30581	----	[Illustration: R. Pheney, lith. M. & N. Hanhart, Impt. MY TWO SERVANTS, ANGELO AND NERO.] NOTES IN NORTH AFRICA: BEING A GUIDE TO THE SPORTSMAN AND TOURIST IN ALGERIA AND TUNISIA. BY W. G. WINDHAM, ESQ. NEW EDITION, WITH COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON: WARD AND LOCK, 158 FLEET STREET. 1862. LONDON: PETTER AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE PRINTING WORKS, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Two great faults have been found with my first edition. The first was, that I had offended many people by personal allusions. To this, I reply, that offence was very far from my mind; and to those offended (if any there be), I say, consider the expressions unsaid. For the rest, they are omitted in this edition. The second alleged defect is, that, while I call my book, to a certain extent, sporting, so little allusion is made to sport. I grant there is some reason in this, and accordingly I have added matter which I think will be useful to future sporting tourists. I would, however, not advise the man who seeks sport alone and solely to go to Algeria, as I am sure he will be disappointed, as I most decidedly was. With regard to the illustrations, I have taken the greatest pains that they may faithfully represent, not only the particular localities alluded to, but also give a fair idea of the country and climate of these latitudes. W. G. WINDHAM. _Hull, April, 1861._ ILLUSTRATIONS. TO FACE PAGE FRONTISPIECE: MY TWO SERVANTS--ANGELO AND NERO 1 SHOOTING HYENAS ON THE PURPLE MOUNTAINS NEAR EL GREESHE 20 SHOOTING WILD DUCKS NEAR AIN MOKRA, PROVINCE OF CONSTANTINE, ALGERIA 44 HOG-SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE OUED EL AHWENA, IN TUNISIA 60 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE VOYAGE OUT:--Paris in 1860--Notre Dame--Our Hotel--Nero and the Groom--The Steamer for Algeria--Gallic Peculiarities--Life on Board 7 CHAPTER II. DESCRIPTION OF ALGIERS:--Arrival in Algeria--Murray's Guide-books, and their Amenities--Disembarkation in the Port of Algiers--Our Fellow-travellers--Algiers and its Inhabitants--The Dey's Palace--Cause of the French Invasion 13 CHAPTER III. LIFE IN ALGIERS:--Algerian Society--A Soirée at General Martinprez's--The Sirocco--My Maltese Companion--The Theatre--General Youssouf and his Career 19 CHAPTER IV. "UP THE COUNTRY:"--Departure from Algiers--Blidah--The Zouave Officers and their Companions--Government Establishment of Horses--Joseph, the Horse-dealer--To Arbah--The Caravanserai--Journey towards Oued-el-Massin 25 CHAPTER V. FURTHER EXPERIENCES:--Abd-el-Kader (but not the Emir)--Difficult Road--Perils of the Way--Prospect of Sport--The First Boar--The Chasseurs d'Afrique--Mine Hostess of the "Scorpion"--Teniet 30 CHAPTER VI. FURTHER PROGRESS--RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES:--Cold Weather--Milianah--Vezoul--The Aubergiste--El Afroun--The Rhamazan--Dancing Dervishes 36 CHAPTER VII. BONA AND ITS VICINITY:--Passage to Bona--State of Affairs on Board--Bona--The Lake Metitza--Ain Mokra--Wild Duck Shooting on the Lake 41 CHAPTER VIII. ON TO TUNIS:--Algeria in General--The Arabs and their Conquerors--Antagonism between the Two Races--Social Condition of the Arabs--The _Oasis_ Steamer--Arrival at Tunis 46 CHAPTER IX. MARSA:--Angelo's Horsemanship--The Bey's Palace at Marsa--The Arabs and their Love of Tobacco--The Friendly Moor at Camatte 52 CHAPTER X. ABOUT BOAR SHOOTING:--Sleeman--the Oued el Ahwena--Its Scenery, and its Dangers--Beauty of the Landscape on its Banks 55 CHAPTER XI. SPORTING EXPERIENCES:--El Greesh--Shooting Hyenas--An Expedition with the Arabs--The Caid and his Family--Another Wild Boar 59 CHAPTER XII. TUNIS AND ITS GOVERNMENT:--Picturesque Situation of Tunis--The Horse Market--Effects of Race--The Bazaars--Mohamed Medea--The Bardo--The Bey of Tunis--His Mode of administering Justice--Prince Puckler Muskau's Account of his Interview 62 CHAPTER XIII. THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE:--Reflections on Ancient Carthage--Hannibal and his Career--An Arab Domicile--Picturesque Appearance of the Ruins 69 CHAPTER XIV. THE RUINS AGAIN:--Great Extent of the Ancient City Marsa, on the Sea-shore--Carthaginian Catacombs near Camatte--Quail Shooting--Trait of Honesty in the Arabs--The Arab Character--Anecdotes concerning them 76 CHAPTER XV. HOME:--My Fellow-passenger, the Sportsman--Passage from Tunis to Malta in a Sailing Vessel--Disagreeables of the Passage--Home Overland--Conclusion 83 NOTES FOR THE SPORTSMAN OR TOURIST IN NORTH AFRICA 88 NOTES IN NORTH AFRICA. CHAPTER I. THE VOYAGE OUT. Paris in 1860.--Notre Dame.--Our Hotel.--Nero and the Groom.--The Steamer for Algeria.--Gallic Peculiarities.--Life on Board. _In medias res._ I will not stop to describe my journey to Paris, _viâ_ Folkestone, nor to chronicle the glasses of pale ale--valedictory libations to _perfide_ Albion, quaffed at the Pavilion--nor to portray the sea-sickness of "mossoo," nor the withering indignation of the British female when her wardrobe was searched. Briefly, kind reader, be pleased to understand that we arrived in safety--guns, rifles, "and all"--at the Hôtel du Louvre, in Paris, at about eleven o'clock on a certain day in February, 1860. The next day was Sunday, and I went to hear vespers at Notre Dame. How I love the old gothic cathedrals, that seem to remove one at once from this work-day world--the fanes wherein the very air seems redolent of devotion, and peopled with phantoms of the past! 'Spite of all disparagement, there is something grand and solemn about them. After service, I ascended one of the towers to the gallery immortalised by Victor Hugo's wonderful romance. The day was declining, and sunset had already commenced. The galleries were crowded with students and respectable operatives and _bourgeois_, with their wives and children. Every face was bathed in the purple light of the departing sun, and many eyes lifted up in silent meditation. I was aroused from the reverie into which the contemplation of this glorious sight had thrown me, by hearing a female voice exclaim, "How beautiful is Nature--how magnificent!" I turned, and saw two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, of sufficiently pleasing appearance. It was from the elder that the exclamation had come, which brought me back from my dream to this nether world. Conquering the shyness which appears to be the Englishman's birthright, I made some remark on the beauties of sunset. Like the earth, we revolved round the sun; but, unlike that planet, we quickly diverged into other orbits. I dimly remember that we talked of Angola cats, Dresden china, Turkish chibouques, maccaroni, and Lord Byron, with whose poems this lady seemed sufficiently familiar. I improved the occasion, as the right thing to do, when talking with ladies about Byron, to find fault with his impiety, his blasphemous scepticism, his cutting sarcasm, and the unhappy frivolity which defaces the works of the man, who, with all his faults, was undoubtedly the greatest poet the nineteenth century has yet produced. A pleasant walk along the quays brought me back to my hotel, in the courtyard of which establishment I found an admiring circle of idlers surrounding my English groom, who had just arrived with my dog Nero; or rather Nero, who seemed by far the most popular character of the two, had just arrived with him; and both appeared to know about as much French one as the other, and to make themselves equally understood or misunderstood. That evening, my friend and travelling companion, B---- and I dined at Dotesio's, in the Rue Castiglione, where we had an excellent dinner, washed down by more excellent wine. The next day found us at Marseilles, at the Hôtel D'Orient, concerning which hostelry I have merely to place on record the fact, that B---- was mulcted in the sum of five francs for the matutinal cold tub in which it was his custom to indulge. The steamer which was to convey us to Algeria was well fitted up in every way. We were the only Englishmen on board. The fore part of the deck was crowded with Zouaves and French soldiers of various denominations, with whom Nero soon made himself perfectly at home, though the exclamation of a Zouave on his first appearance seemed to forbode but an indifferent reception for the four-footed intruder. "_Cré nom d'un chien_" cried the shaven, fez-capped warrior, "_mais je ne t'aimerais pas pour mon camarade du lit!_" Breakfast was served in French fashion on board at ten o'clock, and dinner at five. With one or two exceptions, the company consisted of French commercial travellers, and they were split up into the usual hostile factions of north against south. North, of course, commenced the conversation with Paris, _Paris_, and again PAR-RRI; the southerners every now and then throwing in a doubt of the universal superiority of the metropolis over the known world. One disputant stood out for Marseilles, another broke a lance for Bordeaux, and the war of words waxed so fierce that I began to tremble for the consequences. One young man in company had been some time at Bordeaux, and had much to say thereon; but all his remarks were on one subject--the theatre. On its beauty, its luxury, and its actresses, he held forth at unwearied but wearisome length. While this conversation was going on, the inner man was by no means neglected. Stewed pullets, potatoes, salad, and etceteras, disappeared with marvellous celerity. The cheer was by no means bad, though decidedly Provençal, as I remarked to my next neighbour, a dark-looking Marsellais; which observation, by the way, brought down upon me the anger of the Gods, as impersonated by a large, fat, dirty Calaisien, sitting opposite. He was a big man, this champion, and, according to Cervantes, should, by consequence, have been a good-natured one. Giving himself a sounding blow on the chest for emphasis, he declared the Calaisiens to be an infinitely more moral people than the Marseillais--and washed down his own dictum with an enormous glass of _bière blanche_. I am rather fond of going to sleep after dinner; so I secured my nap on cheap terms, by feigning an interest in the Picard virtues, and accordingly enjoyed a profound rest, disturbed only at intervals by a monotonous and expostulatory "_allons donc!_" thrown in by another dissentient southerner. He was an enormously fat man, the new disputant, and wore a mass of very greasy hair, hanging down over his shoulders. His flannel shirt, an exceedingly dingy specimen of British manufacture, did duty for a waistcoat also; but he was _decoré_, though it was very doubtful to what order the medal on his breast may have belonged. Our captain merits a word of description. He was a short, red-faced individual, of such ineffable seediness, as regarded costume, that I should never have suspected his station but for the fact that he sported a gold band "_bien usité_" round his cap, and sat at the head of the table. For the credit of French politeness be it, however, added, he was a perfect gentleman in his behaviour throughout the voyage. There was also a young French naval officer, whom I afterwards got to know much better in Algeria. He, too, like all the Legitimists, was a most finished gentleman, and spoke English well--a common accomplishment among the officers of the French navy. Though quite a young fellow, he had been in the Russian and Chinese wars, and imparted some very amusing and instructive intelligence on both these subjects. As the noise and the intimacy at the table increased, and the punch and cognac had already "chased" the wine, I adjourned with B---- and the French sailor to the after-deck, and, in company with two young Dutch travellers, smoked our Havanas in a climate that was already African in its heat, while Majorca and Minorca faded away in the distance, and the pale moon rose silently over the quiet sea. CHAPTER II. DESCRIPTION OF ALGIERS. Arrival in Algeria.--Murray's Guide-books, and their Amenities.--Disembarkation in the Port of Algiers.--Our Fellow-travellers.--Algiers and its Inhabitants.--The Dey's Palace.--Cause of the French Invasion. Next morning, at eight o'clock, came the waiter with the intelligence--"_Nous sommes dans la baie d'Alger, monsieur, à une heure de la ville._" My desire to see Algiers was vehement indeed; but scarcely less strong was the craving of the inner man for bread and coffee. With the nectar of Arabia, however, the inspiration of the Orient seemed to percolate my veins; but when a fragrant glass of cognac crowned the meal, the aroma of the East enveloped me, the delicious strains of Bulbul rang in my ears, the Calaisien and the Marseillais, sitting stolidly before me, became straightway transformed into camels, the stewardess into a houri, and the noses of the passengers were as masques in my enraptured sight. But the book at my side was not the Koran, though it might have been, for the strange farrago it contained. It was a celebrated traveller's manual in the English language, and in red binding. The king of the Cannibal Islands has not in his library a more absurd volume than this manual; for in its pages pathetic bagmen give vent to their ludicrous ebullitions concerning the Alhambra, or the Rhine, or any foreign lion you please to name; and young boys just escaped from school dish up their first impressions of the Continent in a style as savoury as the flavour of a Spanish olla podrida. And yet, ascend the Rhine, go to Venice or to St. Petersburg, and ten to one for the chance, that when you meet an Englishman he will have that eternal manual clutched in his British grasp. Oh, my dear and well-beloved countrymen, what creatures of fashion and precedent we all are, from high to low! What one does, the rest must do; and in the self-same manner. I verily believe, if the late Albert Smith had left it on record that, in ascending Mont Blanc, he planted his foot in a certain hole in the snow, every one of his successors in that glorious undertaking would have paid their guides an extra dollar for indicating to them the identical cavity, that they might go and do likewise. Thank goodness, Algeria is as yet encumbered by no manual or "Hand-book," as our modern Germanised phraseology elects to call the egregious productions; so shall we travellers be at liberty to follow our own noses, to go exactly where we like, and to do what we please, even to dressing like Arabs, should the whim seize us. Moreover, we may do in Rome as Rome does, and enjoy a French breakfast washed down with good wine in lieu of bad tea, without having ourselves or our proceedings stigmatised as "shocking," as would undoubtedly be our lot at Paris, or Brussels, or Berlin. Behold us, then, in happy hour, ready to disembark in Algiers, with the children of the desert thronging on board to act as porters. Their appearance pleases me much, as they come forward, with their tall, striking figures, dark eyes, and distinguished mien. "Perfect gentlemen, these," said I to myself; but beneath the outside crust little remains that can be called gratifying. These men are like the apple of Sodom; at least, so I thought on landing, after a long squabble with them respecting the passage money, carried on in bad Italian and French. A nearer acquaintance with them may, perhaps, modify my views on this subject. "Well, it has been a pleasant time on board the packet," is my parting reflection as I step ashore; nor shall I lightly forget the captain, so different in his politeness and urbanity from the sea-bear with whom I sailed in the North Sea; nor the honest Hamburgher, who appeared to have an equally beloved wife in every land and in every place we came to; nor the would-be dandy, who lit cigars innumerable, and invariably flung them overboard after the first puff; nor the priests, who seemed to possess the gift of invisibility, so rarely did they show themselves; nor the hundred thousand events and personages that flash upon our path for a moment on our journey through life, and then linger in the memory only as the dim phantoms of a dream that has passed away. Algiers, seen from the sea, presents the appearance of a vast triangular cone, situated on the slope of a mountain. Like all the inhabitants of Northern Africa, the Algerians were at an early period Christians, and it was only after several battles that the Mahometan religion was finally established all over the coast of Barbary. Before the French occupation, the Algerian ladies, like the females in all Mussulmen countries, were kept in the strictest seclusion. The wife of a rich Moor never left her home except to go to the baths, and even that expedition was undertaken only at night. When it became absolutely necessary that ladies should go abroad in daylight, their faces were covered, and the whole figure so concealed by a redundancy of wrappings, that a stranger would be puzzled to find out what the moving bundles were. The luxury of the bath is greatly used by them. There are public as well as private baths. They consist of three apartments. The first is a large hall, for dressing and undressing; in the second, the visitors perspire; and the third is for bathing proper, or otherwise, as tastes and opinions somewhat differ. After the bath, those of the male sex repair to the first room for lemonade or coffee, or for a pipe. The modern Mahometan ladies of Algiers have almost abandoned this seclusion. They are seen gadding about everywhere, and are reported as being by no means particular or difficult in their conquests. French ideas and morals have percolated them considerably. Excessive obesity is regarded among Mahometans as the perfection of beauty; so that, instead of using powders and other nostrums to reduce themselves, like some of my friends at home, they devour seeds and _couscous_, the national dish, especially employed for fattening people. Some young ladies are crammed to such a degree that they die under the operation. On a fine, hot day in February, 1860, I mounted the conical hill on which Algiers is built. The weather was magnificent. The sun of Africa already made his approach felt, and the mountains in the far horizon stood out like _bas-reliefs_ against the azure sky. Here stood the palace of the Dey before the French occupation. The building is now called the _casbah_, and used as a large barrack; outside are the Moorish houses, and the chief part of the Moorish population. The cause of quarrel between France and Algeria, which resulted in the conquest of the country by the Gallic legions was as follows:--The Dey, a pasha of the old Turkish school, was, it appears, a potentate of extravagant disposition, and owed the French Government a considerable sum of money. The creditors, being in a hurry for their cash, dunned the Dey incessantly, through the agency of their consul. Unaccustomed to the eagerness of French importunity, the Dey, on one unlucky occasion, made a gesture of impatience with his fan, as a man might do with his riding-whip, if his tailor became too pressing for the settlement of his account. It proved an expensive gesture, however; for within a few weeks it brought 10,000 French soldiers to the shores of the Dey, and cost him his entire realm. The bulk of the Mauresque and Turkish population quitted Algeria with their families on the arrival of the French. Those who remain are the poorer classes, and now live, if report speaks true, in an immoral state. These events took place in the reign of that peaceful monarch, Louis Philippe. CHAPTER III. LIFE IN ALGIERS. Algerian Society.--A _Soirée_ at General Martinprez's.--The Sirocco.--My Maltese Companion.--The Theatre.--General Youssouf and Career. I have described Algiers as being built on the side of a mountain. The city possesses a commodious and safe harbour, where flutter the colours of every nation, from the red flag of the Swede to the Spaniard's yellow ensign. Economy of space being a primary consideration in the laying out of the city, the houses have been built very high, and the streets made very narrow, so that there is no room for carriages. The Consul has a very fine Mauresque house in the old Turkish quarter, where he invited me to dinner and a _soirée_ the day after my arrival; and the next day I was invited to the reception of the Governor, General Martinprez. The General received me and my companions most graciously, and, after keeping me in conversation for about five minutes, introduced me to his lady, a very pleasing person. My friend A---- and I were then introduced to two or three other fashionable ladies of Algiers; and, engrossed in conversation with these; we strangers were unconscious of a general movement of the gentlemen towards the farther end of the room, as a preliminary to the amateur concert. I was quite ignorant of this Algerian regulation, by which the gentlemen and ladies are separated as effectually as in a Lutheran church (a fashion, by-the-bye, we appear to be adopting). Accordingly, on looking up, I observed, to my infinite chagrin, that I was the "observed of all observers," and probably was set down as a _bête Anglais_, who knew no better. The extensive crinoline of the ladies effectually prevented a retreat in any direction, and I was unpleasantly conscious of the suppressed titter the fair ones tried to conceal behind their fans. I endeavoured to summon up all the resources of my London phlegm, to support me in this ridiculous position; but, unfortunately, I possess very little of that desirable quality. The fair one with whom I was conversing evidently felt for the unpleasantness of my situation, and very good-naturedly kept me talking till the end of the first piece, when I succeeded in making my escape. How I inwardly abused the opera they were performing! It was called "_Le Diable_;" and to me it appeared as though the fiend in question had no tail--or rather, _no end_--to that appendage, so long did the time seem. Far be it from me to despise the arts; I admire them in every shape, except in the compound form of speech: _exempli gratiâ_, art-union, art-school, &c. Why, in the name of common sense, can we not talk English instead of German, and say school of arts, union of arts, &c.? I suppose we shall soon go a step farther in imitation of our Germanic neighbours, and call poetry by the appellation of poet-art. In the last century, it seemed likely, as Johnson said, that we should babble a dialect of France; in this, there is more danger of our talking a Teutonic jargon. Let us stick to the middle course--for our language is essentially half way between the German and the French, the Teutonic and Romance tongues, and any attempt to approximate too much to either extreme is simply preposterous. The next day we had the sirocco; and, to quote the expression with which I once heard a popular preacher commence a sermon, it was "d----d hot." Start not, ladies of Belgravia, for the preacher in question belonged not to the Anglican communion; he held forth to mere vulgar audiences, at least, in a remote locality. Thrice he repeated the expression (which I will not), and then improved the occasion by describing a place hotter than the crowded chapel in which he was officiating, in the month of July. He was evidently in his element. He was especially hot against those modern spirits, who are not such faithful believers in the burning flames of the lower regions, and even begin to imagine they may have cooled down, if they have not been quite extinguished. "And if"--he cried, in his ardour--"if they were on the point of being extinguished, I would with my own breath rekindle the expiring flame!" And his voice, which sounded like a gale of wind, and his face, red as a furnace, and his enormous fists fiercely clenched, made it appear to the congregation, for the moment, that this terrifying assertion was no exaggeration. But to return to the sirocco. In spite, or rather by reason of the heat, I went for a stroll on the sea-shore with Nero, that we might cool our wearied limbs in the azure wave of the Mediterranean. We had been walking along the shore for about a mile, when about twenty Arab dogs rushed out most ferociously at Nero, and would, I believe, have torn him to pieces, but for the large hunting-whip with which I managed to keep them at bay. There was with me a young Maltese boy, of Irish parentage--a most amusing character this urchin was. He wanted me to take him into the interior as my interpreter. "Take me wid you, sir," was his eloquent appeal; "give me pound a month, sir; tell Arabs you brother of Queen Victoria, sir; Arabs great fools, sir; know no better, sir;" but I was proof against the voice of the charmer. In returning, I met General Martinprez on horseback, and saluted; of course, he returned my greeting most graciously. But I was not a little amused, and could hardly help laughing, when the young Hiberno-Maltese tatterdemalion took off his dirty cap with a flourish to the General, simultaneously with my salute, as if he had been my confidential friend, taking a promenade with me. That evening I went to the theatre. The piece performed was "_Les Femmes Terribles_"--and a terribly Gallic flavour there was diffused over the whole performance--a kind of _haut goût_, for which we stolid islanders have, happily, no relish. General Youssouf was at the theatre this evening. He is rather a fine-looking man, and not too stout. His is a curious history. Originally a Christian slave at Tunis, supposed to be the son of Italian parents, he received the name of Youssouf (Joseph) from his Mussulman masters at Tunis, where he was employed in the Bey's palace. Of fine stature and handsome appearance, the Christian slave soon attracted the notice of the Bey's daughter, an honour to which he was not insensible. The Bey was soon informed of what was going on, and Joseph would have been caged, if not racked, had not some kind friend apprised him of the discovery, and of his own consequent danger. A French man-of-war happened to be in the harbour at La Goeletta, off Tunis, and young Youssouf, then about twenty years of age, managed to effect his escape on board. The Franks, of course, gladly received him as an escaped Christian slave. The Bey sent to demand him back; but the French commander gave him politely to understand that he would see the Bey experiencing the reverse of the joys of Paradise before he would comply with such a request. The vessel set sail next day for Algiers, where the Gallic occupation had just commenced. Young Youssouf--who, in addition to his knowledge of French and Italian, could, of course, speak Arabic perfectly--was here landed, and became interpreter to a foot regiment. Quick and clever, he was soon promoted, till he attained an officer's rank. He is now a general in the service. Entertaining--perhaps naturally--a mortal hatred of the Arabs, he has generally been selected to enforce those stern acts of reprisal against the native population, which, though perhaps justified by necessity, still bear the impress of great severity, and are unpalatable to officers of French birth and education. These measures he has always carried out with strict fidelity and unrelenting harshness. He was the centre of attraction this evening--every battery of eyes was turned upon him. He had fought a duel with the editor of a newspaper, only that morning, for abusing him or his wife, and had succeeded in running the journalist through the shoulder. The next few days I was engaged in making purchases, chiefly of shot and necessary travelling articles, for the interior. I was swimming my dog in the water of the port, according to my daily custom, when I stumbled on my servant, Angelo, whom I determined to take with me into the interior. Besides English, which he spoke very well, he could talk Arabic quite fluently, and I found him very useful. CHAPTER IV. "UP THE COUNTRY." Departure from Algiers.--Blidah.--The Zouave Officers and their Companions.--Government Establishment of Horses.--Joseph, the Horse-dealer.--To Arbah.--The Caravanserai.--Journey towards Oued-el-Massin. On Thursday, March 8th, after seeing A---- start, by diligence, with innumerable bags of cheviotine (deer-shot), I and Angelo left Algiers with my newly-purchased horses, and, passing through some very pretty country, stopped at the first village, where De Warn, a French officer, came up on horseback, with his groom. He admired my horses very much, and announced his destination to be the Maison Carrée, where he was going to shoot quails, a friend of his having bagged forty there in one afternoon. It came on to rain very hard as we passed through the plain of the Medidja, and arrived at Bouffaseh, where there is a column raised to the memory of twenty-three men killed there during the war. We galloped in to Blidah, the rain pouring down on us. At dinner, I met A---- in a _café_, with Count L'Esparre and three or four officers of the 1st Regiment of Zouaves. They were a very pleasant set of fellows, but did not appear to admire their remote quarters at Blidah by any means. The heat, during the height of summer, they informed me, was terrific, and the private soldiers are not allowed to quit their quarters between 10 A.M. and 5 P.M. during the four hottest months of the year. We drank unlimited punch to the "Alliance," and, on returning to the hotel, after a mutual exchange of good wishes, we found familiar faces--belonging to the Dutchmen who had travelled with us from Marseilles to Algiers. I went with Count L'Esparre to see the Government establishment of horses. There were some very fine creatures of Arab breed; also some Persian horses which had been presented by the Shah of Persia. We then started on horseback for Medea, and on my way passed the "Grotto of Monkeys," but none of the animals from which the grotto takes its name met my inquiring gaze. The Rocher Pourri, which I also passed on my way, had just acquired an additional but a lugubrious celebrity, an Arab having killed a Frenchman there the day before. We rode on to Medea through a rattling snow-storm, and arrived properly powdered at the Hôtel du Gastronome, where they made us comfortable enough. Medea is built in a very elevated situation, among the mountains, and must be a very cold place. On the next day, Saturday, it was still snowing hard. A---- had to provide himself with a horse, and we were afterwards both engaged, with Angelo, my Maltese servant, looking for mules to carry our baggage to Teniet. At the hotel, there was a very celebrated picture by Horace Vernet, for which one of the Dutchmen offered a thousand francs, but the offer was declined by Madame Gerard. In my opinion, the picture was far from being a masterpiece. Rising early on Sunday, I was immediately pounced upon by a set of Arabs, who had engaged to take our luggage, and to whom we had paid a deposit in advance. They now refused to take our luggage at five francs per day, the sum agreed upon, unless we retained their valuable services all the time we remained at Teniet, which, of course, we never contemplated doing. I demanded back the deposit, but they would not give it up. On going to the Bureau Arabe, we found it closed, and the Commandant de Ville, to whom some officers recommended us to apply, was gone to Blidah, so there was nothing for it but to invoke the aid of Joseph, a French horse-dealer, who engaged to take our effects on two mules to Teniet at seven and a half francs per mule per day, we paying the return journey. After all, we could not manage to get off until one o'clock in the day. Joseph accompanied us as far as Lodi, to indicate the route to the caravanserai of Arbah, where we were to stay for the night. The good horse-dealer insisted on our taking two or three _petits verres_ on the road. A terrible fellow he was for "nips," that Joseph. The road to Arbah lay across a very barren, desert, mountainous country, with splendid views over the whole Atlas range, as far as Mostaganem, now covered with snow. We passed one or two Arab villages, and had great difficulty in finding our way, on account of the number of roads that branched off right and left. On the journey we passed a very fine house belonging to a rich Arab chief. We were sorely tempted to turn in here, but refrained, and arriving at the caravanserai at about seven o'clock, found a party of French officers just sitting down to dinner. They very politely invited us to join them. The caravanserai is a Government establishment. In form it resembles a large farm yard, entirely walled in and crenellated. It has stalls for horses, and good accommodation for European travellers. A large fair is held here every Wednesday, chiefly for the sale of native horses. We had a long and interesting talk with the officers, and then retired to bed, but not to sleep, for our baggage had not arrived, and the bitter cold kept us in a state of enforced watchfulness. Before breakfast, next day, I walked out on a tour of inspection through the neighbourhood. The caravanserai is situated almost in the desert; and very cold and barren are its surroundings. During breakfast, we were rejoiced by the arrival of our baggage, and at once started for Ouad-el-Massin. There is a very grand sensation of solitude and silence in riding through these vast plains. The weather was still tremendously cold and rainy. I managed to shoot two partridges as we came along. A chapter of accidents now began. My Maltese servant had been mistaken concerning the capacity of our mules; for they broke down, and we were obliged to leave them behind. Then my horse, an exceedingly vicious brute, nearly succeeded in appropriating a piece of Angelo's shoulder, as the latter stooped to tighten the girths. I found afterwards that my steed had a very bad character all over the country; his ill fame, however, was slightly redeemed by the fact that he was a good goer. Then we missed our way among the mountains, and with difficulty succeeded, just as it was getting dark, in reaching a small house at Guebla, kept by a Frenchman. The proprietor received us very hospitably, and gave us all the accommodation he could: it was of rather a limited character, inasmuch as we all slept together in the small room where we dined and breakfasted. Our host informed us that there were a great number of lions in the neighbourhood. He had himself been surprised by one, just after dusk, on the road from Milianca, and offered to induce the Caid of the adjoining tribe to get up a battue on our return. He also spoke of the great number of wild boars in a way that would make a hunter's heart leap within him. We retired to rest, and, sheltered for the nonce from the searching cold, I slept as only a weary traveller can. CHAPTER V. FURTHER EXPERIENCES. Abd-el-Kader (but not the Emir).--Difficult Road.--Perils of the Way.--Prospect of Sport.--The First Boar.--The Chasseurs d'Afrique.--Mine Hostess of the "Scorpion."--Teniet. In the hope of obtaining some reliable information as to hunting prospects, I had in the Caid's lieutenant a fine-looking fellow, rejoicing in the famous name of Abd-el-Kader, though he was no relation to the renowned chief. He gave a long description of the capture of a boar, that had been wounded by some Arabs; how he caught the brute by the hoofs, gagged it, and brought it home alive. Mr. ----, he also informed us, had been surprised, about a month before, by a lion, as he was returning at dusk from Milianah. There were many lions in the vicinity, he added; and promised that his friend the Caid should treat us to a lion-hunt on our return, if we came back this way. Then we started, Abd-el-Kader accompanying us to show us a short way over the mountains to the caravanserai of Oued-el-Massin, where we were to pass the night, and expected to find our luggage. We were prepared to find the river very high, and our anticipations were not deceived. Abd-el-Kader admonished me to wait on the bank while he went in to try if there was any getting through. He returned and asked if my horse was good, and if I was willing to follow him. On receiving my affirmative answer, he told me to fix my eyes on the opposite shore, and, above all things, to abstain from looking at the water, which was tearing along at a tremendous rate; if I neglected his instructions, I should infallibly be carried away and drowned. I started, and, by dint of spurring, managed to get across, though my horse plunged up to his shoulder, and at one moment I thought I was a "gone coon." Abd-el-Kader, the undaunted, then went back once more for the second horse, which he dragged across in due time by the bridle. Then he pointed out to us the road over the mountain to Oued-el-Massin; nor did he think it derogatory to his dignity to accept a reward for the trouble he had taken on our behalf. In spite of the valiant lieutenant's directions, the road was a very difficult one to find. After wandering about in the forest through a number of out-of-the-way paths, we managed at last to stumble on an Arab house or two, where the promise of a supply of powder prevailed with an Arab, and he piloted us down to the caravanserai, where we arrived at about six P.M., wet to the skin, and weary with a most fatiguing day's march. We found our luggage had preceded us by about half an hour; so we had a change of clothes, and sat down gleefully to a capital dinner in very comfortable quarters. These caravanserais are a famous institution. They are built by the French Government for the convenience of travellers, and are very well organised. Each one is under the superintendence of a Frenchman, and has one part devoted to Europeans and another to Arabs. We had an excellent sitting-room and bed-room to ourselves, and, as may be supposed, were exceedingly comfortable. Wednesday, the 14th of March, was ushered in by a pouring rain; and we received the agreeable intelligence that the river between this and our next station was perfectly impassable; so we made up our minds to stay where we were. There was some consolation in the thought that Joseph, the exceedingly keen horse-dealer at Medea, will not be entitled to charge extra for the delay to his mules, he having bound himself, by solemn covenant, to deliver the baggage safely at Teniet for a certain stipulated sum. After breakfast I walked into the forest which surrounds the caravanserai on all sides, and shot two or three brace of red-legged partridges and a woodcock. I saw the traces of several wild boars; they were evidently quite recent; also a wretched porcupine the Arabs had killed. In the course of the day the Arabs brought in a boar which they had killed in the morning. They threw the entrails outside the house, and, during the night, quite an army of jackals came down to devour them. It was so dark that we could not get a shot at these African scavengers, though I sallied out once or twice after them. It rained all night, so that going on was out of the question, from the swollen state of the river; so I walked off before breakfast, with Angelo, to an Arab village, about a mile and a half distant, to inquire about boars. The promise of some powder brought out the inhabitants; and, after a little banter and chaffing, they agreed to meet me after breakfast, and to show me one of those animals. So I returned to the caravanserai to breakfast, and then, with my friend, rode back to the Arab huts. We left our horses at the village, and proceeded to climb a horribly steep hill in company with some of the natives, to whom I had promised tobacco-money, on condition of being brought face to face with a boar. After some tremendously steep climbing, we came upon a number of recent tracks, one of which B---- followed with his Arab, while I remained in another gorge. Presently I heard a shot fired, about a mile off; and, on returning to where the horses were tethered, I found that B---- and his Arab had succeeded in discovering a boar. The Arab had fired at the brute at twenty paces, but missed his aim. It was now past five o'clock, so we returned to the caravanserai to dinner. Some Chasseurs d'Afrique had arrived in the interim. Their captain joined us in our room, and promised us an escort for the morrow. He was from Boulogne-sur-Mer, and spoke English pretty well. He told us we should have to start at six in the morning to cross the river. Accordingly, next morning the Frenchman set out at six o'clock with his troops and traps, leaving a dragoon behind as an escort for us, but with the important qualification that the man might only stay one hour behind the rest, as he must be present on the arrival of the troop at Teniet. "_Et maintenant_," quoth this bold warrior, "_je vais me servir d'un peu de votre tabac, s'il vous plait, car je vois que votre blague est bien garni;_" and, filling his pipe, he vanished, with a polite "_Au revoir, messieurs_!" Feeling too tired to rise at seven for the sake of escort, especially as we had not a very long journey before us, I remained comfortably for breakfast, and B---- started alone. After a good meal, I set out with Angelo, and we forced our way through a densely-wooded country, till we came upon the obstacle which had lost us two days--the river Klebah. This stream we managed with some difficulty to cross; a Frenchman, who emerged from the auberge on the other side, assisting us, by his advice, as to the best spot to choose for our passage. B---- and the trooper had just finished breakfast in the auberge, and departed. The landlady of the "Scorpion," a very chatty and amusing personage, insisted upon it that I was a German. She favoured me with a sporting anecdote, setting forth how she had killed three rabbits during an expedition to pick some rose laurier on the hills. As the bunnies popped their noses out of their holes, she had managed to pop them off with the branches. As this was the only house to be met with on that day's journey, I halted there for half an hour. Mine hostess related how an "English milord" had stayed there for six months with his wife, in a tent, without even a servant--"_Qu'ils sont drôles ces Anglais!_" was the landlady's final comment; and it was not for me to contradict the oft-repeated sentiment. Through a mountainous and most barren country, amid a pelting snow-storm, we wended onwards to Teniet. In my way from El Massin to the "Scorpion," I might almost have knocked over several partridges with my whip, so close did they come; but here there were none to be seen, nor was there any cover that might shelter them. At a miserable auberge called "_les Cèdres_," I found B----. The fort at Teniet is a fine edifice, in a commanding position. I went up and left my letter of introduction for Captain Camatte, who gave us very small hope of sport. He did not seem very keen on the subject, and advised us to try some other place, offering to give us recommendations, &c. I returned to a most miserable room, where we could hardly sit, so much were we annoyed by the smoke from the fire; we could scarcely decide which was hardest to bear, the smoke within, or the cold without. With a hearty laugh at the absurdity of coming to such a place as Teniet in search of game, and with a determination to set out on our return the next day, we betook ourselves to an early bed. CHAPTER VI. FURTHER PROGRESS.--RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. Cold Weather.--Milianah.--Vezoul.--The Aubergiste.--El Afroun.--The Rhamazan.--Dancing Dervishes. In order to avoid the trouble of carrying our ammunition back with us, we sold the greater portion of it. The snow lay four or five inches deep in the road; we sent to the commandant to procure us mules and other necessaries, and set out, with a snow-storm beating down upon us, and the cold as sharp as it well could be. At the "Scorpion" we refreshed ourselves with coffee, and then re-crossed the river, which was scarcely fordable; we got to El Massin about six o'clock; the brigadier told us he had shot a hyena. Some capital wild boar they gave us for dinner, seemed to be an earnest of our return to sporting latitudes. At half-past seven next morning, we emerged from the caravanserai. The weather seemed at last, after a long season of inclemency, to have set in for heat. "_Le temps s'est remis a neuf_," observed Mr. Ball; and it had changed with a vengeance, so far as the temperature was concerned. Terribly hot we found it, marching across the Milianah plain. We crossed the Djelish in a bac, or flying bridge, and reached Afreville about ten o'clock. Leaving B---- and Angelo to proceed to Medea, I went on to Milianah, where I arrived at about twelve o'clock. While waiting there for my baggage, I noticed some Arab boys playing at a game closely resembling hockey. Milianah is a very strong fort, with a splendid view over the Atlas mountains and the plain of the Djelish. I stopped at the Cat or Du-chat stables, appropriately kept by Mr. Duchat-_el_, and found that it was too late to stop at any place on the road to Blidah. I took a walk through the town, and on the Grande Place found a number of soldiers singing a chorus very creditably, without instrumental accompaniment. They perform in this manner every Sunday. The view over the plain of the Djelish is one of the most splendid I ever beheld, not excepting that from the Alhambra itself. I was told I could easily get to Blidah in a day on horseback, from Milianah, so I determined to stay at the Hôtel d'Iffly, a very comfortable place. At dinner I met Mostyn and Captain Ross, just arrived from Algiers, per diligence. Captain R----, who is in the Bengal Artillery, told me he thought the French used the natives much better than we do those of India. I differ from him. One of the French officers with whom I dined told me the only way to manage the "Indigènes" was by that vigorous measure, "_un coup de fouet_," and, from what I saw, I believe it to be the case. On Monday, the 19th, I left Milianah at about half-past seven, and rode through splendid Pyreneean scenery to Vezoul, a French village. The aubergiste took me for a German, and announced that he had two German workmen staying with him, who spoke with the same accent I used. When I repudiated my Teutonic nationality, he met me with the remark: "_Enfin, c'est le même sang rouge qui coule dans nos veines, que nous soyons Anglais, Français, ou Allemands;_" to which undeniable proposition I rejoined, "_Oui, c'est vrai nous sommes tous Européens ici._" I fed my horse here, and came on, over the mountains, under a very hot sun, to Bourkikah, where I entered the Medidja plain. On entering this plain, the traveller enjoys a magnificent view right onward to sea, gleaming miles away in the sunny haze. At Bourkikah, my horse was so tired, that I was obliged to take off the saddle-bags, and leave them at the "Bureau des Diligences," to be forwarded. Some French officers at the hotel assured me I should not be able to get to Blidah, and recommended me strongly to stay at El Afroun, "_chez les Petits Frères_," if I found my horse too tired to proceed. I rode determinedly on through the plain, but could scarcely get my horse to move by dint of whip or spur. By the time I had crossed the river into El Afroun, I found my horse so entirely knocked up, that it was clearly impossible to proceed. So, of necessity, I turned into the auberge, and had a very good dinner, enlivened by a serenade from a legion of frogs, croaking dolefully in the neighbouring marshes. Getting away from El Afroun by six o'clock next morning, I found myself at Blidah by half-past seven. The cavalry horses were just turning out on the plains, and looked very handsome as I rode into the town. At Blidah, where I breakfasted, the sun was hot enough to burn my face in a most unequivocal manner, and to necessitate the purchase of a new hat. On arriving at Bouffanieh, I got off my horse, which by this time had fairly fallen lame, and took the diligence into Algiers. At Bouffanieh I was much amused at the proceedings of a group of Arabs, who were squatting on the ground, selling oranges. Their first customer was a drunken Frenchman, who came staggering up, and began chaffing the vendors; but they evidently got the better of him in no time, and he retired in confusion. Next came a grave, steady-looking Spaniard, who, after much bargaining, marched off with _one_ orange. He was followed by a little girl, who very quickly got hold of three. I thought Algiers improved on a second view. Next day I went for a ride to the Maison Carrée, with De Warne and Captain Thouars, of the _Euphrates_. We had a most magnificent view over the plain of the Metidja. This was the first night of the Rhamazan. I visited the mosques, which have been thrown open to Europeans since the French occupation. Thence I proceeded to view a strange religious or fanatic ceremony of the Mussulmans; some Swedish naval officers were with us. The whole affair reminded me of a meeting of Jumpers, or Ranters. There are no priests to take part in it. The men stand round in a circle, reciting prayers to Allah, and calling on Mahomet, while they work their bodies violently backwards and forwards, till they lash themselves into a state of perfect frenzy. One fanatic more zealous than the rest then rushes forward, cuts himself with a knife, and stands on the sharp edge of the weapon, which is held by another. The chaunt or psalm is then renewed, and another devotee comes forward howling; snatches a portion of prickly pear, and actually devours it ravenously. Then another exceedingly zealous performer--whose face, by the way, reminded me strangely of the portraits of Disraeli in _Punch_--seized some red-hot coals, and held them in his mouth for a time, afterwards proceeding to swallow lighted pipes, and execute other salamandrine feats. After witnessing this spectacle of degradation for some time, we retired, somewhat disgusted at the buffooneries perpetrated in this country, as elsewhere, in the name of religion. CHAPTER VII. BONA AND ITS VICINITY. Passage to Bona.--State of Affairs on Board.--Bona.--The Lake Metitza.--Ain Mokra.--Wild Duck Shooting on the Lake. We bade adieu to B----, who had given us letters of recommendation to the Admiral, for a first-class cabin to Bona--a thing difficult to achieve on board the steamers here, as civilians are only allowed second-class accommodation, the state cabin being reserved for the use of naval and military officers, as the steamers on this line rank as men of war. The boat was much crowded with soldiers, sailors, and Arabs, and we had to share a most miserable berth with eight other occupants. We had arrived too late to procure cabin places, and were obliged to dine in an unsavoury den, reeking with pestilential odours. Most of the Frenchmen grumbled loudly at the miserable accommodation afforded in return for their money. Steaming along past a fine coast, we reached Dellis about eight o'clock. I got Angelo to bring me my sheepskin and cloak, and preferred sleeping on deck to passing the night in a locality which, for the horrors it contained, might have figured as a scene in Dante's "Inferno." The gentle music of the sailors, swabbing the deck, awoke me next morning. I found we were off Bougie, a most beautifully-situated place, entirely surrounded by snow-covered mountains. Here are distinctly to be seen the ruins of the old wall supposed to have been built by the Vandals. A rather tedious day on board, but the occupation of watching the coast, which is very fine, varied the monotony of the voyage. We passed Djigelli at about twelve, and Philippeville at nine in the evening, when I retired to rest, and, the Fates be thanked, it was in a fresh cabin. There was a Jewess on board, a rather pretty personage, who slept in the same cabin with six men, most of them French officers, with a coolness that astonished me. Her husband was in the berth opposite her; she did not appear to feel the discomforts of her position, but chatted away gaily in Arabic and French throughout the whole passage. I don't think she quitted her berth once. At half-past six on Saturday, the 25th of March, came Angelo to announce to me that we were off Bona. This is a very strongly fortified place. We were rowed ashore by Maltese boatmen, and, amid a great crowd and bustle on the quay, landed, and went to the Hôtel de France. The proprietors were very civil, and assigned us a room at the top of the house, looking out on the place. We sallied forth in quest of horses to take us to the market-place. An Arab, who spoke some very broken and dilapidated Italian, took us round the market and through the streets, shouting "Reel Ain Mokra!" Several Arabs came up and offered us their horses, but the steeds had such a forlorn look, that we declined the accommodation, and settled to start by carriage next morning. Accordingly, on Monday, the 26th of March, we set out at five o'clock, on a most wretched morning. The vehicle was the most miserable locomotive contrivance I ever saw. Drawn by two horses, it pounded and churned along a most detestable road. We were obliged to get out several times, and in one place we stuck in the mud for twenty minutes. It was only by dint of putting our united shoulders to the wheel, that we succeeded in extricating our unhappy chariot from its stationary position. At length our eyes were gladdened by the sight of the defile which opens on the lake Metitza, where Count Z----'s property is situated. Though of Polish origin, the Count is an Englishman, and has, I believe, been an officer. Right gladly we alighted from the carriage, and, loading our guns, prevailed on some Italian fishermen to take us out in a boat for a pop at the wild ducks which we saw flying about by hundreds, bagged a few, and then returned to find that the Count's keeper had come down, under the impression that we were poachers, with a firm determination to take us into custody there and then. The production of our letter of recommendation brought him back to civility, and produced an offer to take us out shooting; Count Z---- himself was absent in London. There is an establishment here for the manufacture of oil from putrid fish, which agreeable occupation announced itself in the shape of such an overpowering odour, that I seized a glass of cognac, and fled precipitately, taking my way towards the caravanserai of Ain Mokra. Poor old Nero, whom I had brought with me, got into a scrape here, and narrowly escaped being drowned. It appears that the putrid entrails of the fish are thrown into a kind of pond, which is thus filled with a slimy mixture resembling clay, and exhaling a most horrible odour when exposed to the sun's rays. Nero contrived, in some way or other, to slip into this delectable compound, and there he would have remained, had I not laid hold of him and pulled him out by main force. I at once had him washed and scrubbed, and even emptied some scent on him, but in vain; for days afterwards, poor Nero carried about with him a reminiscence of his odoriferous adventure, which rendered his absence most desirable to the comfort and well-being of his friends. I sallied forth about four miles from Ain Mokra, and lay in ambush for boars, but none appeared, and only shot some jackals--a very poor substitute for the nobler game I had missed. [Illustration: R. Pheney, lith. M. & N. Hanhart, Impt. SHOOTING WILD DUCKS NEAR AIN MOKRA, PROVINCE OF CONSTANTINE, ALGERIA.] At five, next morning, I went out to shoot on the lake. I got Angelo to row a boat slowly among the reeds, and soon saw hundreds of wild ducks, teals, and large white birds of whose name I am ignorant; they looked to me like flamingoes. I could only succeed in bagging a few, as they were exceedingly shy, and made off as soon as the boat approached; moreover, the rushes were not thick enough to afford us an effectual concealment. As the miasma from the lake was sufficiently powerful to threaten fever, we returned to the caravanserai, where we breakfasted, and, after shooting a few quails, returned in our carriage, at one o'clock, to Bona. My driver, who sat beside me, was a very loquacious old soldier, who had served in the campaigns against the Arabs under Baraguay d'Hilliers and Youssouf, and been present at the capture of Milianah and Medeah. The Arabs, he said, never met the French fairly _en bataille rangée_, but always fired from ambush at the rear-guard, and in this way killed a great number of men. He described the conduct of the Arabs to their prisoners as very merciless. They never gave quarter, and frequently mutilated their captives; the women, in this particular, being more cruel than the men. I was informed, on my return, that the party who came out last year to shoot, had only killed four lions in as many months, though they had "all appliances and means to boot," and always kept several Arabs in their pay. CHAPTER VIII. ON TO TUNIS. Algeria in general.--The Arabs and their Conquerors.--Antagonism between the Two Races.--Social Condition of the Arabs.--The Oasis steamer.--Arrival at Tunis. On the 28th of March I left Bona in the steamer _Oasis_. The engine broke down shortly after leaving the port, and, as the sails were absolutely useless, we had the pleasant consciousness of drifting towards a lee shore; but in a short time the damage was luckily repaired, and we proceeded on our voyage. The accounts I had heard of Algeria had not prepared me to find such a flourishing state of affairs as I really found to exist in the community. The colony possesses fine harbours, a magnificent soil, and a glorious climate; numerous towns, with good hotels, are springing up in the interior. It is true that many of the immigrants are not French, but the majority are of that nation; and all the inhabitants, after a few years, adopt the French manners and language. The non-Gallic population are chiefly Spaniards, Italians, Maltese, and Germans. I met only one party of English at Bona, where a community of eighteen souls have been brought over by a Mr. Vincent; they appear to thrive very well. I was told that Count Z---- intended establishing an English village near Bona. From the general prosperity, I, of course, except the Moors and Arabs, who will never, I believe, adopt European civilisation; they seem to recoil from before it, like the wild beasts of their native deserts. The French people certainly pointed out to me in the towns one or two _Europeanised_ Arabs, and laughed at the idea of their ever becoming "_Français_." From what I saw, the natives merely adopted the vices without the good qualities of the dominant race. If to be civilised consists in sitting in the _cafés_, drinking absinthe, playing cards, and speaking bad French, I certainly saw one or two most unquestionable specimens of the Arab adaptability to Gallic impressions; but, with the exception of these brilliant results, I never saw the least token of intercourse between the Moors and their conquerors; indeed, each nation may be said entirely to ignore the existence of the other. The peculiarity of Mussulman habits, with regard to women, entirely precludes all prospect of a future mixture of the two races--such an amalgamation, for instance, as occurred in our own country between the Norman-French conquerors and the conquered Saxons. So well are the French aware of this impossibility, that I have seen the question of the expediency of utterly expelling the Mussulmans from Algeria gravely discussed in the French journals. Another method proposed was, that the young Arabs who had attained the military age of from eighteen to twenty-two years, should be transferred to France, there to pass their period of service as infantry soldiers only, that opportunities might be found, during their "soldiering years," for instructing them in agriculture, and the rudiments of civilised education. This appears to me a sufficiently feasible plan; but I suspect that the Arab converts to civilisation would, on their return to their native land, quickly relapse into their old idle, roving habits, their primitive mode of life, and their inborn hatred of the infidel, whom they now regard as an instrument sent by Providence to inflict vengeance on the true believer for his apathy, and culpable neglect of his religious duties, including the propagation of his faith by fire and sword. Still, they believe the time to be approaching when every true son of the prophet shall "hae his ain" again; and it is past the power of mortal man to shake a Mahometan's trust and reliance on Destiny. For the rest, the French behave with the greatest toleration towards all members of the Moorish faith, who are allowed to perform every rite of their religion, and polygamy even is permitted to prevail among the Mussulman population. At Bona, a very handsome mosque is being erected on the Grand Place by the Government. Tolerant themselves, the French refuse, with perfect justice, to suffer any display of bigotry or fanaticism on the part of the Mahometans towards the Christian community; the consequence is, that the mosques and other resorts of Mahometans are all thrown open to European visitors. My dog Nero was a most decided favourite on board the French steamer, _Oasis_. Everybody was caressing and patting him, from the captain to the stewardess, rather a nice young female, from Germany, who took him under her especial protection, and looked after his creature-comforts in a way that must have aroused the most lively gratitude in the canine bosom of the said Nero. Poor old dog! he seemed quite bewildered at the attention he received, not only here, but also on board the French man-of-war, the _Tartar_, where the French soldiers and sailors were crowding around him all day long, and overwhelming him with favours, in the shape of bits of meat, when they took their meals. A number of Arabs were sleeping about the deck. These children of the desert used to excite Nero's especial wonder. Whenever he was let loose, he was sure to be sniffing about among the prostrate figures, examining their faces and _bournouses_, and often waking them up with a start, to the intense delight of the French tars. On our arrival off La Goulette, the only anchorage for ships, situated about eight miles from Tunis, by sea, and nine miles by land, we were greeted by a scene of the most tremendous confusion. All the feluccas were rowed by Arabs, and their shouting, swearing, and gesticulation exceeded all my former experiences of the kind, Stamboul not excepted. A little patience, and a good deal of backsheesh, enabled us to pass our baggage through the Douane; and we sent it on by boat to Tunis, whither we proceeded by land in a carriage, and a drizzling rain. Once on the way we stopped, at what the inhabitants term the "Carthaginian cistern," to take in some exceedingly dirty water, from a fountain of old-fashioned appearance. The carriage windows were closed on account of the rain--an arrangement which interfered a good deal with my view of the surrounding country. Twice only, before we arrived at Tunis, my companion, a Russian, opened the window--to spit! On the first of these occasions, I got a glimpse of a large heap of immense stones, which were pointed out to me as the ruins of Carthage, and a grove of olives, looking dismal exceedingly in the drizzling rain. On the second occasion, I saw the lakes, and a solitary Tunisian sentinel. This soldier was dressed much in the Turkish costume, and I should scarcely have known him from an Osmanli, but that he wore the brass plaque in the front of his scarlet fez, instead of at the top. As we approached Tunis, we became involved in an increasing crowd of loaded asses and mules; and, amid a great deal of screeching and shouting, we made our entry into the city, and drove to the Hôtel de France, where we obtained such a complete view of an old wall, that it effectually prevented us from seeing anything else. The rooms, or rather holes, assigned to us, were so miserable, that we tried the solitary opposition shop the place can boast--the Hôtel de Provençe--but found that here we should fare rather worse than in the Hôtel de France. There was a third establishment--a tavern, rejoicing in the magniloquent title of "Hotel of the Britannic Isles"--but as this hostelry was entirely occupied by sailors and Maltese skippers, we declined to avail ourselves of the "Britannic" accommodation. There was a great crowd of rather miscellaneous company at the _table-d'hôte_. One French female, whom, without offence to gallantry, I may be permitted to describe as the ugliest woman I met in my travels, excited my especial horror. This charming person actually amused herself, and disgusted her neighbours, by indulging, _across the table_, in an amusement generally associated in men's minds with the chewing of tobacco! I discovered, however, that she was only a servant maid. CHAPTER IX. MARSA. Angelo's Horsemanship.--The Bey's Palace at Marsa.--The Arabs and their Love of Tobacco.--The Friendly Moor at Camatte. On the first of April I rode to Marsa, a little town on the seashore. Angelo's horse seemed rather fresh, and my servant was evidently no Centaur. He came up to me in an olive wood, where I made a halt for about five minutes. He was holding on hard by the mane, his trousers were up to his knees, and his face was horribly pale. On my asking him why he loitered behind so, he owned, with a dismal sigh, that he was half afraid of the horse. "Afraid of the horse, sir!" was poor Angelo's lament: "Very wicked horse, sir--fell from a horse, sir--at Scutari, sir--broke three ribs, sir--and in hospital five weeks, sir!" I told him to be of good cheer, for the horse would soon be quiet after a good gallop; and, tying the horses to some olive trees, I bade Angelo wait for me by the side of a little hillock in the plain, where I could readily find him on my return, and went away into the forest with my gun. The ground was covered with long, thick, pointed grass, very wet with the dew. I saw some quails, and shot a few; then returned to where Angelo was waiting, and galloped on to Marsa. At this place, the Bey, and the principal inhabitants of Tunis, have summer residences, to which they resort for the sake of sea-bathing. On the way, I encountered a number of Arabs, mounted on mules. The foremost shouted out to me in Arabic, as I passed, asking me to stop and give him some tobacco. I understood the word "tobacco," which seems to have nearly the same sound in all languages, and knowing this request to be often a "dodge" on the part of the Arabs, who want an opportunity to rob, if not to murder, the traveller, I pointed to Angelo, who was following, about fifty paces behind me, with my gun, and shouted out that _he_ would find tobacco for them. They evidently understood my meaning; for they all set up a loud laugh, and my friend the tobacconist--or rather the tobacco-less--looked exceedingly "sold." I found Marsa very prettily situated, opposite to the bay of Tunis, near the ruins of old Carthage. The Bey's palace is a handsome building. The English and French consulates are also well built. I proceeded to a small Italian _locanda_, to get breakfast; but the old lady, who seemed the presiding genius of the place, obstinately refused to let us have anything. "_Io han niente_," was her unanswerable argument. But I rather ostentatiously pulled out my watch, whose golden blink somewhat softened the old lady's mood, and caused her to remember that she might have certain eggs, and some bread, and salad, though a moment before she had been protesting that she had not even such a thing as bread in the house. Her son, a handsome young Italian, returned at this juncture, and we soon had an excellent _déjeûner_ of sausages, salad, spinach, omelette, and cheese, with very good wine and coffee. I went down to the seaside and bathed, first burying my watch and purse in the sand; for the Arabs have a weakness for occasionally coming down under such circumstances, and stealing one's clothes. Past a ruined temple, down an avenue into Camatte, where I got an Arab to show me the way to a house formerly occupied by an Englishman. Here, for a wonder, I met a Moor, who spoke very good French, and was very civil. He asked me how I liked Africa, and laughed cordially at my open avowal, that it was "_un peu bizarre_." After gathering a few delicious oranges for me in the garden, he took me into the interior of the house. I found it a most charming residence, with a deliciously cool marble reservoir in the centre, full of gold and silver fish. I rode back by the margin of the lake, but saw only small game till I got to a large olive forest, where a jackal made his appearance. I gave chase, and, after a rattling gallop, lodged him among some cactus bushes, where I could get near enough to shoot him; and so back to Tunis. CHAPTER X. ABOUT BOAR-SHOOTING. Sleeman.--The Oued el Ahwena.--Its Scenery and its Dangers.--Beauty of the Landscape on its Banks. I started next day with the Umbra, who was remarkable for a long scimitar, and spurs nearly as long. Each time I put my horse to a gallop, he was under the impression that I wanted to ride a race with him, and went on at full speed, till I restrained his ardour. We arrived duly at Sleeman, where the Caid had everything prepared very comfortably for us. My friends B---- and F---- arrived later, in a carriage. We had a good Arab dinner, with the national kouskous, followed by a chibouk. There was a river about six miles off, where boars were rumoured to make their abode. I rose early next morning, and, proceeding to this stream, hid in the thicket on the banks, while the Arabs beat the bushes. After waiting a long time, I managed to "pot" a wild boar, which came rushing past me at full speed. After this, the Arabs refused to beat the bushes any more, declaring that the dogs were tired, though the real reason was that they wanted their own dinners, so I was obliged to give up the sport and return. The wild boar was dispatched as a present to the consul. [Illustration: R. Pheney, lith. M. & N. Hanhart, Impt. HOG-SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE OUED EL AHWENA, IN TUNISIA.] The river which we visited to-day is called the Oued el Ahwena. It runs through a rich valley, bordered on both sides by mountains which rise up gradually, and are covered to their very foot with trees of various descriptions. The plain itself is fragrant with myrtles, orange trees, and olives. The beauty of the scene amid which this river falls into the sea is beyond description. Here the water is hissing wildly among osiers and furze bushes; there it skips along like a young goat over the small pebbles; and yonder, again, it winds like a serpent among the sand hills on the sea-shore. The dark olive-trees on the bank seem to look seriously on, like a father watching the pranks of a favourite child. The large ash-trees shake and quiver, like old aunts, all in a tremble at the dangerous hops and vagaries of a lively niece; while the gay-plumaged birds of the air ring out their wild applause, and the flowers on the bankside murmur tenderly, "Oh, take us with you, dear sister!" But the joyous, sparkling river rushes on like a coquette, bounding and skipping towards its goal. Such is the river Ahwena in the glorious month of April: fair without, like many a gay flirt, she can yet inflict wounds incurable, if not death, upon those whom her wiles entrap. Woe to the traveller or hunter who, oppressed by thirst in this burning climate, ventures to taste the sparkling water that bubbles up like champagne, invitingly at his feet! Cholera and death would be the probable result. The waters are redolent of cholera, and the banks of fever. No man may pitch his tent in safety for a single night on the banks of this death-dealing water; not even the Bedouins, who avoid the locality as if it were plague-stricken, for fever is in the very air. Strange that so fair an exterior should veil so baneful a mystery. Those bright, sweet-smelling flowers conceal snakes and reptiles whose bite is almost instantaneously fatal, and the place might be appropriately termed the Valley of Death. Among yonder fair trees lurk the treacherous panther and the slinking hyena. Yet, in this world, amid present impressions of pleasure, we have little time to think of the danger veiled beneath the smiling outward shape. So, at least, it was with me, as I reclined on the carpet of soft grass, after slaying the boar, placidly discussing my breakfast, and enjoying the beauty of the scene around, with the azure-rippling sea about two miles off, the magnificent mountains around me, the sparkling river at my feet, and, across the bay in the far distance, the ruins of the once mighty city of Carthage, with the birds singing merrily overhead in the bright sunshine. There is exquisite pleasure in the sensation of the external world thus melting away, as it were, into a little world of our own, and when the green trees, the azure sky, the perfumed plants, all take their places in an exquisite picture of Nature's own painting. Women, perhaps, most indulge this feeling; hence they often smile with an amiable incredulity when they hear the "lords of the creation," proud of their scholastic lore, discussing and settling everything, priding themselves upon having divided all things so cleverly into _subjective_ and _objective_, and boasting that they have furnished their wise heads with so many drawers (like a chemist's shop, forsooth), with reason located in one, good sense in another, understanding in a third, and so on to the end of the chapter. CHAPTER XI. SPORTING EXPERIENCES. El Greesh.--Shooting Hyenas.--An Expedition with the Arabs.--The Caid and his Family.--Another Wild Boar. The next day I rode on to a place called El Greesh, about twenty miles from Sleeman. I wanted to pitch my tent at the base of the purple mountain, outside the village, where I was sure we should have got a great deal of game, as the mountains were covered with thick underwood. A----, however, and the rest were opposed to it, so I yielded, and pitched my tent in the village itself, where I soon had the entire tribe around me, examining me and my arms, my gestures, and everything, as if I was an event. After a cup of coffee, I determined to start in search of game, and, with a little backsheesh, got an Arab to accompany us to one of the neighbouring defiles, where, after waiting about an hour and a half, I managed to bag a very fine hyena. He was just sneaking out of his hole, and was about 150 yards off. On my return, the natives manifested great joy, shook my hands, made a circle round me, tapped me on the back, &c., to my chagrin. As I was tremendously fatigued, I retired to my sheepskin in my tent with great satisfaction. The natives all slept around our tents on the ground, and some of them kicked up a most infernal noise till about two in the morning, singing a sort of chorus. The following morning the whole tribe collected around our tents and watched _our toilette du matin_ with the most intense eagerness. [Illustration: R. Pheney, lith. M. & N. Hanhart, Impt. SHOOTING HYENAS ON THE PURPLE MOUNTAINS NEAR EL GREESHE.] The greater part of them had brought their matchlocks, as the day was to be a grand field-day, and they were all in the highest spirits, laughing, and cracking jokes to an extraordinary amount. We started about seven A.M., and I remained till eleven A.M., till which time they had not succeeded in driving anything out of cover. Here I sprained my ankle in descending a broken gully, and was obliged to return to the tent. I came back about four P.M., with only small game. After sun-down we went out a second time in ambush after hyena. A lion or panther came, a little after sunset, and frightened the horses so that they broke loose, and we returned to the tents about eleven P.M. The next day we started early, in order to return to Sleeman. We stopped an hour on the banks of our old friend, the river Oued el Ahwenah, for luncheon, where I shot several quail and snipes, and a large bird, whose name I ignore, also a hare, the only one I saw in Tunisia. About four P.M., I reached the Caid's house; a woman, for a wonder, opened the door. As the Caid was there, I looked anywhere but at her. The next day we went out all day, after boar, to the river, with an Italian and some Arabs. I stood up to my knees in the river for about an hour in the brush-wood, when one rushed by; I fired, and he rushed forward badly damaged. The rest fired, and he was found dead a few yards off. The Italian's steed broke loose, and he left us in search of it. I broke from my _corps de garde_. My horse lost a shoe, and then broke loose, and I had to follow him for more than a mile. I had a kind of dumbshow conversation with the Caid's son on my return, a very fine, handsome lad, about seventeen. I hear his sister is most beautiful, and I promised to send him a present, on getting to Tunis, and he is to write to me and tell me if he receives it. After dinner the Caid came and smoked two or three pipes, drank coffee, and wished us adieu in a most gracious manner. We had considerable difficulty in bringing home the boar, as our Arabs all deserted us on account of its being the Ramadhan; but Angelo and B---- managed to carry it back between them. I returned to Tunis next day. CHAPTER XII. TUNIS AND ITS GOVERNMENT. Picturesque Situation of Tunis.--The Horse Market.--Effects of Race.--The Bazaars.--Mohamed Medea.--The Bardo.--The Bey of Tunis.--His Mode of administering Justice.--Prince Puckler Muskau's Account of his Interview. Tunis is situated on the borders of a lake, or rather inlet of the sea. It is surrounded by a crenelated wall, which resembles very much that of Constantinople. Like that city, too, Tunis, from the exterior, presents a very imposing aspect; but enter the city, and the illusion vanishes; there is the same dirt, the same narrow and filthy streets, as in the Turkish capital. The dogs alone are wanting to make the comparison perfect. An ancient historian has called this place _Tunis the white_; but, like other whited sepulchres, it is very foul within. The horses, the really thorough-bred ones, are the finest objects in Tunis. As in the canine and human, so in every other race, blood will tell. The Arab horse, though by no means so swift for a short distance as his English cousin, has a most marvellous power of endurance. He is also extremely sure footed, and scarcely ever comes down. I weigh over thirteen stone, yet have frequently ridden the same horse forty English miles per diem, over country that would infallibly cut up your English two hundred guinea hunter. They also, so to speak, live on air. Their chief drawback is that they are, with few exceptions, stallions, and, consequently, when tethered or standing near each other, are very apt to fight most desperately, or else break loose from their tetherings, when a long and wearisome pursuit is the necessary result. It is very difficult to come across the best _pur sang_ horses, as the Arabs are afraid of the Bey's taking a fancy to them, and taking them by force; and, consequently, they often purposely mutilate them, lest he should seize them to himself. There are also some very fine bazaars at Tunis, and the otto of roses there is especially excellent. Our Consul has a very fine, large house, and dispenses his hospitalities, &c., very generously to his compatriots. His lady is also a most amiable person. Tunis is, I hear, celebrated for the manufacture of the red cap, usually termed "fez," which is worn generally throughout Mussulman countries, and universally by the military. The Tunisian soldiers wear the plaque in front of the fez, in lieu of on the top, like the Turkish. As soon as I had selected my horse, a fine black thorough-bred Arab (whose price was four hundred francs only), I used to make excursions every day into the country, sometimes alone, sometimes attended, always armed, as the Francs of Tunis told me many stories of the dangers arising from going out in the country unarmed, among the Arabs. I think a great number of them were very much exaggerated. One of the places I was fond of riding to was Mohamed Medea, about twelve miles from Tunis, very prettily situated, where there was a very fine ruin of a Roman aqueduct, and eke a French restaurant, where a _déjeûner_, made more agreeable by a twelve miles' ride, was served in quite Parisian style. The reason of there being a French restaurant is this:--The present Bey, on his accession, determined to build a fresh palace at this place; and, being under a sort of douce compulsion, employs nothing but French architects and operatives, who make the hotel their head-quarters, it being about the only Christian house in the entire place. Quail abounded in this vicinity, and there were _pas mal de sangliers_. To escape from the _ennui_ of the _table d'hôte déjeûner_ at Tunis, occupied by French bagmen and milliners, and served in a stuffy hole of a back kitchen, I used frequently to make Angelo put my breakfast in my _sacoche_ (saddle-bag), consisting of a piece of cold meat and some _vin du pays_, and then ride out, dismount, and breakfast _al fresco_, or rather _al bosco_; sometimes I am sorry to confess to breaking the eighth commandment, as I helped myself to my dessert of oranges, from the trees near or under which I sat. The Arabs, _malgré_ the ogre histories I had heard of murder and robbery, were always most civil, and would accept, in spite of the prophet, a glass of wine from my hands though our conversation was of course of the most limited description, unless Angelo was present to interpret. It is true I always was armed. The Bardo is one of the lions of Tunis. It is the country residence of the Bey, and, besides the harem, contains a hall of justice and barracks. It is at Bardo that the Bey holds his court of justice, in which the cases are decided very quickly, and with great precision. The interior of the harem, according to a French traveller, who had visited it, is fitted up very gracefully. There is a magnificent _jet d'eau_ in the marble court of the interior. The gallery running round this court on the second storey is furnished with a very artistically elaborated railing, or grating, part of which is painted green, part gilt. Behind this railing the ladies of the harem get a sly peep at those who visit his highness. The vast saloon in which the Bey receives his visitors is hung with crimson velvet, embroidered with gold, and the ceiling is also gilt and painted over in brilliant colours. From the two sides of the wall are suspended different descriptions of arms, richly manufactured; on the right, they consist of swords and poniards; on the left, of various kinds of muskets and pistols. Gold, silver, and precious stones sparkle out from these arms. Under these weapons are ranged three rows of divans, covered with a thick sort of red silk. The centre of the apartment is furnished with magnificent Persian carpets. On the lowest of the divans, the principal courtiers seat themselves, on solemn days of reception, in double file; while at the extremity, the Bey reclines on an ottoman placed crossways, and covered with white satin. In Europe, we might, with great advantage, take a wrinkle or two from this semi-barbarian prince as regards the administration of justice with expedition. The Bey of Tunis is, at one and the same time, the chief governor of the realm, the administrator of the public revenues, and the final judge of all grand cases. From his immediate authority depends the administration of the police, the imposition of taxes, the various diplomatic relations, and the superintendence of the army and navy. We Europeans can scarcely comprehend how one man can look after so many different details, or direct them with order and precision. But in this country, mark, oh! red-tapeists, everything relating to interior administration is reduced to the greatest simplicity, and from this simplicity, freed from the complicated system of European red-tapeism and bureaucracy, results, it is to be hoped, a strict economy in public expenses, and a rapid process in the courts of justice and other Government affairs. Where a European prince would require a hundred different _employés_, here five or six clerks suffice. Besides the celerity and economy resulting from such a system, a third no less important advantage is derived, viz., the facility with which the Bey is able to superintend the conduct of the ministers, being so few in number, and immediately detect and punish those in whom any act of embezzlement or fraud has been detected; and punishment in this country immediately follows detection. Verily, there are advantages in autocratic as well as in constitutional dynasties!! In the administration of justice, too, the Bey is supreme judge, from whom there is no appeal. The celerity with which causes are tried and judged, is, I am told, perfectly astounding. The case merely consists in a simple exposition of the facts, and such is the wonderful power of discernment of the merits of the case which the Bey thinks he has obtained from long habit, that it is said he rarely deliberates. The court is open to the public--even to Christians! I did not go; but Prince Puckler Muskau has left an account of his presence there. After giving a description of the room, &c., and the Bey's entry, the Prince proceeds:--"The Bey was now presented with a magnificent pipe, which was at least ten feet long. After a few puffs, the audience commenced. The civil and criminal procedure is so summary, that a great majority of cases were decided in as many minutes as they would have taken years in Europe. The subject of the causes was frequently very trivial, yet the patience of the sovereign was by no means exhausted. I thought, in general, that the pleaders were satisfied with the Bey's decision. One sees, by this, that the Bey's place is no sinecure; and I am told that few monarchs in Christian countries have so much personally to do. The Bey sits every day in the court, from eight in summer, and from nine in winter, till mid-day; and illness, or absence from town, is his only excuse for non-attendance. His other governmental duties occupy pretty well the rest of his day." Each country has an "idea," I suppose, that its own Government is best, and perhaps it is as well it should be so. The man who travels much sees the defects and the advantages of each. Our Parliament would certainly not easily be acclimatised in Barbary, nor would a Bey exactly do to grace the British throne. What, for instance, would we think of such a proclamation as this in the _London Gazette_, on a king's accession? It was issued by Mustapha, the father of the present Bey, to the consuls of Christian powers:--"Glory to princes of the religion of Messiah. To the chosen by the great of the nation of Jesus, our most honoured, most longed for, most magnificent, and most powerful friend, the King of ----, we make known, friendly, the following: On Wednesday, 23rd of the month of Moharrem the sacred, of the present year 1251, at the moment when the sun illumined the horizon, the hour marked by destiny having struck for my most honoured brother, Hassein Basha, he emigrated towards the mansion of eternity," &c. &c. CHAPTER XIII. THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE. Reflections on Ancient Carthage.--Hannibal and his Career.--An Arab Domicile.--Picturesque appearance of the Ruins. I went three times to the "Ruins," and therefore should have been lucky. I was, however, the reverse, both as to seeing anything of the ruins, and also the particular object which brought me there. I think, myself, proverbs are very deceitful, and should, like dreams, be read by contrary; some are utterly unintelligible; as, for instance--will any one tell me what this one signifies?--"Sweet words butter no parsnips." I thought parsnips (and, being fond of vegetables, I should like to know) were generally seasoned with pepper or vinegar. I am, perhaps, too stupid to comprehend it, and, like stupid people, abuse what I don't understand. Therefore, don't let any one expect a long description of how this part is Phoenician, and is supposed to be where the Carthaginian parliament was held; or their dandies and "fast" of both sexes met to polka of a night, or drink Punic punch; or a "_cabinet de lecture_," or club, where the _Times_ or the _Globe_ gave the latest telegram from Italy; as how Hannibal obtained a glorious victory over the Roman troops at Thrasymene, or that the commissariat was bad; then, perhaps, old grumblers decried the dissipation at Cannæ, and the expense of the war; and ancient merchants on 'Change complained of the rising importance of the Roman navy, whose ships had just captured the large Phoenician brigantine _Argo_, from Sidon, laden with a valuable freight, otto of roses, and bound for Carthage--_apropos_ of which I will remark, there is a military Rome and a mercantile Carthage in modern times. Take care we be not the Carthage; let us remember that it was from a stranded Punic vessel the Romans learnt the maritime art, in which, at last, they excelled their enemies. Hannibal appears to me always the greatest man of any age, ancient or modern--Napoleon not excepted--and perhaps the most unfortunate. His character comes to us, as his exploits, from foreign and hostile sources; for I believe there exist no Phoenician records; so that there remains a great deal of discount to take off in the way of disparagement, depreciation, &c. &c. It is as if the future Australian, standing on the ruins of a city mightier than Carthage, could obtain no account of Napoleon, but through partial and depreciatory fragments from the pages of Sir Walter Scott's life of that extraordinary meteor. Napoleon, it is true, crossed the Alps, but Hannibal traversed the Alps and Pyrenees too, and I fancy the last are the more impassable of the two. It is true I have not copied Albert Smith, or our other heroic youths, but I have climbed the Malodetta, which well becomes its appellation. Then, Napoleon had a friendly population at any rate behind him, to bring supplies, &c. Hannibal was everywhere surrounded by hostile tribes, besides having had the disadvantage of a march through enemies' countries of several hundred, if not thousand miles. I hope the living in Spain, for his sake, did not then consist of _olla podrida_, with a variation of garlic and acid wine. Perhaps there existed in these days some machine, or some marvellous powder, by which real mountains might be removed (as spiritual ones by faith) at pleasure, and replaced in their original position; but as history makes no mention thereof, it is but fair to conclude not. No, the only machine used, the only mine, was the invincible and iron will of the Carthaginian hero. He, too, if I mistake not, lived under parliamentary _régime_, in the shape of a senate, a great hamper on military manoeuvres, where all should be done quickly, secretly, and unanimously. Napoleon was his own master, with a devoted people. I wonder if parliamentary debates, in Punic days, were as long and insipid as in modern; that is, I have not been to them, but judge by what one reads in that modern tyrant, the _Times_. Oh, mighty _Times_! how we abuse you, and yet how should we relish our breakfast without you? who ever comes up to all we look for when great occasions call for your wonderful pen, stirring us to the quick; or whether, in an idle mood, we seek to while away the passing hour by a description of the last new folly, or the latest odour of the Thames, or anything else instructive and amusing. By the way, if the senate of Carthage took quarter as long sending supplies to their general as the Commons discussing the way to purify the Thames, I fancy he would not have crossed the Pyrenees. I said I went three times to Carthage; the first time, an English friend was leaving that day by a sailing ship, and I had promised to lunch with him at Goulette, and then see him on board, the first of which I did in a small house dignified by the name of _locanda_, or _Hôtel Français_, where some Maltese captains were breakfasting, who had a strong odour of onions and garlic, and at another table a Savoyard was discussing the question of annexation with a Provençal, in what I may term _moitié Français moitié Italien_. They gave us soup made of, I don't know what, but the pepper was very strong, or rather, I may say, would have been, if it were not for the strong taste of the water, and _vice versâ_; after that, some dried fish, called sardines, which they said had just been caught. For second course, we had a sort of _gigot de mouton_, which, in form, resembled the temple of Neptune at the "ruins," and you might almost have sworn they had cut it into that shape on purpose; and quails, very excellent; and we finished with cheese, which might have been manufactured from goat's milk, or cow's milk, or camel's milk, or all three, or any other milk, but was dignified by the appellation of _Chesterrre_, and was decidedly not Stilton, and eke delicious oranges. In this dinner we meet, as in life, with much good to counteract the evil, as the delicious quails made up for rancid flesh of sheep or horse; so, when next Lady Julia Plantagenet jilts me, I will remember Jessie Jones; or, again, as these fragrant oranges, redolent of the East, caused me to forget the nauseous _fromage_, so shall the friendship and good opinion of Brown console me for the putty eye and freezing regard of the fashionable Fitznoodle, when next we meet, not at Philippi, but in the park! After lunch, and adieux, I mounted my horse for the ruins, as my friend's vessel did not start as expected that day, owing to the calm. On passing the gate of Goulette, several Arab convicts, in chains, shouted at me for something; what it was, I ignore; perhaps they asked for backsheesh, or tobacco, or powder, fine or coarse; or, may be, they called me a dog of a Giaour, and cursed my relations and their limbs. This Goulette appears to be the chief place for the Arab malefactors, and they are mainly employed in improving the high road between Goulette and Tunis, and also in repairing the fortifications. The afternoon was beautiful, though hot. As it wanted some time to dinner at Tunis, I made a _détour_ on my return to the ruins, and it requires a fine air to make you enjoy fine scenery. There was scarcely a ripple on the blue Mediterranean. Beautiful trees of every description, olive and orange trees, oleanders, and others, grew to the very base of the mountain, and sent up a delicious perfume. I visited the chapel of St. Louis, from which one enjoys a most delicious prospect. It is built over some god's temple--whose, I forget, or even whether a Roman or Punic one; but this is dedicated to the true God and Christian worship, in remembrance of that venerable French king, who is said to have perished here, while on his way to Palestine, to fight the Moslem. Peace to his ashes! However, I soon left the hill to re-descend, for I was very thirsty; all of a sudden, behind an olive bush, I saw a head, black as ink, pop out; I hallooed to it first in English, then in Italian. No effect. I saw a female figure disappear behind a cottage, and out rushed a fine tall Arab, with menacing gesture, and more menacing language. I was in his garden. "A glass of water, please," said I, in Italian. Still no effect. I thought he was going to be savage, when, from behind the house popped, or rather rolled out, another little naked, curly-headed, black ball--a triennial by his looks--the Arab's only boy, no doubt. He was so irresistibly comic in appearance, that I burst into a fit of laughter. The man's face changed in a moment. I suppose he thought I was admiring the child. He immediately understood what I required, which he brought in such a large cup, that I thought it was intended for a pail. I nearly emptied it, however. He then volunteered bread and olives, which, however, I declined, to spoil my dinner. We then made mutual signs of greeting, and parted. Had I been able to talk, I would have stopped longer. There was a sudden friendship sprung up between me and that poor unlettered infant of the desert. CHAPTER XIV. THE RUINS AGAIN. Great Extent of the Ancient City.--Marsa, on the Sea-shore.--Carthaginian Catacombs near Camatte.--Quail Shooting.--Trait of Honesty in the Arabs.--The Arab Character.--Anecdotes concerning them. The second time I went to the ruins I went, like Scipio, to weep, not over Carthage, but the loss of my breakfast; and the more so that it was to have been a very good one--a regular pic-nic, or _fête champêtre_--under olive-trees, or orange-trees, or palms, shaded from the scorching rays of Phoebus. Champagne, Burgundy (my favourite wine), were to crown the repast. Nor was the food to be only corporal, but eke mental, as the great explorer--the great excavator--was to be there, to have explained that this was a theatre, that an aqueduct; the god to whom this temple or that altar was dedicated; and how many four-in-hands, driven by fast young Phoenician guardsmen, would have been able to pass each other down that "_via longa_." How many stones made up that house; and that this was a bath, and not a harem; and that a certain statue of some celebrity--whose name I had never heard, and never shall--was, by some, supposed to lie 100 feet under this marble pillar, though, according to others, he might be 102 feet deep interred--for all of which, I daresay, I should have been the wiser and the better; but I was sufficiently mundane to regret my _déjeûner_ the most. The fact is, A----, whose back was not sufficiently recovered to accompany me riding, and the American Consul and Davies, had gone with the edibles and beverages in a carriage, and were to have met me at the temple of some god. But, unfortunately, I mistook the deity's name, and afterwards found that their shrine lay ten miles off from the one I worshipped at. This will give one a good idea of the vastness of the ancient city, and struck me more than all the lectures and description in the world. Where people were crowded like bees, as in our London, buying and selling, and riding and driving, some 2,000 years past--occupied then, as now, in all the frivolities of this empty world--to find a complete solitude--a desert nearly--where wander the jackal and hyena! A very clever people, no doubt, these same Phoenicians were, to judge by their edifices; yet they had not discovered the theory of water finding its own level, as the peculiar construction of an aqueduct proves, the remains of which still exist, and which was to convey water some forty miles from the interior. There was a Roman city built over the Punic one, and the latter alone, of course, interests, as the former is seen any day, at Pompeii, in better perfection. Besides Angelo and myself, there was not a human being in view--yes, there are three Arab youths reclining behind that ruin of a wall, motionless as statues; I thought they were statues at first. Two have long flint guns, perhaps to keep crows off the corn, or shoot quails; or, perhaps, to shoot me if they can; for I have a fine gold chain, not to mention a ring, which would maintain them till they died of old age--which could keep them in ease and elegance for a couple of years, at the least. You have yet to learn, if you know it not, that ten Arabs, fine men though they be, with such rusty weapons as yours, are barely a match for one European with an arm such as mine. But, my poor boys, there is no chance for you. I have, you see, a revolver with six barrels. When you see that, your brow droops as much as your eyes sparkled when you saw the chain. It is fancy, on my part, most probably; so, off my horse, and off with my clothes. The sun was scorching, and I took a delicious swim in the sea, and then rode on to Marsa, where is a ruin (everything is in ruins here) of modern date--the late Bey's palace--a most superb edifice. I said a ruin, yet it is scarcely a ruin, though fast becoming so. Marsa is a sort of watering-place for the Christians of Tunis during the heat of summer. A----'s description of the part he visited I will give: "I went with Davies and the Yankee Consul to see the catacombs of Carthage, near Camatte, which completely undermined a large mountain by the sea coast. They contain rows of niches for the coffins, and each chamber communicates with others. They hold some twenty coffins each. Some skeletons have been found, and nails; the former crumbled to pieces immediately, on being exposed to the air. These catacombs are now inhabited by hyenas and jackals, and had a strong odour of those animals." It is supposed they extend for miles, but the impurity of the atmosphere precludes entrance to any distance. My third visit was to shoot quails on ground where, centuries ago, Hannibal had passed at the head of his bronzed legions, amid admiring groups of citizens, the bands playing, perhaps, "_Partant pour l'Italie_." The migration of quails takes place at this season, and, with a good retrieving spaniel, hundreds may be shot. But they lie very close, and require a dog to put them up. They are by no means easy to shoot, and require snipe shot. They lie in the young corn, which is very thick and thriving here as on the field of Waterloo. As I had put up No. 6 shot by mistake, and had no spaniel, I bagged but few comparatively, some twenty. A great number of these quails are sent alive to England, and on board the Italian steamer from Sicily there were about twenty large cages, containing about fifty live quails each, which they told me were going to Britain; they had been caught like larks by the net. By the way, I had here a proof of Arab honesty, refreshing as an oasis in the desert. Riding back through a village to Goutelle (where I was staying, previously to embarking for Malta), I dropped my powder-flask, unawares to myself. I had not passed two minutes when I heard a loud halloo, and turning, perceived an Arab running at full speed to me with my powder-flask. Now, powder is what Arabs prize more than gold even, precious stones, or tobacco, yet they might easily have taken this without my knowing anything. On my offering him coin worth about sixpence, the Arab, in broken _lingua Franca_, made me comprehend he preferred a few charges of powder, which I immediately gave, and which he carefully wrapped up in some old paper. I record this, because at Tunis and elsewhere, we hear of nothing but Arab dishonesty and thieving propensities. Is it true, and this exception a proof of the rule? or are all these stories false? It is hard to say. They are a curious race, apparently a mass of contradictions. One thing is certain; you must not treat them in the _du haut en bas_ style. They are very proud, and naturally regard every Christian _ipso facto_ as individually inferior to the Mussulman, more specially in the far interior, where Christians have not as yet penetrated. A---- and his party had started for Kef, _malgré_ my dissuasions. The fact of a man going to explore Punic ruins with one going to discover Mauritanian lions, was, to my mind, like mixing oil and vinegar, or fire and water, or eating meat with your knife, or soup with a fork, or taking two helpings of soup, or anything else incongruous. D---- was to be their interpreter. The Arabs there told them that a lion can carry away a camel on his back, but not lift a sheep. This they firmly believe. The reason assigned is, that in former times (when animals spoke), the lion said, "I will carry off this sheep, with or without the consent of Allah;" and Allah said to the lion, "You shall not;" and from that time the monarch has never been able to lift a sheep. At one time the man and the lion were great friends, and the lion did not know he was stronger than the man. One day, as they were out walking together, a thorn ran into the lion's foot; he limped, and stopped to pull it out, when the man, in derision, said, "What! so strong a creature hurt with a thorn?" Then the lion in anger ran the thorn into the man's eye, who cried out with pain. This proved to the lion the man's inferiority, and ever after they were declared enemies. At a place called Tibursok, where A----'s party passed on their road to Keff, not a Christian, or even a Jew, were to be seen, consequently the Arabs were very intolerant. D---- walked into this town alone, in front of the party, and, speaking Arabic well, questioned one of the Arabs about some ruin, when another came up and said, "Why do you attend to that dog of a Christian?" D---- took no notice, when the other shouted out, "Cursed be your father, your mother, and all the members of your house." D---- then collared him; the Arab inquired, "What for?" "Because you cursed my relatives," said D----, seeing the rest of the party with the Bey's escort coming up, "and now, just show me the Caid's residence, and I will have you bastinadoed." However, as some of the other Arabs crowded round and begged for mercy, D---- thought it better to let him off. CHAPTER XV. HOME! My fellow-passenger, the Sportsman.--Passage from Tunis to Malta in a Sailing Vessel.--Disagreeables of the Passage.--Home, Overland.--Conclusion. On the steamer _Meludiah_, for Malta, I found a sporting Frenchman on deck. He had been my fellow-passenger from Bona to Tunis, and carried a revolver and a gun; the first for porpoises, the second for gulls, &c. He recounted to me, with great glee, how he had shot a grosbeak, and some other small birds, near Tunis, and given them to the cook on board for our dinner. It was a Mussulman steamer, and, being Rhamazan, they did not serve dinner till after sunset. I was nearly famished. The first course was salad served with rancid oil, which immediately brought me and the Frenchman on deck. During the rest of the passage I made Angelo serve my repasts. The Frenchman was a character. "_Je viens de perdre ma femme_," he said; "_il y a des femmes mechantes vous savez, Monsieur, et des femmes bonnes; la mienne était bonne! mais bonne! Tenez, je l'ai mis dans le cercueil moi même, et maintenant je suis ici pour me distraire, car je n'en trouverai pas une comme celle-là, allez. Je ferai le voyage, j'irai en Alexandrie--n'importe où, travailler j'irai à l'Isthme de Suez._" At last we arrived in Malta. It is a pity for officers and others there is no regular communication by steam between Malta and Tunis; for the _désagrémens_ of a sailing-vessel are by no means despicable. Witness a friend of mine's report thereon:-- "25th.--Came on board the _Gemo_ at seven A.M.; went on shore again at nine, and stopped all day. Dined and slept on board; rough living here, but no cattle, which is a great thing.--26th. Set sail at eleven A.M.; fair wind; fine day, and very hot.--27th. Rain all night; wind light and variable, and one made but little progress. Cape Bona still close to us this morning. We are only going at three and three-quarter knots per hour. A fine breeze got up at twelve, and at seven we passed Panteleria Isle, going at seven knots.--28th. Wind fell away early this morning, and about eleven blew strong from the east: the worst quarter it could for us.--29th. This accursed wind has lasted all night, and blows harder this morning; the sea, too, is very high. It is intensely miserable; rough sea, bad grub, no one to talk to, no books, and no idea when we shall reach Malta.--30th. East wind still; an almighty swell on; one can neither sit, lie, nor stand with comfort. The coast of Sicily is very plain this morning. We are about forty-five miles from Malta, but no one can say when we shall reach it. Fresh provisions have nearly come to an end. Let any one ever catch me on board a sailing-ship again, unless I am forced.--1st. Half a gale, and a heavy sea last night; got no sleep, as the ship jumped so; and the mattress--fancy now!--is stuffed with sticks, and is so cursedly hard, that, after five days of it, one's bones ache all over. A very fine day; but this awful wind still east. At eleven A.M. we were off Gozo, only twenty miles from our destination; but it was impossible to get there. The diet and food on board are awful; I am nearly starved. There was only one thing amusing. A Maltese, who slept in the other berth near me, sneezed nine times in as many minutes; and, after each sternutation, he went through a short formula of prayer, beginning 'Santo Something,' to keep the devil to leeward, I suppose; and, egad, I think he must have been on board _in propriâ personâ_, under some disguise, to have caused us so bad a passage. This afternoon, to vary the programme pleasantly, we had a dead calm. Our miseries seem to have no end. I begin to think I shall rival the 'Flying Dutchman,' and never make my port, but sail on for ever.--2nd. A north-west wind sprang up at five P.M., and we reached Malta at seven." Thus, the sailing-vessel took seven days to do what I did in thirty hours on the steamer. After the usual amount of driving, dining, &c., at Malta, in the words of the poet I bid Adieu to joys of La Valette, Adieu, sirocco, sun, and sweat; Adieu, ye females without graces, Adieu, red coats and redder faces; Adieu, the supercilious air Of those that strut _en militaire_. And now the word is "homeward;" and across a track well known to the English tourist, we journey onward, till The mountains of Trieste afar are seen, And farther yet, the Alps, whose highest peak Now glitters with a gay and snowy sheen In the bright sun; as quick our sailors seek An anchorage in the port, where Turk and Greek, Swede and Levantine, and full many more, The haughty Spaniard, and the German sleek, All races, from the Nile unto the Nore, Into Trieste, in many a varied costume pour. Along thy silent streets I wander now, Venice, once queen, aye, empress of the sea! Fairest in art as clime, yet sunk so low Beneath the despot Teuton's rule, I see Thy halls deserted, fallen, yet in thee Much splendour to admire there still exists. Well could I quit my native land, and flee The rugged northern clime, the vapid mists, With thee to dwell, did I that only what me lists. The fiery car speeds on her iron way, Through hill, o'er valley quickly do we fly. There lies the grot of Adelberg, and day Sees us past Gratze's fortress hasten by Like lightning's flash, nor stop until we spy St. Stephen's dome from out the darkness peer. Like _bas reliefs_ her turrets in the sky O'ertop Vienna, great the pious fear Of holy men, who such vast beauteous structures rear. There Coeur de Lion lived and almost died, In yonder ruin gray o'erbent by time, But that a troubadour, a servant tried, His well-loved master sought through every clime; Nor sought in vain, for by a simple rhyme, A soft tuned sonnet, in a dungeon cold, Imprisoned here he found him for no crime, And saved. The ruins past, I now behold Prague's lofty palaces arise, and turrets old. The scene is changed by many a lovely vale: Upon the Elbe my rapid way I went, Where Nature reigns supreme, nor aught avail 'Gainst her the charms a Raphael's touch can lend To Art's supremest works; these all depend On light, on colour, on the master's hand; Nature's own work, so thought I, as I bend My steps through Dresden's galleries, and stand Before Art's fairest deeds in this fair Saxon land! Swift be my verse, and swifter still my pace (Oh, pardon me, for I'll be sworn I bore) By Berlin's quays, past oft a plain, I race To Hamburg's crowded port, until the roar Of ocean's wave is heard again once more. Once more upon the deck I stand and view Behind that cloud arise old Albion's shore-- Shore that I love, roast beef, plum-pudding too, Pale ale, the _Times_, and scandal, like a Briton true. NOTES FOR THE SPORTSMAN OR TOURIST IN NORTH AFRICA. The best time to go to Algeria or Tunis is October, when the heats of summer begin to become cooler. By all means, let the traveller, if he wish to be independent, travel on horseback. In Algeria he will meet with accommodation everywhere, and proceed as safely as in London, or any part of England. He can go to Boussada or Laghouat, about six days' journey from Algiers, staying every night at caravanserais _en route_. Boussada I did not visit myself, but from rumour, I believe, there is excellent gazelle shooting in the neighbourhood. By the plains of Boussada, the tourist can pass into Tunisia over the French frontier. At Algiers, the best hotels are the Hôtel d'Orient and the Hôtel de la Régence, on the Grande Place. For ammunition, I recommend Huèt, armourer, near the English Consul's; and for horses--François or Francisco, a Maltese, who speaks French and English. The grand thing to be considered is economy of space. Let every necessary for clothing, if possible, be crammed into the saddle-bags attached to one's saddle, as ammunition, guns, &c. &c., must be placed on the other horses. Well did the Romans call baggage by the appellation of _impedimenta_. In this country it is so literally, not figuratively. It is absolutely necessary to have an interpreter who can talk Arabic; for though in Algeria there are many natives who jabber broken French or Italian, even this _lingua Franca_ is so disguised that it is almost impossible to comprehend them; and in the interior there are very few "indigènes" who understand anything but Arabic. In Tunisia nothing but Arabic is of any use whatever. To travel in the interior of Tunis, it is necessary to have a mounted escort, and also a letter of recommendation to the "Caids" (mayors) of the different towns through which you pass. Here you must expect a great want of comfort, as there are no beds, and you generally have to sleep on the floor. On the Lake of Tunis, close to the city, there is very good flamingo shooting. The flamingoes sit on the water in rows like a regiment, and the method I employed in shooting them was as follows:--I used to take a boat with my gun loaded with buckshot (chevrotine), and my rifle. I fired my rifle at the line of flamingoes when about 400 yards off, which used to bring them flying over the boat for curiosity, when I managed, generally with my gun, to bring down one or two. This is, I am sure, the best way of shooting them, though several Europeans told me at Tunis I could shoot them with the rifle. The shortest way direct to Tunis is by Malta; and, in passing, let the sporting tourist visit Gozo, where, in April and September, there is excellent quail shooting. The inhabitants of this isle are a simple, primitive race of people, very lively and intelligent; they speak nearly a pure Arabic. They live chiefly by fishing, and also serve as sailors in foreign vessels, where they remain sometimes entire years without being heard of by their families. In this way they often find a watery grave; and in the isle I met some females, whose male relations had all perished in this way. Navigation appears to have a great charm for these simple islanders; and when they sail along these southern waters, where the sun shines with a brilliant lustre, and the moon with a fairy splendour, they forget not the simple home where the members of their family are crouched side by side, enveloped in a sort of bournouse, and drinking perhaps tea which differs only nominally from the tepid waters of the surrounding ocean, and gabbling a jargon which one can scarcely believe that they understand themselves. The charm which binds these poor people together in their sober and modest existence is less the _penchant_ of natural and intimate affection, than the chain of habit, the necessity of a life of fraternal community and sentiment. A certain equality of position and social development gives them the same desires, the same ends of existence, and like ideas produce an easy mutual understanding. Each one reads, as it were, in the eye of the other; and when they talk, each knows what the other will say almost before he has opened his lips. All the ordinary relations of life are thus present to their memory; and so, by a simple intonation of the voice, by the expression of the visage, by a mute gesture, they excite, _inter se_, as many smiles or tears, more joy or vexation, than we, among our equals, could perhaps evoke by the longest demonstrations or declarations. For we civilised ones live, on an average, in intellectual solitude; each of us, thanks to our particular form of mind or education, has received a different bias of character; each of us, morally weighed, thinks, acts, and believes differently from his neighbour; and hence misunderstandings arise so frequently among us, that, even in the largest families, life in common becomes difficult, and we are often, as it were, apart, utterly unknown one to another, and everywhere feel ourselves as on strange territory. Races, indeed, have lived--aye, for centuries--in a state of community of ideas and sentiments such as I have described in the Isle of Gozo. Perhaps, but only perhaps, the Roman Church of the Middle Ages wished to establish among the nations of Catholic Europe such a state of equality and uniformity of spirit. Hence, no doubt, the reason why she took under her guardianship all the social relations, all the force and manifestations of this life--in fine, man himself, moral and physical man. I will not deny, nor will any one else, that much peaceful happiness, much piety has been established by these means; that human existence in the Middle Ages took an expression of greater fervour and intimacy; that the arts, like flowers, mysteriously developed, unfolded then, and showed to the day a beauty we now admire and deplore, and that the rash and unquiet spirit of modern days cannot imitate. But mind has its rights from all eternity; mind will not be fettered by dogmas, or lulled to sleep by the ringing of a bell; mind has cast aside his swaddling-clothes, and broken the string by which his nurse (the Roman Church) held him, and, in the madness and intoxication of his holiday, has rounded the globe, has traversed all nations, has scaled the Himalayas, and, returning again to Mother Earth, has begun to meditate over the wonders of creation by day, and the stars of heaven by night. We know not, indeed, nor ever shall, perhaps, the number of the stars that shine in the canopy of heaven; we have not yet unveiled the dread mysteries of earth or of sea. Enough: many enigmas are resolved; we know much--we guess at still more. There remains one question unsolved--it is this: Is there more real felicity in our minds now than there was in ancient times? I will confess that if we look at the many, now-a-days, we could scarcely answer this question in the affirmative; yet, it must also be remembered that happiness, which is in part due to mental tyranny, is scarcely true happiness, and that in the few moments of real intellectual dignity some educated man can enjoy more real felicity than the uneducated coal-heaver during many years of uninquiring tranquillity. But while, with a certain benevolence, I was dilating on the intentions of the Roman Church, I find myself all of a sudden seized with a zeal worthy of Exeter Hall. So I return to my Gozo friends. Living among these simple, Christian islanders, of Moorish descent, one is apt to meditate on the mighty transformations which have swept over Europe and left them untouched. The reason I recommend the route _viâ_ Malta and Tunis, instead of passing by Algiers, as I did, is the miserable accommodation on board the steamers between Tunis and Algiers. The passengers on these boats are chiefly bagmen and colonists of different nations. We had a Savoyard, a Spaniard, and two or three Frenchmen and Italians at one table; and the noise, and row, and heat after dinner were very edifying. Bottles were quickly emptied, and heads as quickly filled. One of the guests sung songs; another neighed; a third shouted in tragic verse; a fourth spoke Latin; and a fifth preached temperance; a sixth gave himself out for a professor, and his lecture was nearly as follows:--"The earth, my friends, is a cylinder, and men are but little diminutive dots spread over its surface, apparently at hazard; but _voilà_, the cylinder takes a fancy to turn, the little dots are hustled about, some here, others there, and so emit a sort of vibratory sound, some frequently, others more rarely; and this is the marvellous, complicated music that men call universal history," &c. &c. A fat-looking German, who kept his nose continually dipped in a glass of punch, inhaling the steam with a very gratified look, observed that he felt as though he was in the refreshment saloon of the Berlin theatre; while the Savoyard kept looking at us through his glass, as though it were a _lorgnette_, and the red wine streamed down his purple cheeks into his gaping jaws. And now to proceed to matters of sport. With regard to small game, partridges, ducks, quails, rabbits, &c., there is abundance to be found in Algeria. Near Algiers there is hawking of partridges and hares among the Arab tribes; and, before the French occupation, falconry was the especial amusement of the Arab aristocracy. For shooting of small game I would more especially recommend a caravanserai called Oued el Massin, about half way between Milianah and Teniet. Partridges and woodcock abound there; the quarters, moreover, are remarkably good, and the _cuisine_, superintended by my friend, Mr. Ball, is by no means despicable. From Oued el Massin, a day's journey beyond Milianah, I am convinced excellent shooting may be obtained with a couple of good pointers. Quails are also very numerous. Aquatic birds abound in Algeria, more especially on the lake Fetzara, near Bona, in the province of Constantine. Nothing is more beautiful than the lake Fetzara at sunrise; on its banks are a thousand plants and flowers of every colour and hue, and on its waters repose birds of every description and plumage. As yet it is dusk; everything animal and vegetable is in repose; but with the first ray of the sun come sounds and cries of every imaginable description, and thousands, aye, myriads, of birds are everywhere on the wing. In the impetuosity of their flight, they shake, as it were, the plants and flowers on the border of the lake, who thus pay their morning salute to the sun of Africa. A small barque, however, advances (_vide_ picture), and from this frail skiff suddenly appears the flash of a gun. In a moment the whole air is in motion; grebes with their beautiful plumage, flamingoes with flaming wings, wild swans, and ducks, and teals, by thousands whirl through the air. Is it really to be believed that Nature has affixed (so to speak) some danger to everything charming? One is almost tempted to say so, after examining the enchanting borders of this lake, whose azure waters flow from the mountainous frontier of Tunisia to the opulent plains of Bona. You botanists, who are attracted by the singular colour or strange beauty of some plant or flower here, beware how you approach. Under this magnificent vegetation a trap--a mortal trap--is laid: the banks are of quick-sand! One step, and you meet death--a horrible death. The earth gives way, and you disappear without a trace, for those delicious flowers and plants close up their ranks again, like immortelles over your sepulchre. Listen:--A French cavalry officer came from Bona to shoot flamingoes on this lake. He was accompanied by his servant, also on horseback. He shot a flamingo, who tumbled just on the border of the lake, and dispatched his servant to fetch the bird. At three or four yards from the bird, the soldier disappeared with his horse; and some Arabs, coming up, at the cries of the officer (for the Mussulman believes that the genius of the lake, propitious to Mahometans, devours the profane European), with difficulty saved his servant. As soon as the soldier was out of danger, he cried out, with all the gasconade of a Frenchman, "_Je ne laisserai pas là ce maudit oiseau, cause de ma mésaventure!_" In spite of the energetic dissuasions of the natives, whom, by the way, he could not understand, he advanced on foot; but the earth opened again--he disappeared. One moment his head remained above this liquid ground, one moment he cried for aid, and the abyss had swallowed its prey. However, at certain points, this lake is quite approachable; and, there being several barques, excellent sport may be had. I would, however, recommend sportsmen to procure a letter of introduction to some neighbouring grandee. There is an excellent caravanserai close by, at Ain Mokra. For gazelles one must go quite into the interior of the desert--to Boussada and Laghouat--in the great Sahara desert. Ghazella is, in the Arab language, the synonym for beauty and velocity. Those persons who really desire sport, however, I would recommend to travel from Algiers to Tunisia by land, and, if possible, let them pass by Kef, which is the frontier town. In the vicinity of this town there are, no doubt, plenty of lions; and my friend (who visited it with Dr. Davies, the celebrated explorer and excavator at Carthage) heard of several there, though his stay was so short that he did not succeed in bagging one. For lion-hunting, as for many other things, "_il faut bien de la patience_." Thus it very frequently happens that a man may search without success for months and months for the whereabouts of a lion, and then, suddenly, when your hunter is least prepared for it, and perhaps unarmed, the monarch of the desert will present himself to his astonished gaze. Notwithstanding the formidable character attributed to the lion, he will rarely attack any man unless previously molested. There are three sorts of lions in North Africa--the black, the tawny, and the grey, though the latter is by some supposed to be the same genus as the tawny, only grizzled by age. There are two ways of hunting the lion, by day and by night. That by day is by battue, when a whole tribe turns out to "beard the lion in his den" and make him break cover. Those who are well armed are posted at the outlets of the cover or beaten tracks by which the lion generally passes; any Europeans who assist are usually so stationed; they, however, need have but little fear, for the monarch almost always attacks the _tawny_ native by preference. Is it from sympathy of colour, _similia similibus gaudent_, or from a sort of instinct that the European is better armed, or because he supposes the Arab will make a better repast? The other way of killing the lion is in ambuscade, of which there are two or three kinds. Sometimes the hunters dig a hole in the ground near the spot where the lion is in the habit of passing by night; over this hole they throw branches of trees, which they cover with stones and mortar; they then place some bait near, which can be commanded through holes made in the covering, and when the lion approaches to examine the carcase, he is immediately brought down. Another way of shooting is from a tree. My friend, Count Zamoyski, who has a residence at the Lake Fetzara, shot several in this way. I will, however, refer the reader to Jules Gérard's book for a description of this kind of sport. I did not stay long enough in North Africa to be able to judge of it myself. What I recount now with regard to lion hunting is from hearsay, not from personal experience. The panther is a more dangerous animal than the lion, and much more cunning. Like his relative, the cat, he is very difficult to kill, and it must be a well-directed ball through the head or heart that will prevent him from avenging his wound. For the rest, he is hunted much as the lion. I will not mention the jackal and hyena, both of which animals can be shot after dusk from the tent or hut, by throwing out some carcase or bait before sunset to attract them. Let us pass to that animal which, in my opinion, of all creatures presents by far the best sport on the coast of Barbary--I mean, of course, the wild boar, or halouf, as he is called in the Arabic language. I had long had a desire to hunt the halouf. On my arrival at the Caid's house at Solyman (about twenty miles from Tunis), an old Arab named Mahmoud was sent for, who was reported to be, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord and before the tribes. The next day we started before sunrise to the river, where the boar was supposed to be. _En route_ I questioned my Arab by interpreter. "The halouf," he replied, "when wounded, is as dangerous as the lion. I have," he continued, "myself seen a boar repulse the attack of a young lion." Of boars there are no doubt plenty in Tunisia. They are fond of lying in the thickest brushwood, what the French call _broussailles_, and the main difficulty is to drive them out. It requires some one perfectly conversant with Arabic, and having some authority over the natives, to make them beat properly; otherwise, in a short time they will give over, and pretend that there is nothing there. The best localities for boar are near Solyman, in Tunisia, and Biserta, about fifty miles from Tunis. As for Algeria, the country is now so much frequented by Europeans of all nations, who frighten, if they do not kill, the game, that one has to go a long way into the interior before any sport can be met with. The French talk a great deal about "_la chasseaux panthères_" and "_la chasse aux lions_," &c. &c.; but, in my humble opinion, their forte is "_la chasse aux dames_" or, in plain Saxon English, the success of the "_salon_." Let me conclude with a few words regarding regimen. In this burning climate, above all things observe temperance. I do not mean by that expression that you must be a teetotaller, but the more you can abstain from heating liquids or solids, the better. The other extreme, too, is bad; too much lemonade, or water, or sherbet, is apt to produce diarrhoea. Nature seems to have indicated to the Arabs the best beverage in this zone, both to quench thirst and to preserve health, viz., coffee; but as on a march or out shooting you cannot always stop to have a fire lit, the next best drink is a little weak brandy and water, which you should carry from where you start in the morning, as the water of the rivers is pestiferous. To avoid fever or malaria, I would always take a small quantity of bark of quinine. During the time I was in Africa I enjoyed most excellent health, as I believe everybody may who takes the commonest precautions, and does not indulge, as he may with impunity in more northern climes. Finally, let me give one piece of advice to the sportsman. If he comes to these countries with the expectation that he can, as in England, go out with his gun of a morning and return with his bag full in the evening to a capital dinner, he had better stay at home. To do anything in this country, a man must make his mind up to long and fatiguing marches in the heat of the day, with miserable quarters often at night, in places infested by vermin of every description; in a word, he must be content to rough it. I will also candidly own that, from the accounts I had previously received, I was very much disappointed as regards the quantity of large game to be found in these parts; still, I was, to a certain extent, indemnified for this by the pleasure of visiting a beautiful country, a remarkable people, and magnificent scenery, the entire appearance of which is utterly unlike what one is accustomed to see in the hackneyed countries of modern continental Europe. ITINERARY CARTE. ROUTE--from London to Marseilles, about forty-eight hours. Marseilles, Hôtel d'Orient. Marseilles to Algiers, average passage, three days. Hotels--Hôtel de la Régence and Hôtel de Paris, both good. Algiers to Blidah--horse or diligence--about five hours; Blidah to Medeah--horse or diligence--about eight hours; Blidah to Milianah, about fourteen hours. Blidah--Hôtel de la Régence; Medeah--Hôtel du Gastronome; Milianah--Hôtel d'Iffly. Milianah to Teniet, two days, staying at Oued el Massin, caravanserai; Teniet to Boghar, two days; Boghar to Laghouat, extremity of French frontier in Great Sahara Desert, three days. From there visit Boussada for Gargelles, thence to Constantine, five days; Constantine to Lake Fetzara and Bona, one day. Bona--Hôtel de France. Another way, is to return to Algiers and proceed by sea to Bona, passing Boujie, and Djidjelli, and Philippeville, about forty-eight hours. From Bona to Tunis, by sea, about eighteen hours; or by land, _viâ_ Keff, the frontier town of Tunisia and Algeria, about six days; an escort required. Tunis--Hôtel de France. Tunis to Solyman, four hours; Tunis to Biserta, fourteen hours. On horseback, take two flannel shirts, one change of boots, and bournouse, &c. Average expense per diem, with horse and servant, twenty-five francs. I had three horses and one interpreter, and my expenses averaged £1 10s. _par jour_. THE END. PETTER AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE PRINTING WORKS, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Illustrations have been moved closer to their relevant paragraphs. The page numbers in the List of Illustrations do not reflect the new placement of the illustrations, but are as in the original. Author's archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is preserved. Author's punctuation style is preserved. Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_. Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=. Typographical problems have been changed and are listed below. Transcriber's Changes: Page 5: Original Table of Contents lists Chapter III as page 17. Page 8: Was 'unhapy' (his cutting sarcasm, and the =unhappy= frivolity which defaces the works of the man) Page 30: Was 'Kadir' (FURTHER EXPERIENCES:--Abd-el-=Kader= (but not the Emir)--Difficult Road) Page 33: Was 'twent' (The Arab had fired at the brute at =twenty= paces, but missed his aim.) Page 85: Was 'mattrass' (and the =mattress=--fancy now!--is stuffed with sticks, and is so cursedly hard) 
36348	----	OUR ARTIST IN CUBA, PERU, SPAIN AND ALGIERS. LEAVES FROM _THE SKETCH-BOOK OF A TRAVELLER_. 1864-1868. BY GEORGE W. CARLETON. "Let observation, with expansive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru." [Illustration] NEW YORK: Copyright, 1877, by _G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers_. LONDON: S. LOW & CO. MDCCCLXXVII. OUR ARTIST, [Illustration: colophon] HIS MARK. CONTENTS. PAGE CUBA, 5 PERU, 57 SPAIN, 109 ALGIERS, 131 [Illustration] AN APOLOGY. The Author of these unpretending little wayside sketches offers them to the Public with the hesitating diffidence of an Amateur. The publication a few years ago, of a portion of the drawings was attended with so flattering a reception, that a new edition being called for, it is believed a few more Leaves from the same vagabond sketch-book may not be intrusive. The out-of-the-way sort of places in which the Author's steps have led him, must always present the most enticing subjects for a comic pencil; and although no attempt is here made to much more than hint at the oranges and volantes of Cuba, the earthquakes and buzzards of Peru, the donkeys and beggars of Spain, or the Arabs and dates of Algiers, yet sketches made upon the spot, with the crispy freshness of a first impression, cannot fail in suggesting at least a panoramic picture of such grotesque incidents as these strange Countries furnish. The drawings are merely the chance results of leisure moments; and Our Artist, in essaying to convey a ray of information through the glasses of humor, has simply multiplied with printers' ink his pocket-book of sketches, which, although caricatures, are exaggerations of actual events, jotted down on the impulse of the moment, for the same sort of idle pastime as may possibly lead the reader to linger along its ephemeral pages. NEW YORK, _Christmas_, 1877. PART I. CUBA. [Illustration: colophon] CUBAN SKETCHES. SICK TRANSIT. THE SPANISH TONGUE. TWO BOOBIES. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR. A COLORED HERCULES. AN AGREEABLE BATH. THE CUBAN JEHU. A CELESTIAL MAID. IGLESIA SAN FRANCISCO. A STATUE ON A BUST. A CUBAN MOTIVE. A TAIL UNFOLDED. AN INFLUENZA. MONEY IN THY PURSE. FLEE FOR SHELTER. SUGAR AND WATER. THE RIDE. GREEN FIELDS. A COCK-FIGHT. A SEGAR WELL-LIGHTED. RATHER COOL. SHALL REST BE FOUND. TAKE YOUR PICK. ALL ABOARD. A SPANISH RETREAT. THE MATANZAS CAVE. SPIDERS AND RATS. HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. BELLIGERENTS. A SHADY RETREAT. MATERFAMILIAS. A SPANISH GROCER. CULINARY DEPARTMENT. COLORED HELP. A BUNDLE OF CLOTHES. VERY MOORISH. A BUTTON-SMASHER. CHACUN A SON GOUT. WHITE PANTALOONS. NATURE'S RESTORER. CARNIVAL ACQUAINTANCE. AGRICULTURAL. BEAUTY AT THE BALL. A COT IN THE VALLEY. A DISAPPOINTMENT. A COLORED BEAUTY. DOLCE FAR NIENTE. CORNER STONES. LOCOMOTION. A SUDDEN DEPARTURE. THE START.--THE STEAMSHIP COLUMBIA. AT SEA. [Illustration: First day out.--The wind freshens up a trifle as we get outside Sandy Hook; but our artist says he is'nt sea-sick, for he never felt better in his life.] IN THE GULF OF MEXICO. [Illustration: A "Booby"--as seen _from_ the ship's deck.] [Illustration: A "Booby"--as seen _on_ the ship's deck.] ARRIVAL AT HAVANA. [Illustration: A side elevation of the colored gentleman who carried our luggage from the small boat to the Custom House.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE MERCADERES. [Illustration: The first volante driver that our artist saw in Havana.] VIEW FROM OUR WINDOW AT THE HOTEL ALMY. [Illustration: The old Convent and Bell Tower of the Church of San Francisco,--now used as a Custom House.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE TENIENTE RE. [Illustration: A Cuban Cart and its Motive Power.--Ye patient Donkey.] AT THE CAFE LOUVRE. [Illustration: Manners and Customs of a Cuban with a Cold in his Head.] THE [WICKED] FLEA OF HAVANA. [Illustration: PART I.--The beast in a torpid condition.] [Illustration: PART II.--When he "smells the blood of an Englishmun."] THE NATIONAL VEHICLE OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Manner and Custom of Harnessing ye Animiles to ye Cuban Volante.] A COCK-FIGHT IN CUBA. [Illustration: I.--Chanticleer as he goes in.] [Illustration: II.--Chanticleer considerably "played out."] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE LAMPARILLA. [Illustration: The cool and airy style in which they dress the rising colored generation of Havana.] THE CUBAN TOOTH-PICK. [Illustration: Two ways of carrying it--behind the ear, and in the back-hair.] THE CAPTAIN GENERAL'S QUINTA. [Illustration: View of the Canal and Cocoa Tree; looking East from the Grotto.] THE DOMESTIC INSECTS OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Agitation of the Better-Half of Our Artist, upon entering her chamber and making their acquaintance.] A LITTLE EPISODE IN THE CALLE BARRATILLO. [Illustration: A slight difference arises between the housekeeper's cat and the butcher's dog, who has just come out in his summer costume.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE COMPOSTELLA. [Illustration: The Free Negro.--An every-day scene, when the weather is fine.] AN INTERIOR IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Kitchen, chief-cook and bottle-washer in the establishment of Mrs. Franke, out on the "Cerro."] HEADS OF THE PEOPLE. [Illustration: A portrait of the young lady, whose family (after considerable urging) consents to take in our washing.] PRIMITIVE HABITS OF THE NATIVES. [Illustration: Washing in Havana.--$4 00 a dozen in gold.] WASHING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: I.--My pantaloons as they went _in_. II.--My pantaloons as they came _out_.] CARNIVAL IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A Masquerade at the Tacon Theatre.--Types of Costume, with a glimpse of the "Cuban Dance" in the background.] A MASK BALL AT THE TACON. [Illustration: Our artist mixes in the giddy dance, and falls desperately in love with this sweet creature--but] LATER IN THE EVENING, [Illustration: When the "sweet creature" unmasks, our Artist suddenly recovers from his fit of admiration. Alas! beauty is but mask deep.] STREETS OF HAVANA--CALLE OBRAPIA. [Illustration: The Cuban Wheelbarrow--In Repose.] STREETS OF HAVANA--CALLE O'REILLY. [Illustration: The Cuban Wheelbarrow--In action.] FIRST HOUR! SECOND HOUR!! THIRD HOUR!!! [Illustration: Our Artist forms the praiseworthy determination of studying the Spanish language, and devotes three hours to the enterprise.] BED-ROOMS IN CUBA. [Illustration: The Scorpion of Havana,--encountered in his native jungle.] SEA-BATHS IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist having prepared himself for a jolly plunge, inadvertently observes an insect peculiar to the water, and rather thinks he won't go in just now.] HOTELS IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A cheerful Chinese Chambermaid (?) at the Fonda de Ingleterra, outside the walls.] HIGH ART IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A gay (but slightly mutilated) old plaster-of-Paris girl, that I found in one of the avenues of the Bishop's Garden, on the "Cerro."] LOCOMOTION IN THE COUNTRY. [Illustration: A Cuban Planter going into town with his plunder.] SHOPPING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist just steps around the corner, to look at a "sweet thing in fans" that his wife has found.] [Illustration: RESULT!] THE NATIONAL BEVERAGE OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist indulges in a _panale frio_ (a sort of lime-ade), at the Café Dominica, and gets so "set up," that he vows he won't go home till morning.] THE LIZARDS OF CUBA. [Illustration: Our Artist, on an entomological expedition in the Bishop's Garden, is disagreeably surprised to find such sprightly specimens.] SMOKING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: An English acquaintance of Our Artist wants a light for his paper segar; whereupon the waiter, according to custom, brings a live coal.] THE MUSQUITOS OF HAVANA. [Illustration: A midsummer's night dream.--Our Artist is just the least bit disturbed in his rest, and gently remonstrates.] PUBLIC SERVANTS IN CUBA. [Illustration: A gay and festive Chinese brakeman, on the railroad near Guines.--The shirt-collar-and-pair-of-spurs style of costume.] ONE OF THE SENSATIONS IN CUBA. [Illustration: The Great Cave near Matanzas.--Picturesque House over the Entrance.] THE GREAT CAVE NEAR MATANZAS. [Illustration: A section of the interior--showing the comfortable manner in which our artist followed the guide, inspected the stalactites, and comported himself generally.] THE OUTSKIRTS OF MATANZAS. [Illustration: One of the Fortifications.--Sketched from the end of the _Paseo_, on a day hot enough to give anything but a donkey the brain fever.] ARCHITECTURE IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: A romantic little _tienda mista_ (grocery store) on a corner, in the Calle Ona.] A _CAFFETAL_ NEAR MATANZAS. [Illustration: Our Artist becomes dumb with admiration, at the ingenious manner of toting little niggers.] THE PICTURESQUE IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: A singular little bit, out of the Calle Manzana.] A SUGAR PLANTATION, NEAR THE YUMORI. [Illustration: Our Artist essays to drink the milk from a green Cocoa:] [Illustration: Fatal effect.--An uncomfortable sensation!] A BED-CHAMBER IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: First night at the "Gran Hotel Leon de Oro."--Our artist is accommodated with quarters on the ground-floor, convenient to the court-yard, and is lulled to sleep by a little domestic concert of cats, dogs, donkeys, parrots and game-cocks.] ECONOMY IS WEALTH. [Illustration: Showing the manner in which one ox accomplishes the labor of two, in San Felipe.] THE SUBURBS OF CALABAZAR. [Illustration: A Planter's Hut, and three scraggly Palm Trees in the dim distance.] PLANTATIONS NEAR MARIANAO. [Illustration: A Colored Beauty toting Sugar Cane from the field to the grinding mill.] ARCHITECTURE IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A conglomerate _Esquina_, on the corner of Calle Obispo and Monserate.] LAST NIGHT IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Alarm of Our Artist and Wife, upon going to their room to pack, and discovering that a Tarantula has taken possession of their trunk.] PART II. PERU. [Illustration] PERUVIAN SKETCHES. FRIENDLY COUNSELS. GOOD FOR DIGESTION. A DISAGREEABLE BERTH. AN EYE FOR AN EYE. A COLORED RECEPTION. WHO KNOWS? (NOSE). THE NAKED TRUTH. DISCRETION IN VALOR. A PANAMA LAUNDRESS. BLACK WARRIORS. A MAN FOR A' HAT. MUSIC HATH CHARMS. DOMESTIC BLISS. A CHARIOT RACE. A BIT OF A CHURCH. AN ANTIQUE. HOT WEATHER. FAMILY ARRANGEMENT. WHAT AN ASS! HEADS OF THE PEOPLE. A HAPPY FAMILY. BY THEIR FRUITS. LAND AT LAST. A BEAST OF BURDEN. CALLAO CATHEDRAL. A NIGHT ADVENTURE. A BAGGAGE TRAIN. A RUNAWAY. CATHEDRAL AT LIMA. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC. A WATER-CARRIER. A ROOSTER. A BAG OF CUFFEY. A CHIME OF BELLS. BIRDS OF A FEATHER. DOG-DAYS. A CHINA BOWL OF SOUP. PORK BUSINESS. THING OF BEAUTY. WHEN SHALL WE THREE. FONDEST HOPES DECAY. UNHAND ME! RAT-IFICATION MEETING. NOTHING VENTURE. A BACK SEAT. A GREAT SELL. AN EXCELLENT VIEW. A BEGGARLY SHOW. BREAD-BASKETS. A DEAD-HEAD. THE START--STEAMSHIP "HENRY CHAUNCEY." FROM NEW YORK TO ASPINWALL. [Illustration: Sea-sickness being a weakness of Our Artist, he determines to be fore-armed, and accordingly provides himself with a few simple preventives, warmly recommended by his various friends.] IN THE CARIBBEAN SEA. [Illustration: Our Artist, having indulged rather freely in the different preventives, gets things mixed, and wishes that his friends and their confounded antidotes were at the bottom of the Dead Sea.] ARRIVAL AT ASPINWALL. [Illustration: First impressions of the city and its inhabitants.--Colored citizens on the dock, awaiting the steamer's advent.] ISTHMUS OF DARIEN. [Illustration: View from the window of a Panama railroad car--showing the low-neck and short-sleeve style of costume adopted by the youthful natives of Cruces.--Also a sprightly specimen of the one-eared greyhound indigenous to the country.] A VIEW IN PANAMA. [Illustration: The old and weather-beaten church of Santa Ana--and in the foreground, with basket on her head, baby under one arm, and bowl of milk supported by the other, a colored lady of West Indian descent, vulgarly known as a "Jamaica nigger."] AN AFTERNOON AT PANAMA. [Illustration: Deeming it always incumbent upon the traveller to invest in the products of the country, Our Artist provides himself with a good sensible Panama hat, and thus with wife and "mutual friend," he peacefully and serenely meanders around among the suburbs of the city.] A STREET SCENE IN PANAMA. [Illustration: Our Artist, with the naked eye, beholds a pig, a fighting-cock, and a black baby, all tied by the leg, at the humble doorway of the residence of a colored citizen, in the principal street of the capital of Central America.] IN THE BAY OF PANAMA. [Illustration: Our Artist wanders about the sleepy little neighboring island, Taboga, where the English steamers lie, and sketches, among other picturesque bits, the clean little whitewashed cathedral in the dirty little Broadway of Taboga.] STEAMSHIP "CHILE." FROM PANAMA TO CALLAO. [Illustration: Crossing the equinoctial line, Our Artist discovers that the rays of a vertical sun are anything but bracing and cool.] PAYTA--A SEAPORT IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist, having understood that this town is chiefly remarkable for its fine breed of mules, ironically inquires of a native Venus if this can be considered a good specimen. The N. V. treats Our Artist with silent, stolid, Indian contempt.] NATURAL HISTORY IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist visits a coasting-vessel just arrived from Guayaquil, loaded with every variety of tropical fruit, and a sprinkling of tame monkeys, parrots, alligators, white herons, iguanas, paroquets, spotted deer, etc.] ARRIVAL AT CALLAO--THE HARBOR. [Illustration: The landing-boat being a trifle too much loaded by the head, Our Artist finds it somewhat difficult to steer.] ARCHITECTURE IN CALLAO. [Illustration: The little one-story Cathedral on the Plaza, which the earthquakes have so frantically and so vainly tried to swallow up or tumble down.] ARRIVAL AT LIMA. [Illustration: Triumphal entry of Our Artist and his much-the-better-half; reviving the brilliant days of Pizarro and his conquering warriors, as they entered the "City of the Kings."--The Peruvian warriors in the present century, however, conquer but the baggage, and permit the weary traveller to walk to his hotel at the tail-end of the procession.] THE CATHEDRAL AT LIMA. [Illustration: An after-dinner sketch (rather shaky) from our balcony in the Hotel Morin, on the Grand Plaza.] DOMESTICS IN PERU. [Illustration: One of the waiters at our hotel, clad in the inevitable _poncho_--A genuine native Peruvian, perhaps a son of "Rolla the Peruvian," who was "within."] A PERUVIAN COOK. [Illustration: Peeping into the kitchen one day, Our Artist perceives that a costume, cool and negligé, may be improvised by making a hole in a coffee-bag and getting into it.] STREETS OF LIMA--CALLE JUDIOS. [Illustration: Almost every other street in Lima has a stream of filthy water or open sewer running through the middle of it, offering rich fishing-grounds to the graceful _gallinazos_ or turkey-buzzards, who thus constitute the street-cleaning department of the municipal government.] CELESTIALS IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist is here seen resisting the tempting offer of a bowl of what appears to be buzzard soup, in front of one of the Chinese cook-shops that abound in the neighborhood of the market at Lima.] DOLCE FAR NIENTE--A DREAM OF PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist before going to Lima, during little poetical siestas, had indulged in lovely romantic reveries, the burden of which he sketches in his mind's eye, Horatio--but] THE SAD REALITY. [Illustration: Alas! too frequently his thirsty eye is met only by such visions as the above--and the lovely beauties of Lima, where are they?] BEDROOMS IN PERU. [Illustration: A section of the inner-wall to our chamber at the Hotel in Lima.--The condition of things at the witching hour of night, judging by the sounds.] STREETS OF LIMA.--CALLE PALACIO. [Illustration: A young Peruvian accompanying its mamma to market in the morning.] STREETS OF LIMA--CALLE PLATEROS. [Illustration: A picturesque little _mirador_ or lookout at the corner of Calle Plateros and Bodegones, opposite the Hotel Maury, with balconies _ad lib._] OCCUPATIONS IN LIMA. [Illustration: The _panadero_, or baker, as he appears on his mite of a donkey, rushing round through the streets of Lima, delivering bread to his customers.] CARRIAGES AND PAVEMENTS IN LIMA. [Illustration: Our Artist, after a hearty dinner, extravagantly engages a three-horse coupé, and goes out for a regular, genuine, native Peruvian ride. That his bones are unbroken, and that he is yet alive to tell the tale, remains to him an unfathomable mystery.] COSTUMES IN LIMA.--THE SAYA Y MANTO. [Illustration: Our Artist has heard a good deal about the magnificent eyes of the Limanian women; but as he never sees more than one eye at a time, he can't say much about them, with any regard for the truth.] HEAD-DRESSES IN LIMA.--THE MANTO. [Illustration: The Señoritas look very prettily sometimes, with their black mantillas thrown gracefully over their heads, (_See Geographies, etc._,) but when you come across a party possessing a decided nose, in profile, the effect is rather startling.] REVOLUTIONS IN PERU. [Illustration: Our apartments look out upon the Grand Plaza, where the fighting usually takes place; and as the windows are mostly broken by the balls of the last Revolution, (Nov. 6, 1865,) and it's about time for another, Our Artist gets into ambuscade every time he hears a fire-cracker in the street.] THE WAR WITH SPAIN. [Illustration: Two native and dreadfully patriotic Peruvian soldiers on review before their superior officer.] MARTIAL MUSIC IN PERU. [Illustration: The National Hymn, with variations, as rendered by the Royal Band in front of President Prado's palace on the Grand Plaza.] FINE ARTS IN PERU. [Illustration: A hasty sketch of Mistress Juno and her peacocks, as represented by fresco in the doorway of a Lima palace--Calle Ayachucho.] DARK AGES OF PERU. [Illustration: The old unfinished church and deserted monastery of San Francisco de Paula--Calle Malambo.] LOCOMOTION IN SOUTH AMERICA. [Illustration: What the country people would do down there, if the jackasses were only long enough.--What they _do_ do, is but slightly caricatured by Our Artist.] HAIR-DRESSING IN LIMA. [Illustration: Ladies' style as seen at the theatre. Also Our Artist before and after he had his hair cut in the latest Lima fashion.] A FRUIT-STALL AT CHORRILLOS. [Illustration: Our Artist, as he appeared when stricken with amazement at the huge clusters of white grapes that are everywhere, for a mere song, sold in Peru.] SHOPPING IN PERU. [Illustration: A Peruvian materfamilias, having bought a few simple house-keeping articles in town, is here seen returning to her mountain home, accompanied by her purchases.] THE FLEAS OF LIMA. [Illustration: Having been nearly devoured by these carnivorous little devils, Our Artist sprinkles himself with Turkish flea-powder one night before retiring, and is charmed at the rapid and parabolic manner with which they desert him.] THE LLAMAS OF PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist had heretofore fancied that it would be immensely jolly to ride one of these singular beasts of burden; but when he encounters this one, on a lonely road outside the walls one day, he begs to be excused.] TERPSICHORE IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist assists at a mask-ball in the Jardin Otaiza, and is puzzled at the nationality of the costumes worn by the dancers.] CHURCH ORNAMENTS IN LIMA. [Illustration: The statues in the niches and on the spires of the Cathedral look very well in the daytime; but at night, when the turkey-buzzards roost on their heads, the solemnity of the thing is somewhat marred.] THE BELLS OF LIMA. [Illustration: Lima is full of churches, and the churches are full of bells; and as they ring and bang away from dewy eve till early morn, their cadences are calculated to disturb somewhat the peaceful slumbers of Our Artist.] PERUVIAN BARK--IN THE ROUGH. [Illustration: Our Artist is treated to plenty of this quinine (canine) salutation, whenever and wherever he pays a visit in Lima.] TRANSPORTATION IN PERU. [Illustration: "This pig went to market," but as he wouldn't go decently, he was tied upon the back of the ever-patient donkey, and so, _nolens volens_, came to Lima, crossing the bridge over the Rimac, where Our Artist sketched him.] PRIESTS AND FRIARS OF LIMA. [Illustration: A theological discussion of the gravest import takes place between three jolly Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church--a Dominican, a Mercedarian, and a Buena-Muertean. Scene--The square in front of the church of San Francisco, with its crooked cross.] ENTOMOLOGY IN SOUTH AMERICA. [Illustration: Our Artist doesn't want to say anything against the insects of Peru; but the way in which one of his hands swelled up, after a bite from some unknown varmit in the night, was, to say the least, alarming.] LOTTERIES IN PERU. [Illustration: Having invested in the semi-monthly Lima lottery, Our Artist feels so confident of drawing the $4,000 prize, that he gets extravagant, wears his good clothes, and smokes one-dollar cigars; but a revulsion of feeling takes place after the drawing produces nothing for him but blanks.] CURIOSITIES OF PERU. [Illustration: Having been informed by a musty old sepulchral monk that the remains of Pizarro might be seen behind this grating, Our Artist tremblingly gazes therein--but as it is pitch dark, he doesn't recognize Pizarro.] A COUP D'OEIL IN LIMA. [Illustration: A picturesque view of the great stone bridge over the rapid river Rimac, showing the towers of the church Desamparados, the Arch with illuminated clock, and the spire of Santo Domingo.--Sketched with about ninety-seven Peruvian beggars looking over Our Artist's shoulder.] LAST DAY AT LIMA. [Illustration: A visit to the Museum--which contains a not very remarkable collection of Peruvian antiquities--and where Our Artist sees all that remains of the once magnificent Atahualpa, last king of the Incas. Alas, poor Yorick! To this complexion must we come at last.--Fit sketch wherewith to end this strange, eventful history of "Our Artist in Peru."] PART III. SPAIN. [Illustration] A SPANISH OVERCOAT. [Illustration: Our Artist, upon his arrival in "Sunny Spain," is overtaken in the Pyrenees, on the French Frontier, by a terrific snow-storm, and is compelled to provide himself, at BAYONNE, with an Overcoat of the Country.] HACKMEN IN SPAIN. [Illustration: Portraits of the three Hackmen, who (upon our arrival at the City of BURGOS, in the dead of night,) meet us at the Rail Road station, and propose accompanying us to our Hotel.] A CITIZEN OF VALLADOLID. [Illustration: Here is a faithful portrait of the Old Party who entered the cars at VALLADOLID; carrying with him a few travelling conveniences.] A MADRID HAT. [Illustration: This is a Spanish Dandy at the Grand Opera House in MADRID:--first, with his cigarette and new Hat of the period; second, after his Hat had been sat upon by a fat old Señora, during the third act of Lucia di Lammermoor.] LOTTERIES IN SPAIN. [Illustration: Nearly all the Lottery tickets in Spain are publicly sold in the streets by Beggars: and _this_ is the sort of Vagabond in MADRID to whom Our Artist confided $16 for a ticket that won a prize of $5.] SIGHT-SEEING IN SPAIN. [Illustration: There are so many hundred apartments to be seen in the famous PALACE OF THE ESCORIAL, that Our Artist is obliged to follow his Brigand of a Guide rather rapidly, in order to view them all in one day.] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. [Illustration: Our Artist sees from the car-window, at a Rail-Road Station near Toledo, what, at a first glance, appears to be a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte,--but: (_see next page_.)] A RAIL-ROAD OFFICIAL. [Illustration:---- the Statue suddenly becomes animated and revolves; and the side-view reveals a CIVIL GUARD, with carbine and knapsack beneath his big military cloak.] ARCHITECTURE IN CORDOVA. [Illustration: A picturesque little half Moorish and half Spanish dwelling house, in the Calle Jesus Maria; with a couple of Priests in earnest discussion.] BALCONIES IN SEVILLE. [Illustration: Sketch of a private residence in Calle San Pablo; from the upper Balcony of which, Our Artist had a rose thrown to him, while a cloaked Assassin of a probable Lover, glowered savagely at him from the doorway.] IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA. [Illustration: The Barber of Seville, according to Rossini's Opera, and according to the way in which he is popularly believed to disport himself.--(_See next page._)] A BARBAROUS PROCEEDING. [Illustration: The Barber of Seville, as he actually exists in that city, and precisely as he appeared while operating upon our Artist, one day, in the Calle de las Sierpes.] A CAFÉ IN SEVILLE. [Illustration: Our Artist discovers, one day, in the Calle Tunidores, not exactly the most fashionable Café in SEVILLE, but a Café glorying in the ambitious name of JULIUS CÆSAR!] TYPES OF SPANISH CHARACTER. [Illustration: Fellow Passengers in the Diligence to MALAGA--one, a corpulent and famous Bull-Fighter, and the other, an envious and admiring follower of the same ennobling Profession.] SPANISH STAGE-COACHES. [Illustration: The light and graceful antediluvian Diligence that transported us up the Sierra Nevada Mountains, from MALAGA To LOJA.] LOCOMOTION IN SPAIN. [Illustration: This sketch is an attempt to display the general character and construction of one of the seven Mules that drew our Diligence over the hills from MALAGA To LOJA.] THE SPANISH GUITAR. [Illustration: A characteristic little sketch of a Guitar Player, in the window of a second-story dwelling, on the Alemeda de Verano, at GRENADA.] BEGGARS IN SPAIN. [Illustration: Our Artist, having in a generous moment, distributed a handful of copper coins to the poor of GRENADA, finds himself, thereafter, in all his strolls about the ALHAMBRA, at the Head of such a Procession as this!] THE ALHAMBRA. [Illustration: Sketch of the famous Gate of Justice, the principal modern Entrance to the far-famed Moorish Palace of THE ALHAMBRA--with a little Spanish Flirtation going on in the corner.] THE ALHAMBRA. [Illustration: Outline Sketch of an Ancient Moorish Well, inside the enclosure of the ALHAMBRA; with a bit of the Old Wall.] A SPANISH VEGETABLE MARKET. [Illustration: A sketch in GIBRALTAR--This fellow was seen wandering around the streets, selling vegetables to the natives, and steering his Donkey by the tail.] PART IV. ALGIERS. [Illustration] LANDING IN AFRICA. [Illustration: We leave Gibraltar by Steamer, and upon reaching the city of NEMOURS, Our Artist and his Better-Half are taken ashore from the small boat by the Natives in this summary manner!--A couple of inviting Hotel-keepers are awaiting them on the beach.] AN ARAB BEGGAR. [Illustration: One of the first Objects that greets the eagle eye of Our Artist, as he wanders around the streets of NEMOURS, is this cheerful "What-is-it," who mournfully begs for a few grains of corn.] AFRICAN WATER CARRIERS. [Illustration: Sketch of a fantastic little Fountain in one of the streets of the City of ORAN.] BED-ROOMS IN AFRICA. [Illustration: This is the sort of Thing that you find meandering round on your pillow, when you retire to your Chamber for the night, at the Hotel in ORAN.] ANOTHER ARAB BEGGAR. [Illustration: This Gentleman, who accosted us in the suburbs of ORAN, assured us in tremulous accents that he had eaten nothing in seventeen days--and we saw no reason for doubting his word.] LOCOMOTION IN AFRICA. [Illustration: Upon our arrival in the City of ALGIERS, we are much amused at the first vehicle we see; where a diminutive donkey is hitched in front of an enormous horse.] COSTUMES IN AFRICA. [Illustration: Alarm of Our Artist, as he, for the first time, encounters a Moorish maiden, as she appears around the corner from a dark and narrow street, in the Kasbah quarter of the City of ALGIERS.] SOLDIERS IN AFRICA. [Illustration: A French Zouave off duty, as he appeared while listening to the Military Band that played every afternoon in the Place du Gouvernment, ALGIERS.] A STREET IN ALGIERS. [Illustration: The Rue Staoueli--a narrow street in the old Arab Quarter of ALGIERS, where the houses nearly touch each other at their tops.] MANUFACTURES IN AFRICA. [Illustration: Sketch in the Rue Kasbah.--A couple of Moorish Jews, engaged in silk spinning, at the door of their palatial residence.] MOORISH SHOP-KEEPER. [Illustration: This graceful and fairy-like Will-o'-the-Wisp, sold us some lovely silk embroideries, in ALGIERS, the like of which, Solomon, in all his glory never dreamed of.] FINE ARTS IN AFRICA. [Illustration: We visit the not very interesting Museum in ALGIERS, and sketch, among other curious objects, a Cast of an Arab Martyr [one Géronimo], who had been buried alive in a box of Plaster of Paris.] JARDIN D'ESSAI, ALGIERS. [Illustration: Merely a sketch (for the last page of this little book) of a Date-Palm Tree, in ALGIERS, with a couple of Arabs trying to get in its shade.] * * * * * =THE UNITED STATES LIFE INSURANCE CO.= This company is one of the oldest in this city, and has a high reputation for conservative and skilful management. Its Board of Directors comprises a number of the best known, most influential, and wealthiest of our merchants and bankers. Its officers are men of proved integrity and ability. The annual statement, submitted last January, and accepted by the State Commissioner of Insurance as correct, shows the assets to be $4,654,274, and the surplus, as already stated, to be over $800,000, or more than twenty per cent, of all the liabilities. The United States Life Insurance Co. is known in Life Insurance circles as one of the most carefully handled institutions in the city. So well has it been managed that its business has increased rather than retrograded during the past year, as bad as it has been for all kinds of business. And its losses have been less this year than in any of the five preceding. Its officers are among the best known and most highly esteemed citizens of New York. JAMES BUELL, Esq., the President, is the President of the Importers and Traders' Bank, a man whose name is a synonym for integrity and skill in finance, and its stockholders are men equally well known in business circles, and hold an equal share of public esteem. =Organized 1850.= =JAMES BUELL, _President_.= C. P. FRALEIGH, Sec'y. T. H. BROSNAN, Supt. Agencies. HENRY W. BALDWIN, Supt. Middle Department, Office: Drexel Building, cor. Wall & Broad Streets, NEW YORK. OUR =ARTIST IN CUBA,= PERU, SPAIN AND ALGIERS [Illustration] BY GEORGE W. CARLETON. [Illustration] Price 50 Cents. 
45380	----	provided by the Internet Archive ARTISTS AND ARABS; OR Sketching in Sunshine By Henry Blackburn, Author Of 'Normandy Picturesque,' 'The Pyrenees,' 'Travelling In Spain,' Etc. Second Edition. With Numerous Illustrations. London: Sampson Low, Son, And Marston, 1870. ARGUMENT. The advantage of winter studios abroad, and the value of sketching in the open air; especially in Algeria. 'The best thing the author of a book can do, is to tell the reader, on a piece of paper an inch square, what he means by it.'--Athenaeum. [Illustration: 0019] ARTISTS AND ARABS. CHAPTER I. ON THE WING. [Illustration: 9019] Y the middle of the month of July, the Art season in London was on the wane, and by the end of August the great body of English artists had dispersed, some, the soundest workers perhaps, to the neighbourhood of Welsh mountains and English homesteads, to--'The silence of thatched cottages and the voices of blossoming fields.' From the Tweed to the Shetland Isles, they were thick upon the hills; in every nook and corner of England, amongst the cornfields and upon the lakes; in the valleys and torrent beds of Wales, the cry was still 'they come.' On the continent, both artists and amateurs were everywhere. Smith toiling across the Campagna with the thermometer at 95 (his reward a quiet pipe at the 'café Greco' when the sun goes down) is but a counterpart of a hundred other Smiths scattered abroad. In the galleries of Florence and Rome no more easels could be admitted, and in Switzerland and Savoy the little white tents and 'sun-umbrellas' glistened on the mountain side. Brown might be seen rattling down an arrête from the Flegére, with his _matériel_ swung across his back, like a carpenter's basket, after a hard day's work sketching the Aiguilles that tower above the valley of Chamounix; and Jones, with his little wife beside him, sitting under the deep shade of the beech-trees in the valley of Sixt. We were a sketching party, consisting of two, three or four, according to convenience or accident, wandering about and pitching our tent in various places away from the track of tourists; we had been spending most of the summer days in the beautiful Val d'Aosta (that school for realistic work that a great teacher once selected for his pupil, giving him three months to study its chesnut groves, 'to brace his mind to a comprehension of facts'); we had prolonged the summer far into autumn on the north shore of the Lago Maggiore, where from the heights above the old towns of Intra and Pallanza we had watched its banks turn from green to golden and from gold to russet brown. The mountains were no longer _en toilette_, as the French express it, and the vineyards were stripped of their purple bloom; the wind had come down from the Simplon in sudden and determined gusts, and Monte Rosa no longer stood alone in her robe of white; the last visitor had left the Hôtel de l'Univers at Pallanza, and our host was glad to entertain us at the rate of four francs a day 'tout compris'--when the question came to us, as it does to so many other wanderers in Europe towards the end of October, where to go for winter quarters, where to steal yet a further term of summer days. Should we go again to Spain to study Velasquez and Murillo, should we go as usual to Rome; or should we strike out a new path altogether and go to Trebizond, Cairo, Tunis, or Algeria? There was no agreeing on the matter, diversity of opinion was very great and discussion ran high (the majority we must own, having leanings towards Rome and _chic_; and also 'because there would be more fun'); so, like true Bohemians, we tossed for places and the lot fell upon Algeria. The next morning we are on the way. Trusting ourselves and our baggage to one of those frail-looking little boats with white awnings, that form a feature in every picture of Italian lake scenery, and which, in their peculiar motion and method of propulsion (the rower standing at the stern and facing his work), bear just sufficient resemblance to the Venetian gondola to make us chafe a little at the slow progress we make through the smooth water, we sit and watch the receding towers of Pallanza, as it seems, for the livelong day. There is nothing to relieve the monotony of motion, and scarcely a sound to break the stillness, until we approach the southern shore, and it becomes a question of anxiety as to whether we shall really reach Arona before sundown. But the old boatman is not to be moved by any expostulation or entreaty, nor is he at all affected by the information that we run great risk of losing the last train from Arona; and so we are spooned across the great deep lake at the rate of two or three miles an hour, and glide into the harbour with six inches of water on the flat-bottom of the boat amongst our portmanteaus. From Arona to Genoa by railway, and from Genoa to Nice by the Cornice road--that most beautiful of all drives, where every variety of grandeur and loveliness of view, both by sea and land, seems combined, and from the heights of which, if we look seaward and scan the southern horizon, we can sometimes trace an irregular dark line, which is Corsica--past Mentone and Nice, where the 'winter swallows' are arriving fast; making a wonderful flutter in their nests, all eagerness to obtain the most comfortable quarters, * and all anxiety to have none but 'desirable' swallows for neighbours. This last is a serious matter, this settling down for the winter at Nice, for it is here that the swallows choose their mates, pairing off wonderfully in the springtime, like grouse-shooting M.P.s in August. * Necessary enough, to be protected from the cold blasts that sweep down the valleys, as many invalids know to their cost, who have taken houses or lodgings hastily at Nice. A few hours' journey by railway and we are at Marseilles, where (especially at the 'Grand Hotel') it is an understood and settled thing that every Englishman is on his way, to or from Italy or India, and it requires considerable perseverance to impress upon the attendants that the steamer which sails at noon for Algiers is the one on which our baggage is to be placed, and it is almost impossible to persuade the driver of a fiacre that we do _not_ want to go by the boat just starting for Civita Vecchia or Leghorn. On stepping on board it almost seems as if there were some mistake, for we appear to be the only passengers on the after deck, and to be looked upon with some curiosity by the swarthy half-naked crew, who talk together in an unknown tongue; notwithstanding that at the packet office in the town we were informed that we could not secure berths for certain. We have several hours to wait and to look about us, for the mail is not brought on board until three in the afternoon, and it is half-past, before the officials have kissed each other on both cheeks and we are really moving off--threading our way with difficulty through the mass of shipping which hems us in on all sides. The foredeck of the _Akhbar_ is one mass of confusion and crowding, but the eye soon detects the first blush of oriental colour and costume, and on nearer inspection it is easy to distinguish a few white bournouses moving through the crowd. There are plenty of Zouaves in undress uniforms, chiefly young men, with a superfluity of medals and the peculiar swagger which seems inseparable from this costume; others old and bronzed, who have been to Europe on leave and are returning to join their regiments. Some parting scenes we witness between families of the peasant order, of whom there appear to be a number on board, and their friends who leave in the last boat for the shore. These, one and all, take leave of each other with a significant 'au revoir,' which is the key-note to the whole business, and tells us (who are not studying politics and have no wish or intention, to trouble the reader with the history or prospects of the colony) the secret of its ill-success, viz.:--that these colonists _intend_ to _come back_, and that they are much too near home in Algeria. Looking down upon the fore-deck, as we leave the harbour of Marseilles, there seems scarcely an available inch of space that is not encumbered with bales and goods of all kinds; with heaps of rope and chain, military stores, piles of arms, cavalry-horses, sheep, pigs, and a prodigious number of live fowls. On the after-deck there are but six passengers, there is a Moorish Jew talking fluently with a French commercial traveller, a sad and silent officer of Chasseurs with his young wife, and two lieutenants who chatter away with the captain; the latter, in consideration of his rank as an officer in the Imperial Marine, leaving the mate to take charge of the vessel during the entire voyage. This gentleman seems to the uninitiated to be a curious encumbrance, and to pass his time in conversation, in sleep, and in the consumption of bad cigars. He is 6 a disappointed man' of course, as all officers are, of whatever nation, age, or degree. The voyage averages forty-eight hours, but is often accomplished in less time on the southward journey. It is an uncomfortable period even in fine weather, just too long for a pleasure trip, and just too short to settle down and make up one's mind to it, as in crossing the Atlantic. Our boat is an old Scotch screw, which has been lent to the Company of the _Messageries Impériales_ for winter duty--the shaft hammering and vibrating through the saloon and after-cabins incessantly for the first twenty-four hours, whilst she labours against a cross sea in the Gulf of Lyons, indisposes' the majority of the company, and the captain dines by himself; but about noon on the next day it becomes calm, and the _Akhbar_ steams quietly between the Balearic Islands, close enough for us to distinguish one or two churches and white houses, and a square erection that a fellow-traveller informs us is the work of the 'Majorca Land, Compagnie Anglaise.' In the following little sketch we have indicated the appearance in outline of the two islands of Majorca and Minorca as we approach them going southward, passing at about equal distances between the islands. [Illustration: 0029] The sea is calm and the sky is bright as we leave the islands behind us, and the _Akhbar_ seems to skim more easily through the deep blue water, leaving a wake of at least a mile, and another wake in the sky of sea gulls, who follow us for the rest of the voyage in a graceful undulating line, sleeping on the rigging at night unmolested by the crew, who believe in their good omen. On the second morning on coming on deck we find ourselves in the tropics, the sky is a deep azure, the heat is intense, and the brightness of everything is wonderful. The sun's rays pour down on the vessel, and their effect on the occupants of the fore-deck is curious to witness. The odd heaps of clothing that had lain almost unnoticed during the voyage suddenly come to life, and here and there a dark visage peeps from under a tarpaulin, from the inside of a coil of rope, or from a box of chain, and soon the whole vessel, both the fore and after-deck, is teeming with life, and we find at least double the number of human beings on board that we had had any idea of at starting. But the interest of every one is now centred on a low dark line of coast, with a background of mountains, which every minute becomes more defined; and we watch it until we can discern one or two of the highest peaks, tipped with snow. Soon we can make out a bright green, or rather as it seems in the sunlight, a golden shore, set with a single gem that sparkles in the water. Again it changes into the aspect of a little white pyramid or triangle of chalk on a green shore shelving to the sea, next into an irregular mass of houses with flat roofs, and mosques with ornamented towers and cupolas, surrounded and surmounted by grim fortifications, which are not Moorish; and in a little while we can distinguish the French houses and hotels, a Place, a modern harbour and lighthouse, docks, and French shipping, and one piratical-looking craft that passes close under our bows, manned by dark sailors with bright red sashes and large earrings, dressed like the fishermen in the opera of Mas-aniello. And whilst we are watching and taking it all in, we have glided to our moorings, close under the walls of the great Mosque (part of which we have sketched from this very point of view); and are surrounded by a swarm of half-naked, half-wild and frantic figures, who rush into the water vociferating and imploring us in languages difficult to understand, to be permitted to carry the Franks' baggage to the shore. Taking the first that comes, we are soon at the landing steps and beset by a crowd of beggars, touters, idlers and nondescripts of nearly every nation and creed under heaven. [Illustration: 0033] [Illustration: 0035] CHAPTER II. ALGIERS. ``'Ah oui, c'est qu'elle est belle avec ces châteaux forts, ``Couchés dans les près verts, comme les géants morts! ``C'est qu'elle est noble, Alger la fille du corsaire! ``Un réseau de murs blancs la protège et l'enserre.'= [Illustration: 9035] HE first view of the town of Algiers, with its pretty clusters of white houses set in bright green hills, or as the French express it, 'like a diamond set in emeralds,' the range of the lesser Atlas forming a background of purple waves rising one above the other until they are lost in cloud--was perhaps the most beautiful sight we had witnessed, and it is as well to record it at once, lest the experience of the next few hours might banish it from memory. It was a good beginning to have a stately barefooted Arab to shoulder our baggage from the port, and wonderful to see the load he carried unassisted. * As he winds his way through the narrow and steep slippery streets (whilst we who are shod by a Hoby and otherwise encumbered by broadcloth, have enough to do to keep pace with him, and indeed to keep our footing), it is good to see how nobly our Arab bears his load, how beautifully balanced is his lithe figure, and with what grace and ease he stalks along. As he slightly bows, when taking our three francs (his 'tariff' as he calls it), there is a dignity in his manner, and a composure about him that is almost embarrassing. How he came, in the course of circumstances, to be carrying our luggage instead of wandering with his tribe, perhaps civilization--French civilization--can answer. * It is generally admitted, we believe, that a vegetable diet will not produce heroes,' and there is certainly a prejudice in England about the value of beef for navvies and others who put muscular power into their work. It is an interesting fact to note, and one which we think speaks volumes for the climate of Algeria, that this gentleman lives almost entirely on fruit, rice, and Indian corn. The first hurried glance (as we followed our cicerone up the landing steps to the 'Hôtel de la Régence,' which faces the sea) at the dazzlingly white flat-roofed houses without windows, at the mosques with their gaily painted towers, at the palm-trees and orange-trees, and at the crowd of miscellaneous costumes in which colour preponderated everywhere, gave the impression of a thorough Mahommedan city; and now as we walk down to the _Place_ and look about us at leisure, we find to our astonishment and delight that the Oriental element is still most prominent. The most striking and bewildering thing is undoubtedly the medley that meets the eye everywhere: the conflict of races, the contrast of colours, the extraordinary brightness of everything, the glare, the strange sounds and scenes that cannot be easily taken in at a first visit; the variety of languages heard at the same time, and above all the striking beauty of some faces, and the luxurious richness of costume. First in splendour come the Moors (traders looking like princes), promenading or lounging about under the trees, looking as important and as richly attired as was ever Caliph Haroun Alraschid. They are generally fair and slight of figure, with false effeminate faces, closely-shaven heads covered with fez and turban, loose baggy trousers, jacket and vest of blue or crimson cloth, embroidered with gold; round their waists are rich silken sashes, and their fingers are covered with a profusion of rings. Their legs are often bare and their feet are enclosed in the usual Turkish slipper. This is the prominent town type of Moor or Jew, the latter to be distinguished by wearing dark trousers, clean white stockings, French shoes, and a round cloth cap of European pattern. There are various grades, both of the Moors and Jews, some of course shabby and dirty enough; but the most dignified and picturesque figures are the tall dark Arabs and the Kabyles, with their flowing white bournouses, their turbans of camel's hair, and their independent noble bearing. Here we see them walking side by side with their conquerors in full military uniform and their conquerors' wives in the uniform of _Le Follet_, whilst white-robed female figures flit about closely veiled, and Marabouts (the Mahom-medan priests) also promenade in their flowing robes. Arab women and children lounge about selling fruit or begging furtively, and others hurry to and fro carrying burdens; and everywhere and ever present in this motley throng, the black frock-coat and chimney-pot hat assert themselves, to remind us of what we might otherwise soon be forgetting,--that we are but four days' journey from England. There is noise enough altogether on the _Place_ to bewilder any stranger; for besides the talking and singing, and the cries of vendors of fruit and wares, there is considerable traffic. Close to us as we sit under the trees, (so close as almost to upset the little tables in front of the cafés), without any warning, a huge diligence will come lunging on to the _Place_ groaning under a pile of merchandise, with a bevy of Arabs on the roof, and a party of Moorish women in the 'rotonde'; presently there passes a company of Zouaves at quick step, looking hot and dusty enough, marching to their terrible tattoo; and next, by way of contrast again, come two Arab women with their children, mounted on camels, the beasts looking overworked and sulky; they edge their way through the crowd with the greatest nonchalance, and with an impatient croaking sound go shambling past. The 'Place Royale' faces the north, and is enclosed on three sides with modern French houses with arcades and shops, and when we have time to examine their contents, we shall find them also principally French. Next door to a bonnet-shop there is certainly the name of Mustapha over the door, and in the window are pipes, coral, and filagree work exposed for sale; but most of the goods come from France. Next door again is a French café, where Arabs, who can afford it, delight in being waited upon by their conquerors with white aprons and neck-ties. The background of all this is superb: a calm sunlit sea, white sails glittering and flashing, and far to the eastward a noble bay, with the Kabyle mountains stretching out their arms towards the north. At four o'clock the band plays on the _Place_, and as we sit and watch the groups of Arabs and Moors listening attentively to the overture to 'William Tell,' or admiringly examining the gay uniforms and medals of the Chasseurs d'Afrique--as we see the children of both nations at high romps together--as the sweet sea-breeze that fans us so gently, bears into the newly constructed harbour together, a corvette of the Imperial Marine and a suspicious-looking raking craft with latteen sails--as Marochetti's equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans, and a mosque, stand side by side before us--we have Algiers presented to us in the easiest way imaginable, and (without going through the ordeal of studying its history or statistics) obtain some idea of the general aspect of the place and of the people, and of the relative position of conquerors and conquered. As our business is principally with the Moorish, or picturesque side of things, let us first look at the great Mosque which we glanced at as we entered the harbour, and part of which we have sketched for the reader. [Illustration: 0043] Built close to the water's edge, so close that the Mediterranean waves are sapping its foundations--with plain white shining walls, nearly destitute of exterior ornament, it is perhaps 'the most perfect example of strength and beauty, and of fitness and grace of line, that we shall see in any building of this type. * It is thoroughly Moorish in style, although built by a Christian, if we may believe the story, of which there are several versions; how the Moors in old days took captive a Christian architect, and promised him his liberty on condition of his building them a mosque; how he, true to his own creed, dexterously introduced into the ground plan the form of a cross; and how the Moors, true also to their promise, gave him his liberty indeed, but at the cannon's mouth through a window, seaward. * This beautiful architectural feature of the town has not escaped the civilizing hand of the Frank; the last time we visited Algiers we found the oval window in the tower gone, and in its place an illuminated French clock! The general outline of these mosques is familiar to most readers, the square white walls pierced at intervals with quaint-shaped little windows, the flat cupola or dome, and the square tower often standing apart from the rest of the structure as in the little vignette on our title-page, like an Italian campanile. Some of these towers are richly decorated with arabesque ornamentation,' and glitter in the sun with colour and gilding, but the majority of the mosques are as plain and simple in design as shown in our large sketch. Here, if we take off our shoes, we may enter and hear the Koran read, and we may kneel down to pray with Arabs and Moors; religious tolerance is equally exercised by both creeds. Altogether the Mahommedan places of worship seem by far the most prominent, and although there is a Roman Catholic church and buildings held by other denominations of Christians, there is none of that predominant proselytizing aspect which we might have expected after thirty years' occupation by the French! At Tetuan, for instance, where the proportion of Christians to Mahommedans is certainly smaller, the 'Catholic church' rears its head much more conspicuously. In Algiers the priestly element is undoubtedly active, and _Soeurs de Charité_ are to be seen everywhere, but the buildings that first strike the eye are not churches but mosques; the sounds that become more familiar to the ear than peals of bells, are the Muezzin's morning and evening salutation from the tower of a mosque, calling upon all true believers to--= ```'Come to prayers, come to prayers, ```It is better to pray than to sleep.'= The principal streets in Algiers lead east and west from the _Place_ to the principal gates, the Bab-Azoun and the Bab-el-Oued. They are for the most part French, with arcades like the Rue de Rivoli in Paris; many of the houses are lofty and built in the style perhaps best known as the 'Haussman.' Nearly all the upper town is still Moorish, and is approached by narrow streets or lanes,--steep, slippery, and tortuous, * which we shall examine by-and-bye. * It may be interesting to artists to learn that in this present year 1868, most of the quaint old Moorish streets and buildings are intact--neither disturbed by earthquakes nor 'improved' out of sight. The names of some of the streets are curious, and suggestive of change. Thus we see the 'Rue Royale,' the 'Rue Impériale there is, or was until lately, a 'Place Nationale,' and one street is still boldly proclaimed to be the 'Rue dé la Révolution'! In passing through the French quarter, through the new wide streets, squares and inevitable boulevards, the number of shops for fancy goods and Parisian wares, especially those of hairdressers and modistes, seems rather extraordinary; remembering that the entire European population of Algeria, agricultural as well as urban, is not much more than that of Brighton. In a few shops there are tickets displayed in different languages, but linguists are rare, and where there are announcements of the labels have generally a perplexing, composite character, like the inscription on a statue at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, which ran thus 'Miss Ofelia dans Amlet.' Before we proceed further, let us glance at the general mode of living in Algiers, speaking first of the traveller who goes to the hotels. The ordinary visitor of a month or two will drop down pleasantly enough into the system of hotel life in Algiers; and even if staying for the winter he will probably find it more convenient and amusing to take his meals in French fashion at the hotels, ringing the changes between three or four of the best, and one or two well-known cafés, There is generally no table-d'hôte, but strangers can walk in and have breakfast or dine very comfortably at little tables '_a part_,' at a fixed hour and at a moderate price. The rooms are pleasant, cool, and airy, with large windows open to the sea. Everything is neatly and quietly served, the menu is varied enough, with good French dishes and game in abundance; the hosts being especially liberal in providing those delicious little birds that might be larks or quails,--which in Algiers we see so often on the table and so seldom on the wing. ````INGLIS ````SPOKEN.= Half the people that are dining at the 'Hôtel d'Orient' to-day are residents or habitués; they come in and take their accustomed places as cosily, and are almost as particular and fastidious, as if they were at their club. There is the colonel of a cavalry regiment dining alone, and within joking distance, five young officers, whose various grades of rank are almost as evident from their manner as from the number of stripes on their bright red kepis ranged on the wall of the salon. A French doctor and his wife dine vis-à-vis, at one table, a lady _solitaire_ at another; some gentlemen, whose minds are tuned to commerce, chatter in a corner by themselves; whilst a group of newly-arrived English people in the middle of the room, are busily engaged in putting down the various questions with which they intend to bore the viceconsul on the morrow, as if he were some good-natured house-agent, valet-de-place, and interpreter in one, placed here by Providence for their especial behoof. But it is all very orderly, sociable, and comfortable, and by no means an unpleasant method of living for a time. There is the _cercle_, the club, at which we may dine sometimes; there are those pretty little villas amongst the orange-trees at Mustapha Supérieure, where we may spend the most delightful evenings of all; and there are also the Governor's weekly balls, soirées at the consulate, and other pleasant devices for turning night into day, in Algiers as everywhere else--which we shall be wise if we join in but sparingly. And there are public amusements, concerts, balls, and the theatre--the latter with a company of operatic singers with weak lungs, but voices as sweet as any heard in Italy; and there are the moonlight walks by the sea, to many the greatest delight of all. The ordinary daily occupations are decidedly social and domestic; and it may be truly said that for a stranger, until he becomes accustomed to the place, there is very little going on. You must not bathe, for instance, on this beautiful shelving shore. 'Nobody bathes, it gives fever,' was the invariable answer to enquiries on this subject, and though it is not absolutely forbidden by the faculty, there are so many restrictions imposed upon bathers that few attempt it; moreover, an Englishman is not likely to have brought an acrobatic suit with him, nor will he easily find a 'costume de bain' in Algiers. There is very little to do besides wander about the town, or make excursions in the environs or into the interior (in which latter case it is as well to take a fowling-piece, as there is plenty of game to be met with); and altogether we may answer a question often asked about Algiers as to its attractions for visitors, that it has not many (so called), for the mere holiday lounger. But for those who have resources of their own, for those who have work to do which they wish to do quietly, and who breathe more freely under a bright blue sky, Algiers seems to us to be _the_ place to come to. The 'bird of passage,' who has unfortunately missed an earthquake, often reports that Algiers is a little dull; but even he should not find it so, for beyond the 'distractions' we have hinted at, there is plenty to amuse him if he care little for what is picturesque. There are (or were when we were there), a troop of performing Arabs of the tribe of 'Beni Zouzoug,' who performed nightly the most hideous atrocities in the name of religious rites: wounding their wretched limbs with knives, eating glass, holding burning coals in their mouths, standing on hot iron until the feet frizzled and gave forth sickening odours, and doing other things in an ecstacy of religious frenzy which we could not print, and which would scarcely be believed in if we did. * * Since writing the above, we observe that these Arabs (or a band of mountebanks in their name), have been permitted to perform their horrible orgies in Paris and London, and that young ladies go in evening dress to the 'stalls' to witness them. There are various Moorish ceremonies to be witnessed. There are the sacrifices at the time of the Ramadhan, when the negro priestesses go down to the water side and offer up beasts and birds; the victims, after prolonged agonies which crowds assemble to witness, being finally handed over to a French _chef de cuisine_. There are the mosques to be entered barefoot, and the native courts of law to be seen. Then if possible, a Moor should be visited at home, and a glimpse obtained of his domestic economy, including a dinner without knives or forks. An entertainment consisting entirely of Moorish dances and music is easily got up, and is one of the characteristic sights of Algiers. The young trained dancing girls, urged on to frenzy by the beating of the tom-tom, and falling exhausted at last into the arms of their masters; (dancing with that monotonous motion peculiar to the East, the body swaying to and fro without moving the feet); the uncouth wild airs they sing, their shrieks dying away into a sigh or moan, will not soon be forgotten, and many other scenes of a like nature, on which we must not dwell--for are they not written in twenty books on Algeria already? But there are two sights which are seldom mentioned by other writers, which we must just allude to in passing. The Arab races, which take place in the autumn on the French racecourse near the town, are very curious, and well worth seeing. Their peculiarity consists in about thirty Arabs starting off pell-mell, knocking each other over in their first great rush, their bournouses mingling together and flying in the wind, but arriving at the goal generally singly, and at a slow trot, in anything but racing fashion. Another event is the annual gathering of the tribes, when representatives from the various provinces camp on the hills of the Sahel, and the European can wander from one tent to another and spend his day enjoying Arab hospitality, in sipping coffee and smoking everywhere the pipe of peace. These things we only hint at as resources for visitors, if they are fortunate enough to be in Algiers at the right time; but there are one or two other things that they are not likely to miss, whether they wish to do so or not. They will probably meet one day, in the 'Street of the Eastern Gate,' the Sirocco wind, and they will have to take shelter from a sudden fearful darkness and heat, a blinding choking dust, drying up as it were the very breath of life; penetrating every cavity, and into rooms closed as far as possible from the outer air. Man and beast lie down before it, and there is a sudden silence in the streets, as if they had been overwhelmed by the sea. For two or three hours this mysterious blight pours over the city, and its inhabitants hide their heads. Another rather startling sensation for the first time is the 'morning gun.' In the consulate, which is in an old Moorish house in the upper town, the newly arrived visitor may have been shown imbedded in the wall a large round shot, which he is informed was a messenger from one of Lord Exmouth's three-deckers in the days before the French occupation; and not many yards from it, in another street, he may have had pointed out to him certain fissures or chasms in the walls of the houses, as the havoc made by earthquakes; he may also have experienced in his travels the sudden and severe effect of a tropical thunderstorm. Let him retire to rest with a dreamy recollection of such events in his mind, and let him have his windows open towards the port just before sunrise,--when the earthquake, and the thunder, and the bombardment, will present themselves so suddenly and fearfully to his sleepy senses, that he will bear malice and hatred against the military governor for evermore. But it has roused him to see some of the sights of Algiers. Let him go out at once to the almost deserted _Place_, where a few tall figures wrapped in military cloaks are to be seen quietly sidling out of a door in the corner of a square under the arcades,--coming from the club where the gas is not quite extinguished, and where the little green baize tables are not yet put away for the night; * and then let him hurry out by the _Bab-el-Oued_ and mount the fortifications, and he will see a number of poor Arabs shivering in their white bournouses, perched on the highest points of the rocks like eagles, watching with eager eyes and strained aspect for the rising of the sun, for the coming of the second Mahomet. Let him look in the same direction, eastward, over the town and over the bay to the mountains far beyond. The sparks from the chariot-wheels of fire just fringe the outline of the Kabyle Hills, and in another minute, before all the Arabs have clambered up and reached their vantage ground, the whole bay is in a flood of light. The Arabs prostrate themselves before the sun, and '_Allah il Allah_' (God is great) is the burden of their psalm of praise. * How often have we seen in the Tuileries gardens, the bronzed heroes of Algerian wars, and perhaps have pitied them for their worn appearance; but we shall begin to think that something more than the African sun and long marches have given them a prematurely aged appearance, and that absinthe and late hours in a temperature of 90° Fahrenheit may have something to do with it. But Mahomet's coming is not yet, and so they return down the hill, and crowd together to a very different scene. The officers whom we saw just now leaving the _Place_, have arrived at the Champ de Mars, the drill-ground immediately below us, and here, in the cool morning air, they are exercising and manoeuvring troops. There are several companies going through their drill, and the bugle and the drum drown the Muezzins' voices, who, from almost every mosque and turret in the city, repeat their cry to the faithful to 'Come to prayers.' [Illustration: 0061] [Illustration: 0063] CHAPTER III. THE MOORISH QUARTER--OUR STUDIO. [Illustration: 9063] E said, in the last chapter, that in Algiers there was very little going on for the visitor or idler; but if the traveller have anything of the artist in him, he will be delighted with the old town. If he is wise he will spend the first week in wandering about, and losing himself in the winding streets, going here, there, and everywhere on a picturesque tour of inspection. His artistic tendencies will probably lead him to spend much time in the Moorish cafés, where he may sit down unmolested (if unwelcomed) for hours on a mat, and drink his little saucer of thick, sweet coffee, for which he pays one sou, and smoke in the midst of a group of silent Moors, who may perchance acknowledge his presence by a slight gesture, and offer him their pipes, but who will more frequently affect not to see him, and sit still doing absolutely nothing, with that dignified solemnity peculiar to the East. He will pass through narrow streets and between mysterious-looking old houses that meet over head and shut out the sky; he will jostle often in these narrow ways, soft plump objects in white gauze, whose eyes and ankles give the only visible signs of humanity; he may turn back to watch the wonderful dexterity with which a young Arab girl balances a load of fruit upon her head down to the market place; and he will, if he is not careful, be finally carried down himself by an avalanche of donkeys, driven by a negro gamin who sits on the tail of the last, threading their way noiselessly and swiftly, and carrying everything before them; * and he will probably take refuge under the ruined arch of some old mosque, whose graceful lines and rich decoration are still visible here and there, and he will in a few hours be enchanted with the place, and the more so for the reason that we have already hinted at, viz.:--that in Algiers he is _let alone_, that he is free to wander and 'moon' about at will, without custodian or commissionaire, or any of the tribe of 'valets de place.' * How different from what we read of in _Æothen_. The cry is not, 'Get out of the way, O old man! O virgin!--the Englishman, he comes, he comes!' If we were to push an old man out of the way, or, ever so little, to forget our duty to a fair pedestrian, we should be brought up before the Cadi, and fined and scorned, by a jury of unbelievers! He may go into the Grand Divan; or into the streets where the embroiderers are at work, sitting in front of their open shops, amongst heaps of silks, rich stuffs and every variety of material; or where the old merchant traders, whose occupation is nearly gone, sit smoking out their lazy uncommercial lives. He may go to the old Moorish bath, in a building of curious pattern, which is as well worth seeing as anything in Algiers; and, if an Arabic scholar, he may pick up an acquaintance or two amongst the Moors, and visit their homes when their wives are away for the day, on some mourning expedition to a suburban cemetery. He may explore innumerable crooked, irregular streets, with low doorways and carved lattices, some painted, some gilt; the little narrow windows and the grilles, being as perfectly after the old type as when the Moors held undivided possession of the city. One old street, now pulled down, we remember well; it was the one always chosen for an evening stroll because it faced the western sea, and caught and reflected from its pavement and from its white walls, the last rosy tints of sunset, long after the cobblers and the tinkers in the lower town had lighted their little lanterns, and the cafés were flaring in the French quarter. It was steep and narrow, so steep, in fact, that steps were made in the pavement to climb it, and at the upper end there was the dome of a mosque shining in the sun. It was like the child's picture of 'Jacob's ladder,' brighter and more resplendent at each step, and ending in a blaze of gold. We are often reminded of Spain in these old streets; there are massive wooden doors studded with iron bosses or huge nails as we see them at Toledo, and there is sometimes to be seen over them, the emblem of the human hand pointing upwards, which recalls the Gate of Justice at the entrance to the Alhambra at Granada. The Moors cling to their old traditions, and the belief that they will some day reconquer Spain is still an article of faith. But if ever the Moors are to regain their imaginary lost possessions in Spain, they must surely be made of sterner stuff than the present race, who, judging from appearances, are little likely to do anything great. There are little shops and dark niches where the Moors sit cross-legged, with great gourds and festoons of dried fruits hanging above and around them; the piles of red morocco slippers, the oddshaped earthenware vessels, and the wonderful medley of form and colour, resembling in variety the bazaars at Constantinople, or carrying us in imagination still further East. Other sights and sounds we might mention, some not quite so pleasant but peculiarly Eastern; and we should not forget to note the peculiar scent of herbs and stuffs, which, mingled with the aroma of coffee and tobacco, was sometimes almost overpowering in the little Covered streets; and one odour that went up regularly on Sunday mornings in the Moorish quarter that was not incense, and which it took us a long time to discover the origin of--an Arab branding his donkeys with his monogram! Everything we purchase is odd and quaint, irregular or curious in some way. Every piece of embroidery, every remnant of old carpet, differs from another in pattern as the leaves on the trees. There is no repetition, and herein lies its charm and true value to us. Every fabric differs either in pattern or combination of colours--it is something, as we said, unique, something to treasure, something that will not remind us of the mill. * * The little pattern at the head of this chapter was traced from a piece of embroidered silk, worked by the Moors. If we explore still further we shall come to the Arab quarter, where we also find characteristic things. Here we may purchase for about thirty francs a Kabyle match-lock rifle, or an old sabre with beautifully ornamented hilt; we may, if we please, ransack piles of primitive and rusty implements of all kinds, and pick up curious women's ornaments, beads, coral, and anklets of filagree work; and, if we are fortunate, meet with a complete set or suit of harness and trappings, once the property of some insolvent Arab chief, and of a pattern made familiar to us in the illustrated history of the Cid. In the midst of the Moorish quarter, up a little narrow street (reached in five or six minutes from the centre of the town) passing under an archway and between white walls that nearly meet overhead, we come to a low dark door, with a heavy handle and latch which opens and shuts with a crashing sound; and if we enter the courtyard and ascend a narrow staircase in one corner, we come suddenly upon the interior view of the first or principal floor, of our Moorish home. The house, as may be seen from the illustration, has two stories, and there is also an upper terrace from which we overlook the town. The arrangement of the rooms round the courtyard, all opening inwards, is excellent; they are cool in summer, and warm even on the coldest nights, and although we are in a noisy and thickly populated part of the town, we are ignorant of what goes on outside, the massive walls keeping out nearly all sound. The floors and walls are tiled, so that they can be cleansed and cooled by water being thrown over them; the carpets and cushions spread about invite one to the most luxurious repose, tables and chairs are unknown, there is nothing to offend the eye in shape or form, nothing to offend the ear--not even a door to slam. Above, there is an open terrace, where we sit in the mornings and evenings, and can realise the system of life on the housetops of the East. Here we can cultivate the vine, grow roses and other flowers, build for ourselves extempore arbours, and live literally in the open air. From this terrace we overlook the flat roofs of the houses of the Moorish part of the city, and if we peep over, down into the streets immediately below us, a curious hum of sounds comes up. Our neighbours are certainly industrious; they embroider, they make slippers, they hammer at metal work, they break earthenware and mend it, and appear to quarrel all day long, within a few feet of us; but as we sit in the room from which our sketch is taken, the sounds become mingled and subdued into a pleasant tinkle which is almost musical, and which we can, if we please, shut out entirely by dropping a curtain across the doorway. Our attendants are Moorish, and consist of one old woman, whom we see by accident (closely veiled) about once a month, and a bare-legged, bare-footed Arab boy who waits upon us. There are pigeons on the roof, a French poodle that frequents the lower regions, and a guardian of our doorstep who haunts it day and night, whose portrait is given at Chapter V. Here we work with the greatest freedom and comfort, without interruption or any drawbacks that we can think of. The climate is so equal, warm, and pleasant--even in December and January--that by preference we generally sit on the upper terrace, where we have the perfection of light, and are at the same time sufficiently protected from sun and wind. At night we sleep almost in the open air, and need scarcely drop the curtains at the arched doorways of our rooms; there are no mosquitoes to trouble us, and there is certainly no fear of intrusion. There is also perfect stillness, for our neighbours are at rest soon after sundown. Such is a general sketch of our dwelling in Algiers; let us for a moment, by way of contrast, return in imagination to London, and picture to ourselves our friends as they are working at home. It is considered very desirable, if not essential, to an artist, that his immediate surroundings should be in some sort graceful and harmonious, and it is a lesson worth learning, to see what may be done, with ingenuity and taste, towards converting a single room, in a dingy street, into a fitting abode of the arts. We know a certain painter well, one whose studio it is always a delight to enter, and whose devotion to Art (both music and painting) for its own sake has always stood in the way of his advancement and pecuniary success. He has converted a room in the neighbourhood of Gower Street into a charming nook where colour, form, and texture are all considered in the simplest details of decoration, where there is nothing inharmonious to eye or ear, but where perhaps the sound of the guitar may be heard a little too often. The walls of his studio are draped, the light falls softly from above, the doorway is arched, the seats are couches or carpets on a raised daïs, a Florentine lamp hangs from the ceiling, a medley of vases, costumes, old armour, &c, are grouped about in picturesque confusion, and our friend, in an easy undress of the last century, works away in the midst. Not to particularize further, let the reader consider for a moment what one step beyond his own door brings about, on an average winter's day. A straight, ungraceful, colourless costume of the latter half of the nineteenth century which he _must_ assume, a hat of the period, an umbrella raised to keep off sleet and rain, and for landscape a damp, dreary, muddy, blackened street, with a vista of areas and lamp-posts, and, if perchance he be going to the Academy, a walk through the parish of St. Giles! Perhaps the most depressing prospect in the world, is that from a Gower Street doorstep on a November morning about nine o'clock; but of this enough. We think of our friend as we sit out here on our _terrasse_--sheltering ourselves on the same day, at the same hour, from the sun's rays--we think of him painting Italian scenes by the light of his gas 'sun-burner,' and wish he would come out to Algiers. 'Surely,' we would say to him, 'it is something gained, if we can, ever so little, harmonize the realities of life with our ideal world--if we can, without remark, dress ourselves more as we dress our models, and so live, that one step from the studio to the street shall not be the abomination of desolation.' * * It would be obviously in bad taste for Europeans to walk in the streets of Algiers, _en costume Maure_; but we may make considerable modifications in our attire in an oriental city, to our great comfort and peace of mind. Let us turn again to Nature and to Light, and transport the reader to a little white house, overlooking a beautiful city, on the North African shore, where summer is perpetual and indoor life the exception; and draw a picture for him which _should_ be fascinating and which certainly is true.= _Algiers, Sunrise, December 10._ The mysterious, indefinable charm of the first break of day, is an old and favourite theme in all countries and climates, and one on which perhaps little that is new can be said. In the East it is always striking, but in Algiers it seems to us peculiarly so; for sleeping, or more often lying awake, with the clear crisp night air upon our faces, it comes to our couch in the dreamiest way imaginable--instead of being clothed (as poets express it) with the veil of night, a mantle seems rather to be spread over us in the morning; there is perfect quiet at this hour, and we seem to be almost under a spell not to disturb the stillness--the dawn whispers to us so softly and soothingly that we are powerless to do ought but watch or sleep. The break of day is perhaps first announced to us by a faint stream of light across the courtyard, or the dim shadow of a marble pillar on the wall. In a few minutes, we hear the distant barking of a dog, a slight rustle in the pigeon-house above, or a solitary cry from a minaret which tells us that the city is awaking. We rouse ourselves and steal out quietly on to the upper terrace to see a sight of sights--one of those things that books tell us, rightly or wrongly, is alone worth coming from England to see. The canopy of stars, that had encompassed us so closely during the night, as if to shut in the courtyard overhead, seems lifted again, and the stars themselves are disappearing fast in the grey expanse of sky; and as we endeavour to trace them, looking intently seaward, towards the North and East, we can just discern an horizon line and faint shadows of the 'sleeping giants,' that we know to be not far off. Soon--in about the same time that it takes to write these lines--they begin to take form and outline one by one, a tinge of delicate pearly pink is seen at intervals through their shadows, and before any nearer objects have come into view, the whole coast line and the mountains of Kabylia, stretching-far to the eastward, are flushed with rosy light, opposed to a veil of twilight grey which still hangs over the city. Another minute or two, and our shadows are thrown sharply on a glowing wall, towers and domes come distinctly into view, housetops innumerable range themselves in close array at our feet, and we, who but a few minutes ago, seemed to be standing as it were alone upon the top of a high mountain, are suddenly and closely beleaguered. A city of flat white roofs, towers, and cupolas, relieved here and there by coloured awnings, green shutters, and dark doorways, and by little courtyards blooming with orange and citron trees--intersected with innumerable winding ways (which look like streams forcing their way through a chalk cliff)--has all grown up before our eyes; and beyond it, seaward--a harbour, and a fleet of little vessels with their white sails, are seen shining in the sun. Then come the hundred sounds of a waking city, mingling and increasing every moment; and the flat roofs (some so close that we can step upon them) are soon alive with those quaint white figures we meet in the streets, passing to and fro, from roof to roof, apparently without restraint or fear. There are numbers of children peeping out from odd corners and loopholes, and women with them, some dressed much less scrupulously than we see them in the market place, and some, to tell the truth, entirely without the white robes aforesaid. A few, a very few, are already winding their way through the streets to the nearest mosque, but the majority are collected in groups in conversation, enjoying the sweet sea breeze, which comes laden with the perfume of orange-trees, and a peculiar delicious scent as of violets. The pigeons on the roof-tops now plume their gilded wings and soar--not upward but downward, far away into space; they scarcely break the silence in the air, or spread their wings as they speed along. Oh, what a flight above the azure sea!= ```'Quis dabat mihi pennas sicut columbæ;= the very action of flying seems repose to them. It is still barely sunrise on this soft December morning, the day's labour has scarcely begun, the calm is so perfect that existence alone seems a delight, and the Eastern aroma (if we may so express it) that pervades the air might almost lull us to sleep again, but Allah wills it otherwise. Suddenly---with terrible impulse and shrill accent impossible to describe--a hurricane of women's voices succeeds the calm. Is it treachery? Is it scandal? Has Hassan proved faithless, or has Fatima fled? Oh, the screeching and yelling that succeeded to the quiet beauty of the morning! Oh, the rushing about of veiled (now all closely veiled) figures on house-tops! Oh, the weeping and wailing, and literal, terrible, gnashing of teeth! 'Tell it not upon the house-tops', (shall we ever forget it being told on the housetops? ) 'let not a whole city know thy misdeeds,' is written in the Koran, 'it is better for the faithful to come to prayers!' Merciful powers, how the tempest raged until the sun was up and the city was alive again, and its sounds helped to drown the clamour. Let us come down, for our Arab boy now claps his hands in sign, that (on a little low table or tray, six inches from the ground) coffee and pipes are provided for the unbelievers; and like the Calendar in Eastern Story, he proceeds to tell us the cause of the tumult--a trinket taken from one wife and given to another! Oh, Islam! that a lost bracelet or a jealous wife, should make the earth tremble so! [Illustration: 0083] [Illustration: 0085] CHAPTER IV. 'MODELS.' [Illustration: 9085] ROM the roof-tops of our own and the neighbouring houses we have altogether many opportunities of sketching, and making studies from life. * By degrees, by fits and starts, and by most uncertain means (such as attracting curiosity, making little presents, &c.) we manage to scrape up a distant talking acquaintance with some of the mysterious wayward creatures we have spoken of, and in short, to become almost 'neighbourly.' * In the Exhibition of the Royal Academy of 1867, there was a picture by Alfred Elmore, R.A., taken almost from this spot. But we never get much nearer than talking distance, conversing from one roof to another with a narrow street like a river flowing between us; and only once or twice during our winter sojourn, did we succeed in enticing a veiled houri to venture on our terrace and shake hands with the 'Frank.' If we could manage to hold a young lady in conversation, and exhibit sufficient admiration of her to induce her, ever so slightly, to unveil whilst we made a hasty sketch, it was about all that we could fairly succeed in accomplishing, and 'the game was hardly worth the candle:' it took, perhaps, an hour to ensnare our bird, and in ten minutes or less, she would be again on the wing. Veiled beauties are interesting (sometimes much more interesting for being veiled); but it does not serve our artistic purposes much to see two splendid black eyes and a few white robes. However models we must have, although the profession is almost unknown in Algiers. At Naples we have only to go down to the seashore, at Rome to the steps of St. Peter's, and we find 'subjects' enough, who will come for the asking; but here, where there is so much distinctive costume and variety of race, French artists seem to make little use of their opportunities. It takes some days before we can hear of any one who will be willing to sit, for double the usual remuneration. But they come at last, and when it gets abroad that the Franks have money and 'mean business,' we have a number of applicants, some of whom are not very desirable, and none particularly attractive. We select 'Fatima' first, because she is the youngest and has the best costume, and also because she comes with her father and appears tractable. She is engaged at two francs an hour, which she considers poor pay. How shall we give the reader an idea of this little creature, when she comes next morning and coils herself up amongst the cushions in the corner of our room, like a young panther in the Jardin des Plantes? Her costume, when she throws off her haïk (and with it a tradition of the Mahommedan faith, that forbids her to show her face to an unbeliever) is a rich loose crimson, jacket embroidered with gold, a thin white bodice, loose silk trowsers reaching to the knee and fastened round the waist by a magnificent sash of various colours; red morroco slippers, a profusion of rings on her little fingers, and bracelets and anklets of gold filagree work. Through her waving black hair are twined strings of coins and the folds of a silk handkerchief, the hair falling at the back in plaits below the waist. She is not beautiful, she is scarcely interesting in expression, and she is decidedly unsteady. She seems to have no more power of keeping herself in one position or of remaining in one part of the room, or even of being quiet, than a humming top. The whole thing is an unutterable bore to her, for she does not even reap the reward--her father or husband, or male attendant, always taking the money. She is _petite_, constitutionally phlegmatic, and as fat as her parents can manage to make her; she has small hands and feet, large rolling eyes--the latter made to appear artificially large by the application of henna or antimony black; her attitudes are not ungraceful, but there is a want of character about her, and an utter abandonment to the situation, peculiar to all her race. In short her movements are more suggestive of a little caged animal that had better be petted and caressed, or kept at a safe distance, according to her humour. She does one thing, she smokes incessantly and makes us cigarettes with a skill and rapidity which are wonderful. Her age is thirteen, and she has been married six months; * her ideas appear to be limited to three or four; and her pleasures, poor creature, are equally circumscribed. She had scarcely ever left her father's house, and had never spoken to a man until her marriage. No wonder we, in spite of a little Arabic on which we prided ourselves, could not make much way; no wonder that we came very rapidly to the conclusion that the houris of the Arabian Nights, must have been dull creatures, and their 'Entertainments' rather a failure, if there were no diviner fire than this. No wonder that the Moors advocate a plurality of wives, for if one represents an emotion, a harem would scarcely suffice! * We hear much of the perils of living too fast, and of the preternaturally aged, worn appearance, of English girls after two or three London seasons. What would a British matron say to a daughter--a woman at twelve, married at thirteen, _blasée_ directly, and old at twenty? We get on but indifferently with our studies with this young lady, and, to tell the truth, not too well in Fatima's good graces. Our opportunities are not great, our command of Arabic is limited, and indeed, we do not feel particularly inspired. We cannot tell her many love stories, or sing songs set to a '_tom-tom_;' we can, indeed, offer 'backshish' in the shape of tobacco and sweetmeats, or some trifling European ornament or trinket; but it is clear that she would prefer a greater amount of familiarity, and more demonstrative tokens of esteem. However, she came several times, and we succeeded in obtaining some valuable studies of colour, and 'bits,' memoranda only; but very useful, from being taken down almost unconsciously, in such a luminous key, and with a variety of reflected light and pure shadow tone, that we find unapproachable in after work. As for sketches of character, we obtained very few of Mauresques; our subjects were, as a rule, much too restless, and we had one or two 'scenes' before we parted. On one unfortunate occasion our model insisted upon examining our work before leaving, and the scorn and contempt with which it was regarded was anything but flattering. It nearly caused a breach between us, for, as she observed, it was not only contrary to her creed to have her likeness taken, but it would be perdition to be thus represented amongst the Franks. * We promised to be as careful of this portrait as if it were the original, and, in fact, said anything to be polite and soothing. * For fear of the 'evil eye.' There is a strong belief amongst Mahommedans that portraits are part of their identity; and that the original will suffer if the portrait receive any indignity. On another occasion, we had been working on rather more quietly than usual for half-an-hour, and were really getting a satisfactory study of a new position, when, without apparent cause or warning of any kind, the strange, pale, passionless face, which stared like a wooden marionette, suddenly suffused with crimson, the great eyes filled with tears, the whole frame throbbed convulsively, and the little creature fell into such a passion of crying that we were fain to put by our work and question ourselves whether we had been cruel or unkind. But it was nothing: the cup of boredom had been filled to the brim, all other artifices had failed her to obtain relief from restraint, and so this apparently lethargic little being, who had it seemed, both passion and grief at command, opened the flood-gates upon us, and of course gained her end. There was no more work that day, and she got off with a double allowance of bonbons, and something like a reconciliation. She gave us her little white hand at parting--the fingers and thumbs crowded with rings, and the nails stained black with henna--but the action meant nothing; we dare not press it, it was too soft and frail, and the rings would have cut her fingers, we could only hand it tenderly back again, and bid our 'model' farewell. We got on better afterwards with a Moorish Jewess who, for a 'consideration,' unearthed her property, * including a tiara of gold and jewels, and a bodice of silver embroidery worked on crimson velvet; we purposely reverse the position and speak of the embroidery first, because the velvet was almost hidden. She came slouching in one morning, closely wrapped in a dirty shawl, her black hair all dishevelled and half covering her handsome face, her feet bare and her general appearance so much more suggestive of one of the 'finest pisantry in the world,' that we began to feel doubtful, and to think with Beau Brummel that this must be 'one of our failures.' But when her mother had arranged the tiara in her hair, when the curtain was drawn aside and the full splendour of the Jewish costume was displayed--when, in short, the dignity and grace of a queen were before us, we felt amply rewarded. * Many of the poorest Jewesses possess gold ornaments as heirlooms, burying them in the ground for security, when not in use. The Jewish dress differs from the Mauresque entirely; it is European in shape, with high waist and flowing robes without sleeves, a square cut bodice, often of the same material as the robe itself, and a profusion of gold ornaments, armlets, necklaces, and rings. A pair of tiny velvet slippers (also embroidered) on tiny feet, complete the costume, which varies in colour, but is generally of crimson or dark velvet. As a 'model,' although almost her first appearance in that character, this Jewish woman was very valuable, and we had little trouble after the first interview, in making her understand our wishes. But we had to pay more than in England; there were many drawbacks, and of course much waste of time. On some holydays and on all Jewish festivals, she did not make her appearance, and seemed to think nothing of it when some feast that lasted a week, left us stranded with half-done work. Without being learned in _costumes des dames_, we believe, we may say, that the shape and cut of some of these dresses, and the patterns of the embroidery (old as they are) might be copied with advantage by Parisian modistes; the more we study these old patterns, the more we cannot cease to regret that the _Deae ex machina_, the arbiters of fashion in the city where Fashion is Queen, have not managed to infuse into the costume of the time more character and purity of design--conditions not inconsistent with splendour, and affording scope, if need be, for any amount of extravagance. We are led irresistibly into this digression, if it be a digression, because the statuesque figure before us displays so many lines of grace and beauty that have the additional charm of novelty. We know, for instance, that the pattern of this embroidery is unique, that the artificer of that curiously twined chain of gold has been dead perhaps for ages, that the rings on her fingers and the coins suspended from her hair are many of them real art treasures. * * The 'jewels turned out to be paste on close inspection, but the gold filagree work, and the other ornaments, were old, and some very valuable and rare. The result of our studies, as far as regards Moorish women, we must admit to have been after all, rather limited and unsatisfactory. We never once lighted upon a Moorish face that moved us much by its beauty, for the simple reason that it nearly always lacked expression; anything like emotion seemed inharmonious and out of place, and to disturb the uniformity of its lines. Even those dark lustrous eyes, when lighted by passion, had more of the tiger in them, than the tragedy queen. The perfection of beauty, according to the Moorish ideal, seems to depend principally upon symmetry of feature, and is nothing without roundness of limb and a certain flabbiness of texture. It is an ideal of repose, not to say of dulness and insipidity; a heavy type of beauty of which we obtain some idea in the illustration before us, of a young girl, about thirteen years old, of one of the tribes from the interior. The drawing is by a Frenchman, and pretends to no particular artistic excellence, but it attempts to render (and we think succeeds in rendering) the style of a Mahommedan beauty in bridal array; one who is about to fulfil her destiny, and who appears to have as little animation or intelligence as the Prophet ordained for her, being perfectly fitted (according to the Koran) to fill her place in this world or in the next. * * It detracts a little from the romance of these things to learn from Mrs. Evans (who witnessed, what only ladies, of course, could witness, the robing and decorating of the bride before marriage) the manner in which the face of a Moorish lady is prepared on the day of marriage: 'An old woman having carefully washed the bride's face with water, proceeded to whiten it all over with a milky-looking preparation, and after touching up the cheeks with rouge (and, her eyes with antimony black), bound an amulet round the head; then with a fine camel-hair pencil, she passed a line of liquid glue over the eyebrows, and taking from a folded paper a strip of gold-leaf fixed it across them both, forming one long gilt bar, and then proceeded to give a few finishing touches to the poor lay figure before her, by fastening two or three tiny gold spangles on the forehead!' We cannot help thinking that this might have been an exceptional case, especially in the matter of gilding, but we have seen both patches and paint on Moorish features--as indeed we have seen them in England. [Illustration: 0098] Thus decked with her brightest jewels and adorned with a crown of gold, she waits to meet her lord, to be his 'light of the harem,' his 'sun and moon.' What if we, with our refined aesthetic tastes, what if disinterested spectators, vote her altogether the dullest and most uninteresting of beings? what if she seem to us more like some young animal, magnificently harnessed, waiting to be trotted out to the highest bidder? She shakes the coins and beads on her head sometimes, with a slight impatient gesture, and takes chocolate from her little sister, and is petted and pacified just as we should soothe and pacify an impatient steed; there is clearly no other way to treat her, it is the will of Allah that she should be so debased! * * We have before spoken of the influence of beautiful forms and harmony in colour, in our homes and surroundings; and we feel acutely, that the picture of this Moorish woman, intellectually, does not prove our case; but Mahomet decreed that women should endeavour to _be_ beautiful rather than understand, or enjoy it. One day we had up a tinker, an old brown grizzled Maltese, who with his implements of trade, his patchwork garments and his dirt, had a tone about him, like a figure from one of the old Dutch masters. He sat down in the corner of our courtyard against a marble pillar, and made himself quite at home; he worked with his feet as well as his hands at his grinding, he chattered, he sang, and altogether made such a clatter that we shall not be likely to forget him. This gentleman, and the old negro that lived upon our doorstep, were almost the only subjects that we succeeded in inducing to come within doors; our other life studies were made under less favourable circumstances. From the roof of our own house, it is true, we obtained a variety of sketches, not (as might be supposed from the illustrations and pictures with which we are all familiar) of young ladies attired as scantily as the nymphs at the _Theâtre du Chatelet_, standing in pensive attitudes on their housetops, but generally of groups of veiled women--old, ugly, haggard, shrill of voice, and sometimes rather fierce of aspect, performing various household duties on the roof-tops, including the beating of carpets and of children, the carrying of water-pots and the saying of prayers. A chapter on 'Models' would not be complete without some mention of the camels, of which there are numbers to be found in the Arab quarter of the town. Some of them are splendid creatures, and as different from any exotic specimens that we can see in this country as an acclimatised palm-tree from its wild growth. Some one tells us that these Algerian 'ships of the desert' have not the same sailing qualities, nor the same breadth of beam, as those at Cairo. But (if true) we should have to go to Cairo to study them, so let us be content. We should like to see one or two of our popular artists, who persist in painting camels and desert scenes without ever having been to the East, just sit down here quietly for one day and paint a camel's head; not flinching from the work, but mastering the wonderful texture and shagginess of his thick coat or mane, its massive beauty, and its infinite gradations of colour. Such a sitter no portrait painter ever had in England. Feed him up first, get a boy to keep the flies from him, and he will sit almost immoveably through the day. He will put on a sad expression in the morning, which will not change; he will give no trouble whatever, he will but sit still and croak. [Illustration: 0105] Do we seem to exaggerate the value of such studies? We cannot exaggerate, if we take into full account, the vigorous quality which we impart into our work. And we cannot, perhaps, better illustrate our argument in favour of drawing from, what we should call, _natural_ models, than by comparing the merits of two of the most popular pictures of our time, viz.:--Frith's '_Derby Day_,' and Rosa Bonheur's '_Horse Fair?_' The former pleasing the eye by its cleverness and prettiness; the latter impressing the spectator by its power, and its truthful rendering of animal life. The difference between the two painters is probably, one, more of education than of natural gifts. But whilst the style of the former is grafted on a fashion, the latter is founded on a rock--the result of a close study of nature, chastened by classic feeling, and a remembrance it may be, of the friezes of the Parthenon. [Illustration: 0109] [Illustration: 0111] CHAPTER V. OUR 'LIFE SCHOOL' [Illustration: 9111] F the various studies to be made in Algiers, there are none at the same time so quaint and characteristic, as the Moors in their own homes, seated at their own doors or benches at work, or at the numerous cafés and bazaars; and nothing seems to harmonize so well in these Moorish streets as the groups of natives (both Moors and negroes) with their bright costumes, and 'wares for sale. Colour and contrast of colour, seem to be considered, or _felt_, everywhere. Thus for instance, no two Orientals will walk down a street side by side, unless the colours of their costume harmonize or blend together (they seem to know it instinctively), and then there is always grey or some quiet contrasting tone for a background, and a sky of deep, deep blue. A negress will generally be found selling oranges or citrons; an Arab boy with a red fez and white turban, carrying purple fruit in a basket of leaves; and so on. The reader will think this fanciful, but it is truer than he imagines; let him come and see. It was not at all times easy to sketch in the open street on account of the curiosity it excited; a crowd sometimes collecting until it became almost impossible to breathe. The plan was to go as often as possible to the cafés and divans, and by degrees to make friends with the Moors. There was one café, in a street that we have been to so often, that it is as familiar to us as any in the western world; and where by dint of a little tact and a small outlay of tobacco, we managed to make ourselves quite at home, and were permitted to work away all day, comparatively unmolested. It was a narrow and steep overhanging street, crowded at all times with Moors on one side embroidering, or pretending to sell goods of various kinds; and on the opposite side there was a café, not four feet distant, where a row of about eighteen others sat and smoked, and contemplated their brethren at work. The street was always full of traffic, being an important thoroughfare from the upper to the lower town, and there were perpetually passing up and down, droves of laden donkeys; men with burdens carried on poles between them; vendors of fruit, bread, and live fowls, and crowds of people of every denomination. In a little corner out of sight, where we were certainly rather closely packed, we used to install ourselves continually and sketch the people passing to and fro. The Moors in the café used to sit beside us all day and watch, and _wait_; they gave us a grave silent salutation when we took our places, and another when we left, but we never got much further with our unknown neighbours. If we can imagine a coterie in a small political club, where the open discussion of politics is, with one consent, tabooed for fear of a disturbance, and where the most frolicsome of its members play at chess for relaxation, we shall get some notion of the state of absolute decorum which existed in our little _café maure_. It was very quaint. The memory of the grave quiet faces of these most polite Moorish gentlemen, looking so smooth and clean in their white bournouses, seated solemnly doing nothing, haunts us to this day. Years elapsed between our first and last visit to our favourite street, yet there they were when we came again, still doing nothing in a row; and opposite to them, the merchants who do no trade, also sitting in their * accustomed places, surrounded with the same old wares. There was the same old negro in a dark corner making coffee, and handing it to the same customers, sitting in the same places, in the same dream. [Illustration: 0115] There is certainly both art and mystery in doing nothing well which these men achieve in their peculiar lives; here they sit for years together, silently waiting, without a trace of boredom on their faces, and without exhibiting a gesture of impatience. They--the 'gentlemen' in the café on the right hand--have saved up money enough to keep life together, they have for ever renounced work, and can look on with complacency at their poorer brethren. They have their traditions, their faith, their romance of life, and the curious belief before alluded to, that if they fear God and Mahomet, and sit here long enough, they will one day be sent for to Spain, to repeople the houses where their fathers dwelt. This corner is the one _par excellence_, where the Moors sit and wait. There is the 'wall of wailing' at Jerusalem; there is the 'street of waiting' in Algiers, where the Moors sit clothed in white, dreaming of heaven--with an aspect of more than content, in a state of dreamy delight achieved, apparently, more by habit of mind than any opiates--the realisation of '_Keyf_'. Not far from this street, but still in the Moorish quarter, we may witness a much more animated scene, and obtain in some respects a still better study of character and costume--at a clothes auction in the neighbourhood of the principal bazaar. If we go in the afternoon, we shall probably find a crowd collected in a courtyard, round a number of Jews who are selling clothes, silks, and stuffs, and so intent are they all on the business that is going forward, that we are able to take up a good position to watch the proceedings. We arrived one day at this spot, just as a terrible scuffle or wrangle, was going forward, between ten or a dozen old men (surrounded by at least a hundred spectators) about the quality or ownership of some garment. The merits of the discussion were of little interest to us and were probably of little importance to anybody, but the result was in its way as interesting a spectacle as ever greeted the eye and ear, something that we could never have imagined, and certainly could never have seen, in any other land. This old garment had magical powers, and was a treasure to _us_ at least. It attracted the old and young, the wise and foolish, the excited combatant and the calm and dignified spectator; it collected them all in a large square courtyard with plain whitewashed walls and Moorish arcades. On one side a palm-tree drooped its gigantic leaves, and cast broad shadows on the ground, which in some places, was almost of the brightness of orange; on the other side, half in sunlight, half in shadow, a heavy awning was spread over a raised daïs or stage, and through its tatters and through the deep arcades, the sky appeared in patches of the deepest blue--blue of a depth and brilliancy that few painters have ever succeeded in depicting. It gave in a wider and truer sense, just that quality to our picture--if we may be excused a little technicality and a familiar illustration--that a broad red sash thrown across the bed of a sleeping child in Millais' picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1867, gave to his composition, as many readers may remember. But we cannot take our eyes from the principal group, or do much more than watch the crowd in its changing phases. To give any idea of the uproar, the 'row' we ought to call it, would be to weary the reader with a polyglot of words and sentences, some not too choice, and many too shrill and fiercely accentuated; but to picture the general aspect in a few words is worth a trial, although to do this we must join the throng and fight our way to the front. Where have we seen the like? We have seen such upturned faces in pictures of the early days of the Reformation by Henry Leys; we have seen such passion in _Shy lock_, such despair in _Lear _; such grave and imposing-looking men with 'reverend beards' in many pictures by the old masters; but seldom have we seen such concentration of emotion (if we may so express it), and unity of purpose, in one group. Do our figure-painters want a subject, with variety of colour and character in one canvas? They need not go to the bazaars of Constantinople, or to the markets of the East. Let them follow us here crushing close to the platform, our faces nearly on a level with the boards. Look at the colours, at the folds of their cloaks, bournouses and yachmahs--purple, deep red, and spotless white, all crushed together--with their rich transparent shadows, as the sun streams across them, reflected on the walls. The heavy awning throws a curious glow over the figures, and sometimes almost conceals their features with a dazzle of reflected light. Look at the legs of these eager traders, as they struggle and fight and stand on tiptoe, to catch a glimpse of some new thing exposed for sale; look at them well--the lean, the shambling, the vigorous, the bare bronze (bronzed with sun and grime), the dark hose, the purple silk, and the white cotton, the latter the special affectation of the dandy Jew. What a medley, but what character here--the group from knee to ankle forms a picture alone. And thus they crowd together for half-an-hour, whilst all ordinary business seems suspended. Nothing could be done with such a clatter, not to mention the heat. Oh, how the Arab gutturals, the impossible consonants (quite impossible to unpractised European lips) were interjected and hurled, so to speak, to and fro! How much was said to no purpose, how incoherent it all seemed, and how we wished for a few vowels to cool the air! In half-an-hour a calm has set in and the steady business of the day is allowed to go forward; we may now smoke our pipes in peace, and from a quiet corner watch the proceedings almost unobserved, asking ourselves a question or two suggested by the foregoing scene. Is expression really worth anything? Is the exhibition of passion much more than acting? Shall grey beards and flowing robes carry dignity with them any more, if a haggle about old clothes can produce it in five minutes? And so we sit and watch for hours, wondering at the apparently endless variety of the patterns, and colours of the fabrics exposed for sale; and perhaps we doze, perhaps we dream. Is it the effect of the hachshish? Is it the strong coffee? Are we, indeed, dreaming, or is the auction a sham? Surely that pretty bright handkerchief--now held up and eagerly scanned by bleared old eyes--now rumpled and drawn sharply between haggard fingers--is an old friend, and has no business in a sale like this? Let us rub our eyes and try and remember where we have seen it o before. Yes--there is no mistaking the pattern, we have seen it in Spain. It was bound turbanwise round the head of a woman who performed in the bull ring at Seville, on the occasion of a particularly high and rollicking festival of the 'Catholic Church;' it was handed out of a diligence window one dark night on the Sierra Morena, when a mule had broken its leg, and the only method of getting it along was to tie the injured limb to the girth, and let the animal hop on three legs for the rest of the way. It found its way into the Tyrol, worn as a sash; it was in the market-place at Bastia in Corsica, in the hands of a maiden selling fruit; it flaunted at Marseilles, drying in the wind on a ship's spar; and the last time we saw it (if our memory serves us well) it was carefully taken from a drawer in a little shop, '_Au Dey d'Alger_' in the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, and offered to us, by that greatest of all humbugs, Mustapha, as the latest Algerian thing in neckties, which he asked fifteen francs for, and would gladly part with for two. It was a pattern we knew by heart, that we meet with in all parts of the world, thanks to the universality of Manchester cottons. But the pattern was simple and good, nothing but an arrangement of red and black stripes on a maize ground, and therein lay its success. It had its origin in the first principles of decoration, it transgressed no law or canon of taste, it was easily and cheaply made (as all the best patterns are), and so it travelled round the world, and the imitation work came to be sold in, perhaps, the very bazaar whence the pattern first came, and its originators squabbled over the possession of it, as of something unique. But we can hardly regret the repetition of these Moorish patterns, for they are useful in such a variety of ways. Wind one of the handkerchiefs in and out amongst dark tresses, and see what richness it gives; make a turban of it for a negress's head; tie it nattily under the chin of a little Parisienne and, _hey presto!_ she is pretty; make a sash of it, or throw it loosely on the ground, and the effect is graceful and charming to the eye. In some Japanese and Chinese silks we may meet with more brilliant achievements in positive colours; but the Moors seem to excel all other nations in taste, and in their skilful juxta-position of tints. We have seen a Moorish designer hard at work, with a box of butterflies' wings for his school of design, and we might, perhaps, take the hint at home. But we must leave the Moors and their beautiful fabrics for a while, and glance at the Arab quarter of the town. We shall see the Arabs bye and bye in the plains and in their tents, in their traditionary aspect; but here we come in contact with a somewhat renegade and disreputable race, who hang, as it were, on the outskirts of civilization. Many of them have come from the neighbouring villages and from their camps across the plains of the Sahel; and have set up a market of their own, where they are in full activity, trading with each other and with the Frank. * Here they may be seen by hundreds--some buying and selling, some fighting and not unfrequently, cursing one another heartily; others ranged close together in rows upon the ground, like so many white loaves ready for baking. Calm they are, and almost dignified in appearance, when sitting smoking in conclave; but only give them something to quarrel about, touch them up ever so little on their irritable side, and they will beat Geneva washerwomen for clatter. * This market-place is a sort of commercial neutral ground, where both Arabs and Kabyles meet the French in the strictest amity, and cheat them if they can. Take them individually, these trading men, who have had years of intercourse with their French conquerors, and they disappoint us altogether. They are no longer true followers of the Prophet, although they are a great obstruction to traffic, by spreading carpets on the ground in the middle of the road, and prostrating themselves towards Mahomet and the sun. Trade--paltry, mean, and cowardly as it so often makes men--has done the Arab irreparable harm: it has taught him to believe in counterfeits and little swindles as a legitimate mode of life, to pass bad money, and to cringe to a conqueror because he could make money thereby. He could not do these things in the old days, with his face to the sun. The Arab is generally pictured to us in his tent or with his tribe, calm, dignified and brave, and perhaps we may meet with him thus on the other side of the Sahel, but here in Algiers he is a metamorphosed creature. The camels that crouch upon the ground, and scream and bite at passers-by, are more dignified and consistent in their ill-tempered generation than these 'Sons of the Prophet,' these 'Lights of Truth.' And they have actually caught European tricks. What shall we say when two Arabs meet in the street, and after a few words interchanged, pass away from each other with a quickened, jaunty step, like two city men, who have 'lost time,' and must make it up by a spurt! Shall we respect our noble Arab any more when we see him walking abroad with a stereotyped, plausible smile upon his face, and every action indicating an eye to the main chance? * * It may seem a stretch of fancy, but even the bournous itself, with its classic outline and flowing folds, loses half its dignity and picturesqueness on these men. It has been rather vulgarised of late years in Western Europe; and when we see it carried on the arm of an Arab (as we do sometimes), there is a suggestion of opera stalls, and lingering last good nights on unromantic doorsteps, that is fatal to its patriarchal character. A step lower, of which there are too many examples in the crowd, and there is a sadder metamorphose yet--the patriarch turned scamp--one who has left his family and his tribe to seek his fortune. Look at him, with his ragged bournous, his dirt and his cringing ways, and contrast his life now, with what he has voluntarily abandoned. Oh! how civilization has lowered him in his own eyes, how his courage has turned to bravado, and his tact to cunning; how even natural affection has languished, and family ties are but threads of the lightest tissue. He has failed in his endeavour to trade, he has disobeyed the Koran, and is an outcast and unclean--one of the waifs and strays of cities! As we wend our way homeward (as John Bunyan says), 'thinking of these things,' we see two tall white figures go down to the water side, like the monks in Millais' picture of 'A Dream of the Past.' They stand on the bank in the evening light, their reflections repeated in the water. It is the hour of prayer; what are they doing? They are fishing with a modern rod and line, and their little floats are painted with the tricolour! [Illustration: 0131] [Illustration: 0133] CHAPTER VI. THE BOUZAREAH--A STORM. [Illustration: 9133] T would be passing over the most-enjoyable part of our life abroad, if we omitted all mention of those delightful days, spent on the hill-sides of Mustapha, on the heights of the Bouzareah, and indeed everywhere in the neighbourhood of Algiers, sketching in winter time in the open air. Odours of orange-groves, the aromatic scent of cedars, the sweet breath of wild flowers, roses, honeysuckles and violets, should pervade this page; something should be done, which no words can accomplish, to give the true impression of the scene, to picture the luxuriant wild growth of the surrounding vegetation (radiant in a sunshine which to a northerner is unknown), and to realise in any method of description, the sense of calm enjoyment of living this pure life in a climate neither too hot nor too cold, neither too enervating nor too exciting; of watching the serene days decline into sunsets that light up the Kabyle Hills with crests of gold, and end in sudden twilights that spread a weird unearthly light across the silver sea. * * There are effects of light sometimes, towards evening, especially over the sea, such as we have never seen in any other part of the world. We know one or two landscape painters who have filled their note-books with memoranda of these phases. We take our knapsacks and walk off merrily enough on the bright. December mornings, often before the morning gun has fired or the city is fully awake. If we go out at the eastern gate and keep along near the sea shore in the direction of the _Maison Carrée_ (a French fort, now used as a prison), we obtain fine views of the bay, and of the town of Algiers itself, with its mole and harbour stretching out far into the sea. There is plenty to interest us here, if it is only in sketching the wild palmettos, or in watching the half-wild Arabs who camp in the neighbourhood, and build mud huts which they affect to call cafés, and where we can, if we please, obtain rest and shelter from the midday sun, and a considerable amount of 'stuffiness,' for one sou. But there is no need to trouble them, as there are plenty of shady valleys and cactus-hedges to keep off the sun's rays; the only disturbers of our peace are the dogs who guard the Arab encampments, and have to be diligently kept off with stones. Perhaps the best spots for quiet work are the precincts of the Marabouts' tombs, where we can take refuge unobserved, behind some old wall and return quietly to the same spot, day after day. And here, as one experience of sketching from Nature, let us allude to the theory (laid down pretty confidently by those who have never reduced it to practice), that one great advantage of this climate is, that you may work at the same sketch from day to day, and continue it where you left off! You can do nothing of the kind. * If your drawing is worth anything, it will at least have recorded something of the varying phases of light and shade, that really alter every hour. Let us take an example. About six feet from us, at eight o'clock in the morning, the sheer white wall of a Moslem tomb is glowing with a white heat, and across it are cast the shadows of three palm-leaves, which at a little distance, have the contrasted effect of the blackness of night. ** Approach a little nearer and examine the real colour of these photographic leaf-lines, shade off (with the hand) as much as possible of the wall, the sky, and the reflected light from surrounding leaves, and these dark shadows become a delicate pearl grey, deepening into mauve, or partaking sometimes of the tints of the rich earth below them. They will be deeper yet before noon, and pale again, and uncertain and fantastic in shape, before sundown. If we sketch these shadows only each hour, as they pass from left to right upon the wall (laying down a different wash for the ground each time) and place them side by side in our note-book, we shall have made some discoveries in light and transparent shadow tone, which will be very valuable in after time. No two days or two hours, are under precisely the same atmospheric conditions; the gradations and changes are extraordinary, and would scarcely be believed in by anyone who had not watched them. * We are speaking, of course, of colour and effect, not of details that may be put in at any time. ** Under some conditions of the atmosphere we have obtained more perfect outlines of the leaves of the aloe, with their curiously indented edges and spear-points, _from their shadows_, rather than from the leaves themselves. Thus, although we cannot continue a sketch once left off, to any purpose, we may obtain an infinite and overwhelming variety of work in one day, in the space of a few yards by the side of some old well or Marabout's tomb. We seldom returned from a day in the country, without putting up for an hour or two at one of the numerous cafés, or caravanserai, built near some celebrated spring, with seats, placed invitingly by the roadside, under the shade of trees. There were generally a number of Arabs and French soldiers collected in the middle of the day, drinking coffee, playing at dominoes, or taking a siesta on the mats under the cool arcades, and often some Arab musicians, who hummed and droned monotonous airs; there were always plenty of beggars to improve the occasion, and perhaps, a group of half-naked boys, who would get up an imitation of the 'Beni Zouzoug Arabs,' and go through hideous contortions, inflicting all kinds of torments on each other for a few sous. [Illustration: 8139] It is pleasant to put up at one of these cafés during the heat of the day, and to be able to walk in and take our places quietly amongst the Arabs and Moors, without any particular notice or remark; and delightful (oh! how delightful) to yield to the combined influences of the coffee, the hachshish, the tomtom and the heat, and fall asleep and dream--dream that the world is standing still, that politics and Fenianism are things of the past, and that all the people in a hurry are dead. Pleasant, and not a little perplexing too, when waking, for the eye to rest on the delicate outline of a little window in the wall above, which, with its spiral columns and graceful proportions, seems the very counterpart in miniature of some Gothic cathedral screen. If we examine it, it is old and Moorish (these buildings date back several hundred years), and yet so perfect is its similarity to later work, that our ideas on orders of architecture become confused and vague. We may not attempt to discover the cause of the similarity, or indeed to go deeply into questions of 'style,' but we may be tempted to explore further, and if we examine such cafés (as, for instance, those at El Biar, or Birkadem), we shall find the walls ornamented with Arabesques, sometimes half-concealed under whitewash, and the arcades and conical-domed roofs and doorways covered with curious patterns. In this way we pass the day, often lingering about one spot in most vagrant fashion, till nightfall, when the last diligence comes crashing in, and stops to change its wretched horses. We take our places quickly in the _intérieur_, and are wedged in between little soft white figures with black eyes and stained finger-nails, who stare at us with a fixed and stony stare, all the way back to Algiers. Another day we spend in the _Jardin d'Essai_, (the garden of acclimatisation), where we may wander in December, amidst groves of summer flowers, and where every variety of tree and shrub is brought together for study and comparison. Through the kindness of the director we are enabled to make studies of some rare and curious tropical plants; but there is a little too much formality and an artificial atmosphere about the place, that spoils it for sketching; although nothing can control, or render formal, the wild strength of the gigantic aloes, or make the palm-trees grow in line. From the 'Garden of Marengo,' just outside the western gates, we may obtain good subjects for sketching, including both mosques and palm-trees, such as we have indicated on our title-page; and from the heights behind the Casbah, some beautiful distant views across the plain of the Mitidja. Of one of these an artistic traveller thus speaks: 'Standing on a ridge of the Sahel, far beneath lies the Bay of Algiers, from this particular point thrown into a curve so exquisite and subtle as to be well nigh inimitable by art, the value of the curve being enhanced by the long level line of the Mitidja plain immediately behind, furnishing the horizontal line of repose so indispensable to calm beauty of landscape; whilst in the background the faintly indicated serrated summits of the Atlas chain preserve the whole picture from monotony. The curve of shore, the horizontal bar of plain, the scarcely more than suggested angles of the mountains, form a combination of contrasting yet harmonising lines of infinite loveliness, which Nature would ever paint anew for us in the fresh tints of the morning, with a brush dipped in golden sunshine and soft filmy mist, and with a broad sweep of cool blue shadow over the foreground.' But our favourite rendezvous, our principal 'Champ de Mars,' was a little Arab cemetery, about six miles from Algiers; on the heights westward, in the direction of Sidi Ferruch, and near to a little Arab village called the 'Bouzareah.' This spot combined a wondrous view both of sea and land, with a foreground of beauty not easy to depict. It was a half-deserted cemetery, with tombs of Marabout priests over which the palm-trees waved, and little gravestones here and there surmounted with crescents. Sheltered from the sun's rays, hidden from the sight of passers-by, surrounded with a profusion of aloes, palms, cacti; and an infinite variety of shrubs and flowers peeping out between the palmettos, that spread their leaves like fans upon the ground--it combined everything that could be desired. Here we worked, sitting close to one of the tombs for its shade, with the hush of the breeze, the distant sighing sound of the sea, the voices of bees, and butterflies, the flutter of leaves, and one other sound that intermingled with strange monotony of effect close to our ears, which puzzled us sorely to account for at first. It turned out to be a snore; the custodian of one of the tombs was sleeping inside with his fathers, little dreaming of our proximity. We struck up an acquaintance with him, after a few days of coyness on his part, and finally made him a friend. For a few sous a day he acted as outpost for us, to keep off Arab boys and any other intruders; and before we left, was induced to sit and be included in a sketch. He winced a little at this, and we confess to an inward reproach for having thus degraded him. He did not like it, but he sat it out and had his portrait taken like any Christian dog; he took money for his sin, and finally, by way of expiation let us hope, drank up our palette water at the end of the day! If there is one spot in all Algeria most dear to a Mussulman's heart, most sacred, to a Marabout's memory, it must surely be this peaceful garden of aloes and palms, where flowers ever grow, where the sun shines from the moment of its rising until it sinks beneath the western sea; where, if anywhere on this earth, the faithful will be the first to know of the Prophet's coming, and where they will always be ready to meet him. But if it be dear to a Mussulman's heart, it is also dear to a Christian's, for it has taught us more in a few weeks than we can unlearn in years. We cannot sit here day by day without learning several truths, more forcibly than by any teaching of our schools; taking in, as it were, the mysteries of light and shade, and the various phases of the atmosphere--taking them all to heart, so that they influence our work for years to come. How often have we, at the Uffizi, or at the Louvre, envied the power and skill of a master, whose work we have vainly endeavoured to imitate; and what would we not have given in those days, to achieve something that seemed to approach, ever so little, to the power and beauty of colour, of a Titian or a Paul Veronese. * * And have we not, generally, imbibed more of the trick or method of colour, of the master, than of his inspiration-- more, in short, of the real than the ideal? Is it mere heresy in art, or is it a brighter light dawning upon us here, that seems to say, that we have learned and achieved more, in studying the glowing limbs of an Arab child as it plays amongst these wild palmettos--because we worked with a background of such sea and sky as we never saw in any picture of the 'Finding of Moses;' and because in the painting of the child, we had not perforce to learn any 'master's' trick of colour, nor to follow conventional lines? And do we not, amongst other things, learn to distinguish between the true and conventional rendering of the form, colour and character, of palm-trees, aloes and cacti? First of the palm. Do we not soon discover how much more of beauty, of suggested strength, of grace, lightness and variety of colour and texture, there is in this one stem, that we vainly try to depict in a wood engraving, than we had previously any conception of; and how opposed to facts are the conventional methods of drawing palm-trees (often with a straight stem and uniform leaves looking like a feather broom on a straight stick), which we may find in almost any illustrated book representing Eastern scenes, from Constantinople to the Sea of Galilee. [Illustration: 8147] Take, for instance, as a proof of variety in colour and grandeur of aspect, this group of palm-trees * that have stood guard over the Maho-medan tombs for perhaps a hundred years; stained with time, and shattered with their fierce battle with the storms that sweep over the promontory with terrible force. ** Look at the beauty of their lines, at the glorious colour of their young leaves, and the deep orange of those they have shed, like the plumage of some gigantic bird; one of their number has fallen from age, and lies crossways on the ground, half-concealed in the long grass and shrubs, and it has lain there to our knowledge, undisturbed for years. To paint the sun setting on these glowing stems, and to catch the shadows of their sharp pointed leaves, as they are traced at one period of the day on the white walls of the tombs, is worth long waiting to be able to note down; and to hit the right tint to depict such shadows truly, is an exciting triumph to us. * The palm-stem we have sketched is of a different variety and less formal in character than those generally seen in the East; nevertheless, there is endless variety in the forms and leaves of any one of them, if we judge from photographs. ** We had prepared a drawing of these palm-trees in sunlight; but perhaps Mr. Severn's view of them in a storm, will be thought more characteristic. Second of the aloe; and here we make as great a discovery as with the palm. Have we not been taught (in paintings) from our youth up, that the aloe puts forth its blue riband-like leaves in uniform fashion, like so many starched pennants, which painters often express with one or two strokes of the brush; and are we not told by botanists that it flowers but once in a hundred years? Look at that aloe hedgerow a little distance from us that stretches across the country, like a long blue rippling wave on a calm sea, and which, as we approach it, seems thrown up fantastically and irregularly by breakers to a height of six or eight feet, and which (like the sea), on a nearer view changes its opaque cold blue tint, to a rich transparent green and gold. Approach them closely, walk under their colossal leaves, avoid their sharp spear-points and touch their soft pulpy stems. What wonderful variety there is in their forms, what transparent beauty of colour, what eccentric shadows they cast upon each other, and with what a grand spiral sweep some of the young shoots rear upwards! So tender and pliable are they, that in some positions a child might snap their leaves, and yet so wonderful is the distribution of strength, that they would resist at spear-point the approach of a lion, and almost turn a charge of cavalry. If we snap off the point of one of the leaves it is a needle, and a thread clings to it which we may peel off down the stem a yard long--needle and thread--nature-pointed, nature-threaded! Should not artists see these things? Should not poets read of them? Here we are inclined to ask, if the aloe flowers but once in a hundred years, how is it that everywhere in Algeria, we see plants of all ages with their long flowering stems, some ten or twelve feet high? Have they combined this year to flower, or are botanists at fault? Of the cactus, which also grows in wild profusion, we could say almost as much as of the palms and aloes, but it might seem like repetition. Suffice it, that our studies of their separate leaves were the minutest and most rewarding labour we achieved, and that until we had painted the cactus and the palmetto growing together, we had never understood the meaning of 'tropical vegetation.' [Illustration: 0151] Many other subjects we obtain at the Bouzareah; simple perhaps, and apparently not worth recording, but of immense value to a student of Nature. Is it nothing, for instance, for a painter to have springing up before him in this clear atmosphere, delicate stems of grass, six feet high, falling over in spray of golden leaves against a background of blue sea; darting upward, sheer, bright, and transparent from a bank covered with the prickly pear, that looks by contrast, like the rock-work from which a fountain springs? Is it nothing to see amongst all this wondrous overgrowth of gigantic leaves, and amongst the tender creepers and the flowers, the curious knotted and twisted stem of the vine, trailing serpent-like on the ground, its surface worn smooth with time? Is it nothing for an artist to learn practically, what 'white heat' means? It is well worth coming to North Africa in winter, if only to see the flowers, but of these we cannot trust ourselves to speak--they _must_ be seen and painted. It is difficult to tear ourselves away from this spot, and especially tempting to dwell upon these details, because they have seldom been treated of before; but perhaps the question may occur to some--are such subjects as we have depicted worth painting, or, indeed, of any prolonged or separate study? Let us endeavour to answer it by another question. Are the waves worth painting, by themselves? Has it not occurred to one or two artists (not to many, we admit) that the waves of the sea have never yet been adequately painted; and have never had their due, so to speak, because it has always been considered necessary to introduce something else into the composition, be it only a rope, a spar, or a deserted ship? Has it not been discovered (though only of late years) that there is scope for imagination and poetry, and all the elements of a great and enthralling picture, in the drawing of waves alone; and should there not be, if nobly treated, interest enough in a group of colossal vegetation in a brilliant atmosphere, without the usual conventional adjuncts of figures and buildings? So far, whilst sketching at the Bouzareah, we have spoken only of the foreground; but we have been all the time in the presence of the most wonderful panorama of sea and land, and have watched so many changing aspects from these heights, that we might fill a chapter in describing them alone. The view northward over the Mediterranean, westward towards Sidi Ferruch, southward across the plains to the Atlas, eastward towards Algiers and the mountains of Kabylia beyond; each point so distant from the other that, according to the wind or time of day, it partook of quite distinct aspects, fill up so many pictures in our mind's eye that a book might be written, called 'The Bouzareah,' as seen under the different phases of sunshine and storm. It has often been objected to these Eastern scenes, that they have 'no atmosphere,' and no gradation of middle distance; that there is not enough repose about them, that they lack mystery and are altogether wanting in the poetry of cloudland. But there are clouds. We have seen, for the last few mornings (looking through the arched windows of the great aloe-leaves) little companies of small white clouds, casting clearly-defined shadows across the distant sea, and breaking up the horizon line with their soft white folds,= ```'They come like shadows, so depart.'= --reappearing and disappearing by some mysterious law, but seldom culminating in rain. Yes, there are clouds. Look this time far away towards the horizon line across the bay, and watch that rolling sea which looks like foam, that rises higher and higher as we watch it, darkening the sky, and soon enveloping us in a kin of sea fog, through which the sun gleams dimly red, whilst the white walls of the tombs appear cold and grey against a leaden sky. See it all pass away again across the plain of the Mitidja, and disappear in the shadows of the lesser Atlas. There is a hush in the breeze and all is bright again, but a storm is coming. [Illustration: 0157] Take shelter, if you have courage, _inside_ one of the Marabouts' tombs (there is plenty of space), whilst a tempest rages that should wake the dead before Mahomet's coming. Sit and wait in there, perhaps an hour, whilst one or two strong gusts of wind pass over, and then all is still again; and so dark that we can see nothing inside but the light of a pipe in one corner. We get impatient, thinking that it is passing off. But it comes at last. It breaks over the tombs, and tears through the plantation, with a tremendous surging sound, putting to flight the Arabs on guard, who wrap their bournouses about them and hurry off to the village, with the cry of 'Allah il Allah;' leaving the care of the tombs to the palms, that have stood guard over them so long. Oh, how they fight and struggle in the wind! how they creak, and moan, and strike against one another, like human creatures in the thick of battle! How they rally side by side, and wrestle with the wind--crashing down suddenly against the walls of the tomb, and scattering their leaves over us; then rallying again, and fighting the storm with human energy and persistence! It is a fearful sight--the rain falling in masses, but nearly horizontally, and with such density that we can see but a few yards from our place of shelter--and it is a fearful sound, to hear the palm-trees shriek in the wind. There was one part of the scene we could not describe, one which no other than Dante's pen, or Doré's pencil, could give any idea of; we could not depict the confused muttering sound and grinding clatter (if we may call it so), that the battered and wounded aloes made amongst themselves, like maimed and dying combatants trodden under foot. Many scenes in nature have been compared to a battle-field; we have seen sheaves of corn blown about by the wind, looking like the tents of a routed host; but this scene was beyond parallel--the hideous contortion, the melancholy aspect of destruction, the disfigured limbs in hopeless wreck, the weird and ghastly forms that writhed and groaned aloud, as the storm made havoc with them. And they made havoc with each other. What would the reader say, if he saw the wounds inflicted by some of the young leaves on the parent stems--how they pierce and transfix, and sometimes _saw_ into each other, with their sharp serrated edges, as they sway backwards and forwards in the wind. He would say perhaps that no sea monster or devil-fish, could seem more horrible, and we wish him no wilder vision than to be near them at night, when disturbed by the wind. We have scarcely alluded to the palmetto-leaves and branches that filled the air, to the sound of rushing water, to the distant roar of the sea, nor to many other aspects of the storm. It lasted, not much more than an hour, but the water covered the floor of our little temple before the rain subsided, and the ground a few feet off where we had sat, was completely under water. Everything was steaming with vapour, but the land was refreshed, and the dark earth was richer than we had seen it for months--there would be no dust in Algiers until to-morrow. [Illustration: 0163] CHAPTER VII. BLIDAH--MEDEAH--THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS. [Illustration: 9165] HE Atlas Mountains, of which we have spoken so often, are almost separated from the hills of the Sahel on which the town of Algiers is built, by the broad plain of the Mitidja, averaging between twenty and thirty miles across; and at the inland extremity of this plain, nestling close under the shadow of the lesser Atlas, is situated the town of Blidah, half Arab, half French, with its little population of European colonists and traders; its orange-groves and its orange-merchants, who here pass their monotonous, semi-successful lives--varied by occasional earthquakes and Arab _émeutes_. It was not particularly to see Blidah, but because it was on the high road to the Atlas Mountains, and to Medeah, a strongly fortified town situated 2900 feet above the sea-level--approached by a military road cut through the celebrated gorge of 'La Chiffa'--that two of our party left Algiers on horseback, on the 14th of December, on a sketching expedition. We made other interesting tours at different times; but it will be sufficient for our purpose to speak of two expeditions--the one to Medeah; the other, to the celebrated 'Fort Napoléon,' on the Kabyle Hills. It seems to say something for the peculiarly invigorating character of the climate that, at an average temperature of 70° Fahrenheit, our little horses did their thirty or forty miles a day, laden with our well-stored saddle-bags and sketching paraphernalia; and it speaks volumes for the security with which travellers can move about from town to town, that we were merely by chance provided with firearms, and that we started without any guide or escort. * * At the time we speak of, journeys into the interior were much less frequent than they are now; when there is a railway to Blidah, and a diligence to the Fort Napoléon. We pass through the eastern gate before sunrise, and winding up the hills behind Mustapha Supérieure (keeping to the road) we begin to descend on the southern side and have the broad plain of the Mitidja before us, just as the day is breaking. As we come down towards the plain, we pass several farms of the French colonists; and here and there, a tobacco plantation where both Arabs and French are employed. At Birkadem, which is in the midst of a farming district, we halt to breakfast, and run considerable risk of getting into a controversy on French colonization, with some friendly and pleasant, but rather desponding agriculturists. But, happily for ourselves and for our readers, we do not attempt to master the subject, and with a sketch of the little Moorish café with its marble columns and arcades, we continue our journey; over a wide waste--half moorland, half desert--passing at intervals little oases of cultivation, with houses, shrubs and gardens surrounding. Straight before us, apparently only a few miles off, but in reality twenty, stretches the chain of the lesser Atlas; the dark shadows here and there, pointing out the approaches to a higher range beyond. At the foot of the mountains we can distinctly see with our glasses, the white Moorish houses and villas that are built near Blidah, and the thick clusters of trees that shelter them. Our way across the plain for the next two or three hours is rather solitary, and although we keep up a steady pace, we seem to get no nearer to our destination. We pass a number of Arabs leading camels, and overtake a troop of twenty or thirty donkeys, laden with goods and ridden by their owners (who sit upon the top of their piles), shambling along almost as fast as a horse can trot. They beat us hollow before noon, because they never stop, and reach Bouffarik, the midday resting-place, long before us. At Bouffarik we are again amongst the colonists, and hear the peculiar French dialect of Provence and Languedoc, with occasional snatches of German and Maltese. We rest until about two hours of sunset, and become thoroughly imbued with the idea that we must be again in the south of France; so completely have the French realised, in the midst of an African plain, the dull uniformity of a poor French town, with its 'place,' its one street of cobble-stones, and its two rows of trees. Here we can obtain bad coffee, just as we can in France, and read the 'Moniteur' but four days old. It is altogether French, and when the white Arab mare belonging to one of our party turns restive at starting again, and proceeds through the village on its hind legs; it is just in time to remind us that it was here that Horace Vernet worked, and painted those rampant white steeds that we know so well, in the centre of his battle pictures. The war horse, (with the light upon him) was more to Horace Vernet perhaps, than the glory of the whole plain of the Mitidja; but how he could have lived in Algeria so long, and have been so little influenced by the scene around him, it is hard to tell. It is tempting (indeed it is almost impossible to avoid) at Bouffarik, going a little into the question of colonization, and speaking from personal observation, of the progress made during the last few years. But as English people care little or nothing for the prospects of Algeria, we will merely remark _en passant_, that the insurmountable evil of Algeria being too near the home country, seems to blight its prospects even here, and that the want of confidence displayed by private capitalists retards all progress. Nearly all the capital employed by the colonists at Bouffarik and Blidah has been raised by a paternal government; but, notwithstanding help from the home country, the tide of wealth neither flows nor ebbs, with great rapidity. At Bouffarik we see the Arabs calmly settled under French rule, and learning the arts of peace; taking to husbandry and steam ploughs, and otherwise progressing in a scientific and peaceful direction. We see them in the evening, sitting by their cottages with their half-naked children, looking prosperous and happy enough, and hear them droning to them in that monotonous 'singsong' that is so irritating to the ear. There is a musician at the door of our hostelry now, who is as great a nuisance as any Italian organ grinder in Mayfair; he taps on a little piece of stretched parchment, and howls without ceasing. It is given to the inhabitants of some countries, who have what is commonly called 'no ear for music' to hum and to drone in more sensitive ears to the point of distraction, and it seems to be the special attribute of the Arab to fill the air with monotonous sounds; when he is on a journey or resting from it, it is the same--he hums and moans like a creature in torment. In contact with Europeans we perhaps see him at his worst; for however orderly and useful a member of society he may be, however neat and clean, there is something cringing and artificial in him at the best. But we must hasten on to Blidah. Again we cross a wide plain, again do we overtake and are overtaken by, the tribe of donkeys; and just as the sun goes down we enter the city gates together, dismounting in the principal square, which is filled with idlers, chiefly French soldiers and poor Arabs who have learned to beg. We had chosen the time for this journey when the moon was nearly full, and our first near view of the town was by moonlight. Nothing can be conceived more beautiful than Blidah by night, with its little white domes and towers, and the mountains looming indistinctly in the background. In the Moorish quarter, the tower of the principal Mosque stands out clearly defined in the moonlight, whilst all around it cluster the little flat-roofed houses, set in masses of dark foliage--the olives and the date-trees, and the sharp-pointed spires of the cypresses, just tinged with a silver light. So peaceful, so beautiful does it look at night, so complete the repose with which we have always associated Blidah, that it is a rude disenchantment to learn that but a few years ago, this city was upheaved and tossed about, like the waves of the sea. In 1825, eight or nine thousand people perished from an earthquake; and in 1866, a lady who was staying at our hotel, thus wrote home to her friends: * * 'Last Winter in Algeria,' by Mrs. H. Lloyd Evans. 'I was roused from sleep by a sound as of some one beating the floor above, and the walls on every side. It increased rapidly in violence, till the whole house shook and rocked and seemed giving way beneath our feet. I saw the wall in the corner of the room split open, and immediately afterwards masses of plaster fell from the ceiling and walls, bringing clouds of dust and a darkness as of night. 'On the _Place_ it was a fearful scene, people came tearing down the neighbouring streets, women and children ran aimlessly hither and thither, shrieking wildly, men uttering hoarse sounds of terror, whilst the ground heaved and trembled beneath our feet, and we gazed at the surrounding houses in expectant horror; it seemed as if they must fall like a pack of cards. The young trees rocked and swayed, the flagstaff waved backwards and forwards--the wind moaning, the rain pouring down, whilst above all rose, ever and anon, the sound of cavalry trumpets and the rolling of the drum, calling on the troops to quit their tottering barracks. 'The Arabs alone stalked about unmoved, shrugging their shoulders and muttering "It is destiny!"' The air is delightful at Blidah, and the little country houses, with their groves of orange-trees, their gardens and vineyards, have been pointed out by travellers, as some of the most desirable spots on earth. The extract above may tend to qualify the longings of some people; but we think we might 'take our chance' at Blidah, as the Neapolitans do near Vesuvius--there are so many compensations. Early in the morning we are again on our way, and as we leave the western gate, the donkeys, with their dirty drivers, scramble out with us and again play the game of the tortoise and the hare. The gorge of La Chiffa is one of the principal approaches to the mountains, through which a military road is cut to Medeah. The first part is wild and rocky, the road passing between almost perpendicular cliffs, carried sometimes by masonry over a chasm at a height of several thousand feet. We ride for miles through a valley of most solitary grandeur, with no sounds but the rushing of the torrent and the occasional cries of monkeys. We pass by one celebrated waterfall called 'Ruisseau des Singes,' and are otherwise reminded of the presence of monkeys, by their pelting us with large stones, which they dislodge from their hiding-places above our heads. We are at times so shut in by the rocks, that we can scarcely discover any outlet, but after a few hours' ascent, we come suddenly upon quite a different scene. What is it that delights the eye and that thrills us with pleasurable emotions, calling up memories of green lanes and England, pastoral?'Tis the plash of water, and the trickling, tinkling play of a running stream, winding and winding down to the swollen torrent that we crossed just now. Here under the shadow and shelter of the mountains--refreshed by rains that they in the plains know not of, and where the heat of a midday sun can scarcely approach--we find a cottage, a little farm, green pastures, cattle grazing, trees, flowers and children; the stream flowing through all, bright, deep, and sparkling, with green banks, bullrushes and lilies of the valley of the Atlas. A few poor emigrants have settled down in this corner of the world, as quietly, and we may add as securely, as if a sandy plain did not divide them from everything kindred and civilized. We make our midday halt under the shade of chesnut-trees, and sketch; one great defect of our drawings being, that they are far too pastoral--they would not be admitted by judges, to represent Africa at all! Nothing in this land of strong contrasts could equal the change from Nature, untilled, unfruitful, stern and forbidding; to this little farm-house, as it might be in Wales, surrounded by trees and watered by a sparkling stream. Continuing our journey up the gorge, walking, riding, clambering, and resting, by turns, we do not reach Medeah until after dark. During the last few miles our horses are troublesome, and will not be persuaded to pass close to any rock or brushwood, being evidently nervous of some sudden attack, or surprise; and so we creep along silently and in single file, trusting chiefly to our horses to keep to the path. At last the long-looked-for lights of Medeah appear, and in a quarter of an hour afterwards we are inside the fortifications; and with a '_Voyageurs, monsieur_' to the sentinel at the gate, we pass under the dark arches of a Roman aqueduct--casting a deep shadow over the town as the moon shines out, now obscured again by a passing cloud--like some solemn dissolving view of Roman power, or phantom monument of the past. At Medeah, we find everything much the same as at Blidah; a little rougher and poorer perhaps, but the same mixture of French and Moorish buildings. Fine old mosques, courtyards after the style of the Alhambra, and carved doorways of very early date; but brick fortifications, young French soldiers, _estaminéts_, and a 'Place' with half-dead trees, are more prominent features; and here, at a height of nearly 3000 feet above the sea, set deep in the heart of the Atlas, civilization may again be seen, doing its work--the Arabs indulging in absinthe freely, and playing at cards with their conquerors. The beautiful mountain scenery south of Medeah led us to spend some time in sketching and in exploring the country. In spite of its wildness and solitariness we could wander about with perfect security, within a day or two's journey of the French outposts. The crisp keen air at this altitude tempted us on and on, through the most deserted region that can be imagined. The mountain-ranges to the south were like an undulating sea, divided from us by lesser hills and little plains, with here and there valleys, green and cultivated; but the prevailing character of the scenery was rocky and barren. The great beauty was in the clouds that passed over at intervals, spreading a grateful shade, and casting wonderful shadows on the rocks. The rain would fall heavily through them sometimes for three or four minutes, like summer showers, and the little dried-up torrent beds would trickle for a while; the Arabs would collect a few drops, and then all would be gone--the clouds, the rivulets, and every sign of moisture on the ground--and the mountains would stand out sharp and clear against the sky, with that curious pinky hue, so well portrayed in the background of Lewis's picture of 'A camp on Mount Sinai.' Here we could pitch our tent in the deepest solitude, and romance as much as we pleased without fear of interruption. The only variation to the almost death-like silence that prevailed, would be the distant cry of a jackal, which disturbed us for a moment, or the moaning of the wind in some far-off valley, for the air seemed never still on these heights. A stray monkey or two, would come and furtively peep at our proceedings, but would be off again in an instant, and there were no birds; indeed, since we left Blidah we had scarcely heard their voices. The few Arab tribes that cultivated the valleys, seldom came near us; so that we sometimes heard no voices but our own, from morning till night. One day proved an exception. We had been making a drawing of the prospect due south, in order to get the effect of the sun's rays upon a sandy plateau that stretched between us and the next range of mountains: it was little more than a study of colour and effect, for there was not much to break the monotony of the subject--a sand-plain bounded by barren rocks. We had nearly finished our work, when two dark specks appeared suddenly on the sky-line, and quickly descending the rocks, began to cross the plain towards us. With our telescope, we soon made out that they were horsemen at full gallop, and we could tell this, not by the figures themselves, but by the long shadows that the afternoon sun cast from them upon the plain. In a few minutes they rode up to our tent. They were not, as our porters had insisted, some Arabs on a reconnoitering expedition, but two American gentlemen on hired horses from Algiers, who were scampering about the country without any guide or escort. They had come from Milianah that day, they would be at Blidah to-morrow, and at Algiers the next day, in time to 'catch the boat for Europe!' There was an end to all romance about desert scenes and being 'alone with Nature we could not get rid of the western world, we were tourists and nothing more. But it was pleasant to hear the English language spoken, and delightful to record that these gentlemen neither bragged of their exploits nor favoured us with what are called 'Americanisms.' In short, we are able to speak of our interview (they came back with us as far as Medeah) without repeating any of those bits of smart conversation, that seem inseparable from the record of such rencontres. These gentlemen had taken a glance at a great deal, in four or five days, and had been (perhaps it did not much matter) once or twice, into a little danger; they had seen the cedar forests, the 'Fort Napoléon,' and the principal sights, and were now on their way home. They had, however, done one thing, in which they evidently felt unmixed satisfaction, though they did not express it in so many words--they had been rather _farther_ into the interior, than any of their countrymen. Before leaving the mountains, we should answer a question that we have been asked repeatedly, 'What of the African lion, so celebrated by Jules Gérard?' We answer, that we did not penetrate far enough for 'sport,' of this kind; indeed we scarcely ever heard of any lions. Once only our horses stopped and trembled violently, and would not pass a thicket without a long detour; and once (only once) we heard the lion's roar, not far off. It is a sound that carries a dread with it not soon forgotten, and the solemnity of which, when echoed from the mountains, it is not easy to describe. Perhaps the only person who was ever flippant in speaking of lions, was Gordon Cumming, but then he used to go amongst them (according to his own account), single-handed, to 'select specimens' before firing! But in the solitude of these mountain wanderings, we have had opportunities of seeing one phase of Arab life that we had really come out to see, and which was alone worth the journey. We had started early one morning from Blidah, but not so early, that in deference to the wishes of some of our companions, we had first attended service in a chapel, dedicated to 'Our Lady of Succour.' We went into the little building, which, like some rare exotic, was flourishing alone, surrounded by the most discordant elements--situated hard by a mosque and close to some noisy Arab dwellings. Service was being performed in the usual manner, the priests were bowing before a tinsel cross, and praying (in a language of their own) to a coloured print of 'Our Lady,' in a gilt frame. There were the customary chauntings, the swinging of censers, the creaking of chairs, the interchanging of glances, and the paying of sous. Sins were confessed through a hole in the wall, and holy water was administered to the faithful, with a brush. Everything was conducted with perfect decorum, and was (as it seemed to an eyewitness) the most materialistic expression of devotion it were possible to devise. Before the evening of the same day, we make a halt amongst the mountains. A few yards from us we see in the evening light a promontory; upon it some figures, motionless, and nearly the same colour as the rocks--Arabs watching the setting sun. The twilight has faded so rapidly into darkness, that we have soon to put by our work, and can see no objects, distinctly, excepting this promontory; on which the sun still shines through some unseen valley, and lights up the figures as they kneel in prayer. The solemnity of the scene could hardly be conveyed to the mind of the reader in words, its picturesqueness we should altogether fail to do justice to; but its beauty and suggestiveness, set us upon a train of thought, which, in connection with the ceremony of the morning, we may be pardoned for dwelling upon in a few words. It was not the first nor the last time, that we had witnessed the Arabs at prayer, and had studied with a painter's eye their attitudes of devotion, the religious fervour in their faces, and their perfect _abandon_. The charm of the scene was in its primitive aspect, and in the absence of all the accessories, which Europeans are taught from their youth up, to connect in some way, with every act of public worship; and who could help being struck by the sight of all this earnestness--at these heartfelt prayers? What does the Arab see, in this mystery of beauty, in its daily recurring 'splendour and decline? Shall we say that the rising and the setting of the sun behind the hills, may not (to the rude souls of men who have learned their all from Nature), point out the entrance of that Paradise, which their simple faith has taught them, they shall one day enter and possess? If it were possible in these days, when religious art assumes the most fantastic forms, to create ever so slight a re-action against a school which has perhaps held its own too long--if it were not heresy to set forth as the noblest aim for a painter, that he should depict the deepest emotion, the simplest faith, the most heartfelt devotion, without the accessories of purple and fine linen, without marble columns or gilded shrines, without furniture, without Madonnas and without paste--then we might point confidently to the picture before us to aid our words. What if the heaven prayed for, and the prophet worshipped, seem to a Christian unorthodox and worse--there is sincerity here, there is faith, devotion, ecstasy, adoration. What more, indeed, does the painter hope for--what does he seek; and what more has he ever found in the noblest work of Christian art? If he lack enthusiasm, still, before a scene so strange, let him think for a moment what manner of worship this, of the Arabs is; and contrast their system with that of the Vatican. The religion of the Arabs is a very striking thing, and its position and influence on their lives might put many professing Christians to the blush. An honest, earnest faith is theirs, be it right or wrong. If we examine it at all, we find it something more than a silly superstition; we find that it has been 'a firm belief and hope amongst twelve millions of men in Arabia alone, holding its place in their hearts for more than twelve hundred years.' It is a religion of Duty, an acting up to certain fixed principles and defined laws of life, untrammelled by many ceremonies, unshaken by doubts; a following out to the letter, the written law, as laid down for them by Mahomet, as the rule and principle of their lives. If the whole system of the Mahommedan faith breaks down (as we admit it does) on examination, it does not affect our position, viz.:--that we have here an exhibition of religious fervour which seldom reaches to fanaticism, and is essentially sincere. Regarding the scene from a purely artistic point of view, we can imagine no more fitting subject for a painter, than this group of Arabs at their devotions--Nature their temple, its altar the setting sun, their faces towards Mecca, their hearts towards the Prophet, their every attitude breathing devotion and faith. Setting aside all questions of orthodoxy, regarding for our particular purpose both civilised and uncivilised worshippers under their general religious aspect--how would it 'strike that stranger' who, descending from another planet, wondered why, if men's Duty was so clearly placed before them, they did not follow it--how would he view the two great phases of religious worship? Whose religion would seem most inspiring, whose temple most fitting, whose altar most glorious, whose religion the most free from question; the modern and enlightened, intrenched in orthodoxy and enthroned in state; or the benighted and un-regenerate, but earnest, nature-loving and always sincere? We shall have perhaps (if we make a serious study of these subjects and put our heart into the work), to unlearn something that we have been taught, about the steady painting of Madonnas and angels, in our schools; but, if we do no more than make one or two sketches of such scenes as the above, we shall have added to our store of knowledge in a rough and ready way; and have familiarised ourselves with the sight of what,--though barbaric--is noble and true. [Illustration: 0191] [Illustration: 0193] CHAPTER VIII. KAB YLIA--THE FORT NAPOLÉON. [Illustration: 9193] T was almost impossible to take up a newspaper in Algiers, or to converse for five minutes in a café, or at the club, without the 'question Kabyle' cropping up in some paragraph or conversation. Every day there came contradictory news about the war, that it would really be over to-morrow or the next day, or the next week. It had lasted with more or less activity for thirty years, but now at last the smouldering embers seemed to be dying out. The Djurjura mountains stretching eastward into Kabylia, which we knew so well in their peaceful aspect, with the sun shining upon their snow-clad summits from morning till night, were still the theatre of war. In the heart of the mountains, about sixty miles from Algiers, and at a height of nearly 3000 feet above the sea, the French army was busily engaged in building a fortress, in order to keep the Kabyles at bay and give protection to the colonists; and whilst this work was progressing with wonderful rapidity, the outposts of the army were carrying on a guerilla warfare with the unsubdued tribes. Their camps were pitched on the various heights, and the sound of the morning _réveille_ was generally succeeded by the 'ping' of the rifle from some concealed Kabyles, and by a quick return volley from the French outposts. We went to the Fort Napoleon at the invitation of some French officers, who, when they wrote to us, imagined (as all French people had imagined a hundred times before) that the war was over, and that it would be a good opportunity to visit the camp and the fort, in process of construction. * Two easy days' journey on horseback, halting for the night at a caravanserai called Les Issers, brought us to Tiziouzou, a small town and military depot on the borders of Kabylia, at the foot of the mountains, and but a few miles from the fort. At Les Issers we slept upon the ground, each man by the side of his own horse, as there was neither stabling nor sleeping accommodation to be had in the inn, which was crowded before we arrived, with troops and war _matériel_. To reach this, our first night's halting-place, we had had some rough riding, ending by fording in the evening, a rapid river which rose above the saddle-girths and nearly upset our active little horses. The night was starlight, and we lay down about fifty together, with fires burning in a circle round us, to prevent any surprise. * General Randon laid the first stone of the Fort Napoléon in June, 1857. This fort, which occupies an area of more than twenty acres, and is built on most irregular ground, was built in a few months. The route from Les Issers to Tiziouzou was crowded with baggage-waggons sticking in the mud, and with immense droves of camels and donkeys, on their way to the fort. The late rains had almost obliterated the military road (which was said to extend all the way from Algiers to the Fort Napoléon), and in some places it was turned into a river. The greater part of our route had been wild and uncultivated, but as we came near to Tiziouzou and approached the mountains, every valley was luxuriant with vegetation, fig-trees and olives grew in abundance, the former of enormous size. But nearly every inhabitant was French, and we, who had come to sketch and to see the Kabyles, were as yet disappointed at finding none but French soldiers, European camp-followers, and camel-drivers, on the way; and when we arrived at Tiziouzou, we were so shut in by mountains on all sides, that even the heights of Beni-Raten were concealed from view. It was fortunate that we obtained the shelter of a little inn on the night of our arrival, for the rain fell steadily in sheets of water, until our wooden house was soaked through, and stood like an island in the midst of a lake. We sent our horses back to Algiers, and carrying our own knapsacks, set off in the early morning to walk up to the fort. A lively cantinière (attached to a regiment of Zouaves camped near Tiziouzou) walked with us and led the way, past one or two half-deserted Kabyle villages, by a short cut to the camp. The military road by which the artillery had been brought up was about fifteen miles, but by taking the steeper paths, we must have reduced the distance by more than half. At one point of the way the bare mountain side was so steep and slippery with the late rain, that it was almost impossible to ascend it, but some Arabs, with an eye to business worthy of the western world, had stationed themselves here with their camels to drag up pedestrians; a camel's tail was let for two sous and was in great request. The latter part of the ascent was through forests, and groves of olive and cork trees, looking cool and grey amongst the mass of rich vegetation, through which we had sometimes to cut a path. It was a wild walk, but our merry little cantinière was so active and entertaining that we, encumbered with knapsacks, had enough to do to keep up with her, and indeed to comprehend the rapid little French histories that she favoured us with. Every now and then we heard through the trees the strains of 'Partant pour la Syrie,' or the rattle of a regimental drum, and came suddenly upon working parties on the road, which the army boasts was made practicable in three months. After about four hours' clambering, we again emerge upon the road, near the summit, and in a few minutes more, come in sight of the fort and the pretty white tents of the camps on the surrounding hills. Here we must pause a few minutes, to give a picture of the state of things at the 'Fort Napoléon,' a few weeks before our arrival. We are indebted to Lieut.-Col. Walmisley, one of our countrymen who accompanied the expedition, for the following graphic account of a sharp action with the Kabyles:-- 'Daylight dawned upon the Kabyle hills on the morning of the 24th June, 1857, and its light streamed over the serried ranks of the second division, as, under the command of General MacMahon, the head of the column marched out of the lines of Aboudid. 'Before it lay the heights of Icheriden, with its village and triple row of barricades, behind which the men of the Beni Menguillet anxiously watched the progress of the foe. The path of the column lay along a mountain ridge, and it was strange to see that column of between six and seven thousand men, advancing quietly and composedly, the birds singing around them; the Kabyles crowning every available hillock, the hawks and eagles slowly wheeling in large circles over their heads, and the bright rays of the morning sun gleaming on brighter bayonets. ***** 'The Kabyle barricades remained black and silent as ever; not a bournous was to be seen, as the 54th and the Zouaves received orders to carry the position at the point of the bayonet. Before them lay a ridge covered with brushwood, affording capital shelter, but at about sixty or seventy paces from the stockades the brush had been cleared away, and now the occasional gleam of a bayonet, the report of a musket or two fired against the stockade, the loud ringing of the trumpets, as they gave forth in inspiriting tones the _pas de charge_, and the wild shouting of the men, as they pushed their way forward, told of the progress of the attack. 'Still the same stern heavy silence reigned over the hostile village. Was it indeed deserted, or was it the silence of despair? But now the bugle notes became shriller and more exciting; the shots quicker and more steady, as emerging from the bush, the attacking column rushed forward to the attack. Sixty paces of greensward were before them: but instantly, and as if by magic, a thousand reports broke the silence of the dark stockades, a wild yell rose from their defenders, as the hail of lead fell on the advancing regiments, and a long line of dead marked the advance. The Kabyles leaning their pieces over the joints of the trees, where they were fitted into each other, and through crevices and loopholes, offered little or no mark themselves to the shot; whilst not a ball of theirs missed its aim. 'But the Zouaves were not to be daunted; and leaving the ground dotted with their dead and dying comrades, on they rushed, a wild cheer rising from their ranks, and a volley of balls pattering a reply. Again the line of fire burst from the dark stockade, and the advancing column withered away. The ground was strewn with fallen forms, and the fire of the stockade fell fast and sure. The men gave way, seeking the shelter of the bushes; their officers dashing to the front, vainly attempting to lead them on. It was useless--even the sturdy Zouaves refused to cross the deadly slope, for to do so was death; on the green slope, across which the balls hurried fast and thick, lay whole ranks of French uniforms. 'The fire from stockade and bush raged fast and furious; well kept up on the side of the French, more deadly on that of the Kabyles, and still _the men would not advance_ over the uncovered space, for it was certain death. Two thousand Kabyle marksmen lined the loopholes, and the balls now began to whiz round the heads of the generals and their staff.' General MacMahon, who was wounded in this engagement, at last resorted to shells to dislodge the defenders; the result was successful, and the whole ended in a panic. 'Fast and furious now became the flight of the Kabyles, and all was havoc and confusion. The men of the Legion, mixed up with the Zouaves and the 54th, dashed after the fugitives, entering the villages with them, and bayoneting right and left with savage shouts, whilst down the steep sides of the hills, away over the ridges to the right and to the left, the waving bournous might be seen in flight!' The curtain fell upon the Kabyle war soon after this action, and large detachments of troops were at once told off to build the fort. All around, on every promontory and hill, the little white tents were scattered thickly, and the sound of the bugle, and the sight of the red kepis of the soldiers, prevailed everywhere. But the war was practically over, civilians came up from Algiers--some to see, and some to trade--and quite a little colony sprung up. And here, on one of the heights shown in our little sketch, we establish ourselves again--whilst the Kabyle villages still smoulder in the distance, and revenge is deep in the hearts of the insurgent tribes, 'one peaceful English tent' is pitched upon the heights of Beni-Raten, and its occupants devote themselves to the uneventful pursuit of studying mountain beauty. We endeavour (and with some success) to ignore the military element; we listen neither to the réveille, nor to the too frequent crack of a rifle; our pursuits are not warlike, and, judging from the sights and sounds that sometimes surround us, we trust they never may be. The view from this elevation is superb,--north, south, east and west, there is a wondrous landscape, but northward especially; where far above the purple hills, higher than all but a few snowy peaks, there stretches a horizontal line of blue, that seems almost in the clouds. Nothing gives us such a sense of height and distance, as these accidental peeps of the Mediterranean, and nothing could contrast more effectively than the snowy peaks in sunlight, against the blue sea. [Illustration: 0203] All this we are able to study, in perfect security and with very little interruption; sketching first one mountain side clothed with a mass of verdure; another, rocky, barren, and wild; one day an olive-grove, another a deserted Kabyle village, and so on, with an infinite variety which would only be wearisome in detail. And we obtain what is so valuable to an artist, and what is supposed to be so rare in Africa--variety of atmospheric effect. It is generally admitted (and we should be unwilling to contest the point), that English landscape is unrivalled in this respect, and that it is only _form_ and _colour_, that we may study with advantage in tropical climates; but directly we ascend the mountains, we lose that still, serene atmosphere that has been called the 'monotony of blue.' We read often of African sun, but very seldom of African clouds and wind. To-day we are surrounded by clouds _below_ us, which come and gather round the mountain-peaks and remain until evening. Sometimes just before sunset, the curtain will be lifted for a moment, and the hill sides will be in a blaze of gold--again the clouds come round, and do not disperse till nightfall; and when the mountains are once more revealed, the moon is up, and they are of a silver hue--the sky immediately above, remaining quite unclouded. The air is soft on these half-clouded days, in spite of our height above the sea; and the showers that fall at intervals, turn the soil in the valleys into a hotbed for forcing hothouse plants, as we should call them in England. The weather was nearly always fine, and we generally found a little military tent (lent to us by one of the Staff) sufficient protection and shelter, even on this exposed situation. But we must not forget the winds that lived in the valleys, and came up to where our tents were pitched--sometimes one at a time, sometimes three or four together. Of all things that impressed us, during our stay upon the Kabyle hills, the beauty of the clouds, the purple tints upon the mountains, and the _wind_, will be remembered best. It is a common phrase, to 'scatter to the four winds;' but here the four winds came and met near our little camp, and sometimes made terrible havoc with our belongings. They came suddenly one day, and took up a tent, and flung it at a man and killed him; another time they came sighing gently, as if a light breeze were all we need prepare for, and in five minutes we found ourselves in the thick of a fight for our possessions, if not for our lives. And with the wind there came sometimes such sheets of rain, that turned the paths into watercourses, and carried shrubs and trees down into the valley; all this happening whilst the sea was calm in the distance, and the sun was shining fiercely on the plains. These were rough days, to be expected in late autumn and early spring, but not to be missed for a little personal discomfort, for Algeria has not been seen without a mountain storm. Before leaving Kabylia, we will take one or two leaves from our note-book; just to picture to the reader (who may be more interested in what is going on at the camp, than in the various phases of the landscape) the rather incongruous elements of which our little society is made up. There has been a general movement lately, * amongst the conquered tribes, who are beginning to re-establish themselves in their old quarters (but under French rule), which brings together for the night about a hundred Kabyles, with their wives and children. * October, 1857. Around the camp this evening there are groups of men and women standing, that bring forcibly to the mind, those prints of the early patriarchs from which we are apt to take our first and, perhaps, most vivid, impressions of Eastern life; and we cannot wonder at French artists attempting to illustrate Scriptural scenes from incidents in Algeria. There are Jacob and Joseph, as one might imagine them, to the life; Ruth in the fields, and Rachel by the well; and there is a patriarch coming down the mountain, with a light about his head as the sun's last rays burst upon him, that Herbert might well have seen, when he was painting Moses with the tables of the law. The effect is accidental, but it is perfect in an artistic sense, from the solemnity of the man, the attitude of his crowd of followers, the grand mountain forms which are partially lit up by gleams of sunset, and the sharp shadows cast by the throng. This man may have been a warrior chief, or the head of a tribe; he was certainly the head of a large family, who pressed round him to anticipate his wants and do him honour. His children seemed to be everywhere about him; they were his furniture, they warmed his tent and kept out the wind, they begged for him, prayed for him, and generally helped him on his way. In the Koran there is a saying of similar purport to the words 'happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them'--this one had his quiver full of them, indeed, and whether he had ever done much to deserve the blessing, he certainly enjoyed it to the full. * Looked upon as a coloured statue he was, in some respects, a perfect type of beauty, strength, and dignified repose--what we might fitly call a 'study,' as he sat waiting, whilst the women prepared his evening meal; but whether from a moral point of view he quite deserved all the respect and deference that was paid to him, is another question. * How many a man is sheltered from the winds of the world by a grove of sleek relations, who surround him and keep him from harm; such a man has never really tried the outer world? and has but a second-hand experience of its troubles. As a picture, as we said before, he was magnificent, and there was a regal air with which he disposed the folds of his bournous, which we, clad in the costume of advanced civilization, could not but admire and envy. He had the advantage of us in every way, and made us feel it acutely. He had a splendid arm, and we could see it; the fine contour, and colour, of his head and neck were surrounded by white folds, but not concealed. His head was not surmounted with a battered 'wide-awake,' his neck was not bandaged as if it were wounded, his feet were not misshapen clumps of leather, his robes--but we have no heart to go further into detail. There is a 'well-dressed' French gentleman standing near this figure; and there is not about him one graceful fold, one good suggestive line, one tint of colour grateful to the eye, or one redeeming feature in his (by contrast) hideous _tout ensemble._ These are everyday truths, but they strike us sometimes with a sort of surprise; we have discovered no new thing in costume, and nothing worth telling; but the sudden and humiliating contrast gives our artistic sensibilities a shock and fills us with despair. A little way removed there is a warrior on horseback at prayers, his hands outstretched, his face turned towards the sun. It is as grand a picture as the last, but it does not bear examination. He came and sat down afterwards, to smoke, close to our tent, and we regret to say that he was extremely dirty, and in his habits, rather cruel. There were red drops upon the ground where his horse had stood, and his spur was a terrible instrument to contemplate; in the enthusiasm of a noble nature he had ridden his delicate locomotive too hard, and had, apparently, sometimes forgotten to give it a feed. It was a beautiful, black Arab steed, but it wanted grooming sadly; its feet were cracked and spread from neglect, and its whole appearance betokened rough usage. Perhaps this was an exceptional case, perhaps not; but to the scandal of those whose romantic picture of the Arab in his tent with his children and his steed, are amongst the most cherished associations, we are bound to confess that we have seen as much cruelty as kindness, bestowed by the Arabs and Kabyles, on their horses, and incline to the opinion that they are, as a rule, anything but tender and loving to their four-footed friends. [Illustration: 0212] The Kabyles came round our tents in the morning before leaving, and the last we saw of our model patriarch, was flying before an enraged vivandière, who pursued him down the hill with a dish-cloth. He had been prowling about since dawn, and had forgotten the distinction between 'meum' and 'tuum.' It has been said that there is 'no such thing as Arab embarrassment, and no such dignity as Arab dignity;' but the Arab or the Kabyle, as we hinted in a former chapter, appears to great disadvantage in contact with the French, and seems to lose at once in _morale_. Another day, there is a flutter in our little camp, for 'the mail' has come in, in the person of an active young orderly of Zouaves, who, leaving the bulk of his charge to come round by the road, has anticipated the regular delivery by some hours, scaling the heights with the agility of a cat, and appearing suddenly in our midst. If he had sprung out of the earth he could not have startled us much more, and if he had brought a message that all the troops were to leave Africa to-morrow, he could scarcely have been more welcome. And what has he brought to satisfy the crowd of anxious faces that assemble round the hut, dignified by the decoration of a pasteboard eagle and the inscription '_Bureau de Poste_.' It was scarcely as trying a position for an official, as that at our own Post-office at Sebastopol in Crimean days, although there was eagerness and crowding enough to perplex any distributor; but it was very soon over, in five minutes letters and papers were cast aside, and boredom had recommenced with the majority. It was the old story--the old curse of Algeria doing its work; the French officers are too near home to care much for 'news,' and hear too frequently from Paris (twice a week) to attach much importance to letters. Newspapers were the 'pièces de résistance,' but there was not much news in '_La Presse_' and its _feuilleton_ consisted of two or three chapters of a translation of Dickens' 'Martin Chuzzlewit'; there was the '_Moniteur_,' with lists of promotions in the army, and the usual announcement, that Napoleon, 'by the grace of God and the national will,' would levy new taxes upon the people; there was a provincial paper, containing an account of the discovery of some ruins near Carcassonne; there was '_Le Follet_' for 'my lady _commandant_,' and a few other papers with illustrated caricatures and conundrums. Some of the letters were amusing, as we heard them read aloud; one was too quaint not to mention, it was from a bootmaker in Paris to his dear, long-lost customer on the Kabyle Hills. He 'felt that he was going to die,' and prayed '_M'sieu le Lieutenant_' to order a good supply of boots for fear of any sudden accident, 'no one else could make such boots for Monsieur.' And so on, including subjects of about equal importance, with the latest Parisian gossip, and intelligence of a new piece at the 'Variétés.' One other letter we may mention, that came up by the same post, to one other member of that little band, perched like eagles on the heights; it was also unimportant and from home, and the burden of it was this--'Broadtouch' had stretched ten feet of canvas for a painting of one rolling wave, and 'Interstice' had studied the texture of a nut-shell until his eyes were dim. We finish the evening as usual with dominoes and coffee; enjoying many a long and delightful chit-chat with our military friends. These pleasant, genial, but rather unhappy gentlemen do not 'talk shop,' it is tabooed in conversation, as strictly as at the 'Rag': but the stamp of banishment is upon their faces unmistakeably, and if they do speak of this foreign service (now that the war is nearly over), it is in language that seems to say,--'all ye who enter here, leave Hope behind.' [Illustration: 0219] [Illustration: 0221] CHAPTER IX. 'WINTER SWALLOWS.' '_Oh que l'hirondelle est bien la type de la vraie sagesse, elle qui a su effacer de son existence, ces longs hivers qui glacent et engourdissent! Dès que le soleil commence à décroître, sitôt que les plantes jaunissent et qu'aux chaudes haleines du Zéphyr succèdent les froides rafales de l'aquilon, elle s'envole prudemment à tire d'ailes, vers les douces régions embaumées du Midi._' [Illustration: 9221] E come down the hills and back to Algiers, to find the winter in full bloom, and the 'winter swallows' in great force, In fact, so full of bustle is the town, and so frequent is the sight of English faces, and the sound of English voices, that it hardly seems like the place we had left a few weeks since. It has been said that English people love sunshine and blue sky more than any other nation, and that the dwellers under the 'ciel nebuleuse du nord,' will go anywhere to seek a brighter clime; and it is a fact, the importance of which is hardly realised in England, that the African sun is producing a crop of English residents that is growing rapidly, and taking firm root in the soil, in spite of siroccos, in spite of earthquakes--without a thought of colonization in the strict sense of the word, and without, it must be added, any particular love for the French people. The visitors, or tourists, are increasing also, and they are naturally, rather vulgarising our favourite places. Thus we hear of picnics at the Bouzareah, of balls at Mustapha, of 'trips' to Blidah by railway, and of 'excursions to the gorge of La Chiffa and back' in one day. An amusing chapter might be written upon Algiers from the traveller's point of view, but one or two touches will suffice, to show the easy and familiar terms, on which our countrymen and country-women invade this stronghold of the French; once the 'city of pirates' and the terror of Mediterranean waters. There is the cosmopolitan traveller, who, having 'done Europe,' finds Algiers, of course, rather 'slow,' by contrast; and there is the very matter-of-fact traveller, who finds it all vanity, and says,--'Take ever so copious a stock of illusions with you to the bright Orient, and within half-an-hour after landing, you are as bankrupt as a bank of deposit... and the end of it all is, that this city of the "Arabian Nights" turns out to be as unromantic as Seven Dials.' There are lady travellers, who (enjoying special advantages by reason of their sex, and seeing much more than Englishmen of Moorish interiors) are perhaps best fitted to write books about this country; there are proselytizing ladies, who come with a mission, and end by getting themselves and their friends into trouble, by distributing tracts amongst the Moors; and there are ladies who (when their baggage is detained at one of the ports), endeavour to break down the barriers of official routine in an unexpected way. 'The douane did not choose to wake up and give us our luggage,' writes one, 'it was such a lazy douane; and though I went again and again and said pretty things to the gendarmes, it was of no use.' Another form of invasion is less polite, but it has been submitted to with tolerable grace on more than one occasion. Here is the latest instance. * * 'Under the Palms,' by the Hon. Lewis Wingfield. London, 1867. 'Being anxious to obtain a sketch of one of the quaint streets of the upper town, I wandered one morning up its dark alleys and intricate byeways; and wishing to establish myself at a window, I knocked at a promising door, and was answered by a mysterious voice from behind a lattice; the door opened of itself, and I marched upstairs unmindful of evil. In the upper court I was instantly surrounded by a troup of women, in the picturesque private dress of the Moorish ladies, unencumbered with veil or yashmak. 'These ladies dragged at my watch-chain, and pulled my hair, until finding myself in such very questionable society, I beat a hasty retreat, flying down stairs six steps at a time, slamming the doors in the faces of the houris, and eventually reaching the street in safety, while sundry slow Mussulmans wagged their beards and said that Christian dogs did not often enter such places with impunity.' It is pleasant to see with what good tempered grace, both the Moors and the French take this modern English invasion. We settle down for the winter here and build and plant vineyards, and make merry, in the same romping fashion that we do in Switzerland. We write to England about it, as if the country belonged to us, and of the climate, as if we had been the discoverers of its charms. But it is all so cozy and genial, and so much a matter of course, that we are apt to forget its oddity; we have friends in England who speak of Algiers with positive delight, whose faces brighten at the very mention of its name, and who always speak of going there, as of 'going home.' We have principally confined our remarks to places near Algiers, omitting all mention of Oran and Constantine, because it is impossible to work to much purpose if we travel about, and these places are worthy of distinct and separate visits. The longest journey that we would suggest to artists to make in one winter, would be to the cedar forests of Teniet-el-Had, because the scenery is so magnificent, and the forms of the cedars themselves, are perhaps the wildest and most wonderful to be met with in any part of the world. Hitherto, almost the only sketches that we have seen of this mountain forest have been by our own countrymen and countrywomen, for French artists do not as a rule go far from Algiers. With a few notable exceptions, * our experience of the works of Frenchmen in Algiers, has been anything but inspiring; we have known these artists closetted for weeks--copying and re-copying fanciful desert scenes, such as camels dying on sandy plains, under a sky of the heaviest opaque blue, and with cold grey shadows upon the ground--drawing imaginary Mauresques on impossible housetops, and in short working more from fancy than from facts; producing, it may be, most saleable pictures, but doing themselves and their _clientelles_, no other good thereby. It seems ungracious to speak thus of people from whom we invariably received civility and kindness; but the truth remains, we found them hard at work on 'pot-boilers' for exportation, and doing, like the photographers, a flourishing trade. * We shall not be accused of alluding in this category to such painters as the late Horace Vernêt; or to Gérome, Frère, and others who study here in winter time. We should endeavour to spend most of our time in the country, if we wish to make progress. If we stay in Algiers we shall of course be liable to some interruptions; we shall be too comfortable and perhaps become too luxurious. We must not dream away our time on a Turkey carpet, or on our _terrasse_, charming though the view may be. There is too much scent of henna, too strong a flavour of coffee and tobacco, there are, in short, too many of the comforts of life; we had better be off to the hills, where the air is cooler, and where we can live a free life under canvass for a while. * * It may not be thought very practical to suggest much sketching in the open air, as the light is generally considered too trying, and the glare too great, for any very successful work in colour. The tropical vegetation in Algeria gives continual shade and shelter, and the style of architecture, with cool open arcades to the houses, is admirably adapted for work; but failing the ordinary means of shelter, much may be done under a large umbrella, or from an ordinary military tent. In the Paris Exhibition of 1867, there were some portable, wooden Swiss houses, that seemed constructed for sketching purposes, as they could be taken down almost as easily as a tent, and removed from one place to another. A few months, spent amongst the mountains, will have a wonderfully bracing effect on Europeans, because both the eye and the mind will be satisfied and refreshed; although, it is a curious fact that on the uneducated, such scenes have little, or no, influence. We shall not easily forget 'the splendid comet of Arab civilization that has left such a trail of light behind it,' but cannot help remarking that neither the Arab in a state of nature, nor the Moor surrounded by every refinement and luxury, seem to be much influenced by the grace and beauty around them; and in this they do not stand alone, for it is, as we said, a notable fact? that contact with what is beautiful in scenery or in art, is of itself of little worth. * * To reverse the position--it is a fact, which may be proved bystatistics, that there is as much, if not more, benevolence, forbearance, and mutual help, existing amongst the lower classes in the 'black country,' as in any other part of the United Kingdom. What shall we say of the Sicilian peasant girl, born and bred on the heights of Taormina? What of the Swiss girl who spends her life, knee-deep in newly-mown hay? Does beautiful scenery seem to inspire them with noble thoughts? Does being 'face to face with Nature,' as the phrase goes, appear to give them refined tastes, or to elevate their ideas? Does it seem to lead to cleanliness, to godliness, or any other virtue? The answer is almost invariably, 'No;' they must be educated to it, and neither the present race of Arabs nor Moors are so educated. They do not seem to appreciate the works of their fathers, and will, probably before long, fall into the way of dressing themselves and building dwellings, after the style of their conquerors. With Europeans it is just the reverse, and the most educated and refined amongst us, are learning more and more to value, what an Eastern nation is casting off. We submit to the fashions of our time not without murmurs, which are sounds of hope. We put up with a hideous costume and more hideous streets--from habit or necessity as the case may be--but even custom will not altogether deaden the senses to a love for the beautiful. In costume this is especially noticeable. What is it that attracts the largest audiences to 'burlesque' representations at our theatres? Not the buffoonery, but the spectacle. The eye robbed of its natural food, seeks it in a number of roundabout ways--but it seeks it. What made the American people crowd to Ristori's performances in New York, over and over again? Not the novelty, not alone for the sake of being able to say that they had been there; but for the delight to the eye in contemplating forms of classic beauty, and the delight to the ear in hearing the poetry of the most musical language in the world, nobly spoken, although but few of the audience could understand a word. It was a libel upon the people to suggest that their attending these performances was affectation; it was an almost unconscious drawing out of that natural love for the beautiful, which is implanted somewhere, in every human breast, and which, in this case perhaps, gave the American audience a temporary relief from smartness, and angularity of body and mind. [Illustration: 0233] [Illustration: 0235] CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION. [Illustration: 9235] F the foregoing sketches have seemed to some of our readers, a thought too slight and discursive, and to be wanting in detail; it is because, perhaps, they have reflected a little too naturally, the habit of a painter's mind, and have followed out the principle of outdoor sketching, which is to 'hit off' as accurately as possible, the various points of interest that come under observation, and, in doing so, to give _colour_ rather than detail, and to aim principally at the rendering of atmosphere and effect. But for this, perhaps, most readers will be thankful, and for two reasons. First, because it is a fact, that English people as a rule, care little or nothing for Algeria as a colony--that they never have cared, and probably never will. Second, because, in spite of the assertion of a late writer, that 'Algeria is a country virtually unknown to Englishmen,' we believe that the English public has been literally inundated with books of travel and statistics, on this subject. It is only in its picturesque aspect, and as a winter residence for invalids, that Algiers will ever claim much interest for English people; and even in picturesqueness, it falls far short of other cities well known to Englishmen. There is nothing in costume to compare with the bazaars of Constantinople, or in architecture, to the bystreets of Trebizond; but Algeria is much more accessible from England, and that is our reason for selecting it. It has one special attraction, in which it stands almost alone, viz, that here we may see the two great tides of civilization--primitive and modern--the East and the West--meet and mingle without limit and without confusion. There is no violent collision and no decided fusion; but the general result is peaceful, and we are enabled to contemplate it at leisure; and have such intimate and quiet intercourse with the Oriental, as is nowhere else to be met with, we believe, in the world. In speaking thus enthusiastically of the advantages of Algeria, let us not be supposed to undervalue the beauties of England, or its unapproachable landscape and mountain scenery. The 'painter's camp' in the Highlands, is no doubt, the right place for a camp, but it is not the only right place; the spot where it was pitched is covered with snow as we write these lines. Moreover, it is not given to everyone to be able to _draw trees_, and it is a change and relief to many, to have landscape work that does not depend upon their successful delineation. In fine, for artists, Algiers seems perfect; a cheap place of residence with few 'distractions,' without many taxes or cares; with extraordinary opportunities for the study of Nature in her grandest aspects, and of character, costume, and architecture of a good old type. But what they really gain by working here is not easily written down, nor to be explained to others; nor is it all at once discovered by themselves. It has not been dinned into their ears by rote, or by rule, but rather inhaled, and (if we may so express it) taken in with the atmosphere they breathe. If they have not produced anything great or noble, they have at least infused more light and nature into their work, and have done something to counteract the tendency to that sickly sentimentality and artificialism, that is the curse of modern schools. We have been led to insist, perhaps a little too earnestly, on the good effects of sound work on a painter's mind, by the thought of what some of our foremost artists are doing at the present time. When painters of the highest aim and most refined intelligence, seem tending towards a system of mere decorative art; when Millais paints children, apparently, to display their dress, and devotes his great powers as a colourist almost exclusively to imitative work; when Leighton cultivates a style of refined Platonism which is not Attic and is sometimes scarcely human; when other painters of celebrity, that we need scarcely name spend their lives upon the working out of effective details; when the modern development of what is called Præ-Raphaelitism, seems to remove us farther than ever from what should be the aim of a great painter, we may be pardoned for insisting upon the benefits of change of air and change of scene. But not only to artists and amateurs--to those fortunate people whose time and means are as as much at their own disposal as the genii of Aladdin's lamp; to those who can get 'ordered abroad' at the season when it is most pleasant to go; to those who live at high pressure for half the year, and need a change--not so much perhaps, from winter's gloom--as from the 'clouds that linger on the mind's horizon;' to all who seek a 'new sensation,' we would say, once more--pay a visit to the 'city of pirates,' to the 'diamond set in emeralds,' on the African shore. POSTSCRIPT TO SECOND EDITION. _We have been requested by several readers to state, in a New Edition, the readiest and cheapest method of reaching Algeria from England. There is no quicker or cheaper way than to go through France to Marseilles, and thence by steamer direct to Algiers. The cost of the journey from London to Algiers varies from to £10, according to 'class.' The steamers from Marseilles leave on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at mid-day: the cheapest boats leave on Thursdays, their first-class fare, including living, being about £3 3s. All other information respecting this journey, can be obtained by reference to Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide. The best months for a visit to Algeria are from November to April. Travellers should obtain the French 'Guide de l'Algerie,' published by Hachette, Paris; also 'Last Winter in Algeria,' by Mrs. Evans, a most useful book for visitors. Hotels in Algiers:--'L Orient,' 'La Regence' 'L Europe,' &c._ 
3296	----	THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE By Saint Augustine Bishop of Hippo Translated by E. B. Pusey (Edward Bouverie) AD 401 BOOK I Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? and, again, to know Thee or to call on Thee? for who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee? for he that knoweth Thee not, may call on Thee as other than Thou art. Or, is it rather, that we call on Thee that we may know Thee? but how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher? and they that seek the Lord shall praise Him: for they that seek shall find Him, and they that find shall praise Him. I will seek Thee, Lord, by calling on Thee; and will call on Thee, believing in Thee; for to us hast Thou been preached. My faith, Lord, shall call on Thee, which Thou hast given me, wherewith Thou hast inspired me, through the Incarnation of Thy Son, through the ministry of the Preacher. And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since, when I call for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? and what room is there within me, whither my God can come into me? whither can God come into me, God who made heaven and earth? is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught in me that can contain Thee? do then heaven and earth, which Thou hast made, and wherein Thou hast made me, contain Thee? or, because nothing which exists could exist without Thee, doth therefore whatever exists contain Thee? Since, then, I too exist, why do I seek that Thou shouldest enter into me, who were not, wert Thou not in me? Why? because I am not gone down in hell, and yet Thou art there also. For if I go down into hell, Thou art there. I could not be then, O my God, could not be at all, wert Thou not in me; or, rather, unless I were in Thee, of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things? Even so, Lord, even so. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst Thou enter into me? for whither can I go beyond heaven and earth, that thence my God should come into me, who hath said, I fill the heaven and the earth. Do the heaven and earth then contain Thee, since Thou fillest them? or dost Thou fill them and yet overflow, since they do not contain Thee? And whither, when the heaven and the earth are filled, pourest Thou forth the remainder of Thyself? or hast Thou no need that aught contain Thee, who containest all things, since what Thou fillest Thou fillest by containing it? for the vessels which Thou fillest uphold Thee not, since, though they were broken, Thou wert not poured out. And when Thou art poured out on us, Thou art not cast down, but Thou upliftest us; Thou art not dissipated, but Thou gatherest us. But Thou who fillest all things, fillest Thou them with Thy whole self? or, since all things cannot contain Thee wholly, do they contain part of Thee? and all at once the same part? or each its own part, the greater more, the smaller less? And is, then one part of Thee greater, another less? or, art Thou wholly every where, while nothing contains Thee wholly? What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong, stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion; art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what had I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to him that speaketh not, since mute are even the most eloquent. Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good! What art Thou to me? In Thy pity, teach me to utter it. Or what am I to Thee that Thou demandest my love, and, if I give it not, art wroth with me, and threatenest me with grievous woes? Is it then a slight woe to love Thee not? Oh! for Thy mercies' sake, tell me, O Lord my God, what Thou art unto me. Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. So speak, that I may hear. Behold, Lord, my heart is before Thee; open Thou the ears thereof, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. After this voice let me haste, and take hold on Thee. Hide not Thy face from me. Let me die--lest I die--only let me see Thy face. Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak. Lord, Thou knowest. Have I not confessed against myself my transgressions unto Thee, and Thou, my God, hast forgiven the iniquity of my heart? I contend not in judgment with Thee, who art the truth; I fear to deceive myself; lest mine iniquity lie unto itself. Therefore I contend not in judgment with Thee; for if Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall abide it? Yet suffer me to speak unto Thy mercy, me, dust and ashes. Yet suffer me to speak, since I speak to Thy mercy, and not to scornful man. Thou too, perhaps, despisest me, yet wilt Thou return and have compassion upon me. For what would I say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I came into this dying life (shall I call it?) or living death. Then immediately did the comforts of Thy compassion take me up, as I heard (for I remember it not) from the parents of my flesh, out of whose substance Thou didst sometime fashion me. Thus there received me the comforts of woman's milk. For neither my mother nor my nurses stored their own breasts for me; but Thou didst bestow the food of my infancy through them, according to Thine ordinance, whereby Thou distributest Thy riches through the hidden springs of all things. Thou also gavest me to desire no more than Thou gavest; and to my nurses willingly to give me what Thou gavest them. For they, with a heaven-taught affection, willingly gave me what they abounded with from Thee. For this my good from them, was good for them. Nor, indeed, from them was it, but through them; for from Thee, O God, are all good things, and from my God is all my health. This I since learned, Thou, through these Thy gifts, within me and without, proclaiming Thyself unto me. For then I knew but to suck; to repose in what pleased, and cry at what offended my flesh; nothing more. Afterwards I began to smile; first in sleep, then waking: for so it was told me of myself, and I believed it; for we see the like in other infants, though of myself I remember it not. Thus, little by little, I became conscious where I was; and to have a wish to express my wishes to those who could content them, and I could not; for the wishes were within me, and they without; nor could they by any sense of theirs enter within my spirit. So I flung about at random limbs and voice, making the few signs I could, and such as I could, like, though in truth very little like, what I wished. And when I was not presently obeyed (my wishes being hurtful or unintelligible), then I was indignant with my elders for not submitting to me, with those owing me no service, for not serving me; and avenged myself on them by tears. Such have I learnt infants to be from observing them; and that I was myself such, they, all unconscious, have shown me better than my nurses who knew it. And, lo! my infancy died long since, and I live. But Thou, Lord, who for ever livest, and in whom nothing dies: for before the foundation of the worlds, and before all that can be called "before," Thou art, and art God and Lord of all which Thou hast created: in Thee abide, fixed for ever, the first causes of all things unabiding; and of all things changeable, the springs abide in Thee unchangeable: and in Thee live the eternal reasons of all things unreasoning and temporal. Say, Lord, to me, Thy suppliant; say, all-pitying, to me, Thy pitiable one; say, did my infancy succeed another age of mine that died before it? was it that which I spent within my mother's womb? for of that I have heard somewhat, and have myself seen women with child? and what before that life again, O God my joy, was I any where or any body? For this have I none to tell me, neither father nor mother, nor experience of others, nor mine own memory. Dost Thou mock me for asking this, and bid me praise Thee and acknowledge Thee, for that I do know? I acknowledge Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise Thee for my first rudiments of being, and my infancy, whereof I remember nothing; for Thou hast appointed that man should from others guess much as to himself; and believe much on the strength of weak females. Even then I had being and life, and (at my infancy's close) I could seek for signs whereby to make known to others my sensations. Whence could such a being be, save from Thee, Lord? Shall any be his own artificer? or can there elsewhere be derived any vein, which may stream essence and life into us, save from thee, O Lord, in whom essence and life are one? for Thou Thyself art supremely Essence and Life. For Thou art most high, and art not changed, neither in Thee doth to-day come to a close; yet in Thee doth it come to a close; because all such things also are in Thee. For they had no way to pass away, unless Thou upheldest them. And since Thy years fail not, Thy years are one to-day. How many of ours and our fathers' years have flowed away through Thy "to-day," and from it received the measure and the mould of such being as they had; and still others shall flow away, and so receive the mould of their degree of being. But Thou art still the same, and all things of tomorrow, and all beyond, and all of yesterday, and all behind it, Thou hast done to-day. What is it to me, though any comprehend not this? Let him also rejoice and say, What thing is this? Let him rejoice even thus! and be content rather by not discovering to discover Thee, than by discovering not to discover Thee. Hear, O God. Alas, for man's sin! So saith man, and Thou pitiest him; for Thou madest him, but sin in him Thou madest not. Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? for in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth. Who remindeth me? doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself I remember not? What then was my sin? was it that I hung upon the breast and cried? for should I now so do for food suitable to my age, justly should I be laughed at and reproved. What I then did was worthy reproof; but since I could not understand reproof, custom and reason forbade me to be reproved. For those habits, when grown, we root out and cast away. Now no man, though he prunes, wittingly casts away what is good. Or was it then good, even for a while, to cry for what, if given, would hurt? bitterly to resent, that persons free, and its own elders, yea, the very authors of its birth, served it not? that many besides, wiser than it, obeyed not the nod of its good pleasure? to do its best to strike and hurt, because commands were not obeyed, which had been obeyed to its hurt? The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence. Myself have seen and known even a baby envious; it could not speak, yet it turned pale and looked bitterly on its foster-brother. Who knows not this? Mothers and nurses tell you that they allay these things by I know not what remedies. Is that too innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing in rich abundance, not to endure one to share it, though in extremest need, and whose very life as yet depends thereon? We bear gently with all this, not as being no or slight evils, but because they will disappear as years increase; for, though tolerated now, the very same tempers are utterly intolerable when found in riper years. Thou, then, O Lord my God, who gavest life to this my infancy, furnishing thus with senses (as we see) the frame Thou gavest, compacting its limbs, ornamenting its proportions, and, for its general good and safety, implanting in it all vital functions, Thou commandest me to praise Thee in these things, to confess unto Thee, and sing unto Thy name, Thou most Highest. For Thou art God, Almighty and Good, even hadst Thou done nought but only this, which none could do but Thou: whose Unity is the mould of all things; who out of Thy own fairness makest all things fair; and orderest all things by Thy law. This age then, Lord, whereof I have no remembrance, which I take on others' word, and guess from other infants that I have passed, true though the guess be, I am yet loth to count in this life of mine which I live in this world. For no less than that which I spent in my mother's womb, is it hid from me in the shadows of forgetfulness. But if I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me, where, I beseech Thee, O my God, where, Lord, or when, was I Thy servant guiltless? But, lo! that period I pass by; and what have I now to do with that, of which I can recall no vestige? Passing hence from infancy, I came to boyhood, or rather it came to me, displacing infancy. Nor did that depart,--(for whither went it?)--and yet it was no more. For I was no longer a speechless infant, but a speaking boy. This I remember; and have since observed how I learned to speak. It was not that my elders taught me words (as, soon after, other learning) in any set method; but I, longing by cries and broken accents and various motions of my limbs to express my thoughts, that so I might have my will, and yet unable to express all I willed, or to whom I willed, did myself, by the understanding which Thou, my God, gavest me, practise the sounds in my memory. When they named any thing, and as they spoke turned towards it, I saw and remembered that they called what they would point out by the name they uttered. And that they meant this thing and no other was plain from the motion of their body, the natural language, as it were, of all nations, expressed by the countenance, glances of the eye, gestures of the limbs, and tones of the voice, indicating the affections of the mind, as it pursues, possesses, rejects, or shuns. And thus by constantly hearing words, as they occurred in various sentences, I collected gradually for what they stood; and having broken in my mouth to these signs, I thereby gave utterance to my will. Thus I exchanged with those about me these current signs of our wills, and so launched deeper into the stormy intercourse of human life, yet depending on parental authority and the beck of elders. O God my God, what miseries and mockeries did I now experience, when obedience to my teachers was proposed to me, as proper in a boy, in order that in this world I might prosper, and excel in tongue-science, which should serve to the "praise of men," and to deceitful riches. Next I was put to school to get learning, in which I (poor wretch) knew not what use there was; and yet, if idle in learning, I was beaten. For this was judged right by our forefathers; and many, passing the same course before us, framed for us weary paths, through which we were fain to pass; multiplying toil and grief upon the sons of Adam. But, Lord, we found that men called upon Thee, and we learnt from them to think of Thee (according to our powers) as of some great One, who, though hidden from our senses, couldest hear and help us. For so I began, as a boy, to pray to Thee, my aid and refuge; and broke the fetters of my tongue to call on Thee, praying Thee, though small, yet with no small earnestness, that I might not be beaten at school. And when Thou heardest me not (not thereby giving me over to folly), my elders, yea my very parents, who yet wished me no ill, mocked my stripes, my then great and grievous ill. Is there, Lord, any of soul so great, and cleaving to Thee with so intense affection (for a sort of stupidity will in a way do it); but is there any one who, from cleaving devoutly to Thee, is endued with so great a spirit, that he can think as lightly of the racks and hooks and other torments (against which, throughout all lands, men call on Thee with extreme dread), mocking at those by whom they are feared most bitterly, as our parents mocked the torments which we suffered in boyhood from our masters? For we feared not our torments less; nor prayed we less to Thee to escape them. And yet we sinned, in writing or reading or studying less than was exacted of us. For we wanted not, O Lord, memory or capacity, whereof Thy will gave enough for our age; but our sole delight was play; and for this we were punished by those who yet themselves were doing the like. But elder folks' idleness is called "business"; that of boys, being really the same, is punished by those elders; and none commiserates either boys or men. For will any of sound discretion approve of my being beaten as a boy, because, by playing a ball, I made less progress in studies which I was to learn, only that, as a man, I might play more unbeseemingly? and what else did he who beat me? who, if worsted in some trifling discussion with his fellow-tutor, was more embittered and jealous than I when beaten at ball by a play-fellow? And yet, I sinned herein, O Lord God, the Creator and Disposer of all things in nature, of sin the Disposer only, O Lord my God, I sinned in transgressing the commands of my parents and those of my masters. For what they, with whatever motive, would have me learn, I might afterwards have put to good use. For I disobeyed, not from a better choice, but from love of play, loving the pride of victory in my contests, and to have my ears tickled with lying fables, that they might itch the more; the same curiosity flashing from my eyes more and more, for the shows and games of my elders. Yet those who give these shows are in such esteem, that almost all wish the same for their children, and yet are very willing that they should be beaten, if those very games detain them from the studies, whereby they would have them attain to be the givers of them. Look with pity, Lord, on these things, and deliver us who call upon Thee now; deliver those too who call not on Thee yet, that they may call on Thee, and Thou mayest deliver them. As a boy, then, I had already heard of an eternal life, promised us through the humility of the Lord our God stooping to our pride; and even from the womb of my mother, who greatly hoped in Thee, I was sealed with the mark of His cross and salted with His salt. Thou sawest, Lord, how while yet a boy, being seized on a time with sudden oppression of the stomach, and like near to death--Thou sawest, my God (for Thou wert my keeper), with what eagerness and what faith I sought, from the pious care of my mother and Thy Church, the mother of us all, the baptism of Thy Christ, my God and Lord. Whereupon the mother of my flesh, being much troubled (since, with a heart pure in Thy faith, she even more lovingly travailed in birth of my salvation), would in eager haste have provided for my consecration and cleansing by the health-giving sacraments, confessing Thee, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins, unless I had suddenly recovered. And so, as if I must needs be again polluted should I live, my cleansing was deferred, because the defilements of sin would, after that washing, bring greater and more perilous guilt. I then already believed: and my mother, and the whole household, except my father: yet did not he prevail over the power of my mother's piety in me, that as he did not yet believe, so neither should I. For it was her earnest care that Thou my God, rather than he, shouldest be my father; and in this Thou didst aid her to prevail over her husband, whom she, the better, obeyed, therein also obeying Thee, who hast so commanded. I beseech Thee, my God, I would fain know, if so Thou willest, for what purpose my baptism was then deferred? was it for my good that the rein was laid loose, as it were, upon me, for me to sin? or was it not laid loose? If not, why does it still echo in our ears on all sides, "Let him alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptised?" but as to bodily health, no one says, "Let him be worse wounded, for he is not yet healed." How much better then, had I been at once healed; and then, by my friends' and my own, my soul's recovered health had been kept safe in Thy keeping who gavest it. Better truly. But how many and great waves of temptation seemed to hang over me after my boyhood! These my mother foresaw; and preferred to expose to them the clay whence I might afterwards be moulded, than the very cast, when made. In boyhood itself, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth), I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Yet I was forced; and this was well done towards me, but I did not well; for, unless forced, I had not learnt. But no one doth well against his will, even though what he doth, be well. Yet neither did they well who forced me, but what was well came to me from Thee, my God. For they were regardless how I should employ what they forced me to learn, except to satiate the insatiate desires of a wealthy beggary, and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the error of all who urged me to learn; and my own, who would not learn, Thou didst use for my punishment--a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and so great a sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst well for me; and by my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own punishment. But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first lessons, reading, writing and arithmetic, I thought as great a burden and penalty as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the sin and vanity of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that passeth away and cometh not again? For those first lessons were better certainly, because more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading what I find written, and myself writing what I will; whereas in the others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love; the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life. For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not himself; weeping the death of Dido for love to Aeneas, but weeping not his own death for want of love to Thee, O God. Thou light of my heart, Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who givest vigour to my mind, who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not. I committed fornication against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed "Well done! well done!" for the friendship of this world is fornication against Thee; and "Well done! well done!" echoes on till one is ashamed not to be thus a man. And for all this I wept not, I who wept for Dido slain, and "seeking by the sword a stroke and wound extreme," myself seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest and lowest of Thy creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth. And if forbid to read all this, I was grieved that I might not read what grieved me. Madness like this is thought a higher and a richer learning, than that by which I learned to read and write. But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth tell me, "Not so, not so. Far better was that first study." For, lo, I would readily forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all the rest, rather than how to read and write. But over the entrance of the Grammar School is a vail drawn! true; yet is this not so much an emblem of aught recondite, as a cloak of error. Let not those, whom I no longer fear, cry out against me, while I confess to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and acquiesce in the condemnation of my evil ways, that I may love Thy good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar-learning cry out against me. For if I question them whether it be true that Aeneas came on a time to Carthage, as the poet tells, the less learned will reply that they know not, the more learned that he never did. But should I ask with what letters the name "Aeneas" is written, every one who has learnt this will answer me aright, as to the signs which men have conventionally settled. If, again, I should ask which might be forgotten with least detriment to the concerns of life, reading and writing or these poetic fictions? who does not foresee what all must answer who have not wholly forgotten themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather loved the one and hated the other. "One and one, two"; "two and two, four"; this was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse lined with armed men," and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade and sad similitude," were the choice spectacle of my vanity. Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales? For Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most sweetly vain, yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was Homer. Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments. Time was also (as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends, smiling and sportively encouraging me. This I learned without any pressure of punishment to urge me on, for my heart urged me to give birth to its conceptions, which I could only do by learning words not of those who taught, but of those who talked with me; in whose ears also I gave birth to the thoughts, whatever I conceived. No doubt, then, that a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a frightful enforcement. Only this enforcement restrains the rovings of that freedom, through Thy laws, O my God, Thy laws, from the master's cane to the martyr's trials, being able to temper for us a wholesome bitter, recalling us to Thyself from that deadly pleasure which lures us from Thee. Hear, Lord, my prayer; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee all Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that Thou mightest become a delight to me above all the allurements which I once pursued; that I may most entirely love Thee, and clasp Thy hand with all my affections, and Thou mayest yet rescue me from every temptation, even unto the end. For lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful thing my childhood learned; for Thy service, that I speak, write, read, reckon. For Thou didst grant me Thy discipline, while I was learning vanities; and my sin of delighting in those vanities Thou hast forgiven. In them, indeed, I learnt many a useful word, but these may as well be learned in things not vain; and that is the safe path for the steps of youth. But woe is thee, thou torrent of human custom! Who shall stand against thee? how long shalt thou not be dried up? how long roll the sons of Eve into that huge and hideous ocean, which even they scarcely overpass who climb the cross? Did not I read in thee of Jove the thunderer and the adulterer? both, doubtless, he could not be; but so the feigned thunder might countenance and pander to real adultery. And now which of our gowned masters lends a sober ear to one who from their own school cries out, "These were Homer's fictions, transferring things human to the gods; would he had brought down things divine to us!" Yet more truly had he said, "These are indeed his fictions; but attributing a divine nature to wicked men, that crimes might be no longer crimes, and whoso commits them might seem to imitate not abandoned men, but the celestial gods." And yet, thou hellish torrent, into thee are cast the sons of men with rich rewards, for compassing such learning; and a great solemnity is made of it, when this is going on in the forum, within sight of laws appointing a salary beside the scholar's payments; and thou lashest thy rocks and roarest, "Hence words are learnt; hence eloquence; most necessary to gain your ends, or maintain opinions." As if we should have never known such words as "golden shower," "lap," "beguile," "temples of the heavens," or others in that passage, unless Terence had brought a lewd youth upon the stage, setting up Jupiter as his example of seduction. "Viewing a picture, where the tale was drawn, Of Jove's descending in a golden shower To Danae's lap a woman to beguile." And then mark how he excites himself to lust as by celestial authority: "And what God? Great Jove, Who shakes heaven's highest temples with his thunder, And I, poor mortal man, not do the same! I did it, and with all my heart I did it." Not one whit more easily are the words learnt for all this vileness; but by their means the vileness is committed with less shame. Not that I blame the words, being, as it were, choice and precious vessels; but that wine of error which is drunk to us in them by intoxicated teachers; and if we, too, drink not, we are beaten, and have no sober judge to whom we may appeal. Yet, O my God (in whose presence I now without hurt may remember this), all this unhappily I learnt willingly with great delight, and for this was pronounced a hopeful boy. Bear with me, my God, while I say somewhat of my wit, Thy gift, and on what dotages I wasted it. For a task was set me, troublesome enough to my soul, upon terms of praise or shame, and fear of stripes, to speak the words of Juno, as she raged and mourned that she could not "This Trojan prince from Latinum turn." Which words I had heard that Juno never uttered; but we were forced to go astray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to say in prose much what he expressed in verse. And his speaking was most applauded, in whom the passions of rage and grief were most preeminent, and clothed in the most fitting language, maintaining the dignity of the character. What is it to me, O my true life, my God, that my declamation was applauded above so many of my own age and class? is not all this smoke and wind? and was there nothing else whereon to exercise my wit and tongue? Thy praises, Lord, Thy praises might have stayed the yet tender shoot of my heart by the prop of Thy Scriptures; so had it not trailed away amid these empty trifles, a defiled prey for the fowls of the air. For in more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels. But what marvel that I was thus carried away to vanities, and went out from Thy presence, O my God, when men were set before me as models, who, if in relating some action of theirs, in itself not ill, they committed some barbarism or solecism, being censured, were abashed; but when in rich and adorned and well-ordered discourse they related their own disordered life, being bepraised, they gloried? These things Thou seest, Lord, and holdest Thy peace; long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. Wilt Thou hold Thy peace for ever? and even now Thou drawest out of this horrible gulf the soul that seeketh Thee, that thirsteth for Thy pleasures, whose heart saith unto Thee, I have sought Thy face; Thy face, Lord, will I seek. For darkened affections is removal from Thee. For it is not by our feet, or change of place, that men leave Thee, or return unto Thee. Or did that Thy younger son look out for horses or chariots, or ships, fly with visible wings, or journey by the motion of his limbs, that he might in a far country waste in riotous living all Thou gavest at his departure? a loving Father, when Thou gavest, and more loving unto him, when he returned empty. So then in lustful, that is, in darkened affections, is the true distance from Thy face. Behold, O Lord God, yea, behold patiently as Thou art wont how carefully the sons of men observe the covenanted rules of letters and syllables received from those who spake before them, neglecting the eternal covenant of everlasting salvation received from Thee. Insomuch, that a teacher or learner of the hereditary laws of pronunciation will more offend men by speaking without the aspirate, of a "uman being," in despite of the laws of grammar, than if he, a "human being," hate a "human being" in despite of Thine. As if any enemy could be more hurtful than the hatred with which he is incensed against him; or could wound more deeply him whom he persecutes, than he wounds his own soul by his enmity. Assuredly no science of letters can be so innate as the record of conscience, "that he is doing to another what from another he would be loth to suffer." How deep are Thy ways, O God, Thou only great, that sittest silent on high and by an unwearied law dispensing penal blindness to lawless desires. In quest of the fame of eloquence, a man standing before a human judge, surrounded by a human throng, declaiming against his enemy with fiercest hatred, will take heed most watchfully, lest, by an error of the tongue, he murder the word "human being"; but takes no heed, lest, through the fury of his spirit, he murder the real human being. This was the world at whose gate unhappy I lay in my boyhood; this the stage where I had feared more to commit a barbarism, than having committed one, to envy those who had not. These things I speak and confess to Thee, my God; for which I had praise from them, whom I then thought it all virtue to please. For I saw not the abyss of vileness, wherein I was cast away from Thine eyes. Before them what more foul than I was already, displeasing even such as myself? with innumerable lies deceiving my tutor, my masters, my parents, from love of play, eagerness to see vain shows and restlessness to imitate them! Thefts also I committed, from my parents' cellar and table, enslaved by greediness, or that I might have to give to boys, who sold me their play, which all the while they liked no less than I. In this play, too, I often sought unfair conquests, conquered myself meanwhile by vain desire of preeminence. And what could I so ill endure, or, when I detected it, upbraided I so fiercely, as that I was doing to others? and for which if, detected, I was upbraided, I chose rather to quarrel than to yield. And is this the innocence of boyhood? Not so, Lord, not so; I cry Thy mercy, my God. For these very sins, as riper years succeed, these very sins are transferred from tutors and masters, from nuts and balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and manors and slaves, just as severer punishments displace the cane. It was the low stature then of childhood which Thou our King didst commend as an emblem of lowliness, when Thou saidst, Of such is the kingdom of heaven. Yet, Lord, to Thee, the Creator and Governor of the universe, most excellent and most good, thanks were due to Thee our God, even hadst Thou destined for me boyhood only. For even then I was, I lived, and felt; and had an implanted providence over my well-being--a trace of that mysterious Unity whence I was derived; I guarded by the inward sense the entireness of my senses, and in these minute pursuits, and in my thoughts on things minute, I learnt to delight in truth, I hated to be deceived, had a vigorous memory, was gifted with speech, was soothed by friendship, avoided pain, baseness, ignorance. In so small a creature, what was not wonderful, not admirable? But all are gifts of my God: it was not I who gave them me; and good these are, and these together are myself. Good, then, is He that made me, and He is my good; and before Him will I exult for every good which of a boy I had. For it was my sin, that not in Him, but in His creatures-myself and others--I sought for pleasures, sublimities, truths, and so fell headlong into sorrows, confusions, errors. Thanks be to Thee, my joy and my glory and my confidence, my God, thanks be to Thee for Thy gifts; but do Thou preserve them to me. For so wilt Thou preserve me, and those things shall be enlarged and perfected which Thou hast given me, and I myself shall be with Thee, since even to be Thou hast given me. BOOK II I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these various and shadowy loves: my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men. And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be loved? but I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship's bright boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscence of the flesh, and the bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a gulf of flagitiousnesses. Thy wrath had gathered over me, and I knew it not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul, and I strayed further from Thee, and Thou lettest me alone, and I was tossed about, and wasted, and dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and Thou heldest Thy peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then heldest Thy peace, and I wandered further and further from Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness. Oh! that some one had then attempered my disorder, and turned to account the fleeting beauties of these, the extreme points of Thy creation! had put a bound to their pleasureableness, that so the tides of my youth might have cast themselves upon the marriage shore, if they could not be calmed, and kept within the object of a family, as Thy law prescribes, O Lord: who this way formest the offspring of this our death, being able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns which were excluded from Thy paradise? For Thy omnipotency is not far from us, even when we be far from Thee. Else ought I more watchfully to have heeded the voice from the clouds: Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I spare you. And it is good for a man not to touch a woman. And, he that is unmarried thinketh of the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things of this world, how he may please his wife. To these words I should have listened more attentively, and being severed for the kingdom of heaven's sake, had more happily awaited Thy embraces; but I, poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following the rushing of my own tide, forsaking Thee, and exceeded all Thy limits; yet I escaped not Thy scourges. For what mortal can? For Thou wert ever with me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures without alloy. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in Thee, O Lord, who teachest by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal; and killest us, lest we die from Thee. Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of Thy house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the madness of lust (to which human shamelessness giveth free licence, though unlicensed by Thy laws) took the rule over me, and I resigned myself wholly to it? My friends meanwhile took no care by marriage to save my fall; their only care was that I should learn to speak excellently, and be a persuasive orator. For that year were my studies intermitted: whilst after my return from Madaura (a neighbour city, whither I had journeyed to learn grammar and rhetoric), the expenses for a further journey to Carthage were being provided for me; and that rather by the resolution than the means of my father, who was but a poor freeman of Thagaste. To whom tell I this? not to Thee, my God; but before Thee to mine own kind, even to that small portion of mankind as may light upon these writings of mine. And to what purpose? that whosoever reads this, may think out of what depths we are to cry unto Thee. For what is nearer to Thine ears than a confessing heart, and a life of faith? Who did not extol my father, for that beyond the ability of his means, he would furnish his son with all necessaries for a far journey for his studies' sake? For many far abler citizens did no such thing for their children. But yet this same father had no concern how I grew towards Thee, or how chaste I were; so that I were but copious in speech, however barren I were to Thy culture, O God, who art the only true and good Lord of Thy field, my heart. But while in that my sixteenth year I lived with my parents, leaving all school for a while (a season of idleness being interposed through the narrowness of my parents' fortunes), the briers of unclean desires grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. When that my father saw me at the baths, now growing towards manhood, and endued with a restless youthfulness, he, as already hence anticipating his descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing in that tumult of the senses wherein the world forgetteth Thee its Creator, and becometh enamoured of Thy creature, instead of Thyself, through the fumes of that invisible wine of its self-will, turning aside and bowing down to the very basest things. But in my mother's breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, and the foundation of Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet but a Catechumen, and that but recently. She then was startled with a holy fear and trembling; and though I was not as yet baptised, feared for me those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their back to Thee, and not their face. Woe is me! and dare I say that Thou heldest Thy peace, O my God, while I wandered further from Thee? Didst Thou then indeed hold Thy peace to me? And whose but Thine were these words which by my mother, Thy faithful one, Thou sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great anxiety warned me, "not to commit fornication; but especially never to defile another man's wife." These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not: and I thought Thou wert silent and that it was she who spake; by whom Thou wert not silent unto me; and in her wast despised by me, her son, the son of Thy handmaid, Thy servant. But I knew it not; and ran headlong with such blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed of a less shamelessness, when I heard them boast of their flagitiousness, yea, and the more boasting, the more they were degraded: and I took pleasure, not only in the pleasure of the deed, but in the praise. What is worthy of dispraise but vice? But I made myself worse than I was, that I might not be dispraised; and when in any thing I had not sinned as the abandoned ones, I would say that I had done what I had not done, that I might not seem contemptible in proportion as I was innocent; or of less account, the more chaste. Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, and wallowed in the mire thereof, as if in a bed of spices and precious ointments. And that I might cleave the faster to its very centre, the invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, for that I was easy to be seduced. Neither did the mother of my flesh (who had now fled out of the centre of Babylon, yet went more slowly in the skirts thereof as she advised me to chastity, so heed what she had heard of me from her husband, as to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection, if it could not be pared away to the quick) what she felt to be pestilent at present and for the future dangerous. She heeded not this, for she feared lest a wife should prove a clog and hindrance to my hopes. Not those hopes of the world to come, which my mother reposed in Thee; but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too desirous I should attain; my father, because he had next to no thought of Thee, and of me but vain conceits; my mother, because she accounted that those usual courses of learning would not only be no hindrance, but even some furtherance towards attaining Thee. For thus I conjecture, recalling, as well as I may, the disposition of my parents. The reins, meantime, were slackened to me, beyond all temper of due severity, to spend my time in sport, yea, even unto dissoluteness in whatsoever I affected. And in all was a mist, intercepting from me, O my God, the brightness of Thy truth; and mine iniquity burst out as from very fatness. Theft is punished by Thy law, O Lord, and the law written in the hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not. For what thief will abide a thief? not even a rich thief, one stealing through want. Yet I lusted to thieve, and did it, compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through a cloyedness of well-doing, and a pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole that, of which I had enough, and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself. A pear tree there was near our vineyard, laden with fruit, tempting neither for colour nor taste. To shake and rob this, some lewd young fellows of us went, late one night (having according to our pestilent custom prolonged our sports in the streets till then), and took huge loads, not for our eating, but to fling to the very hogs, having only tasted them. And this, but to do what we liked only, because it was misliked. Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, which Thou hadst pity upon in the bottom of the bottomless pit. Now, behold, let my heart tell Thee what it sought there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill, but the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault itself. Foul soul, falling from Thy firmament to utter destruction; not seeking aught through the shame, but the shame itself! For there is an attractiveness in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver, and all things; and in bodily touch, sympathy hath much influence, and each other sense hath his proper object answerably tempered. Worldy honour hath also its grace, and the power of overcoming, and of mastery; whence springs also the thirst of revenge. But yet, to obtain all these, we may not depart from Thee, O Lord, nor decline from Thy law. The life also which here we live hath its own enchantment, through a certain proportion of its own, and a correspondence with all things beautiful here below. Human friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by reason of the unity formed of many souls. Upon occasion of all these, and the like, is sin committed, while through an immoderate inclination towards these goods of the lowest order, the better and higher are forsaken,--Thou, our Lord God, Thy truth, and Thy law. For these lower things have their delights, but not like my God, who made all things; for in Him doth the righteous delight, and He is the joy of the upright in heart. When, then, we ask why a crime was done, we believe it not, unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and beatific goods, they be abject and low. A man hath murdered another; why? he loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, was on fire to be revenged. Would any commit murder upon no cause, delighted simply in murdering? who would believe it? for as for that furious and savage man, of whom it is said that he was gratuitously evil and cruel, yet is the cause assigned; "lest" (saith he) "through idleness hand or heart should grow inactive." And to what end? that, through that practice of guilt, he might, having taken the city, attain to honours, empire, riches, and be freed from fear of the laws, and his embarrassments from domestic needs, and consciousness of villainies. So then, not even Catiline himself loved his own villainies, but something else, for whose sake he did them. What then did wretched I so love in thee, thou theft of mine, thou deed of darkness, in that sixteenth year of my age? Lovely thou wert not, because thou wert theft. But art thou any thing, that thus I speak to thee? Fair were the pears we stole, because they were Thy creation, Thou fairest of all, Creator of all, Thou good God; God, the sovereign good and my true good. Fair were those pears, but not them did my wretched soul desire; for I had store of better, and those I gathered, only that I might steal. For, when gathered, I flung them away, my only feast therein being my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy. For if aught of those pears came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin. And now, O Lord my God, I enquire what in that theft delighted me; and behold it hath no loveliness; I mean not such loveliness as in justice and wisdom; nor such as is in the mind and memory, and senses, and animal life of man; nor yet as the stars are glorious and beautiful in their orbs; or the earth, or sea, full of embryo-life, replacing by its birth that which decayeth; nay, nor even that false and shadowy beauty which belongeth to deceiving vices. For so doth pride imitate exaltedness; whereas Thou alone art God exalted over all. Ambition, what seeks it, but honours and glory? whereas Thou alone art to be honoured above all, and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and uninjuriousness; because nothing is found more single than Thee: and what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest besides the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but Thou art the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: but Thou art the most overflowing Giver of all good. Covetousness would possess many things; and Thou possessest all things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more excellent than Thou? Anger seeks revenge: who revenges more justly than Thou? Fear startles at things unwonted and sudden, which endangers things beloved, and takes forethought for their safety; but to Thee what unwonted or sudden, or who separateth from Thee what Thou lovest? Or where but with Thee is unshaken safety? Grief pines away for things lost, the delight of its desires; because it would have nothing taken from it, as nothing can from Thee. Thus doth the soul commit fornication, when she turns from Thee, seeking without Thee, what she findeth not pure and untainted, till she returns to Thee. Thus all pervertedly imitate Thee, who remove far from Thee, and lift themselves up against Thee. But even by thus imitating Thee, they imply Thee to be the Creator of all nature; whence there is no place whither altogether to retire from Thee. What then did I love in that theft? and wherein did I even corruptly and pervertedly imitate my Lord? Did I wish even by stealth to do contrary to Thy law, because by power I could not, so that being a prisoner, I might mimic a maimed liberty by doing with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Thy Omnipotency? Behold, Thy servant, fleeing from his Lord, and obtaining a shadow. O rottenness, O monstrousness of life, and depth of death! could I like what I might not, only because I might not? What shall I render unto the Lord, that, whilst my memory recalls these things, my soul is not affrighted at them? I will love Thee, O Lord, and thank Thee, and confess unto Thy name; because Thou hast forgiven me these so great and heinous deeds of mine. To Thy grace I ascribe it, and to Thy mercy, that Thou hast melted away my sins as it were ice. To Thy grace I ascribe also whatsoever I have not done of evil; for what might I not have done, who even loved a sin for its own sake? Yea, all I confess to have been forgiven me; both what evils I committed by my own wilfulness, and what by Thy guidance I committed not. What man is he, who, weighing his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his purity and innocency to his own strength; that so he should love Thee the less, as if he had less needed Thy mercy, whereby Thou remittest sins to those that turn to Thee? For whosoever, called by Thee, followed Thy voice, and avoided those things which he reads me recalling and confessing of myself, let him not scorn me, who being sick, was cured by that Physician, through whose aid it was that he was not, or rather was less, sick: and for this let him love Thee as much, yea and more; since by whom he sees me to have been recovered from such deep consumption of sin, by Him he sees himself to have been from the like consumption of sin preserved. What fruit had I then (wretched man!) in those things, of the remembrance whereof I am now ashamed? Especially, in that theft which I loved for the theft's sake; and it too was nothing, and therefore the more miserable I, who loved it. Yet alone I had not done it: such was I then, I remember, alone I had never done it. I loved then in it also the company of the accomplices, with whom I did it? I did not then love nothing else but the theft, yea rather I did love nothing else; for that circumstance of the company was also nothing. What is, in truth? who can teach me, save He that enlighteneth my heart, and discovereth its dark corners? What is it which hath come into my mind to enquire, and discuss, and consider? For had I then loved the pears I stole, and wished to enjoy them, I might have done it alone, had the bare commission of the theft sufficed to attain my pleasure; nor needed I have inflamed the itching of my desires by the excitement of accomplices. But since my pleasure was not in those pears, it was in the offence itself, which the company of fellow-sinners occasioned. What then was this feeling? For of a truth it was too foul: and woe was me, who had it. But yet what was it? Who can understand his errors? It was the sport, which as it were tickled our hearts, that we beguiled those who little thought what we were doing, and much disliked it. Why then was my delight of such sort that I did it not alone? Because none doth ordinarily laugh alone? ordinarily no one; yet laughter sometimes masters men alone and singly when no one whatever is with them, if anything very ludicrous presents itself to their senses or mind. Yet I had not done this alone; alone I had never done it. Behold my God, before Thee, the vivid remembrance of my soul; alone, I had never committed that theft wherein what I stole pleased me not, but that I stole; nor had it alone liked me to do it, nor had I done it. O friendship too unfriendly! thou incomprehensible inveigler of the soul, thou greediness to do mischief out of mirth and wantonness, thou thirst of others' loss, without lust of my own gain or revenge: but when it is said, "Let's go, let's do it," we are ashamed not to be shameless. Who can disentangle that twisted and intricate knottiness? Foul is it: I hate to think on it, to look on it. But Thee I long for, O Righteousness and Innocency, beautiful and comely to all pure eyes, and of a satisfaction unsating. With Thee is rest entire, and life imperturbable. Whoso enters into Thee, enters into the joy of his Lord: and shall not fear, and shall do excellently in the All-Excellent. I sank away from Thee, and I wandered, O my God, too much astray from Thee my stay, in these days of my youth, and I became to myself a barren land. BOOK III To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved, I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I would fain, through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong then into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God, my Mercy, with how much gall didst Thou out of Thy great goodness besprinkle for me that sweetness? For I was both beloved, and secretly arrived at the bond of enjoying; and was with joy fettered with sorrow-bringing bonds, that I might be scourged with the iron burning rods of jealousy, and suspicions, and fears, and angers, and quarrels. Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, and this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness? for a man is the more affected with these actions, the less free he is from such affections. Howsoever, when he suffers in his own person, it uses to be styled misery: when he compassionates others, then it is mercy. But what sort of compassion is this for feigned and scenical passions? for the auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve: and he applauds the actor of these fictions the more, the more he grieves. And if the calamities of those persons (whether of old times, or mere fiction) be so acted, that the spectator is not moved to tears, he goes away disgusted and criticising; but if he be moved to passion, he stays intent, and weeps for joy. Are griefs then too loved? Verily all desire joy. Or whereas no man likes to be miserable, is he yet pleased to be merciful? which because it cannot be without passion, for this reason alone are passions loved? This also springs from that vein of friendship. But whither goes that vein? whither flows it? wherefore runs it into that torrent of pitch bubbling forth those monstrous tides of foul lustfulness, into which it is wilfully changed and transformed, being of its own will precipitated and corrupted from its heavenly clearness? Shall compassion then be put away? by no means. Be griefs then sometimes loved. But beware of uncleanness, O my soul, under the guardianship of my God, the God of our fathers, who is to be praised and exalted above all for ever, beware of uncleanness. For I have not now ceased to pity; but then in the theatres I rejoiced with lovers when they wickedly enjoyed one another, although this was imaginary only in the play. And when they lost one another, as if very compassionate, I sorrowed with them, yet had my delight in both. But now I much more pity him that rejoiceth in his wickedness, than him who is thought to suffer hardship, by missing some pernicious pleasure, and the loss of some miserable felicity. This certainly is the truer mercy, but in it grief delights not. For though he that grieves for the miserable, be commended for his office of charity; yet had he, who is genuinely compassionate, rather there were nothing for him to grieve for. For if good will be ill willed (which can never be), then may he, who truly and sincerely commiserates, wish there might be some miserable, that he might commiserate. Some sorrow may then be allowed, none loved. For thus dost Thou, O Lord God, who lovest souls far more purely than we, and hast more incorruptibly pity on them, yet are wounded with no sorrowfulness. And who is sufficient for these things? But I, miserable, then loved to grieve, and sought out what to grieve at, when in another's and that feigned and personated misery, that acting best pleased me, and attracted me the most vehemently, which drew tears from me. What marvel that an unhappy sheep, straying from Thy flock, and impatient of Thy keeping, I became infected with a foul disease? And hence the love of griefs; not such as should sink deep into me; for I loved not to suffer, what I loved to look on; but such as upon hearing their fictions should lightly scratch the surface; upon which, as on envenomed nails, followed inflamed swelling, impostumes, and a putrefied sore. My life being such, was it life, O my God? And Thy faithful mercy hovered over me afar. Upon how grievous iniquities consumed I myself, pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity, that having forsaken Thee, it might bring me to the treacherous abyss, and the beguiling service of devils, to whom I sacrificed my evil actions, and in all these things Thou didst scourge me! I dared even, while Thy solemnities were celebrated within the walls of Thy Church, to desire, and to compass a business deserving death for its fruits, for which Thou scourgedst me with grievous punishments, though nothing to my fault, O Thou my exceeding mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible destroyers, among whom I wandered with a stiff neck, withdrawing further from Thee, loving mine own ways, and not Thine; loving a vagrant liberty. Those studies also, which were accounted commendable, had a view to excelling in the courts of litigation; the more bepraised, the craftier. Such is men's blindness, glorying even in their blindness. And now I was chief in the rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly, and I swelled with arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter and altogether removed from the subvertings of those "Subverters" (for this ill-omened and devilish name was the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived, with a shameless shame that I was not even as they. With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted with their friendship, whose doings I ever did abhor--i.e., their "subvertings," wherewith they wantonly persecuted the modesty of strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering, feeding thereon their malicious birth. Nothing can be liker the very actions of devils than these. What then could they be more truly called than "Subverters"? themselves subverted and altogether perverted first, the deceiving spirits secretly deriding and seducing them, wherein themselves delight to jeer at and deceive others. Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned I books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable and vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost all admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." But this book altered my affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself O Lord; and made me have other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to me; and I longed with an incredibly burning desire for an immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return to Thee. For not to sharpen my tongue (which thing I seemed to be purchasing with my mother's allowances, in that my nineteenth year, my father being dead two years before), not to sharpen my tongue did I employ that book; nor did it infuse into me its style, but its matter. How did I burn then, my God, how did I burn to re-mount from earthly things to Thee, nor knew I what Thou wouldest do with me? For with Thee is wisdom. But the love of wisdom is in Greek called "philosophy," with which that book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honourable name colouring and disguising their own errors: and almost all who in that and former ages were such, are in that book censured and set forth: there also is made plain that wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and devout servant: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And since at that time (Thou, O light of my heart, knowest) Apostolic Scripture was not known to me, I was delighted with that exhortation, so far only, that I was thereby strongly roused, and kindled, and inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace not this or that sect, but wisdom itself whatever it were; and this alone checked me thus unkindled, that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name, according to Thy mercy, O Lord, this name of my Saviour Thy Son, had my tender heart, even with my mother's milk, devoutly drunk in and deeply treasured; and whatsoever was without that name, though never so learned, polished, or true, took not entire hold of me. I resolved then to bend my mind to the holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. But behold, I see a thing not understood by the proud, nor laid open to children, lowly in access, in its recesses lofty, and veiled with mysteries; and I was not such as could enter into it, or stoop my neck to follow its steps. For not as I now speak, did I feel when I turned to those Scriptures; but they seemed to me unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of Tully: for my swelling pride shrunk from their lowliness, nor could my sharp wit pierce the interior thereof. Yet were they such as would grow up in a little one. But I disdained to be a little one; and, swollen with pride, took myself to be a great one. Therefore I fell among men proudly doting, exceeding carnal and prating, in whose mouths were the snares of the Devil, limed with the mixture of the syllables of Thy name, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, our Comforter. These names departed not out of their mouth, but so far forth as the sound only and the noise of the tongue, for the heart was void of truth. Yet they cried out "Truth, Truth," and spake much thereof to me, yet it was not in them: but they spake falsehood, not of Thee only (who truly art Truth), but even of those elements of this world, Thy creatures. And I indeed ought to have passed by even philosophers who spake truth concerning them, for love of Thee, my Father, supremely good, Beauty of all things beautiful. O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and huge books, echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an echo? And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial though they be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even after those first works of Thine, but after Thee Thyself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: yet they still set before me in those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather. Food in sleep shows very like our food awake; yet are not those asleep nourished by it, for they are asleep. But those were not even any way like to Thee, as Thou hast now spoken to me; for those were corporeal fantasies, false bodies, than which these true bodies, celestial or terrestrial, which with our fleshly sight we behold, are far more certain: these things the beasts and birds discern as well as we, and they are more certain than when we fancy them. And again, we do with more certainty fancy them, than by them conjecture other vaster and infinite bodies which have no being. Such empty husks was I then fed on; and was not fed. But Thou, my soul's Love, in looking for whom I fail, that I may become strong, art neither those bodies which we see, though in heaven; nor those which we see not there; for Thou hast created them, nor dost Thou account them among the chiefest of Thy works. How far then art Thou from those fantasies of mine, fantasies of bodies which altogether are not, than which the images of those bodies, which are, are far more certain, and more certain still the bodies themselves, which yet Thou art not; no, nor yet the soul, which is the life of the bodies. So then, better and more certain is the life of the bodies than the bodies. But Thou art the life of souls, the life of lives, having life in Thyself; and changest not, life of my soul. Where then wert Thou then to me, and how far from me? Far verily was I straying from Thee, barred from the very husks of the swine, whom with husks I fed. For how much better are the fables of poets and grammarians than these snares? For verses, and poems, and "Medea flying," are more profitable truly than these men's five elements, variously disguised, answering to five dens of darkness, which have no being, yet slay the believer. For verses and poems I can turn to true food, and "Medea flying," though I did sing, I maintained not; though I heard it sung, I believed not: but those things I did believe. Woe, woe, by what steps was I brought down to the depths of hell! toiling and turmoiling through want of Truth, since I sought after Thee, my God (to Thee I confess it, who hadst mercy on me, not as yet confessing), not according to the understanding of the mind, wherein Thou willedst that I should excel the beasts, but according to the sense of the flesh. But Thou wert more inward to me than my most inward part; and higher than my highest. I lighted upon that bold woman, simple and knoweth nothing, shadowed out in Solomon, sitting at the door, and saying, Eat ye bread of secrecies willingly, and drink ye stolen waters which are sweet: she seduced me, because she found my soul dwelling abroad in the eye of my flesh, and ruminating on such food as through it I had devoured. For other than this, that which really is I knew not; and was, as it were through sharpness of wit, persuaded to assent to foolish deceivers, when they asked me, "whence is evil?" "is God bounded by a bodily shape, and has hairs and nails?" "are they to be esteemed righteous who had many wives at once, and did kill men, and sacrifice living creatures?" At which I, in my ignorance, was much troubled, and departing from the truth, seemed to myself to be making towards it; because as yet I knew not that evil was nothing but a privation of good, until at last a thing ceases altogether to be; which how should I see, the sight of whose eyes reached only to bodies, and of my mind to a phantasm? And I knew not God to be a Spirit, not one who hath parts extended in length and breadth, or whose being was bulk; for every bulk is less in a part than in the whole: and if it be infinite, it must be less in such part as is defined by a certain space, than in its infinitude; and so is not wholly every where, as Spirit, as God. And what that should be in us, by which we were like to God, and might be rightly said to be after the image of God, I was altogether ignorant. Nor knew I that true inward righteousness which judgeth not according to custom, but out of the most rightful law of God Almighty, whereby the ways of places and times were disposed according to those times and places; itself meantime being the same always and every where, not one thing in one place, and another in another; according to which Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and David, were righteous, and all those commended by the mouth of God; but were judged unrighteous by silly men, judging out of man's judgment, and measuring by their own petty habits, the moral habits of the whole human race. As if in an armory, one ignorant what were adapted to each part should cover his head with greaves, or seek to be shod with a helmet, and complain that they fitted not: or as if on a day when business is publicly stopped in the afternoon, one were angered at not being allowed to keep open shop, because he had been in the forenoon; or when in one house he observeth some servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is forbidden in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one house, and one family, the same thing is not allotted every where, and to all. Even such are they who are fretted to hear something to have been lawful for righteous men formerly, which now is not; or that God, for certain temporal respects, commanded them one thing, and these another, obeying both the same righteousness: whereas they see, in one man, and one day, and one house, different things to be fit for different members, and a thing formerly lawful, after a certain time not so; in one corner permitted or commanded, but in another rightly forbidden and punished. Is justice therefore various or mutable? No, but the times, over which it presides, flow not evenly, because they are times. But men whose days are few upon the earth, for that by their senses they cannot harmonise the causes of things in former ages and other nations, which they had not experience of, with these which they have experience of, whereas in one and the same body, day, or family, they easily see what is fitting for each member, and season, part, and person; to the one they take exceptions, to the other they submit. These things I then knew not, nor observed; they struck my sight on all sides, and I saw them not. I indited verses, in which I might not place every foot every where, but differently in different metres; nor even in any one metre the self-same foot in all places. Yet the art itself, by which I indited, had not different principles for these different cases, but comprised all in one. Still I saw not how that righteousness, which good and holy men obeyed, did far more excellently and sublimely contain in one all those things which God commanded, and in no part varied; although in varying times it prescribed not every thing at once, but apportioned and enjoined what was fit for each. And I in my blindness, censured the holy Fathers, not only wherein they made use of things present as God commanded and inspired them, but also wherein they were foretelling things to come, as God was revealing in them. Can it at any time or place be unjust to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind; and his neighbour as himself? Therefore are those foul offences which be against nature, to be every where and at all times detested and punished; such as were those of the men of Sodom: which should all nations commit, they should all stand guilty of the same crime, by the law of God, which hath not so made men that they should so abuse one another. For even that intercourse which should be between God and us is violated, when that same nature, of which He is Author, is polluted by perversity of lust. But those actions which are offences against the customs of men, are to be avoided according to the customs severally prevailing; so that a thing agreed upon, and confirmed, by custom or law of any city or nation, may not be violated at the lawless pleasure of any, whether native or foreigner. For any part which harmoniseth not with its whole, is offensive. But when God commands a thing to be done, against the customs or compact of any people, though it were never by them done heretofore, it is to be done; and if intermitted, it is to be restored; and if never ordained, is now to be ordained. For lawful if it be for a king, in the state which he reigns over, to command that which no one before him, nor he himself heretofore, had commanded, and to obey him cannot be against the common weal of the state (nay, it were against it if he were not obeyed, for to obey princes is a general compact of human society); how much more unhesitatingly ought we to obey God, in all which He commands, the Ruler of all His creatures! For as among the powers in man's society, the greater authority is obeyed in preference to the lesser, so must God above all. So in acts of violence, where there is a wish to hurt, whether by reproach or injury; and these either for revenge, as one enemy against another; or for some profit belonging to another, as the robber to the traveller; or to avoid some evil, as towards one who is feared; or through envy, as one less fortunate to one more so, or one well thriven in any thing, to him whose being on a par with himself he fears, or grieves at, or for the mere pleasure at another's pain, as spectators of gladiators, or deriders and mockers of others. These be the heads of iniquity which spring from the lust of the flesh, of the eye, or of rule, either singly, or two combined, or all together; and so do men live ill against the three, and seven, that psaltery of of ten strings, Thy Ten Commandments, O God, most high, and most sweet. But what foul offences can there be against Thee, who canst not be defiled? or what acts of violence against Thee, who canst not be harmed? But Thou avengest what men commit against themselves, seeing also when they sin against Thee, they do wickedly against their own souls, and iniquity gives itself the lie, by corrupting and perverting their nature, which Thou hast created and ordained, or by an immoderate use of things allowed, or in burning in things unallowed, to that use which is against nature; or are found guilty, raging with heart and tongue against Thee, kicking against the pricks; or when, bursting the pale of human society, they boldly joy in self-willed combinations or divisions, according as they have any object to gain or subject of offence. And these things are done when Thou art forsaken, O Fountain of Life, who art the only and true Creator and Governor of the Universe, and by a self-willed pride, any one false thing is selected therefrom and loved. So then by a humble devoutness we return to Thee; and Thou cleansest us from our evil habits, and art merciful to their sins who confess, and hearest the groaning of the prisoner, and loosest us from the chains which we made for ourselves, if we lift not up against Thee the horns of an unreal liberty, suffering the loss of all, through covetousness of more, by loving more our own private good than Thee, the Good of all. Amidst these offences of foulness and violence, and so many iniquities, are sins of men, who are on the whole making proficiency; which by those that judge rightly, are, after the rule of perfection, discommended, yet the persons commended, upon hope of future fruit, as in the green blade of growing corn. And there are some, resembling offences of foulness or violence, which yet are no sins; because they offend neither Thee, our Lord God, nor human society; when, namely, things fitting for a given period are obtained for the service of life, and we know not whether out of a lust of having; or when things are, for the sake of correction, by constituted authority punished, and we know not whether out of a lust of hurting. Many an action then which in men's sight is disapproved, is by Thy testimony approved; and many, by men praised, are (Thou being witness) condemned: because the show of the action, and the mind of the doer, and the unknown exigency of the period, severally vary. But when Thou on a sudden commandest an unwonted and unthought of thing, yea, although Thou hast sometime forbidden it, and still for the time hidest the reason of Thy command, and it be against the ordinance of some society of men, who doubts but it is to be done, seeing that society of men is just which serves Thee? But blessed are they who know Thy commands! For all things were done by Thy servants; either to show forth something needful for the present, or to foreshow things to come. These things I being ignorant of, scoffed at those Thy holy servants and prophets. And what gained I by scoffing at them, but to be scoffed at by Thee, being insensibly and step by step drawn on to those follies, as to believe that a fig-tree wept when it was plucked, and the tree, its mother, shed milky tears? Which fig notwithstanding (plucked by some other's, not his own, guilt) had some Manichaean saint eaten, and mingled with his bowels, he should breathe out of it angels, yea, there shall burst forth particles of divinity, at every moan or groan in his prayer, which particles of the most high and true God had remained bound in that fig, unless they had been set at liberty by the teeth or belly of some "Elect" saint! And I, miserable, believed that more mercy was to be shown to the fruits of the earth than men, for whom they were created. For if any one an hungered, not a Manichaean, should ask for any, that morsel would seem as it were condemned to capital punishment, which should be given him. And Thou sentest Thine hand from above, and drewest my soul out of that profound darkness, my mother, Thy faithful one, weeping to Thee for me, more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children. For she, by that faith and spirit which she had from Thee, discerned the death wherein I lay, and Thou heardest her, O Lord; Thou heardest her, and despisedst not her tears, when streaming down, they watered the ground under her eyes in every place where she prayed; yea Thou heardest her. For whence was that dream whereby Thou comfortedst her; so that she allowed me to live with her, and to eat at the same table in the house, which she had begun to shrink from, abhorring and detesting the blasphemies of my error? For she saw herself standing on a certain wooden rule, and a shining youth coming towards her, cheerful and smiling upon her, herself grieving, and overwhelmed with grief. But he having (in order to instruct, as is their wont not to be instructed) enquired of her the causes of her grief and daily tears, and she answering that she was bewailing my perdition, he bade her rest contented, and told her to look and observe, "That where she was, there was I also." And when she looked, she saw me standing by her in the same rule. Whence was this, but that Thine ears were towards her heart? O Thou Good omnipotent, who so carest for every one of us, as if Thou caredst for him only; and so for all, as if they were but one! Whence was this also, that when she had told me this vision, and I would fain bend it to mean, "That she rather should not despair of being one day what I was"; she presently, without any hesitation, replies: "No; for it was not told me that, 'where he, there thou also'; but 'where thou, there he also'?" I confess to Thee, O Lord, that to the best of my remembrance (and I have oft spoken of this), that Thy answer, through my waking mother,--that she was not perplexed by the plausibility of my false interpretation, and so quickly saw what was to be seen, and which I certainly had not perceived before she spake,--even then moved me more than the dream itself, by which a joy to the holy woman, to be fulfilled so long after, was, for the consolation of her present anguish, so long before foresignified. For almost nine years passed, in which I wallowed in the mire of that deep pit, and the darkness of falsehood, often assaying to rise, but dashed down the more grievously. All which time that chaste, godly, and sober widow (such as Thou lovest), now more cheered with hope, yet no whit relaxing in her weeping and mourning, ceased not at all hours of her devotions to bewail my case unto Thee. And her prayers entered into Thy presence; and yet Thou sufferedst me to be yet involved and reinvolved in that darkness. Thou gavest her meantime another answer, which I call to mind; for much I pass by, hasting to those things which more press me to confess unto Thee, and much I do not remember. Thou gavest her then another answer, by a Priest of Thine, a certain Bishop brought up in Thy Church, and well studied in Thy books. Whom when this woman had entreated to vouchsafe to converse with me, refute my errors, unteach me ill things, and teach me good things (for this he was wont to do, when he found persons fitted to receive it), he refused, wisely, as I afterwards perceived. For he answered, that I was yet unteachable, being puffed up with the novelty of that heresy, and had already perplexed divers unskilful persons with captious questions, as she had told him: "but let him alone a while" (saith he), "only pray God for him, he will of himself by reading find what that error is, and how great its impiety." At the same time he told her, how himself, when a little one, had by his seduced mother been consigned over to the Manichees, and had not only read, but frequently copied out almost all, their books, and had (without any argument or proof from any one) seen how much that sect was to be avoided; and had avoided it. Which when he had said, and she would not be satisfied, but urged him more, with entreaties and many tears, that he would see me and discourse with me; he, a little displeased at her importunity, saith, "Go thy ways and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish." Which answer she took (as she often mentioned in her conversations with me) as if it had sounded from heaven. BOOK IV For this space of nine years (from my nineteenth year to my eight-and-twentieth) we lived seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, in divers lusts; openly, by sciences which they call liberal; secretly, with a false-named religion; here proud, there superstitious, every where vain. Here, hunting after the emptiness of popular praise, down even to theatrical applauses, and poetic prizes, and strifes for grassy garlands, and the follies of shows, and the intemperance of desires. There, desiring to be cleansed from these defilements, by carrying food to those who were called "elect" and "holy," out of which, in the workhouse of their stomachs, they should forge for us Angels and Gods, by whom we might be cleansed. These things did I follow, and practise with my friends, deceived by me, and with me. Let the arrogant mock me, and such as have not been, to their soul's health, stricken and cast down by Thee, O my God; but I would still confess to Thee mine own shame in Thy praise. Suffer me, I beseech Thee, and give me grace to go over in my present remembrance the wanderings of my forepassed time, and to offer unto Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. For what am I to myself without Thee, but a guide to mine own downfall? or what am I even at the best, but an infant sucking the milk Thou givest, and feeding upon Thee, the food that perisheth not? But what sort of man is any man, seeing he is but a man? Let now the strong and the mighty laugh at us, but let us poor and needy confess unto Thee. In those years I taught rhetoric, and, overcome by cupidity, made sale of a loquacity to overcome by. Yet I preferred (Lord, Thou knowest) honest scholars (as they are accounted), and these I, without artifice, taught artifices, not to be practised against the life of the guiltless, though sometimes for the life of the guilty. And Thou, O God, from afar perceivedst me stumbling in that slippery course, and amid much smoke sending out some sparks of faithfulness, which I showed in that my guidance of such as loved vanity, and sought after leasing, myself their companion. In those years I had one,--not in that which is called lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void of understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her; in whom I in my own case experienced what difference there is betwixt the self-restraint of the marriage-covenant, for the sake of issue, and the bargain of a lustful love, where children are born against their parents' will, although, once born, they constrain love. I remember also, that when I had settled to enter the lists for a theatrical prize, some wizard asked me what I would give him to win; but I, detesting and abhorring such foul mysteries, answered, "Though the garland were of imperishable gold, I would not suffer a fly to be killed to gain me it." For he was to kill some living creatures in his sacrifices, and by those honours to invite the devils to favour me. But this ill also I rejected, not out of a pure love for Thee, O God of my heart; for I knew not how to love Thee, who knew not how to conceive aught beyond a material brightness. And doth not a soul, sighing after such fictions, commit fornication against Thee, trust in things unreal, and feed the wind? Still I would not forsooth have sacrifices offered to devils for me, to whom I was sacrificing myself by that superstition. For what else is it to feed the wind, but to feed them, that is by going astray to become their pleasure and derision? Those impostors then, whom they style Mathematicians, I consulted without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to pray to any spirit for their divinations: which art, however, Christian and true piety consistently rejects and condemns. For, it is a good thing to confess unto Thee, and to say, Have mercy upon me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee; and not to abuse Thy mercy for a licence to sin, but to remember the Lord's words, Behold, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. All which wholesome advice they labour to destroy, saying, "The cause of thy sin is inevitably determined in heaven"; and "This did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars": that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might be blameless; while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the stars is to bear the blame. And who is He but our God? the very sweetness and well-spring of righteousness, who renderest to every man according to his works: and a broken and contrite heart wilt Thou not despise. There was in those days a wise man, very skilful in physic, and renowned therein, who had with his own proconsular hand put the Agonistic garland upon my distempered head, but not as a physician: for this disease Thou only curest, who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble. But didst Thou fail me even by that old man, or forbear to heal my soul? For having become more acquainted with him, and hanging assiduously and fixedly on his speech (for though in simple terms, it was vivid, lively, and earnest), when he had gathered by my discourse that I was given to the books of nativity-casters, he kindly and fatherly advised me to cast them away, and not fruitlessly bestow a care and diligence, necessary for useful things, upon these vanities; saying, that he had in his earliest years studied that art, so as to make it the profession whereby he should live, and that, understanding Hippocrates, he could soon have understood such a study as this; and yet he had given it over, and taken to physic, for no other reason but that he found it utterly false; and he, a grave man, would not get his living by deluding people. "But thou," saith he, "hast rhetoric to maintain thyself by, so that thou followest this of free choice, not of necessity: the more then oughtest thou to give me credit herein, who laboured to acquire it so perfectly as to get my living by it alone." Of whom when I had demanded, how then could many true things be foretold by it, he answered me (as he could) "that the force of chance, diffused throughout the whole order of things, brought this about. For if when a man by haphazard opens the pages of some poet, who sang and thought of something wholly different, a verse oftentimes fell out, wondrously agreeable to the present business: it were not to be wondered at, if out of the soul of man, unconscious what takes place in it, by some higher instinct an answer should be given, by hap, not by art, corresponding to the business and actions of the demander." And thus much, either from or through him, Thou conveyedst to me, and tracedst in my memory, what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my dearest Nebridius, a youth singularly good and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof (such as I sought) whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly foretold by those consulted was the result of haphazard, not of the art of the star-gazers. In those years when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had made one my friend, but too dear to me, from a community of pursuits, of mine own age, and, as myself, in the first opening flower of youth. He had grown up of a child with me, and we had been both school-fellows and play-fellows. But he was not yet my friend as afterwards, nor even then, as true friendship is; for true it cannot be, unless in such as Thou cementest together, cleaving unto Thee, by that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. Yet was it but too sweet, ripened by the warmth of kindred studies: for, from the true faith (which he as a youth had not soundly and thoroughly imbibed), I had warped him also to those superstitious and pernicious fables, for which my mother bewailed me. With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be without him. But behold Thou wert close on the steps of Thy fugitives, at once God of vengeance, and Fountain of mercies, turning us to Thyself by wonderful means; Thou tookest that man out of this life, when he had scarce filled up one whole year of my friendship, sweet to me above all sweetness of that my life. Who can recount all Thy praises, which he hath felt in his one self? What diddest Thou then, my God, and how unsearchable is the abyss of Thy judgments? For long, sore sick of a fever, he lay senseless in a death-sweat; and his recovery being despaired of, he was baptised, unknowing; myself meanwhile little regarding, and presuming that his soul would retain rather what it had received of me, not what was wrought on his unconscious body. But it proved far otherwise: for he was refreshed, and restored. Forthwith, as soon as I could speak with him (and I could, so soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we hung but too much upon each other), I essayed to jest with him, as though he would jest with me at that baptism which he had received, when utterly absent in mind and feeling, but had now understood that he had received. But he so shrunk from me, as from an enemy; and with a wonderful and sudden freedom bade me, as I would continue his friend, forbear such language to him. I, all astonished and amazed, suppressed all my emotions till he should grow well, and his health were strong enough for me to deal with him as I would. But he was taken away from my frenzy, that with Thee he might be preserved for my comfort; a few days after in my absence, he was attacked again by the fever, and so departed. At this grief my heart was utterly darkened; and whatever I beheld was death. My native country was a torment to me, and my father's house a strange unhappiness; and whatever I had shared with him, wanting him, became a distracting torture. Mine eyes sought him every where, but he was not granted them; and I hated all places, for that they had not him; nor could they now tell me, "he is coming," as when he was alive and absent. I became a great riddle to myself, and I asked my soul, why she was so sad, and why she disquieted me sorely: but she knew not what to answer me. And if I said, Trust in God, she very rightly obeyed me not; because that most dear friend, whom she had lost, was, being man, both truer and better than that phantasm she was bid to trust in. Only tears were sweet to me, for they succeeded my friend, in the dearest of my affections. And now, Lord, these things are passed by, and time hath assuaged my wound. May I learn from Thee, who art Truth, and approach the ear of my heart unto Thy mouth, that Thou mayest tell me why weeping is sweet to the miserable? Hast Thou, although present every where, cast away our misery far from Thee? And Thou abidest in Thyself, but we are tossed about in divers trials. And yet unless we mourned in Thine ears, we should have no hope left. Whence then is sweet fruit gathered from the bitterness of life, from groaning, tears, sighs, and complaints? Doth this sweeten it, that we hope Thou hearest? This is true of prayer, for therein is a longing to approach unto Thee. But is it also in grief for a thing lost, and the sorrow wherewith I was then overwhelmed? For I neither hoped he should return to life nor did I desire this with my tears; but I wept only and grieved. For I was miserable, and had lost my joy. Or is weeping indeed a bitter thing, and for very loathing of the things which we before enjoyed, does it then, when we shrink from them, please us? But what speak I of these things? for now is no time to question, but to confess unto Thee. Wretched I was; and wretched is every soul bound by the friendship of perishable things; he is torn asunder when he loses them, and then he feels the wretchedness which he had ere yet he lost them. So was it then with me; I wept most bitterly, and found my repose in bitterness. Thus was I wretched, and that wretched life I held dearer than my friend. For though I would willingly have changed it, yet was I more unwilling to part with it than with him; yea, I know not whether I would have parted with it even for him, as is related (if not feigned) of Pylades and Orestes, that they would gladly have died for each other or together, not to live together being to them worse than death. But in me there had arisen some unexplained feeling, too contrary to this, for at once I loathed exceedingly to live and feared to die. I suppose, the more I loved him, the more did I hate, and fear (as a most cruel enemy) death, which had bereaved me of him: and I imagined it would speedily make an end of all men, since it had power over him. Thus was it with me, I remember. Behold my heart, O my God, behold and see into me; for well I remember it, O my Hope, who cleansest me from the impurity of such affections, directing mine eyes towards Thee, and plucking my feet out of the snare. For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly. O madness, which knowest not how to love men, like men! O foolish man that I then was, enduring impatiently the lot of man! I fretted then, sighed, wept, was distracted; had neither rest nor counsel. For I bore about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being borne by me, yet where to repose it, I found not. Not in calm groves, not in games and music, nor in fragrant spots, nor in curious banquetings, nor in the pleasures of the bed and the couch; nor (finally) in books or poesy, found it repose. All things looked ghastly, yea, the very light; whatsoever was not what he was, was revolting and hateful, except groaning and tears. For in those alone found I a little refreshment. But when my soul was withdrawn from them a huge load of misery weighed me down. To Thee, O Lord, it ought to have been raised, for Thee to lighten; I knew it; but neither could nor would; the more, since, when I thought of Thee, Thou wert not to me any solid or substantial thing. For Thou wert not Thyself, but a mere phantom, and my error was my God. If I offered to discharge my load thereon, that it might rest, it glided through the void, and came rushing down again on me; and I had remained to myself a hapless spot, where I could neither be, nor be from thence. For whither should my heart flee from my heart? Whither should I flee from myself? Whither not follow myself? And yet I fled out of my country; for so should mine eyes less look for him, where they were not wont to see him. And thus from Thagaste, I came to Carthage. Times lose no time; nor do they roll idly by; through our senses they work strange operations on the mind. Behold, they went and came day by day, and by coming and going, introduced into my mind other imaginations and other remembrances; and little by little patched me up again with my old kind of delights, unto which that my sorrow gave way. And yet there succeeded, not indeed other griefs, yet the causes of other griefs. For whence had that former grief so easily reached my very inmost soul, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one that must die, as if he would never die? For what restored and refreshed me chiefly was the solaces of other friends, with whom I did love, what instead of Thee I loved; and this was a great fable, and protracted lie, by whose adulterous stimulus, our soul, which lay itching in our ears, was being defiled. But that fable would not die to me, so oft as any of my friends died. There were other things which in them did more take my mind; to talk and jest together, to do kind offices by turns; to read together honied books; to play the fool or be earnest together; to dissent at times without discontent, as a man might with his own self; and even with the seldomness of these dissentings, to season our more frequent consentings; sometimes to teach, and sometimes learn; long for the absent with impatience; and welcome the coming with joy. These and the like expressions, proceeding out of the hearts of those that loved and were loved again, by the countenance, the tongue, the eyes, and a thousand pleasing gestures, were so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of many make but one. This is it that is loved in friends; and so loved, that a man's conscience condemns itself, if he love not him that loves him again, or love not again him that loves him, looking for nothing from his person but indications of his love. Hence that mourning, if one die, and darkenings of sorrows, that steeping of the heart in tears, all sweetness turned to bitterness; and upon the loss of life of the dying, the death of the living. Blessed whoso loveth Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee. For he alone loses none dear to him, to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. And who is this but our God, the God that made heaven and earth, and filleth them, because by filling them He created them? Thee none loseth, but who leaveth. And who leaveth Thee, whither goeth or whither fleeth he, but from Thee well-pleased, to Thee displeased? For where doth he not find Thy law in his own punishment? And Thy law is truth, and truth Thou. Turn us, O God of Hosts, show us Thy countenance, and we shall be whole. For whithersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward Thee, it is riveted upon sorrows, yea though it is riveted on things beautiful. And yet they, out of Thee, and out of the soul, were not, unless they were from Thee. They rise, and set; and by rising, they begin as it were to be; they grow, that they may be perfected; and perfected, they wax old and wither; and all grow not old, but all wither. So then when they rise and tend to be, the more quickly they grow that they may be, so much the more they haste not to be. This is the law of them. Thus much has Thou allotted them, because they are portions of things, which exist not all at once, but by passing away and succeeding, they together complete that universe, whereof they are portions. And even thus is our speech completed by signs giving forth a sound: but this again is not perfected unless one word pass away when it hath sounded its part, that another may succeed. Out of all these things let my soul praise Thee, O God, Creator of all; yet let not my soul be riveted unto these things with the glue of love, through the senses of the body. For they go whither they were to go, that they might not be; and they rend her with pestilent longings, because she longs to be, yet loves to repose in what she loves. But in these things is no place of repose; they abide not, they flee; and who can follow them with the senses of the flesh? yea, who can grasp them, when they are hard by? For the sense of the flesh is slow, because it is the sense of the flesh; and thereby is it bounded. It sufficeth for that it was made for; but it sufficeth not to stay things running their course from their appointed starting-place to the end appointed. For in Thy Word, by which they are created, they hear their decree, "hence and hitherto." Be not foolish, O my soul, nor become deaf in the ear of thine heart with the tumult of thy folly. Hearken thou too. The Word itself calleth thee to return: and there is the place of rest imperturbable, where love is not forsaken, if itself forsaketh not. Behold, these things pass away, that others may replace them, and so this lower universe be completed by all his parts. But do I depart any whither? saith the Word of God. There fix thy dwelling, trust there whatsoever thou hast thence, O my soul, at least now thou art tired out with vanities. Entrust Truth, whatsoever thou hast from the Truth, and thou shalt lose nothing; and thy decay shall bloom again, and all thy diseases be healed, and thy mortal parts be reformed and renewed, and bound around thee: nor shall they lay thee whither themselves descend; but they shall stand fast with thee, and abide for ever before God, Who abideth and standeth fast for ever. Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow thee. Whatever by her thou hast sense of, is in part; and the whole, whereof these are parts, thou knowest not; and yet they delight thee. But had the sense of thy flesh a capacity for comprehending the whole, and not itself also, for thy punishment, been justly restricted to a part of the whole, thou wouldest, that whatsoever existeth at this present, should pass away, that so the whole might better please thee. For what we speak also, by the same sense of the flesh thou hearest; yet wouldest not thou have the syllables stay, but fly away, that others may come, and thou hear the whole. And so ever, when any one thing is made up of many, all of which do not exist together, all collectively would please more than they do severally, could all be perceived collectively. But far better than these is He who made all; and He is our God, nor doth He pass away, for neither doth aught succeed Him. If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him are they firmly stablished; else would they pass, and pass away. In Him then be they beloved; and carry unto Him along with thee what souls thou canst, and say to them, "Him let us love, Him let us love: He made these, nor is He far off. For He did not make them, and so depart, but they are of Him, and in Him. See there He is, where truth is loved. He is within the very heart, yet hath the heart strayed from Him. Go back into your heart, ye transgressors, and cleave fast to Him that made you. Stand with Him, and ye shall stand fast. Rest in Him, and ye shall be at rest. Whither go ye in rough ways? Whither go ye? The good that you love is from Him; but it is good and pleasant through reference to Him, and justly shall it be embittered, because unjustly is any thing loved which is from Him, if He be forsaken for it. To what end then would ye still and still walk these difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest, where ye seek it. Seek what ye seek; but it is not there where ye seek. Ye seek a blessed life in the land of death; it is not there. For how should there be a blessed life where life itself is not? "But our true Life came down hither, and bore our death, and slew him, out of the abundance of His own life: and He thundered, calling aloud to us to return hence to Him into that secret place, whence He came forth to us, first into the Virgin's womb, wherein He espoused the human creation, our mortal flesh, that it might not be for ever mortal, and thence like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoicing as a giant to run his course. For He lingered not, but ran, calling aloud by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension; crying aloud to us to return unto Him. And He departed from our eyes, that we might return into our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and lo, He is here. He would not be long with us, yet left us not; for He departed thither, whence He never parted, because the world was made by Him. And in this world He was, and into this world He came to save sinners, unto whom my soul confesseth, and He healeth it, for it hath sinned against Him. O ye sons of men, how long so slow of heart? Even now, after the descent of Life to you, will ye not ascend and live? But whither ascend ye, when ye are on high, and set your mouth against the heavens? Descend, that ye may ascend, and ascend to God. For ye have fallen, by ascending against Him." Tell them this, that they may weep in the valley of tears, and so carry them up with thee unto God; because out of His spirit thou speakest thus unto them, if thou speakest, burning with the fire of charity. These things I then knew not, and I loved these lower beauties, and I was sinking to the very depths, and to my friends I said, "Do we love any thing but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful? and what is beauty? What is it that attracts and wins us to the things we love? for unless there were in them a grace and beauty, they could by no means draw us unto them." And I marked and perceived that in bodies themselves, there was a beauty, from their forming a sort of whole, and again, another from apt and mutual correspondence, as of a part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and the like. And this consideration sprang up in my mind, out of my inmost heart, and I wrote "on the fair and fit," I think, two or three books. Thou knowest, O Lord, for it is gone from me; for I have them not, but they are strayed from me, I know not how. But what moved me, O Lord my God, to dedicate these books unto Hierius, an orator of Rome, whom I knew not by face, but loved for the fame of his learning which was eminent in him, and some words of his I had heard, which pleased me? But more did he please me, for that he pleased others, who highly extolled him, amazed that out of a Syrian, first instructed in Greek eloquence, should afterwards be formed a wonderful Latin orator, and one most learned in things pertaining unto philosophy. One is commended, and, unseen, he is loved: doth this love enter the heart of the hearer from the mouth of the commender? Not so. But by one who loveth is another kindled. For hence he is loved who is commended, when the commender is believed to extol him with an unfeigned heart; that is, when one that loves him, praises him. For so did I then love men, upon the judgment of men, not Thine, O my God, in Whom no man is deceived. But yet why not for qualities, like those of a famous charioteer, or fighter with beasts in the theatre, known far and wide by a vulgar popularity, but far otherwise, and earnestly, and so as I would be myself commended? For I would not be commended or loved, as actors are (though I myself did commend and love them), but had rather be unknown, than so known; and even hated, than so loved. Where now are the impulses to such various and divers kinds of loves laid up in one soul? Why, since we are equally men, do I love in another what, if I did not hate, I should not spurn and cast from myself? For it holds not, that as a good horse is loved by him, who would not, though he might, be that horse, therefore the same may be said of an actor, who shares our nature. Do I then love in a man, what I hate to be, who am a man? Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs Thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee. And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than his feelings, and the beatings of his heart. But that orator was of that sort whom I loved, as wishing to be myself such; and I erred through a swelling pride, and was tossed about with every wind, but yet was steered by Thee, though very secretly. And whence do I know, and whence do I confidently confess unto Thee, that I had loved him more for the love of his commenders, than for the very things for which he was commended? Because, had he been unpraised, and these self-same men had dispraised him, and with dispraise and contempt told the very same things of him, I had never been so kindled and excited to love him. And yet the things had not been other, nor he himself other; but only the feelings of the relators. See where the impotent soul lies along, that is not yet stayed up by the solidity of truth! Just as the gales of tongues blow from the breast of the opinionative, so is it carried this way and that, driven forward and backward, and the light is overclouded to it, and the truth unseen. And lo, it is before us. And it was to me a great matter, that my discourse and labours should be known to that man: which should he approve, I were the more kindled; but if he disapproved, my empty heart, void of Thy solidity, had been wounded. And yet the "fair and fit," whereon I wrote to him, I dwelt on with pleasure, and surveyed it, and admired it, though none joined therein. But I saw not yet, whereon this weighty matter turned in Thy wisdom, O Thou Omnipotent, who only doest wonders; and my mind ranged through corporeal forms; and "fair," I defined and distinguished what is so in itself, and "fit," whose beauty is in correspondence to some other thing: and this I supported by corporeal examples. And I turned to the nature of the mind, but the false notion which I had of spiritual things, let me not see the truth. Yet the force of truth did of itself flash into mine eyes, and I turned away my panting soul from incorporeal substance to lineaments, and colours, and bulky magnitudes. And not being able to see these in the mind, I thought I could not see my mind. And whereas in virtue I loved peace, and in viciousness I abhorred discord; in the first I observed a unity, but in the other, a sort of division. And in that unity I conceived the rational soul, and the nature of truth and of the chief good to consist; but in this division I miserably imagined there to be some unknown substance of irrational life, and the nature of the chief evil, which should not only be a substance, but real life also, and yet not derived from Thee, O my God, of whom are all things. And yet that first I called a Monad, as it had been a soul without sex; but the latter a Duad;--anger, in deeds of violence, and in flagitiousness, lust; not knowing whereof I spake. For I had not known or learned that neither was evil a substance, nor our soul that chief and unchangeable good. For as deeds of violence arise, if that emotion of the soul be corrupted, whence vehement action springs, stirring itself insolently and unrulily; and lusts, when that affection of the soul is ungoverned, whereby carnal pleasures are drunk in, so do errors and false opinions defile the conversation, if the reasonable soul itself be corrupted; as it was then in me, who knew not that it must be enlightened by another light, that it may be partaker of truth, seeing itself is not that nature of truth. For Thou shalt light my candle, O Lord my God, Thou shalt enlighten my darkness: and of Thy fulness have we all received, for Thou art the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; for in Thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of change. But I pressed towards Thee, and was thrust from Thee, that I might taste of death: for thou resistest the proud. But what prouder, than for me with a strange madness to maintain myself to be that by nature which Thou art? For whereas I was subject to change (so much being manifest to me, my very desire to become wise, being the wish, of worse to become better), yet chose I rather to imagine Thee subject to change, and myself not to be that which Thou art. Therefore I was repelled by Thee, and Thou resistedst my vain stiffneckedness, and I imagined corporeal forms, and, myself flesh, I accused flesh; and, a wind that passeth away, I returned not to Thee, but I passed on and on to things which have no being, neither in Thee, nor in me, nor in the body. Neither were they created for me by Thy truth, but by my vanity devised out of things corporeal. And I was wont to ask Thy faithful little ones, my fellow-citizens (from whom, unknown to myself, I stood exiled), I was wont, prating and foolishly, to ask them, "Why then doth the soul err which God created?" But I would not be asked, "Why then doth God err?" And I maintained that Thy unchangeable substance did err upon constraint, rather than confess that my changeable substance had gone astray voluntarily, and now, in punishment, lay in error. I was then some six or seven and twenty years old when I wrote those volumes; revolving within me corporeal fictions, buzzing in the ears of my heart, which I turned, O sweet truth, to thy inward melody, meditating on the "fair and fit," and longing to stand and hearken to Thee, and to rejoice greatly at the Bridegroom's voice, but could not; for by the voices of mine own errors, I was hurried abroad, and through the weight of my own pride, I was sinking into the lowest pit. For Thou didst not make me to hear joy and gladness, nor did the bones exult which were not yet humbled. And what did it profit me, that scarce twenty years old, a book of Aristotle, which they call the ten Predicaments, falling into my hands (on whose very name I hung, as on something great and divine, so often as my rhetoric master of Carthage, and others, accounted learned, mouthed it with cheeks bursting with pride), I read and understood it unaided? And on my conferring with others, who said that they scarcely understood it with very able tutors, not only orally explaining it, but drawing many things in sand, they could tell me no more of it than I had learned, reading it by myself. And the book appeared to me to speak very clearly of substances, such as "man," and of their qualities, as the figure of a man, of what sort it is; and stature, how many feet high; and his relationship, whose brother he is; or where placed; or when born; or whether he stands or sits; or be shod or armed; or does, or suffers anything; and all the innumerable things which might be ranged under these nine Predicaments, of which I have given some specimens, or under that chief Predicament of Substance. What did all this further me, seeing it even hindered me? when, imagining whatever was, was comprehended under those ten Predicaments, I essayed in such wise to understand, O my God, Thy wonderful and unchangeable Unity also, as if Thou also hadst been subjected to Thine own greatness or beauty; so that (as in bodies) they should exist in Thee, as their subject: whereas Thou Thyself art Thy greatness and beauty; but a body is not great or fair in that it is a body, seeing that, though it were less great or fair, it should notwithstanding be a body. But it was falsehood which of Thee I conceived, not truth, fictions of my misery, not the realities of Thy blessedness. For Thou hadst commanded, and it was done in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns to me, and that in the sweat of my brows I should eat my bread. And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by myself, and understood? And I delighted in them, but knew not whence came all, that therein was true or certain. For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened. Whatever was written, either on rhetoric, or logic, geometry, music, and arithmetic, by myself without much difficulty or any instructor, I understood, Thou knowest, O Lord my God; because both quickness of understanding, and acuteness in discerning, is Thy gift: yet did I not thence sacrifice to Thee. So then it served not to my use, but rather to my perdition, since I went about to get so good a portion of my substance into my own keeping; and I kept not my strength for Thee, but wandered from Thee into a far country, to spend it upon harlotries. For what profited me good abilities, not employed to good uses? For I felt not that those arts were attained with great difficulty, even by the studious and talented, until I attempted to explain them to such; when he most excelled in them who followed me not altogether slowly. But what did this further me, imagining that Thou, O Lord God, the Truth, wert a vast and bright body, and I a fragment of that body? Perverseness too great! But such was I. Nor do I blush, O my God, to confess to Thee Thy mercies towards me, and to call upon Thee, who blushed not then to profess to men my blasphemies, and to bark against Thee. What profited me then my nimble wit in those sciences and all those most knotty volumes, unravelled by me, without aid from human instruction; seeing I erred so foully, and with such sacrilegious shamefulness, in the doctrine of piety? Or what hindrance was a far slower wit to Thy little ones, since they departed not far from Thee, that in the nest of Thy Church they might securely be fledged, and nourish the wings of charity, by the food of a sound faith. O Lord our God, under the shadow of Thy wings let us hope; protect us, and carry us. Thou wilt carry us both when little, and even to hoar hairs wilt Thou carry us; for our firmness, when it is Thou, then is it firmness; but when our own, it is infirmity. Our good ever lives with Thee; from which when we turn away, we are turned aside. Let us now, O Lord, return, that we may not be overturned, because with Thee our good lives without any decay, which good art Thou; nor need we fear, lest there be no place whither to return, because we fell from it: for through our absence, our mansion fell not--Thy eternity. BOOK V Accept the sacrifice of my confessions from the ministry of my tongue, which Thou hast formed and stirred up to confess unto Thy name. Heal Thou all my bones, and let them say, O Lord, who is like unto Thee? For he who confesses to Thee doth not teach Thee what takes place within him; seeing a closed heart closes not out Thy eye, nor can man's hard-heartedness thrust back Thy hand: for Thou dissolvest it at Thy will in pity or in vengeance, and nothing can hide itself from Thy heat. But let my soul praise Thee, that it may love Thee; and let it confess Thy own mercies to Thee, that it may praise Thee. Thy whole creation ceaseth not, nor is silent in Thy praises; neither the spirit of man with voice directed unto Thee, nor creation animate or inanimate, by the voice of those who meditate thereon: that so our souls may from their weariness arise towards Thee, leaning on those things which Thou hast created, and passing on to Thyself, who madest them wonderfully; and there is refreshment and true strength. Let the restless, the godless, depart and flee from Thee; yet Thou seest them, and dividest the darkness. And behold, the universe with them is fair, though they are foul. And how have they injured Thee? or how have they disgraced Thy government, which, from the heaven to this lowest earth, is just and perfect? For whither fled they, when they fled from Thy presence? or where dost not Thou find them? But they fled, that they might not see Thee seeing them, and, blinded, might stumble against Thee (because Thou forsakest nothing Thou hast made); that the unjust, I say, might stumble upon Thee, and justly be hurt; withdrawing themselves from thy gentleness, and stumbling at Thy uprightness, and falling upon their own ruggedness. Ignorant, in truth, that Thou art every where, Whom no place encompasseth! and Thou alone art near, even to those that remove far from Thee. Let them then be turned, and seek Thee; because not as they have forsaken their Creator, hast Thou forsaken Thy creation. Let them be turned and seek Thee; and behold, Thou art there in their heart, in the heart of those that confess to Thee, and cast themselves upon Thee, and weep in Thy bosom, after all their rugged ways. Then dost Thou gently wipe away their tears, and they weep the more, and joy in weeping; even for that Thou, Lord,--not man of flesh and blood, but--Thou, Lord, who madest them, re-makest and comfortest them. But where was I, when I was seeking Thee? And Thou wert before me, but I had gone away from Thee; nor did I find myself, how much less Thee! I would lay open before my God that nine-and-twentieth year of mine age. There had then come to Carthage a certain Bishop of the Manichees, Faustus by name, a great snare of the Devil, and many were entangled by him through that lure of his smooth language: which though I did commend, yet could I separate from the truth of the things which I was earnest to learn: nor did I so much regard the service of oratory as the science which this Faustus, so praised among them, set before me to feed upon. Fame had before bespoken him most knowing in all valuable learning, and exquisitely skilled in the liberal sciences. And since I had read and well remembered much of the philosophers, I compared some things of theirs with those long fables of the Manichees, and found the former the more probable; even although they could only prevail so far as to make judgment of this lower world, the Lord of it they could by no means find out. For Thou art great, O Lord, and hast respect unto the humble, but the proud Thou beholdest afar off. Nor dost Thou draw near, but to the contrite in heart, nor art found by the proud, no, not though by curious skill they could number the stars and the sand, and measure the starry heavens, and track the courses of the planets. For with their understanding and wit, which Thou bestowedst on them, they search out these things; and much have they found out; and foretold, many years before, eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and moon,--what day and hour, and how many digits,--nor did their calculation fail; and it came to pass as they foretold; and they wrote down the rules they had found out, and these are read at this day, and out of them do others foretell in what year and month of the year, and what day of the month, and what hour of the day, and what part of its light, moon or sun is to be eclipsed, and so it shall be, as it is foreshowed. At these things men, that know not this art, marvel and are astonished, and they that know it, exult, and are puffed up; and by an ungodly pride departing from Thee, and failing of Thy light, they foresee a failure of the sun's light, which shall be, so long before, but see not their own, which is. For they search not religiously whence they have the wit, wherewith they search out this. And finding that Thou madest them, they give not themselves up to Thee, to preserve what Thou madest, nor sacrifice to Thee what they have made themselves; nor slay their own soaring imaginations, as fowls of the air, nor their own diving curiosities (wherewith, like the fishes of the sea, they wander over the unknown paths of the abyss), nor their own luxuriousness, as beasts of the field, that Thou, Lord, a consuming fire, mayest burn up those dead cares of theirs, and re-create themselves immortally. But they knew not the way, Thy Word, by Whom Thou madest these things which they number, and themselves who number, and the sense whereby they perceive what they number, and the understanding, out of which they number; or that of Thy wisdom there is no number. But the Only Begotten is Himself made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and was numbered among us, and paid tribute unto Caesar. They knew not this way whereby to descend to Him from themselves, and by Him ascend unto Him. They knew not this way, and deemed themselves exalted amongst the stars and shining; and behold, they fell upon the earth, and their foolish heart was darkened. They discourse many things truly concerning the creature; but Truth, Artificer of the creature, they seek not piously, and therefore find Him not; or if they find Him, knowing Him to be God, they glorify Him not as God, neither are thankful, but become vain in their imaginations, and profess themselves to be wise, attributing to themselves what is Thine; and thereby with most perverse blindness, study to impute to Thee what is their own, forging lies of Thee who art the Truth, and changing the glory of uncorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things, changing Thy truth into a lie, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator. Yet many truths concerning the creature retained I from these men, and saw the reason thereof from calculations, the succession of times, and the visible testimonies of the stars; and compared them with the saying of Manichaeus, which in his frenzy he had written most largely on these subjects; but discovered not any account of the solstices, or equinoxes, or the eclipses of the greater lights, nor whatever of this sort I had learned in the books of secular philosophy. But I was commanded to believe; and yet it corresponded not with what had been established by calculations and my own sight, but was quite contrary. Doth then, O Lord God of truth, whoso knoweth these things, therefore please Thee? Surely unhappy is he who knoweth all these, and knoweth not Thee: but happy whoso knoweth Thee, though he know not these. And whoso knoweth both Thee and them is not the happier for them, but for Thee only, if, knowing Thee, he glorifies Thee as God, and is thankful, and becomes not vain in his imaginations. For as he is better off who knows how to possess a tree, and return thanks to Thee for the use thereof, although he know not how many cubits high it is, or how wide it spreads, than he that can measure it, and count all its boughs, and neither owns it, nor knows or loves its Creator: so a believer, whose all this world of wealth is, and who having nothing, yet possesseth all things, by cleaving unto Thee, whom all things serve, though he know not even the circles of the Great Bear, yet is it folly to doubt but he is in a better state than one who can measure the heavens, and number the stars, and poise the elements, yet neglecteth Thee who hast made all things in number, weight, and measure. But yet who bade that Manichaeus write on these things also, skill in which was no element of piety? For Thou hast said to man, Behold piety and wisdom; of which he might be ignorant, though he had perfect knowledge of these things; but these things, since, knowing not, he most impudently dared to teach, he plainly could have no knowledge of piety. For it is vanity to make profession of these worldly things even when known; but confession to Thee is piety. Wherefore this wanderer to this end spake much of these things, that convicted by those who had truly learned them, it might be manifest what understanding he had in the other abstruser things. For he would not have himself meanly thought of, but went about to persuade men, "That the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and Enricher of Thy faithful ones, was with plenary authority personally within him." When then he was found out to have taught falsely of the heaven and stars, and of the motions of the sun and moon (although these things pertain not to the doctrine of religion), yet his sacrilegious presumption would become evident enough, seeing he delivered things which not only he knew not, but which were falsified, with so mad a vanity of pride, that he sought to ascribe them to himself, as to a divine person. For when I hear any Christian brother ignorant of these things, and mistaken on them, I can patiently behold such a man holding his opinion; nor do I see that any ignorance as to the position or character of the corporeal creation can injure him, so long as he doth not believe any thing unworthy of Thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But it doth injure him, if he imagine it to pertain to the form of the doctrine of piety, and will yet affirm that too stiffly whereof he is ignorant. And yet is even such an infirmity, in the infancy of faith, borne by our mother Charity, till the new-born may grow up unto a perfect man, so as not to be carried about with every wind of doctrine. But in him who in such wise presumed to be the teacher, source, guide, chief of all whom he could so persuade, that whoso followed him thought that he followed, not a mere man, but Thy Holy Spirit; who would not judge that so great madness, when once convicted of having taught any thing false, were to be detested and utterly rejected? But I had not as yet clearly ascertained whether the vicissitudes of longer and shorter days and nights, and of day and night itself, with the eclipses of the greater lights, and whatever else of the kind I had read of in other books, might be explained consistently with his sayings; so that, if they by any means might, it should still remain a question to me whether it were so or no; but I might, on account of his reputed sanctity, rest my credence upon his authority. And for almost all those nine years, wherein with unsettled mind I had been their disciple, I had longed but too intensely for the coming of this Faustus. For the rest of the sect, whom by chance I had lighted upon, when unable to solve my objections about these things, still held out to me the coming of this Faustus, by conference with whom these and greater difficulties, if I had them, were to be most readily and abundantly cleared. When then he came, I found him a man of pleasing discourse, and who could speak fluently and in better terms, yet still but the self-same things which they were wont to say. But what availed the utmost neatness of the cup-bearer to my thirst for a more precious draught? Mine ears were already cloyed with the like, nor did they seem to me therefore better, because better said; nor therefore true, because eloquent; nor the soul therefore wise, because the face was comely, and the language graceful. But they who held him out to me were no good judges of things; and therefore to them he appeared understanding and wise, because in words pleasing. I felt however that another sort of people were suspicious even of truth, and refused to assent to it, if delivered in a smooth and copious discourse. But Thou, O my God, hadst already taught me by wonderful and secret ways, and therefore I believe that Thou taughtest me, because it is truth, nor is there besides Thee any teacher of truth, where or whencesoever it may shine upon us. Of Thyself therefore had I now learned, that neither ought any thing to seem to be spoken truly, because eloquently; nor therefore falsely, because the utterance of the lips is inharmonious; nor, again, therefore true, because rudely delivered; nor therefore false, because the language is rich; but that wisdom and folly are as wholesome and unwholesome food; and adorned or unadorned phrases as courtly or country vessels; either kind of meats may be served up in either kind of dishes. That greediness then, wherewith I had of so long time expected that man, was delighted verily with his action and feeling when disputing, and his choice and readiness of words to clothe his ideas. I was then delighted, and, with many others and more than they, did I praise and extol him. It troubled me, however, that in the assembly of his auditors, I was not allowed to put in and communicate those questions that troubled me, in familiar converse with him. Which when I might, and with my friends began to engage his ears at such times as it was not unbecoming for him to discuss with me, and had brought forward such things as moved me; I found him first utterly ignorant of liberal sciences, save grammar, and that but in an ordinary way. But because he had read some of Tully's Orations, a very few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such few volumes of his own sect as were written in Latin and neatly, and was daily practised in speaking, he acquired a certain eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive because under the guidance of a good wit, and with a kind of natural gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I recall it, O Lord my God, Thou judge of my conscience? before Thee is my heart, and my remembrance, Who didst at that time direct me by the hidden mystery of Thy providence, and didst set those shameful errors of mine before my face, that I might see and hate them. For after it was clear that he was ignorant of those arts in which I thought he excelled, I began to despair of his opening and solving the difficulties which perplexed me (of which indeed however ignorant, he might have held the truths of piety, had he not been a Manichee). For their books are fraught with prolix fables, of the heaven, and stars, sun, and moon, and I now no longer thought him able satisfactorily to decide what I much desired, whether, on comparison of these things with the calculations I had elsewhere read, the account given in the books of Manichaeus were preferable, or at least as good. Which when I proposed to be considered and discussed, he, so far modestly, shrunk from the burthen. For he knew that he knew not these things, and was not ashamed to confess it. For he was not one of those talking persons, many of whom I had endured, who undertook to teach me these things, and said nothing. But this man had a heart, though not right towards Thee, yet neither altogether treacherous to himself. For he was not altogether ignorant of his own ignorance, nor would he rashly be entangled in a dispute, whence he could neither retreat nor extricate himself fairly. Even for this I liked him the better. For fairer is the modesty of a candid mind, than the knowledge of those things which I desired; and such I found him, in all the more difficult and subtile questions. My zeal for the writings of Manichaeus being thus blunted, and despairing yet more of their other teachers, seeing that in divers things which perplexed me, he, so renowned among them, had so turned out; I began to engage with him in the study of that literature, on which he also was much set (and which as rhetoric-reader I was at that time teaching young students at Carthage), and to read with him, either what himself desired to hear, or such as I judged fit for his genius. But all my efforts whereby I had purposed to advance in that sect, upon knowledge of that man, came utterly to an end; not that I detached myself from them altogether, but as one finding nothing better, I had settled to be content meanwhile with what I had in whatever way fallen upon, unless by chance something more eligible should dawn upon me. Thus, that Faustus, to so many a snare of death, had now neither willing nor witting it, begun to loosen that wherein I was taken. For Thy hands, O my God, in the secret purpose of Thy providence, did not forsake my soul; and out of my mother's heart's blood, through her tears night and day poured out, was a sacrifice offered for me unto Thee; and Thou didst deal with me by wondrous ways. Thou didst it, O my God: for the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and He shall dispose his way. Or how shall we obtain salvation, but from Thy hand, re-making what it made? Thou didst deal with me, that I should be persuaded to go to Rome, and to teach there rather, what I was teaching at Carthage. And how I was persuaded to this, I will not neglect to confess to Thee; because herein also the deepest recesses of Thy wisdom, and Thy most present mercy to us, must be considered and confessed. I did not wish therefore to go to Rome, because higher gains and higher dignities were warranted me by my friends who persuaded me to this (though even these things had at that time an influence over my mind), but my chief and almost only reason was, that I heard that young men studied there more peacefully, and were kept quiet under a restraint of more regular discipline; so that they did not, at their pleasures, petulantly rush into the school of one whose pupils they were not, nor were even admitted without his permission. Whereas at Carthage there reigns among the scholars a most disgraceful and unruly licence. They burst in audaciously, and with gestures almost frantic, disturb all order which any one hath established for the good of his scholars. Divers outrages they commit, with a wonderful stolidity, punishable by law, did not custom uphold them; that custom evincing them to be the more miserable, in that they now do as lawful what by Thy eternal law shall never be lawful; and they think they do it unpunished, whereas they are punished with the very blindness whereby they do it, and suffer incomparably worse than what they do. The manners then which, when a student, I would not make my own, I was fain as a teacher to endure in others: and so I was well pleased to go where, all that knew it, assured me that the like was not done. But Thou, my refuge and my portion in the land of the living; that I might change my earthly dwelling for the salvation of my soul, at Carthage didst goad me, that I might thereby be torn from it; and at Rome didst proffer me allurements, whereby I might be drawn thither, by men in love with a dying life, the one doing frantic, the other promising vain, things; and, to correct my steps, didst secretly use their and my own perverseness. For both they who disturbed my quiet were blinded with a disgraceful frenzy, and they who invited me elsewhere savoured of earth. And I, who here detested real misery, was there seeking unreal happiness. But why I went hence, and went thither, Thou knewest, O God, yet showedst it neither to me, nor to my mother, who grievously bewailed my journey, and followed me as far as the sea. But I deceived her, holding me by force, that either she might keep me back or go with me, and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped: for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her face. And yet refusing to return without me, I scarcely persuaded her to stay that night in a place hard by our ship, where was an Oratory in memory of the blessed Cyprian. That night I privily departed, but she was not behind in weeping and prayer. And what, O Lord, was she with so many tears asking of Thee, but that Thou wouldest not suffer me to sail? But Thou, in the depth of Thy counsels and hearing the main point of her desire, regardest not what she then asked, that Thou mightest make me what she ever asked. The wind blew and swelled our sails, and withdrew the shore from our sight; and she on the morrow was there, frantic with sorrow, and with complaints and groans filled Thine ears, Who didst then disregard them; whilst through my desires, Thou wert hurrying me to end all desire, and the earthly part of her affection to me was chastened by the allotted scourge of sorrows. For she loved my being with her, as mothers do, but much more than many; and she knew not how great joy Thou wert about to work for her out of my absence. She knew not; therefore did she weep and wail, and by this agony there appeared in her the inheritance of Eve, with sorrow seeking what in sorrow she had brought forth. And yet, after accusing my treachery and hardheartedness, she betook herself again to intercede to Thee for me, went to her wonted place, and I to Rome. And lo, there was I received by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was going down to hell, carrying all the sins which I had committed, both against Thee, and myself, and others, many and grievous, over and above that bond of original sin, whereby we all die in Adam. For Thou hadst not forgiven me any of these things in Christ, nor had He abolished by His Cross the enmity which by my sins I had incurred with Thee. For how should He, by the crucifixion of a phantasm, which I believed Him to be? So true, then, was the death of my soul, as that of His flesh seemed to me false; and how true the death of His body, so false was the life of my soul, which did not believe it. And now the fever heightening, I was parting and departing for ever. For had I then parted hence, whither had I departed, but into fire and torments, such as my misdeeds deserved in the truth of Thy appointment? And this she knew not, yet in absence prayed for me. But Thou, everywhere present, heardest her where she was, and, where I was, hadst compassion upon me; that I should recover the health of my body, though frenzied as yet in my sacrilegious heart. For I did not in all that danger desire Thy baptism; and I was better as a boy, when I begged it of my mother's piety, as I have before recited and confessed. But I had grown up to my own shame, and I madly scoffed at the prescripts of Thy medicine, who wouldest not suffer me, being such, to die a double death. With which wound had my mother's heart been pierced, it could never be healed. For I cannot express the affection she bore to me, and with how much more vehement anguish she was now in labour of me in the spirit, than at her childbearing in the flesh. I see not then how she should have been healed, had such a death of mine stricken through the bowels of her love. And where would have been those her so strong and unceasing prayers, unintermitting to Thee alone? But wouldest Thou, God of mercies, despise the contrite and humbled heart of that chaste and sober widow, so frequent in almsdeeds, so full of duty and service to Thy saints, no day intermitting the oblation at Thine altar, twice a day, morning and evening, without any intermission, coming to Thy church, not for idle tattlings and old wives' fables; but that she might hear Thee in Thy discourses, and Thou her in her prayers. Couldest Thou despise and reject from Thy aid the tears of such an one, wherewith she begged of Thee not gold or silver, nor any mutable or passing good, but the salvation of her son's soul? Thou, by whose gift she was such? Never, Lord. Yea, Thou wert at hand, and wert hearing and doing, in that order wherein Thou hadst determined before that it should be done. Far be it that Thou shouldest deceive her in Thy visions and answers, some whereof I have, some I have not mentioned, which she laid up in her faithful heart, and ever praying, urged upon Thee, as Thine own handwriting. For Thou, because Thy mercy endureth for ever, vouchsafest to those to whom Thou forgivest all of their debts, to become also a debtor by Thy promises. Thou recoveredst me then of that sickness, and healedst the son of Thy handmaid, for the time in body, that he might live, for Thee to bestow upon him a better and more abiding health. And even then, at Rome, I joined myself to those deceiving and deceived "holy ones"; not with their disciples only (of which number was he, in whose house I had fallen sick and recovered); but also with those whom they call "The Elect." For I still thought "that it was not we that sin, but that I know not what other nature sinned in us"; and it delighted my pride, to be free from blame; and when I had done any evil, not to confess I had done any, that Thou mightest heal my soul because it had sinned against Thee: but I loved to excuse it, and to accuse I know not what other thing, which was with me, but which I was not. But in truth it was wholly I, and mine impiety had divided me against myself: and that sin was the more incurable, whereby I did not judge myself a sinner; and execrable iniquity it was, that I had rather have Thee, Thee, O God Almighty, to be overcome in me to my destruction, than myself of Thee to salvation. Not as yet then hadst Thou set a watch before my mouth, and a door of safe keeping around my lips, that my heart might not turn aside to wicked speeches, to make excuses of sins, with men that work iniquity; and, therefore, was I still united with their Elect. But now despairing to make proficiency in that false doctrine, even those things (with which if I should find no better, I had resolved to rest contented) I now held more laxly and carelessly. For there half arose a thought in me that those philosophers, whom they call Academics, were wiser than the rest, for that they held men ought to doubt everything, and laid down that no truth can be comprehended by man: for so, not then understanding even their meaning, I also was clearly convinced that they thought, as they are commonly reported. Yet did I freely and openly discourage that host of mine from that over-confidence which I perceived him to have in those fables, which the books of Manichaeus are full of. Yet I lived in more familiar friendship with them, than with others who were not of this heresy. Nor did I maintain it with my ancient eagerness; still my intimacy with that sect (Rome secretly harbouring many of them) made me slower to seek any other way: especially since I despaired of finding the truth, from which they had turned me aside, in Thy Church, O Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of all things visible and invisible: and it seemed to me very unseemly to believe Thee to have the shape of human flesh, and to be bounded by the bodily lineaments of our members. And because, when I wished to think on my God, I knew not what to think of, but a mass of bodies (for what was not such did not seem to me to be anything), this was the greatest, and almost only cause of my inevitable error. For hence I believed Evil also to be some such kind of substance, and to have its own foul and hideous bulk; whether gross, which they called earth, or thin and subtile (like the body of the air), which they imagine to be some malignant mind, creeping through that earth. And because a piety, such as it was, constrained me to believe that the good God never created any evil nature, I conceived two masses, contrary to one another, both unbounded, but the evil narrower, the good more expansive. And from this pestilent beginning, the other sacrilegious conceits followed on me. For when my mind endeavoured to recur to the Catholic faith, I was driven back, since that was not the Catholic faith which I thought to be so. And I seemed to myself more reverential, if I believed of Thee, my God (to whom Thy mercies confess out of my mouth), as unbounded, at least on other sides, although on that one where the mass of evil was opposed to Thee, I was constrained to confess Thee bounded; than if on all sides I should imagine Thee to be bounded by the form of a human body. And it seemed to me better to believe Thee to have created no evil (which to me ignorant seemed not some only, but a bodily substance, because I could not conceive of mind unless as a subtile body, and that diffused in definite spaces), than to believe the nature of evil, such as I conceived it, could come from Thee. Yea, and our Saviour Himself, Thy Only Begotten, I believed to have been reached forth (as it were) for our salvation, out of the mass of Thy most lucid substance, so as to believe nothing of Him, but what I could imagine in my vanity. His Nature then, being such, I thought could not be born of the Virgin Mary, without being mingled with the flesh: and how that which I had so figured to myself could be mingled, and not defiled, I saw not. I feared therefore to believe Him born in the flesh, lest I should be forced to believe Him defiled by the flesh. Now will Thy spiritual ones mildly and lovingly smile upon me, if they shall read these my confessions. Yet such was I. Furthermore, what the Manichees had criticised in Thy Scriptures, I thought could not be defended; yet at times verily I had a wish to confer upon these several points with some one very well skilled in those books, and to make trial what he thought thereon; for the words of one Helpidius, as he spoke and disputed face to face against the said Manichees, had begun to stir me even at Carthage: in that he had produced things out of the Scriptures, not easily withstood, the Manichees' answer whereto seemed to me weak. And this answer they liked not to give publicly, but only to us in private. It was, that the Scriptures of the New Testament had been corrupted by I know not whom, who wished to engraff the law of the Jews upon the Christian faith: yet themselves produced not any uncorrupted copies. But I, conceiving of things corporeal only, was mainly held down, vehemently oppressed and in a manner suffocated by those "masses"; panting under which after the breath of Thy truth, I could not breathe it pure and untainted. I began then diligently to practise that for which I came to Rome, to teach rhetoric; and first, to gather some to my house, to whom, and through whom, I had begun to be known; when lo, I found other offences committed in Rome, to which I was not exposed in Africa. True, those "subvertings" by profligate young men were not here practised, as was told me: but on a sudden, said they, to avoid paying their master's stipend, a number of youths plot together, and remove to another;--breakers of faith, who for love of money hold justice cheap. These also my heart hated, though not with a perfect hatred: for perchance I hated them more because I was to suffer by them, than because they did things utterly unlawful. Of a truth such are base persons, and they go a whoring from Thee, loving these fleeting mockeries of things temporal, and filthy lucre, which fouls the hand that grasps it; hugging the fleeting world, and despising Thee, Who abidest, and recallest, and forgivest the adulteress soul of man, when she returns to Thee. And now I hate such depraved and crooked persons, though I love them if corrigible, so as to prefer to money the learning which they acquire, and to learning, Thee, O God, the truth and fulness of assured good, and most pure peace. But then I rather for my own sake misliked them evil, than liked and wished them good for Thine. When therefore they of Milan had sent to Rome to the prefect of the city, to furnish them with a rhetoric reader for their city, and sent him at the public expense, I made application (through those very persons, intoxicated with Manichaean vanities, to be freed wherefrom I was to go, neither of us however knowing it) that Symmachus, then prefect of the city, would try me by setting me some subject, and so send me. To Milan I came, to Ambrose the Bishop, known to the whole world as among the best of men, Thy devout servant; whose eloquent discourse did then plentifully dispense unto Thy people the flour of Thy wheat, the gladness of Thy oil, and the sober inebriation of Thy wine. To him was I unknowing led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be led to Thee. That man of God received me as a father, and showed me an Episcopal kindness on my coming. Thenceforth I began to love him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth (which I utterly despaired of in Thy Church), but as a person kind towards myself. And I listened diligently to him preaching to the people, not with that intent I ought, but, as it were, trying his eloquence, whether it answered the fame thereof, or flowed fuller or lower than was reported; and I hung on his words attentively; but of the matter I was as a careless and scornful looker-on; and I was delighted with the sweetness of his discourse, more recondite, yet in manner less winning and harmonious, than that of Faustus. Of the matter, however, there was no comparison; for the one was wandering amid Manichaean delusions, the other teaching salvation most soundly. But salvation is far from sinners, such as I then stood before him; and yet was I drawing nearer by little and little, and unconsciously. For though I took no pains to learn what he spake, but only to hear how he spake (for that empty care alone was left me, despairing of a way, open for man, to Thee), yet together with the words which I would choose, came also into my mind the things which I would refuse; for I could not separate them. And while I opened my heart to admit "how eloquently he spake," there also entered "how truly he spake"; but this by degrees. For first, these things also had now begun to appear to me capable of defence; and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the Manichees' objections, I now thought might be maintained without shamelessness; especially after I had heard one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and ofttimes "in a figure," which when I understood literally, I was slain spiritually. Very many places then of those books having been explained, I now blamed my despair, in believing that no answer could be given to such as hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets. Yet did I not therefore then see that the Catholic way was to be held, because it also could find learned maintainers, who could at large and with some show of reason answer objections; nor that what I held was therefore to be condemned, because both sides could be maintained. For the Catholic cause seemed to me in such sort not vanquished, as still not as yet to be victorious. Hereupon I earnestly bent my mind, to see if in any way I could by any certain proof convict the Manichees of falsehood. Could I once have conceived a spiritual substance, all their strongholds had been beaten down, and cast utterly out of my mind; but I could not. Notwithstanding, concerning the frame of this world, and the whole of nature, which the senses of the flesh can reach to, as I more and more considered and compared things, I judged the tenets of most of the philosophers to have been much more probable. So then after the manner of the Academics (as they are supposed) doubting of every thing, and wavering between all, I settled so far, that the Manichees were to be abandoned; judging that, even while doubting, I might not continue in that sect, to which I already preferred some of the philosophers; to which philosophers notwithstanding, for that they were without the saving Name of Christ, I utterly refused to commit the cure of my sick soul. I determined therefore so long to be a Catechumen in the Catholic Church, to which I had been commended by my parents, till something certain should dawn upon me, whither I might steer my course. BOOK VI O Thou, my hope from my youth, where wert Thou to me, and whither wert Thou gone? Hadst not Thou created me, and separated me from the beasts of the field, and fowls of the air? Thou hadst made me wiser, yet did I walk in darkness, and in slippery places, and sought Thee abroad out of myself, and found not the God of my heart; and had come into the depths of the sea, and distrusted and despaired of ever finding truth. My mother had now come to me, resolute through piety, following me over sea and land, in all perils confiding in Thee. For in perils of the sea, she comforted the very mariners (by whom passengers unacquainted with the deep, use rather to be comforted when troubled), assuring them of a safe arrival, because Thou hadst by a vision assured her thereof. She found me in grievous peril, through despair of ever finding truth. But when I had discovered to her that I was now no longer a Manichee, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she was not overjoyed, as at something unexpected; although she was now assured concerning that part of my misery, for which she bewailed me as one dead, though to be reawakened by Thee, carrying me forth upon the bier of her thoughts, that Thou mightest say to the son of the widow, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise; and he should revive, and begin to speak, and Thou shouldest deliver him to his mother. Her heart then was shaken with no tumultuous exultation, when she heard that what she daily with tears desired of Thee was already in so great part realised; in that, though I had not yet attained the truth, I was rescued from falsehood; but, as being assured, that Thou, Who hadst promised the whole, wouldest one day give the rest, most calmly, and with a heart full of confidence, she replied to me, "She believed in Christ, that before she departed this life, she should see me a Catholic believer." Thus much to me. But to Thee, Fountain of mercies, poured she forth more copious prayers and tears, that Thou wouldest hasten Thy help, and enlighten my darkness; and she hastened the more eagerly to the Church, and hung upon the lips of Ambrose, praying for the fountain of that water, which springeth up unto life everlasting. But that man she loved as an angel of God, because she knew that by him I had been brought for the present to that doubtful state of faith I now was in, through which she anticipated most confidently that I should pass from sickness unto health, after the access, as it were, of a sharper fit, which physicians call "the crisis." When then my mother had once, as she was wont in Afric, brought to the Churches built in memory of the Saints, certain cakes, and bread and wine, and was forbidden by the door-keeper; so soon as she knew that the Bishop had forbidden this, she so piously and obediently embraced his wishes, that I myself wondered how readily she censured her own practice, rather than discuss his prohibition. For wine-bibbing did not lay siege to her spirit, nor did love of wine provoke her to hatred of the truth, as it doth too many (both men and women), who revolt at a lesson of sobriety, as men well-drunk at a draught mingled with water. But she, when she had brought her basket with the accustomed festival-food, to be but tasted by herself, and then given away, never joined therewith more than one small cup of wine, diluted according to her own abstemious habits, which for courtesy she would taste. And if there were many churches of the departed saints that were to be honoured in that manner, she still carried round that same one cup, to be used every where; and this, though not only made very watery, but unpleasantly heated with carrying about, she would distribute to those about her by small sips; for she sought there devotion, not pleasure. So soon, then, as she found this custom to be forbidden by that famous preacher and most pious prelate, even to those that would use it soberly, lest so an occasion of excess might be given to the drunken; and for these, as it were, anniversary funeral solemnities did much resemble the superstition of the Gentiles, she most willingly forbare it: and for a basket filled with fruits of the earth, she had learned to bring to the Churches of the martyrs a breast filled with more purified petitions, and to give what she could to the poor; that so the communication of the Lord's Body might be there rightly celebrated, where, after the example of His Passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and crowned. But yet it seems to me, O Lord my God, and thus thinks my heart of it in Thy sight, that perhaps she would not so readily have yielded to the cutting off of this custom, had it been forbidden by another, whom she loved not as Ambrose, whom, for my salvation, she loved most entirely; and he her again, for her most religious conversation, whereby in good works, so fervent in spirit, she was constant at church; so that, when he saw me, he often burst forth into her praises; congratulating me that I had such a mother; not knowing what a son she had in me, who doubted of all these things, and imagined the way to life could not be found out. Nor did I yet groan in my prayers, that Thou wouldest help me; but my spirit was wholly intent on learning, and restless to dispute. And Ambrose himself, as the world counts happy, I esteemed a happy man, whom personages so great held in such honour; only his celibacy seemed to me a painful course. But what hope he bore within him, what struggles he had against the temptations which beset his very excellencies, or what comfort in adversities, and what sweet joys Thy Bread had for the hidden mouth of his spirit, when chewing the cud thereof, I neither could conjecture, nor had experienced. Nor did he know the tides of my feelings, or the abyss of my danger. For I could not ask of him, what I would as I would, being shut out both from his ear and speech by multitudes of busy people, whose weaknesses he served. With whom when he was not taken up (which was but a little time), he was either refreshing his body with the sustenance absolutely necessary, or his mind with reading. But when he was reading, his eye glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest. Ofttimes when we had come (for no man was forbidden to enter, nor was it his wont that any who came should be announced to him), we saw him thus reading to himself, and never otherwise; and having long sat silent (for who durst intrude on one so intent?) we were fain to depart, conjecturing that in the small interval which he obtained, free from the din of others' business, for the recruiting of his mind, he was loth to be taken off; and perchance he dreaded lest if the author he read should deliver any thing obscurely, some attentive or perplexed hearer should desire him to expound it, or to discuss some of the harder questions; so that his time being thus spent, he could not turn over so many volumes as he desired; although the preserving of his voice (which a very little speaking would weaken) might be the truer reason for his reading to himself. But with what intent soever he did it, certainly in such a man it was good. I however certainly had no opportunity of enquiring what I wished of that so holy oracle of Thine, his breast, unless the thing might be answered briefly. But those tides in me, to be poured out to him, required his full leisure, and never found it. I heard him indeed every Lord's day, rightly expounding the Word of truth among the people; and I was more and more convinced that all the knots of those crafty calumnies, which those our deceivers had knit against the Divine Books, could be unravelled. But when I understood withal, that "man created by Thee, after Thine own image," was not so understood by Thy spiritual sons, whom of the Catholic Mother Thou hast born again through grace, as though they believed and conceived of Thee as bounded by human shape (although what a spiritual substance should be I had not even a faint or shadowy notion); yet, with joy I blushed at having so many years barked not against the Catholic faith, but against the fictions of carnal imaginations. For so rash and impious had I been, that what I ought by enquiring to have learned, I had pronounced on, condemning. For Thou, Most High, and most near; most secret, and most present; Who hast not limbs some larger, some smaller, but art wholly every where, and no where in space, art not of such corporeal shape, yet hast Thou made man after Thine own image; and behold, from head to foot is he contained in space. Ignorant then how this Thy image should subsist, I should have knocked and proposed the doubt, how it was to be believed, not insultingly opposed it, as if believed. Doubt, then, what to hold for certain, the more sharply gnawed my heart, the more ashamed I was, that so long deluded and deceived by the promise of certainties, I had with childish error and vehemence, prated of so many uncertainties. For that they were falsehoods became clear to me later. However I was certain that they were uncertain, and that I had formerly accounted them certain, when with a blind contentiousness, I accused Thy Catholic Church, whom I now discovered, not indeed as yet to teach truly, but at least not to teach that for which I had grievously censured her. So I was confounded, and converted: and I joyed, O my God, that the One Only Church, the body of Thine Only Son (wherein the name of Christ had been put upon me as an infant), had no taste for infantine conceits; nor in her sound doctrine maintained any tenet which should confine Thee, the Creator of all, in space, however great and large, yet bounded every where by the limits of a human form. I joyed also that the old Scriptures of the law and the Prophets were laid before me, not now to be perused with that eye to which before they seemed absurd, when I reviled Thy holy ones for so thinking, whereas indeed they thought not so: and with joy I heard Ambrose in his sermons to the people, oftentimes most diligently recommend this text for a rule, The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life; whilst he drew aside the mystic veil, laying open spiritually what, according to the letter, seemed to teach something unsound; teaching herein nothing that offended me, though he taught what I knew not as yet, whether it were true. For I kept my heart from assenting to any thing, fearing to fall headlong; but by hanging in suspense I was the worse killed. For I wished to be as assured of the things I saw not, as I was that seven and three are ten. For I was not so mad as to think that even this could not be comprehended; but I desired to have other things as clear as this, whether things corporeal, which were not present to my senses, or spiritual, whereof I knew not how to conceive, except corporeally. And by believing might I have been cured, that so the eyesight of my soul being cleared, might in some way be directed to Thy truth, which abideth always, and in no part faileth. But as it happens that one who has tried a bad physician, fears to trust himself with a good one, so was it with the health of my soul, which could not be healed but by believing, and lest it should believe falsehoods, refused to be cured; resisting Thy hands, Who hast prepared the medicines of faith, and hast applied them to the diseases of the whole world, and given unto them so great authority. Being led, however, from this to prefer the Catholic doctrine, I felt that her proceeding was more unassuming and honest, in that she required to be believed things not demonstrated (whether it was that they could in themselves be demonstrated but not to certain persons, or could not at all be), whereas among the Manichees our credulity was mocked by a promise of certain knowledge, and then so many most fabulous and absurd things were imposed to be believed, because they could not be demonstrated. Then Thou, O Lord, little by little with most tender and most merciful hand, touching and composing my heart, didst persuade me--considering what innumerable things I believed, which I saw not, nor was present while they were done, as so many things in secular history, so many reports of places and of cities, which I had not seen; so many of friends, so many of physicians, so many continually of other men, which unless we should believe, we should do nothing at all in this life; lastly, with how unshaken an assurance I believed of what parents I was born, which I could not know, had I not believed upon hearsay--considering all this, Thou didst persuade me, that not they who believed Thy Books (which Thou hast established in so great authority among almost all nations), but they who believed them not, were to be blamed; and that they were not to be heard, who should say to me, "How knowest thou those Scriptures to have been imparted unto mankind by the Spirit of the one true and most true God?" For this very thing was of all most to be believed, since no contentiousness of blasphemous questionings, of all that multitude which I had read in the self-contradicting philosophers, could wring this belief from me, "That Thou art" whatsoever Thou wert (what I knew not), and "That the government of human things belongs to Thee." This I believed, sometimes more strongly, more weakly otherwhiles; yet I ever believed both that Thou wert, and hadst a care of us; though I was ignorant, both what was to be thought of Thy substance, and what way led or led back to Thee. Since then we were too weak by abstract reasonings to find out truth: and for this very cause needed the authority of Holy Writ; I had now begun to believe that Thou wouldest never have given such excellency of authority to that Writ in all lands, hadst Thou not willed thereby to be believed in, thereby sought. For now what things, sounding strangely in the Scripture, were wont to offend me, having heard divers of them expounded satisfactorily, I referred to the depth of the mysteries, and its authority appeared to me the more venerable, and more worthy of religious credence, in that, while it lay open to all to read, it reserved the majesty of its mysteries within its profounder meaning, stooping to all in the great plainness of its words and lowliness of its style, yet calling forth the intensest application of such as are not light of heart; that so it might receive all in its open bosom, and through narrow passages waft over towards Thee some few, yet many more than if it stood not aloft on such a height of authority, nor drew multitudes within its bosom by its holy lowliness. These things I thought on, and Thou wert with me; I sighed, and Thou heardest me; I wavered, and Thou didst guide me; I wandered through the broad way of the world, and Thou didst not forsake me. I panted after honours, gains, marriage; and thou deridedst me. In these desires I underwent most bitter crosses, Thou being the more gracious, the less Thou sufferedst aught to grow sweet to me, which was not Thou. Behold my heart, O Lord, who wouldest I should remember all this, and confess to Thee. Let my soul cleave unto Thee, now that Thou hast freed it from that fast-holding birdlime of death. How wretched was it! and Thou didst irritate the feeling of its wound, that forsaking all else, it might be converted unto Thee, who art above all, and without whom all things would be nothing; be converted, and be healed. How miserable was I then, and how didst Thou deal with me, to make me feel my misery on that day, when I was preparing to recite a panegyric of the Emperor, wherein I was to utter many a lie, and lying, was to be applauded by those who knew I lied, and my heart was panting with these anxieties, and boiling with the feverishness of consuming thoughts. For, passing through one of the streets of Milan, I observed a poor beggar, then, I suppose, with a full belly, joking and joyous: and I sighed, and spoke to the friends around me, of the many sorrows of our frenzies; for that by all such efforts of ours, as those wherein I then toiled dragging along, under the goading of desire, the burthen of my own wretchedness, and, by dragging, augmenting it, we yet looked to arrive only at that very joyousness whither that beggar-man had arrived before us, who should never perchance attain it. For what he had obtained by means of a few begged pence, the same was I plotting for by many a toilsome turning and winding; the joy of a temporary felicity. For he verily had not the true joy; but yet I with those my ambitious designs was seeking one much less true. And certainly he was joyous, I anxious; he void of care, I full of fears. But should any ask me, had I rather be merry or fearful? I would answer merry. Again, if he asked had I rather be such as he was, or what I then was? I should choose to be myself, though worn with cares and fears; but out of wrong judgment; for, was it the truth? For I ought not to prefer myself to him, because more learned than he, seeing I had no joy therein, but sought to please men by it; and that not to instruct, but simply to please. Wherefore also Thou didst break my bones with the staff of Thy correction. Away with those then from my soul who say to her, "It makes a difference whence a man's joy is. That beggar-man joyed in drunkenness; Thou desiredst to joy in glory." What glory, Lord? That which is not in Thee. For even as his was no true joy, so was that no true glory: and it overthrew my soul more. He that very night should digest his drunkenness; but I had slept and risen again with mine, and was to sleep again, and again to rise with it, how many days, Thou, God, knowest. But "it doth make a difference whence a man's joy is." I know it, and the joy of a faithful hope lieth incomparably beyond such vanity. Yea, and so was he then beyond me: for he verily was the happier; not only for that he was thoroughly drenched in mirth, I disembowelled with cares: but he, by fair wishes, had gotten wine; I, by lying, was seeking for empty, swelling praise. Much to this purpose said I then to my friends: and I often marked in them how it fared with me; and I found it went ill with me, and grieved, and doubled that very ill; and if any prosperity smiled on me, I was loth to catch at it, for almost before I could grasp it, it flew away. These things we, who were living as friends together, bemoaned together, but chiefly and most familiarly did I speak thereof with Alypius and Nebridius, of whom Alypius was born in the same town with me, of persons of chief rank there, but younger than I. For he had studied under me, both when I first lectured in our town, and afterwards at Carthage, and he loved me much, because I seemed to him kind, and learned; and I him, for his great towardliness to virtue, which was eminent enough in one of no greater years. Yet the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits (amongst whom those idle spectacles are hotly followed) had drawn him into the madness of the Circus. But while he was miserably tossed therein, and I, professing rhetoric there, had a public school, as yet he used not my teaching, by reason of some unkindness risen betwixt his father and me. I had found then how deadly he doted upon the Circus, and was deeply grieved that he seemed likely, nay, or had thrown away so great promise: yet had I no means of advising or with a sort of constraint reclaiming him, either by the kindness of a friend, or the authority of a master. For I supposed that he thought of me as did his father; but he was not such; laying aside then his father's mind in that matter, he began to greet me, come sometimes into my lecture room, hear a little, and be gone. I however had forgotten to deal with him, that he should not, through a blind and headlong desire of vain pastimes, undo so good a wit. But Thou, O Lord, who guidest the course of all Thou hast created, hadst not forgotten him, who was one day to be among Thy children, Priest and Dispenser of Thy Sacrament; and that his amendment might plainly be attributed to Thyself, Thou effectedst it through me, unknowingly. For as one day I sat in my accustomed place, with my scholars before me, he entered, greeted me, sat down, and applied his mind to what I then handled. I had by chance a passage in hand, which while I was explaining, a likeness from the Circensian races occurred to me, as likely to make what I would convey pleasanter and plainer, seasoned with biting mockery of those whom that madness had enthralled; God, Thou knowest that I then thought not of curing Alypius of that infection. But he took it wholly to himself, and thought that I said it simply for his sake. And whence another would have taken occasion of offence with me, that right-minded youth took as a ground of being offended at himself, and loving me more fervently. For Thou hadst said it long ago, and put it into Thy book, Rebuke a wise man and he will love Thee. But I had not rebuked him, but Thou, who employest all, knowing or not knowing, in that order which Thyself knowest (and that order is just), didst of my heart and tongue make burning coals, by which to set on fire the hopeful mind, thus languishing, and so cure it. Let him be silent in Thy praises, who considers not Thy mercies, which confess unto Thee out of my inmost soul. For he upon that speech burst out of that pit so deep, wherein he was wilfully plunged, and was blinded with its wretched pastimes; and he shook his mind with a strong self-command; whereupon all the filths of the Circensian pastimes flew off from him, nor came he again thither. Upon this, he prevailed with his unwilling father that he might be my scholar. He gave way, and gave in. And Alypius beginning to be my hearer again, was involved in the same superstition with me, loving in the Manichees that show of continency which he supposed true and unfeigned. Whereas it was a senseless and seducing continency, ensnaring precious souls, unable as yet to reach the depth of virtue, yet readily beguiled with the surface of what was but a shadowy and counterfeit virtue. He, not forsaking that secular course which his parents had charmed him to pursue, had gone before me to Rome, to study law, and there he was carried away incredibly with an incredible eagerness after the shows of gladiators. For being utterly averse to and detesting spectacles, he was one day by chance met by divers of his acquaintance and fellow-students coming from dinner, and they with a familiar violence haled him, vehemently refusing and resisting, into the Amphitheatre, during these cruel and deadly shows, he thus protesting: "Though you hale my body to that place, and there set me, can you force me also to turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall then be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them." They, hearing this, led him on nevertheless, desirous perchance to try that very thing, whether he could do as he said. When they were come thither, and had taken their places as they could, the whole place kindled with that savage pastime. But he, closing the passage of his eyes, forbade his mind to range abroad after such evil; and would he had stopped his ears also! For in the fight, when one fell, a mighty cry of the whole people striking him strongly, overcome by curiosity, and as if prepared to despise and be superior to it whatsoever it were, even when seen, he opened his eyes, and was stricken with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to behold, was in his body; and he fell more miserably than he upon whose fall that mighty noise was raised, which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes, to make way for the striking and beating down of a soul, bold rather than resolute, and the weaker, in that it had presumed on itself, which ought to have relied on Thee. For so soon as he saw that blood, he therewith drunk down savageness; nor turned away, but fixed his eye, drinking in frenzy, unawares, and was delighted with that guilty fight, and intoxicated with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the man he came, but one of the throng he came unto, yea, a true associate of theirs that brought him thither. Why say more? He beheld, shouted, kindled, carried thence with him the madness which should goad him to return not only with them who first drew him thither, but also before them, yea and to draw in others. Yet thence didst Thou with a most strong and most merciful hand pluck him, and taughtest him to have confidence not in himself, but in Thee. But this was after. But this was already being laid up in his memory to be a medicine hereafter. So was that also, that when he was yet studying under me at Carthage, and was thinking over at mid-day in the market-place what he was to say by heart (as scholars use to practise), Thou sufferedst him to be apprehended by the officers of the market-place for a thief. For no other cause, I deem, didst Thou, our God, suffer it, but that he who was hereafter to prove so great a man, should already begin to learn that in judging of causes, man was not readily to be condemned by man out of a rash credulity. For as he was walking up and down by himself before the judgment-seat, with his note-book and pen, lo, a young man, a lawyer, the real thief, privily bringing a hatchet, got in, unperceived by Alypius, as far as the leaden gratings which fence in the silversmiths' shops, and began to cut away the lead. But the noise of the hatchet being heard, the silversmiths beneath began to make a stir, and sent to apprehend whomever they should find. But he, hearing their voices, ran away, leaving his hatchet, fearing to be taken with it. Alypius now, who had not seen him enter, was aware of his going, and saw with what speed he made away. And being desirous to know the matter, entered the place; where finding the hatchet, he was standing, wondering and considering it, when behold, those that had been sent, find him alone with the hatchet in his hand, the noise whereof had startled and brought them thither. They seize him, hale him away, and gathering the dwellers in the market-place together, boast of having taken a notorious thief, and so he was being led away to be taken before the judge. But thus far was Alypius to be instructed. For forthwith, O Lord, Thou succouredst his innocency, whereof Thou alone wert witness. For as he was being led either to prison or to punishment, a certain architect met them, who had the chief charge of the public buildings. Glad they were to meet him especially, by whom they were wont to be suspected of stealing the goods lost out of the marketplace, as though to show him at last by whom these thefts were committed. He, however, had divers times seen Alypius at a certain senator's house, to whom he often went to pay his respects; and recognising him immediately, took him aside by the hand, and enquiring the occasion of so great a calamity, heard the whole matter, and bade all present, amid much uproar and threats, to go with him. So they came to the house of the young man who had done the deed. There, before the door, was a boy so young as to be likely, not apprehending any harm to his master, to disclose the whole. For he had attended his master to the market-place. Whom so soon as Alypius remembered, he told the architect: and he showing the hatchet to the boy, asked him "Whose that was?" "Ours," quoth he presently: and being further questioned, he discovered every thing. Thus the crime being transferred to that house, and the multitude ashamed, which had begun to insult over Alypius, he who was to be a dispenser of Thy Word, and an examiner of many causes in Thy Church, went away better experienced and instructed. Him then I had found at Rome, and he clave to me by a most strong tie, and went with me to Milan, both that he might not leave me, and might practise something of the law he had studied, more to please his parents than himself. There he had thrice sat as Assessor, with an uncorruptness much wondered at by others, he wondering at others rather who could prefer gold to honesty. His character was tried besides, not only with the bait of covetousness, but with the goad of fear. At Rome he was Assessor to the count of the Italian Treasury. There was at that time a very powerful senator, to whose favours many stood indebted, many much feared. He would needs, by his usual power, have a thing allowed him which by the laws was unallowed. Alypius resisted it: a bribe was promised; with all his heart he scorned it: threats were held out; he trampled upon them: all wondering at so unwonted a spirit, which neither desired the friendship, nor feared the enmity of one so great and so mightily renowned for innumerable means of doing good or evil. And the very judge, whose councillor Alypius was, although also unwilling it should be, yet did not openly refuse, but put the matter off upon Alypius, alleging that he would not allow him to do it: for in truth had the judge done it, Alypius would have decided otherwise. With this one thing in the way of learning was he well-nigh seduced, that he might have books copied for him at Praetorian prices, but consulting justice, he altered his deliberation for the better; esteeming equity whereby he was hindered more gainful than the power whereby he were allowed. These are slight things, but he that is faithful in little, is faithful also in much. Nor can that any how be void, which proceeded out of the mouth of Thy Truth: If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? He being such, did at that time cleave to me, and with me wavered in purpose, what course of life was to be taken. Nebridius also, who having left his native country near Carthage, yea and Carthage itself, where he had much lived, leaving his excellent family-estate and house, and a mother behind, who was not to follow him, had come to Milan, for no other reason but that with me he might live in a most ardent search after truth and wisdom. Like me he sighed, like me he wavered, an ardent searcher after true life, and a most acute examiner of the most difficult questions. Thus were there the mouths of three indigent persons, sighing out their wants one to another, and waiting upon Thee that Thou mightest give them their meat in due season. And in all the bitterness which by Thy mercy followed our worldly affairs, as we looked towards the end, why we should suffer all this, darkness met us; and we turned away groaning, and saying, How long shall these things be? This too we often said; and so saying forsook them not, for as yet there dawned nothing certain, which these forsaken, we might embrace. And I, viewing and reviewing things, most wondered at the length of time from that my nineteenth year, wherein I had begun to kindle with the desire of wisdom, settling when I had found her, to abandon all the empty hopes and lying frenzies of vain desires. And lo, I was now in my thirtieth year, sticking in the same mire, greedy of enjoying things present, which passed away and wasted my soul; while I said to myself, "Tomorrow I shall find it; it will appear manifestly and I shall grasp it; lo, Faustus the Manichee will come, and clear every thing! O you great men, ye Academicians, it is true then, that no certainty can be attained for the ordering of life! Nay, let us search the more diligently, and despair not. Lo, things in the ecclesiastical books are not absurd to us now, which sometimes seemed absurd, and may be otherwise taken, and in a good sense. I will take my stand, where, as a child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth be found out. But where shall it be sought or when? Ambrose has no leisure; we have no leisure to read; where shall we find even the books? Whence, or when procure them? from whom borrow them? Let set times be appointed, and certain hours be ordered for the health of our soul. Great hope has dawned; the Catholic Faith teaches not what we thought, and vainly accused it of; her instructed members hold it profane to believe God to be bounded by the figure of a human body: and do we doubt to 'knock,' that the rest 'may be opened'? The forenoons our scholars take up; what do we during the rest? Why not this? But when then pay we court to our great friends, whose favour we need? When compose what we may sell to scholars? When refresh ourselves, unbending our minds from this intenseness of care? "Perish every thing, dismiss we these empty vanities, and betake ourselves to the one search for truth! Life is vain, death uncertain; if it steals upon us on a sudden, in what state shall we depart hence? and where shall we learn what here we have neglected? and shall we not rather suffer the punishment of this negligence? What, if death itself cut off and end all care and feeling? Then must this be ascertained. But God forbid this! It is no vain and empty thing, that the excellent dignity of the authority of the Christian Faith hath overspread the whole world. Never would such and so great things be by God wrought for us, if with the death of the body the life of the soul came to an end. Wherefore delay then to abandon worldly hopes, and give ourselves wholly to seek after God and the blessed life? But wait! Even those things are pleasant; they have some, and no small sweetness. We must not lightly abandon them, for it were a shame to return again to them. See, it is no great matter now to obtain some station, and then what should we more wish for? We have store of powerful friends; if nothing else offer, and we be in much haste, at least a presidentship may be given us: and a wife with some money, that she increase not our charges: and this shall be the bound of desire. Many great men, and most worthy of imitation, have given themselves to the study of wisdom in the state of marriage." While I went over these things, and these winds shifted and drove my heart this way and that, time passed on, but I delayed to turn to the Lord; and from day to day deferred to live in Thee, and deferred not daily to die in myself. Loving a happy life, I feared it in its own abode, and sought it, by fleeing from it. I thought I should be too miserable, unless folded in female arms; and of the medicine of Thy mercy to cure that infirmity I thought not, not having tried it. As for continency, I supposed it to be in our own power (though in myself I did not find that power), being so foolish as not to know what is written, None can be continent unless Thou give it; and that Thou wouldest give it, if with inward groanings I did knock at Thine ears, and with a settled faith did cast my care on Thee. Alypius indeed kept me from marrying; alleging that so could we by no means with undistracted leisure live together in the love of wisdom, as we had long desired. For himself was even then most pure in this point, so that it was wonderful; and that the more, since in the outset of his youth he had entered into that course, but had not stuck fast therein; rather had he felt remorse and revolting at it, living thenceforth until now most continently. But I opposed him with the examples of those who as married men had cherished wisdom, and served God acceptably, and retained their friends, and loved them faithfully. Of whose greatness of spirit I was far short; and bound with the disease of the flesh, and its deadly sweetness, drew along my chain, dreading to be loosed, and as if my wound had been fretted, put back his good persuasions, as it were the hand of one that would unchain me. Moreover, by me did the serpent speak unto Alypius himself, by my tongue weaving and laying in his path pleasurable snares, wherein his virtuous and free feet might be entangled. For when he wondered that I, whom he esteemed not slightly, should stick so fast in the birdlime of that pleasure, as to protest (so oft as we discussed it) that I could never lead a single life; and urged in my defence when I saw him wonder, that there was great difference between his momentary and scarce-remembered knowledge of that life, which so he might easily despise, and my continued acquaintance whereto if the honourable name of marriage were added, he ought not to wonder why I could not contemn that course; he began also to desire to be married; not as overcome with desire of such pleasure, but out of curiosity. For he would fain know, he said, what that should be, without which my life, to him so pleasing, would to me seem not life but a punishment. For his mind, free from that chain, was amazed at my thraldom; and through that amazement was going on to a desire of trying it, thence to the trial itself, and thence perhaps to sink into that bondage whereat he wondered, seeing he was willing to make a covenant with death; and he that loves danger, shall fall into it. For whatever honour there be in the office of well-ordering a married life, and a family, moved us but slightly. But me for the most part the habit of satisfying an insatiable appetite tormented, while it held me captive; him, an admiring wonder was leading captive. So were we, until Thou, O Most High, not forsaking our dust, commiserating us miserable, didst come to our help, by wondrous and secret ways. Continual effort was made to have me married. I wooed, I was promised, chiefly through my mother's pains, that so once married, the health-giving baptism might cleanse me, towards which she rejoiced that I was being daily fitted, and observed that her prayers, and Thy promises, were being fulfilled in my faith. At which time verily, both at my request and her own longing, with strong cries of heart she daily begged of Thee, that Thou wouldest by a vision discover unto her something concerning my future marriage; Thou never wouldest. She saw indeed certain vain and fantastic things, such as the energy of the human spirit, busied thereon, brought together; and these she told me of, not with that confidence she was wont, when Thou showedst her any thing, but slighting them. For she could, she said, through a certain feeling, which in words she could not express, discern betwixt Thy revelations, and the dreams of her own soul. Yet the matter was pressed on, and a maiden asked in marriage, two years under the fit age; and, as pleasing, was waited for. And many of us friends conferring about, and detesting the turbulent turmoils of human life, had debated and now almost resolved on living apart from business and the bustle of men; and this was to be thus obtained; we were to bring whatever we might severally procure, and make one household of all; so that through the truth of our friendship nothing should belong especially to any; but the whole thus derived from all, should as a whole belong to each, and all to all. We thought there might be some often persons in this society; some of whom were very rich, especially Romanianus our townsman, from childhood a very familiar friend of mine, whom the grievous perplexities of his affairs had brought up to court; who was the most earnest for this project; and therein was his voice of great weight, because his ample estate far exceeded any of the rest. We had settled also that two annual officers, as it were, should provide all things necessary, the rest being undisturbed. But when we began to consider whether the wives, which some of us already had, others hoped to have, would allow this, all that plan, which was being so well moulded, fell to pieces in our hands, was utterly dashed and cast aside. Thence we betook us to sighs, and groans, and our steps to follow the broad and beaten ways of the world; for many thoughts were in our heart, but Thy counsel standeth for ever. Out of which counsel Thou didst deride ours, and preparedst Thine own; purposing to give us meat in due season, and to fill our souls with blessing. Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and my concubine being torn from my side as a hindrance to my marriage, my heart which clave unto her was torn and wounded and bleeding. And she returned to Afric, vowing unto Thee never to know any other man, leaving with me my son by her. But unhappy I, who could not imitate a very woman, impatient of delay, inasmuch as not till after two years was I to obtain her I sought not being so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust, procured another, though no wife, that so by the servitude of an enduring custom, the disease of my soul might be kept up and carried on in its vigour, or even augmented, into the dominion of marriage. Nor was that my wound cured, which had been made by the cutting away of the former, but after inflammation and most acute pain, it mortified, and my pains became less acute, but more desperate. To Thee be praise, glory to Thee, Fountain of mercies. I was becoming more miserable, and Thou nearer. Thy right hand was continually ready to pluck me out of the mire, and to wash me thoroughly, and I knew it not; nor did anything call me back from a yet deeper gulf of carnal pleasures, but the fear of death, and of Thy judgment to come; which amid all my changes, never departed from my breast. And in my disputes with my friends Alypius and Nebridius of the nature of good and evil, I held that Epicurus had in my mind won the palm, had I not believed that after death there remained a life for the soul, and places of requital according to men's deserts, which Epicurus would not believe. And I asked, "were we immortal, and to live in perpetual bodily pleasure, without fear of losing it, why should we not be happy, or what else should we seek?" not knowing that great misery was involved in this very thing, that, being thus sunk and blinded, I could not discern that light of excellence and beauty, to be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see, and is seen by the inner man. Nor did I, unhappy, consider from what source it sprung, that even on these things, foul as they were, I with pleasure discoursed with my friends, nor could I, even according to the notions I then had of happiness, be happy without friends, amid what abundance soever of carnal pleasures. And yet these friends I loved for themselves only, and I felt that I was beloved of them again for myself only. O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing! Turned it hath, and turned again, upon back, sides, and belly, yet all was painful; and Thou alone rest. And behold, Thou art at hand, and deliverest us from our wretched wanderings, and placest us in Thy way, and dost comfort us, and say, "Run; I will carry you; yea I will bring you through; there also will I carry you." BOOK VII Deceased was now that my evil and abominable youth, and I was passing into early manhood; the more defiled by vain things as I grew in years, who could not imagine any substance, but such as is wont to be seen with these eyes. I thought not of Thee, O God, under the figure of a human body; since I began to hear aught of wisdom, I always avoided this; and rejoiced to have found the same in the faith of our spiritual mother, Thy Catholic Church. But what else to conceive of Thee I knew not. And I, a man, and such a man, sought to conceive of Thee the sovereign, only, true God; and I did in my inmost soul believe that Thou wert incorruptible, and uninjurable, and unchangeable; because though not knowing whence or how, yet I saw plainly, and was sure, that that which may be corrupted must be inferior to that which cannot; what could not be injured I preferred unhesitatingly to what could receive injury; the unchangeable to things subject to change. My heart passionately cried out against all my phantoms, and with this one blow I sought to beat away from the eye of my mind all that unclean troop which buzzed around it. And lo, being scarce put off, in the twinkling of an eye they gathered again thick about me, flew against my face, and beclouded it; so that though not under the form of the human body, yet was I constrained to conceive of Thee (that incorruptible, uninjurable, and unchangeable, which I preferred before the corruptible, and injurable, and changeable) as being in space, whether infused into the world, or diffused infinitely without it. Because whatsoever I conceived, deprived of this space, seemed to me nothing, yea altogether nothing, not even a void, as if a body were taken out of its place, and the place should remain empty of any body at all, of earth and water, air and heaven, yet would it remain a void place, as it were a spacious nothing. I then being thus gross-hearted, nor clear even to myself, whatsoever was not extended over certain spaces, nor diffused, nor condensed, nor swelled out, or did not or could not receive some of these dimensions, I thought to be altogether nothing. For over such forms as my eyes are wont to range, did my heart then range: nor yet did I see that this same notion of the mind, whereby I formed those very images, was not of this sort, and yet it could not have formed them, had not itself been some great thing. So also did I endeavour to conceive of Thee, Life of my life, as vast, through infinite spaces on every side penetrating the whole mass of the universe, and beyond it, every way, through unmeasurable boundless spaces; so that the earth should have Thee, the heaven have Thee, all things have Thee, and they be bounded in Thee, and Thou bounded nowhere. For that as the body of this air which is above the earth, hindereth not the light of the sun from passing through it, penetrating it, not by bursting or by cutting, but by filling it wholly: so I thought the body not of heaven, air, and sea only, but of the earth too, pervious to Thee, so that in all its parts, the greatest as the smallest, it should admit Thy presence, by a secret inspiration, within and without, directing all things which Thou hast created. So I guessed, only as unable to conceive aught else, for it was false. For thus should a greater part of the earth contain a greater portion of Thee, and a less, a lesser: and all things should in such sort be full of Thee, that the body of an elephant should contain more of Thee, than that of a sparrow, by how much larger it is, and takes up more room; and thus shouldest Thou make the several portions of Thyself present unto the several portions of the world, in fragments, large to the large, petty to the petty. But such art not Thou. But not as yet hadst Thou enlightened my darkness. It was enough for me, Lord, to oppose to those deceived deceivers, and dumb praters, since Thy word sounded not out of them;--that was enough which long ago, while we were yet at Carthage, Nebridius used to propound, at which all we that heard it were staggered: "That said nation of darkness, which the Manichees are wont to set as an opposing mass over against Thee, what could it have done unto Thee, hadst Thou refused to fight with it? For, if they answered, 'it would have done Thee some hurt,' then shouldest Thou be subject to injury and corruption: but it could do Thee no hurt,' then was no reason brought for Thy fighting with it; and fighting in such wise, as that a certain portion or member of Thee, or offspring of Thy very Substance, should be mingled with opposed powers, and natures not created by Thee, and be by them so far corrupted and changed to the worse, as to be turned from happiness into misery, and need assistance, whereby it might be extricated and purified; and that this offspring of Thy Substance was the soul, which being enthralled, defiled, corrupted, Thy Word, free, pure, and whole, might relieve; that Word itself being still corruptible because it was of one and the same Substance. So then, should they affirm Thee, whatsoever Thou art, that is, Thy Substance whereby Thou art, to be incorruptible, then were all these sayings false and execrable; but if corruptible, the very statement showed it to be false and revolting." This argument then of Nebridius sufficed against those who deserved wholly to be vomited out of the overcharged stomach; for they had no escape, without horrible blasphemy of heart and tongue, thus thinking and speaking of Thee. But I also as yet, although I held and was firmly persuaded that Thou our Lord the true God, who madest not only our souls, but our bodies, and not only our souls and bodies, but all beings, and all things, wert undefilable and unalterable, and in no degree mutable; yet understood I not, clearly and without difficulty, the cause of evil. And yet whatever it were, I perceived it was in such wise to be sought out, as should not constrain me to believe the immutable God to be mutable, lest I should become that evil I was seeking out. I sought it out then, thus far free from anxiety, certain of the untruth of what these held, from whom I shrunk with my whole heart: for I saw, that through enquiring the origin of evil, they were filled with evil, in that they preferred to think that Thy substance did suffer ill than their own did commit it. And I strained to perceive what I now heard, that free-will was the cause of our doing ill, and Thy just judgment of our suffering ill. But I was not able clearly to discern it. So then endeavouring to draw my soul's vision out of that deep pit, I was again plunged therein, and endeavouring often, I was plunged back as often. But this raised me a little into Thy light, that I knew as well that I had a will, as that I lived: when then I did will or nill any thing, I was most sure that no other than myself did will and nill: and I all but saw that there was the cause of my sin. But what I did against my will, I saw that I suffered rather than did, and I judged not to be my fault, but my punishment; whereby, however, holding Thee to be just, I speedily confessed myself to be not unjustly punished. But again I said, Who made me? Did not my God, Who is not only good, but goodness itself? Whence then came I to will evil and nill good, so that I am thus justly punished? who set this in me, and ingrafted into me this plant of bitterness, seeing I was wholly formed by my most sweet God? If the devil were the author, whence is that same devil? And if he also by his own perverse will, of a good angel became a devil, whence, again, came in him that evil will whereby he became a devil, seeing the whole nature of angels was made by that most good Creator? By these thoughts I was again sunk down and choked; yet not brought down to that hell of error (where no man confesseth unto Thee), to think rather that Thou dost suffer ill, than that man doth it. For I was in such wise striving to find out the rest, as one who had already found that the incorruptible must needs be better than the corruptible: and Thee therefore, whatsoever Thou wert, I confessed to be incorruptible. For never soul was, nor shall be, able to conceive any thing which may be better than Thou, who art the sovereign and the best good. But since most truly and certainly, the incorruptible is preferable to the corruptible (as I did now prefer it), then, wert Thou not incorruptible, I could in thought have arrived at something better than my God. Where then I saw the incorruptible to be preferable to the corruptible, there ought I to seek for Thee, and there observe "wherein evil itself was"; that is, whence corruption comes, by which Thy substance can by no means be impaired. For corruption does no ways impair our God; by no will, by no necessity, by no unlooked-for chance: because He is God, and what He wills is good, and Himself is that good; but to be corrupted is not good. Nor art Thou against Thy will constrained to any thing, since Thy will is not greater than Thy power. But greater should it be, were Thyself greater than Thyself. For the will and power of God is God Himself. And what can be unlooked-for by Thee, Who knowest all things? Nor is there any nature in things, but Thou knowest it. And what should we more say, "why that substance which God is should not be corruptible," seeing if it were so, it should not be God? And I sought "whence is evil," and sought in an evil way; and saw not the evil in my very search. I set now before the sight of my spirit the whole creation, whatsoever we can see therein (as sea, earth, air, stars, trees, mortal creatures); yea, and whatever in it we do not see, as the firmament of heaven, all angels moreover, and all the spiritual inhabitants thereof. But these very beings, as though they were bodies, did my fancy dispose in place, and I made one great mass of Thy creation, distinguished as to the kinds of bodies; some, real bodies, some, what myself had feigned for spirits. And this mass I made huge, not as it was (which I could not know), but as I thought convenient, yet every way finite. But Thee, O Lord, I imagined on every part environing and penetrating it, though every way infinite: as if there were a sea, every where, and on every side, through unmeasured space, one only boundless sea, and it contained within it some sponge, huge, but bounded; that sponge must needs, in all its parts, be filled from that unmeasurable sea: so conceived I Thy creation, itself finite, full of Thee, the Infinite; and I said, Behold God, and behold what God hath created; and God is good, yea, most mightily and incomparably better than all these: but yet He, the Good, created them good; and see how He environeth and fulfils them. Where is evil then, and whence, and how crept it in hither? What is its root, and what its seed? Or hath it no being? Why then fear we and avoid what is not? Or if we fear it idly, then is that very fear evil, whereby the soul is thus idly goaded and racked. Yea, and so much a greater evil, as we have nothing to fear, and yet do fear. Therefore either is that evil which we fear, or else evil is, that we fear. Whence is it then? seeing God, the Good, hath created all these things good. He indeed, the greater and chiefest Good, hath created these lesser goods; still both Creator and created, all are good. Whence is evil? Or, was there some evil matter of which He made, and formed, and ordered it, yet left something in it which He did not convert into good? Why so then? Had He no might to turn and change the whole, so that no evil should remain in it, seeing He is All-mighty? Lastly, why would He make any thing at all of it, and not rather by the same All-mightiness cause it not to be at all? Or, could it then be against His will? Or if it were from eternity, why suffered He it so to be for infinite spaces of times past, and was pleased so long after to make something out of it? Or if He were suddenly pleased now to effect somewhat, this rather should the All-mighty have effected, that this evil matter should not be, and He alone be, the whole, true, sovereign, and infinite Good. Or if it was not good that He who was good should not also frame and create something that were good, then, that evil matter being taken away and brought to nothing, He might form good matter, whereof to create all things. For He should not be All-mighty, if He might not create something good without the aid of that matter which Himself had not created. These thoughts I revolved in my miserable heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares, lest I should die ere I had found the truth; yet was the faith of Thy Christ, our Lord and Saviour, professed in the Church Catholic, firmly fixed in my heart, in many points, indeed, as yet unformed, and fluctuating from the rule of doctrine; yet did not my mind utterly leave it, but rather daily took in more and more of it. By this time also had I rejected the lying divinations and impious dotages of the astrologers. Let Thine own mercies, out of my very inmost soul, confess unto Thee for this also, O my God. For Thou, Thou altogether (for who else calls us back from the death of all errors, save the Life which cannot die, and the Wisdom which needing no light enlightens the minds that need it, whereby the universe is directed, down to the whirling leaves of trees?)--Thou madest provision for my obstinacy wherewith I struggled against Vindicianus, an acute old man, and Nebridius, a young man of admirable talents; the first vehemently affirming, and the latter often (though with some doubtfulness) saying, "That there was no such art whereby to foresee things to come, but that men's conjectures were a sort of lottery, and that out of many things which they said should come to pass, some actually did, unawares to them who spake it, who stumbled upon it, through their oft speaking." Thou providedst then a friend for me, no negligent consulter of the astrologers; nor yet well skilled in those arts, but (as I said) a curious consulter with them, and yet knowing something, which he said he had heard of his father, which how far it went to overthrow the estimation of that art, he knew not. This man then, Firminus by name, having had a liberal education, and well taught in Rhetoric, consulted me, as one very dear to him, what, according to his so-called constellations, I thought on certain affairs of his, wherein his worldly hopes had risen, and I, who had herein now begun to incline towards Nebridius' opinion, did not altogether refuse to conjecture, and tell him what came into my unresolved mind; but added, that I was now almost persuaded that these were but empty and ridiculous follies. Thereupon he told me that his father had been very curious in such books, and had a friend as earnest in them as himself, who with joint study and conference fanned the flame of their affections to these toys, so that they would observe the moments whereat the very dumb animals, which bred about their houses, gave birth, and then observed the relative position of the heavens, thereby to make fresh experiments in this so-called art. He said then that he had heard of his father, that what time his mother was about to give birth to him, Firminus, a woman-servant of that friend of his father's was also with child, which could not escape her master, who took care with most exact diligence to know the births of his very puppies. And so it was that (the one for his wife, and the other for his servant, with the most careful observation, reckoning days, hours, nay, the lesser divisions of the hours) both were delivered at the same instant; so that both were constrained to allow the same constellations, even to the minutest points, the one for his son, the other for his new-born slave. For so soon as the women began to be in labour, they each gave notice to the other what was fallen out in their houses, and had messengers ready to send to one another so soon as they had notice of the actual birth, of which they had easily provided, each in his own province, to give instant intelligence. Thus then the messengers of the respective parties met, he averred, at such an equal distance from either house that neither of them could make out any difference in the position of the stars, or any other minutest points; and yet Firminus, born in a high estate in his parents' house, ran his course through the gilded paths of life, was increased in riches, raised to honours; whereas that slave continued to serve his masters, without any relaxation of his yoke, as Firminus, who knew him, told me. Upon hearing and believing these things, told by one of such credibility, all that my resistance gave way; and first I endeavoured to reclaim Firminus himself from that curiosity, by telling him that upon inspecting his constellations, I ought if I were to predict truly, to have seen in them parents eminent among their neighbours, a noble family in its own city, high birth, good education, liberal learning. But if that servant had consulted me upon the same constellations, since they were his also, I ought again (to tell him too truly) to see in them a lineage the most abject, a slavish condition, and every thing else utterly at variance with the former. Whence then, if I spake the truth, I should, from the same constellations, speak diversely, or if I spake the same, speak falsely: thence it followed most certainly that whatever, upon consideration of the constellations, was spoken truly, was spoken not out of art, but chance; and whatever spoken falsely, was not out of ignorance in the art, but the failure of the chance. An opening thus made, ruminating with myself on the like things, that no one of those dotards (who lived by such a trade, and whom I longed to attack, and with derision to confute) might urge against me that Firminus had informed me falsely, or his father him; I bent my thoughts on those that are born twins, who for the most part come out of the womb so near one to other, that the small interval (how much force soever in the nature of things folk may pretend it to have) cannot be noted by human observation, or be at all expressed in those figures which the astrologer is to inspect, that he may pronounce truly. Yet they cannot be true: for looking into the same figures, he must have predicted the same of Esau and Jacob, whereas the same happened not to them. Therefore he must speak falsely; or if truly, then, looking into the same figures, he must not give the same answer. Not by art, then, but by chance, would he speak truly. For Thou, O Lord, most righteous Ruler of the Universe, while consulters and consulted know it not, dost by Thy hidden inspiration effect that the consulter should hear what, according to the hidden deservings of souls, he ought to hear, out of the unsearchable depth of Thy just judgment, to Whom let no man say, What is this? Why that? Let him not so say, for he is man. Now then, O my Helper, hadst Thou loosed me from those fetters: and I sought "whence is evil," and found no way. But Thou sufferedst me not by any fluctuations of thought to be carried away from the Faith whereby I believed Thee both to be, and Thy substance to be unchangeable, and that Thou hast a care of, and wouldest judge men, and that in Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, and the holy Scriptures, which the authority of Thy Catholic Church pressed upon me, Thou hadst set the way of man's salvation, to that life which is to be after this death. These things being safe and immovably settled in my mind, I sought anxiously "whence was evil?" What were the pangs of my teeming heart, what groans, O my God! yet even there were Thine ears open, and I knew it not; and when in silence I vehemently sought, those silent contritions of my soul were strong cries unto Thy mercy. Thou knewest what I suffered, and no man. For, what was that which was thence through my tongue distilled into the ears of my most familiar friends? Did the whole tumult of my soul, for which neither time nor utterance sufficed, reach them? Yet went up the whole to Thy hearing, all which I roared out from the groanings of my heart; and my desire was before Thee, and the light of mine eyes was not with me: for that was within, I without: nor was that confined to place, but I was intent on things contained in place, but there found I no resting-place, nor did they so receive me, that I could say, "It is enough," "it is well": nor did they yet suffer me to turn back, where it might be well enough with me. For to these things was I superior, but inferior to Thee; and Thou art my true joy when subjected to Thee, and Thou hadst subjected to me what Thou createdst below me. And this was the true temperament, and middle region of my safety, to remain in Thy Image, and by serving Thee, rule the body. But when I rose proudly against Thee, and ran against the Lord with my neck, with the thick bosses of my buckler, even these inferior things were set above me, and pressed me down, and no where was there respite or space of breathing. They met my sight on all sides by heaps and troops, and in thought the images thereof presented themselves unsought, as I would return to Thee, as if they would say unto me, "Whither goest thou, unworthy and defiled?" And these things had grown out of my wound; for Thou "humbledst the proud like one that is wounded," and through my own swelling was I separated from Thee; yea, my pride-swollen face closed up mine eyes. But Thou, Lord, abidest for ever, yet not for ever art Thou angry with us; because Thou pitiest our dust and ashes, and it was pleasing in Thy sight to reform my deformities; and by inward goads didst Thou rouse me, that I should be ill at ease, until Thou wert manifested to my inward sight. Thus, by the secret hand of Thy medicining was my swelling abated, and the troubled and bedimmed eyesight of my mind, by the smarting anointings of healthful sorrows, was from day to day healed. And Thou, willing first to show me how Thou resistest the proud, but givest grace unto the humble, and by how great an act of Thy mercy Thou hadst traced out to men the way of humility, in that Thy Word was made flesh, and dwelt among men:--Thou procuredst for me, by means of one puffed up with most unnatural pride, certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin. And therein I read, not indeed in the very words, but to the very same purpose, enforced by many and divers reasons, that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: the Same was in the beginning with God: all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made: that which was made by Him is life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. And that the soul of man, though it bears witness to the light, yet itself is not that light; but the Word of God, being God, is that true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And that He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. But, that He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, as many as believed in His name; this I read not there. Again I read there, that God the Word was born not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. But that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, I read not there. For I traced in those books that it was many and divers ways said, that the Son was in the form of the Father, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, for that naturally He was the Same Substance. But that He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, and that the death of the cross: wherefore God exalted Him from the dead, and gave Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should how, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father; those books have not. For that before all times and above all times Thy Only-Begotten Son remaineth unchangeable, co-eternal with Thee, and that of His fulness souls receive, that they may be blessed; and that by participation of wisdom abiding in them, they are renewed, so as to be wise, is there. But that in due time He died for the ungodly; and that Thou sparedst not Thine Only Son, but deliveredst Him for us all, is not there. For Thou hiddest these things from the wise, and revealedst them to babes; that they that labour and are heavy laden might come unto Him, and He refresh them, because He is meek and lowly in heart; and the meek He directeth in judgment, and the gentle He teacheth His ways, beholding our lowliness and trouble, and forgiving all our sins. But such as are lifted up in the lofty walk of some would-be sublimer learning, hear not Him, saying, Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls. Although they knew God, yet they glorify Him not as God, nor are thankful, but wax vain in their thoughts; and their foolish heart is darkened; professing that they were wise, they became fools. And therefore did I read there also, that they had changed the glory of Thy incorruptible nature into idols and divers shapes, into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and birds, and beasts, and creeping things; namely, into that Egyptian food for which Esau lost his birthright, for that Thy first-born people worshipped the head of a four-footed beast instead of Thee; turning in heart back towards Egypt; and bowing Thy image, their own soul, before the image of a calf that eateth hay. These things found I here, but I fed not on them. For it pleased Thee, O Lord, to take away the reproach of diminution from Jacob, that the elder should serve the younger: and Thou calledst the Gentiles into Thine inheritance. And I had come to Thee from among the Gentiles; and I set my mind upon the gold which Thou willedst Thy people to take from Egypt, seeing Thine it was, wheresoever it were. And to the Athenians Thou saidst by Thy Apostle, that in Thee we live, move, and have our being, as one of their own poets had said. And verily these books came from thence. But I set not my mind on the idols of Egypt, whom they served with Thy gold, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. And being thence admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inward self, Thou being my Guide: and able I was, for Thou wert become my Helper. And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul (such as it was), above the same eye of my soul, above my mind, the Light Unchangeable. Not this ordinary light, which all flesh may look upon, nor as it were a greater of the same kind, as though the brightness of this should be manifold brighter, and with its greatness take up all space. Not such was this light, but other, yea, far other from these. Nor was it above my soul, as oil is above water, nor yet as heaven above earth: but above to my soul, because It made me; and I below It, because I was made by It. He that knows the Truth, knows what that Light is; and he that knows It, knows eternity. Love knoweth it. O Truth Who art Eternity! and Love Who art Truth! and Eternity Who art Love! Thou art my God, to Thee do I sigh night and day. Thee when I first knew, Thou liftedst me up, that I might see there was what I might see, and that I was not yet such as to see. And Thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight, streaming forth Thy beams of light upon me most strongly, and I trembled with love and awe: and I perceived myself to be far off from Thee, in the region of unlikeness, as if I heard this Thy voice from on high: "I am the food of grown men, grow, and thou shalt feed upon Me; nor shalt thou convert Me, like the food of thy flesh into thee, but thou shalt be converted into Me." And I learned, that Thou for iniquity chastenest man, and Thou madest my soul to consume away like a spider. And I said, "Is Truth therefore nothing because it is not diffused through space finite or infinite?" And Thou criedst to me from afar: "Yet verily, I AM that I AM." And I heard, as the heart heareth, nor had I room to doubt, and I should sooner doubt that I live than that Truth is not, which is clearly seen, being understood by those things which are made. And I beheld the other things below Thee, and I perceived that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not, for they are, since they are from Thee, but are not, because they are not what Thou art. For that truly is which remains unchangeably. It is good then for me to hold fast unto God; for if I remain not in Him, I cannot in myself; but He remaining in Himself, reneweth all things. And Thou art the Lord my God, since Thou standest not in need of my goodness. And it was manifested unto me, that those things be good which yet are corrupted; which neither were they sovereignly good, nor unless they were good could be corrupted: for if sovereignly good, they were incorruptible, if not good at all, there were nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption injures, but unless it diminished goodness, it could not injure. Either then corruption injures not, which cannot be; or which is most certain, all which is corrupted is deprived of good. But if they be deprived of all good, they shall cease to be. For if they shall be, and can now no longer be corrupted, they shall be better than before, because they shall abide incorruptibly. And what more monstrous than to affirm things to become better by losing all their good? Therefore, if they shall be deprived of all good, they shall no longer be. So long therefore as they are, they are good: therefore whatsoever is, is good. That evil then which I sought, whence it is, is not any substance: for were it a substance, it should be good. For either it should be an incorruptible substance, and so a chief good: or a corruptible substance; which unless it were good, could not be corrupted. I perceived therefore, and it was manifested to me that Thou madest all things good, nor is there any substance at all, which Thou madest not; and for that Thou madest not all things equal, therefore are all things; because each is good, and altogether very good, because our God made all things very good. And to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil: yea, not only to Thee, but also to Thy creation as a whole, because there is nothing without, which may break in, and corrupt that order which Thou hast appointed it. But in the parts thereof some things, because unharmonising with other some, are accounted evil: whereas those very things harmonise with others, and are good; and in themselves are good. And all these things which harmonise not together, do yet with the inferior part, which we call Earth, having its own cloudy and windy sky harmonising with it. Far be it then that I should say, "These things should not be": for should I see nought but these, I should indeed long for the better; but still must even for these alone praise Thee; for that Thou art to be praised, do show from the earth, dragons, and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, and stormy wind, which fulfil Thy word; mountains, and all hills, fruitful trees, and all cedars; beasts, and all cattle, creeping things, and flying fowls; kings of the earth, and all people, princes, and all judges of the earth; young men and maidens, old men and young, praise Thy Name. But when, from heaven, these praise Thee, praise Thee, our God, in the heights all Thy angels, all Thy hosts, sun and moon, all the stars and light, the Heaven of heavens, and the waters that be above the heavens, praise Thy Name; I did not now long for things better, because I conceived of all: and with a sounder judgment I apprehended that the things above were better than these below, but altogether better than those above by themselves. There is no soundness in them, whom aught of Thy creation displeaseth: as neither in me, when much which Thou hast made, displeased me. And because my soul durst not be displeased at my God, it would fain not account that Thine, which displeased it. Hence it had gone into the opinion of two substances, and had no rest, but talked idly. And returning thence, it had made to itself a God, through infinite measures of all space; and thought it to be Thee, and placed it in its heart; and had again become the temple of its own idol, to Thee abominable. But after Thou hadst soothed my head, unknown to me, and closed mine eyes that they should not behold vanity, I ceased somewhat of my former self, and my frenzy was lulled to sleep; and I awoke in Thee, and saw Thee infinite, but in another way, and this sight was not derived from the flesh. And I looked back on other things; and I saw that they owed their being to Thee; and were all bounded in Thee: but in a different way; not as being in space; but because Thou containest all things in Thine hand in Thy Truth; and all things are true so far as they nor is there any falsehood, unless when that is thought to be, which is not. And I saw that all things did harmonise, not with their places only, but with their seasons. And that Thou, who only art Eternal, didst not begin to work after innumerable spaces of times spent; for that all spaces of times, both which have passed, and which shall pass, neither go nor come, but through Thee, working and abiding. And I perceived and found it nothing strange, that bread which is pleasant to a healthy palate is loathsome to one distempered: and to sore eyes light is offensive, which to the sound is delightful. And Thy righteousness displeaseth the wicked; much more the viper and reptiles, which Thou hast created good, fitting in with the inferior portions of Thy Creation, with which the very wicked also fit in; and that the more, by how much they be unlike Thee; but with the superior creatures, by how much they become more like to Thee. And I enquired what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but the perversion of the will, turned aside from Thee, O God, the Supreme, towards these lower things, and casting out its bowels, and puffed up outwardly. And I wondered that I now loved Thee, and no phantasm for Thee. And yet did I not press on to enjoy my God; but was borne up to Thee by Thy beauty, and soon borne down from Thee by mine own weight, sinking with sorrow into these inferior things. This weight was carnal custom. Yet dwelt there with me a remembrance of Thee; nor did I any way doubt that there was One to whom I might cleave, but that I was not yet such as to cleave to Thee: for that the body which is corrupted presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things. And most certain I was, that Thy invisible works from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even Thy eternal power and Godhead. For examining whence it was that I admired the beauty of bodies celestial or terrestrial; and what aided me in judging soundly on things mutable, and pronouncing, "This ought to be thus, this not"; examining, I say, whence it was that I so judged, seeing I did so judge, I had found the unchangeable and true Eternity of Truth above my changeable mind. And thus by degrees I passed from bodies to the soul, which through the bodily senses perceives; and thence to its inward faculty, to which the bodily senses represent things external, whitherto reach the faculties of beasts; and thence again to the reasoning faculty, to which what is received from the senses of the body, is referred to be judged. Which finding itself also to be in me a thing variable, raised itself up to its own understanding, and drew away my thoughts from the power of habit, withdrawing itself from those troops of contradictory phantasms; that so it might find what that light was whereby it was bedewed, when, without all doubting, it cried out, "That the unchangeable was to be preferred to the changeable"; whence also it knew That Unchangeable, which, unless it had in some way known, it had had no sure ground to prefer it to the changeable. And thus with the flash of one trembling glance it arrived at THAT WHICH IS. And then I saw Thy invisible things understood by the things which are made. But I could not fix my gaze thereon; and my infirmity being struck back, I was thrown again on my wonted habits, carrying along with me only a loving memory thereof, and a longing for what I had, as it were, perceived the odour of, but was not yet able to feed on. Then I sought a way of obtaining strength sufficient to enjoy Thee; and found it not, until I embraced that Mediator betwixt God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who is over all, God blessed for evermore, calling unto me, and saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and mingling that food which I was unable to receive, with our flesh. For, the Word was made flesh, that Thy wisdom, whereby Thou createdst all things, might provide milk for our infant state. For I did not hold to my Lord Jesus Christ, I, humbled, to the Humble; nor knew I yet whereto His infirmity would guide us. For Thy Word, the Eternal Truth, far above the higher parts of Thy Creation, raises up the subdued unto Itself: but in this lower world built for Itself a lowly habitation of our clay, whereby to abase from themselves such as would be subdued, and bring them over to Himself; allaying their swelling, and fomenting their love; to the end they might go on no further in self-confidence, but rather consent to become weak, seeing before their feet the Divinity weak by taking our coats of skin; and wearied, might cast themselves down upon It, and It rising, might lift them up. But I thought otherwise; conceiving only of my Lord Christ as of a man of excellent wisdom, whom no one could be equalled unto; especially, for that being wonderfully born of a Virgin, He seemed, in conformity therewith, through the Divine care for us, to have attained that great eminence of authority, for an ensample of despising things temporal for the obtaining of immortality. But what mystery there lay in "The Word was made flesh," I could not even imagine. Only I had learnt out of what is delivered to us in writing of Him that He did eat, and drink, sleep, walk, rejoiced in spirit, was sorrowful, discoursed; that flesh did not cleave by itself unto Thy Word, but with the human soul and mind. All know this who know the unchangeableness of Thy Word, which I now knew, as far as I could, nor did I at all doubt thereof. For, now to move the limbs of the body by will, now not, now to be moved by some affection, now not, now to deliver wise sayings through human signs, now to keep silence, belong to soul and mind subject to variation. And should these things be falsely written of Him, all the rest also would risk the charge, nor would there remain in those books any saving faith for mankind. Since then they were written truly, I acknowledged a perfect man to be in Christ; not the body of a man only, nor, with the body, a sensitive soul without a rational, but very man; whom, not only as being a form of Truth, but for a certain great excellence of human nature and a more perfect participation of wisdom, I judged to be preferred before others. But Alypius imagined the Catholics to believe God to be so clothed with flesh, that besides God and flesh, there was no soul at all in Christ, and did not think that a human mind was ascribed to Him. And because he was well persuaded that the actions recorded of Him could only be performed by a vital and a rational creature, he moved the more slowly towards the Christian Faith. But understanding afterwards that this was the error of the Apollinarian heretics, he joyed in and was conformed to the Catholic Faith. But somewhat later, I confess, did I learn how in that saying, The Word was made flesh, the Catholic truth is distinguished from the falsehood of Photinus. For the rejection of heretics makes the tenets of Thy Church and sound doctrine to stand out more clearly. For there must also be heresies, that the approved may be made manifest among the weak. But having then read those books of the Platonists, and thence been taught to search for incorporeal truth, I saw Thy invisible things, understood by those things which are made; and though cast back, I perceived what that was which through the darkness of my mind I was hindered from contemplating, being assured "That Thou wert, and wert infinite, and yet not diffused in space, finite or infinite; and that Thou truly art Who art the same ever, in no part nor motion varying; and that all other things are from Thee, on this most sure ground alone, that they are." Of these things I was assured, yet too unsure to enjoy Thee. I prated as one well skilled; but had I not sought Thy way in Christ our Saviour, I had proved to be, not skilled, but killed. For now I had begun to wish to seem wise, being filled with mine own punishment, yet I did not mourn, but rather scorn, puffed up with knowledge. For where was that charity building upon the foundation of humility, which is Christ Jesus? or when should these books teach me it? Upon these, I believe, Thou therefore willedst that I should fall, before I studied Thy Scriptures, that it might be imprinted on my memory how I was affected by them; and that afterwards when my spirits were tamed through Thy books, and my wounds touched by Thy healing fingers, I might discern and distinguish between presumption and confession; between those who saw whither they were to go, yet saw not the way, and the way that leadeth not to behold only but to dwell in the beatific country. For had I first been formed in Thy Holy Scriptures, and hadst Thou in the familiar use of them grown sweet unto me, and had I then fallen upon those other volumes, they might perhaps have withdrawn me from the solid ground of piety, or, had I continued in that healthful frame which I had thence imbibed, I might have thought that it might have been obtained by the study of those books alone. Most eagerly then did I seize that venerable writing of Thy Spirit; and chiefly the Apostle Paul. Whereupon those difficulties vanished away, wherein he once seemed to me to contradict himself, and the text of his discourse not to agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets. And the face of that pure word appeared to me one and the same; and I learned to rejoice with trembling. So I began; and whatsoever truth I had read in those other books, I found here amid the praise of Thy Grace; that whoso sees, may not so glory as if he had not received, not only what he sees, but also that he sees (for what hath he, which he hath not received?), and that he may be not only admonished to behold Thee, who art ever the same, but also healed, to hold Thee; and that he who cannot see afar off, may yet walk on the way, whereby he may arrive, and behold, and hold Thee. For, though a man be delighted with the law of God after the inner man, what shall he do with that other law in his members which warreth against the law of his mind, and bringeth him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members? For, Thou art righteous, O Lord, but we have sinned and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and Thy hand is grown heavy upon us, and we are justly delivered over unto that ancient sinner, the king of death; because he persuaded our will to be like his will whereby he abode not in Thy truth. What shall wretched man do? who shall deliver him from the body of his death, but only Thy Grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, whom Thou hast begotten co-eternal, and formedst in the beginning of Thy ways, in whom the prince of this world found nothing worthy of death, yet killed he Him; and the handwriting, which was contrary to us, was blotted out? This those writings contain not. Those pages present not the image of this piety, the tears of confession, Thy sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, the salvation of the people, the Bridal City, the earnest of the Holy Ghost, the Cup of our Redemption. No man sings there, Shall not my soul be submitted unto God? for of Him cometh my salvation. For He is my God and my salvation, my guardian, I shall no more be moved. No one there hears Him call, Come unto Me, all ye that labour. They scorn to learn of Him, because He is meek and lowly in heart; for these things hast Thou hid from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. For it is one thing, from the mountain's shaggy top to see the land of peace, and to find no way thither; and in vain to essay through ways unpassable, opposed and beset by fugitives and deserters, under their captain the lion and the dragon: and another to keep on the way that leads thither, guarded by the host of the heavenly General; where they spoil not who have deserted the heavenly army; for they avoid it, as very torment. These things did wonderfully sink into my bowels, when I read that least of Thy Apostles, and had meditated upon Thy works, and trembled exceedingly. BOOK VIII O my God, let me, with thanksgiving, remember, and confess unto Thee Thy mercies on me. Let my bones be bedewed with Thy love, and let them say unto Thee, Who is like unto Thee, O Lord? Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder, I will offer unto Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. And how Thou hast broken them, I will declare; and all who worship Thee, when they hear this, shall say, "Blessed be the Lord, in heaven and in earth, great and wonderful is his name." Thy words had stuck fast in my heart, and I was hedged round about on all sides by Thee. Of Thy eternal life I was now certain, though I saw it in a figure and as through a glass. Yet I had ceased to doubt that there was an incorruptible substance, whence was all other substance; nor did I now desire to be more certain of Thee, but more steadfast in Thee. But for my temporal life, all was wavering, and my heart had to be purged from the old leaven. The Way, the Saviour Himself, well pleased me, but as yet I shrunk from going through its straitness. And Thou didst put into my mind, and it seemed good in my eyes, to go to Simplicianus, who seemed to me a good servant of Thine; and Thy grace shone in him. I had heard also that from his very youth he had lived most devoted unto Thee. Now he was grown into years; and by reason of so great age spent in such zealous following of Thy ways, he seemed to me likely to have learned much experience; and so he had. Out of which store I wished that he would tell me (setting before him my anxieties) which were the fittest way for one in my case to walk in Thy paths. For, I saw the church full; and one went this way, and another that way. But I was displeased that I led a secular life; yea now that my desires no longer inflamed me, as of old, with hopes of honour and profit, a very grievous burden it was to undergo so heavy a bondage. For, in comparison of Thy sweetness, and the beauty of Thy house which I loved, those things delighted me no longer. But still I was enthralled with the love of woman; nor did the Apostle forbid me to marry, although he advised me to something better, chiefly wishing that all men were as himself was. But I being weak, chose the more indulgent place; and because of this alone, was tossed up and down in all beside, faint and wasted with withering cares, because in other matters I was constrained against my will to conform myself to a married life, to which I was given up and enthralled. I had heard from the mouth of the Truth, that there were some eunuchs which had made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake: but, saith He, let him who can receive it, receive it. Surely vain are all men who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things which are seen, find out Him who is good. But I was no longer in that vanity; I had surmounted it; and by the common witness of all Thy creatures had found Thee our Creator, and Thy Word, God with Thee, and together with Thee one God, by whom Thou createdst all things. There is yet another kind of ungodly, who knowing God, glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful. Into this also had I fallen, but Thy right hand upheld me, and took me thence, and Thou placedst me where I might recover. For Thou hast said unto man, Behold, the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and, Desire not to seem wise; because they who affirmed themselves to be wise, became fools. But I had now found the goodly pearl, which, selling all that I had, I ought to have bought, and I hesitated. To Simplicianus then I went, the father of Ambrose (a Bishop now) in receiving Thy grace, and whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. To him I related the mazes of my wanderings. But when I mentioned that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, sometime Rhetoric Professor of Rome (who had died a Christian, as I had heard), had translated into Latin, he testified his joy that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, full of fallacies and deceits, after the rudiments of this world, whereas the Platonists many ways led to the belief in God and His Word. Then to exhort me to the humility of Christ, hidden from the wise, and revealed to little ones, he spoke of Victorinus himself, whom while at Rome he had most intimately known: and of him he related what I will not conceal. For it contains great praise of Thy grace, to be confessed unto Thee, how that aged man, most learned and skilled in the liberal sciences, and who had read, and weighed so many works of the philosophers; the instructor of so many noble Senators, who also, as a monument of his excellent discharge of his office, had (which men of this world esteem a high honour) both deserved and obtained a statue in the Roman Forum; he, to that age a worshipper of idols, and a partaker of the sacrilegious rites, to which almost all the nobility of Rome were given up, and had inspired the people with the love of Anubis, barking Deity, and all The monster Gods of every kind, who fought 'Gainst Neptune, Venus, and Minerva: whom Rome once conquered, now adored, all which the aged Victorinus had with thundering eloquence so many years defended;--he now blushed not to be the child of Thy Christ, and the new-born babe of Thy fountain; submitting his neck to the yoke of humility, and subduing his forehead to the reproach of the Cross. O Lord, Lord, Which hast bowed the heavens and come down, touched the mountains and they did smoke, by what means didst Thou convey Thyself into that breast? He used to read (as Simplicianus said) the holy Scripture, most studiously sought and searched into all the Christian writings, and said to Simplicianus (not openly, but privately and as a friend), "Understand that I am already a Christian." Whereto he answered, "I will not believe it, nor will I rank you among Christians, unless I see you in the Church of Christ." The other, in banter, replied, "Do walls then make Christians?" And this he often said, that he was already a Christian; and Simplicianus as often made the same answer, and the conceit of the "walls" was by the other as often renewed. For he feared to offend his friends, proud daemon-worshippers, from the height of whose Babylonian dignity, as from cedars of Libanus, which the Lord had not yet broken down, he supposed the weight of enmity would fall upon him. But after that by reading and earnest thought he had gathered firmness, and feared to be denied by Christ before the holy angels, should he now be afraid to confess Him before men, and appeared to himself guilty of a heavy offence, in being ashamed of the Sacraments of the humility of Thy Word, and not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud daemons, whose pride he had imitated and their rites adopted, he became bold-faced against vanity, and shame-faced towards the truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly said to Simplicianus (as himself told me), "Go we to the Church; I wish to be made a Christian." But he, not containing himself for joy, went with him. And having been admitted to the first Sacrament and become a Catechumen, not long after he further gave in his name, that he might be regenerated by baptism, Rome wondering, the Church rejoicing. The proud saw, and were wroth; they gnashed with their teeth, and melted away. But the Lord God was the hope of Thy servant, and he regarded not vanities and lying madness. To conclude, when the hour was come for making profession of his faith (which at Rome they, who are about to approach to Thy grace, deliver, from an elevated place, in the sight of all the faithful, in a set form of words committed to memory), the presbyters, he said, offered Victorinus (as was done to such as seemed likely through bashfulness to be alarmed) to make his profession more privately: but he chose rather to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy multitude. "For it was not salvation that he taught in rhetoric, and yet that he had publicly professed: how much less then ought he, when pronouncing Thy word, to dread Thy meek flock, who, when delivering his own words, had not feared a mad multitude!" When, then, he went up to make his profession, all, as they knew him, whispered his name one to another with the voice of congratulation. And who there knew him not? and there ran a low murmur through all the mouths of the rejoicing multitude, Victorinus! Victorinus! Sudden was the burst of rapture, that they saw him; suddenly were they hushed that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent boldness, and all wished to draw him into their very heart; yea by their love and joy they drew him thither, such were the hands wherewith they drew him. Good God! what takes place in man, that he should more rejoice at the salvation of a soul despaired of, and freed from greater peril, than if there had always been hope of him, or the danger had been less? For so Thou also, merciful Father, dost more rejoice over one penitent than over ninety-nine just persons that need no repentance. And with much joyfulness do we hear, so often as we hear with what joy the sheep which had strayed is brought back upon the shepherd's shoulder, and the groat is restored to Thy treasury, the neighbours rejoicing with the woman who found it; and the joy of the solemn service of Thy house forceth to tears, when in Thy house it is read of Thy younger son, that he was dead, and liveth again; had been lost, and is found. For Thou rejoicest in us, and in Thy holy angels, holy through holy charity. For Thou art ever the same; for all things which abide not the same nor for ever, Thou for ever knowest in the same way. What then takes place in the soul, when it is more delighted at finding or recovering the things it loves, than if it had ever had them? yea, and other things witness hereunto; and all things are full of witnesses, crying out, "So is it." The conquering commander triumpheth; yet had he not conquered unless he had fought; and the more peril there was in the battle, so much the more joy is there in the triumph. The storm tosses the sailors, threatens shipwreck; all wax pale at approaching death; sky and sea are calmed, and they are exceeding joyed, as having been exceeding afraid. A friend is sick, and his pulse threatens danger; all who long for his recovery are sick in mind with him. He is restored, though as yet he walks not with his former strength; yet there is such joy, as was not, when before he walked sound and strong. Yea, the very pleasures of human life men acquire by difficulties, not those only which fall upon us unlooked for, and against our wills, but even by self-chosen, and pleasure-seeking trouble. Eating and drinking have no pleasure, unless there precede the pinching of hunger and thirst. Men, given to drink, eat certain salt meats, to procure a troublesome heat, which the drink allaying, causes pleasure. It is also ordered that the affianced bride should not at once be given, lest as a husband he should hold cheap whom, as betrothed, he sighed not after. This law holds in foul and accursed joy; this in permitted and lawful joy; this in the very purest perfection of friendship; this, in him who was dead, and lived again; had been lost and was found. Every where the greater joy is ushered in by the greater pain. What means this, O Lord my God, whereas Thou art everlastingly joy to Thyself, and some things around Thee evermore rejoice in Thee? What means this, that this portion of things thus ebbs and flows alternately displeased and reconciled? Is this their allotted measure? Is this all Thou hast assigned to them, whereas from the highest heavens to the lowest earth, from the beginning of the world to the end of ages, from the angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its place, and realisest each in their season, every thing good after its kind? Woe is me! how high art Thou in the highest, and how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest, and we scarcely return to Thee. Up, Lord, and do; stir us up, and recall us; kindle and draw us; inflame, grow sweet unto us, let us now love, let us run. Do not many, out of a deeper hell of blindness than Victorinus, return to Thee, approach, and are enlightened, receiving that Light, which they who receive, receive power from Thee to become Thy sons? But if they be less known to the nations, even they that know them, joy less for them. For when many joy together, each also has more exuberant joy for that they are kindled and inflamed one by the other. Again, because those known to many, influence the more towards salvation, and lead the way with many to follow. And therefore do they also who preceded them much rejoice in them, because they rejoice not in them alone. For far be it, that in Thy tabernacle the persons of the rich should be accepted before the poor, or the noble before the ignoble; seeing rather Thou hast chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and the base things of this world, and the things despised hast Thou chosen, and those things which are not, that Thou mightest bring to nought things that are. And yet even that least of Thy apostles, by whose tongue Thou soundedst forth these words, when through his warfare, Paulus the Proconsul, his pride conquered, was made to pass under the easy yoke of Thy Christ, and became a provincial of the great King; he also for his former name Saul, was pleased to be called Paul, in testimony of so great a victory. For the enemy is more overcome in one, of whom he hath more hold; by whom he hath hold of more. But the proud he hath more hold of, through their nobility; and by them, of more through their authority. By how much the more welcome then the heart of Victorinus was esteemed, which the devil had held as an impregnable possession, the tongue of Victorinus, with which mighty and keen weapon he had slain many; so much the more abundantly ought Thy sons to rejoice, for that our King hath bound the strong man, and they saw his vessels taken from him and cleansed, and made meet for Thy honour; and become serviceable for the Lord, unto every good work. But when that man of Thine, Simplicianus, related to me this of Victorinus, I was on fire to imitate him; for for this very end had he related it. But when he had subjoined also, how in the days of the Emperor Julian a law was made, whereby Christians were forbidden to teach the liberal sciences or oratory; and how he, obeying this law, chose rather to give over the wordy school than Thy Word, by which Thou makest eloquent the tongues of the dumb; he seemed to me not more resolute than blessed, in having thus found opportunity to wait on Thee only. Which thing I was sighing for, bound as I was, not with another's irons, but by my own iron will. My will the enemy held, and thence had made a chain for me, and bound me. For of a forward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not resisted, became necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together (whence I called it a chain) a hard bondage held me enthralled. But that new will which had begun to be in me, freely to serve Thee, and to wish to enjoy Thee, O God, the only assured pleasantness, was not yet able to overcome my former wilfulness, strengthened by age. Thus did my two wills, one new, and the other old, one carnal, the other spiritual, struggle within me; and by their discord, undid my soul. Thus, I understood, by my own experience, what I had read, how the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Myself verily either way; yet more myself, in that which I approved in myself, than in that which in myself I disapproved. For in this last, it was now for the more part not myself, because in much I rather endured against my will, than acted willingly. And yet it was through me that custom had obtained this power of warring against me, because I had come willingly, whither I willed not. And who has any right to speak against it, if just punishment follow the sinner? Nor had I now any longer my former plea, that I therefore as yet hesitated to be above the world and serve Thee, for that the truth was not altogether ascertained to me; for now it too was. But I still under service to the earth, refused to fight under Thy banner, and feared as much to be freed of all incumbrances, as we should fear to be encumbered with it. Thus with the baggage of this present world was I held down pleasantly, as in sleep: and the thoughts wherein I meditated on Thee were like the efforts of such as would awake, who yet overcome with a heavy drowsiness, are again drenched therein. And as no one would sleep for ever, and in all men's sober judgment waking is better, yet a man for the most part, feeling a heavy lethargy in all his limbs, defers to shake off sleep, and though half displeased, yet, even after it is time to rise, with pleasure yields to it, so was I assured that much better were it for me to give myself up to Thy charity, than to give myself over to mine own cupidity; but though the former course satisfied me and gained the mastery, the latter pleased me and held me mastered. Nor had I any thing to answer Thee calling to me, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. And when Thou didst on all sides show me that what Thou saidst was true, I, convicted by the truth, had nothing at all to answer, but only those dull and drowsy words, "Anon, anon," "presently," "leave me but a little." But "presently, presently," had no present, and my "little while" went on for a long while; in vain I delighted in Thy law according to the inner man, when another law in my members rebelled against the law of my mind, and led me captive under the law of sin which was in my members. For the law of sin is the violence of custom, whereby the mind is drawn and holden, even against its will; but deservedly, for that it willingly fell into it. Who then should deliver me thus wretched from the body of this death, but Thy grace only, through Jesus Christ our Lord? And how Thou didst deliver me out of the bonds of desire, wherewith I was bound most straitly to carnal concupiscence, and out of the drudgery of worldly things, I will now declare, and confess unto Thy name, O Lord, my helper and my redeemer. Amid increasing anxiety, I was doing my wonted business, and daily sighing unto Thee. I attended Thy Church, whenever free from the business under the burden of which I groaned. Alypius was with me, now after the third sitting released from his law business, and awaiting to whom to sell his counsel, as I sold the skill of speaking, if indeed teaching can impart it. Nebridius had now, in consideration of our friendship, consented to teach under Verecundus, a citizen and a grammarian of Milan, and a very intimate friend of us all; who urgently desired, and by the right of friendship challenged from our company, such faithful aid as he greatly needed. Nebridius then was not drawn to this by any desire of advantage (for he might have made much more of his learning had he so willed), but as a most kind and gentle friend, he would not be wanting to a good office, and slight our request. But he acted herein very discreetly, shunning to become known to personages great according to this world, avoiding the distraction of mind thence ensuing, and desiring to have it free and at leisure, as many hours as might be, to seek, or read, or hear something concerning wisdom. Upon a day then, Nebridius being absent (I recollect not why), lo, there came to see me and Alypius, one Pontitianus, our countryman so far as being an African, in high office in the Emperor's court. What he would with us, I know not, but we sat down to converse, and it happened that upon a table for some game, before us, he observed a book, took, opened it, and contrary to his expectation, found it the Apostle Paul; for he thought it some of those books which I was wearing myself in teaching. Whereat smiling, and looking at me, he expressed his joy and wonder that he had on a sudden found this book, and this only before my eyes. For he was a Christian, and baptised, and often bowed himself before Thee our God in the Church, in frequent and continued prayers. When then I had told him that I bestowed very great pains upon those Scriptures, a conversation arose (suggested by his account) on Antony the Egyptian monk: whose name was in high reputation among Thy servants, though to that hour unknown to us. Which when he discovered, he dwelt the more upon that subject, informing and wondering at our ignorance of one so eminent. But we stood amazed, hearing Thy wonderful works most fully attested, in times so recent, and almost in our own, wrought in the true Faith and Church Catholic. We all wondered; we, that they were so great, and he, that they had not reached us. Thence his discourse turned to the flocks in the monasteries, and their holy ways, a sweet-smelling savour unto Thee, and the fruitful deserts of the wilderness, whereof we knew nothing. And there was a monastery at Milan, full of good brethren, without the city walls, under the fostering care of Ambrose, and we knew it not. He went on with his discourse, and we listened in intent silence. He told us then how one afternoon at Triers, when the Emperor was taken up with the Circensian games, he and three others, his companions, went out to walk in gardens near the city walls, and there as they happened to walk in pairs, one went apart with him, and the other two wandered by themselves; and these, in their wanderings, lighted upon a certain cottage, inhabited by certain of Thy servants, poor in spirit, of whom is the kingdom of heaven, and there they found a little book containing the life of Antony. This one of them began to read, admire, and kindle at it; and as he read, to meditate on taking up such a life, and giving over his secular service to serve Thee. And these two were of those whom they style agents for the public affairs. Then suddenly, filled with a holy love, and a sober shame, in anger with himself cast his eyes upon his friend, saying, "Tell me, I pray thee, what would we attain by all these labours of ours? what aim we at? what serve we for? Can our hopes in court rise higher than to be the Emperor's favourites? and in this, what is there not brittle, and full of perils? and by how many perils arrive we at a greater peril? and when arrive we thither? But a friend of God, if I wish it, I become now at once." So spake he. And in pain with the travail of a new life, he turned his eyes again upon the book, and read on, and was changed inwardly, where Thou sawest, and his mind was stripped of the world, as soon appeared. For as he read, and rolled up and down the waves of his heart, he stormed at himself a while, then discerned, and determined on a better course; and now being Thine, said to his friend, "Now have I broken loose from those our hopes, and am resolved to serve God; and this, from this hour, in this place, I begin upon. If thou likest not to imitate me, oppose not." The other answered, he would cleave to him, to partake so glorious a reward, so glorious a service. Thus both being now Thine, were building the tower at the necessary cost, the forsaking all that they had, and following Thee. Then Pontitianus and the other with him, that had walked in other parts of the garden, came in search of them to the same place; and finding them, reminded them to return, for the day was now far spent. But they relating their resolution and purpose, and how that will was begun and settled in them, begged them, if they would not join, not to molest them. But the others, though nothing altered from their former selves, did yet bewail themselves (as he affirmed), and piously congratulated them, recommending themselves to their prayers; and so, with hearts lingering on the earth, went away to the palace. But the other two, fixing their heart on heaven, remained in the cottage. And both had affianced brides, who when they heard hereof, also dedicated their virginity unto God. Such was the story of Pontitianus; but Thou, O Lord, while he was speaking, didst turn me round towards myself, taking me from behind my back where I had placed me, unwilling to observe myself; and setting me before my face, that I might see how foul I was, how crooked and defiled, bespotted and ulcerous. And I beheld and stood aghast; and whither to flee from myself I found not. And if I sought to turn mine eye from off myself, he went on with his relation, and Thou again didst set me over against myself, and thrustedst me before my eyes, that I might find out mine iniquity, and hate it. I had known it, but made as though I saw it not, winked at it, and forgot it. But now, the more ardently I loved those whose healthful affections I heard of, that they had resigned themselves wholly to Thee to be cured, the more did I abhor myself, when compared with them. For many of my years (some twelve) had now run out with me since my nineteenth, when, upon the reading of Cicero's Hortensius, I was stirred to an earnest love of wisdom; and still I was deferring to reject mere earthly felicity, and give myself to search out that, whereof not the finding only, but the very search, was to be preferred to the treasures and kingdoms of the world, though already found, and to the pleasures of the body, though spread around me at my will. But I wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet." For I feared lest Thou shouldest hear me soon, and soon cure me of the disease of concupiscence, which I wished to have satisfied, rather than extinguished. And I had wandered through crooked ways in a sacrilegious superstition, not indeed assured thereof, but as preferring it to the others which I did not seek religiously, but opposed maliciously. And I had thought that I therefore deferred from day to day to reject the hopes of this world, and follow Thee only, because there did not appear aught certain, whither to direct my course. And now was the day come wherein I was to be laid bare to myself, and my conscience was to upbraid me. "Where art thou now, my tongue? Thou saidst that for an uncertain truth thou likedst not to cast off the baggage of vanity; now, it is certain, and yet that burden still oppresseth thee, while they who neither have so worn themselves out with seeking it, nor for often years and more have been thinking thereon, have had their shoulders lightened, and received wings to fly away." Thus was I gnawed within, and exceedingly confounded with a horrible shame, while Pontitianus was so speaking. And he having brought to a close his tale and the business he came for, went his way; and I into myself. What said I not against myself? with what scourges of condemnation lashed I not my soul, that it might follow me, striving to go after Thee! Yet it drew back; refused, but excused not itself. All arguments were spent and confuted; there remained a mute shrinking; and she feared, as she would death, to be restrained from the flux of that custom, whereby she was wasting to death. Then in this great contention of my inward dwelling, which I had strongly raised against my soul, in the chamber of my heart, troubled in mind and countenance, I turned upon Alypius. "What ails us?" I exclaim: "what is it? what heardest thou? The unlearned start up and take heaven by force, and we with our learning, and without heart, lo, where we wallow in flesh and blood! Are we ashamed to follow, because others are gone before, and not ashamed not even to follow?" Some such words I uttered, and my fever of mind tore me away from him, while he, gazing on me in astonishment, kept silence. For it was not my wonted tone; and my forehead, cheeks, eyes, colour, tone of voice, spake my mind more than the words I uttered. A little garden there was to our lodging, which we had the use of, as of the whole house; for the master of the house, our host, was not living there. Thither had the tumult of my breast hurried me, where no man might hinder the hot contention wherein I had engaged with myself, until it should end as Thou knewest, I knew not. Only I was healthfully distracted and dying, to live; knowing what evil thing I was, and not knowing what good thing I was shortly to become. I retired then into the garden, and Alypius, on my steps. For his presence did not lessen my privacy; or how could he forsake me so disturbed? We sate down as far removed as might be from the house. I was troubled in spirit, most vehemently indignant that I entered not into Thy will and covenant, O my God, which all my bones cried out unto me to enter, and praised it to the skies. And therein we enter not by ships, or chariots, or feet, no, move not so far as I had come from the house to that place where we were sitting. For, not to go only, but to go in thither was nothing else but to will to go, but to will resolutely and thoroughly; not to turn and toss, this way and that, a maimed and half-divided will, struggling, with one part sinking as another rose. Lastly, in the very fever of my irresoluteness, I made with my body many such motions as men sometimes would, but cannot, if either they have not the limbs, or these be bound with bands, weakened with infirmity, or any other way hindered. Thus, if I tore my hair, beat my forehead, if locking my fingers I clasped my knee; I willed, I did it. But I might have willed, and not done it; if the power of motion in my limbs had not obeyed. So many things then I did, when "to will" was not in itself "to be able"; and I did not what both I longed incomparably more to do, and which soon after, when I should will, I should be able to do; because soon after, when I should will, I should will thoroughly. For in these things the ability was one with the will, and to will was to do; and yet was it not done: and more easily did my body obey the weakest willing of my soul, in moving its limbs at its nod, than the soul obeyed itself to accomplish in the will alone this its momentous will. Whence is this monstrousness? and to what end? Let Thy mercy gleam that I may ask, if so be the secret penalties of men, and those darkest pangs of the sons of Adam, may perhaps answer me. Whence is this monstrousness? and to what end? The mind commands the body, and it obeys instantly; the mind commands itself, and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved; and such readiness is there, that command is scarce distinct from obedience. Yet the mind is mind, the hand is body. The mind commands the mind, its own self, to will, and yet it doth not. Whence this monstrousness? and to what end? It commands itself, I say, to will, and would not command, unless it willed, and what it commands is not done. But it willeth not entirely: therefore doth it not command entirely. For so far forth it commandeth, as it willeth: and, so far forth is the thing commanded, not done, as it willeth not. For the will commandeth that there be a will; not another, but itself. But it doth not command entirely, therefore what it commandeth, is not. For were the will entire, it would not even command it to be, because it would already be. It is therefore no monstrousness partly to will, partly to nill, but a disease of the mind, that it doth not wholly rise, by truth upborne, borne down by custom. And therefore are there two wills, for that one of them is not entire: and what the one lacketh, the other hath. Let them perish from Thy presence, O God, as perish vain talkers and seducers of the soul: who observing that in deliberating there were two wills, affirm that there are two minds in us of two kinds, one good, the other evil. Themselves are truly evil, when they hold these evil things; and themselves shall become good when they hold the truth and assent unto the truth, that Thy Apostle may say to them, Ye were sometimes darkness, but now light in the Lord. But they, wishing to be light, not in the Lord, but in themselves, imagining the nature of the soul to be that which God is, are made more gross darkness through a dreadful arrogancy; for that they went back farther from Thee, the true Light that enlightened every man that cometh into the world. Take heed what you say, and blush for shame: draw near unto Him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed. Myself when I was deliberating upon serving the Lord my God now, as I had long purposed, it was I who willed, I who nilled, I, I myself. I neither willed entirely, nor nilled entirely. Therefore was I at strife with myself, and rent asunder by myself. And this rent befell me against my will, and yet indicated, not the presence of another mind, but the punishment of my own. Therefore it was no more I that wrought it, but sin that dwelt in me; the punishment of a sin more freely committed, in that I was a son of Adam. For if there be so many contrary natures as there be conflicting wills, there shall now be not two only, but many. If a man deliberate whether he should go to their conventicle or to the theatre, these Manichees cry out, Behold, here are two natures: one good, draws this way; another bad, draws back that way. For whence else is this hesitation between conflicting wills? But I say that both be bad: that which draws to them, as that which draws back to the theatre. But they believe not that will to be other than good, which draws to them. What then if one of us should deliberate, and amid the strife of his two wills be in a strait, whether he should go to the theatre or to our church? would not these Manichees also be in a strait what to answer? For either they must confess (which they fain would not) that the will which leads to our church is good, as well as theirs, who have received and are held by the mysteries of theirs: or they must suppose two evil natures, and two evil souls conflicting in one man, and it will not be true, which they say, that there is one good and another bad; or they must be converted to the truth, and no more deny that where one deliberates, one soul fluctuates between contrary wills. Let them no more say then, when they perceive two conflicting wills in one man, that the conflict is between two contrary souls, of two contrary substances, from two contrary principles, one good, and the other bad. For Thou, O true God, dost disprove, check, and convict them; as when, both wills being bad, one deliberates whether he should kill a man by poison or by the sword; whether he should seize this or that estate of another's, when he cannot both; whether he should purchase pleasure by luxury, or keep his money by covetousness; whether he go to the circus or the theatre, if both be open on one day; or thirdly, to rob another's house, if he have the opportunity; or, fourthly, to commit adultery, if at the same time he have the means thereof also; all these meeting together in the same juncture of time, and all being equally desired, which cannot at one time be acted: for they rend the mind amid four, or even (amid the vast variety of things desired) more, conflicting wills, nor do they yet allege that there are so many divers substances. So also in wills which are good. For I ask them, is it good to take pleasure in reading the Apostle? or good to take pleasure in a sober Psalm? or good to discourse on the Gospel? They will answer to each, "it is good." What then if all give equal pleasure, and all at once? Do not divers wills distract the mind, while he deliberates which he should rather choose? yet are they all good, and are at variance till one be chosen, whither the one entire will may be borne, which before was divided into many. Thus also, when, above, eternity delights us, and the pleasure of temporal good holds us down below, it is the same soul which willeth not this or that with an entire will; and therefore is rent asunder with grievous perplexities, while out of truth it sets this first, but out of habit sets not that aside. Thus soul-sick was I, and tormented, accusing myself much more severely than my wont, rolling and turning me in my chain, till that were wholly broken, whereby I now was but just, but still was, held. And Thou, O Lord, pressedst upon me in my inward parts by a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame, lest I should again give way, and not bursting that same slight remaining tie, it should recover strength, and bind me the faster. For I said with myself, "Be it done now, be it done now." And as I spake, I all but enacted it: I all but did it, and did it not: yet sunk not back to my former state, but kept my stand hard by, and took breath. And I essayed again, and wanted somewhat less of it, and somewhat less, and all but touched, and laid hold of it; and yet came not at it, nor touched nor laid hold of it; hesitating to die to death and to live to life: and the worse whereto I was inured, prevailed more with me than the better whereto I was unused: and the very moment wherein I was to become other than I was, the nearer it approached me, the greater horror did it strike into me; yet did it not strike me back, nor turned me away, but held me in suspense. The very toys of toys, and vanities of vanities, my ancient mistresses, still held me; they plucked my fleshy garment, and whispered softly, "Dost thou cast us off? and from that moment shall we no more be with thee for ever? and from that moment shall not this or that be lawful for thee for ever?" And what was it which they suggested in that I said, "this or that," what did they suggest, O my God? Let Thy mercy turn it away from the soul of Thy servant. What defilements did they suggest! what shame! And now I much less than half heard them, and not openly showing themselves and contradicting me, but muttering as it were behind my back, and privily plucking me, as I was departing, but to look back on them. Yet they did retard me, so that I hesitated to burst and shake myself free from them, and to spring over whither I was called; a violent habit saying to me, "Thinkest thou, thou canst live without them?" But now it spake very faintly. For on that side whither I had set my face, and whither I trembled to go, there appeared unto me the chaste dignity of Continency, serene, yet not relaxedly, gay, honestly alluring me to come and doubt not; and stretching forth to receive and embrace me, her holy hands full of multitudes of good examples: there were so many young men and maidens here, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows and aged virgins; and Continence herself in all, not barren, but a fruitful mother of children of joys, by Thee her Husband, O Lord. And she smiled on me with a persuasive mockery, as would she say, "Canst not thou what these youths, what these maidens can? or can they either in themselves, and not rather in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me unto them. Why standest thou in thyself, and so standest not? cast thyself upon Him, fear not He will not withdraw Himself that thou shouldest fall; cast thyself fearlessly upon Him, He will receive, and will heal thee." And I blushed exceedingly, for that I yet heard the muttering of those toys, and hung in suspense. And she again seemed to say, "Stop thine ears against those thy unclean members on the earth, that they may be mortified. They tell thee of delights, but not as doth the law of the Lord thy God." This controversy in my heart was self against self only. But Alypius sitting close by my side, in silence waited the issue of my unwonted emotion. But when a deep consideration had from the secret bottom of my soul drawn together and heaped up all my misery in the sight of my heart; there arose a mighty storm, bringing a mighty shower of tears. Which that I might pour forth wholly, in its natural expressions, I rose from Alypius: solitude was suggested to me as fitter for the business of weeping; so I retired so far that even his presence could not be a burden to me. Thus was it then with me, and he perceived something of it; for something I suppose I had spoken, wherein the tones of my voice appeared choked with weeping, and so had risen up. He then remained where we were sitting, most extremely astonished. I cast myself down I know not how, under a certain fig-tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to Thee. And, not indeed in these words, yet to this purpose, spake I much unto Thee: and Thou, O Lord, how long? how long, Lord, wilt Thou be angry for ever? Remember not our former iniquities, for I felt that I was held by them. I sent up these sorrowful words: How long, how long, "to-morrow, and tomorrow?" Why not now? why not is there this hour an end to my uncleanness? So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, "Take up and read; Take up and read." Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find. For I had heard of Antony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he received the admonition, as if what was being read was spoken to him: Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me: and by such oracle he was forthwith converted unto Thee. Eagerly then I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I laid the volume of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away. Then putting my finger between, or some other mark, I shut the volume, and with a calmed countenance made it known to Alypius. And what was wrought in him, which I knew not, he thus showed me. He asked to see what I had read: I showed him; and he looked even further than I had read, and I knew not what followed. This followed, him that is weak in the faith, receive; which he applied to himself, and disclosed to me. And by this admonition was he strengthened; and by a good resolution and purpose, and most corresponding to his character, wherein he did always very far differ from me, for the better, without any turbulent delay he joined me. Thence we go in to my mother; we tell her; she rejoiceth: we relate in order how it took place; she leaps for joy, and triumpheth, and blesseth Thee, Who are able to do above that which we ask or think; for she perceived that Thou hadst given her more for me, than she was wont to beg by her pitiful and most sorrowful groanings. For thou convertedst me unto Thyself, so that I sought neither wife, nor any hope of this world, standing in that rule of faith, where Thou hadst showed me unto her in a vision, so many years before. And Thou didst convert her mourning into joy, much more plentiful than she had desired, and in a much more precious and purer way than she erst required, by having grandchildren of my body. BOOK IX O Lord, I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thy handmaid: Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of praise. Let my heart and my tongue praise Thee; yea, let all my bones say, O Lord, who is like unto Thee? Let them say, and answer Thou me, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Who am I, and what am I? What evil have not been either my deeds, or if not my deeds, my words, or if not my words, my will? But Thou, O Lord, are good and merciful, and Thy right hand had respect unto the depth of my death, and from the bottom of my heart emptied that abyss of corruption. And this Thy whole gift was, to nill what I willed, and to will what Thou willedst. But where through all those years, and out of what low and deep recess was my free-will called forth in a moment, whereby to submit my neck to Thy easy yoke, and my shoulders unto Thy light burden, O Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer? How sweet did it at once become to me, to want the sweetnesses of those toys! and what I feared to be parted from, was now a joy to part with. For Thou didst cast them forth from me, Thou true and highest sweetness. Thou castest them forth, and for them enteredst in Thyself, sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more hidden than all depths, higher than all honour, but not to the high in their own conceits. Now was my soul free from the biting cares of canvassing and getting, and weltering in filth, and scratching off the itch of lust. And my infant tongue spake freely to Thee, my brightness, and my riches, and my health, the Lord my God. And I resolved in Thy sight, not tumultuously to tear, but gently to withdraw, the service of my tongue from the marts of lip-labour: that the young, no students in Thy law, nor in Thy peace, but in lying dotages and law-skirmishes, should no longer buy at my mouth arms for their madness. And very seasonably, it now wanted but very few days unto the Vacation of the Vintage, and I resolved to endure them, then in a regular way to take my leave, and having been purchased by Thee, no more to return for sale. Our purpose then was known to Thee; but to men, other than our own friends, was it not known. For we had agreed among ourselves not to let it out abroad to any: although to us, now ascending from the valley of tears, and singing that song of degrees, Thou hadst given sharp arrows, and destroying coals against the subtle tongue, which as though advising for us, would thwart, and would out of love devour us, as it doth its meat. Thou hadst pierced our hearts with Thy charity, and we carried Thy words as it were fixed in our entrails: and the examples of Thy servants, whom for black Thou hadst made bright, and for dead, alive, being piled together in the receptacle of our thoughts, kindled and burned up that our heavy torpor, that we should not sink down to the abyss; and they fired us so vehemently, that all the blasts of subtle tongues from gainsayers might only inflame us the more fiercely, not extinguish us. Nevertheless, because for Thy Name's sake which Thou hast hallowed throughout the earth, this our vow and purpose might also find some to commend it, it seemed like ostentation not to wait for the vacation now so near, but to quit beforehand a public profession, which was before the eyes of all; so that all looking on this act of mine, and observing how near was the time of vintage which I wished to anticipate, would talk much of me, as if I had desired to appear some great one. And what end had it served me, that people should repute and dispute upon my purpose, and that our good should be evil spoken of. Moreover, it had at first troubled me that in this very summer my lungs began to give way, amid too great literary labour, and to breathe deeply with difficulty, and by the pain in my chest to show that they were injured, and to refuse any full or lengthened speaking; this had troubled me, for it almost constrained me of necessity to lay down that burden of teaching, or, if I could be cured and recover, at least to intermit it. But when the full wish for leisure, that I might see how that Thou art the Lord, arose, and was fixed, in me; my God, Thou knowest, I began even to rejoice that I had this secondary, and that no feigned, excuse, which might something moderate the offence taken by those who, for their sons' sake, wished me never to have the freedom of Thy sons. Full then of such joy, I endured till that interval of time were run; it may have been some twenty days, yet they were endured manfully; endured, for the covetousness which aforetime bore a part of this heavy business, had left me, and I remained alone, and had been overwhelmed, had not patience taken its place. Perchance, some of Thy servants, my brethren, may say that I sinned in this, that with a heart fully set on Thy service, I suffered myself to sit even one hour in the chair of lies. Nor would I be contentious. But hast not Thou, O most merciful Lord, pardoned and remitted this sin also, with my other most horrible and deadly sins, in the holy water? Verecundus was worn down with care about this our blessedness, for that being held back by bonds, whereby he was most straitly bound, he saw that he should be severed from us. For himself was not yet a Christian, his wife one of the faithful; and yet hereby, more rigidly than by any other chain, was he let and hindered from the journey which we had now essayed. For he would not, he said, be a Christian on any other terms than on those he could not. However, he offered us courteously to remain at his country-house so long as we should stay there. Thou, O Lord, shalt reward him in the resurrection of the just, seeing Thou hast already given him the lot of the righteous. For although, in our absence, being now at Rome, he was seized with bodily sickness, and therein being made a Christian, and one of the faithful, he departed this life; yet hadst Thou mercy not on him only, but on us also: lest remembering the exceeding kindness of our friend towards us, yet unable to number him among Thy flock, we should be agonised with intolerable sorrow. Thanks unto Thee, our God, we are Thine: Thy suggestions and consolations tell us, Faithful in promises, Thou now requitest Verecundus for his country-house of Cassiacum, where from the fever of the world we reposed in Thee, with the eternal freshness of Thy Paradise: for that Thou hast forgiven him his sins upon earth, in that rich mountain, that mountain which yieldeth milk, Thine own mountain. He then had at that time sorrow, but Nebridius joy. For although he also, not being yet a Christian, had fallen into the pit of that most pernicious error, believing the flesh of Thy Son to be a phantom: yet emerging thence, he believed as we did; not as yet endued with any Sacraments of Thy Church, but a most ardent searcher out of truth. Whom, not long after our conversion and regeneration by Thy Baptism, being also a faithful member of the Church Catholic, and serving Thee in perfect chastity and continence amongst his people in Africa, his whole house having through him first been made Christian, didst Thou release from the flesh; and now he lives in Abraham's bosom. Whatever that be, which is signified by that bosom, there lives my Nebridius, my sweet friend, and Thy child, O Lord, adopted of a freed man: there he liveth. For what other place is there for such a soul? There he liveth, whereof he asked much of me, a poor inexperienced man. Now lays he not his ear to my mouth, but his spiritual mouth unto Thy fountain, and drinketh as much as he can receive, wisdom in proportion to his thirst, endlessly happy. Nor do I think that he is so inebriated therewith, as to forget me; seeing Thou, Lord, Whom he drinketh, art mindful of us. So were we then, comforting Verecundus, who sorrowed, as far as friendship permitted, that our conversion was of such sort; and exhorting him to become faithful, according to his measure, namely, of a married estate; and awaiting Nebridius to follow us, which, being so near, he was all but doing: and so, lo! those days rolled by at length; for long and many they seemed, for the love I bare to the easeful liberty, that I might sing to Thee, from my inmost marrow, My heart hath said unto Thee, I have sought Thy face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Now was the day come wherein I was in deed to be freed of my Rhetoric Professorship, whereof in thought I was already freed. And it was done. Thou didst rescue my tongue, whence Thou hadst before rescued my heart. And I blessed Thee, rejoicing; retiring with all mine to the villa. What I there did in writing, which was now enlisted in Thy service, though still, in this breathing-time as it were, panting from the school of pride, my books may witness, as well what I debated with others, as what with myself alone, before Thee: what with Nebridius, who was absent, my Epistles bear witness. And when shall I have time to rehearse all Thy great benefits towards us at that time, especially when hasting on to yet greater mercies? For my remembrance recalls me, and pleasant is it to me, O Lord, to confess to Thee, by what inward goads Thou tamedst me; and how Thou hast evened me, lowering the mountains and hills of my high imaginations, straightening my crookedness, and smoothing my rough ways; and how Thou also subduedst the brother of my heart, Alypius, unto the name of Thy Only Begotten, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which he would not at first vouchsafe to have inserted in our writings. For rather would he have them savour of the lofty cedars of the Schools, which the Lord hath now broken down, than of the wholesome herbs of the Church, the antidote against serpents. Oh, in what accents spake I unto Thee, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those faithful songs, and sounds of devotion, which allow of no swelling spirit, as yet a Catechumen, and a novice in Thy real love, resting in that villa, with Alypius a Catechumen, my mother cleaving to us, in female garb with masculine faith, with the tranquillity of age, motherly love, Christian piety! Oh, what accents did I utter unto Thee in those Psalms, and how was I by them kindled towards Thee, and on fire to rehearse them, if possible, through the whole world, against the pride of mankind! And yet they are sung through the whole world, nor can any hide himself from Thy heat. With what vehement and bitter sorrow was I angered at the Manichees! and again I pitied them, for they knew not those Sacraments, those medicines, and were mad against the antidote which might have recovered them of their madness. How I would they had then been somewhere near me, and without my knowing that they were there, could have beheld my countenance, and heard my words, when I read the fourth Psalm in that time of my rest, and how that Psalm wrought upon me: When I called, the God of my righteousness heard me; in tribulation Thou enlargedst me. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, and hear my prayer. Would that what I uttered on these words, they could hear, without my knowing whether they heard, lest they should think I spake it for their sakes! Because in truth neither should I speak the same things, nor in the same way, if I perceived that they heard and saw me; nor if I spake them would they so receive them, as when I spake by and for myself before Thee, out of the natural feelings of my soul. I trembled for fear, and again kindled with hope, and with rejoicing in Thy mercy, O Father; and all issued forth both by mine eyes and voice, when Thy good Spirit turning unto us, said, O ye sons of men, how long slow of heart? why do ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? For I had loved vanity, and sought after leasing. And Thou, O Lord, hadst already magnified Thy Holy One, raising Him from the dead, and setting Him at Thy right hand, whence from on high He should send His promise, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth. And He had already sent Him, but I knew it not; He had sent Him, because He was now magnified, rising again from the dead, and ascending into heaven. For till then, the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. And the prophet cries out, How long, slow of heart? why do ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Know this, that the Lord hath magnified His Holy One. He cries out, How long? He cries out, Know this: and I so long, not knowing, loved vanity, and sought after leasing: and therefore I heard and trembled, because it was spoken unto such as I remembered myself to have been. For in those phantoms which I had held for truths, was there vanity and leasing; and I spake aloud many things earnestly and forcibly, in the bitterness of my remembrance. Which would they had heard, who yet love vanity and seek after leasing! They would perchance have been troubled, and have vomited it up; and Thou wouldest hear them when they cried unto Thee; for by a true death in the flesh did He die for us, who now intercedeth unto Thee for us. I further read, Be angry, and sin not. And how was I moved, O my God, who had now learned to be angry at myself for things past, that I might not sin in time to come! Yea, to be justly angry; for that it was not another nature of a people of darkness which sinned for me, as they say who are not angry at themselves, and treasure up wrath against the day of wrath, and of the revelation of Thy just judgment. Nor were my good things now without, nor sought with the eyes of flesh in that earthly sun; for they that would have joy from without soon become vain, and waste themselves on the things seen and temporal, and in their famished thoughts do lick their very shadows. Oh that they were wearied out with their famine, and said, Who will show us good things? And we would say, and they hear, The light of Thy countenance is sealed upon us. For we are not that light which enlighteneth every man, but we are enlightened by Thee; that having been sometimes darkness, we may be light in Thee. Oh that they could see the eternal Internal, which having tasted, I was grieved that I could not show It them, so long as they brought me their heart in their eyes roving abroad from Thee, while they said, Who will show us good things? For there, where I was angry within myself in my chamber, where I was inwardly pricked, where I had sacrificed, slaying my old man and commencing the purpose of a new life, putting my trust in Thee,--there hadst Thou begun to grow sweet unto me, and hadst put gladness in my heart. And I cried out, as I read this outwardly, finding it inwardly. Nor would I be multiplied with worldly goods; wasting away time, and wasted by time; whereas I had in Thy eternal Simple Essence other corn, and wine, and oil. And with a loud cry of my heart I cried out in the next verse, O in peace, O for The Self-same! O what said he, I will lay me down and sleep, for who shall hinder us, when cometh to pass that saying which is written, Death is swallowed up in victory? And Thou surpassingly art the Self-same, Who art not changed; and in Thee is rest which forgetteth all toil, for there is none other with Thee, nor are we to seek those many other things, which are not what Thou art: but Thou, Lord, alone hast made me dwell in hope. I read, and kindled; nor found I what to do to those deaf and dead, of whom myself had been, a pestilent person, a bitter and a blind bawler against those writings, which are honied with the honey of heaven, and lightsome with Thine own light: and I was consumed with zeal at the enemies of this Scripture. When shall I recall all which passed in those holy-days? Yet neither have I forgotten, nor will I pass over the severity of Thy scourge, and the wonderful swiftness of Thy mercy. Thou didst then torment me with pain in my teeth; which when it had come to such height that I could not speak, it came into my heart to desire all my friends present to pray for me to Thee, the God of all manner of health. And this I wrote on wax, and gave it them to read. Presently so soon as with humble devotion we had bowed our knees, that pain went away. But what pain? or how went it away? I was affrighted, O my Lord, my God; for from infancy I had never experienced the like. And the power of Thy Nod was deeply conveyed to me, and rejoicing in faith, I praised Thy Name. And that faith suffered me not to be at ease about my past sins, which were not yet forgiven me by Thy baptism. The vintage-vacation ended, I gave notice to the Milanese to provide their scholars with another master to sell words to them; for that I had both made choice to serve Thee, and through my difficulty of breathing and pain in my chest was not equal to the Professorship. And by letters I signified to Thy Prelate, the holy man Ambrose, my former errors and present desires, begging his advice what of Thy Scriptures I had best read, to become readier and fitter for receiving so great grace. He recommended Isaiah the Prophet: I believe, because he above the rest is a more clear foreshower of the Gospel and of the calling of the Gentiles. But I, not understanding the first lesson in him, and imagining the whole to be like it, laid it by, to be resumed when better practised in our Lord's own words. Thence, when the time was come wherein I was to give in my name, we left the country and returned to Milan. It pleased Alypius also to be with me born again in Thee, being already clothed with the humility befitting Thy Sacraments; and a most valiant tamer of the body, so as, with unwonted venture, to wear the frozen ground of Italy with his bare feet. We joined with us the boy Adeodatus, born after the flesh, of my sin. Excellently hadst Thou made him. He was not quite fifteen, and in wit surpassed many grave and learned men. I confess unto Thee Thy gifts, O Lord my God, Creator of all, and abundantly able to reform our deformities: for I had no part in that boy, but the sin. For that we brought him up in Thy discipline, it was Thou, none else, had inspired us with it. I confess unto Thee Thy gifts. There is a book of ours entitled The Master; it is a dialogue between him and me. Thou knowest that all there ascribed to the person conversing with me were his ideas, in his sixteenth year. Much besides, and yet more admirable, I found in him. That talent struck awe into me. And who but Thou could be the workmaster of such wonders? Soon didst Thou take his life from the earth: and I now remember him without anxiety, fearing nothing for his childhood or youth, or his whole self. Him we joined with us, our contemporary in grace, to be brought up in Thy discipline: and we were baptised, and anxiety for our past life vanished from us. Nor was I sated in those days with the wondrous sweetness of considering the depth of Thy counsels concerning the salvation of mankind. How did I weep, in Thy Hymns and Canticles, touched to the quick by the voices of Thy sweet-attuned Church! The voices flowed into mine ears, and the Truth distilled into my heart, whence the affections of my devotion overflowed, and tears ran down, and happy was I therein. Not long had the Church of Milan begun to use this kind of consolation and exhortation, the brethren zealously joining with harmony of voice and hearts. For it was a year, or not much more, that Justina, mother to the Emperor Valentinian, a child, persecuted Thy servant Ambrose, in favour of her heresy, to which she was seduced by the Arians. The devout people kept watch in the Church, ready to die with their Bishop Thy servant. There my mother Thy handmaid, bearing a chief part of those anxieties and watchings, lived for prayer. We, yet unwarmed by the heat of Thy Spirit, still were stirred up by the sight of the amazed and disquieted city. Then it was first instituted that after the manner of the Eastern Churches, Hymns and Psalms should be sung, lest the people should wax faint through the tediousness of sorrow: and from that day to this the custom is retained, divers (yea, almost all) Thy congregations, throughout other parts of the world following herein. Then didst Thou by a vision discover to Thy forenamed Bishop where the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius the martyrs lay hid (whom Thou hadst in Thy secret treasury stored uncorrupted so many years), whence Thou mightest seasonably produce them to repress the fury of a woman, but an Empress. For when they were discovered and dug up, and with due honour translated to the Ambrosian Basilica, not only they who were vexed with unclean spirits (the devils confessing themselves) were cured, but a certain man who had for many years been blind, a citizen, and well known to the city, asking and hearing the reason of the people's confused joy, sprang forth desiring his guide to lead him thither. Led thither, he begged to be allowed to touch with his handkerchief the bier of Thy saints, whose death is precious in Thy sight. Which when he had done, and put to his eyes, they were forthwith opened. Thence did the fame spread, thence Thy praises glowed, shone; thence the mind of that enemy, though not turned to the soundness of believing, was yet turned back from her fury of persecuting. Thanks to Thee, O my God. Whence and whither hast Thou thus led my remembrance, that I should confess these things also unto Thee? which great though they be, I had passed by in forgetfulness. And yet then, when the odour of Thy ointments was so fragrant, did we not run after Thee. Therefore did I more weep among the singing of Thy Hymns, formerly sighing after Thee, and at length breathing in Thee, as far as the breath may enter into this our house of grass. Thou that makest men to dwell of one mind in one house, didst join with us Euodius also, a young man of our own city. Who being an officer of Court, was before us converted to Thee and baptised: and quitting his secular warfare, girded himself to Thine. We were together, about to dwell together in our devout purpose. We sought where we might serve Thee most usefully, and were together returning to Africa: whitherward being as far as Ostia, my mother departed this life. Much I omit, as hastening much. Receive my confessions and thanksgivings, O my God, for innumerable things whereof I am silent. But I will not omit whatsoever my soul would bring forth concerning that Thy handmaid, who brought me forth, both in the flesh, that I might be born to this temporal light, and in heart, that I might be born to Light eternal. Not her gifts, but Thine in her, would I speak of; for neither did she make nor educate herself. Thou createdst her; nor did her father and mother know what a one should come from them. And the sceptre of Thy Christ, the discipline of Thine only Son, in a Christian house, a good member of Thy Church, educated her in Thy fear. Yet for her good discipline was she wont to commend not so much her mother's diligence, as that of a certain decrepit maid-servant, who had carried her father when a child, as little ones used to be carried at the backs of elder girls. For which reason, and for her great age, and excellent conversation, was she, in that Christian family, well respected by its heads. Whence also the charge of her master's daughters was entrusted to her, to which she gave diligent heed, restraining them earnestly, when necessary, with a holy severity, and teaching them with a grave discretion. For, except at those hours wherein they were most temporately fed at their parents' table, she would not suffer them, though parched with thirst, to drink even water; preventing an evil custom, and adding this wholesome advice: "Ye drink water now, because you have not wine in your power; but when you come to be married, and be made mistresses of cellars and cupboards, you will scorn water, but the custom of drinking will abide." By this method of instruction, and the authority she had, she refrained the greediness of childhood, and moulded their very thirst to such an excellent moderation that what they should not, that they would not. And yet (as Thy handmaid told me her son) there had crept upon her a love of wine. For when (as the manner was) she, as though a sober maiden, was bidden by her parents to draw wine out of the hogshed, holding the vessel under the opening, before she poured the wine into the flagon, she sipped a little with the tip of her lips; for more her instinctive feelings refused. For this she did, not out of any desire of drink, but out of the exuberance of youth, whereby it boils over in mirthful freaks, which in youthful spirits are wont to be kept under by the gravity of their elders. And thus by adding to that little, daily littles (for whoso despiseth little things shall fall by little and little), she had fallen into such a habit as greedily to drink off her little cup brim-full almost of wine. Where was then that discreet old woman, and that her earnest countermanding? Would aught avail against a secret disease, if Thy healing hand, O Lord, watched not over us? Father, mother, and governors absent, Thou present, who createdst, who callest, who also by those set over us, workest something towards the salvation of our souls, what didst Thou then, O my God? how didst Thou cure her? how heal her? didst Thou not out of another soul bring forth a hard and a sharp taunt, like a lancet out of Thy secret store, and with one touch remove all that foul stuff? For a maid-servant with whom she used to go to the cellar, falling to words (as it happens) with her little mistress, when alone with her, taunted her with this fault, with most bitter insult, calling her wine-bibber. With which taunt she, stung to the quick, saw the foulness of her fault, and instantly condemned and forsook it. As flattering friends pervert, so reproachful enemies mostly correct. Yet not what by them Thou doest, but what themselves purposed, dost Thou repay them. For she in her anger sought to vex her young mistress, not to amend her; and did it in private, either for that the time and place of the quarrel so found them; or lest herself also should have anger, for discovering it thus late. But Thou, Lord, Governor of all in heaven and earth, who turnest to Thy purposes the deepest currents, and the ruled turbulence of the tide of times, didst by the very unhealthiness of one soul heal another; lest any, when he observes this, should ascribe it to his own power, even when another, whom he wished to be reformed, is reformed through words of his. Brought up thus modestly and soberly, and made subject rather by Thee to her parents, than by her parents to Thee, so soon as she was of marriageable age, being bestowed upon a husband, she served him as her lord; and did her diligence to win him unto Thee, preaching Thee unto him by her conversation; by which Thou ornamentedst her, making her reverently amiable, and admirable unto her husband. And she so endured the wronging of her bed as never to have any quarrel with her husband thereon. For she looked for Thy mercy upon him, that believing in Thee, he might be made chaste. But besides this, he was fervid, as in his affections, so in anger: but she had learnt not to resist an angry husband, not in deed only, but not even in word. Only when he was smoothed and tranquil, and in a temper to receive it, she would give an account of her actions, if haply he had overhastily taken offence. In a word, while many matrons, who had milder husbands, yet bore even in their faces marks of shame, would in familiar talk blame their husbands' lives, she would blame their tongues, giving them, as in jest, earnest advice: "That from the time they heard the marriage writings read to them, they should account them as indentures, whereby they were made servants; and so, remembering their condition, ought not to set themselves up against their lords." And when they, knowing what a choleric husband she endured, marvelled that it had never been heard, nor by any token perceived, that Patricius had beaten his wife, or that there had been any domestic difference between them, even for one day, and confidentially asking the reason, she taught them her practice above mentioned. Those wives who observed it found the good, and returned thanks; those who observed it not, found no relief, and suffered. Her mother-in-law also, at first by whisperings of evil servants incensed against her, she so overcame by observance and persevering endurance and meekness, that she of her own accord discovered to her son the meddling tongues whereby the domestic peace betwixt her and her daughter-in-law had been disturbed, asking him to correct them. Then, when in compliance with his mother, and for the well-ordering of the family, he had with stripes corrected those discovered, at her will who had discovered them, she promised the like reward to any who, to please her, should speak ill of her daughter-in-law to her: and none now venturing, they lived together with a remarkable sweetness of mutual kindness. This great gift also thou bestowedst, O my God, my mercy, upon that good handmaid of Thine, in whose womb Thou createdst me, that between any disagreeing and discordant parties where she was able, she showed herself such a peacemaker, that hearing on both sides most bitter things, such as swelling and indigested choler uses to break out into, when the crudities of enmities are breathed out in sour discourses to a present friend against an absent enemy, she never would disclose aught of the one unto the other, but what might tend to their reconcilement. A small good this might appear to me, did I not to my grief know numberless persons, who through some horrible and wide-spreading contagion of sin, not only disclose to persons mutually angered things said in anger, but add withal things never spoken, whereas to humane humanity, it ought to seem a light thing not to torment or increase ill will by ill words, unless one study withal by good words to quench it. Such was she, Thyself, her most inward Instructor, teaching her in the school of the heart. Finally, her own husband, towards the very end of his earthly life, did she gain unto Thee; nor had she to complain of that in him as a believer, which before he was a believer she had borne from him. She was also the servant of Thy servants; whosoever of them knew her, did in her much praise and honour and love Thee; for that through the witness of the fruits of a holy conversation they perceived Thy presence in her heart. For she had been the wife of one man, had requited her parents, had governed her house piously, was well reported of for good works, had brought up children, so often travailing in birth of them, as she saw them swerving from Thee. Lastly, of all of us Thy servants, O Lord (whom on occasion of Thy own gift Thou sufferest to speak), us, who before her sleeping in Thee lived united together, having received the grace of Thy baptism, did she so take care of, as though she had been mother of us all; so served us, as though she had been child to us all. The day now approaching whereon she was to depart this life (which day Thou well knewest, we knew not), it came to pass, Thyself, as I believe, by Thy secret ways so ordering it, that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window, which looked into the garden of the house where we now lay, at Ostia; where removed from the din of men, we were recruiting from the fatigues of a long journey, for the voyage. We were discoursing then together, alone, very sweetly; and forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, we were enquiring between ourselves in the presence of the Truth, which Thou art, of what sort the eternal life of the saints was to be, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man. But yet we gasped with the mouth of our heart, after those heavenly streams of Thy fountain, the fountain of life, which is with Thee; that being bedewed thence according to our capacity, we might in some sort meditate upon so high a mystery. And when our discourse was brought to that point, that the very highest delight of the earthly senses, in the very purest material light, was, in respect of the sweetness of that life, not only not worthy of comparison, but not even of mention; we raising up ourselves with a more glowing affection towards the "Self-same," did by degrees pass through all things bodily, even the very heaven whence sun and moon and stars shine upon the earth; yea, we were soaring higher yet, by inward musing, and discourse, and admiring of Thy works; and we came to our own minds, and went beyond them, that we might arrive at that region of never-failing plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where life is the Wisdom by whom all these things are made, and what have been, and what shall be, and she is not made, but is, as she hath been, and so shall she be ever; yea rather, to "have been," and "hereafter to be," are not in her, but only "to be," seeing she is eternal. For to "have been," and to "be hereafter," are not eternal. And while we were discoursing and panting after her, we slightly touched on her with the whole effort of our heart; and we sighed, and there we leave bound the first fruits of the Spirit; and returned to vocal expressions of our mouth, where the word spoken has beginning and end. And what is like unto Thy Word, our Lord, who endureth in Himself without becoming old, and maketh all things new? We were saying then: If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images of earth, and waters, and air, hushed also the pole of heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self surmount self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue and every sign, and whatsoever exists only in transition, since if any could hear, all these say, We made not ourselves, but He made us that abideth for ever--If then having uttered this, they too should be hushed, having roused only our ears to Him who made them, and He alone speak, not by them but by Himself, that we may hear His Word, not through any tongue of flesh, nor Angel's voice, nor sound of thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear Whom in these things we love, might hear His Very Self without these (as we two now strained ourselves, and in swift thought touched on that Eternal Wisdom which abideth over all);--could this be continued on, and other visions of kind far unlike be withdrawn, and this one ravish, and absorb, and wrap up its beholder amid these inward joys, so that life might be for ever like that one moment of understanding which now we sighed after; were not this, Enter into thy Master's joy? And when shall that be? When we shall all rise again, though we shall not all be changed? Such things was I speaking, and even if not in this very manner, and these same words, yet, Lord, Thou knowest that in that day when we were speaking of these things, and this world with all its delights became, as we spake, contemptible to us, my mother said, "Son, for mine own part I have no further delight in any thing in this life. What I do here any longer, and to what I am here, I know not, now that my hopes in this world are accomplished. One thing there was for which I desired to linger for a while in this life, that I might see thee a Catholic Christian before I died. My God hath done this for me more abundantly, that I should now see thee withal, despising earthly happiness, become His servant: what do I here?" What answer I made her unto these things, I remember not. For scarce five days after, or not much more, she fell sick of a fever; and in that sickness one day she fell into a swoon, and was for a while withdrawn from these visible things. We hastened round her; but she was soon brought back to her senses; and looking on me and my brother standing by her, said to us enquiringly, "Where was I?" And then looking fixedly on us, with grief amazed: "Here," saith she, "shall you bury your mother." I held my peace and refrained weeping; but my brother spake something, wishing for her, as the happier lot, that she might die, not in a strange place, but in her own land. Whereat, she with anxious look, checking him with her eyes, for that he still savoured such things, and then looking upon me: "Behold," saith she, "what he saith": and soon after to us both, "Lay," she saith, "this body any where; let not the care for that any way disquiet you: this only I request, that you would remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be." And having delivered this sentiment in what words she could, she held her peace, being exercised by her growing sickness. But I, considering Thy gifts, Thou unseen God, which Thou instillest into the hearts of Thy faithful ones, whence wondrous fruits do spring, did rejoice and give thanks to Thee, recalling what I before knew, how careful and anxious she had ever been as to her place of burial, which she had provided and prepared for herself by the body of her husband. For because they had lived in great harmony together, she also wished (so little can the human mind embrace things divine) to have this addition to that happiness, and to have it remembered among men, that after her pilgrimage beyond the seas, what was earthly of this united pair had been permitted to be united beneath the same earth. But when this emptiness had through the fulness of Thy goodness begun to cease in her heart, I knew not, and rejoiced admiring what she had so disclosed to me; though indeed in that our discourse also in the window, when she said, "What do I here any longer?" there appeared no desire of dying in her own country. I heard afterwards also, that when we were now at Ostia, she with a mother's confidence, when I was absent, one day discoursed with certain of my friends about the contempt of this life, and the blessing of death: and when they were amazed at such courage which Thou hadst given to a woman, and asked, "Whether she were not afraid to leave her body so far from her own city?" she replied, "Nothing is far to God; nor was it to be feared lest at the end of the world, He should not recognise whence He were to raise me up." On the ninth day then of her sickness, and the fifty-sixth year of her age, and the three-and-thirtieth of mine, was that religious and holy soul freed from the body. I closed her eyes; and there flowed withal a mighty sorrow into my heart, which was overflowing into tears; mine eyes at the same time, by the violent command of my mind, drank up their fountain wholly dry; and woe was me in such a strife! But when she breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus burst out into a loud lament; then, checked by us all, held his peace. In like manner also a childish feeling in me, which was, through my heart's youthful voice, finding its vent in weeping, was checked and silenced. For we thought it not fitting to solemnise that funeral with tearful lament, and groanings; for thereby do they for the most part express grief for the departed, as though unhappy, or altogether dead; whereas she was neither unhappy in her death, nor altogether dead. Of this we were assured on good grounds, the testimony of her good conversation and her faith unfeigned. What then was it which did grievously pain me within, but a fresh wound wrought through the sudden wrench of that most sweet and dear custom of living together? I joyed indeed in her testimony, when, in that her last sickness, mingling her endearments with my acts of duty, she called me "dutiful," and mentioned, with great affection of love, that she never had heard any harsh or reproachful sound uttered by my mouth against her. But yet, O my God, Who madest us, what comparison is there betwixt that honour that I paid to her, and her slavery for me? Being then forsaken of so great comfort in her, my soul was wounded, and that life rent asunder as it were, which, of hers and mine together, had been made but one. The boy then being stilled from weeping, Euodius took up the Psalter, and began to sing, our whole house answering him, the Psalm, I will sing of mercy and judgments to Thee, O Lord. But hearing what we were doing, many brethren and religious women came together; and whilst they (whose office it was) made ready for the burial, as the manner is, I, in a part of the house, where I might properly, together with those who thought not fit to leave me, discoursed upon something fitting the time; and by this balm of truth assuaged that torment, known to Thee, they unknowing and listening intently, and conceiving me to be without all sense of sorrow. But in Thy ears, where none of them heard, I blamed the weakness of my feelings, and refrained my flood of grief, which gave way a little unto me; but again came, as with a tide, yet not so as to burst out into tears, nor to change of countenance; still I knew what I was keeping down in my heart. And being very much displeased that these human things had such power over me, which in the due order and appointment of our natural condition must needs come to pass, with a new grief I grieved for my grief, and was thus worn by a double sorrow. And behold, the corpse was carried to the burial; we went and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers which we poured forth unto Thee, when the Sacrifice of our ransom was offered for her, when now the corpse was by the grave's side, as the manner there is, previous to its being laid therein, did I weep even during those prayers; yet was I the whole day in secret heavily sad, and with troubled mind prayed Thee, as I could, to heal my sorrow, yet Thou didst not; impressing, I believe, upon my memory by this one instance, how strong is the bond of all habit, even upon a soul, which now feeds upon no deceiving Word. It seemed also good to me to go and bathe, having heard that the bath had its name (balneum) from the Greek Balaneion for that it drives sadness from the mind. And this also I confess unto Thy mercy, Father of the fatherless, that I bathed, and was the same as before I bathed. For the bitterness of sorrow could not exude out of my heart. Then I slept, and woke up again, and found my grief not a little softened; and as I was alone in my bed, I remembered those true verses of Thy Ambrose. For Thou art the "Maker of all, the Lord, And Ruler of the height, Who, robing day in light, hast poured Soft slumbers o'er the night, That to our limbs the power Of toil may be renew'd, And hearts be rais'd that sink and cower, And sorrows be subdu'd." And then by little and little I recovered my former thoughts of Thy handmaid, her holy conversation towards Thee, her holy tenderness and observance towards us, whereof I was suddenly deprived: and I was minded to weep in Thy sight, for her and for myself, in her behalf and in my own. And I gave way to the tears which I before restrained, to overflow as much as they desired; reposing my heart upon them; and it found rest in them, for it was in Thy ears, not in those of man, who would have scornfully interpreted my weeping. And now, Lord, in writing I confess it unto Thee. Read it, who will, and interpret it, how he will: and if he finds sin therein, that I wept my mother for a small portion of an hour (the mother who for the time was dead to mine eyes, who had for many years wept for me that I might live in Thine eyes), let him not deride me; but rather, if he be one of large charity, let him weep himself for my sins unto Thee, the Father of all the brethren of Thy Christ. But now, with a heart cured of that wound, wherein it might seem blameworthy for an earthly feeling, I pour out unto Thee, our God, in behalf of that Thy handmaid, a far different kind of tears, flowing from a spirit shaken by the thoughts of the dangers of every soul that dieth in Adam. And although she having been quickened in Christ, even before her release from the flesh, had lived to the praise of Thy name for her faith and conversation; yet dare I not say that from what time Thou regeneratedst her by baptism, no word issued from her mouth against Thy Commandment. Thy Son, the Truth, hath said, Whosoever shall say unto his brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. And woe be even unto the commendable life of men, if, laying aside mercy, Thou shouldest examine it. But because Thou art not extreme in enquiring after sins, we confidently hope to find some place with Thee. But whosoever reckons up his real merits to Thee, what reckons he up to Thee but Thine own gifts? O that men would know themselves to be men; and that he that glorieth would glory in the Lord. I therefore, O my Praise and my Life, God of my heart, laying aside for a while her good deeds, for which I give thanks to Thee with joy, do now beseech Thee for the sins of my mother. Hearken unto me, I entreat Thee, by the Medicine of our wounds, Who hung upon the tree, and now sitting at Thy right hand maketh intercession to Thee for us. I know that she dealt mercifully, and from her heart forgave her debtors their debts; do Thou also forgive her debts, whatever she may have contracted in so many years, since the water of salvation. Forgive her, Lord, forgive, I beseech Thee; enter not into judgment with her. Let Thy mercy be exalted above Thy justice, since Thy words are true, and Thou hast promised mercy unto the merciful; which Thou gavest them to be, who wilt have mercy on whom Thou wilt have mercy; and wilt have compassion on whom Thou hast had compassion. And, I believe, Thou hast already done what I ask; but accept, O Lord, the free-will offerings of my mouth. For she, the day of her dissolution now at hand, took no thought to have her body sumptuously wound up, or embalmed with spices; nor desired she a choice monument, or to be buried in her own land. These things she enjoined us not; but desired only to have her name commemorated at Thy Altar, which she had served without intermission of one day: whence she knew the holy Sacrifice to be dispensed, by which the hand-writing that was against us is blotted out; through which the enemy was triumphed over, who summing up our offences, and seeking what to lay to our charge, found nothing in Him, in Whom we conquer. Who shall restore to Him the innocent blood? Who repay Him the price wherewith He bought us, and so take us from Him? Unto the Sacrament of which our ransom, Thy handmaid bound her soul by the bond of faith. Let none sever her from Thy protection: let neither the lion nor the dragon interpose himself by force or fraud. For she will not answer that she owes nothing, lest she be convicted and seized by the crafty accuser: but she will answer that her sins are forgiven her by Him, to Whom none can repay that price which He, Who owed nothing, paid for us. May she rest then in peace with the husband before and after whom she had never any; whom she obeyed, with patience bringing forth fruit unto Thee, that she might win him also unto Thee. And inspire, O Lord my God, inspire Thy servants my brethren, Thy sons my masters, whom with voice, and heart, and pen I serve, that so many as shall read these Confessions, may at Thy Altar remember Monnica Thy handmaid, with Patricius, her sometimes husband, by whose bodies Thou broughtest me into this life, how I know not. May they with devout affection remember my parents in this transitory light, my brethren under Thee our Father in our Catholic Mother, and my fellow-citizens in that eternal Jerusalem which Thy pilgrim people sigheth after from their Exodus, even unto their return thither. That so my mother's last request of me, may through my confessions, more than through my prayers, be, through the prayers of many, more abundantly fulfilled to her. BOOK X Let me know Thee, O Lord, who knowest me: let me know Thee, as I am known. Power of my soul, enter into it, and fit it for Thee, that Thou mayest have and hold it without spot or wrinkle. This is my hope, therefore do I speak; and in this hope do I rejoice, when I rejoice healthfully. Other things of this life are the less to be sorrowed for, the more they are sorrowed for; and the more to be sorrowed for, the less men sorrow for them. For behold, Thou lovest the truth, and he that doth it, cometh to the light. This would I do in my heart before Thee in confession: and in my writing, before many witnesses. And from Thee, O Lord, unto whose eyes the abyss of man's conscience is naked, what could be hidden in me though I would not confess it? For I should hide Thee from me, not me from Thee. But now, for that my groaning is witness, that I am displeased with myself, Thou shinest out, and art pleasing, and beloved, and longed for; that I may be ashamed of myself, and renounce myself, and choose Thee, and neither please Thee nor myself, but in Thee. To Thee therefore, O Lord, am I open, whatever I am; and with what fruit I confess unto Thee, I have said. Nor do I it with words and sounds of the flesh, but with the words of my soul, and the cry of the thought which Thy ear knoweth. For when I am evil, then to confess to Thee is nothing else than to be displeased with myself; but when holy, nothing else than not to ascribe it to myself: because Thou, O Lord, blessest the godly, but first Thou justifieth him when ungodly. My confession then, O my God, in Thy sight, is made silently, and not silently. For in sound, it is silent; in affection, it cries aloud. For neither do I utter any thing right unto men, which Thou hast not before heard from me; nor dost Thou hear any such thing from me, which Thou hast not first said unto me. What then have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions--as if they could heal all my infirmities--a race, curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own? Why seek they to hear from me what I am; who will not hear from Thee what themselves are? And how know they, when from myself they hear of myself, whether I say true; seeing no man knows what is in man, but the spirit of man which is in him? But if they hear from Thee of themselves, they cannot say, "The Lord lieth." For what is it to hear from Thee of themselves, but to know themselves? and who knoweth and saith, "It is false," unless himself lieth? But because charity believeth all things (that is, among those whom knitting unto itself it maketh one), I also, O Lord, will in such wise confess unto Thee, that men may hear, to whom I cannot demonstrate whether I confess truly; yet they believe me, whose ears charity openeth unto me. But do Thou, my inmost Physician, make plain unto me what fruit I may reap by doing it. For the confessions of my past sins, which Thou hast forgiven and covered, that Thou mightest bless me in Thee, changing my soul by Faith and Thy Sacrament, when read and heard, stir up the heart, that it sleep not in despair and say "I cannot," but awake in the love of Thy mercy and the sweetness of Thy grace, whereby whoso is weak, is strong, when by it he became conscious of his own weakness. And the good delight to hear of the past evils of such as are now freed from them, not because they are evils, but because they have been and are not. With what fruit then, O Lord my God, to Whom my conscience daily confesseth, trusting more in the hope of Thy mercy than in her own innocency, with what fruit, I pray, do I by this book confess to men also in Thy presence what I now am, not what I have been? For that other fruit I have seen and spoken of. But what I now am, at the very time of making these confessions, divers desire to know, who have or have not known me, who have heard from me or of me; but their ear is not at my heart where I am, whatever I am. They wish then to hear me confess what I am within; whither neither their eye, nor ear, nor understanding can reach; they wish it, as ready to believe--but will they know? For charity, whereby they are good, telleth them that in my confessions I lie not; and she in them, believeth me. But for what fruit would they hear this? Do they desire to joy with me, when they hear how near, by Thy gift, I approach unto Thee? and to pray for me, when they shall hear how much I am held back by my own weight? To such will I discover myself. For it is no mean fruit, O Lord my God, that by many thanks should be given to Thee on our behalf, and Thou be by many entreated for us. Let the brotherly mind love in me what Thou teachest is to be loved, and lament in me what Thou teachest is to be lamented. Let a brotherly, not a stranger, mind, not that of the strange children, whose mouth talketh of vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity, but that brotherly mind which when it approveth, rejoiceth for me, and when it disapproveth me, is sorry for me; because whether it approveth or disapproveth, it loveth me. To such will I discover myself: they will breathe freely at my good deeds, sigh for my ill. My good deeds are Thine appointments, and Thy gifts; my evil ones are my offences, and Thy judgments. Let them breathe freely at the one, sigh at the other; and let hymns and weeping go up into Thy sight, out of the hearts of my brethren, Thy censers. And do Thou, O Lord, be pleased with the incense of Thy holy temple, have mercy upon me according to Thy great mercy for Thine own name's sake; and no ways forsaking what Thou hast begun, perfect my imperfections. This is the fruit of my confessions of what I am, not of what I have been, to confess this, not before Thee only, in a secret exultation with trembling, and a secret sorrow with hope; but in the ears also of the believing sons of men, sharers of my joy, and partners in my mortality, my fellow-citizens, and fellow-pilgrims, who are gone before, or are to follow on, companions of my way. These are Thy servants, my brethren, whom Thou willest to be Thy sons; my masters, whom Thou commandest me to serve, if I would live with Thee, of Thee. But this Thy Word were little did it only command by speaking, and not go before in performing. This then I do in deed and word, this I do under Thy wings; in over great peril, were not my soul subdued unto Thee under Thy wings, and my infirmity known unto Thee. I am a little one, but my Father ever liveth, and my Guardian is sufficient for me. For He is the same who begat me, and defends me: and Thou Thyself art all my good; Thou, Almighty, Who are with me, yea, before I am with Thee. To such then whom Thou commandest me to serve will I discover, not what I have been, but what I now am and what I yet am. But neither do I judge myself. Thus therefore I would be heard. For Thou, Lord, dost judge me: because, although no man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man which is in him, yet is there something of man, which neither the spirit of man that is in him, itself knoweth. But Thou, Lord, knowest all of him, Who hast made him. Yet I, though in Thy sight I despise myself, and account myself dust and ashes; yet know I something of Thee, which I know not of myself. And truly, now we see through a glass darkly, not face to face as yet. So long therefore as I be absent from Thee, I am more present with myself than with Thee; and yet know I Thee that Thou art in no ways passible; but I, what temptations I can resist, what I cannot, I know not. And there is hope, because Thou art faithful, Who wilt not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able; but wilt with the temptation also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it. I will confess then what I know of myself, I will confess also what I know not of myself. And that because what I do know of myself, I know by Thy shining upon me; and what I know not of myself, so long know I not it, until my darkness be made as the noon-day in Thy countenance. Not with doubting, but with assured consciousness, do I love Thee, Lord. Thou hast stricken my heart with Thy word, and I loved Thee. Yea also heaven, and earth, and all that therein is, behold, on every side they bid me love Thee; nor cease to say so unto all, that they may be without excuse. But more deeply wilt Thou have mercy on whom Thou wilt have mercy, and wilt have compassion on whom Thou hast had compassion: else in deaf ears do the heaven and the earth speak Thy praises. But what do I love, when I love Thee? not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs acceptable to embracements of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, and melody, and fragrance, and meat, and embracement when I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, embracement of my inner man: where there shineth unto my soul what space cannot contain, and there soundeth what time beareth not away, and there smelleth what breathing disperseth not, and there tasteth what eating diminisheth not, and there clingeth what satiety divorceth not. This is it which I love when I love my God. And what is this? I asked the earth, and it answered me, "I am not He"; and whatsoever are in it confessed the same. I asked the sea and the deeps, and the living creeping things, and they answered, "We are not thy God, seek above us." I asked the moving air; and the whole air with his inhabitants answered, "Anaximenes was deceived, I am not God." I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars, "Nor (say they) are we the God whom thou seekest." And I replied unto all the things which encompass the door of my flesh: "Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me something of Him." And they cried out with a loud voice, "He made us." My questioning them, was my thoughts on them: and their form of beauty gave the answer. And I turned myself unto myself, and said to myself, "Who art thou?" And I answered, "A man." And behold, in me there present themselves to me soul, and body, one without, the other within. By which of these ought I to seek my God? I had sought Him in the body from earth to heaven, so far as I could send messengers, the beams of mine eyes. But the better is the inner, for to it as presiding and judging, all the bodily messengers reported the answers of heaven and earth, and all things therein, who said, "We are not God, but He made us." These things did my inner man know by the ministry of the outer: I the inner knew them; I, the mind, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and it answered me, "I am not He, but He made me." Is not this corporeal figure apparent to all whose senses are perfect? why then speaks it not the same to all? Animals small and great see it, but they cannot ask it: because no reason is set over their senses to judge on what they report. But men can ask, so that the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; but by love of them, they are made subject unto them: and subjects cannot judge. Nor yet do the creatures answer such as ask, unless they can judge; nor yet do they change their voice (i.e., their appearance), if one man only sees, another seeing asks, so as to appear one way to this man, another way to that, but appearing the same way to both, it is dumb to this, speaks to that; yea rather it speaks to all; but they only understand, who compare its voice received from without, with the truth within. For truth saith unto me, "Neither heaven, nor earth, nor any other body is thy God." This, their very nature saith to him that seeth them: "They are a mass; a mass is less in a part thereof than in the whole." Now to thee I speak, O my soul, thou art my better part: for thou quickenest the mass of my body, giving it life, which no body can give to a body: but thy God is even unto thee the Life of thy life. What then do I love, when I love my God? who is He above the head of my soul? By my very soul will I ascend to Him. I will pass beyond that power whereby I am united to my body, and fill its whole frame with life. Nor can I by that power find my God; for so horse and mule that have no understanding might find Him; seeing it is the same power, whereby even their bodies live. But another power there is, not that only whereby I animate, but that too whereby I imbue with sense my flesh, which the Lord hath framed for me: commanding the eye not to hear, and the ear not to see; but the eye, that through it I should see, and the ear, that through it I should hear; and to the other senses severally, what is to each their own peculiar seats and offices; which, being divers, I the one mind, do through them enact. I will pass beyond this power of mine also; for this also have the horse, and mule, for they also perceive through the body. I will pass then beyond this power of my nature also, rising by degrees unto Him Who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There is stored up, whatsoever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried. When I enter there, I require what I will to be brought forth, and something instantly comes; others must be longer sought after, which are fetched, as it were, out of some inner receptacle; others rush out in troops, and while one thing is desired and required, they start forth, as who should say, "Is it perchance I?" These I drive away with the hand of my heart, from the face of my remembrance; until what I wish for be unveiled, and appear in sight, out of its secret place. Other things come up readily, in unbroken order, as they are called for; those in front making way for the following; and as they make way, they are hidden from sight, ready to come when I will. All which takes place when I repeat a thing by heart. There are all things preserved distinctly and under general heads, each having entered by its own avenue: as light, and all colours and forms of bodies by the eyes; by the ears all sorts of sounds; all smells by the avenue of the nostrils; all tastes by the mouth; and by the sensation of the whole body, what is hard or soft; hot or cold; or rugged; heavy or light; either outwardly or inwardly to the body. All these doth that great harbour of the memory receive in her numberless secret and inexpressible windings, to be forthcoming, and brought out at need; each entering in by his own gate, and there laid up. Nor yet do the things themselves enter in; only the images of the things perceived are there in readiness, for thought to recall. Which images, how they are formed, who can tell, though it doth plainly appear by which sense each hath been brought in and stored up? For even while I dwell in darkness and silence, in my memory I can produce colours, if I will, and discern betwixt black and white, and what others I will: nor yet do sounds break in and disturb the image drawn in by my eyes, which I am reviewing, though they also are there, lying dormant, and laid up, as it were, apart. For these too I call for, and forthwith they appear. And though my tongue be still, and my throat mute, so can I sing as much as I will; nor do those images of colours, which notwithstanding be there, intrude themselves and interrupt, when another store is called for, which flowed in by the ears. So the other things, piled in and up by the other senses, I recall at my pleasure. Yea, I discern the breath of lilies from violets, though smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to sweet wine, smooth before rugged, at the time neither tasting nor handling, but remembering only. These things do I within, in that vast court of my memory. For there are present with me, heaven, earth, sea, and whatever I could think on therein, besides what I have forgotten. There also meet I with myself, and recall myself, and when, where, and what I have done, and under what feelings. There be all which I remember, either on my own experience, or other's credit. Out of the same store do I myself with the past continually combine fresh and fresh likenesses of things which I have experienced, or, from what I have experienced, have believed: and thence again infer future actions, events and hopes, and all these again I reflect on, as present. "I will do this or that," say I to myself, in that great receptacle of my mind, stored with the images of things so many and so great, "and this or that will follow." "O that this or that might be!" "God avert this or that!" So speak I to myself: and when I speak, the images of all I speak of are present, out of the same treasury of memory; nor would I speak of any thereof, were the images wanting. Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large and boundless chamber! who ever sounded the bottom thereof? yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to contain itself. And where should that be, which it containeth not of itself? Is it without it, and not within? how then doth it not comprehend itself? A wonderful admiration surprises me, amazement seizes me upon this. And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by; nor wonder that when I spake of all these things, I did not see them with mine eyes, yet could not have spoken of them, unless I then actually saw the mountains, billows, rivers, stars which I had seen, and that ocean which I believe to be, inwardly in my memory, and that, with the same vast spaces between, as if I saw them abroad. Yet did not I by seeing draw them into myself, when with mine eyes I beheld them; nor are they themselves with me, but their images only. And I know by what sense of the body each was impressed upon me. Yet not these alone does the unmeasurable capacity of my memory retain. Here also is all, learnt of the liberal sciences and as yet unforgotten; removed as it were to some inner place, which is yet no place: nor are they the images thereof, but the things themselves. For, what is literature, what the art of disputing, how many kinds of questions there be, whatsoever of these I know, in such manner exists in my memory, as that I have not taken in the image, and left out the thing, or that it should have sounded and passed away like a voice fixed on the ear by that impress, whereby it might be recalled, as if it sounded, when it no longer sounded; or as a smell while it passes and evaporates into air affects the sense of smell, whence it conveys into the memory an image of itself, which remembering, we renew, or as meat, which verily in the belly hath now no taste, and yet in the memory still in a manner tasteth; or as any thing which the body by touch perceiveth, and which when removed from us, the memory still conceives. For those things are not transmitted into the memory, but their images only are with an admirable swiftness caught up, and stored as it were in wondrous cabinets, and thence wonderfully by the act of remembering, brought forth. But now when I hear that there be three kinds of questions, "Whether the thing be? what it is? of what kind it is?" I do indeed hold the images of the sounds of which those words be composed, and that those sounds, with a noise passed through the air, and now are not. But the things themselves which are signified by those sounds, I never reached with any sense of my body, nor ever discerned them otherwise than in my mind; yet in my memory have I laid up not their images, but themselves. Which how they entered into me, let them say if they can; for I have gone over all the avenues of my flesh, but cannot find by which they entered. For the eyes say, "If those images were coloured, we reported of them." The ears say, "If they sound, we gave knowledge of them." The nostrils say, "If they smell, they passed by us." The taste says, "Unless they have a savour, ask me not." The touch says, "If it have not size, I handled it not; if I handled it not, I gave no notice of it." Whence and how entered these things into my memory? I know not how. For when I learned them, I gave not credit to another man's mind, but recognised them in mine; and approving them for true, I commended them to it, laying them up as it were, whence I might bring them forth when I willed. In my heart then they were, even before I learned them, but in my memory they were not. Where then? or wherefore, when they were spoken, did I acknowledge them, and said, "So is it, it is true," unless that they were already in the memory, but so thrown back and buried as it were in deeper recesses, that had not the suggestion of another drawn them forth I had perchance been unable to conceive of them? Wherefore we find, that to learn these things whereof we imbibe not the images by our senses, but perceive within by themselves, without images, as they are, is nothing else, but by conception, to receive, and by marking to take heed that those things which the memory did before contain at random and unarranged, be laid up at hand as it were in that same memory where before they lay unknown, scattered and neglected, and so readily occur to the mind familiarised to them. And how many things of this kind does my memory bear which have been already found out, and as I said, placed as it were at hand, which we are said to have learned and come to know which were I for some short space of time to cease to call to mind, they are again so buried, and glide back, as it were, into the deeper recesses, that they must again, as if new, be thought out thence, for other abode they have none: but they must be drawn together again, that they may be known; that is to say, they must as it were be collected together from their dispersion: whence the word "cogitation" is derived. For cogo (collect) and cogito (re-collect) have the same relation to each other as ago and agito, facio and factito. But the mind hath appropriated to itself this word (cogitation), so that, not what is "collected" any how, but what is "recollected," i.e., brought together, in the mind, is properly said to be cogitated, or thought upon. The memory containeth also reasons and laws innumerable of numbers and dimensions, none of which hath any bodily sense impressed; seeing they have neither colour, nor sound, nor taste, nor smell, nor touch. I have heard the sound of the words whereby when discussed they are denoted: but the sounds are other than the things. For the sounds are other in Greek than in Latin; but the things are neither Greek, nor Latin, nor any other language. I have seen the lines of architects, the very finest, like a spider's thread; but those are still different, they are not the images of those lines which the eye of flesh showed me: he knoweth them, whosoever without any conception whatsoever of a body, recognises them within himself. I have perceived also the numbers of the things with which we number all the senses of my body; but those numbers wherewith we number are different, nor are they the images of these, and therefore they indeed are. Let him who seeth them not, deride me for saying these things, and I will pity him, while he derides me. All these things I remember, and how I learnt them I remember. Many things also most falsely objected against them have I heard, and remember; which though they be false, yet is it not false that I remember them; and I remember also that I have discerned betwixt those truths and these falsehoods objected to them. And I perceive that the present discerning of these things is different from remembering that I oftentimes discerned them, when I often thought upon them. I both remember then to have often understood these things; and what I now discern and understand, I lay up in my memory, that hereafter I may remember that I understand it now. So then I remember also to have remembered; as if hereafter I shall call to remembrance, that I have now been able to remember these things, by the force of memory shall I call it to remembrance. The same memory contains also the affections of my mind, not in the same manner that my mind itself contains them, when it feels them; but far otherwise, according to a power of its own. For without rejoicing I remember myself to have joyed; and without sorrow do I recollect my past sorrow. And that I once feared, I review without fear; and without desire call to mind a past desire. Sometimes, on the contrary, with joy do I remember my fore-past sorrow, and with sorrow, joy. Which is not wonderful, as to the body; for mind is one thing, body another. If I therefore with joy remember some past pain of body, it is not so wonderful. But now seeing this very memory itself is mind (for when we give a thing in charge, to be kept in memory, we say, "See that you keep it in mind"; and when we forget, we say, "It did not come to my mind," and, "It slipped out of my mind," calling the memory itself the mind); this being so, how is it that when with joy I remember my past sorrow, the mind hath joy, the memory hath sorrow; the mind upon the joyfulness which is in it, is joyful, yet the memory upon the sadness which is in it, is not sad? Does the memory perchance not belong to the mind? Who will say so? The memory then is, as it were, the belly of the mind, and joy and sadness, like sweet and bitter food; which, when committed to the memory, are as it were passed into the belly, where they may be stowed, but cannot taste. Ridiculous it is to imagine these to be alike; and yet are they not utterly unlike. But, behold, out of my memory I bring it, when I say there be four perturbations of the mind, desire, joy, fear, sorrow; and whatsoever I can dispute thereon, by dividing each into its subordinate species, and by defining it, in my memory find I what to say, and thence do I bring it: yet am I not disturbed by any of these perturbations, when by calling them to mind, I remember them; yea, and before I recalled and brought them back, they were there; and therefore could they, by recollection, thence be brought. Perchance, then, as meat is by chewing the cud brought up out of the belly, so by recollection these out of the memory. Why then does not the disputer, thus recollecting, taste in the mouth of his musing the sweetness of joy, or the bitterness of sorrow? Is the comparison unlike in this, because not in all respects like? For who would willingly speak thereof, if so oft as we name grief or fear, we should be compelled to be sad or fearful? And yet could we not speak of them, did we not find in our memory, not only the sounds of the names according to the images impressed by the senses of the body, but notions of the very things themselves which we never received by any avenue of the body, but which the mind itself perceiving by the experience of its own passions, committed to the memory, or the memory of itself retained, without being committed unto it. But whether by images or no, who can readily say? Thus, I name a stone, I name the sun, the things themselves not being present to my senses, but their images to my memory. I name a bodily pain, yet it is not present with me, when nothing aches: yet unless its image were present to my memory, I should not know what to say thereof, nor in discoursing discern pain from pleasure. I name bodily health; being sound in body, the thing itself is present with me; yet, unless its image also were present in my memory, I could by no means recall what the sound of this name should signify. Nor would the sick, when health were named, recognise what were spoken, unless the same image were by the force of memory retained, although the thing itself were absent from the body. I name numbers whereby we number; and not their images, but themselves are present in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and that image is present in my memory. For I recall not the image of its image, but the image itself is present to me, calling it to mind. I name memory, and I recognise what I name. And where do I recognise it, but in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself? What, when I name forgetfulness, and withal recognise what I name? whence should I recognise it, did I not remember it? I speak not of the sound of the name, but of the thing which it signifies: which if I had forgotten, I could not recognise what that sound signifies. When then I remember memory, memory itself is, through itself, present with itself: but when I remember forgetfulness, there are present both memory and forgetfulness; memory whereby I remember, forgetfulness which I remember. But what is forgetfulness, but the privation of memory? How then is it present that I remember it, since when present I cannot remember? But if what we remember we hold it in memory, yet, unless we did remember forgetfulness, we could never at the hearing of the name recognise the thing thereby signified, then forgetfulness is retained by memory. Present then it is, that we forget not, and being so, we forget. It is to be understood from this that forgetfulness when we remember it, is not present to the memory by itself but by its image: because if it were present by itself, it would not cause us to remember, but to forget. Who now shall search out this? who shall comprehend how it is? Lord, I, truly, toil therein, yea and toil in myself; I am become a heavy soil requiring over much sweat of the brow. For we are not now searching out the regions of heaven, or measuring the distances of the stars, or enquiring the balancings of the earth. It is I myself who remember, I the mind. It is not so wonderful, if what I myself am not, be far from me. But what is nearer to me than myself? And lo, the force of mine own memory is not understood by me; though I cannot so much as name myself without it. For what shall I say, when it is clear to me that I remember forgetfulness? Shall I say that that is not in my memory, which I remember? or shall I say that forgetfulness is for this purpose in my memory, that I might not forget? Both were most absurd. What third way is there? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained by my memory, not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it? How could I say this either, seeing that when the image of any thing is impressed on the memory, the thing itself must needs be first present, whence that image may be impressed? For thus do I remember Carthage, thus all places where I have been, thus men's faces whom I have seen, and things reported by the other senses; thus the health or sickness of the body. For when these things were present, my memory received from them images, which being present with me, I might look on and bring back in my mind, when I remembered them in their absence. If then this forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its image, not through itself, then plainly itself was once present, that its image might be taken. But when it was present, how did it write its image in the memory, seeing that forgetfulness by its presence effaces even what it finds already noted? And yet, in whatever way, although that way be past conceiving and explaining, yet certain am I that I remember forgetfulness itself also, whereby what we remember is effaced. Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, O my God, a deep and boundless manifoldness; and this thing is the mind, and this am I myself. What am I then, O my God? What nature am I? A life various and manifold, and exceeding immense. Behold in the plains, and caves, and caverns of my memory, innumerable and innumerably full of innumerable kinds of things, either through images, as all bodies; or by actual presence, as the arts; or by certain notions or impressions, as the affections of the mind, which, even when the mind doth not feel, the memory retaineth, while yet whatsoever is in the memory is also in the mind--over all these do I run, I fly; I dive on this side and on that, as far as I can, and there is no end. So great is the force of memory, so great the force of life, even in the mortal life of man. What shall I do then, O Thou my true life, my God? I will pass even beyond this power of mine which is called memory: yea, I will pass beyond it, that I may approach unto Thee, O sweet Light. What sayest Thou to me? See, I am mounting up through my mind towards Thee who abidest above me. Yea, I now will pass beyond this power of mine which is called memory, desirous to arrive at Thee, whence Thou mayest be arrived at; and to cleave unto Thee, whence one may cleave unto Thee. For even beasts and birds have memory; else could they not return to their dens and nests, nor many other things they are used unto: nor indeed could they be used to any thing, but by memory. I will pass then beyond memory also, that I may arrive at Him who hath separated me from the four-footed beasts and made me wiser than the fowls of the air, I will pass beyond memory also, and where shall I find Thee, Thou truly good and certain sweetness? And where shall I find Thee? If I find Thee without my memory, then do I not retain Thee in my memory. And how shall I find Thee, if I remember Thee not? For the woman that had lost her groat, and sought it with a light; unless she had remembered it, she had never found it. For when it was found, whence should she know whether it were the same, unless she remembered it? I remember to have sought and found many a thing; and this I thereby know, that when I was seeking any of them, and was asked, "Is this it?" "Is that it?" so long said I "No," until that were offered me which I sought. Which had I not remembered (whatever it were) though it were offered me, yet should I not find it, because I could not recognise it. And so it ever is, when we seek and find any lost thing. Notwithstanding, when any thing is by chance lost from the sight, not from the memory (as any visible body), yet its image is still retained within, and it is sought until it be restored to sight; and when it is found, it is recognised by the image which is within: nor do we say that we have found what was lost, unless we recognise it; nor can we recognise it, unless we remember it. But this was lost to the eyes, but retained in the memory. But what when the memory itself loses any thing, as falls out when we forget and seek that we may recollect? Where in the end do we search, but in the memory itself? and there, if one thing be perchance offered instead of another, we reject it, until what we seek meets us; and when it doth, we say, "This is it"; which we should not unless we recognised it, nor recognise it unless we remembered it. Certainly then we had forgotten it. Or, had not the whole escaped us, but by the part whereof we had hold, was the lost part sought for; in that the memory felt that it did not carry on together all which it was wont, and maimed, as it were, by the curtailment of its ancient habit, demanded the restoration of what it missed? For instance, if we see or think of some one known to us, and having forgotten his name, try to recover it; whatever else occurs, connects itself not therewith; because it was not wont to be thought upon together with him, and therefore is rejected, until that present itself, whereon the knowledge reposes equably as its wonted object. And whence does that present itself, but out of the memory itself? for even when we recognise it, on being reminded by another, it is thence it comes. For we do not believe it as something new, but, upon recollection, allow what was named to be right. But were it utterly blotted out of the mind, we should not remember it, even when reminded. For we have not as yet utterly forgotten that, which we remember ourselves to have forgotten. What then we have utterly forgotten, though lost, we cannot even seek after. How then do I seek Thee, O Lord? For when I seek Thee, my God, I seek a happy life. I will seek Thee, that my soul may live. For my body liveth by my soul; and my soul by Thee. How then do I seek a happy life, seeing I have it not, until I can say, where I ought to say it, "It is enough"? How seek I it? By remembrance, as though I had forgotten it, remembering that I had forgotten it? Or, desiring to learn it as a thing unknown, either never having known, or so forgotten it, as not even to remember that I had forgotten it? is not a happy life what all will, and no one altogether wills it not? where have they known it, that they so will it? where seen it, that they so love it? Truly we have it, how, I know not. Yea, there is another way, wherein when one hath it, then is he happy; and there are, who are blessed, in hope. These have it in a lower kind, than they who have it in very deed; yet are they better off than such as are happy neither in deed nor in hope. Yet even these, had they it not in some sort, would not so will to be happy, which that they do will, is most certain. They have known it then, I know not how, and so have it by some sort of knowledge, what, I know not, and am perplexed whether it be in the memory, which if it be, then we have been happy once; whether all severally, or in that man who first sinned, in whom also we all died, and from whom we are all born with misery, I now enquire not; but only, whether the happy life be in the memory? For neither should we love it, did we not know it. We hear the name, and we all confess that we desire the thing; for we are not delighted with the mere sound. For when a Greek hears it in Latin, he is not delighted, not knowing what is spoken; but we Latins are delighted, as would he too, if he heard it in Greek; because the thing itself is neither Greek nor Latin, which Greeks and Latins, and men of all other tongues, long for so earnestly. Known therefore it is to all, for they with one voice be asked, "would they be happy?" they would answer without doubt, "they would." And this could not be, unless the thing itself whereof it is the name were retained in their memory. But is it so, as one remembers Carthage who hath seen it? No. For a happy life is not seen with the eye, because it is not a body. As we remember numbers then? No. For these, he that hath in his knowledge, seeks not further to attain unto; but a happy life we have in our knowledge, and therefore love it, and yet still desire to attain it, that we may be happy. As we remember eloquence then? No. For although upon hearing this name also, some call to mind the thing, who still are not yet eloquent, and many who desire to be so, whence it appears that it is in their knowledge; yet these have by their bodily senses observed others to be eloquent, and been delighted, and desire to be the like (though indeed they would not be delighted but for some inward knowledge thereof, nor wish to be the like, unless they were thus delighted); whereas a happy life, we do by no bodily sense experience in others. As then we remember joy? Perchance; for my joy I remember, even when sad, as a happy life, when unhappy; nor did I ever with bodily sense see, hear, smell, taste, or touch my joy; but I experienced it in my mind, when I rejoiced; and the knowledge of it clave to my memory, so that I can recall it with disgust sometimes, at others with longing, according to the nature of the things, wherein I remember myself to have joyed. For even from foul things have I been immersed in a sort of joy; which now recalling, I detest and execrate; otherwhiles in good and honest things, which I recall with longing, although perchance no longer present; and therefore with sadness I recall former joy. Where then and when did I experience my happy life, that I should remember, and love, and long for it? Nor is it I alone, or some few besides, but we all would fain be happy; which, unless by some certain knowledge we knew, we should not with so certain a will desire. But how is this, that if two men be asked whether they would go to the wars, one, perchance, would answer that he would, the other, that he would not; but if they were asked whether they would be happy, both would instantly without any doubting say they would; and for no other reason would the one go to the wars, and the other not, but to be happy. Is it perchance that as one looks for his joy in this thing, another in that, all agree in their desire of being happy, as they would (if they were asked) that they wished to have joy, and this joy they call a happy life? Although then one obtains this joy by one means, another by another, all have one end, which they strive to attain, namely, joy. Which being a thing which all must say they have experienced, it is therefore found in the memory, and recognised whenever the name of a happy life is mentioned. Far be it, Lord, far be it from the heart of Thy servant who here confesseth unto Thee, far be it, that, be the joy what it may, I should therefore think myself happy. For there is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this is it, and there is no other. For they who think there is another, pursue some other and not the true joy. Yet is not their will turned away from some semblance of joy. It is not certain then that all wish to be happy, inasmuch as they who wish not to joy in Thee, which is the only happy life, do not truly desire the happy life. Or do all men desire this, but because the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, that they cannot do what they would, they fall upon that which they can, and are content therewith; because, what they are not able to do, they do not will so strongly as would suffice to make them able? For I ask any one, had he rather joy in truth, or in falsehood? They will as little hesitate to say "in the truth," as to say "that they desire to be happy," for a happy life is joy in the truth: for this is a joying in Thee, Who art the Truth, O God my light, health of my countenance, my God. This is the happy life which all desire; this life which alone is happy, all desire; to joy in the truth all desire. I have met with many that would deceive; who would be deceived, no one. Where then did they know this happy life, save where they know the truth also? For they love it also, since they would not be deceived. And when they love a happy life, which is no other than joying in the truth, then also do they love the truth; which yet they would not love, were there not some notice of it in their memory. Why then joy they not in it? why are they not happy? because they are more strongly taken up with other things which have more power to make them miserable, than that which they so faintly remember to make them happy. For there is yet a little light in men; let them walk, let them walk, that the darkness overtake them not. But why doth "truth generate hatred," and the man of Thine, preaching the truth, become an enemy to them? whereas a happy life is loved, which is nothing else but joying in the truth; unless that truth is in that kind loved, that they who love anything else would gladly have that which they love to be the truth: and because they would not be deceived, would not be convinced that they are so? Therefore do they hate the truth for that thing's sake which they loved instead of the truth. They love truth when she enlightens, they hate her when she reproves. For since they would not be deceived, and would deceive, they love her when she discovers herself unto them, and hate her when she discovers them. Whence she shall so repay them, that they who would not be made manifest by her, she both against their will makes manifest, and herself becometh not manifest unto them. Thus, thus, yea thus doth the mind of man, thus blind and sick, foul and ill-favoured, wish to be hidden, but that aught should be hidden from it, it wills not. But the contrary is requited it, that itself should not be hidden from the Truth; but the Truth is hid from it. Yet even thus miserable, it had rather joy in truths than in falsehoods. Happy then will it be, when, no distraction interposing, it shall joy in that only Truth, by Whom all things are true. See what a space I have gone over in my memory seeking Thee, O Lord; and I have not found Thee, without it. Nor have I found any thing concerning Thee, but what I have kept in memory, ever since I learnt Thee. For since I learnt Thee, I have not forgotten Thee. For where I found Truth, there found I my God, the Truth itself; which since I learnt, I have not forgotten. Since then I learnt Thee, Thou residest in my memory; and there do I find Thee, when I call Thee to remembrance, and delight in Thee. These be my holy delights, which Thou hast given me in Thy mercy, having regard to my poverty. But where in my memory residest Thou, O Lord, where residest Thou there? what manner of lodging hast Thou framed for Thee? what manner of sanctuary hast Thou builded for Thee? Thou hast given this honour to my memory, to reside in it; but in what quarter of it Thou residest, that am I considering. For in thinking on Thee, I passed beyond such parts of it as the beasts also have, for I found Thee not there among the images of corporeal things: and I came to those parts to which I committed the affections of my mind, nor found Thee there. And I entered into the very seat of my mind (which it hath in my memory, inasmuch as the mind remembers itself also), neither wert Thou there: for as Thou art not a corporeal image, nor the affection of a living being (as when we rejoice, condole, desire, fear, remember, forget, or the like); so neither art Thou the mind itself; because Thou art the Lord God of the mind; and all these are changed, but Thou remainest unchangeable over all, and yet hast vouchsafed to dwell in my memory, since I learnt Thee. And why seek I now in what place thereof Thou dwellest, as if there were places therein? Sure I am, that in it Thou dwellest, since I have remembered Thee ever since I learnt Thee, and there I find Thee, when I call Thee to remembrance. Where then did I find Thee, that I might learn Thee? For in my memory Thou wert not, before I learned Thee. Where then did I find Thee, that I might learn Thee, but in Thee above me? Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no place. Every where, O Truth, dost Thou give audience to all who ask counsel of Thee, and at once answerest all, though on manifold matters they ask Thy counsel. Clearly dost Thou answer, though all do not clearly hear. All consult Thee on what they will, though they hear not always what they will. He is Thy best servant who looks not so much to hear that from Thee which himself willeth, as rather to will that, which from Thee he heareth. Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee; deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odours, and I drew in breath and panted for Thee. I tasted, and hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace. When I shall with my whole self cleave to Thee, I shall no where have sorrow or labour; and my life shall wholly live, as wholly full of Thee. But now since whom Thou fillest, Thou liftest up, because I am not full of Thee I am a burden to myself. Lamentable joys strive with joyous sorrows: and on which side is the victory, I know not. Woe is me! Lord, have pity on me. My evil sorrows strive with my good joys; and on which side is the victory, I know not. Woe is me! Lord, have pity on me. Woe is me! lo! I hide not my wounds; Thou art the Physician, I the sick; Thou merciful, I miserable. Is not the life of man upon earth all trial? Who wishes for troubles and difficulties? Thou commandest them to be endured, not to be loved. No man loves what he endures, though he love to endure. For though he rejoices that he endures, he had rather there were nothing for him to endure. In adversity I long for prosperity, in prosperity I fear adversity. What middle place is there betwixt these two, where the life of man is not all trial? Woe to the prosperities of the world, once and again, through fear of adversity, and corruption of joy! Woe to the adversities of the world, once and again, and the third time, from the longing for prosperity, and because adversity itself is a hard thing, and lest it shatter endurance. Is not the life of man upon earth all trial: without any interval? And all my hope is no where but in Thy exceeding great mercy. Give what Thou enjoinest, and enjoin what Thou wilt. Thou enjoinest us continency; and when I knew, saith one, that no man can be continent, unless God give it, this also was a part of wisdom to know whose gift she is. By continency verily are we bound up and brought back into One, whence we were dissipated into many. For too little doth he love Thee, who loves any thing with Thee, which he loveth not for Thee. O love, who ever burnest and never consumest! O charity, my God, kindle me. Thou enjoinest continency: give me what Thou enjoinest, and enjoin what Thou wilt. Verily Thou enjoinest me continency from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world. Thou enjoinest continency from concubinage; and for wedlock itself, Thou hast counselled something better than what Thou hast permitted. And since Thou gavest it, it was done, even before I became a dispenser of Thy Sacrament. But there yet live in my memory (whereof I have much spoken) the images of such things as my ill custom there fixed; which haunt me, strengthless when I am awake: but in sleep, not only so as to give pleasure, but even to obtain assent, and what is very like reality. Yea, so far prevails the illusion of the image, in my soul and in my flesh, that, when asleep, false visions persuade to that which when waking, the true cannot. Am I not then myself, O Lord my God? And yet there is so much difference betwixt myself and myself, within that moment wherein I pass from waking to sleeping, or return from sleeping to waking! Where is reason then, which, awake, resisteth such suggestions? And should the things themselves be urged on it, it remaineth unshaken. Is it clasped up with the eyes? is it lulled asleep with the senses of the body? And whence is it that often even in sleep we resist, and mindful of our purpose, and abiding most chastely in it, yield no assent to such enticements? And yet so much difference there is, that when it happeneth otherwise, upon waking we return to peace of conscience: and by this very difference discover that we did not, what yet we be sorry that in some way it was done in us. Art Thou not mighty, God Almighty, so as to heal all the diseases of my soul, and by Thy more abundant grace to quench even the impure motions of my sleep! Thou wilt increase, Lord, Thy gifts more and more in me, that my soul may follow me to Thee, disentangled from the birdlime of concupiscence; that it rebel not against itself, and even in dreams not only not, through images of sense, commit those debasing corruptions, even to pollution of the flesh, but not even to consent unto them. For that nothing of this sort should have, over the pure affections even of a sleeper, the very least influence, not even such as a thought would restrain,--to work this, not only during life, but even at my present age, is not hard for the Almighty, Who art able to do above all that we ask or think. But what I yet am in this kind of my evil, have I confessed unto my good Lord; rejoicing with trembling, in that which Thou hast given me, and bemoaning that wherein I am still imperfect; hoping that Thou wilt perfect Thy mercies in me, even to perfect peace, which my outward and inward man shall have with Thee, when death shall be swallowed up in victory. There is another evil of the day, which I would were sufficient for it. For by eating and drinking we repair the evil decays of our body, until Thou destroy both belly and meat, when Thou shalt slay my emptiness with a wonderful fulness, and clothe this incorruptible with an eternal incorruption. But now the necessity is sweet unto me, against which sweetness I fight, that I be not taken captive; and carry on a daily war by fastings; often bringing my body into subjection; and my pains are removed by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are in a manner pains; they burn and kill like a fever, unless the medicine of nourishments come to our aid. Which since it is at hand through the consolations of Thy gifts, with which land, and water, and air serve our weakness, our calamity is termed gratification. This hast Thou taught me, that I should set myself to take food as physic. But while I am passing from the discomfort of emptiness to the content of replenishing, in the very passage the snare of concupiscence besets me. For that passing, is pleasure, nor is there any other way to pass thither, whither we needs must pass. And health being the cause of eating and drinking, there joineth itself as an attendant a dangerous pleasure, which mostly endeavours to go before it, so that I may for her sake do what I say I do, or wish to do, for health's sake. Nor have each the same measure; for what is enough for health, is too little for pleasure. And oft it is uncertain, whether it be the necessary care of the body which is yet asking for sustenance, or whether a voluptuous deceivableness of greediness is proffering its services. In this uncertainty the unhappy soul rejoiceth, and therein prepares an excuse to shield itself, glad that it appeareth not what sufficeth for the moderation of health, that under the cloak of health, it may disguise the matter of gratification. These temptations I daily endeavour to resist, and I call on Thy right hand, and to Thee do I refer my perplexities; because I have as yet no settled counsel herein. I hear the voice of my God commanding, Let not your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness. Drunkenness is far from me; Thou wilt have mercy, that it come not near me. But full feeding sometimes creepeth upon Thy servant; Thou wilt have mercy, that it may be far from me. For no one can be continent unless Thou give it. Many things Thou givest us, praying for them; and what good soever we have received before we prayed, from Thee we received it; yea to the end we might afterwards know this, did we before receive it. Drunkard was I never, but drunkards have I known made sober by Thee. From Thee then it was, that they who never were such, should not so be, as from Thee it was, that they who have been, should not ever so be; and from Thee it was, that both might know from Whom it was. I heard another voice of Thine, Go not after thy lusts, and from thy pleasure turn away. Yea by Thy favour have I heard that which I have much loved; neither if we eat, shall we abound; neither if we eat not, shall we lack; which is to say, neither shall the one make me plenteous, nor the other miserable. I heard also another, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content; I know how to abound, and how to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me. Behold a soldier of the heavenly camp, not the dust which we are. But remember, Lord, that we are dust, and that of dust Thou hast made man; and he was lost and is found. Nor could he of himself do this, because he whom I so loved, saying this through the in-breathing of Thy inspiration, was of the same dust. I can do all things (saith he) through Him that strengtheneth me. Strengthen me, that I can. Give what Thou enjoinest, and enjoin what Thou wilt. He confesses to have received, and when he glorieth, in the Lord he glorieth. Another have I heard begging that he might receive. Take from me (saith he) the desires of the belly; whence it appeareth, O my holy God, that Thou givest, when that is done which Thou commandest to be done. Thou hast taught me, good Father, that to the pure, all things are pure; but that it is evil unto the man that eateth with offence; and, that every creature of Thine is good, and nothing to be refused, which is received with thanksgiving; and that meat commendeth us not to God; and, that no man should judge us in meat or drink; and, that he which eateth, let him not despise him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not, judge him that eateth. These things have I learned, thanks be to Thee, praise to Thee, my God, my Master, knocking at my ears, enlightening my heart; deliver me out of all temptation. I fear not uncleanness of meat, but the uncleanness of lusting. I know; that Noah was permitted to eat all kind of flesh that was good for food; that Elijah was fed with flesh; that endued with an admirable abstinence, was not polluted by feeding on living creatures, locusts. I know also that Esau was deceived by lusting for lentiles; and that David blamed himself for desiring a draught of water; and that our King was tempted, not concerning flesh, but bread. And therefore the people in the wilderness also deserved to be reproved, not for desiring flesh, but because, in the desire of food, they murmured against the Lord. Placed then amid these temptations, I strive daily against concupiscence in eating and drinking. For it is not of such nature that I can settle on cutting it off once for all, and never touching it afterward, as I could of concubinage. The bridle of the throat then is to be held attempered between slackness and stiffness. And who is he, O Lord, who is not some whit transported beyond the limits of necessity? whoever he is, he is a great one; let him make Thy Name great. But I am not such, for I am a sinful man. Yet do I too magnify Thy name; and He maketh intercession to Thee for my sins who hath overcome the world; numbering me among the weak members of His body; because Thine eyes have seen that of Him which is imperfect, and in Thy book shall all be written. With the allurements of smells, I am not much concerned. When absent, I do not miss them; when present, I do not refuse them; yet ever ready to be without them. So I seem to myself; perchance I am deceived. For that also is a mournful darkness whereby my abilities within me are hidden from me; so that my mind making enquiry into herself of her own powers, ventures not readily to believe herself; because even what is in it is mostly hidden, unless experience reveal it. And no one ought to be secure in that life, the whole whereof is called a trial, that he who hath been capable of worse to be made better, may not likewise of better be made worse. Our only hope, only confidence, only assured promise is Thy mercy. The delights of the ear had more firmly entangled and subdued me; but Thou didst loosen and free me. Now, in those melodies which Thy words breathe soul into, when sung with a sweet and attuned voice, I do a little repose; yet not so as to be held thereby, but that I can disengage myself when I will. But with the words which are their life and whereby they find admission into me, themselves seek in my affections a place of some estimation, and I can scarcely assign them one suitable. For at one time I seem to myself to give them more honour than is seemly, feeling our minds to be more holily and fervently raised unto a flame of devotion, by the holy words themselves when thus sung, than when not; and that the several affections of our spirit, by a sweet variety, have their own proper measures in the voice and singing, by some hidden correspondence wherewith they are stirred up. But this contentment of the flesh, to which the soul must not be given over to be enervated, doth oft beguile me, the sense not so waiting upon reason as patiently to follow her; but having been admitted merely for her sake, it strives even to run before her, and lead her. Thus in these things I unawares sin, but afterwards am aware of it. At other times, shunning over-anxiously this very deception, I err in too great strictness; and sometimes to that degree, as to wish the whole melody of sweet music which is used to David's Psalter, banished from my ears, and the Church's too; and that mode seems to me safer, which I remember to have been often told me of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who made the reader of the psalm utter it with so slight inflection of voice, that it was nearer speaking than singing. Yet again, when I remember the tears I shed at the Psalmody of Thy Church, in the beginning of my recovered faith; and how at this time I am moved, not with the singing, but with the things sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and modulation most suitable, I acknowledge the great use of this institution. Thus I fluctuate between peril of pleasure and approved wholesomeness; inclined the rather (though not as pronouncing an irrevocable opinion) to approve of the usage of singing in the church; that so by the delight of the ears the weaker minds may rise to the feeling of devotion. Yet when it befalls me to be more moved with the voice than the words sung, I confess to have sinned penally, and then had rather not hear music. See now my state; weep with me, and weep for me, ye, whoso regulate your feelings within, as that good action ensues. For you who do not act, these things touch not you. But Thou, O Lord my God, hearken; behold, and see, and have mercy and heal me, Thou, in whose presence I have become a problem to myself; and that is my infirmity. There remains the pleasure of these eyes of my flesh, on which to make my confessions in the hearing of the ears of Thy temple, those brotherly and devout ears; and so to conclude the temptations of the lust of the flesh, which yet assail me, groaning earnestly, and desiring to be clothed upon with my house from heaven. The eyes love fair and varied forms, and bright and soft colours. Let not these occupy my soul; let God rather occupy it, who made these things, very good indeed, yet is He my good, not they. And these affect me, waking, the whole day, nor is any rest given me from them, as there is from musical, sometimes in silence, from all voices. For this queen of colours, the light, bathing all which we behold, wherever I am through the day, gliding by me in varied forms, soothes me when engaged on other things, and not observing it. And so strongly doth it entwine itself, that if it be suddenly withdrawn, it is with longing sought for, and if absent long, saddeneth the mind. O Thou Light, which Tobias saw, when, these eyes closed, he taught his son the way of life; and himself went before with the feet of charity, never swerving. Or which Isaac saw, when his fleshly eyes being heavy and closed by old age, it was vouchsafed him, not knowingly, to bless his sons, but by blessing to know them. Or which Jacob saw, when he also, blind through great age, with illumined heart, in the persons of his sons shed light on the different races of the future people, in them foresignified; and laid his hands, mystically crossed, upon his grandchildren by Joseph, not as their father by his outward eye corrected them, but as himself inwardly discerned. This is the light, it is one, and all are one, who see and love it. But that corporeal light whereof I spake, it seasoneth the life of this world for her blind lovers, with an enticing and dangerous sweetness. But they who know how to praise Thee for it, "O all-creating Lord," take it up in Thy hymns, and are not taken up with it in their sleep. Such would I be. These seductions of the eyes I resist, lest my feet wherewith I walk upon Thy way be ensnared; and I lift up mine invisible eyes to Thee, that Thou wouldest pluck my feet out of the snare. Thou dost ever and anon pluck them out, for they are ensnared. Thou ceasest not to pluck them out, while I often entangle myself in the snares on all sides laid; because Thou that keepest Israel shalt neither slumber nor sleep. What innumerable toys, made by divers arts and manufactures, in our apparel, shoes, utensils and all sorts of works, in pictures also and divers images, and these far exceeding all necessary and moderate use and all pious meaning, have men added to tempt their own eyes withal; outwardly following what themselves make, inwardly forsaking Him by whom themselves were made, and destroying that which themselves have been made! But I, my God and my Glory, do hence also sing a hymn to Thee, and do consecrate praise to Him who consecrateth me, because those beautiful patterns which through men's souls are conveyed into their cunning hands, come from that Beauty, which is above our souls, which my soul day and night sigheth after. But the framers and followers of the outward beauties derive thence the rule of judging of them, but not of using them. And He is there, though they perceive Him not, that so they might not wander, but keep their strength for Thee, and not scatter it abroad upon pleasurable weariness. And I, though I speak and see this, entangle my steps with these outward beauties; but Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, Thou pluckest me out; because Thy loving-kindness is before my eyes. For I am taken miserably, and Thou pluckest me out mercifully; sometimes not perceiving it, when I had but lightly lighted upon them; otherwhiles with pain, because I had stuck fast in them. To this is added another form of temptation more manifoldly dangerous. For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which consisteth in the delight of all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves, who go far from Thee, waste and perish, the soul hath, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious desire, veiled under the title of knowledge and learning, not of delighting in the flesh, but of making experiments through the flesh. The seat whereof being in the appetite of knowledge, and sight being the sense chiefly used for attaining knowledge, it is in Divine language called The lust of the eyes. For, to see, belongeth properly to the eyes; yet we use this word of the other senses also, when we employ them in seeking knowledge. For we do not say, hark how it flashes, or smell how it glows, or taste how it shines, or feel how it gleams; for all these are said to be seen. And yet we say not only, see how it shineth, which the eyes alone can perceive; but also, see how it soundeth, see how it smelleth, see how it tasteth, see how hard it is. And so the general experience of the senses, as was said, is called The lust of the eyes, because the office of seeing, wherein the eyes hold the prerogative, the other senses by way of similitude take to themselves, when they make search after any knowledge. But by this may more evidently be discerned, wherein pleasure and wherein curiosity is the object of the senses; for pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savoury, soft; but curiosity, for trial's sake, the contrary as well, not for the sake of suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial and knowing them. For what pleasure hath it, to see in a mangled carcase what will make you shudder? and yet if it be lying near, they flock thither, to be made sad, and to turn pale. Even in sleep they are afraid to see it. As if when awake, any one forced them to see it, or any report of its beauty drew them thither! Thus also in the other senses, which it were long to go through. From this disease of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence men go on to search out the hidden powers of nature (which is besides our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know. Hence also, if with that same end of perverted knowledge magical arts be enquired by. Hence also in religion itself, is God tempted, when signs and wonders are demanded of Him, not desired for any good end, but merely to make trial of. In this so vast wilderness, full of snares and dangers, behold many of them I have cut off, and thrust out of my heart, as Thou hast given me, O God of my salvation. And yet when dare I say, since so many things of this kind buzz on all sides about our daily life-when dare I say that nothing of this sort engages my attention, or causes in me an idle interest? True, the theatres do not now carry me away, nor care I to know the courses of the stars, nor did my soul ever consult ghosts departed; all sacrilegious mysteries I detest. From Thee, O Lord my God, to whom I owe humble and single-hearted service, by what artifices and suggestions doth the enemy deal with me to desire some sign! But I beseech Thee by our King, and by our pure and holy country, Jerusalem, that as any consenting thereto is far from me, so may it ever be further and further. But when I pray Thee for the salvation of any, my end and intention is far different. Thou givest and wilt give me to follow Thee willingly, doing what Thou wilt. Notwithstanding, in how many most petty and contemptible things is our curiosity daily tempted, and how often we give way, who can recount? How often do we begin as if we were tolerating people telling vain stories, lest we offend the weak; then by degrees we take interest therein! I go not now to the circus to see a dog coursing a hare; but in the field, if passing, that coursing peradventure will distract me even from some weighty thought, and draw me after it: not that I turn aside the body of my beast, yet still incline my mind thither. And unless Thou, having made me see my infirmity didst speedily admonish me either through the sight itself by some contemplation to rise towards Thee, or altogether to despise and pass it by, I dully stand fixed therein. What, when sitting at home, a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them rushing into her nets, oft-times takes my attention? Is the thing different, because they are but small creatures? I go on from them to praise Thee the wonderful Creator and Orderer of all, but this does not first draw my attention. It is one thing to rise quickly, another not to fall. And of such things is my life full; and my one hope is Thy wonderful great mercy. For when our heart becomes the receptacle of such things, and is overcharged with throngs of this abundant vanity, then are our prayers also thereby often interrupted and distracted, and whilst in Thy presence we direct the voice of our heart to Thine ears, this so great concern is broken off by the rushing in of I know not what idle thoughts. Shall we then account this also among things of slight concernment, or shall aught bring us back to hope, save Thy complete mercy, since Thou hast begun to change us? And Thou knowest how far Thou hast already changed me, who first healedst me of the lust of vindicating myself, that so Thou mightest forgive all the rest of my iniquities, and heal all my infirmities, and redeem life from corruption, and crown me with mercy and pity, and satisfy my desire with good things: who didst curb my pride with Thy fear, and tame my neck to Thy yoke. And now I bear it and it is light unto me, because so hast Thou promised, and hast made it; and verily so it was, and I knew it not, when I feared to take it. But, O Lord, Thou alone Lord without pride, because Thou art the only true Lord, who hast no lord; hath this third kind of temptation also ceased from me, or can it cease through this whole life? To wish, namely, to be feared and loved of men, for no other end, but that we may have a joy therein which is no joy? A miserable life this and a foul boastfulness! Hence especially it comes that men do neither purely love nor fear Thee. And therefore dost Thou resist the proud, and givest grace to the humble: yea, Thou thunderest down upon the ambitions of the world, and the foundations of the mountains tremble. Because now certain offices of human society make it necessary to be loved and feared of men, the adversary of our true blessedness layeth hard at us, every where spreading his snares of "well-done, well-done"; that greedily catching at them, we may be taken unawares, and sever our joy from Thy truth, and set it in the deceivingness of men; and be pleased at being loved and feared, not for Thy sake, but in Thy stead: and thus having been made like him, he may have them for his own, not in the bands of charity, but in the bonds of punishment: who purposed to set his throne in the north, that dark and chilled they might serve him, pervertedly and crookedly imitating Thee. But we, O Lord, behold we are Thy little flock; possess us as Thine, stretch Thy wings over us, and let us fly under them. Be Thou our glory; let us be loved for Thee, and Thy word feared in us. Who would be praised of men when Thou blamest, will not be defended of men when Thou judgest; nor delivered when Thou condemnest. But when--not the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, nor he blessed who doth ungodlily, but--a man is praised for some gift which Thou hast given him, and he rejoices more at the praise for himself than that he hath the gift for which he is praised, he also is praised, while Thou dispraisest; better is he who praised than he who is praised. For the one took pleasure in the gift of God in man; the other was better pleased with the gift of man, than of God. By these temptations we are assailed daily, O Lord; without ceasing are we assailed. Our daily furnace is the tongue of men. And in this way also Thou commandest us continence. Give what Thou enjoinest, and enjoin what Thou wilt. Thou knowest on this matter the groans of my heart, and the floods of mine eyes. For I cannot learn how far I am more cleansed from this plague, and I much fear my secret sins, which Thine eyes know, mine do not. For in other kinds of temptations I have some sort of means of examining myself; in this, scarce any. For, in refraining my mind from the pleasures of the flesh and idle curiosity, I see how much I have attained lo, when I do without them; foregoing, or not having them. For then I ask myself how much more or less troublesome it is to me not to have them? Then, riches, which are desired, that they may serve to some one or two or all of the three concupiscences, if the soul cannot discern whether, when it hath them, it despiseth them, they may be cast aside, that so it may prove itself. But to be without praise, and therein essay our powers, must we live ill, yea so abandonedly and atrociously, that no one should know without detesting us? What greater madness can be said or thought of? But if praise useth and ought to accompany a good life and good works, we ought as little to forego its company, as good life itself. Yet I know not whether I can well or ill be without anything, unless it be absent. What then do I confess unto Thee in this kind of temptation, O Lord? What, but that I am delighted with praise, but with truth itself, more than with praise? For were it proposed to me, whether I would, being frenzied in error on all things, be praised by all men, or being consistent and most settled in the truth be blamed by all, I see which I should choose. Yet fain would I that the approbation of another should not even increase my joy for any good in me. Yet I own, it doth increase it, and not so only, but dispraise doth diminish it. And when I am troubled at this my misery, an excuse occurs to me, which of what value it is, Thou God knowest, for it leaves me uncertain. For since Thou hast commanded us not continency alone, that is, from what things to refrain our love, but righteousness also, that is, whereon to bestow it, and hast willed us to love not Thee only, but our neighbour also; often, when pleased with intelligent praise, I seem to myself to be pleased with the proficiency or towardliness of my neighbour, or to be grieved for evil in him, when I hear him dispraise either what he understands not, or is good. For sometimes I am grieved at my own praise, either when those things be praised in me, in which I mislike myself, or even lesser and slight goods are more esteemed than they ought. But again how know I whether I am therefore thus affected, because I would not have him who praiseth me differ from me about myself; not as being influenced by concern for him, but because those same good things which please me in myself, please me more when they please another also? For some how I am not praised when my judgment of myself is not praised; forasmuch as either those things are praised, which displease me; or those more, which please me less. Am I then doubtful of myself in this matter? Behold, in Thee, O Truth, I see that I ought not to be moved at my own praises, for my own sake, but for the good of my neighbour. And whether it be so with me, I know not. For herein I know less of myself than of Thee. I beseech now, O my God, discover to me myself also, that I may confess unto my brethren, who are to pray for me, wherein I find myself maimed. Let me examine myself again more diligently. If in my praise I am moved with the good of my neighbour, why am I less moved if another be unjustly dispraised than if it be myself? Why am I more stung by reproach cast upon myself, than at that cast upon another, with the same injustice, before me? Know I not this also? or is it at last that I deceive myself, and do not the truth before Thee in my heart and tongue? This madness put far from me, O Lord, lest mine own mouth be to me the sinner's oil to make fat my head. I am poor and needy; yet best, while in hidden groanings I displease myself, and seek Thy mercy, until what is lacking in my defective state be renewed and perfected, on to that peace which the eye of the proud knoweth not. Yet the word which cometh out of the mouth, and deeds known to men, bring with them a most dangerous temptation through the love of praise: which, to establish a certain excellency of our own, solicits and collects men's suffrages. It tempts, even when it is reproved by myself in myself, on the very ground that it is reproved; and often glories more vainly of the very contempt of vain-glory; and so it is no longer contempt of vain-glory, whereof it glories; for it doth not contemn when it glorieth. Within also, within is another evil, arising out of a like temptation; whereby men become vain, pleasing themselves in themselves, though they please not, or displease or care not to please others. But pleasing themselves, they much displease Thee, not only taking pleasure in things not good, as if good, but in Thy good things, as though their own; or even if as Thine, yet as though for their own merits; or even if as though from Thy grace, yet not with brotherly rejoicing, but envying that grace to others. In all these and the like perils and travails, Thou seest the trembling of my heart; and I rather feel my wounds to be cured by Thee, than not inflicted by me. Where hast Thou not walked with me, O Truth, teaching me what to beware, and what to desire; when I referred to Thee what I could discover here below, and consulted Thee? With my outward senses, as I might, I surveyed the world, and observed the life, which my body hath from me, and these my senses. Thence entered I the recesses of my memory, those manifold and spacious chambers, wonderfully furnished with innumerable stores; and I considered, and stood aghast; being able to discern nothing of these things without Thee, and finding none of them to be Thee. Nor was I myself, who found out these things, who went over them all, and laboured to distinguish and to value every thing according to its dignity, taking some things upon the report of my senses, questioning about others which I felt to be mingled with myself, numbering and distinguishing the reporters themselves, and in the large treasure-house of my memory revolving some things, storing up others, drawing out others. Nor yet was I myself when I did this, i.e., that my power whereby I did it, neither was it Thou, for Thou art the abiding light, which I consulted concerning all these, whether they were, what they were, and how to be valued; and I heard Thee directing and commanding me; and this I often do, this delights me, and as far as I may be freed from necessary duties, unto this pleasure have I recourse. Nor in all these which I run over consulting Thee can I find any safe place for my soul, but in Thee; whither my scattered members may be gathered, and nothing of me depart from Thee. And sometimes Thou admittest me to an affection, very unusual, in my inmost soul; rising to a strange sweetness, which if it were perfected in me, I know not what in it would not belong to the life to come. But through my miserable encumbrances I sink down again into these lower things, and am swept back by former custom, and am held, and greatly weep, but am greatly held. So much doth the burden of a bad custom weigh us down. Here I can stay, but would not; there I would, but cannot; both ways, miserable. Thus then have I considered the sicknesses of my sins in that threefold concupiscence, and have called Thy right hand to my help. For with a wounded heart have I beheld Thy brightness, and stricken back I said, "Who can attain thither? I am cast away from the sight of Thine eyes." Thou art the Truth who presidest over all, but I through my covetousness would not indeed forego Thee, but would with Thee possess a lie; as no man would in such wise speak falsely, as himself to be ignorant of the truth. So then I lost Thee, because Thou vouchsafest not to be possessed with a lie. Whom could I find to reconcile me to Thee? was I to have recourse to Angels? by what prayers? by what sacraments? Many endeavouring to return unto Thee, and of themselves unable, have, as I hear, tried this, and fallen into the desire of curious visions, and been accounted worthy to be deluded. For they, being high minded, sought Thee by the pride of learning, swelling out rather than smiting upon their breasts, and so by the agreement of their heart, drew unto themselves the princes of the air, the fellow-conspirators of their pride, by whom, through magical influences, they were deceived, seeking a mediator, by whom they might be purged, and there was none. For the devil it was, transforming himself into an Angel of light. And it much enticed proud flesh, that he had no body of flesh. For they were mortal, and sinners; but thou, Lord, to whom they proudly sought to be reconciled, art immortal, and without sin. But a mediator between God and man must have something like to God, something like to men; lest being in both like to man, he should be far from God: or if in both like God, too unlike man: and so not be a mediator. That deceitful mediator then, by whom in Thy secret judgments pride deserved to be deluded, hath one thing in common with man, that is sin; another he would seem to have in common with God; and not being clothed with the mortality of flesh, would vaunt himself to be immortal. But since the wages of sin is death, this hath he in common with men, that with them he should be condemned to death. But the true Mediator, Whom in Thy secret mercy Thou hast showed to the humble, and sentest, that by His example also they might learn that same humility, that Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, appeared betwixt mortal sinners and the immortal just One; mortal with men, just with God: that because the wages of righteousness is life and peace, He might by a righteousness conjoined with God make void that death of sinners, now made righteous, which He willed to have in common with them. Hence He was showed forth to holy men of old; that so they, through faith in His Passion to come, as we through faith of it passed, might be saved. For as Man, He was a Mediator; but as the Word, not in the middle between God and man, because equal to God, and God with God, and together one God. How hast Thou loved us, good Father, who sparedst not Thine only Son, but deliveredst Him up for us ungodly! How hast Thou loved us, for whom He that thought it no robbery to be equal with Thee, was made subject even to the death of the cross, He alone, free among the dead, having power to lay down His life, and power to take it again: for us to Thee both Victor and Victim, and therefore Victor, because the Victim; for us to Thee Priest and Sacrifice, and therefore Priest because the Sacrifice; making us to Thee, of servants, sons by being born of Thee, and serving us. Well then is my hope strong in Him, that Thou wilt heal all my infirmities, by Him Who sitteth at Thy right hand and maketh intercession for us; else should I despair. For many and great are my infirmities, many they are, and great; but Thy medicine is mightier. We might imagine that Thy Word was far from any union with man, and despair of ourselves, unless He had been made flesh and dwelt among us. Affrighted with my sins and the burden of my misery, I had cast in my heart, and had purposed to flee to the wilderness: but Thou forbadest me, and strengthenedst me, saying, Therefore Christ died for all, that they which live may now no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them. See, Lord, I cast my care upon Thee, that I may live, and consider wondrous things out of Thy law. Thou knowest my unskilfulness, and my infirmities; teach me, and heal me. He, Thine only Son, in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, hath redeemed me with His blood. Let not the proud speak evil of me; because I meditate on my ransom, and eat and drink, and communicate it; and poor, desired to be satisfied from Him, amongst those that eat and are satisfied, and they shall praise the Lord who seek Him. BOOK XI Lord, since eternity is Thine, art Thou ignorant of what I say to Thee? or dost Thou see in time, what passeth in time? Why then do I lay in order before Thee so many relations? Not, of a truth, that Thou mightest learn them through me, but to stir up mine own and my readers' devotions towards Thee, that we may all say, Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. I have said already; and again will say, for love of Thy love do I this. For we pray also, and yet Truth hath said, Your Father knoweth what you have need of, before you ask. It is then our affections which we lay open unto Thee, confessing our own miseries, and Thy mercies upon us, that Thou mayest free us wholly, since Thou hast begun, that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves, and be blessed in Thee; seeing Thou hast called us, to become poor in spirit, and meek, and mourners, and hungering and athirst after righteousness, and merciful, and pure in heart, and peace-makers. See, I have told Thee many things, as I could and as I would, because Thou first wouldest that I should confess unto Thee, my Lord God. For Thou art good, for Thy mercy endureth for ever. But how shall I suffice with the tongue of my pen to utter all Thy exhortations, and all Thy terrors, and comforts, and guidances, whereby Thou broughtest me to preach Thy Word, and dispense Thy Sacrament to Thy people? And if I suffice to utter them in order, the drops of time are precious with me; and long have I burned to meditate in Thy law, and therein to confess to Thee my skill and unskilfulness, the daybreak of Thy enlightening, and the remnants of my darkness, until infirmity be swallowed up by strength. And I would not have aught besides steal away those hours which I find free from the necessities of refreshing my body and the powers of my mind, and of the service which we owe to men, or which though we owe not, we yet pay. O Lord my god, give ear unto my prayer, and let Thy mercy hearken unto my desire: because it is anxious not for myself alone, but would serve brotherly charity; and Thou seest my heart, that so it is. I would sacrifice to Thee the service of my thought and tongue; do Thou give me, what I may offer Thee. For I am poor and needy, Thou rich to all that call upon Thee; Who, inaccessible to care, carest for us. Circumcise from all rashness and all lying both my inward and outward lips: let Thy Scriptures be my pure delights: let me not be deceived in them, nor deceive out of them. Lord, hearken and pity, O Lord my God, Light of the blind, and Strength of the weak; yea also Light of those that see, and Strength of the strong; hearken unto my soul, and hear it crying out of the depths. For if Thine ears be not with us in the depths also, whither shall we go? whither cry? The day is Thine, and the night is Thine; at Thy beck the moments flee by. Grant thereof a space for our meditations in the hidden things of Thy law, and close it not against us who knock. For not in vain wouldest Thou have the darksome secrets of so many pages written; nor are those forests without their harts which retire therein and range and walk; feed, lie down, and ruminate. Perfect me, O Lord, and reveal them unto me. Behold, Thy voice is my joy; Thy voice exceedeth the abundance of pleasures. Give what I love: for I do love; and this hast Thou given: forsake not Thy own gifts, nor despise Thy green herb that thirsteth. Let me confess unto Thee whatsoever I shall find in Thy books, and hear the voice of praise, and drink in Thee, and meditate on the wonderful things out of Thy law; even from the beginning, wherein Thou madest the heaven and the earth, unto the everlasting reigning of Thy holy city with Thee. Lord, have mercy on me, and hear my desire. For it is not, I deem, of the earth, not of gold and silver, and precious stones, or gorgeous apparel, or honours and offices, or the pleasures of the flesh, or necessaries for the body and for this life of our pilgrimage: all which shall be added unto those that seek Thy kingdom and Thy righteousness. Behold, O Lord my God, wherein is my desire. The wicked have told me of delights, but not such as Thy law, O Lord. Behold, wherein is my desire. Behold, Father, behold, and see and approve; and be it pleasing in the sight of Thy mercy, that I may find grace before Thee, that the inward parts of Thy words be opened to me knocking. I beseech by our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son, the Man of Thy right hand, the Son of man, whom Thou hast established for Thyself, as Thy Mediator and ours, through Whom Thou soughtest us, not seeking Thee, but soughtest us, that we might seek Thee,--Thy Word, through Whom Thou madest all things, and among them, me also;--Thy Only-Begotten, through Whom Thou calledst to adoption the believing people, and therein me also;--I beseech Thee by Him, who sitteth at Thy right hand, and intercedeth with Thee for us, in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. These do I seek in Thy books. Of Him did Moses write; this saith Himself; this saith the Truth. I would hear and understand, how "In the Beginning Thou madest the heaven and earth." Moses wrote this, wrote and departed, passed hence from Thee to Thee; nor is he now before me. For if he were, I would hold him and ask him, and beseech him by Thee to open these things unto me, and would lay the ears of my body to the sounds bursting out of his mouth. And should he speak Hebrew, in vain will it strike on my senses, nor would aught of it touch my mind; but if Latin, I should know what he said. But whence should I know, whether he spake truth? Yea, and if I knew this also, should I know it from him? Truly within me, within, in the chamber of my thoughts, Truth, neither Hebrew, nor Greek, nor Latin, nor barbarian, without organs of voice or tongue, or sound of syllables, would say, "It is truth," and I forthwith should say confidently to that man of Thine, "thou sayest truly." Whereas then I cannot enquire of him, Thee, Thee I beseech, O Truth, full of Whom he spake truth, Thee, my God, I beseech, forgive my sins; and Thou, who gavest him Thy servant to speak these things, give to me also to understand them. Behold, the heavens and the earth are; they proclaim that they were created; for they change and vary. Whereas whatsoever hath not been made, and yet is, hath nothing in it, which before it had not; and this it is, to change and vary. They proclaim also, that they made not themselves; "therefore we are, because we have been made; we were not therefore, before we were, so as to make ourselves." Now the evidence of the thing, is the voice of the speakers. Thou therefore, Lord, madest them; who art beautiful, for they are beautiful; who art good, for they are good; who art, for they are; yet are they not beautiful nor good, nor are they, as Thou their Creator art; compared with Whom, they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor are. This we know, thanks be to Thee. And our knowledge, compared with Thy knowledge, is ignorance. But how didst Thou make the heaven and the earth? and what the engine of Thy so mighty fabric? For it was not as a human artificer, forming one body from another, according to the discretion of his mind, which can in some way invest with such a form, as it seeth in itself by its inward eye. And whence should he be able to do this, unless Thou hadst made that mind? and he invests with a form what already existeth, and hath a being, as clay, or stone, or wood, or gold, or the like. And whence should they be, hadst not Thou appointed them? Thou madest the artificer his body, Thou the mind commanding the limbs, Thou the matter whereof he makes any thing; Thou the apprehension whereby to take in his art, and see within what he doth without; Thou the sense of his body, whereby, as by an interpreter, he may from mind to matter, convey that which he doth, and report to his mind what is done; that it within may consult the truth, which presideth over itself, whether it be well done or no. All these praise Thee, the Creator of all. But how dost Thou make them? how, O God, didst Thou make heaven and earth? Verily, neither in the heaven, nor in the earth, didst Thou make heaven and earth; nor in the air, or waters, seeing these also belong to the heaven and the earth; nor in the whole world didst Thou make the whole world; because there was no place where to make it, before it was made, that it might be. Nor didst Thou hold any thing in Thy hand, whereof to make heaven and earth. For whence shouldest Thou have this, which Thou hadst not made, thereof to make any thing? For what is, but because Thou art? Therefore Thou spokest, and they were made, and in Thy Word Thou madest them. But how didst Thou speak? In the way that the voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son? For that voice passed by and passed away, began and ended; the syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so forth in order, until the last after the rest, and silence after the last. Whence it is abundantly clear and plain that the motion of a creature expressed it, itself temporal, serving Thy eternal will. And these Thy words, created for a time, the outward ear reported to the intelligent soul, whose inward ear lay listening to Thy Eternal Word. But she compared these words sounding in time, with that Thy Eternal Word in silence, and said "It is different, far different. These words are far beneath me, nor are they, because they flee and pass away; but the Word of my Lord abideth above me for ever." If then in sounding and passing words Thou saidst that heaven and earth should be made, and so madest heaven and earth, there was a corporeal creature before heaven and earth, by whose motions in time that voice might take his course in time. But there was nought corporeal before heaven and earth; or if there were, surely Thou hadst, without such a passing voice, created that, whereof to make this passing voice, by which to say, Let the heaven and the earth be made. For whatsoever that were, whereof such a voice were made, unless by Thee it were made, it could not be at all. By what Word then didst Thou speak, that a body might be made, whereby these words again might be made? Thou callest us then to understand the Word, God, with Thee God, Which is spoken eternally, and by It are all things spoken eternally. For what was spoken was not spoken successively, one thing concluded that the next might be spoken, but all things together and eternally. Else have we time and change; and not a true eternity nor true immortality. This I know, O my God, and give thanks. I know, I confess to Thee, O Lord, and with me there knows and blesses Thee, whoso is not unthankful to assure Truth. We know, Lord, we know; since inasmuch as anything is not which was, and is, which was not, so far forth it dieth and ariseth. Nothing then of Thy Word doth give place or replace, because It is truly immortal and eternal. And therefore unto the Word coeternal with Thee Thou dost at once and eternally say all that Thou dost say; and whatever Thou sayest shall be made is made; nor dost Thou make, otherwise than by saying; and yet are not all things made together, or everlasting, which Thou makest by saying. Why, I beseech Thee, O Lord my God? I see it in a way; but how to express it, I know not, unless it be, that whatsoever begins to be, and leaves off to be, begins then, and leaves off then, when in Thy eternal Reason it is known, that it ought to begin or leave off; in which Reason nothing beginneth or leaveth off. This is Thy Word, which is also "the Beginning, because also It speaketh unto us." Thus in the Gospel He speaketh through the flesh; and this sounded outwardly in the ears of men; that it might be believed and sought inwardly, and found in the eternal Verity; where the good and only Master teacheth all His disciples. There, Lord, hear I Thy voice speaking unto me; because He speaketh us, who teacheth us; but He that teacheth us not, though He speaketh, to us He speaketh not. Who now teacheth us, but the unchangeable Truth? for even when we are admonished through a changeable creature; we are but led to the unchangeable Truth; where we learn truly, while we stand and hear Him, and rejoice greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice, restoring us to Him, from Whom we are. And therefore the Beginning, because unless It abided, there should not, when we went astray, be whither to return. But when we return from error, it is through knowing; and that we may know, He teacheth us, because He is the Beginning, and speaking unto us. In this Beginning, O God, hast Thou made heaven and earth, in Thy Word, in Thy Son, in Thy Power, in Thy Wisdom, in Thy Truth; wondrously speaking, and wondrously making. Who shall comprehend? Who declare it? What is that which gleams through me, and strikes my heart without hurting it; and I shudder and kindle? I shudder, inasmuch as I am unlike it; I kindle, inasmuch as I am like it. It is Wisdom, Wisdom's self which gleameth through me; severing my cloudiness which yet again mantles over me, fainting from it, through the darkness which for my punishment gathers upon me. For my strength is brought down in need, so that I cannot support my blessings, till Thou, Lord, Who hast been gracious to all mine iniquities, shalt heal all my infirmities. For Thou shalt also redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with loving kindness and tender mercies, and shalt satisfy my desire with good things, because my youth shall be renewed like an eagle's. For in hope we are saved, wherefore we through patience wait for Thy promises. Let him that is able, hear Thee inwardly discoursing out of Thy oracle: I will boldly cry out, How wonderful are Thy works, O Lord, in Wisdom hast Thou made them all; and this Wisdom is the Beginning, and in that Beginning didst Thou make heaven and earth. Lo, are they not full of their old leaven, who say to us, "What was God doing before He made heaven and earth? For if (say they) He were unemployed and wrought not, why does He not also henceforth, and for ever, as He did heretofore? For did any new motion arise in God, and a new will to make a creature, which He had never before made, how then would that be a true eternity, where there ariseth a will, which was not? For the will of God is not a creature, but before the creature; seeing nothing could be created, unless the will of the Creator had preceded. The will of God then belongeth to His very Substance. And if aught have arisen in God's Substance, which before was not, that Substance cannot be truly called eternal. But if the will of God has been from eternity that the creature should be, why was not the creature also from eternity?" Who speak thus, do not yet understand Thee, O Wisdom of God, Light of souls, understand not yet how the things be made, which by Thee, and in Thee are made: yet they strive to comprehend things eternal, whilst their heart fluttereth between the motions of things past and to come, and is still unstable. Who shall hold it, and fix it, that it be settled awhile, and awhile catch the glory of that ever-fixed Eternity, and compare it with the times which are never fixed, and see that it cannot be compared; and that a long time cannot become long, but out of many motions passing by, which cannot be prolonged altogether; but that in the Eternal nothing passeth, but the whole is present; whereas no time is all at once present: and that all time past, is driven on by time to come, and all to come followeth upon the past; and all past and to come, is created, and flows out of that which is ever present? Who shall hold the heart of man, that it may stand still, and see how eternity ever still-standing, neither past nor to come, uttereth the times past and to come? Can my hand do this, or the hand of my mouth by speech bring about a thing so great? See, I answer him that asketh, "What did God before He made heaven and earth?" I answer not as one is said to have done merrily (eluding the pressure of the question), "He was preparing hell (saith he) for pryers into mysteries." It is one thing to answer enquiries, another to make sport of enquirers. So I answer not; for rather had I answer, "I know not," what I know not, than so as to raise a laugh at him who asketh deep things and gain praise for one who answereth false things. But I say that Thou, our God, art the Creator of every creature: and if by the name "heaven and earth," every creature be understood; I boldly say, "that before God made heaven and earth, He did not make any thing." For if He made, what did He make but a creature? And would I knew whatsoever I desire to know to my profit, as I know, that no creature was made, before there was made any creature. But if any excursive brain rove over the images of forepassed times, and wonder that Thou the God Almighty and All-creating and All-supporting, Maker of heaven and earth, didst for innumerable ages forbear from so great a work, before Thou wouldest make it; let him awake and consider, that he wonders at false conceits. For whence could innumerable ages pass by, which Thou madest not, Thou the Author and Creator of all ages? or what times should there be, which were not made by Thee? or how should they pass by, if they never were? Seeing then Thou art the Creator of all times, if any time was before Thou madest heaven and earth, why say they that Thou didst forego working? For that very time didst Thou make, nor could times pass by, before Thou madest those times. But if before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it demanded, what Thou then didst? For there was no "then," when there was no time. Nor dost Thou by time, precede time: else shouldest Thou not precede all times. But Thou precedest all things past, by the sublimity of an ever-present eternity; and surpassest all future because they are future, and when they come, they shall be past; but Thou art the Same, and Thy years fail not. Thy years neither come nor go; whereas ours both come and go, that they all may come. Thy years stand together, because they do stand; nor are departing thrust out by coming years, for they pass not away; but ours shall all be, when they shall no more be. Thy years are one day; and Thy day is not daily, but To-day, seeing Thy To-day gives not place unto to-morrow, for neither doth it replace yesterday. Thy To-day, is Eternity; therefore didst Thou beget The Coeternal, to whom Thou saidst, This day have I begotten Thee. Thou hast made all things; and before all times Thou art: neither in any time was time not. At no time then hadst Thou not made any thing, because time itself Thou madest. And no times are coeternal with Thee, because Thou abidest; but if they abode, they should not be times. For what is time? Who can readily and briefly explain this? Who can even in thought comprehend it, so as to utter a word about it? But what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? And, we understand, when we speak of it; we understand also, when we hear it spoken of by another. What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not. Those two times then, past and to come, how are they, seeing the past now is not, and that to come is not yet? But the present, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity. If time present (if it is to be time) only cometh into existence, because it passeth into time past, how can we say that either this is, whose cause of being is, that it shall not be; so, namely, that we cannot truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to be? And yet we say, "a long time" and "a short time"; still, only of time past or to come. A long time past (for example) we call an hundred years since; and a long time to come, an hundred years hence. But a short time past, we call (suppose) often days since; and a short time to come, often days hence. But in what sense is that long or short, which is not? For the past, is not now; and the future, is not yet. Let us not then say, "it is long"; but of the past, "it hath been long"; and of the future, "it will be long." O my Lord, my Light, shall not here also Thy Truth mock at man? For that past time which was long, was it long when it was now past, or when it was yet present? For then might it be long, when there was, what could be long; but when past, it was no longer; wherefore neither could that be long, which was not at all. Let us not then say, "time past hath been long": for we shall not find, what hath been long, seeing that since it was past, it is no more, but let us say, "that present time was long"; because, when it was present, it was long. For it had not yet passed away, so as not to be; and therefore there was, what could be long; but after it was past, that ceased also to be long, which ceased to be. Let us see then, thou soul of man, whether present time can be long: for to thee it is given to feel and to measure length of time. What wilt thou answer me? Are an hundred years, when present, a long time? See first, whether an hundred years can be present. For if the first of these years be now current, it is present, but the other ninety and nine are to come, and therefore are not yet, but if the second year be current, one is now past, another present, the rest to come. And so if we assume any middle year of this hundred to be present, all before it, are past; all after it, to come; wherefore an hundred years cannot be present. But see at least whether that one which is now current, itself is present; for if the current month be its first, the rest are to come; if the second, the first is already past, and the rest are not yet. Therefore, neither is the year now current present; and if not present as a whole, then is not the year present. For twelve months are a year; of which whatever by the current month is present; the rest past, or to come. Although neither is that current month present; but one day only; the rest being to come, if it be the first; past, if the last; if any of the middle, then amid past and to come. See how the present time, which alone we found could be called long, is abridged to the length scarce of one day. But let us examine that also; because neither is one day present as a whole. For it is made up of four and twenty hours of night and day: of which, the first hath the rest to come; the last hath them past; and any of the middle hath those before it past, those behind it to come. Yea, that one hour passeth away in flying particles. Whatsoever of it hath flown away, is past; whatsoever remaineth, is to come. If an instant of time be conceived, which cannot be divided into the smallest particles of moments, that alone is it, which may be called present. Which yet flies with such speed from future to past, as not to be lengthened out with the least stay. For if it be, it is divided into past and future. The present hath no space. Where then is the time, which we may call long? Is it to come? Of it we do not say, "it is long"; because it is not yet, so as to be long; but we say, "it will be long." When therefore will it be? For if even then, when it is yet to come, it shall not be long (because what can be long, as yet is not), and so it shall then be long, when from future which as yet is not, it shall begin now to be, and have become present, that so there should exist what may be long; then does time present cry out in the words above, that it cannot be long. And yet, Lord, we perceive intervals of times, and compare them, and say, some are shorter, and others longer. We measure also, how much longer or shorter this time is than that; and we answer, "This is double, or treble; and that, but once, or only just so much as that." But we measure times as they are passing, by perceiving them; but past, which now are not, or the future, which are not yet, who can measure? unless a man shall presume to say, that can be measured, which is not. When then time is passing, it may be perceived and measured; but when it is past, it cannot, because it is not. I ask, Father, I affirm not: O my God, rule and guide me. "Who will tell me that there are not three times (as we learned when boys, and taught boys), past, present, and future; but present only, because those two are not? Or are they also; and when from future it becometh present, doth it come out of some secret place; and so, when retiring, from present it becometh past? For where did they, who foretold things to come, see them, if as yet they be not? For that which is not, cannot be seen. And they who relate things past, could not relate them, if in mind they did not discern them, and if they were not, they could no way be discerned. Things then past and to come, are." Permit me, Lord, to seek further. O my hope, let not my purpose be confounded. For if times past and to come be, I would know where they be. Which yet if I cannot, yet I know, wherever they be, they are not there as future, or past, but present. For if there also they be future, they are not yet there; if there also they be past, they are no longer there. Wheresoever then is whatsoever is, it is only as present. Although when past facts are related, there are drawn out of the memory, not the things themselves which are past, but words which, conceived by the images of the things, they, in passing, have through the senses left as traces in the mind. Thus my childhood, which now is not, is in time past, which now is not: but now when I recall its image, and tell of it, I behold it in the present, because it is still in my memory. Whether there be a like cause of foretelling things to come also; that of things which as yet are not, the images may be perceived before, already existing, I confess, O my God, I know not. This indeed I know, that we generally think before on our future actions, and that that forethinking is present, but the action whereof we forethink is not yet, because it is to come. Which, when we have set upon, and have begun to do what we were forethinking, then shall that action be; because then it is no longer future, but present. Which way soever then this secret fore-perceiving of things to come be; that only can be seen, which is. But what now is, is not future, but present. When then things to come are said to be seen, it is not themselves which as yet are not (that is, which are to be), but their causes perchance or signs are seen, which already are. Therefore they are not future but present to those who now see that, from which the future, being foreconceived in the mind, is foretold. Which fore-conceptions again now are; and those who foretell those things, do behold the conceptions present before them. Let now the numerous variety of things furnish me some example. I behold the day-break, I foreshow, that the sun, is about to rise. What I behold, is present; what I foresignify, to come; not the sun, which already is; but the sun-rising, which is not yet. And yet did I not in my mind imagine the sun-rising itself (as now while I speak of it), I could not foretell it. But neither is that day-break which I discern in the sky, the sun-rising, although it goes before it; nor that imagination of my mind; which two are seen now present, that the other which is to be may be foretold. Future things then are not yet: and if they be not yet, they are not: and if they are not, they cannot be seen; yet foretold they may be from things present, which are already, and are seen. Thou then, Ruler of Thy creation, by what way dost Thou teach souls things to come? For Thou didst teach Thy Prophets. By what way dost Thou, to whom nothing is to come, teach things to come; or rather of the future, dost teach things present? For, what is not, neither can it be taught. Too far is this way of my ken: it is too mighty for me, I cannot attain unto it; but from Thee I can, when Thou shalt vouchsafe it, O sweet light of my hidden eyes. What now is clear and plain is, that neither things to come nor past are. Nor is it properly said, "there be three times, past, present, and to come": yet perchance it might be properly said, "there be three times; a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future." For these three do exist in some sort, in the soul, but otherwhere do I not see them; present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation. If thus we be permitted to speak, I see three times, and I confess there are three. Let it be said too, "there be three times, past, present, and to come": in our incorrect way. See, I object not, nor gainsay, nor find fault, if what is so said be but understood, that neither what is to be, now is, nor what is past. For but few things are there, which we speak properly, most things improperly; still the things intended are understood. I said then even now, we measure times as they pass, in order to be able to say, this time is twice so much as that one; or, this is just so much as that; and so of any other parts of time, which be measurable. Wherefore, as I said, we measure times as they pass. And if any should ask me, "How knowest thou?" I might answer, "I know, that we do measure, nor can we measure things that are not; and things past and to come, are not." But time present how do we measure, seeing it hath no space? It is measured while passing, but when it shall have passed, it is not measured; for there will be nothing to be measured. But whence, by what way, and whither passes it while it is a measuring? whence, but from the future? Which way, but through the present? whither, but into the past? From that therefore, which is not yet, through that, which hath no space, into that, which now is not. Yet what do we measure, if not time in some space? For we do not say, single, and double, and triple, and equal, or any other like way that we speak of time, except of spaces of times. In what space then do we measure time passing? In the future, whence it passeth through? But what is not yet, we measure not. Or in the present, by which it passes? but no space, we do not measure: or in the past, to which it passes? But neither do we measure that, which now is not. My soul is on fire to know this most intricate enigma. Shut it not up, O Lord my God, good Father; through Christ I beseech Thee, do not shut up these usual, yet hidden things, from my desire, that it be hindered from piercing into them; but let them dawn through Thy enlightening mercy, O Lord. Whom shall I enquire of concerning these things? and to whom shall I more fruitfully confess my ignorance, than to Thee, to Whom these my studies, so vehemently kindled toward Thy Scriptures, are not troublesome? Give what I love; for I do love, and this hast Thou given me. Give, Father, Who truly knowest to give good gifts unto Thy children. Give, because I have taken upon me to know, and trouble is before me until Thou openest it. By Christ I beseech Thee, in His Name, Holy of holies, let no man disturb me. For I believed, and therefore do I speak. This is my hope, for this do I live, that I may contemplate the delights of the Lord. Behold, Thou hast made my days old, and they pass away, and how, I know not. And we talk of time, and time, and times, and times, "How long time is it since he said this"; "how long time since he did this"; and "how long time since I saw that"; and "this syllable hath double time to that single short syllable." These words we speak, and these we hear, and are understood, and understand. Most manifest and ordinary they are, and the self-same things again are but too deeply hidden, and the discovery of them were new. I heard once from a learned man, that the motions of the sun, moon, and stars, constituted time, and I assented not. For why should not the motions of all bodies rather be times? Or, if the lights of heaven should cease, and a potter's wheel run round, should there be no time by which we might measure those whirlings, and say, that either it moved with equal pauses, or if it turned sometimes slower, otherwhiles quicker, that some rounds were longer, other shorter? Or, while we were saying this, should we not also be speaking in time? Or, should there in our words be some syllables short, others long, but because those sounded in a shorter time, these in a longer? God, grant to men to see in a small thing notices common to things great and small. The stars and lights of heaven, are also for signs, and for seasons, and for years, and for days; they are; yet neither should I say, that the going round of that wooden wheel was a day, nor yet he, that it was therefore no time. I desire to know the force and nature of time, by which we measure the motions of bodies, and say (for example) this motion is twice as long as that. For I ask, Seeing "day" denotes not the stay only of the sun upon the earth (according to which day is one thing, night another); but also its whole circuit from east to east again; according to which we say, "there passed so many days," the night being included when we say, "so many days," and the nights not reckoned apart;--seeing then a day is completed by the motion of the sun and by his circuit from east to east again, I ask, does the motion alone make the day, or the stay in which that motion is completed, or both? For if the first be the day; then should we have a day, although the sun should finish that course in so small a space of time, as one hour comes to. If the second, then should not that make a day, if between one sun-rise and another there were but so short a stay, as one hour comes to; but the sun must go four and twenty times about, to complete one day. If both, then neither could that be called a day; if the sun should run his whole round in the space of one hour; nor that, if, while the sun stood still, so much time should overpass, as the sun usually makes his whole course in, from morning to morning. I will not therefore now ask, what that is which is called day; but, what time is, whereby we, measuring the circuit of the sun, should say that it was finished in half the time it was wont, if so be it was finished in so small a space as twelve hours; and comparing both times, should call this a single time, that a double time; even supposing the sun to run his round from east to east, sometimes in that single, sometimes in that double time. Let no man then tell me, that the motions of the heavenly bodies constitute times, because, when at the prayer of one, the sun had stood still, till he could achieve his victorious battle, the sun stood still, but time went on. For in its own allotted space of time was that battle waged and ended. I perceive time then to be a certain extension. But do I perceive it, or seem to perceive it? Thou, Light and Truth, wilt show me. Dost Thou bid me assent, if any define time to be "motion of a body?" Thou dost not bid me. For that no body is moved, but in time, I hear; this Thou sayest; but that the motion of a body is time, I hear not; Thou sayest it not. For when a body is moved, I by time measure, how long it moveth, from the time it began to move until it left off? And if I did not see whence it began; and it continue to move so that I see not when it ends, I cannot measure, save perchance from the time I began, until I cease to see. And if I look long, I can only pronounce it to be a long time, but not how long; because when we say "how long," we do it by comparison; as, "this is as long as that," or "twice so long as that," or the like. But when we can mark the distances of the places, whence and whither goeth the body moved, or his parts, if it moved as in a lathe, then can we say precisely, in how much time the motion of that body or his part, from this place unto that, was finished. Seeing therefore the motion of a body is one thing, that by which we measure how long it is, another; who sees not, which of the two is rather to be called time? For and if a body be sometimes moved, sometimes stands still, then we measure, not his motion only, but his standing still too by time; and we say, "it stood still, as much as it moved"; or "it stood still twice or thrice so long as it moved"; or any other space which our measuring hath either ascertained, or guessed; more or less, as we use to say. Time then is not the motion of a body. And I confess to Thee, O Lord, that I yet know not what time is, and again I confess unto Thee, O Lord, that I know that I speak this in time, and that having long spoken of time, that very "long" is not long, but by the pause of time. How then know I this, seeing I know not what time is? or is it perchance that I know not how to express what I know? Woe is me, that do not even know, what I know not. Behold, O my God, before Thee I lie not; but as I speak, so is my heart. Thou shalt light my candle; Thou, O Lord my God, wilt enlighten my darkness. Does not my soul most truly confess unto Thee, that I do measure times? Do I then measure, O my God, and know not what I measure? I measure the motion of a body in time; and the time itself do I not measure? Or could I indeed measure the motion of a body how long it were, and in how long space it could come from this place to that, without measuring the time in which it is moved? This same time then, how do I measure? do we by a shorter time measure a longer, as by the space of a cubit, the space of a rood? for so indeed we seem by the space of a short syllable, to measure the space of a long syllable, and to say that this is double the other. Thus measure we the spaces of stanzas, by the spaces of the verses, and the spaces of the verses, by the spaces of the feet, and the spaces of the feet, by the spaces of the syllables, and the spaces of long, by the space of short syllables; not measuring by pages (for then we measure spaces, not times); but when we utter the words and they pass by, and we say "it is a long stanza," because composed of so many verses; long verses, because consisting of so many feet; long feet, because prolonged by so many syllables; a long syllable because double to a short one. But neither do we this way obtain any certain measure of time; because it may be, that a shorter verse, pronounced more fully, may take up more time than a longer, pronounced hurriedly. And so for a verse, a foot, a syllable. Whence it seemed to me, that time is nothing else than protraction; but of what, I know not; and I marvel, if it be not of the mind itself? For what, I beseech Thee, O my God, do I measure, when I say, either indefinitely "this is a longer time than that," or definitely "this is double that"? That I measure time, I know; and yet I measure not time to come, for it is not yet; nor present, because it is not protracted by any space; nor past, because it now is not. What then do I measure? Times passing, not past? for so I said. Courage, my mind, and press on mightily. God is our helper, He made us, and not we ourselves. Press on where truth begins to dawn. Suppose, now, the voice of a body begins to sound, and does sound, and sounds on, and list, it ceases; it is silence now, and that voice is past, and is no more a voice. Before it sounded, it was to come, and could not be measured, because as yet it was not, and now it cannot, because it is no longer. Then therefore while it sounded, it might; because there then was what might be measured. But yet even then it was not at a stay; for it was passing on, and passing away. Could it be measured the rather, for that? For while passing, it was being extended into some space of time, so that it might be measured, since the present hath no space. If therefore then it might, then, lo, suppose another voice hath begun to sound, and still soundeth in one continued tenor without any interruption; let us measure it while it sounds; seeing when it hath left sounding, it will then be past, and nothing left to be measured; let us measure it verily, and tell how much it is. But it sounds still, nor can it be measured but from the instant it began in, unto the end it left in. For the very space between is the thing we measure, namely, from some beginning unto some end. Wherefore, a voice that is not yet ended, cannot be measured, so that it may be said how long, or short it is; nor can it be called equal to another, or double to a single, or the like. But when ended, it no longer is. How may it then be measured? And yet we measure times; but yet neither those which are not yet, nor those which no longer are, nor those which are not lengthened out by some pause, nor those which have no bounds. We measure neither times to come, nor past, nor present, nor passing; and yet we do measure times. "Deus Creator omnium," this verse of eight syllables alternates between short and long syllables. The four short then, the first, third, fifth, and seventh, are but single, in respect of the four long, the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth. Every one of these to every one of those, hath a double time: I pronounce them, report on them, and find it so, as one's plain sense perceives. By plain sense then, I measure a long syllable by a short, and I sensibly find it to have twice so much; but when one sounds after the other, if the former be short, the latter long, how shall I detain the short one, and how, measuring, shall I apply it to the long, that I may find this to have twice so much; seeing the long does not begin to sound, unless the short leaves sounding? And that very long one do I measure as present, seeing I measure it not till it be ended? Now his ending is his passing away. What then is it I measure? where is the short syllable by which I measure? where the long which I measure? Both have sounded, have flown, passed away, are no more; and yet I measure, and confidently answer (so far as is presumed on a practised sense) that as to space of time this syllable is but single, that double. And yet I could not do this, unless they were already past and ended. It is not then themselves, which now are not, that I measure, but something in my memory, which there remains fixed. It is in thee, my mind, that I measure times. Interrupt me not, that is, interrupt not thyself with the tumults of thy impressions. In thee I measure times; the impression, which things as they pass by cause in thee, remains even when they are gone; this it is which still present, I measure, not the things which pass by to make this impression. This I measure, when I measure times. Either then this is time, or I do not measure times. What when we measure silence, and say that this silence hath held as long time as did that voice? do we not stretch out our thought to the measure of a voice, as if it sounded, that so we may be able to report of the intervals of silence in a given space of time? For though both voice and tongue be still, yet in thought we go over poems, and verses, and any other discourse, or dimensions of motions, and report as to the spaces of times, how much this is in respect of that, no otherwise than if vocally we did pronounce them. If a man would utter a lengthened sound, and had settled in thought how long it should be, he hath in silence already gone through a space of time, and committing it to memory, begins to utter that speech, which sounds on, until it be brought unto the end proposed. Yea it hath sounded, and will sound; for so much of it as is finished, hath sounded already, and the rest will sound. And thus passeth it on, until the present intent conveys over the future into the past; the past increasing by the diminution of the future, until by the consumption of the future, all is past. But how is that future diminished or consumed, which as yet is not? or how that past increased, which is now no longer, save that in the mind which enacteth this, there be three things done? For it expects, it considers, it remembers; that so that which it expecteth, through that which it considereth, passeth into that which it remembereth. Who therefore denieth, that things to come are not as yet? and yet, there is in the mind an expectation of things to come. And who denies past things to be now no longer? and yet is there still in the mind a memory of things past. And who denieth the present time hath no space, because it passeth away in a moment? and yet our consideration continueth, through which that which shall be present proceedeth to become absent. It is not then future time, that is long, for as yet it is not: but a long future, is "a long expectation of the future," nor is it time past, which now is not, that is long; but a long past, is "a long memory of the past." I am about to repeat a Psalm that I know. Before I begin, my expectation is extended over the whole; but when I have begun, how much soever of it I shall separate off into the past, is extended along my memory; thus the life of this action of mine is divided between my memory as to what I have repeated, and expectation as to what I am about to repeat; but "consideration" is present with me, that through it what was future, may be conveyed over, so as to become past. Which the more it is done again and again, so much the more the expectation being shortened, is the memory enlarged: till the whole expectation be at length exhausted, when that whole action being ended, shall have passed into memory. And this which takes place in the whole Psalm, the same takes place in each several portion of it, and each several syllable; the same holds in that longer action, whereof this Psalm may be part; the same holds in the whole life of man, whereof all the actions of man are parts; the same holds through the whole age of the sons of men, whereof all the lives of men are parts. But because Thy loving-kindness is better than all lives, behold, my life is but a distraction, and Thy right hand upheld me, in my Lord the Son of man, the Mediator betwixt Thee, The One, and us many, many also through our manifold distractions amid many things, that by Him I may apprehend in Whom I have been apprehended, and may be re-collected from my old conversation, to follow The One, forgetting what is behind, and not distended but extended, not to things which shall be and shall pass away, but to those things which are before, not distractedly but intently, I follow on for the prize of my heavenly calling, where I may hear the voice of Thy praise, and contemplate Thy delights, neither to come, nor to pass away. But now are my years spent in mourning. And Thou, O Lord, art my comfort, my Father everlasting, but I have been severed amid times, whose order I know not; and my thoughts, even the inmost bowels of my soul, are rent and mangled with tumultuous varieties, until I flow together into Thee, purified and molten by the fire of Thy love. And now will I stand, and become firm in Thee, in my mould, Thy truth; nor will I endure the questions of men, who by a penal disease thirst for more than they can contain, and say, "what did God before He made heaven and earth?" Or, "How came it into His mind to make any thing, having never before made any thing?" Give them, O Lord, well to bethink themselves what they say, and to find, that "never" cannot be predicated, when "time" is not. This then that He is said "never to have made"; what else is it to say, than "in 'no time' to have made?" Let them see therefore, that time cannot be without created being, and cease to speak that vanity. May they also be extended towards those things which are before; and understand Thee before all times, the eternal Creator of all times, and that no times be coeternal with Thee, nor any creature, even if there be any creature before all times. O Lord my God, what a depth is that recess of Thy mysteries, and how far from it have the consequences of my transgressions cast me! Heal mine eyes, that I may share the joy of Thy light. Certainly, if there be mind gifted with such vast knowledge and foreknowledge, as to know all things past and to come, as I know one well-known Psalm, truly that mind is passing wonderful, and fearfully amazing; in that nothing past, nothing to come in after-ages, is any more hidden from him, than when I sung that Psalm, was hidden from me what, and how much of it had passed away from the beginning, what, and how much there remained unto the end. But far be it that Thou the Creator of the Universe, the Creator of souls and bodies, far be it, that Thou shouldest in such wise know all things past and to come. Far, far more wonderfully, and far more mysteriously, dost Thou know them. For not, as the feelings of one who singeth what he knoweth, or heareth some well-known song, are through expectation of the words to come, and the remembering of those that are past, varied, and his senses divided,--not so doth any thing happen unto Thee, unchangeably eternal, that is, the eternal Creator of minds. Like then as Thou in the Beginning knewest the heaven and the earth, without any variety of Thy knowledge, so madest Thou in the Beginning heaven and earth, without any distraction of Thy action. Whoso understandeth, let him confess unto Thee; and whoso understandeth not, let him confess unto Thee. Oh how high art Thou, and yet the humble in heart are Thy dwelling-place; for Thou raisest up those that are bowed down, and they fall not, whose elevation Thou art. BOOK XII My heart, O Lord, touched with the words of Thy Holy Scripture, is much busied, amid this poverty of my life. And therefore most times, is the poverty of human understanding copious in words, because enquiring hath more to say than discovering, and demanding is longer than obtaining, and our hand that knocks, hath more work to do, than our hand that receives. We hold the promise, who shall make it null? If God be for us, who can be against us? Ask, and ye shall have; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, shall it be opened. These be Thine own promises: and who need fear to be deceived, when the Truth promiseth? The lowliness of my tongue confesseth unto Thy Highness, that Thou madest heaven and earth; this heaven which I see, and this earth that I tread upon, whence is this earth that I bear about me; Thou madest it. But where is that heaven of heavens, O Lord, which we hear of in the words of the Psalm. The heaven of heavens are the Lord's; but the earth hath He given to the children of men? Where is that heaven which we see not, to which all this which we see is earth? For this corporeal whole, not being wholly every where, hath in such wise received its portion of beauty in these lower parts, whereof the lowest is this our earth; but to that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our earth, is but earth: yea both these great bodies, may not absurdly be called earth, to that unknown heaven, which is the Lord's, not the sons' of men. And now this earth was invisible and without form, and there was I know not what depth of abyss, upon which there was no light, because it had no shape. Therefore didst Thou command it to be written, that darkness was upon the face of the deep; what else than the absence of light? For had there been light, where should it have been but by being over all, aloft, and enlightening? Where then light was not, what was the presence of darkness, but the absence of light? Darkness therefore was upon it, because light was not upon it; as where sound is not, there is silence. And what is it to have silence there, but to have no sound there? Hast not Thou, O Lord, taught his soul, which confesseth unto Thee? Hast not Thou taught me, Lord, that before Thou formedst and diversifiedst this formless matter, there was nothing, neither colour, nor figure, nor body, nor spirit? and yet not altogether nothing; for there was a certain formlessness, without any beauty. How then should it be called, that it might be in some measure conveyed to those of duller mind, but by some ordinary word? And what, among all parts of the world can be found nearer to an absolute formlessness, than earth and deep? For, occupying the lowest stage, they are less beautiful than the other higher parts are, transparent all and shining. Wherefore then may I not conceive the formlessness of matter (which Thou hadst created without beauty, whereof to make this beautiful world) to be suitably intimated unto men, by the name of earth invisible and without form. So that when thought seeketh what the sense may conceive under this, and saith to itself, "It is no intellectual form, as life, or justice; because it is the matter of bodies; nor object of sense, because being invisible, and without form, there was in it no object of sight or sense";--while man's thought thus saith to itself, it may endeavour either to know it, by being ignorant of it; or to be ignorant, by knowing it. But I, Lord, if I would, by my tongue and my pen, confess unto Thee the whole, whatever Thyself hath taught me of that matter,--the name whereof hearing before, and not understanding, when they who understood it not, told me of it, so I conceived of it as having innumerable forms and diverse, and therefore did not conceive it at all, my mind tossed up and down foul and horrible "forms" out of all order, but yet "forms" and I called it without form not that it wanted all form, but because it had such as my mind would, if presented to it, turn from, as unwonted and jarring, and human frailness would be troubled at. And still that which I conceived, was without form, not as being deprived of all form, but in comparison of more beautiful forms; and true reason did persuade me, that I must utterly uncase it of all remnants of form whatsoever, if I would conceive matter absolutely without form; and I could not; for sooner could I imagine that not to be at all, which should be deprived of all form, than conceive a thing betwixt form and nothing, neither formed, nor nothing, a formless almost nothing. So my mind gave over to question thereupon with my spirit, it being filled with the images of formed bodies, and changing and varying them, as it willed; and I bent myself to the bodies themselves, and looked more deeply into their changeableness, by which they cease to be what they have been, and begin to be what they were not; and this same shifting from form to form, I suspected to be through a certain formless state, not through a mere nothing; yet this I longed to know, not to suspect only.-If then my voice and pen would confess unto Thee the whole, whatsoever knots Thou didst open for me in this question, what reader would hold out to take in the whole? Nor shall my heart for all this cease to give Thee honour, and a song of praise, for those things which it is not able to express. For the changeableness of changeable things, is itself capable of all those forms, into which these changeable things are changed. And this changeableness, what is it? Is it soul? Is it body? Is it that which constituteth soul or body? Might one say, "a nothing something", an "is, is not," I would say, this were it: and yet in some way was it even then, as being capable of receiving these visible and compound figures. But whence had it this degree of being, but from Thee, from Whom are all things, so far forth as they are? But so much the further from Thee, as the unliker Thee; for it is not farness of place. Thou therefore, Lord, Who art not one in one place, and otherwise in another, but the Self-same, and the Self-same, and the Self-same, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, didst in the Beginning, which is of Thee, in Thy Wisdom, which was born of Thine own Substance, create something, and that out of nothing. For Thou createdst heaven and earth; not out of Thyself, for so should they have been equal to Thine Only Begotten Son, and thereby to Thee also; whereas no way were it right that aught should be equal to Thee, which was not of Thee. And aught else besides Thee was there not, whereof Thou mightest create them, O God, One Trinity, and Trine Unity; and therefore out of nothing didst Thou create heaven and earth; a great thing, and a small thing; for Thou art Almighty and Good, to make all things good, even the great heaven, and the petty earth. Thou wert, and nothing was there besides, out of which Thou createdst heaven and earth; things of two sorts; one near Thee, the other near to nothing; one to which Thou alone shouldest be superior; the other, to which nothing should be inferior. But that heaven of heavens was for Thyself, O Lord; but the earth which Thou gavest to the sons of men, to be seen and felt, was not such as we now see and feel. For it was invisible, without form, and there was a deep, upon which there was no light; or, darkness was above the deep, that is, more than in the deep. Because this deep of waters, visible now, hath even in his depths, a light proper for its nature; perceivable in whatever degree unto the fishes, and creeping things in the bottom of it. But that whole deep was almost nothing, because hitherto it was altogether without form; yet there was already that which could be formed. For Thou, Lord, madest the world of a matter without form, which out of nothing, Thou madest next to nothing, thereof to make those great things, which we sons of men wonder at. For very wonderful is this corporeal heaven; of which firmament between water and water, the second day, after the creation of light, Thou saidst, Let it be made, and it was made. Which firmament Thou calledst heaven; the heaven, that is, to this earth and sea, which Thou madest the third day, by giving a visible figure to the formless matter, which Thou madest before all days. For already hadst Thou made both an heaven, before all days; but that was the heaven of this heaven; because In the beginning Thou hadst made heaven and earth. But this same earth which Thou madest was formless matter, because it was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, of which invisible earth and without form, of which formlessness, of which almost nothing, Thou mightest make all these things of which this changeable world consists, but subsists not; whose very changeableness appears therein, that times can be observed and numbered in it. For times are made by the alterations of things, while the figures, the matter whereof is the invisible earth aforesaid, are varied and turned. And therefore the Spirit, the Teacher of Thy servant, when It recounts Thee to have In the Beginning created heaven and earth, speaks nothing of times, nothing of days. For verily that heaven of heavens which Thou createdst in the Beginning, is some intellectual creature, which, although no ways coeternal unto Thee, the Trinity, yet partaketh of Thy eternity, and doth through the sweetness of that most happy contemplation of Thyself, strongly restrain its own changeableness; and without any fall since its first creation, cleaving close unto Thee, is placed beyond all the rolling vicissitude of times. Yea, neither is this very formlessness of the earth, invisible, and without form, numbered among the days. For where no figure nor order is, there does nothing come, or go; and where this is not, there plainly are no days, nor any vicissitude of spaces of times. O let the Light, the Truth, the Light of my heart, not mine own darkness, speak unto me. I fell off into that, and became darkened; but even thence, even thence I loved Thee. I went astray, and remembered Thee. I heard Thy voice behind me, calling to me to return, and scarcely heard it, through the tumultuousness of the enemies of peace. And now, behold, I return in distress and panting after Thy fountain. Let no man forbid me! of this will I drink, and so live. Let me not be mine own life; from myself I lived ill, death was I to myself; and I revive in Thee. Do Thou speak unto me, do Thou discourse unto me. I have believed Thy Books, and their words be most full of mystery. Already Thou hast told me with a strong voice, O Lord, in my inner ear, that Thou art eternal, Who only hast immortality; since Thou canst not be changed as to figure or motion, nor is Thy will altered by times: seeing no will which varies is immortal. This is in Thy sight clear to me, and let it be more and more cleared to me, I beseech Thee; and in the manifestation thereof, let me with sobriety abide under Thy wings. Thou hast told me also with a strong voice, O Lord, in my inner ear, that Thou hast made all natures and substances, which are not what Thyself is, and yet are; and that only is not from Thee, which is not, and the motion of the will from Thee who art, unto that which in a less degree is, because such motion is transgression and sin; and that no man's sin doth either hurt Thee, or disturb the order of Thy government, first or last. This is in Thy sight clear unto me, and let it be more and more cleared to me, I beseech Thee: and in the manifestation thereof, let me with sobriety abide under Thy wings. Thou hast told me also with a strong voice, in my inner ear, that neither is that creature coeternal unto Thyself, whose happiness Thou only art, and which with a most persevering purity, drawing its nourishment from Thee, doth in no place and at no time put forth its natural mutability; and, Thyself being ever present with it, unto Whom with its whole affection it keeps itself, having neither future to expect, nor conveying into the past what it remembereth, is neither altered by any change, nor distracted into any times. O blessed creature, if such there be, for cleaving unto Thy Blessedness; blest in Thee, its eternal Inhabitant and its Enlightener! Nor do I find by what name I may the rather call the heaven of heavens which is the Lord's, than Thine house, which contemplateth Thy delights without any defection of going forth to another; one pure mind, most harmoniously one, by that settled estate of peace of holy spirits, the citizens of Thy city in heavenly places; far above those heavenly places that we see. By this may the soul, whose pilgrimage is made long and far away, by this may she understand, if she now thirsts for Thee, if her tears be now become her bread, while they daily say unto her, Where is Thy God? if she now seeks of Thee one thing, and desireth it, that she may dwell in Thy house all the days of her life (and what is her life, but Thou? and what Thy days, but Thy eternity, as Thy years which fail not, because Thou art ever the same?); by this then may the soul that is able, understand how far Thou art, above all times, eternal; seeing Thy house which at no time went into a far country, although it be not coeternal with Thee, yet by continually and unfailingly cleaving unto Thee, suffers no changeableness of times. This is in Thy sight clear unto me, and let it be more and more cleared unto me, I beseech Thee, and in the manifestation thereof, let me with sobriety abide under Thy wings. There is, behold, I know not what formlessness in those changes of these last and lowest creatures; and who shall tell me (unless such a one as through the emptiness of his own heart, wonders and tosses himself up and down amid his own fancies?), who but such a one would tell me, that if all figure be so wasted and consumed away, that there should only remain that formlessness, through which the thing was changed and turned from one figure to another, that that could exhibit the vicissitudes of times? For plainly it could not, because, without the variety of motions, there are no times: and no variety, where there is no figure. These things considered, as much as Thou givest, O my God, as much as Thou stirrest me up to knock, and as much as Thou openest to me knocking, two things I find that Thou hast made, not within the compass of time, neither of which is coeternal with Thee. One, which is so formed, that without any ceasing of contemplation, without any interval of change, though changeable, yet not changed, it may thoroughly enjoy Thy eternity and unchangeableness; the other which was so formless, that it had not that, which could be changed from one form into another, whether of motion, or of repose, so as to become subject unto time. But this Thou didst not leave thus formless, because before all days, Thou in the Beginning didst create Heaven and Earth; the two things that I spake of. But the Earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep. In which words, is the formlessness conveyed unto us (that such capacities may hereby be drawn on by degrees, as are not able to conceive an utter privation of all form, without yet coming to nothing), out of which another Heaven might be created, together with a visible and well-formed earth: and the waters diversly ordered, and whatsoever further is in the formation of the world, recorded to have been, not without days, created; and that, as being of such nature, that the successive changes of times may take place in them, as being subject to appointed alterations of motions and of forms. This then is what I conceive, O my God, when I hear Thy Scripture saying, In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth: and the Earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, and not mentioning what day Thou createdst them; this is what I conceive, that because of the Heaven of heavens,--that intellectual Heaven, whose Intelligences know all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifestation, face to face; not, this thing now, and that thing anon; but (as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times;--and because of the earth invisible and without form, without any succession of times, which succession presents "this thing now, that thing anon"; because where is no form, there is no distinction of things:--it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed, and a primitive formless; the one, heaven but the Heaven of heaven, the other earth but the earth invisible and without form; because of these two do I conceive, did Thy Scripture say without mention of days, In the Beginning God created Heaven and Earth. For forthwith it subjoined what earth it spake of; and also, in that the Firmament is recorded to be created the second day, and called Heaven, it conveys to us of which Heaven He before spake, without mention of days. Wondrous depth of Thy words! whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth. O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; oh that Thou wouldest slay them with Thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies unto it: for so do I love to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto Thee. But behold others not faultfinders, but extollers of the book of Genesis; "The Spirit of God," say they, "Who by His servant Moses wrote these things, would not have those words thus understood; He would not have it understood, as thou sayest, but otherwise, as we say." Unto Whom Thyself, O Thou God all, being judge, do I thus answer. "Will you affirm that to be false, which with a strong voice Truth tells me in my inner ear, concerning the Eternity of the Creator, that His substance is no ways changed by time, nor His will separate from His substance? Wherefore He willeth not one thing now, another anon, but once, and at once, and always, He willeth all things that He willeth; not again and again, nor now this, now that; nor willeth afterwards, what before He willed not, nor willeth not, what before He willed; because such a will is and no mutable thing is eternal: but our God is eternal. Again, what He tells me in my inner ear, the expectation of things to come becomes sight, when they are come, and this same sight becomes memory, when they be past. Now all thought which thus varies is mutable; and no mutable thing is eternal: but our God is eternal." These things I infer, and put together, and find that my God, the eternal God, hath not upon any new will made any creature, nor doth His knowledge admit of any thing transitory. "What will ye say then, O ye gainsayers? Are these things false?" "No," they say; "What then? Is it false, that every nature already formed, or matter capable of form, is not, but from Him Who is supremely good, because He is supremely?" "Neither do we deny this," say they. "What then? do you deny this, that there is a certain sublime creature, with so chaste a love cleaving unto the true and truly eternal God, that although not coeternal with Him, yet is it not detached from Him, nor dissolved into the variety and vicissitude of times, but reposeth in the most true contemplation of Him only?" Because Thou, O God, unto him that loveth Thee so much as Thou commandest, dost show Thyself, and sufficest him; and therefore doth he not decline from Thee, nor toward himself. This is the house of God, not of earthly mould, nor of celestial bulk corporeal but spiritual, and partaker of Thy eternity, because without defection for ever. For Thou hast made it fast for ever and ever, Thou hast given it a law which it shall not pass. Nor yet is it coeternal with Thee, O God, because not without beginning; for it was made. For although we find no time before it, for wisdom was created before all things; not that Wisdom which is altogether equal and coeternal unto Thee, our God, His Father, and by Whom all things were created, and in Whom, as the Beginning, Thou createdst heaven and earth; but that wisdom which is created, that is, the intellectual nature, which by contemplating the light, is light. For this, though created, is also called wisdom. But what difference there is betwixt the Light which enlighteneth, and which is enlightened, so much is there betwixt the Wisdom that createth, and that created; as betwixt the Righteousness which justifieth, and the righteousness which is made by justification. For we also are called Thy righteousness; for so saith a certain servant of Thine, That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Therefore since a certain created wisdom was created before all things, the rational and intellectual mind of that chaste city of Thine, our mother which is above, and is free and eternal in the heavens (in what heavens, if not in those that praise Thee, the Heaven of heavens? Because this is also the Heaven of heavens for the Lord);--though we find no time before it (because that which hath been created before all things, precedeth also the creature of time), yet is the Eternity of the Creator Himself before it, from Whom, being created, it took the beginning, not indeed of time (for time itself was not yet), but of its creation. Hence it is so of Thee, our God, as to be altogether other than Thou, and not the Self-same: because though we find time neither before it, nor even in it (it being meet ever to behold Thy face, nor is ever drawn away from it, wherefore it is not varied by any change), yet is there in it a liability to change, whence it would wax dark, and chill, but that by a strong affection cleaving unto Thee, like perpetual noon, it shineth and gloweth from Thee. O house most lightsome and delightsome! I have loved thy beauty, and the place of the habitation of the glory of my Lord, thy builder and possessor. Let my wayfaring sigh after thee, and I say to Him that made thee, let Him take possession of me also in thee, seeing He hath made me likewise. I have gone astray like a lost sheep: yet upon the shoulders of my Shepherd, thy builder, hope I to be brought back to thee. "What say ye to me, O ye gainsayers that I was speaking unto, who yet believe Moses to have been the holy servant of God, and his books the oracles of the Holy Ghost? Is not this house of God, not coeternal indeed with God, yet after its measure, eternal in the heavens, when you seek for changes of times in vain, because you will not find them? For that, to which it is ever good to cleave fast to God, surpasses all extension, and all revolving periods of time." "It is," say they. "What then of all that which my heart loudly uttered unto my God, when inwardly it heard the voice of His praise, what part thereof do you affirm to be false? Is it that the matter was without form, in which because there was no form, there was no order? But where no order was, there could be no vicissitude of times: and yet this almost nothing, inasmuch as it was not altogether nothing, was from Him certainly, from Whom is whatsoever is, in what degree soever it is." "This also," say they, "do we not deny." With these I now parley a little in Thy presence, O my God, who grant all these things to be true, which Thy Truth whispers unto my soul. For those who deny these things, let them bark and deafen themselves as much as they please; I will essay to persuade them to quiet, and to open in them a way for Thy word. But if they refuse, and repel me; I beseech, O my God, be not Thou silent to me. Speak Thou truly in my heart; for only Thou so speakest: and I will let them alone blowing upon the dust without, and raising it up into their own eyes: and myself will enter my chamber, and sing there a song of loves unto Thee; groaning with groanings unutterable, in my wayfaring, and remembering Jerusalem, with heart lifted up towards it, Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem my mother, and Thyself that rulest over it, the Enlightener, Father, Guardian, Husband, the pure and strong delight, and solid joy, and all good things unspeakable, yea all at once, because the One Sovereign and true Good. Nor will I be turned away, until Thou gather all that I am, from this dispersed and disordered estate, into the peace of that our most dear mother, where the first-fruits of my spirit be already (whence I am ascertained of these things), and Thou conform and confirm it for ever, O my God, my Mercy. But those who do not affirm all these truths to be false, who honour Thy holy Scripture, set forth by holy Moses, placing it, as we, on the summit of authority to be followed, and do yet contradict me in some thing, I answer thus; By Thyself judge, O our God, between my Confessions and these men's contradictions. For they say, "Though these things be true, yet did not Moses intend those two, when, by revelation of the Spirit, he said, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. He did not under the name of heaven, signify that spiritual or intellectual creature which always beholds the face of God; nor under the name of earth, that formless matter." "What then?" "That man of God," say they, "meant as we say, this declared he by those words." "What?" "By the name of heaven and earth would he first signify," say they, "universally and compendiously, all this visible world; so as afterwards by the enumeration of the several days, to arrange in detail, and, as it were, piece by piece, all those things, which it pleased the Holy Ghost thus to enounce. For such were that rude and carnal people to which he spake, that he thought them fit to be entrusted with the knowledge of such works of God only as were visible." They agree, however, that under the words earth invisible and without form, and that darksome deep (out of which it is subsequently shown, that all these visible things which we all know, were made and arranged during those "days") may, not incongruously, be understood of this formless first matter. What now if another should say that "this same formlessness and confusedness of matter, was for this reason first conveyed under the name of heaven and earth, because out of it was this visible world with all those natures which most manifestly appear in it, which is ofttimes called by the name of heaven and earth, created and perfected?" What again if another say that "invisible and visible nature is not indeed inappropriately called heaven and earth; and so, that the universal creation, which God made in His Wisdom, that is, in the Beginning, was comprehended under those two words? Notwithstanding, since all things be made not of the substance of God, but out of nothing (because they are not the same that God is, and there is a mutable nature in them all, whether they abide, as doth the eternal house of God, or be changed, as the soul and body of man are): therefore the common matter of all things visible and invisible (as yet unformed though capable of form), out of which was to be created both heaven and earth (i.e., the invisible and visible creature when formed), was entitled by the same names given to the earth invisible and without form and the darkness upon the deep, but with this distinction, that by the earth invisible and without form is understood corporeal matter, antecedent to its being qualified by any form; and by the darkness upon the deep, spiritual matter, before it underwent any restraint of its unlimited fluidness, or received any light from Wisdom?" It yet remains for a man to say, if he will, that "the already perfected and formed natures, visible and invisible, are not signified under the name of heaven and earth, when we read, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, but that the yet unformed commencement of things, the stuff apt to receive form and making, was called by these names, because therein were confusedly contained, not as yet distinguished by their qualities and forms, all those things which being now digested into order, are called Heaven and Earth, the one being the spiritual, the other the corporeal, creation." All which things being heard and well considered, I will not strive about words: for that is profitable to nothing, but the subversion of the hearers. But the law is good to edify, if a man use it lawfully: for that the end of it is charity, out of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned. And well did our Master know, upon which two commandments He hung all the Law and the Prophets. And what doth it prejudice me, O my God, Thou light of my eyes in secret, zealously confessing these things, since divers things may be understood under these words which yet are all true,--what, I say, doth it prejudice me, if I think otherwise than another thinketh the writer thought? All we readers verily strive to trace out and to understand his meaning whom we read; and seeing we believe him to speak truly, we dare not imagine him to have said any thing, which ourselves either know or think to be false. While every man endeavours then to understand in the Holy Scriptures, the same as the writer understood, what hurt is it, if a man understand what Thou, the light of all true-speaking minds, dost show him to be true, although he whom he reads, understood not this, seeing he also understood a Truth, though not this truth? For true it is, O Lord, that Thou madest heaven and earth; and it is true too, that the Beginning is Thy Wisdom, in Which Thou createst all: and true again, that this visible world hath for its greater part the heaven and the earth, which briefly comprise all made and created natures. And true too, that whatsoever is mutable, gives us to understand a certain want of form, whereby it receiveth a form, or is changed, or turned. It is true, that that is subject to no times, which so cleaveth to the unchangeable Form, as though subject to change, never to be changed. It is true, that that formlessness which is almost nothing, cannot be subject to the alteration of times. It is true, that that whereof a thing is made, may by a certain mode of speech, be called by the name of the thing made of it; whence that formlessness, whereof heaven and earth were made, might be called heaven and earth. It is true, that of things having form, there is not any nearer to having no form, than the earth and the deep. It is true, that not only every created and formed thing, but whatsoever is capable of being created and formed, Thou madest, of Whom are all things. It is true, that whatsoever is formed out of that which had no form, was unformed before it was formed. Out of these truths, of which they doubt not whose inward eye Thou hast enabled to see such things, and who unshakenly believe Thy servant Moses to have spoken in the Spirit of truth;--of all these then, he taketh one, who saith, In the Beginning God made the heaven and the earth; that is, "in His Word coeternal with Himself, God made the intelligible and the sensible, or the spiritual and the corporeal creature." He another, that saith, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth; that is, "in His Word coeternal with Himself, did God make the universal bulk of this corporeal world, together with all those apparent and known creatures, which it containeth." He another, that saith, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth; that is, "in His Word coeternal with Himself, did God make the formless matter of creatures spiritual and corporeal." He another, that saith, In the Beginning God created heaven and earth; that is, "in His Word coeternal with Himself, did God create the formless matter of the creature corporeal, wherein heaven and earth lay as yet confused, which, being now distinguished and formed, we at this day see in the bulk of this world." He another, who saith, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth; that is, "in the very beginning of creating and working, did God make that formless matter, confusedly containing in itself both heaven and earth; out of which, being formed, do they now stand out, and are apparent, with all that is in them." And with regard to the understanding of the words following, out of all those truths, he chooses one to himself, who saith, But the earth was invisible, and without form, and darkness was upon the deep; that is, "that corporeal thing that God made, was as yet a formless matter of corporeal things, without order, without light." Another he who says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep; that is, "this all, which is called heaven and earth, was still a formless and darksome matter, of which the corporeal heaven and the corporeal earth were to be made, with all things in them, which are known to our corporeal senses." Another he who says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep; that is, "this all, which is called heaven and earth, was still a formless and a darksome matter; out of which was to be made, both that intelligible heaven, otherwhere called the Heaven of heavens, and the earth, that is, the whole corporeal nature, under which name is comprised this corporeal heaven also; in a word, out of which every visible and invisible creature was to be created." Another he who says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, "the Scripture did not call that formlessness by the name of heaven and earth; but that formlessness, saith he, already was, which he called the earth invisible without form, and darkness upon the deep; of which he had before said, that God had made heaven and earth, namely, the spiritual and corporeal creature." Another he who says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep; that is, "there already was a certain formless matter, of which the Scripture said before, that God made heaven and earth; namely, the whole corporeal bulk of the world, divided into two great parts, upper and lower, with all the common and known creatures in them." For should any attempt to dispute against these two last opinions, thus, "If you will not allow, that this formlessness of matter seems to be called by the name of heaven and earth; Ergo, there was something which God had not made, out of which to make heaven and earth; for neither hath Scripture told us, that God made this matter, unless we understand it to be signified by the name of heaven and earth, or of earth alone, when it is said, In the Beginning God made the heaven and earth; that so in what follows, and the earth was invisible and without form (although it pleased Him so to call the formless matter), we are to understand no other matter, but that which God made, whereof is written above, God made heaven and earth." The maintainers of either of those two latter opinions will, upon hearing this, return for answer, "we do not deny this formless matter to be indeed created by God, that God of Whom are all things, very good; for as we affirm that to be a greater good, which is created and formed, so we confess that to be a lesser good which is made capable of creation and form, yet still good. We say however that Scripture hath not set down, that God made this formlessness, as also it hath not many others; as the Cherubim, and Seraphim, and those which the Apostle distinctly speaks of, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers. All which that God made, is most apparent. Or if in that which is said, He made heaven and earth, all things be comprehended, what shall we say of the waters, upon which the Spirit of God moved? For if they be comprised in this word earth; how then can formless matter be meant in that name of earth, when we see the waters so beautiful? Or if it be so taken; why then is it written, that out of the same formlessness, the firmament was made, and called heaven; and that the waters were made, is not written? For the waters remain not formless and invisible, seeing we behold them flowing in so comely a manner. But if they then received that beauty, when God said, Let the waters under the firmament be gathered together, that so the gathering together be itself the forming of them; what will be said as to those waters above the firmament? Seeing neither if formless would they have been worthy of so honourable a seat, nor is it written, by what word they were formed. If then Genesis is silent as to God's making of any thing, which yet that God did make neither sound faith nor well-grounded understanding doubteth, nor again will any sober teaching dare to affirm these waters to be coeternal with God, on the ground that we find them to be mentioned in the hook of Genesis, but when they were created, we do not find; why (seeing truth teaches us) should we not understand that formless matter (which this Scripture calls the earth invisible and without form, and darksome deep) to have been created of God out of nothing, and therefore not to be coeternal to Him; notwithstanding this history hath omitted to show when it was created?" These things then being heard and perceived, according to the weakness of my capacity (which I confess unto Thee, O Lord, that knowest it), two sorts of disagreements I see may arise, when a thing is in words related by true reporters; one, concerning the truth of the things, the other, concerning the meaning of the relater. For we enquire one way about the making of the creature, what is true; another way, what Moses, that excellent minister of Thy Faith, would have his reader and hearer understand by those words. For the first sort, away with all those who imagine themselves to know as a truth, what is false; and for this other, away with all them too, which imagine Moses to have written things that be false. But let me be united in Thee, O Lord, with those and delight myself in Thee, with them that feed on Thy truth, in the largeness of charity, and let us approach together unto the words of Thy book, and seek in them for Thy meaning, through the meaning of Thy servant, by whose pen Thou hast dispensed them. But which of us shall, among those so many truths, which occur to enquirers in those words, as they are differently understood, so discover that one meaning, as to affirm, "this Moses thought," and "this would he have understood in that history"; with the same confidence as he would, "this is true," whether Moses thought this or that? For behold, O my God, I Thy servant, who have in this book vowed a sacrifice of confession unto Thee, and pray, that by Thy mercy I may pay my vows unto Thee, can I, with the same confidence wherewith I affirm, that in Thy incommutable world Thou createdst all things visible and invisible, affirm also, that Moses meant no other than this, when he wrote, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth? No. Because I see not in his mind, that he thought of this when he wrote these things, as I do see it in Thy truth to be certain. For he might have his thoughts upon God's commencement of creating, when he said In the beginning; and by heaven and earth, in this place he might intend no formed and perfected nature whether spiritual or corporeal, but both of them inchoate and as yet formless. For I perceive, that whichsoever of the two had been said, it might have been truly said; but which of the two he thought of in these words, I do not so perceive. Although, whether it were either of these, or any sense beside (that I have not here mentioned), which this so great man saw in his mind, when he uttered these words, I doubt not but that he saw it truly, and expressed it aptly. Let no man harass me then, by saying, Moses thought not as you say, but as I say: for if he should ask me, "How know you that Moses thought that which you infer out of his words?" I ought to take it in good part, and would answer perchance as I have above, or something more at large, if he were unyielding. But when he saith, "Moses meant not what you say, but what I say," yet denieth not that what each of us say, may both be true, O my God, life of the poor, in Whose bosom is no contradiction, pour down a softening dew into my heart, that I may patiently bear with such as say this to me, not because they have a divine Spirit, and have seen in the heart of Thy servant what they speak, but because they be proud; not knowing Moses' opinion, but loving their own, not because it is truth, but because it is theirs. Otherwise they would equally love another true opinion, as I love what they say, when they say true: not because it is theirs, but because it is true; and on that very ground not theirs because it is true. But if they therefore love it, because it is true, then is it both theirs, and mine; as being in common to all lovers of truth. But whereas they contend that Moses did not mean what I say, but what they say, this I like not, love not: for though it were so, yet that their rashness belongs not to knowledge, but to overboldness, and not insight but vanity was its parent. And therefore, O Lord, are Thy judgements terrible; seeing Thy truth is neither mine, nor his, nor another's; but belonging to us all, whom Thou callest publicly to partake of it, warning us terribly, not to account it private to ourselves, lest we be deprived of it. For whosoever challenges that as proper to himself, which Thou propoundest to all to enjoy, and would have that his own which belongs to all, is driven from what is in common to his own; that is, from truth, to a lie. For he that speaketh a lie, speaketh it of his own. Hearken, O God, Thou best judge; Truth Itself, hearken to what I shall say to this gainsayer, hearken, for before Thee do I speak, and before my brethren, who employ Thy law lawfully, to the end of charity: hearken and behold, if it please Thee, what I shall say to him. For this brotherly and peaceful word do I return unto Him: "If we both see that to be true that Thou sayest, and both see that to be true that I say, where, I pray Thee, do we see it? Neither I in thee, nor thou in me; but both in the unchangeable Truth itself, which is above our souls." Seeing then we strive not about the very light of the Lord God, why strive we about the thoughts of our neighbour which we cannot so see, as the unchangeable Truth is seen: for that, if Moses himself had appeared to us and said, "This I meant"; neither so should we see it, but should believe it. Let us not then be puffed up for one against another, above that which is written: let us love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind: and our neighbour as ourself. With a view to which two precepts of charity, unless we believe that Moses meant, whatsoever in those books he did mean, we shall make God a liar, imagining otherwise of our fellow servant's mind, than he hath taught us. Behold now, how foolish it is, in such abundance of most true meanings, as may be extracted out of those words, rashly to affirm, which of them Moses principally meant; and with pernicious contentions to offend charity itself, for whose sake he spake every thing, whose words we go about to expound. And yet I, O my God, Thou lifter up of my humility, and rest of my labour, Who hearest my confessions, and forgivest my sins: seeing Thou commandest me to love my neighbour as myself, I cannot believe that Thou gavest a less gift unto Moses Thy faithful servant, than I would wish or desire Thee to have given me, had I been born in the time he was, and hadst Thou set me in that office, that by the service of my heart and tongue those books might be dispensed, which for so long after were to profit all nations, and through the whole world from such an eminence of authority, were to surmount all sayings of false and proud teachings. I should have desired verily, had I then been Moses (for we all come from the same lump, and what is man, saving that Thou art mindful of him?), I would then, had I been then what he was, and been enjoined by Thee to write the book of Genesis, have desired such a power of expression and such a style to be given me, that neither they who cannot yet understand how God created, might reject the sayings, as beyond their capacity; and they who had attained thereto, might find what true opinion soever they had by thought arrived at, not passed over in those few words of that Thy servant: and should another man by the light of truth have discovered another, neither should that fail of being discoverable in those same words. For as a fountain within a narrow compass, is more plentiful, and supplies a tide for more streams over larger spaces, than any one of those streams, which, after a wide interval, is derived from the same fountain; so the relation of that dispenser of Thine, which was to benefit many who were to discourse thereon, does out of a narrow scantling of language, overflow into streams of clearest truth, whence every man may draw out for himself such truth as he can upon these subjects, one, one truth, another, another, by larger circumlocutions of discourse. For some, when they read, or hear these words, conceive that God like a man or some mass endued with unbounded power, by some new and sudden resolution, did, exterior to itself, as it were at a certain distance, create heaven and earth, two great bodies above and below, wherein all things were to be contained. And when they hear, God said, Let it be made, and it was made; they conceive of words begun and ended, sounding in time, and passing away; after whose departure, that came into being, which was commanded so to do; and whatever of the like sort, men's acquaintance with the material world would suggest. In whom, being yet little ones and carnal, while their weakness is by this humble kind of speech, carried on, as in a mother's bosom, their faith is wholesomely built up, whereby they hold assured, that God made all natures, which in admirable variety their eye beholdeth around. Which words, if any despising, as too simple, with a proud weakness, shall stretch himself beyond the guardian nest; he will, alas, fall miserably. Have pity, O Lord God, lest they who go by the way trample on the unfledged bird, and send Thine angel to replace it into the nest, that it may live, till it can fly. But others, unto whom these words are no longer a nest, but deep shady fruit-bowers, see the fruits concealed therein, fly joyously around, and with cheerful notes seek out, and pluck them. For reading or hearing these words, they see that all times past and to come, are surpassed by Thy eternal and stable abiding; and yet that there is no creature formed in time, not of Thy making. Whose will, because it is the same that Thou art, Thou madest all things, not by any change of will, nor by a will, which before was not, and that these things were not out of Thyself, in Thine own likeness, which is the form of all things; but out of nothing, a formless unlikeness, which should be formed by Thy likeness (recurring to Thy Unity, according to their appointed capacity, so far as is given to each thing in his kind), and might all be made very good; whether they abide around Thee, or being in gradation removed in time and place, made or undergo the beautiful variations of the Universe. These things they see, and rejoice, in the little degree they here may, in the light of Thy truth. Another bends his mind on that which is said, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth; and beholdeth therein Wisdom, the Beginning because It also speaketh unto us. Another likewise bends his mind on the same words, and by Beginning understands the commencement of things created; In the beginning He made, as if it were said, He at first made. And among them that understand In the Beginning to mean, "In Thy Wisdom Thou createdst heaven and earth," one believes the matter out of which the heaven and earth were to be created, to be there called heaven and earth; another, natures already formed and distinguished; another, one formed nature, and that a spiritual, under the name Heaven, the other formless, a corporeal matter, under the name Earth. They again who by the names heaven and earth, understand matter as yet formless, out of which heaven and earth were to be formed, neither do they understand it in one way; but the one, that matter out of which both the intelligible and the sensible creature were to be perfected; another, that only, out of which this sensible corporeal mass was to be made, containing in its vast bosom these visible and ordinary natures. Neither do they, who believe the creatures already ordered and arranged, to be in this place called heaven and earth, understand the same; but the one, both the invisible and visible, the other, the visible only, in which we behold this lightsome heaven, and darksome earth, with the things in them contained. But he that no otherwise understands In the Beginning He made, than if it were said, At first He made, can only truly understand heaven and earth of the matter of heaven and earth, that is, of the universal intelligible and corporeal creation. For if he would understand thereby the universe, as already formed, it may be rightly demanded of him, "If God made this first, what made He afterwards?" and after the universe, he will find nothing; whereupon must he against his will hear another question; "How did God make this first, if nothing after?" But when he says, God made matter first formless, then formed, there is no absurdity, if he be but qualified to discern, what precedes by eternity, what by time, what by choice, and what in original. By eternity, as God is before all things; by time, as the flower before the fruit; by choice, as the fruit before the flower; by original, as the sound before the tune. Of these four, the first and last mentioned, are with extreme difficulty understood, the two middle, easily. For a rare and too lofty a vision is it, to behold Thy Eternity, O Lord, unchangeably making things changeable; and thereby before them. And who, again, is of so sharp-sighted understanding, as to be able without great pains to discern, how the sound is therefore before the tune; because a tune is a formed sound; and a thing not formed, may exist; whereas that which existeth not, cannot be formed. Thus is the matter before the thing made; not because it maketh it, seeing itself is rather made; nor is it before by interval of time; for we do not first in time utter formless sounds without singing, and subsequently adapt or fashion them into the form of a chant, as wood or silver, whereof a chest or vessel is fashioned. For such materials do by time also precede the forms of the things made of them, but in singing it is not so; for when it is sung, its sound is heard; for there is not first a formless sound, which is afterwards formed into a chant. For each sound, so soon as made, passeth away, nor canst thou find ought to recall and by art to compose. So then the chant is concentrated in its sound, which sound of his is his matter. And this indeed is formed, that it may be a tune; and therefore (as I said) the matter of the sound is before the form of the tune; not before, through any power it hath to make it a tune; for a sound is no way the workmaster of the tune; but is something corporeal, subjected to the soul which singeth, whereof to make a tune. Nor is it first in time; for it is given forth together with the tune; nor first in choice, for a sound is not better than a tune, a tune being not only a sound, but a beautiful sound. But it is first in original, because a tune receives not form to become a sound, but a sound receives a form to become a tune. By this example, let him that is able, understand how the matter of things was first made, and called heaven and earth, because heaven and earth were made out of it. Yet was it not made first in time; because the forms of things give rise to time; but that was without form, but now is, in time, an object of sense together with its form. And yet nothing can be related of that matter, but as though prior in time, whereas in value it is last (because things formed are superior to things without form) and is preceded by the Eternity of the Creator: that so there might be out of nothing, whereof somewhat might be created. In this diversity of the true opinions, let Truth herself produce concord. And our God have mercy upon us, that we may use the law lawfully, the end of the commandment, pure charity. By this if man demands of me, "which of these was the meaning of Thy servant Moses"; this were not the language of my Confessions, should I not confess unto Thee, "I know not"; and yet I know that those senses are true, those carnal ones excepted, of which I have spoken what seemed necessary. And even those hopeful little ones who so think, have this benefit, that the words of Thy Book affright them not, delivering high things lowlily, and with few words a copious meaning. And all we who, I confess, see and express the truth delivered in those words, let us love one another, and jointly love Thee our God, the fountain of truth, if we are athirst for it, and not for vanities; yea, let us so honour this Thy servant, the dispenser of this Scripture, full of Thy Spirit, as to believe that, when by Thy revelation he wrote these things, he intended that, which among them chiefly excels both for light of truth, and fruitfulness of profit. So when one says, "Moses meant as I do"; and another, "Nay, but as I do," I suppose that I speak more reverently, "Why not rather as both, if both be true?" And if there be a third, or a fourth, yea if any other seeth any other truth in those words, why may not he be believed to have seen all these, through whom the One God hath tempered the holy Scriptures to the senses of many, who should see therein things true but divers? For I certainly (and fearlessly I speak it from my heart), that were I to indite any thing to have supreme authority, I should prefer so to write, that whatever truth any could apprehend on those matters, might be conveyed in my words, rather than set down my own meaning so clearly as to exclude the rest, which not being false, could not offend me. I will not therefore, O my God, be so rash, as not to believe, that Thou vouchsafedst as much to that great man. He without doubt, when he wrote those words, perceived and thought on what truth soever we have been able to find, yea and whatsoever we have not been able, nor yet are, but which may be found in them. Lastly, O Lord, who art God and not flesh and blood, if man did see less, could any thing be concealed from Thy good Spirit (who shall lead me into the land of uprightness), which Thou Thyself by those words wert about to reveal to readers in times to come, though he through whom they were spoken, perhaps among many true meanings, thought on some one? which if so it be, let that which he thought on be of all the highest. But to us, O Lord, do Thou, either reveal that same, or any other true one which Thou pleasest; that so, whether Thou discoverest the same to us, as to that Thy servant, or some other by occasion of those words, yet Thou mayest feed us, not error deceive us. Behold, O Lord my God, how much we have written upon a few words, how much I beseech Thee! What strength of ours, yea what ages would suffice for all Thy books in this manner? Permit me then in these more briefly to confess unto Thee, and to choose some one true, certain, and good sense that Thou shalt inspire me, although many should occur, where many may occur; this being the law my confession, that if I should say that which Thy minister intended, that is right and best; for this should I endeavour, which if I should not attain, yet I should say that, which Thy Truth willed by his words to tell me, which revealed also unto him, what It willed. BOOK XIII I call upon Thee, O my God, my mercy, Who createdst me, and forgottest not me, forgetting Thee. I call Thee into my soul which, by the longing Thyself inspirest into her, Thou preparest for Thee. Forsake me not now calling upon Thee, whom Thou preventedst before I called, and urgedst me with much variety of repeated calls, that I would hear Thee from afar, and be converted, and call upon Thee, that calledst after me; for Thou, Lord, blottedst out all my evil deservings, so as not to repay into my hands, wherewith I fell from Thee; and Thou hast prevented all my well deservings, so as to repay the work of Thy hands wherewith Thou madest me; because before I was, Thou wert; nor was I any thing, to which Thou mightest grant to be; and yet behold, I am, out of Thy goodness, preventing all this which Thou hast made me, and whereof Thou hast made me. For neither hadst Thou need of me, nor am I any such good, as to be helpful unto Thee, my Lord and God; not in serving Thee, as though Thou wouldest tire in working; or lest Thy power might be less, if lacking my service: nor cultivating Thy service, as a land, that must remain uncultivated, unless I cultivated Thee: but serving and worshipping Thee, that I might receive a well-being from Thee, from whom it comes, that I have a being capable of well-being. For of the fulness of Thy goodness, doth Thy creature subsist, that so a good, which could no ways profit Thee, nor was of Thee (lest so it should be equal to Thee), might yet be since it could be made of Thee. For what did heaven and earth, which Thou madest in the Beginning, deserve of Thee? Let those spiritual and corporeal natures which Thou madest in Thy Wisdom, say wherein they deserved of Thee, to depend thereon (even in that their several inchoate and formless state, whether spiritual or corporeal, ready to fall away into an immoderate liberty and far-distant unlikeliness unto Thee;--the spiritual, though without form, superior to the corporeal though formed, and the corporeal though without form, better than were it altogether nothing), and so to depend upon Thy Word, as formless, unless by the same Word they were brought back to Thy Unity, indued with form and from Thee the One Sovereign Good were made all very good. How did they deserve of Thee, to be even without form, since they had not been even this, but from Thee? How did corporeal matter deserve of Thee, to be even invisible and without form? seeing it were not even this, but that Thou madest it, and therefore because it was not, could not deserve of Thee to be made. Or how could the inchoate spiritual creature deserve of Thee, even to ebb and flow darksomely like the deep,--unlike Thee, unless it had been by the same Word turned to that, by Whom it was created, and by Him so enlightened, become light; though not equally, yet conformably to that Form which is equal unto Thee? For as in a body, to be, is not one with being beautiful, else could it not be deformed; so likewise to a created spirit to live, is not one with living wisely; else should it be wise unchangeably. But good it is for it always to hold fast to Thee; lest what light it hath obtained by turning to Thee, it lose by turning from Thee, and relapse into life resembling the darksome deep. For we ourselves also, who as to the soul are a spiritual creature, turned away from Thee our light, were in that life sometimes darkness; and still labour amidst the relics of our darkness, until in Thy Only One we become Thy righteousness, like the mountains of God. For we have been Thy judgments, which are like the great deep. That which Thou saidst in the beginning of the creation, Let there be light, and there was light; I do, not unsuitably, understand of the spiritual creature: because there was already a sort of life, which Thou mightest illuminate. But as it had no claim on Thee for a life, which could be enlightened, so neither now that it was, had it any, to be enlightened. For neither could its formless estate be pleasing unto Thee, unless it became light, and that not by existing simply, but by beholding the illuminating light, and cleaving to it; so that, that it lived, and lived happily, it owes to nothing but Thy grace, being turned by a better change unto That which cannot be changed into worse or better; which Thou alone art, because Thou alone simply art; unto Thee it being not one thing to live, another to live blessedly, seeing Thyself art Thine own Blessedness. What then could be wanting unto Thy good, which Thou Thyself art, although these things had either never been, or remained without form; which thou madest, not out of any want, but out of the fulness of Thy goodness, restraining them and converting them to form, not as though Thy joy were fulfilled by them? For to Thee being perfect, is their imperfection displeasing, and hence were they perfected by Thee, and please Thee; not as wert Thou imperfect, and by their perfecting wert also to be perfected. For Thy good Spirit indeed was borne over the waters, not borne up by them, as if He rested upon them. For those, on whom Thy good Spirit is said to rest, He causes to rest in Himself. But Thy incorruptible and unchangeable will, in itself all-sufficient for itself, was borne upon that life which Thou hadst created; to which, living is not one with happy living, seeing it liveth also, ebbing and flowing in its own darkness: for which it remaineth to be converted unto Him, by Whom it was made, and to live more and more by the fountain of life, and in His light to see light, and to be perfected, and enlightened, and beautified. Lo, now the Trinity appears unto me in a glass darkly, which is Thou my God, because Thou, O Father, in Him Who is the Beginning of our wisdom, Which is Thy Wisdom, born of Thyself, equal unto Thee and coeternal, that is, in Thy Son, createdst heaven and earth. Much now have we said of the Heaven of heavens, and of the earth invisible and without form, and of the darksome deep, in reference to the wandering instability of its spiritual deformity, unless it had been converted unto Him, from Whom it had its then degree of life, and by His enlightening became a beauteous life, and the heaven of that heaven, which was afterwards set between water and water. And under the name of God, I now held the Father, who made these things, and under the name of Beginning, the Son, in whom He made these things; and believing, as I did, my God as the Trinity, I searched further in His holy words, and lo, Thy Spirit moved upon the waters. Behold the Trinity, my God, Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, Creator of all creation. But what was the cause, O true-speaking Light?--unto Thee lift I up my heart, let it not teach me vanities, dispel its darkness; and tell me, I beseech Thee, by our mother charity, tell me the reason, I beseech Thee, why after the mention of heaven, and of the earth invisible and without form, and darkness upon the deep, Thy Scripture should then at length mention Thy Spirit? Was it because it was meet that the knowledge of Him should be conveyed, as being "borne above"; and this could not be said, unless that were first mentioned, over which Thy Spirit may be understood to have been borne. For neither was He borne above the Father, nor the Son, nor could He rightly be said to be borne above, if He were borne over nothing. First then was that to be spoken of, over which He might be borne; and then He, whom it was meet not otherwise to be spoken of than as being borne. But wherefore was it not meet that the knowledge of Him should be conveyed otherwise, than as being borne above? Hence let him that is able, follow with his understanding Thy Apostle, where he thus speaks, Because Thy love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us: and where concerning spiritual gifts, he teacheth and showeth unto us a more excellent way of charity; and where he bows his knee unto Thee for us, that we may know the supereminent knowledge of the love of Christ. And therefore from the beginning, was He borne supereminent above the waters. To whom shall I speak this? how speak of the weight of evil desires, downwards to the steep abyss; and how charity raises up again by Thy Spirit which was borne above the waters? to whom shall I speak it? how speak it? For it is not in space that we are merged and emerge. What can be more, and yet what less like? They be affections, they be loves; the uncleanness of our spirit flowing away downwards with the love of cares, and the holiness of Thine raising us upward by love of unanxious repose; that we may lift our hearts unto Thee, where Thy Spirit is borne above the waters; and come to that supereminent repose, when our soul shall have passed through the waters which yield no support. Angels fell away, man's soul fell away, and thereby pointed the abyss in that dark depth, ready for the whole spiritual creation, hadst not Thou said from the beginning, Let there be light, and there had been light, and every obedient intelligence of Thy heavenly City had cleaved to Thee, and rested in Thy Spirit, Which is borne unchangeably over every thing changeable. Otherwise, had even the heaven of heavens been in itself a darksome deep; but now it is light in the Lord. For even in that miserable restlessness of the spirits, who fell away and discovered their own darkness, when bared of the clothing of Thy light, dost Thou sufficiently reveal how noble Thou madest the reasonable creature; to which nothing will suffice to yield a happy rest, less than Thee; and so not even herself. For Thou, O our God, shalt lighten our darkness: from Thee riseth our garment of light; and then shall our darkness be as the noon day. Give Thyself unto me, O my God, restore Thyself unto me: behold I love, and if it be too little, I would love more strongly. I cannot measure so as to know, how much love there yet lacketh to me, ere my life may run into Thy embracements, nor turn away, until it be hidden in the hidden place of Thy Presence. This only I know, that woe is me except in Thee: not only without but within myself also; and all abundance, which is not my God, is emptiness to me. But was not either the Father, or the Son, borne above the waters? if this means, in space, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if the unchangeable supereminence of Divinity above all things changeable, then were both Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost borne upon the waters. Why then is this said of Thy Spirit only, why is it said only of Him? As if He had been in place, Who is not in place, of Whom only it is written, that He is Thy gift? In Thy Gift we rest; there we enjoy Thee. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us up thither, and Thy good Spirit lifts up our lowliness from the gates of death. In Thy good pleasure is our peace. The body by its own weight strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to his own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are urged by their own weight, they seek their own places. Oil poured below water, is raised above the water; water poured upon oil, sinks below the oil. They are urged by their own weights to seek their own places. When out of their order, they are restless; restored to order, they are at rest. My weight, is my love; thereby am I borne, whithersoever I am borne. We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever. Blessed creature, which being itself other than Thou, has known no other condition, than that, so soon as it was made, it was, without any interval, by Thy Gift, Which is borne above every thing changeable, borne aloft by that calling whereby Thou saidst, Let there be light, and there was light. Whereas in us this took place at different times, in that we were darkness, and are made light: but of that is only said, what it would have been, had it not been enlightened. And, this is so spoken, as if it had been unsettled and darksome before; that so the cause whereby it was made otherwise, might appear, namely, that being turned to the Light unfailing it became light. Whoso can, let him understand this; let him ask of Thee. Why should he trouble me, as if I could enlighten any man that cometh into this world? Which of us comprehendeth the Almighty Trinity? and yet which speaks not of It, if indeed it be It? Rare is the soul, which while it speaks of It, knows what it speaks of. And they contend and strive, yet, without peace, no man sees that vision. I would that men would consider these three, that are in themselves. These three be indeed far other than the Trinity: I do but tell, where they may practise themselves, and there prove and feel how far they be. Now the three I spake of are, To Be, to Know, and to Will. For I Am, and Know, and Will: I Am Knowing and Willing: and I Know myself to Be, and to Will: and I Will to Be, and to Know. In these three then, let him discern that can, how inseparable a life there is, yea one life, mind, and one essence, yea lastly how inseparable a distinction there is, and yet a distinction. Surely a man hath it before him; let him look into himself, and see, and tell me. But when he discovers and can say any thing of these, let him not therefore think that he has found that which is above these Unchangeable, which Is unchangeably, and Knows unchangeably, and Wills unchangeably; and whether because of these three, there is in God also a Trinity, or whether all three be in Each, so that the three belong to Each; or whether both ways at once, wondrously, simply and yet manifoldly, Itself a bound unto Itself within Itself, yet unbounded; whereby It is, and is Known unto Itself and sufficeth to itself, unchangeably the Self-same, by the abundant greatness of its Unity,--who can readily conceive this? who could any ways express it? who would, any way, pronounce thereon rashly? Proceed in thy confession, say to the Lord thy God, O my faith, Holy, Holy, Holy, O Lord my God, in Thy Name have we been baptised, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; in Thy Name do we baptise, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, because among us also, in His Christ did God make heaven and earth, namely, the spiritual and carnal people of His Church. Yea and our earth, before it received the form of doctrine, was invisible and without form; and we were covered with the darkness of ignorance. For Thou chastenedst man for iniquity, and Thy judgments were like the great deep unto him. But because Thy Spirit was borne above the waters, Thy mercy forsook not our misery, and Thou saidst, Let there be light, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent ye, let there be light. And because our soul was troubled within us, we remembered Thee, O Lord, from the land of Jordan, and that mountain equal unto Thyself, but little for our sakes: and our darkness displeased us, we turned unto Thee and there was light. And, behold, we were sometimes darkness, but now light in the Lord. But as yet by faith and not by sight, for by hope we are saved; but hope that is seen, is not hope. As yet doth deep call unto deep, but now in the voice of Thy water-spouts. As yet doth he that saith, I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even he as yet, doth not think himself to have apprehended, and forgetteth those things which are behind, and reacheth forth to those which are before, and groaneth being burthened, and his soul thirsteth after the Living God, as the hart after the water-brooks, and saith, When shall I come? desiring to be clothed upon with his house which is from heaven, and calleth upon this lower deep, saying, Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. And, be not children in understanding, but in malice, be ye children, that in understanding ye may be perfect; and O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? But now no longer in his own voice; but in Thine who sentest Thy Spirit from above; through Him who ascended up on high, and set open the flood-gates of His gifts, that the force of His streams might make glad the city of God. Him doth this friend of the Bridegroom sigh after, having now the first-fruits of the Spirit laid up with Him, yet still groaning within himself, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of his body; to Him he sighs, a member of the Bride; for Him he is jealous, as being a friend of the Bridegroom; for Him he is jealous, not for himself; because in the voice of Thy water-spouts, not in his own voice, doth he call to that other depth, over whom being jealous he feareth, lest as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so their minds should be corrupted from the purity that is in our Bridegroom Thy only Son. O what a light of beauty will that be, when we shall see Him as He is, and those tears be passed away, which have been my meat day and night, whilst they daily say unto me, Where is now Thy God? Behold, I too say, O my God, Where art Thou? see, where Thou art! in Thee I breathe a little, when I pour out my soul by myself in the voice of joy and praise, the sound of him that keeps holy-day. And yet again it is sad, because it relapseth, and becomes a deep, or rather perceives itself still to be a deep. Unto it speaks my faith which Thou hast kindled to enlighten my feet in the night, Why art thou sad, O my soul, and why dost thou trouble me? Hope in the Lord; His word is a lanthorn unto thy feet: hope and endure, until the night, the mother of the wicked, until the wrath of the Lord, be overpast, whereof we also were once children, who were sometimes darkness, relics whereof we bear about us in our body, dead because of sin; until the day break, and the shadows fly away. Hope thou in the Lord; in the morning I shall stand in Thy presence, and contemplate Thee: I shall for ever confess unto Thee. In the morning I shall stand in Thy presence, and shall see the health of my countenance, my God, who also shall quicken our mortal bodies, by the Spirit that dwelleth in us, because He hath in mercy been borne over our inner darksome and floating deep: from Whom we have in this pilgrimage received an earnest, that we should now be light: whilst we are saved by hope, and are the children of light, and the children of the day, not the children of the night, nor of the darkness, which yet sometimes we were. Betwixt whom and us, in this uncertainty of human knowledge, Thou only dividest; Thou, who provest our hearts, and callest the light, day, and the darkness, night. For who discerneth us, but Thou? And what have we, that we have not received of Thee? out of the same lump vessels are made unto honour, whereof others also are made unto dishonour. Or who, except Thou, our God, made for us that firmament of authority over us in Thy Divine Scripture? as it is said, For heaven shall be folded up like a scroll; and now is it stretched over us like a skin. For Thy Divine Scripture is of more eminent authority, since those mortals by whom Thou dispensest it unto us, underwent mortality. And Thou knowest, Lord, Thou knowest, how Thou with skins didst clothe men, when they by sin became mortal. Whence Thou hast like a skin stretched out the firmament of Thy book, that is, Thy harmonizing words, which by the ministry of mortal men Thou spreadest over us. For by their very death was that solid firmament of authority, in Thy discourses set forth by them, more eminently extended over all that be under it; which whilst they lived here, was not so eminently extended. Thou hadst not as yet spread abroad the heaven like a skin; Thou hadst not as yet enlarged in all directions the glory of their deaths. Let us look, O Lord, upon the heavens, the work of Thy fingers; clear from our eyes that cloud, which Thou hast spread under them. There is Thy testimony, which giveth wisdom unto the little ones: perfect, O my God, Thy praise out of the mouth of babes and sucklings. For we know no other books, which so destroy pride, which so destroy the enemy and the defender, who resisteth Thy reconciliation by defending his own sins. I know not, Lord, I know not any other such pure words, which so persuade me to confess, and make my neck pliant to Thy yoke, and invite me to serve Thee for nought. Let me understand them, good Father: grant this to me, who am placed under them: because for those placed under them, hast Thou established them. Other waters there be above this firmament, I believe immortal, and separated from earthly corruption. Let them praise Thy Name, let them praise Thee, the supercelestial people, Thine angels, who have no need to gaze up at this firmament, or by reading to know of Thy Word. For they always behold Thy face, and there read without any syllables in time, what willeth Thy eternal will; they read, they choose, they love. They are ever reading; and that never passes away which they read; for by choosing, and by loving, they read the very unchangeableness of Thy counsel. Their book is never closed, nor their scroll folded up; seeing Thou Thyself art this to them, and art eternally; because Thou hast ordained them above this firmament, which Thou hast firmly settled over the infirmity of the lower people, where they might gaze up and learn Thy mercy, announcing in time Thee Who madest times. For Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and Thy truth reacheth unto the clouds. The clouds pass away, but the heaven abideth. The preachers of Thy word pass out of this life into another; but Thy Scripture is spread abroad over the people, even unto the end of the world. Yet heaven and earth also shall pass away, but Thy words shall not pass away. Because the scroll shall be rolled together: and the grass over which it was spread, shall with the goodliness of it pass away; but Thy Word remaineth for ever, which now appeareth unto us under the dark image of the clouds, and through the glass of the heavens, not as it is: because we also, though the well-beloved of Thy Son, yet it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. He looketh through the lattice of our flesh, and He spake us tenderly, and kindled us, and we ran after His odours. But when He shall appear, then shall we be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. As He is, Lord, will our sight be. For altogether, as Thou art, Thou only knowest; Who art unchangeably, and knowest unchangeably, and willest unchangeably. And Thy Essence Knoweth, and Willeth unchangeably; and Thy Knowledge Is, and Willeth unchangeably; and Thy Will Is, and Knoweth unchangeably. Nor seemeth it right in Thine eyes, that as the Unchangeable Light knoweth Itself, so should it be known by the thing enlightened, and changeable. Therefore is my soul like a land where no water is, because as it cannot of itself enlighten itself, so can it not of itself satisfy itself. For so is the fountain of life with Thee, like as in Thy light we shall see light. Who gathered the embittered together into one society? For they have all one end, a temporal and earthly felicity, for attaining whereof they do all things, though they waver up and down with an innumerable variety of cares. Who, Lord, but Thou, saidst, Let the waters be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, which thirsteth after Thee? For the sea also is Thine, and Thou hast made it, and Thy hands prepared the dry land. Nor is the bitterness of men's wills, but the gathering together of the waters, called sea; for Thou restrainest the wicked desires of men's souls, and settest them their bounds, how far they may be allowed to pass, that their waves may break one against another: and thus makest Thou it a sea, by the order of Thy dominion over all things. But the souls that thirst after Thee, and that appear before Thee (being by other bounds divided from the society of the sea), Thou waterest by a sweet spring, that the earth may bring forth her fruit, and Thou, Lord God, so commanding, our soul may bud forth works of mercy according to their kind, loving our neighbour in the relief of his bodily necessities, having seed in itself according to its likeness, when from feeling of our infirmity, we compassionate so as to relieve the needy; helping them, as we would be helped; if we were in like need; not only in things easy, as in herb yielding seed, but also in the protection of our assistance, with our best strength, like the tree yielding fruit: that is, well-doing in rescuing him that suffers wrong, from the hand of the powerful, and giving him the shelter of protection, by the mighty strength of just judgment. So, Lord, so, I beseech Thee, let there spring up, as Thou doest, as Thou givest cheerfulness and ability, let truth spring out of the earth, and righteousness look down from heaven, and let there be lights in the firmament. Let us break our bread to the hungry, and bring the houseless poor to our house. Let us clothe the naked, and despise not those of our own flesh. Which fruits having sprung out of the earth, see it is good: and let our temporary light break forth; and ourselves, from this lower fruitfulness of action, arriving at the delightfulness of contemplation, obtaining the Word of Life above, appear like lights in the world, cleaving to the firmament of Thy Scripture. For there Thou instructest us, to divide between the things intellectual, and things of sense, as betwixt the day and the night; or between souls, given either to things intellectual, or things of sense, so that now not Thou only in the secret of Thy judgment, as before the firmament was made, dividest between the light and the darkness, but Thy spiritual children also set and ranked in the same firmament (now that Thy grace is laid open throughout the world), may give light upon the earth, and divide betwixt the day and the night, and be for signs of times, that old things are passed away, and, behold, all things are become new; and that our salvation is nearer than when we believed: and that the night is far spent, and the day is at hand: and that Thou wilt crown Thy year with blessing, sending the labourers of Thy goodness into Thy harvest, in sowing whereof, others have laboured, sending also into another field, whose harvest shall be in the end. Thus grantest Thou the prayers of him that asketh, and blessest the years of the just; but Thou art the same, and in Thy years which fail not, Thou preparest a garner for our passing years. For Thou by an eternal counsel dost in their proper seasons bestow heavenly blessings upon the earth. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, as it were the lesser light: to another faith; to another the gift with the light of perspicuous truth, as it were for the rule of the day. To another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, as it were the lesser light: to another faith; to another the gift of healing; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues. And all these as it were stars. For all these worketh the one and self-same spirit, dividing to every man his own as He will; and causing stars to appear manifestly, to profit withal. But the word of knowledge, wherein are contained all Sacraments, which are varied in their seasons as it were the moon, and those other notices of gifts, which are reckoned up in order, as it were stars, inasmuch as they come short of that brightness of wisdom, which gladdens the forementioned day, are only for the rule of the night. For they are necessary to such, as that Thy most prudent servant could not speak unto as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal; even he, who speaketh wisdom among those that are perfect. But the natural man, as it were a babe in Christ and fed on milk, until he be strengthened for solid meat and his eye be enabled to behold the Sun, let him not dwell in a night forsaken of all light, but be content with the light of the moon and the stars. So dost Thou speak to us, our All-wise God, in Thy Book, Thy firmament; that we may discern all things, in an admirable contemplation; though as yet in signs and in times, and in days, and in years. But first, wash you, be clean; put away evil from your souls, and from before mine eyes, that the dry land may appear. Learn to do good, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow, that the earth may bring forth the green herb for meat, and the tree bearing fruit; and come, let us reason together, saith the Lord, that there may be lights in the firmament of the heaven, and they may shine upon the earth. That rich man asked of the good Master, what he should do to attain eternal life. Let the good Master tell him (whom he thought no more than man; but He is good because He is God), let Him tell him, if he would enter into life, he must keep the commandments: let him put away from him the bitterness of malice and wickedness; not kill, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness; that the dry land may appear, and bring forth the honouring of father and mother, and the love of our neighbour. All these (saith he) have I kept. Whence then so many thorns, if the earth be fruitful? Go, root up the spreading thickets of covetousness; sell that thou hast, and be filled with fruit, by giving to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and follow the Lord if thou wilt be perfect, associated with them, among whom He speaketh wisdom, Who knoweth what to distribute to the day, and to the night, that thou also mayest know it, and for thee there may be lights in the firmament of heaven; which will not be, unless thy heart be there: nor will that either be, unless there thy treasure be; as thou hast heard of the good Master. But that barren earth was grieved; and the thorns choked the word. But you, chosen generation, you weak things of the world, who have forsaken all, that ye may follow the Lord; go after Him, and confound the mighty; go after Him, ye beautiful feet, and shine ye in the firmament, that the heavens may declare His glory, dividing between the light of the perfect, though not as the angels, and the darkness of the little ones, though not despised. Shine over the earth; and let the day, lightened by the sun, utter unto day, speech of wisdom; and night, shining with the moon, show unto night, the word of knowledge. The moon and stars shine for the night; yet doth not the night obscure them, seeing they give it light in its degree. For behold God saying, as it were, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven; there came suddenly a sound from heaven, as it had been the rushing of a mighty wind, and there appeared cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And there were made lights in the firmament of heaven, having the word of life. Run ye to and fro every where, ye holy fires, ye beauteous fires; for ye are the light of the world, nor are ye put under a bushel; He whom you cleave unto, is exalted, and hath exalted you. Run ye to and fro, and be known unto all nations. Let the sea also conceive and bring forth your works; and let the waters bring forth the moving creature that hath life. For ye, separating the precious from the vile, are made the mouth of God, by whom He saith, Let the waters bring forth, not the living creature which the earth brings forth, but the moving creature having life, and the fowls that fly above the earth. For Thy Sacraments, O God, by the ministry of Thy holy ones, have moved amid the waves of temptations of the world, to hallow the Gentiles in Thy Name, in Thy Baptism. And amid these things, many great wonders were wrought, as it were great whales: and the voices of Thy messengers flying above the earth, in the open firmament of Thy Book; that being set over them, as their authority under which they were to fly, whithersoever they went. For there is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard: seeing their sound is gone through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world, because Thou, Lord, multipliedst them by blessing. Speak I untruly, or do I mingle and confound, and not distinguish between the lucid knowledge of these things in the firmament of heaven, and the material works in the wavy sea, and under the firmament of heaven? For of those things whereof the knowledge is substantial and defined, without any increase by generation, as it were lights of wisdom and knowledge, yet even of them, the material operations are many and divers; and one thing growing out of another, they are multiplied by Thy blessing, O God, who hast refreshed the fastidiousness of mortal senses; that so one thing in the understanding of our mind, may, by the motions of the body, be many ways set out, and expressed. These Sacraments have the waters brought forth; but in Thy word. The necessities of the people estranged from the eternity of Thy truth, have brought them forth, but in Thy Gospel; because the waters themselves cast them forth, the diseased bitterness whereof was the cause, why they were sent forth in Thy Word. Now are all things fair that Thou hast made; but behold, Thyself art unutterably fairer, that madest all; from whom had not Adam fallen, the brackishness of the sea had never flowed out of him, that is, the human race so profoundly curious, and tempestuously swelling, and restlessly tumbling up and down; and then had there been no need of Thy dispensers to work in many waters, after a corporeal and sensible manner, mysterious doings and sayings. For such those moving and flying creatures now seem to me to mean, whereby people being initiated and consecrated by corporeal Sacraments, should not further profit, unless their soul had a spiritual life, and unless after the word of admission, it looked forwards to perfection. And hereby, in Thy Word, not the deepness of the sea, but the earth separated from the bitterness of the waters, brings forth, not the moving creature that hath life, but the living soul. For now hath it no more need of baptism, as the heathen have, and as itself had, when it was covered with the waters; (for no other entrance is there into the kingdom of heaven, since Thou hast appointed that this should be the entrance): nor does it seek after wonderfulness of miracles to work belief; for it is not such, that unless it sees signs and wonders, it will not believe, now that the faithful earth is separated from the waters that were bitter with infidelity; and tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not. Neither then does that earth which Thou hast founded upon the waters, need that flying kind, which at Thy word the waters brought forth. Send Thou Thy word into it by Thy messengers: for we speak of their working, yet it is Thou that workest in them that they may work out a living soul in it. The earth brings it forth, because the earth is the cause that they work this in the soul; as the sea was the cause that they wrought upon the moving creatures that have life, and the fowls that fly under the firmament of heaven, of whom the earth hath no need; although it feeds upon that fish which was taken out of the deep, upon that table which Thou hast prepared in the presence of them that believe. For therefore was He taken out of the deep, that He might feed the dry land; and the fowl, though bred in the sea, is yet multiplied upon the earth. For of the first preachings of the Evangelists, man's infidelity was the cause; yet are the faithful also exhorted and blessed by them manifoldly, from day to day. But the living soul takes his beginning from the earth: for it profits only those already among the Faithful, to contain themselves from the love of this world, that so their soul may live unto Thee, which was dead while it lived in pleasures; in death-bringing pleasures, Lord, for Thou, Lord, art the life-giving delight of the pure heart. Now then let Thy ministers work upon the earth,--not as upon the waters of infidelity, by preaching and speaking by miracles, and Sacraments, and mystic words; wherein ignorance, the mother of admiration, might be intent upon them, out of a reverence towards those secret signs. For such is the entrance unto the Faith for the sons of Adam forgetful of Thee, while they hide themselves from Thy face, and become a darksome deep. But--let Thy ministers work now as on the dry land, separated from the whirlpools of the great deep: and let them be a pattern unto the Faithful, by living before them, and stirring them up to imitation. For thus do men hear, so as not to hear only, but to do also. Seek the Lord, and your soul shall live, that the earth may bring forth the living soul. Be not conformed to the world. Contain yourselves from it: the soul lives by avoiding what it dies by affecting. Contain yourselves from the ungoverned wildness of pride, the sluggish voluptuousness of luxury, and the false name of knowledge: that so the wild beasts may be tamed, the cattle broken to the yoke, the serpents, harmless. For these be the motions of our mind under an allegory; that is to say, the haughtiness of pride, the delight of lust, and the poison of curiosity, are the motions of a dead soul; for the soul dies not so as to lose all motion; because it dies by forsaking the fountain of life, and so is taken up by this transitory world, and is conformed unto it. But Thy word, O God, is the fountain of life eternal; and passeth not away: wherefore this departure of the soul is restrained by Thy word, when it is said unto us, Be not conformed unto this world; that so the earth may in the fountain of life bring forth a living soul; that is, a soul made continent in Thy Word, by Thy Evangelists, by following the followers of Thy Christ. For this is after his kind; because a man is wont to imitate his friend. Be ye (saith he) as I am, for I also am as you are. Thus in this living soul shall there be good beasts, in meekness of action (for Thou hast commanded, Go on with thy business in meekness, so shalt thou be beloved by all men); and good cattle, which neither if they eat, shall they over-abound, nor, if they eat not, have any lack; and good serpents, not dangerous, to do hurt, but wise to take heed; and only making so much search into this temporal nature, as may suffice that eternity be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. For these creatures are obedient unto reason, when being restrained from deadly prevailing upon us, they live, and are good. For behold, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our affections have been restrained from the love of the world, by which we died through evil-living; and begun to be a living soul, through good living; and Thy word which Thou spokest by Thy apostle, is made good in us, Be not conformed to this world: there follows that also, which Thou presently subjoinedst, saying, But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind; not now after your kind, as though following your neighbour who went before you, nor as living after the example of some better man (for Thou saidst not, "Let man be made after his kind," but, Let us make man after our own image and similitude), that we might prove what Thy will is. For to this purpose said that dispenser of Thine (who begat children by the Gospel), that he might not for ever have them babes, whom he must be fain to feed with milk, and cherish as a nurse; be ye transformed (saith he) by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Wherefore Thou sayest not, "Let man be made," but Let us make man. Nor saidst Thou, "according to his kind"; but, after our image and likeness. For man being renewed in his mind, and beholding and understanding Thy truth, needs not man as his director, so as to follow after his kind; but by Thy direction proveth what is that good, that acceptable, and perfect will of Thine: yea, Thou teachest him, now made capable, to discern the Trinity of the Unity, and the Unity of the Trinity. Wherefore to that said in the plural, Let us make man, is yet subjoined in the singular, And God made man: and to that said in the plural, After our likeness, is subjoined in the singular, After the image of God. Thus is man renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him: and being made spiritual, he judgeth all things (all things which are to be judged), yet himself is judged of no man. But that he judgeth all things, this answers to his having dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over all cattle and wild beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. For this he doth by the understanding of his mind, whereby he perceiveth the things of the Spirit of God; whereas otherwise, man being placed in honour, had no understanding, and is compared unto the brute beasts, and is become like unto them. In Thy Church therefore, O our God, according to Thy grace which Thou hast bestowed upon it (for we are Thy workmanship created unto good works), not those only who are spiritually set over, but they also who spiritually are subject to those that are set over them,--for in this way didst Thou make man male and female, in Thy grace spiritual, where, according to the sex of body, there is neither male nor female, because neither Jew nor Grecian, neither bond nor free.--Spiritual persons (whether such as are set over, or such as obey); do judge spiritually; not of that spiritual knowledge which shines in the firmament (for they ought not to judge as to so supreme authority), nor may they judge of Thy Book itself, even though something there shineth not clearly; for we submit our understanding unto it, and hold for certain, that even what is closed to our sight, is yet rightly and truly spoken. For so man, though now spiritual and renewed in the knowledge of God after His image that created him, ought to be a doer of the law, not a judge. Neither doth he judge of that distinction of spiritual and carnal men, who are known unto Thine eyes, O our God, and have not as yet discovered themselves unto us by works, that by their fruits we might know them: but Thou, Lord, dost even now know them, and hast divided and called them in secret, or ever the firmament was made. Nor doth he, though spiritual, judge the unquiet people of this world; for what hath he to do, to judge them that are without, knowing not which of them shall hereafter come into the sweetness of Thy grace; and which continue in the perpetual bitterness of ungodliness? Man therefore, whom Thou hast made after Thine own image, received not dominion over the lights of heaven, nor over that hidden heaven itself, nor over the day and the night, which Thou calledst before the foundation of the heaven, nor over the gathering together of the waters, which is the sea; but He received dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and over all cattle, and over all the earth, and over all creeping things which creep upon the earth. For He judgeth and approveth what He findeth right, and He disalloweth what He findeth amiss, whether in the celebration of those Sacraments by which such are initiated, as Thy mercy searches out in many waters: or in that, in which that Fish is set forth, which, taken out of the deep, the devout earth feedeth upon: or in the expressions and signs of words, subject to the authority of Thy Book,--such signs, as proceed out of the mouth, and sound forth, flying as it were under the firmament, by interpreting, expounding, discoursing disputing, consecrating, or praying unto Thee, so that the people may answer, Amen. The vocal pronouncing of all which words, is occasioned by the deep of this world, and the blindness of the flesh, which cannot see thoughts; So that there is need to speak aloud into the ears; so that, although flying fowls be multiplied upon the earth, yet they derive their beginning from the waters. The spiritual man judgeth also by allowing of what is right, and disallowing what he finds amiss, in the works and lives of the faithful; their alms, as it were the earth bringing forth fruit, and of the living soul, living by the taming of the affections, in chastity, in fasting, in holy meditations; and of those things, which are perceived by the senses of the body. Upon all these is he now said to judge, wherein he hath also power of correction. But what is this, and what kind of mystery? Behold, Thou blessest mankind, O Lord, that they may increase and multiply, and replenish the earth; dost Thou not thereby give us a hint to understand something? why didst Thou not as well bless the light, which Thou calledst day; nor the firmament of heaven, nor the lights, nor the stars, nor the earth, nor the sea? I might say that Thou, O God, who created created us after Thine Image, I might say, that it had been Thy good pleasure to bestow this blessing peculiarly upon man; hadst Thou not in like manner blessed the fishes and the whales, that they should increase and multiply, and replenish the waters of the sea, and that the fowls should be multiplied upon the earth. I might say likewise, that this blessing pertained properly unto such creatures, as are bred of their own kind, had I found it given to the fruit-trees, and plants, and beasts of the earth. But now neither unto the herbs, nor the trees, nor the beasts, nor serpents is it said, Increase and multiply; notwithstanding all these as well as the fishes, fowls, or men, do by generation increase and continue their kind. What then shall I say, O Truth my Light? "that it was idly said, and without meaning?" Not so, O Father of piety, far be it from a minister of Thy word to say so. And if I understand not what Thou meanest by that phrase, let my betters, that is, those of more understanding than myself, make better use of it, according as Thou, my God, hast given to each man to understand. But let my confession also be pleasing in Thine eyes, wherein I confess unto Thee, that I believe, O Lord, that Thou spokest not so in vain; nor will I suppress, what this lesson suggests to me. For it is true, nor do I see what should hinder me from thus understanding the figurative sayings of Thy Bible. For I know a thing to be manifoldly signified by corporeal expressions, which is understood one way by the mind; and that understood many ways in the mind, which is signified one way by corporeal expression. Behold, the single love of God and our neighbour, by what manifold sacraments, and innumerable languages, and in each several language, in how innumerable modes of speaking, it is corporeally expressed. Thus do the offspring of the waters increase and multiply. Observe again, whosoever readest this; behold, what Scripture delivers, and the voice pronounces one only way, In the Beginning God created heaven and earth; is it not understood manifoldly, not through any deceit of error, but by various kinds of true senses? Thus do man's offspring increase and multiply. If therefore we conceive of the natures of the things themselves, not allegorically, but properly, then does the phrase increase and multiply, agree unto all things, that come of seed. But if we treat of the words as figuratively spoken (which I rather suppose to be the purpose of the Scripture, which doth not, surely, superfluously ascribe this benediction to the offspring of aquatic animals and man only); then do we find "multitude" to belong to creatures spiritual as well as corporeal, as in heaven and earth, and to righteous and unrighteous, as in light and darkness; and to holy authors who have been the ministers of the Law unto us, as in the firmament which is settled betwixt the waters and the waters; and to the society of people yet in the bitterness of infidelity, as in the sea; and to the zeal of holy souls, as in the dry land; and to works of mercy belonging to this present life, as in the herbs bearing seed, and in trees bearing fruit; and to spiritual gifts set forth for edification, as in the lights of heaven; and to affections formed unto temperance, as in the living soul. In all these instances we meet with multitudes, abundance, and increase; but what shall in such wise increase and multiply that one thing may be expressed many ways, and one expression understood many ways; we find not, except in signs corporeally expressed, and in things mentally conceived. By signs corporeally pronounced we understand the generations of the waters, necessarily occasioned by the depth of the flesh; by things mentally conceived, human generations, on account of the fruitfulness of reason. And for this end do we believe Thee, Lord, to have said to these kinds, Increase and multiply. For in this blessing, I conceive Thee to have granted us a power and a faculty, both to express several ways what we understand but one; and to understand several ways, what we read to be obscurely delivered but in one. Thus are the waters of the sea replenished, which are not moved but by several significations: thus with human increase is the earth also replenished, whose dryness appeareth in its longing, and reason ruleth over it. I would also say, O Lord my God, what the following Scripture minds me of; yea, I will say, and not fear. For I will say the truth, Thyself inspiring me with what Thou willedst me to deliver out of those words. But by no other inspiration than Thine, do I believe myself to speak truth, seeing Thou art the Truth, and every man a liar. He therefore that speaketh a lie, speaketh of his own; that therefore I may speak truth, I will speak of Thine. Behold, Thou hast given unto us for food every herb bearing seed which is upon all the earth; and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed. And not to us alone, but also to all the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the earth, and to all creeping things; but unto the fishes and to the great whales, hast Thou not given them. Now we said that by these fruits of the earth were signified, and figured in an allegory, the works of mercy which are provided for the necessities of this life out of the fruitful earth. Such an earth was the devout Onesiphorus, unto whose house Thou gavest mercy, because he often refreshed Thy Paul, and was not ashamed of his chain. Thus did also the brethren, and such fruit did they bear, who out of Macedonia supplied what was lacking to him. But how grieved he for some trees, which did not afford him the fruit due unto him, where he saith, At my first answer no man stood by me, but all men forsook me. I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. For these fruits are due to such as minister the spiritual doctrine unto us out of their understanding of the divine mysteries; and they are due to them, as men; yea and due to them also, as the living soul, which giveth itself as an example, in all continency; and due unto them also, as flying creatures, for their blessings which are multiplied upon the earth, because their sound went out into all lands. But they are fed by these fruits, that are delighted with them; nor are they delighted with them, whose God is their belly. For neither in them that yield them, are the things yielded the fruit, but with what mind they yield them. He therefore that served God, and not his own belly, I plainly see why he rejoiced; I see it, and I rejoice with him. For he had received from the Philippians, what they had sent by Epaphroditus unto him: and yet I perceive why he rejoiced. For whereat he rejoiced upon that he fed; for, speaking in truth, I rejoiced (saith he) greatly in the Lord, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again, wherein ye were also careful, but it had become wearisome unto you. These Philippians then had now dried up, with a long weariness, and withered as it were as to bearing this fruit of a good work; and he rejoiceth for them, that they flourished again, not for himself, that they supplied his wants. Therefore subjoins he, not that I speak in respect of want, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full, and to be hungry; both to abound, and to suffer need. I can do all things through Him which strengtheneth me. Whereat then rejoicest thou, O great Paul? whereat rejoicest thou? whereon feedest thou, O man, renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created thee, thou living soul, of so much continency, thou tongue like flying fowls, speaking mysteries? (for to such creatures, is this food due;) what is it that feeds thee? joy. Hear we what follows: notwithstanding, ye have well done, that ye did communicate with my affliction. Hereat he rejoiceth, hereon feedeth; because they had well done, not because his strait was eased, who saith unto Thee, Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; for that he knew to abound, and to suffer want, in Thee Who strengthenest him. For ye Philippians also know (saith he), that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no Church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity. Unto these good works, he now rejoiceth that they are returned; and is gladdened that they flourished again, as when a fruitful field resumes its green. Was it for his own necessities, because he said, Ye sent unto my necessity? Rejoiceth he for that? Verily not for that. But how know we this? Because himself says immediately, not because I desire a gift, but I desire fruit. I have learned of Thee, my God, to distinguish betwixt a gift, and fruit. A gift, is the thing itself which he gives, that imparts these necessaries unto us; as money, meat, drink, clothing, shelter, help: but the fruit, is the good and right will of the giver. For the Good Master said not only, He that receiveth a prophet, but added, in the name of a prophet: nor did He only say, He that receiveth a righteous man, but added, in the name of a righteous man. So verily shall the one receive the reward of a prophet, the other, the reward of a righteous man: nor saith He only, He that shall give to drink a cup of cold water to one of my little ones; but added, in the name of a disciple: and so concludeth, Verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward. The gift is, to receive a prophet, to receive a righteous man, to give a cup of cold water to a disciple: but the fruit, to do this in the name of a prophet, in the name of a righteous man, in the name of a disciple. With fruit was Elijah fed by the widow that knew she fed a man of God, and therefore fed him: but by the raven was he fed with a gift. Nor was the inner man of Elijah so fed, but the outer only; which might also for want of that food have perished. I will then speak what is true in Thy sight, O Lord, that when carnal men and infidels (for the gaining and initiating whom, the initiatory Sacraments and the mighty workings of miracles are necessary, which we suppose to be signified by the name of fishes and whales) undertake the bodily refreshment, or otherwise succour Thy servant with something useful for this present life; whereas they be ignorant, why this is to be done, and to what end; neither do they feed these, nor are these fed by them; because neither do the one do it out of an holy and right intent; nor do the other rejoice at their gifts, whose fruit they as yet behold not. For upon that is the mind fed, of which it is glad. And therefore do not the fishes and whales feed upon such meats, as the earth brings not forth until after it was separated and divided from the bitterness of the waves of the sea. And Thou, O God, sawest every thing that Thou hadst made, and, behold, it was very good. Yea we also see the same, and behold, all things are very good. Of the several kinds of Thy works, when Thou hadst said "let them be," and they were, Thou sawest each that it was good. Seven times have I counted it to be written, that Thou sawest that that which Thou madest was good: and this is the eighth, that Thou sawest every thing that Thou hadst made, and, behold, it was not only good, but also very good, as being now altogether. For severally, they were only good; but altogether, both good, and very good. All beautiful bodies express the same; by reason that a body consisting of members all beautiful, is far more beautiful than the same members by themselves are, by whose well-ordered blending the whole is perfected; notwithstanding that the members severally be also beautiful. And I looked narrowly to find, whether seven, or eight times Thou sawest that Thy works were good, when they pleased Thee; but in Thy seeing I found no times, whereby I might understand that Thou sawest so often, what Thou madest. And I said, "Lord, is not this Thy Scripture true, since Thou art true, and being Truth, hast set it forth? why then dost Thou say unto me, 'that in Thy seeing there be no times'; whereas this Thy Scripture tells me, that what Thou madest each day, Thou sawest that it was good: and when I counted them, I found how often." Unto this Thou answerest me, for Thou art my God, and with a strong voice tellest Thy servant in his inner ear, breaking through my deafness and crying, "O man, that which My Scripture saith, I say: and yet doth that speak in time; but time has no relation to My Word; because My Word exists in equal eternity with Myself. So the things which ye see through My Spirit, I see; like as what ye speak by My Spirit, I speak. And so when ye see those things in time, I see them not in time; as when ye speak in time, I speak them not in time." And I heard, O Lord my God, and drank up a drop of sweetness out of Thy truth, and understood, that certain men there be who mislike Thy works; and say, that many of them Thou madest, compelled by necessity; such as the fabric of the heavens, and harmony of the stars; and that Thou madest them not of what was Thine, but that they were otherwhere and from other sources created, for Thee to bring together and compact and combine, when out of Thy conquered enemies Thou raisedst up the walls of the universe; that they, bound down by the structure, might not again be able to rebel against Thee. For other things, they say Thou neither madest them, nor even compactedst them, such as all flesh and all very minute creatures, and whatsoever hath its root in the earth; but that a mind at enmity with Thee, and another nature not created by Thee, and contrary unto Thee, did, in these lower stages of the world, beget and frame these things. Frenzied are they who say thus, because they see not Thy works by Thy Spirit, nor recognise Thee in them. But they who by Thy Spirit see these things, Thou seest in them. Therefore when they see that these things are good, Thou seest that they are good; and whatsoever things for Thy sake please, Thou pleasest in them, and what through Thy Spirit please us, they please Thee in us. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man, which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no one, but the Spirit of God. Now we (saith he) have received, not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. And I am admonished, "Truly the things of God knoweth no one, but the Spirit of God: how then do we also know, what things are given us of God?" Answer is made me; "because the things which we know by His Spirit, even these no one knoweth, but the Spirit of God. For as it is rightly said unto those that were to speak by the Spirit of God, it is not ye that speak: so is it rightly said to them that know through the Spirit of God, 'It is not ye that know.' And no less then is it rightly said to those that see through the Spirit of God, 'It is not ye that see'; so whatsoever through the Spirit of God they see to be good, it is not they, but God that sees that it is good." It is one thing then for a man to think that to be ill which is good, as the forenamed do; another, that that which is good, a man should see that it is good (as Thy creatures be pleasing unto many, because they be good, whom yet Thou pleasest not in them, when they prefer to enjoy them, to Thee); and another, that when a man sees a thing that it is good, God should in him see that it is good, so, namely, that He should be loved in that which He made, Who cannot be loved, but by the Holy Ghost which He hath given. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Which is given unto us: by Whom we see that whatsoever in any degree is, is good. For from Him it is, who Himself Is not in degree, but what He Is, Is. Thanks to Thee, O Lord. We behold the heaven and earth, whether the corporeal part, superior and inferior, or the spiritual and corporeal creature; and in the adorning of these parts, whereof the universal pile of the world, or rather the universal creation, doth consist, we see light made, and divided from the darkness. We see the firmament of heaven, whether that primary body of the world, between the spiritual upper waters and the inferior corporeal waters, or (since this also is called heaven) this space of air through which wander the fowls of heaven, betwixt those waters which are in vapours borne above them, and in clear nights distill down in dew; and those heavier waters which flow along the earth. We behold a face of waters gathered together in the fields of the sea; and the dry land both void, and formed so as to be visible and harmonized, yea and the matter of herbs and trees. We behold the lights shining from above, the sun to suffice for the day, the moon and the stars to cheer the night; and that by all these, times should be marked and signified. We behold on all sides a moist element, replenished with fishes, beasts, and birds; because the grossness of the air, which bears up the flights of birds, thickeneth itself by the exhalation of the waters. We behold the face of the earth decked out with earthly creatures, and man, created after Thy image and likeness, even through that Thy very image and likeness (that is the power of reason and understanding), set over all irrational creatures. And as in his soul there is one power which has dominion by directing, another made subject, that it might obey; so was there for the man, corporeally also, made a woman, who in the mind of her reasonable understanding should have a parity of nature, but in the sex of her body, should be in like manner subject to the sex of her husband, as the appetite of doing is fain to conceive the skill of right-doing from the reason of the mind. These things we behold, and they are severally good, and altogether very good. Let Thy works praise Thee, that we may love Thee; and let us love Thee, that Thy works may praise Thee, which from time have beginning and ending, rising and setting, growth and decay, form and privation. They have then their succession of morning and evening, part secretly, part apparently; for they were made of nothing, by Thee, not of Thee; not of any matter not Thine, or that was before, but of matter concreated (that is, at the same time created by Thee), because to its state without form, Thou without any interval of time didst give form. For seeing the matter of heaven and earth is one thing, and the form another, Thou madest the matter of merely nothing, but the form of the world out of the matter without form: yet both together, so that the form should follow the matter, without any interval of delay. We have also examined what Thou willedst to be shadowed forth, whether by the creation, or the relation of things in such an order. And we have seen, that things singly are good, and together very good, in Thy Word, in Thy Only-Begotten, both heaven and earth, the Head and the body of the Church, in Thy predestination before all times, without morning and evening. But when Thou begannest to execute in time the things predestinated, to the end Thou mightest reveal hidden things, and rectify our disorders; for our sins hung over us, and we had sunk into the dark deep; and Thy good Spirit was borne over us, to help us in due season; and Thou didst justify the ungodly, and dividest them from the wicked; and Thou madest the firmament of authority of Thy Book between those placed above, who were to be docile unto Thee, and those under, who were to be subject to them: and Thou gatheredst together the society of unbelievers into one conspiracy, that the zeal of the faithful might appear, and they might bring forth works of mercy, even distributing to the poor their earthly riches, to obtain heavenly. And after this didst Thou kindle certain lights in the firmament, Thy Holy ones, having the word of life; and shining with an eminent authority set on high through spiritual gifts; after that again, for the initiation of the unbelieving Gentiles, didst Thou out of corporeal matter produce the Sacraments, and visible miracles, and forms of words according to the firmament of Thy Book, by which the faithful should be blessed and multiplied. Next didst Thou form the living soul of the faithful, through affections well ordered by the vigour of continency: and after that, the mind subjected to Thee alone and needing to imitate no human authority, hast Thou renewed after Thy image and likeness; and didst subject its rational actions to the excellency of the understanding, as the woman to the man; and to all Offices of Thy Ministry, necessary for the perfecting of the faithful in this life, Thou willedst, that for their temporal uses, good things, fruitful to themselves in time to come, be given by the same faithful. All these we see, and they are very good, because Thou seest them in us, Who hast given unto us Thy Spirit, by which we might see them, and in them love Thee. O Lord God, give peace unto us: (for Thou hast given us all things;) the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which hath no evening. For all this most goodly array of things very good, having finished their courses, is to pass away, for in them there was morning and evening. But the seventh day hath no evening, nor hath it setting; because Thou hast sanctified it to an everlasting continuance; that that which Thou didst after Thy works which were very good, resting the seventh day, although Thou madest them in unbroken rest, that may the voice of Thy Book announce beforehand unto us, that we also after our works (therefore very good, because Thou hast given them us), shall rest in Thee also in the Sabbath of eternal life. For then shalt Thou rest in us, as now Thou workest in us; and so shall that be Thy rest through us, as these are Thy works through us. But Thou, Lord, ever workest, and art ever at rest. Nor dost Thou see in time, nor art moved in time, nor restest in a time; and yet Thou makest things seen in time, yea the times themselves, and the rest which results from time. We therefore see these things which Thou madest, because they are: but they are, because Thou seest them. And we see without, that they are, and within, that they are good, but Thou sawest them there, when made, where Thou sawest them, yet to be made. And we were at a later time moved to do well, after our hearts had conceived of Thy Spirit; but in the former time we were moved to do evil, forsaking Thee; but Thou, the One, the Good God, didst never cease doing good. And we also have some good works, of Thy gift, but not eternal; after them we trust to rest in Thy great hallowing. But Thou, being the Good which needeth no good, art ever at rest, because Thy rest is Thou Thyself. And what man can teach man to understand this? or what Angel, an Angel? or what Angel, a man? Let it be asked of Thee, sought in Thee, knocked for at Thee; so, so shall it be received, so shall it be found, so shall it be opened. Amen. GRATIAS TIBI DOMINE 
21751	----	The Middy and the Moors, an Algerine Tale of Piracy and Slavery, by R.M. Ballantyne. ________________________________________________________________________ Robert Michael Ballantyne was born in 1825 and died in 1894. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, and in 1841 he became a clerk with the Hudson Bay Company, working at the Red River Settlement in Northen Canada until 1847, arriving back in Edinburgh in 1848. The letters he had written home were very amusing in their description of backwoods life, and his family publishing connections suggested that he should construct a book based on these letters. Three of his most enduring books were written over the next decade, "The Young Fur Traders", "Ungava", "The Hudson Bay Company", and were based on his experiences with the H.B.C. In this period he also wrote "The Coral island" and "Martin Rattler", both of these taking place in places never visited by Ballantyne. Having been chided for small mistakes he made in these books, he resolved always to visit the places he wrote about. With these books he became known as a great master of literature intended for teenagers. He researched the Cornish Mines, the London Fire Brigade, the Postal Service, the Railways, the laying down of submarine telegraph cables, the construction of light-houses, the light-ship service, the life-boat service, South Africa, Norway, the North Sea fishing fleet, ballooning, deep-sea diving, Algiers, and many more, experiencing the lives of the men and women in these settings by living with them for weeks and months at a time, and he lived as they lived. He was a very true-to-life author, depicting the often squalid scenes he encountered with great care and attention to detail. His young readers looked forward eagerly to his next books, and through the 1860s and 1870s there was a flow of books from his pen, sometimes four in a year, all very good reading. The rate of production diminished in the last ten or fifteen years of his life, but the quality never failed. He published over ninety books under his own name, and a few books for very young children under the pseudonym "Comus". For today's taste his books are perhaps a little too religious, and what we would nowadays call "pi". In part that was the way people wrote in those days, but more important was the fact that in his days at the Red River Settlement, in the wilds of Canada, he had been a little dissolute, and he did not want his young readers to be unmindful of how they ought to behave, as he felt he had been. Some of his books were quite short, little over 100 pages. These books formed a series intended for the children of poorer parents, having less pocket-money. These books are particularly well-written and researched, because he wanted that readership to get the very best possible for their money. They were published as six series, three books in each series. One of these series is "On the Coast", which includes "Saved by the Lifeboat". Re-created as an e-Text by Nick Hodson, July 2003. ________________________________________________________________________ THE MIDDY AND THE MOORS, AN ALGERINE TALE OF PIRACY AND SLAVERY, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE. CHAPTER ONE. AN ALGERINE STORY. THE HERO IS BLOWN AWAY, CAPTURED, CRUSHED, COMFORTED, AND ASTONISHED. One beautiful summer night, about the beginning of the present century, a young naval officer entered the public drawing-room of a hotel at Nice, and glanced round as if in search of some one. Many people were assembled there--some in robust, others in delicate, health, many in that condition which rendered it doubtful to which class they belonged, but all engaged in the quiet buzz of conversation which, in such a place, is apt to set in after dinner. The young Englishman, for such he evidently was, soon observed an elderly lady beckoning to him at the other end of the _salon_, and was quickly seated between her and a fragile girl whose hand he gently took hold of. "Mother," he said, to the elderly lady, "I'm going to have a row on the Mediterranean. The night is splendid, the air balmy, the stars gorgeous." "Now, George," interrupted the girl, with a little smile, "don't be flowery. We know all about that." "Too bad," returned the youth; "I never rise to poetry in your presence, Minnie, without being snubbed. But you cannot cure me. Romance is too deeply ingrained in my soul. Poetry flows from me like--like anything! I am a midshipman in the British Navy, a position which affords scope for the wildest enthusiasm, and--and--I'll astonish you yet, see if I don't." "I am sure you will, dear boy," said his mother; and she believed that he would! "Of course you will," added his sister; and she at least hoped that he would. To say truth, there was nothing about the youth--as regards appearance or character--which rendered either the assurance or the hope unwarrantable. He was not tall, but he was strong and active. He was not exactly handsome, but he was possessed of a genial, hearty disposition, a playful spirit, and an earnest soul; also a modestly reckless nature which was quite captivating. "You won't be anxious about me, mother, if I don't return till pretty late," he said, rising. "I want a good long, refreshing pull, but I'll be back in time to say good-night to you, Minnie, before you go to sleep." "Your leave expires on Thursday, mind," said his sister; "we cannot spare you long." "I shall be back in good time, trust me. _Au revoir_," he said, with a pleasant nod, as he left the room. And they did trust him; for our midshipman, George Foster, was trustworthy; but those "circumstances" over which people have "no control" are troublesome derangers of the affairs of man. That was the last the mother and sister saw of George for the space of nearly two years! Taking his way to the pebbly shore, young Foster hired a small boat, or punt, from a man who knew him well, declined the owner's services, pushed off, seized the oars, and rowed swiftly out to sea. It was, as he had said, a splendid night. The stars bespangled the sky like diamond-dust. The water was as clear as a mirror, and the lights of Nice seemed to shoot far down into its depths. The hum of the city came off with ever-deepening softness as the distance from the shore increased. The occasional sound of oars was heard not far off, though boats and rowers were invisible, for there was no moon, and the night was dark notwithstanding the starlight. There was no fear, however, of the young sailor losing himself while the city lights formed such a glorious beacon astern. After pulling steadily for an hour or more he rested on his oars, gazed up at the bright heavens, and then at the land lights, which by that time resembled a twinkling line on the horizon. "Must 'bout ship now," he muttered. "Won't do to keep Minnie waiting." As he rowed leisurely landward a sudden gust of wind from the shore shivered the liquid mirror into fragments. It was the advance-guard of a squall which in a few minutes rushed down from the mountains of the Riviera and swept out upon the darkening sea. Young Foster, as we have said, was strong. He was noted among his fellows as a splendid oarsman. The squall, therefore, did not disconcert him, though it checked his speed greatly. After one or two lulls the wind increased to a gale, and in half an hour the youth found, with some anxiety, that he was making no headway against it. The shore at that point was so much of a straight line as to render the hope of being able to slant-in a faint one. As it was better, however, to attempt that than to row straight in the teeth of the gale, he diverged towards a point a little to the eastward of the port of Nice, and succeeded in making better way through the water, though he made no perceptible approach to land. "Pooh! It's only a squall--be over in a minute," said the middy, by way of encouraging himself, as he glanced over his shoulder at the flickering lights, which were now barely visible. He was wrong. The gale increased. Next time he glanced over his shoulder the lights were gone. Dark clouds were gathering up from the northward, and a short jabble of sea was rising which occasionally sent a spurt of spray inboard. Feeling now that his only chance of regaining the shore lay in a strong, steady, persevering pull straight towards it, he once more turned the bow of the little boat into the wind's eye, and gave way with a will. But what could human muscle and human will, however powerful, do against a rampant nor'wester? Very soon our hero was forced to rest upon his oars from sheer exhaustion, while his boat drifted slowly out to sea. Then the thought of his mother and Minnie flashed upon him, and, with a sudden gush, as it were, of renewed strength he resumed his efforts, and strained his powers to the uttermost--but all in vain. Something akin to despair now seized on him, for the alternative was to drift out into the open sea, where no friendly island lay between him and the shores of Africa. The necessity for active exertion, however, gave him no time either to rest or think. As the distance from land increased the seas rose higher, and broke so frequently over the boat that it began to fill. To stop rowing--at least, to the extent of keeping the bow to the wind--would have risked turning broadside-on, and being overturned or swamped; there was nothing, therefore, to be done in the circumstances except to keep the boat's head to the wind and drift. In the midst of the rushing gale and surging seas he sat there, every gleam of hope almost extinguished, when there came to his mind a brief passage from the Bible--"Hope thou in God." Many a time had his mother tried, in days gone by, to impress that text on his mind, but apparently without success. Now it arose before him like a beacon-star. At the same time he thought of the possibility that he might be seen and picked up by a passing vessel. He could not but feel, however, that the chances of this latter event occurring were small indeed, for a passing ship or boat would not only be going at great speed, but would be very unlikely to see his cockle-shell in the darkness, or to hear his cry in the roaring gale. Still he grasped that hope as the drowning man is said to clutch at a straw. And the hope was quickly fulfilled, for scarcely had another half-hour elapsed when he observed a sail--the high-peaked sail peculiar to some Mediterranean craft--rise, ghost-like, out of the driving foam and spray. The vessel was making almost straight for him; he knew that it would pass before there could be time to heave a rope. At the risk of being run down he rowed the punt in front of it, as if courting destruction, but at the same time guided his little craft so skilfully that it passed close to leeward, where the vessel's bulwarks were dipping into the water. Our middy's aim was so exact that the vessel only grazed the boat as it flew past. In that moment young Foster sprang with the agility of a cat, capsized the boat with the impulse, caught the bulwarks and rigging of the vessel, and in another moment stood panting on her deck. "Hallo! Neptune, what do _you_ want here?" cried a gruff voice at Foster's elbows. At the same time a powerful hand grasped his throat, and a lantern was thrust in his face. "Let go, and I will tell you," gasped the youth, restraining his indignation at such unnecessary violence. The grasp tightened, however, instead of relaxing. "Speak out, baby-face," roared the voice, referring, in the latter expression, no doubt, to our hero's juvenility. Instead of speaking out, George Foster hit out, and the voice with the lantern went down into the lee scuppers! Then, the glare of the lantern being removed from his eyes, George saw, by the light of the binnacle lamp, that his adversary, a savage-looking Turk--at least in dress--was gathering himself up for a rush, and that the steersman, a huge negro, was grinning from ear to ear. "Go below!" said a deep stern voice in the Arabic tongue. The effect of this order was to cause the Turk with the broken lantern to change his mind, and retire with humility, while it solemnised the negro steersman's face almost miraculously. The speaker was the captain of the vessel; a man of grave demeanour, herculean mould, and clothed in picturesque Eastern costume. Turning with quiet politeness to Foster, he asked him in broken French how he had come on board. The youth explained in French quite as much broken as that of his interrogator. "D'you speak English?" he added. To this the captain replied in English, still more shattered than his French, that he could, "a ver' leetil," but that as he, (the youth), was a prisoner, there would be no occasion for speech at all, the proper attitude of a prisoner being that of absolute silence and obedience to orders. "A prisoner!" ejaculated Foster, on recovering from the first shock of surprise. "Do you know that I am an officer in the Navy of his Majesty the King of Great Britain?" A gleam of satisfaction lighted up the swarthy features of the Turk for a moment as he replied-- "Ver goot. Ransum all de more greater." As he spoke, a call from the look-out at the bow of the vessel induced him to hurry forward. At the same instant a slight hissing sound caused Foster to turn to the steersman, whose black face was alive with intelligence, while an indescribable hitch up of his chin seemed to beckon the youth to approach with caution. Foster perceived at once that the man wished his communication, whatever it was, to be unobserved by any one; he therefore moved towards him as if merely to glance at the compass. "Massa," said the negro, without looking at Foster or changing a muscle of his now stolid visage, "you's in a dreffle fix. Dis yer am a pirit. But _I's_ not a pirit, bress you! I's wuss nor dat: I's a awrful hyperkrite! an' I wants to give you good adwice. Wotiver you doos, _don't resist_. You'll on'y git whacked if you do." "Thank you, Sambo. But what if I do resist in spite of being whacked?" "Den you bery soon change your mind, das all. Moreober, my name's not Sambo. It am Peter de Great." As he said so Peter the Great drew himself up to his full height, and he drew himself up to six feet four when he did that! The captain coming aft at that moment put an abrupt end to the conversation. Two powerful Moorish seamen accompanied him. These, without uttering a word, seized Foster by the arms. In the strength of his indignation our middy was on the point of commencing a tremendous struggle, when Peter the Great's "_don't resist_," and the emphasis with which it had been spoken, came to mind, and he suddenly gave in. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was led down into a small, dimly-lighted cabin, where, being permitted to sit down on a locker, he was left to his own reflections. These were by no means agreeable, as may well be supposed, for he now knew that he had fallen into the hands of those pests, the Algerine pirates, who at that time infested the Mediterranean. With the thoughtlessness of youth Foster had never troubled his mind much about the piratical city of Algiers. Of course he knew that it was a stronghold on the northern coast of Africa, inhabited by Moorish rascals, who, taking advantage of their position, issued from their port and pounced upon the merchantmen that entered the Mediterranean, confiscating their cargoes and enslaving their crews and passengers, or holding them to ransom. He also knew, or had heard, that some of the great maritime powers paid subsidies to the Dey of Algiers to allow the vessels of their respective nations to come and go unmolested, but he could scarcely credit the latter fact. It seemed to him, as indeed it was, preposterous. "For," said he to the brother middy who had given him the information, "would not the nations whom the Dey had the impudence to tax join their fleets together, pay him an afternoon visit one fine day, and blow him and his Moors and Turks and city into a heap of rubbish?" What the middy replied we have now no means of knowing, but certain it is that his information was correct, for some of the principal nations did, at that time, submit to the degradation of this tax, and they did _not_ unite their fleets for the extinction of the pirates. Poor George Foster now began to find out that the terrible truths which he had refused to believe were indeed great realities, and had now begun to affect himself. He experienced an awful sinking of the heart when it occurred to him that no one would ever know anything about his fate, for the little boat would be sure to be found bottom up, sooner or later, and it would of course be assumed that he had been drowned. Shall it be said that the young midshipman was weak, or wanting in courage, because he bowed his head and wept when the full force of his condition came home to him? Nay, verily, for there was far more of grief for the prolonged agony that was in store for his mother and sister than for the fate that awaited himself. He prayed as well as wept. "God help me--and them!" he exclaimed aloud. The prayer was brief but sincere,--perhaps the more sincere because so brief. At all events it was that acknowledgment of utter helplessness which secures the help of the Almighty Arm. Growing weary at last, he stretched himself on the locker, and, with the facility of robust health, fell into a sound sleep. Youth, strength, and health are not easily incommoded by wet garments! Besides, the weather was unusually warm at the time. How long he slept he could not tell, but the sun was high when he awoke, and his clothes were quite dry. Other signs there were that he had slept long, such as the steadiness of the breeze and the more regular motion of the vessel, which showed that the gale was over and the sea going down. There was also a powerful sensation in what he styled his "bread-basket"--though it might, with equal truth, have been called his meat-and-vegetable basket--which told him more eloquently than anything else of the lapse of time. Rising from his hard couch, and endeavouring to relieve the aching of the bound arms by change of position, he observed that the cabin hatch was open, and that nothing prevented his going on deck, if so disposed. Accordingly, he ascended, though with some difficulty, owing to his not having been trained to climb a ladder in a rough sea without the use of his hands. A Moor, he observed, had taken his friend Peter the Great's place at the tiller, and the captain stood near the stern observing a passing vessel. A stiffish but steady breeze carried them swiftly over the waves, which, we might say, laughingly reflected the bright sunshine and the deep-blue sky. Several vessels of different rigs and nationalities were sailing in various directions, both near and far away. Going straight to the captain with an air of good-humoured _sang froid_ which was peculiar to him, Foster said-- "Captain, don't you think I've had these bits of rope-yarn on my wrists long enough? I'm not used, you see, to walking the deck without the use of my hands; and a heavy lurch, as like as not, would send me slap into the lee scuppers--sailor though I be. Besides, I won't jump overboard without leave, you may rely upon that. Neither will I attempt, single-handed, to fight your whole crew, so you needn't be afraid." The stern Moor evidently understood part of this speech, and he was so tickled with the last remark that his habitual gravity gave place to the faintest flicker of a smile, while a twinkle gleamed for a moment in his eye. Only for a moment, however. Pointing over the side, he bade his prisoner "look." Foster looked, and beheld in the far distance a three-masted vessel that seemed to bear a strong resemblance to a British man-of-war. "You promise," said the captain, "not shout or ro-ar." "I promise," answered our middy, "neither to `Shout' nor `ro-ar'--for my doing either, even though like a bull of Bashan, would be of no earthly use at this distance." "Inglesemans," said the captain, "niver brok the word!" After paying this scarcely-deserved compliment he gave an order to a sailor who was coiling up ropes near him, and the man at once proceeded to untie Foster's bonds. "My good fellow," said the midshipman, observing that his liberator was the man whom he had knocked down the night before, "I'm sorry I had to floor you, but it was impossible to help it, you know. An Englishman is like a bull-dog. He won't suffer himself to be seized by the throat and choked if he can help it!" The Turk, who was evidently a renegade Briton, made no reply whatever to this address; but, after casting the lashings loose, returned to his former occupation. Foster proceeded to thank the captain for his courtesy and make him acquainted with the state of his appetite, but he was evidently not in a conversational frame of mind. Before a few words had been spoken the captain stopped him, and, pointing down the skylight, said, sharply-- "Brukfust! Go!" Both look and tone admonished our hero to obey. He descended to the cabin, therefore, without finishing his sentence, and there discovered that "brukfust" consisted of two sea-biscuits and a mug of water. To these dainties he applied himself with infinite relish, for he had always been Spartan-like as to the quality of his food, and hunger makes almost any kind of dish agreeable. While thus engaged he heard a hurried trampling of feet on deck, mingled with sharp orders from the captain. At first he thought the sounds might have reference to taking in a reef to prepare for a squall, but as the noise rather increased, his curiosity was roused, and he was about to return on deck when Peter the Great suddenly leaped into the cabin and took hurriedly from the opposite locker a brace of highly ornamented pistols and a scimitar. "What's wrong, Peter?" asked Foster, starting up. "We's a-goin' to fight!" groaned the negro. "Oh! I's a awrful hyperkrite! You stop where you am, massa, else you'll get whacked." Despite the risk of being "whacked," the youth would have followed the negro on deck, had not the hatch been slammed in his face and secured. Next moment he heard a volley of musketry on deck. It was instantly replied to by a distant volley, and immediately thereafter groans and curses showed that the firing had not been without effect. That the pirate had engaged a vessel of some sort was evident, and our hero, being naturally anxious to see if not to share in the fight, tried hard to get out of his prison, but without success. He was obliged, therefore, to sit there inactive and listen to the wild confusion overhead. At last there came a crash, followed by fiercer shouts and cries. He knew that the vessels had met and that the pirates were boarding. In a few minutes comparative silence ensued, broken only by occasional footsteps and the groaning of the wounded. CHAPTER TWO. AMONG PIRATES--ENSLAVED. When George Foster was again permitted to go on deck the sight that he beheld was not calculated to comfort him in his misfortunes. Several Moorish seamen were going about with bared legs and arms, swishing water on the decks and swabbing up the blood, with which they were bespattered. Most of these men were more or less wounded and bandaged, for the crew of the merchantman they had attacked had offered a desperate resistance, knowing well the fate in store for them if captured. The said merchantman, a large brig, sailed close alongside of the pirate vessel with a prize crew on board. Her own men, who were Russians, had been put in chains in the fore part of their vessel under the forecastle, so as to be out of sight. Her officers and several passengers had been removed to the pirate's quarter-deck. Among them were an old gentleman of dignified bearing, and an elderly lady who seemed to be supported, physically as well as mentally, by a tall, dark-complexioned, noble-looking girl, who was evidently the daughter of the old gentleman, though whether also the daughter of the elderly lady young Foster could not discover, there being little or no resemblance between them. The memory of his mother and sister strongly inclined the sympathetic midshipman to approach the party and offer words of consolation to the ladies. As he advanced to them for that purpose, a doubt as to which language he should use assailed him. French, he knew, was the language most likely to be understood, but a girl with such magnificent black eyes must certainly be Spanish! His knowledge of Spanish was about equal to that of an ill-trained parrot, but what of that? Was he not a Briton, whose chief characteristic is to go in for anything and stick at nothing? We do not venture to write down what he said, but when he had said it the blank look of the elderly lady and the peculiar look of the girl induced him to repeat the speech in his broken--his very much broken-- French, whereupon the old gentleman turned to him gravely and said-- "My vife is Engleesh, an' my datter is Danish--no, not joost--vell, she is 'af-an'-'af. Speak to dem in your nattif tong." "_You_ are not English, anyhow, old boy," thought Foster, as he turned with a mingled feeling of confusion and recklessness to the elderly lady. "Pardon me, madam," he said, "but from the appearance of--of--your--" He was interrupted at this point by the captain, who, flushed and blood-bespattered from the recent fight, came aft with a drawn scimitar in his hand, and sternly ordered the young midshipman to go forward. It was a humiliating position to be placed in; yet, despite the "stick-at-nothing" spirit, he felt constrained to obey, but did so, nevertheless, with an air of defiant ferocity which relieved his feelings to some extent. The said feelings were utterly ignored by the pirate captain, who did not condescend even to look at him after the first glance, but turned to the other captives and ordered them, in rather less stern tones, to "go below," an order which was promptly obeyed. On reaching the fore part of the vessel, Foster found several of the crew engaged in bandaging each other's wounds, and, from the clumsy way in which they went to work, it was very clear that they were much more accustomed to inflict wounds than to bandage them. Now it must be told that, although George Foster was not a surgeon, he had an elder brother who was, and with whom he had associated constantly while he was studying and practising for his degree; hence he became acquainted with many useful facts and modes of action connected with the healing art, of which the world at large is ignorant. Perceiving that one of the pirates was bungling a very simple operation, he stepped forward, and, with that assurance which results naturally from the combination of conscious power and "cheek," took up the dressing of the wound. At first the men seemed inclined to resent the interference, but when they saw that the "Christian" knew what he was about, and observed how well and swiftly he did the work, they stood aside and calmly submitted. Foster was interrupted, however, in the midst of his philanthropic work by Peter the Great, who came forward and touched him on the shoulder. "Sorry to 't'rupt you, sar, but you come wid me." "Mayn't I finish this operation first?" said Foster, looking up. "No, sar. My orders is prumptory." Our amateur surgeon dropped the bandage indignantly and followed the negro, who led him down into the hold, at the further and dark end of which he saw several wounded men lying, and beside them one or two whose motionless and straightened figures seemed to indicate that death had relieved them from earthly troubles. Amongst these men he spent the night and all next day, with only a couple of biscuits and a mug of water to sustain him. Next evening Peter the Great came down and bade him follow him to the other end of the hold. "Now, sar, you go in dere," said the negro, stopping and pointing to a small door in the bulkhead, inside of which was profound darkness. Foster hesitated and looked at his big conductor. "'Bey orders, sar!" said the negro, in a loud, stern voice of command. Then, stooping as if to open the little door, he added, in a low voice, "Don' be a fool, massa. _Submit_! Das de word, if you don' want a whackin'. It's a friend advises you. Dere's one oder prisoner dere, but he's wounded, an' won't hurt you. _Go_ in! won't you?" Peter the Great accompanied the last words with a violent thrust that sent the hapless middy headlong into the dark hole, but as he closed and fastened the door he muttered, "Don' mind my leetle ways, massa. You know I's bound to be a hyperkrite." Having thus relieved his conscience, Peter returned to the deck, leaving the poor prisoner to rise and, as a first consequence, to hit his head on the beams above him. The hole into which he had been thrust was truly a "black hole," though neither so hot nor so deadly as that of Calcutta. Extending his arms cautiously, he touched the side of the ship with his left hand; with the other he felt about for some time, but reached nothing until he had advanced a step, when his foot touched something on the floor, and he bent down to feel it, but shrank hastily back on touching what he perceived at once was a human form. "Pardon me, friend, whoever you are," he said quickly, "I did not mean to--I did not know--are you badly hurt?" But no reply came from the wounded man--not even a groan. A vague suspicion crossed Foster's mind. The man might be dying of his wounds. He spoke to him again in French and Spanish, but still got no reply! Then he listened intently for his breathing, but all was as silent as the tomb. With an irresistible impulse, yet instinctive shudder, he laid his hand on the man and passed it up until it reached the face. The silence was then explained. The face was growing cold and rigid in death. Drawing back hastily, the poor youth shouted to those outside to let them know what had occurred, but no one paid the least attention to him. He was about to renew his cries more loudly, when the thought occurred that perhaps they might attribute them to fear. This kept him quiet, and he made up his mind to endure in silence. If there had been a ray of light, however feeble, in the hold, he thought his condition would have been more bearable, for then he could have faced the lifeless clay and looked at it; but to know that it was there, within a foot of him, without his being able to see it, or to form any idea of what it was like, made the case terrible indeed. Of course he drew back from it as far as the little space allowed, and crushed himself up against the side of the vessel; but that did no good, for the idea occurred to his excited brain that it might possibly come to life again, rise up, and plunge against him. At times this thought took such possession of him that he threw up his arms to defend himself from attack, and uttered a half-suppressed cry of terror. At last nature asserted herself, and he slept, sitting on the floor and leaning partly against the vessel's side, partly against the bulkhead. But horrible dreams disturbed him. The corpse became visible, the eyes glared at him, the blood-stained face worked convulsively, and he awoke with a shriek, followed immediately by a sigh of relief on finding that it was all a dream. Then the horror came again, as he suddenly remembered that the dead man was still there, a terrible reality! At last pure exhaustion threw him into a dreamless and profound slumber. The plunging of the little craft as it flew southward before a stiff breeze did not disturb him, and he did not awake until some one rudely seized his arm late on the following day. Then, in the firm belief that his dream had come true at last, he uttered a tremendous yell and struggled to rise, but a powerful hand held him down, and a dark lantern revealed a coal-black face gazing at him. "Hallo! massa, hold on. I did tink you mus' be gone dead, for I holler'd in at you 'nuff to bust de kittle-drum ob your ear--if you hab one!" "Look there, Peter," said Foster, pointing to the recumbent figure, while he wiped the perspiration from his brow. "Ah! poor feller. He gone de way ob all flesh; but he hoed sooner dan dere was any occasion for--tanks to de captain." As he spoke he held the lantern over the dead man and revealed the face of a youth in Eastern garb, on whose head there was a terrible sword-cut. As they looked at the sad spectacle, and endeavoured to arrange the corpse, the negro explained that the poor fellow had been a Greek captive who to save his life had joined the pirates and become a Mussulman; but, on thinking over it, had returned to the Christian faith and refused to take part in the bloody work which they were required to do. It was his refusal to fight on the occasion of the recent attack on the merchantman that had induced the captain to cut him down. He had been put into the prison in the hold, and carelessly left there to bleed to death. "Now, you come along, massa," said the negro, taking up the lantern, "we's all goin' on shore." "On shore! Where have we got to?" "To Algiers, de city ob pirits; de hotbed ob wickedness; de home ob de Moors an' Turks an' Cabyles, and de cuss ob de whole wurld." Poor Foster's heart sank on hearing this, for he had heard of the hopeless slavery to which thousands of Christians had been consigned there in time past, and his recent experience of Moors had not tended to improve his opinion of them. A feeling of despair impelled him to seize the negro by the arm as he was about to ascend the ladder and stop him. "Peter," he said, "I think you have a friendly feeling towards me, because you've called me massa more than once, though you have no occasion to do so." "Dat's 'cause I'm fond o' you. I always was fond o' a nice smood young babby face, an' I tooked a fancy to you de moment I see you knock Joe Spinks into de lee scuppers." "So--he was an Englishman that I treated so badly, eh?" "Yes, massa, on'y you didn't treat him bad 'nuff. But you obsarve dat I on'y calls you massa w'en we's alone an' friendly like. W'en we's in public I calls you `sar' an' speak gruff an' shove you into black holes." "And why do you act so, Peter?" "'Cause, don't you see, I's a hyperkrite. I tole you dat before." "Well, I can guess what you mean. You don't want to appear too friendly? Just so. Well, now, I have got nobody to take my part here, so as you are a free man I wish you would keep an eye on me when we go ashore, and see where they send me, and speak a word for me when it is in your power. You see, they'll give me up for drowned at home and never find out that I'm here." "`A free man!'" repeated the negro, with an expansion of his mouth that is indescribable. "You tink I's a free man! but I's a slabe, same as yourself, on'y de diff'rence am dat dere's nobody to ransum _me_, so dey don't boder deir heads 'bout me s'long as I do my work. If I don't do my work I'm whacked; if I rebel and kick up a shindy I'm whacked wuss; if I tries to run away I'm whacked till I'm dead. Das all. But I's not free. No, no not at all! Hows'ever I's free-an'-easy, an' dat make de pirits fond o' me, which goes a long way, for dere's nuffin' like lub!" Foster heartily agreed with the latter sentiment and added-- "Well, now, Peter, I will say no more, for as you profess to be fond of me, and as I can truly say the same in regard to you, we may be sure that each will help the other if he gets the chance. But, tell me, are you really one of the crew of this pirate vessel?" "No, massa, only for dis viage. I b'longs to a old sinner called Hassan, what libs in de country, not far from de town. He not a bad feller, but he's obs'nit--oh! as obs'nit as a deaf an' dumb mule. If you want 'im to go one way just tell him to go toder way--an' you've got 'im." At that moment the captain's voice was heard shouting down the hatchway, demanding to know what detained the negro and his prisoners. He spoke in that jumble of languages in use at that time among the Mediterranean nations called Lingua Franca, for the negro did not understand Arabic. "Comin', captain, comin'," cried the negro, in his own peculiar English--which was, indeed, his mother tongue, for he had been born in the United States of America. "Now, den, sar," (to Foster), "w'en you goin' to move you stumps? Up wid you!" Peter emphasised his orders with a real kick, which expedited his prisoner's ascent, and, at the same time, justified the negro's claim to be a thorough-paced "hyperkrite!" "Where's the other one?" demanded the captain angrily. "Escaped, captain!" answered Peter. "How? You must have helped him," cried the captain, drawing his ever-ready sword and pointing it at the breast of the negro, who fell upon his knees, clasped his great hands, and rolled his eyes in an apparent agony of terror. "Don't, captain. I isn't wuth killin', an' w'en I's gone, who'd cook for you like me? De man escaped by jumpin' out ob his body. He's gone dead!" "Fool!" muttered the pirate, returning his sword to its sheath, "bind that prisoner, and have him and the others ready to go on shore directly." In a few seconds all the prisoners were ranged between the cabin hatchway and the mast. The hands of most of the men were loosely tied, to prevent trouble in case desperation should impel any of them to assault their captors, but the old Dane and the women were left unfettered. And now George Foster beheld, for the first time, the celebrated city, which was, at that period, the terror of the merchant vessels of all nations that had dealings with the Mediterranean shores. A small pier and breakwater enclosed a harbour which was crowded with boats and shipping. From this harbour the town rose abruptly on the side of a steep hill, and was surrounded by walls of great strength, which bristled with cannon. The houses were small and square-looking, and in the midst, here and there, clusters of date-palms told of the almost tropical character of the climate, while numerous domes, minarets, and crescents told of the Moor and the religion of Mohammed. But religion in its true sense had little footing in that piratical city, which subsisted on robbery and violence, while cruelty and injustice of the grossest kind were rampant. Whatever Islamism may have taught them, it did not produce men or women who held the golden rule to be a virtue, and certainly few practised it. Yet we would not be understood to mean that there were none who did so. As there were Christians in days of old, even in Caesar's household, so there existed men and women who were distinguished by the Christian graces, even in the Pirate City. Even there God had not left Himself without a witness. As the vessel slowly entered the harbour under a very light breeze, she was boarded by several stately officers in the picturesque costume-- turbans, red leathern boots, etcetera--peculiar to the country. After speaking a few minutes with the captain, one of the officers politely addressed the old Dane and his family through an interpreter; but as they spoke in subdued tones Foster could not make out what was said. Soon he was interrupted by a harsh order from an unknown Moor in an unknown tongue. An angry order invariably raised in our hero the spirit of rebellion. He flushed and turned a fierce look on the Moor, but that haughty and grave individual was accustomed to such looks. He merely repeated his order in a quiet voice, at the same time translating it by pointing to the boat alongside. Foster felt that discretion was the better part of valour, all the more that there stood at the Moor's back five or six powerful Arabs, who seemed quite ready to enforce his instructions. The poor middy glanced round to see if his only friend, Peter the Great, was visible, but he was not; so, with a flushed countenance at thus being compelled to put his pride in his pocket, he jumped into the boat, not caring very much whether he should break his neck by doing so with tied hands, or fall into the sea and end his life in a shark's maw! In a few minutes he was landed on the mole or pier, and made to join a band of captives, apparently from many nations, who already stood waiting there. Immediately afterwards the band was ordered to move on, and as they marched through the great gateway in the massive walls Foster felt as if he were entering the portals of Dante's Inferno, and had left all hope behind. But his feelings misled him. Hope, thank God! is not easily extinguished in the human breast. As he tramped along the narrow and winding streets, which seemed to him an absolute labyrinth, he began to take interest in the curious sights and sounds that greeted him on every side, and his mind was thus a little taken off himself. And there was indeed much there to interest a youth who had never seen Eastern manners or customs before. Narrow and steep though the streets were--in some cases so steep that they formed flights of what may be styled broad and shallow stairs--they were crowded with bronzed men in varied Eastern costume; Moors in fez and gay vest and red morocco slippers; Turks with turban and pipe; Cabyles from the mountains; Arabs from the plains; water-carriers with jar on shoulder; Jews in sombre robes; Jewesses with rich shawls and silk kerchiefs as headgear; donkeys with panniers that almost blocked the way; camels, and veiled women, and many other strange sights that our hero had up to that time only seen in picture-books. Presently the band of captives halted before a small door which was thickly studded with large nails. It seemed to form the only opening in a high dead wall, with the exception of two holes about a foot square, which served as windows. This was the Bagnio, or prison, in which the slaves were put each evening after the day's labour was over, there to feed and rest on the stone floor until daylight should call them forth again to renewed toil. It was a gloomy courtyard, with cells around it in which the captives slept. A fountain in the middle kept the floor damp and seemed to prove an attraction to various centipedes, scorpions, and other noisome creatures which were crawling about. Here the captives just arrived had their bonds removed, and were left to their own devices, each having received two rolls of black bread before the jailor retired and locked them up for the night. Taking possession of an empty cell, George Foster sat down on the stone floor and gazed at the wretched creatures around him, many of whom were devouring their black bread with ravenous haste. The poor youth could hardly believe his eyes, and it was some time before he could convince himself that the whole thing was not a dream but a terrible reality. CHAPTER THREE. THE BAGNIO--OUR HERO SEES SOMETHING OF MISERY, AND IS SOLD AS A SLAVE. There are some things in this world so unbelievable that even when we know them to be true we still remain in a state of semi-scepticism. When our unfortunate midshipman awoke next morning, raised himself on his elbow, and felt that all his bones and muscles were stiff and pained from lying on a stone floor, it was some time before he could make out where he was, or recall the events of the last few days. The first thing that revived his sluggish memory was the scuttling away, in anxious haste, of a scorpion that had sought and found comfortable quarters during the night under the lee of his right leg. Starting up, he crushed the reptile with his foot. "You will get used to that," said a quietly sarcastic voice with a slightly foreign accent, close to him. The speaker was a middle-aged man with grey hair, hollow cheeks, and deep sunken eyes. "They trouble us a little at first," he continued, "but, as I have said, we get used to them. It is long since I cared for scorpions." "Have you, then, been long here?" asked Foster. "Yes. Twelve years." "A prisoner?--a slave?" asked the midshipman anxiously. "A prisoner, yes. A slave, yes--a mummified man; a dead thing with life enough to work, but not yet quite a brute, more's the pity, for then I should not care! But here I have been for twelve years--long, long years! It has seemed to me an eternity." "It _is_ a long time to be a slave. God help you, poor man!" exclaimed Foster. "You will have to offer that prayer for yourself, young man," returned the other; "you will need help more than I. At first we are fools, but time makes us wise. It even teaches Englishmen that they are not unconquerable." The man spoke pointedly and in a harsh sarcastic tone which tended to check Foster's new-born compassion; nevertheless, he continued to address his fellow-sufferer in a sympathetic spirit. "You are not an Englishman, I think," he said, "though you speak our language well." "No, I am French, but my wife is English." "Your wife! Is she here also?" "Thank God--no," replied the Frenchman, with a sudden burst of seriousness which was evidently genuine. "She is in England, trying to make up the sum of my ransom. But she will never do it. She is poor. She has her daughter to provide for besides herself, and we have no friends. No, I have hoped for twelve years, and hope is now dead-- nearly dead." The overwhelming thoughts that this information raised in Foster's mind rendered him silent for a few minutes. The idea of the poor wife in England, toiling for twelve years almost hopelessly to ransom her husband, filled his susceptible heart with pity. Then the thought of his mother and Minnie--who were also poor--toiling for years to procure his ransom, filled him with oppressive dread. To throw the depressing subject off his mind, he asked how the Frenchman had guessed that he was an Englishman before he had heard him speak. "I know your countrymen," he answered, "by their bearing. Besides, you have been muttering in your sleep about `Mother and Minnie.' If the latter is, as I suppose, your sweetheart--your _fiancee_--the sooner you get her out of your mind the better, for you will never see her more." Again Foster felt repelled by the harsh cynicism of the man, yet at the same time he felt strangely attracted to him, a fact which he showed more by his tones than his words when he said-- "My friend, you are not yet enrolled among the infallible prophets. Whether I shall ever again see those whom I love depends upon the will of God. But I don't wonder that with your sad experience you should give way to despair. For myself, I will cling to the hope that God will deliver me, and I would advise you to do the same." "How many I have seen, who had the sanguine temperament, like yours, awakened and crushed," returned the Frenchman. "See, there is one of them," he added, pointing to a cell nearly opposite, in which a form was seen lying on its back, straight and motionless. "That young man was such another as you are when he first came here." "Is he dead?" asked the midshipman, with a look of pity. "Yes--he died in the night while you slept. It was attending to him in his last moments that kept me awake. He was nothing to me but a fellow-slave and sufferer, but I _was_ fond of him. He was hard to conquer, but they managed it at last, for they beat him to death." "Then they did _not_ conquer him," exclaimed Foster with a gush of indignant pity. "To beat a man to death is to murder, not to conquer. But you called him a young man. The corpse that lies there has thin grey hair and a wrinkled brow." "Nevertheless he was young--not more than twenty-seven--but six years of this life brought him to what you see. He might have lived longer, as I have, had he been submissive!" Before Foster could reply, the grating of a rusty key in the door caused a movement as well as one or two sighs and groans among the slaves, for the keepers had come to summon them to work. The Frenchman rose and followed the others with a hook of sullen indifference. Most of them were without fetters, but a few strong young men wore chains and fetters more or less heavy, and Foster judged from this circumstance, as well as their expressions, that these were rebellious subjects whom it was difficult to tame. Much to his surprise, the youth found that he was not called on to join his comrades in misfortune, but was left behind in solitude. While casting about in his mind as to what this could mean, he observed in a corner the two rolls of black bread which he had received the previous night, and which, not being hungry at the time, he had neglected. As a healthy appetite was by that time obtruding itself on his attention, he took hold of one and began to eat. It was not attractive, but, not being particular, he consumed it. He even took up the other and ate that also, after which he sighed and wished for more! As there was no more to be had, he went to the fountain in the court and washed his breakfast down with water. About two hours later the door was again opened, and a man in the uniform of a janissary entered. Fixing a keen glance on the young captive, he bade him in broken English rise and follow. By this time the lesson of submission had been sufficiently impressed on our hero to induce him to accord prompt obedience. He followed his guide into the street, where he walked along until they arrived at a square, on one side of which stood a large mosque. Here marketing was being carried on to a considerable extent, and, as he threaded his way through the various groups, he could not help being impressed with the extreme simplicity of the mode of procedure, for it seemed to him that all a man wanted to enable him to set himself up in trade was a few articles of any kind--old or new, it did not matter which--with a day's lease of about four feet square of the market pavement. There the retail trader squatted, smoked his pipe, and calmly awaited the decrees of Fate! One of these small traders he noted particularly while his conductor stopped to converse with a friend. He was an old man, evidently a descendant of Ishmael, and clothed in what seemed to be a ragged cast-off suit that had belonged to Abraham or Isaac. He carried his shop on his arm in the shape of a basket, out of which he took a little bit of carpet, and spread it close to where they stood. On this he sat down and slowly extracted from his basket, and spread on the ground before him, a couple of old locks, several knives, an old brass candlestick, an assortment of rusty keys, a flat-iron, and half a dozen other articles of household furniture. Before any purchases were made, however, the janissary moved on, and Foster had to follow. Passing through two or three tortuous and narrow lanes, which, however, were thickly studded with shops--that is, with holes in the wall, in which merchandise was displayed outside as well as in--they came to a door which was strictly guarded. Passing the guards, they found themselves in a court, beyond which they could see another court which looked like a hall of justice--or injustice, as the case might be. What strengthened Foster in the belief that such was its character, was the fact that, at the time they entered, an officer was sitting cross-legged on a bench, smoking comfortably, while in front of him a man lay on his face with his soles turned upwards, whilst an executioner was applying to them the punishment of the bastinado. The culprit could not have been a great offender, for, after a sharp yell or two, he was allowed to rise and limp away. Our hero was led before the functionary who looked like a judge. He regarded the middy with no favour. We should have recorded that Foster, when blown out to sea, as already described, had leaped on the pirate's deck without coat or vest. As he was still in this dismantled condition, and had neither been washed nor combed since that event occurred, his appearance at this time was not prepossessing. "Who are you, and where do you come from?" was the first question put by an interpreter. Of course Foster told the exact truth about himself. After he had done so, the judge and interpreter consulted together, glancing darkly at their prisoner the while. Then the judge smiled significantly and nodded his head. The interpreter turned to a couple of negroes who stood ready to execute any commands, apparently, and said a few words to them. They at once took hold of Foster and fastened a rope to his wrist. As they did so, the interpreter turned to the poor youth and said-- "What you tell is all lies." "Indeed, indeed, it is not," exclaimed the midshipman fervently. "Go!" said the interpreter. A twitch from the rope at the same moment recalled our hero to his right mind; and the remembrance of the poor wretch who had just suffered the bastinado, and also of Peter the Great's oft-repeated reference to "whacking," had the effect of crushing the spirit of rebellion which had just begun to arise in his breast. Thus he was conducted ignominiously into the street and back to the market-square, where he was made to stand with a number of other men, who, like himself, appeared to be slaves. For what they were there waiting he could not tell, but he was soon enlightened, as after half an hour, a dignified-looking Moor in flowing apparel came forward, examined one of the captives, felt his muscles, made him open his mouth, and otherwise show his paces, after which he paid a sum of money for him and a negro attendant led him away. "I'm to be sold as a slave," Foster involuntarily groaned aloud. "Like all the rest of us," growled a stout sailor-like man, who stood at his elbow. Foster turned quickly to look at him, but a sudden movement in the group separated them after the first glance at each other. By way of relieving his overcharged feelings he tried to interest himself in the passers-by. This, however, he found very difficult, until he observed a sturdy young Cabyle coming along with two enormous feathery bundles suspended over his right shoulder, one hanging before, the other behind. To his surprise these bundles turned out to be living fowls, tied by the legs and hanging with their heads down. There could not, he thought, have been fewer than thirty or forty birds in each bundle, and it occurred to him at once that they had probably been carried to market thus from some distance in the country. At all events, the young Cabyle seemed to be dusty and warm with walking. He even seemed fatigued, for, when about to pass the group of slaves, he stopped to rest and flung down his load. The shock of the fall must have snapped a number of legs, for a tremendous cackle burst from the bundles as they struck the ground. This raised the thought in Foster's mind that he could hope for no mercy where such wanton cruelty was not even deemed worthy of notice by the bystanders; but the sound of a familiar voice put all other thoughts to flight. "Dis way, massa, you's sure to git fuss-rate fellers here. We brought 'im in on'y yesterday--all fresh like new-laid eggs." The speaker was Peter the Great. The man to whom he spoke was a Moor of tall stature and of somewhat advanced years. Delighted more than he could express, in his degraded and forlorn condition, at this unlooked-for meeting with his black friend, Foster was about to claim acquaintance, when the negro advanced to the group among whom he stood, exclaiming loudly-- "Here dey am, massa, dis way." Then turning suddenly on Foster with a fierce expression, he shouted, "What you lookin' at, you babby-faced ijit? Hab you nebber seen a handsome nigger before dat you look all t'under-struck of a heap? Can't you hold your tongue, you chatterin' monkey?" and with that, although Foster had not uttered a syllable, the negro fetched him a sounding smack on the cheek, to the great amusement of the bystanders. Well was it then for our middy that it flashed into his mind that Peter the Great, being the most astounding "hyperkrite" on earth, was at work in his deceptive way, else would he have certainly retaliated and brought on himself swift punishment--for slaves were not permitted to resent injuries or create riots. As it was, he cast down his eyes, flushed scarlet, and restrained himself. "Now, massa," continued the negro, turning to the fine, sailor-like man who had spoken to Foster a few minutes before, "here's a nice-lookin' man. Strong an' healfy--fit for anyt'ing no doubt." "Ask him if he understands gardening," said the Moor. We may remark, in passing, that Peter the Great and his owner had a peculiar mode of carrying on conversation. The latter addressed his slave in the Lingua Franca, while Peter replied in his own nigger English, which the Moor appeared to understand perfectly. Why they carried it on thus we cannot explain, but it is our duty to record the fact. "Understand gardening!" exclaimed the sailor, in supreme contempt, "I should think not. Wot d'you take me for, you black baboon! Do I look like a gardener? Ploughin' an' diggin' I knows nothin' about wotsomever, though I _have_ ploughed the waves many a day, an' I'm considered a fust-rate hand at diggin' into wittles." "Oh! massa, das de man for your money! Buy him, quick!" cried the negro, with a look of earnest entreaty at his master. "He say he's ploughed many a day, an''s a fuss-rate hand at diggin'. _Do_ buy 'im!" But the Moor would not buy him. Either he understood the sailor's language to some extent, or that inveterate obstinacy of which Peter had made mention as being part of his character was beginning to assert itself. "Ask this one what he knows about it," said the Moor, pointing to a thin young man, whose sprightly expression showed that he had not yet fully realised what fate was in store for him in the pirates' stronghold. "Wich is it you mean, massa, dis one?" said Peter, purposely mistaking and turning to Foster. "Oh! you needn't ask about _him_. He not wuff his salt. I could tell him at a mile off for a lazy, useless feller. Gib more trouble dan he's wuff. Dere now, dis looks a far better man," he added, laying hold of the thin sprightly youth and turning him round. "What d'ye t'ink ob dis one?" "I _told_ you to ask that one," replied the Moor sharply. "Can you do gardenin', you feller?" asked Peter. "Oui, oui--un peu," replied the youth, who happened to be French, but understood English. "None ob your wee-wees an' poo-poos to me. Can't you speak English?" "Oui, yes, I gardin ver' leetle." "Jus' so. Das de man for us, massa, if you won't hab de oder. I likes de look ob 'im. I don't t'ink he'll be hard on de wittles, an' he's so t'in dat he won't puspire much when he works in de sun in summer. Do buy _him_, massa." But "massa" would not buy him, and looked hard for some time at our hero. "I see how it am," said the negro, growing sulky. "You set your heart on dat useless ijit. Do come away, massa, it 'ud break my heart to lib wid sich a feller." This seemed to clinch the matter, for the Moor purchased the objectionable slave, ordered Peter the Great to bring him along, and left the market-place. "Didn't I tell you I's de greatest hyperkrite as ever was born?" said Peter, in a low voice, when sufficiently far in rear to prevent being overheard by his master. "You certainly did," replied Foster, who felt something almost like satisfaction at this change in his fate; "you are the most perfect hypocrite that I ever came across, and I am not sorry for it. Only I hope you won't deceive your friends." "Honour bright!" said the negro, with a roll of the eyes and a solemnity of expression that told far more than words could express. "Can you tell me," asked the middy, as they walked along, "what has become of that fine-looking girl that was captured with her father and mother by your captain?" "Don't say _my_ captain, sar," replied Peter sternly. "He no captain ob mine. I was on'y loaned to him. But I knows nuffin ob de gall. Bery likely she's de Dey's forty-second wife by dis time. Hush! look sulky," he added quickly, observing that his master was looking back. Poor Foster found himself under the necessity of following his black friend's lead, and acting the "hyperkrite," in order to prevent their friendship being discovered. He did it with a bad grace, it is true, but felt that, for his friend's sake if not his own, he was bound to comply. So he put on an expression which his cheery face had not known since that period of infancy when his frequent demands for sugar were not gratified. Wheels worked within wheels, however, for he felt so disgusted with the part he had to play that he got into the sulks naturally! "Fuss-rate!" whispered Peter, "you's a'most as good as myself." By this time they had reached one of the eastern gates of the city. It was named Bab-Azoun. As they passed through it the negro told his brother-slave that the large iron hooks which ornamented the wall there were used for the purpose of having criminals cast on them; the wretched victims being left to hang there, by whatever parts of their bodies chanced to catch on the hooks, till they died. Having reached the open country outside the walls, they walked along a beautiful road, from which were obtained here and there splendid views of the surrounding country. On one side lay the blue Mediterranean, with its picturesque boats and shipping, and the white city descending to the very edge of the sea; on the other side rose the wooded slopes of a suburb named Mustapha, with numerous white Moorish houses in the midst of luxuriant gardens, where palms, bananas, cypresses, aloes, lemon-trees, and orange groves perfumed the balmy air, and afforded grateful shade from the glare of the African sun. Into one of those gardens the Moor at last turned and led the way to a house, which, if not in itself beautiful according to European notions of architecture, was at least rendered cheerful with whitewash, and stood in the midst of a beauty and luxuriance of vegetation that could not be surpassed. Opening a door in this building, the Turk entered. His slaves followed, and Foster, to his surprise, found what may be styled a miniature garden in the courtyard within. CHAPTER FOUR. OUR MIDDY IS PUT TO WORK--ALSO PUT ON HIS "WORD-OF-HONOUR," AND RECEIVES A GREAT SHOCK OF SURPRISE. George Foster soon found that his master and owner, Ben-Ahmed, was a stern and exacting, but by no means an ill-natured or cruel, man. He appeared to be considerably over sixty years of age, but showed no signs of abated vigour. In character he was amiable and just, according to his light, but dignified and reticent. His first act, after seating himself cross-legged on a carpet in a marble and tessellated recess, was to call for a hookah. He smoked that for a few minutes and contemplated the courtyard on which the recess opened. It was a pleasant object of contemplation, being filled with young orange-trees and creeping plants of a tropical kind, which were watered by a stone fountain in the centre of the court. This fountain also served to replenish a marble bath, to cool the sultry air, and to make pleasant tinkling music. Of course the nose was not forgotten in this luxurious assemblage of things that were gratifying to ear and eye. Flowers of many kinds were scattered around, and sweet-scented plants perfumed the air. Ben-Ahmed's next act, after having lighted his pipe, was to summon Peter the Great and his new slave--the former to act as interpreter, for it was a peculiarity of this Moor that though he appeared to understand English he would not condescend to speak it. After asking several questions as to our hero's name, age, and calling in life, he told Peter to inform Foster that escape from that country was impossible, that any attempt to escape would be punished with flogging and other torture, that perseverance in such attempts would result in his being sent to work in chains with the Bagnio slaves and would probably end in death from excessive toil, torture, and partial starvation. Having said this, the Moor asked several questions--through the negro, and always in the Lingua Franca. "Massa bids me ax," said Peter, "if you are a gentleman, an' if you know it am de custom in England for gentleman-pris'ners to give dere word-ob-honour dat dey not run away, an' den go about as if dey was free?" "Tell him that every officer in the service of the King of England is considered a gentleman." "Come now, sar," interrupted Peter sternly, "you know das not true. I bin in England myself--cook to a French rest'rung in London--an' I nebber hear dat a _pleece_ officer was a gentleman!" "Well, I mean every commissioned officer in the army and navy," returned Foster, "and when such are taken prisoner I am aware that they are always allowed a certain amount of freedom of action on giving their word of honour that they will not attempt to escape." When this was explained to Ben-Ahmed, he again said a few words to the negro, who translated as before. "Massa say dat as you are a gentleman if you will gib your word-ob-honour not to escape, he will make you free. Not kite free, ob course, but free to work in de gardin widout chains; free to sleep in de out-house widout bein' locked up ob nights, an' free to enjoy you'self w'en you gits de chance." Foster looked keenly at the negro, being uncertain whether or not he was jesting, but the solemn features of that arch "hyperkrite" were no index to the working of his eccentric mind--save when he permitted them to speak; then, indeed, they were almost more intelligible than the plainest language. "And what if I refuse to pledge my word for the sake of such freedom?" asked our hero. "W'y, den you'll git whacked, an' you'll 'sperience uncommon hard times, an' you'll change you mind bery soon, so I t'ink, on de whole, you better change 'im at once. Seems to me you's a remarkably obs'nit young feller!" With a sad feeling that he was doing something equivalent to locking the door and throwing away the key, Foster gave the required promise, and was forthwith conducted into the garden and set to work. His dark friend supplied him with a new striped cotton shirt--his own having been severely torn during his recent adventures--also with a pair of canvas trousers, a linen jacket, and a straw hat with a broad rim; all of which fitted him badly, and might have caused him some discomfort in other circumstances, but he was too much depressed just then to care much for anything. His duty that day consisted in digging up a piece of waste ground. To relieve his mind, he set to work with tremendous energy, insomuch that Peter the Great, who was looking on, exclaimed-- "Hi! what a digger you is! You'll bust up altogidder if you goes on like dat. De moles is nuffin' to you." But Foster heeded not. The thought that he was now doomed to hopeless slavery, perhaps for life, was pressed home to him more powerfully than ever, and he felt that if he was to save himself from going mad he must work with his muscles like a tiger, and, if possible, cease to think. Accordingly, he went on toiling till the perspiration ran down his face, and all his sinews were strained. "Poor boy!" muttered the negro in a low tone, "he's tryin' to dig his own grave. But he not succeed. Many a man try dat before now and failed. Howsomeber, it's blowin' a hard gale wid him just now--an' de harder it blow de sooner it's ober. Arter de storm comes de calm." With these philosophic reflections, Peter the Great went off to his own work, leaving our hero turning over the soil like a steam-plough. Strong though Foster was--both of muscle and will--he was but human after all. In course of time he stopped from sheer exhaustion, flung down the spade, and, raising himself with his hands stretched up and his face turned to the sky, he cried-- "God help me! what shall I do?" Then, dropping his face on his hands, he stood for a considerable time quite motionless. "What a fool I was to promise not to try to escape!" he thought, and a feeling of despair followed the thought, but a certain touch of relief came when he reflected that at any time he could go boldly to his master, withdraw the promise, and take the consequences. He was still standing like a statue, with his hands covering his face, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder. It was the negro who had returned to see how he was getting on. "Look yar, now, Geo'ge," he said in quite a fatherly manner, "dis'll neber do. My massa buy you to work in de gardin, not to stand like a statoo washin' its face widout soap or water. We don't want no more statoos. Got more'n enuff ob marble ones all around. Besides, you don't make a good statoo--leastwise not wid dem slop clo'es on. Now, come yar, Geo'ge. I wants a little combersation wid you. I'll preach you a small sarmin if you'll allow me." So saying, Peter led his assistant slave into a cool arbour, where Ben-Ahmed was wont at times to soothe his spirits with a pipe. "Now, look yar, Geo'ge, dis won't do. I say it once and for all--dis _won't do_." "I know it won't, Peter," replied the almost heart-broken middy, with a sad smile, "you're very kind. I know you take an interest in me, and I'll try to do better, but I'm not used to spade-work, you know, and--" "Spade-work!" shouted Peter, laying his huge black hand on Foster's shoulder, and giving him a squeeze that made him wince, "das not what I mean. Work! w'y you's done more'n a day's work in one hour, judging by de work ob or'nary slabes. No, das not it. What's wrong is dat you don't rightly understand your priv'leges. Das de word, your priv'leges. Now, look yar. I don't want you to break your heart before de time, an' fur dat purpus I would remind you dat while dar's life dar's hope. Moreober, you's got no notion what luck you're in. If a bad massa got hold ob you, he gib you no noo clo'es, he gib you hard, black bread 'stead o' de good grub what you gits yar. He make you work widout stoppin' all day, and whack you on de sole ob your foots if you dar say one word. Was you eber whacked on de sole ob your foots?" "No, never," replied Foster, amused in spite of himself by the negro's earnest looks and manner. "Ho! den you don't know yet what Paradise am." "Paradise, Peter? You mean the other place, I suppose." "No, sar, I mean not'ing ob de sort. I mean de Paradise what comes arter it's ober, an' you 'gins to git well again. Hah! but you'll find it out some day. But, to continoo, you's got eberyt'ing what's comfrable here. If you on'y sawd de Bagnio slabes at work--I'll take you to see 'em some day--den you'll be content an' pleased wid your lot till de time comes when you escape." "Escape! How can I escape, Peter, now that I have given my word of honour not to try?" "Not'ing easier," replied the negro calmly, "you's on'y got to break your word-ob-honour!" "I'm sorry to hear you say that, my friend," returned Foster, "for it shakes my confidence in you. You must know that an English gentleman _never_ breaks his word--that is, he never _should_ break it--and you may rest assured that I will not break mine. If your view of such matters is so loose, Peter, what security have I that you won't deceive _me_ and betray _me_ when it is your interest or your whim to do so?" "Security, Massa? I lub you! I's fond o' your smood babby face. Isn't dat security enough?" Foster could not help admitting that it was, as long as it lasted! "But what," he asked, "what security has Ben-Ahmed that you won't be as false to him as you recommend me to be?" "I lub massa too!" answered the negro, with a bland smile. "What! love a man whom you have described to me as the most obstinate fellow you ever knew?" "Ob course I do," returned Peter. "W'y not? A obs'nit man may be as good as anoder man what can be shoved about any way you please. Ha! you not know yit what it is to hab a _bad_ massa. Wait a bit; you find it out, p'r'aps, soon enough. Look yar." He bared his bosom as he spoke, and displayed to his wondering and sympathetic friend a mass of old scars and gashes and healed-up sores. "Dis what my last massa do to me, 'cause I not quite as smart as he wish. De back am wuss. Oh, if you know'd a bad massa, you'd be thankful to-day for gettin' a good un. Now, what I say is, nobody never knows what's a-goin' to turn up. You just keep quiet an' wait. Some slabes yar hab waited patiently for ten-fifteen year, an' more. What den? Sure to 'scape sooner or later. Many are ransum in a year or two. Oders longer. Lots ob 'em die, an' 'scape dat way. Keep up your heart, Geo'ge, whateber you do, and, if you won't break your word-ob-honour, something else'll be sure to turn up." Although the negro's mode of affording comfort and encouragement was not based entirely on sound principles, his cheery and hopeful manner went a long way to lighten the load of care that had been settling down like a dead weight on young Foster's heart, and he returned to his work with a happier spirit than he had possessed since the day he leaped upon the deck of the pirate vessel. That night he spent under the same roof with his black friend and a number of the other slaves, none of whom, however, were his countrymen, or could speak any language that he understood. His bed was the tiled floor of an out-house, but there was plenty of straw on it. He had only one blanket, but the nights as well as days were warm, and his food, although of the simplest kind and chiefly vegetable, was good in quality and sufficient in quantity. The next day, at the first blush of morning light, he was aroused with the other slaves by Peter the Great, who, he found, was the Moor's overseer of domestics. He was put to the same work as before, but that day his friend the negro was sent off on a mission that was to detain him several days from home. Another man took Peter's place, but, as he spoke neither English nor French, no communication passed between the overseer and slave except by signs. As, however, the particular job on which he had been put was simple, this did not matter. During the period of Peter's absence the poor youth felt the oppression of his isolated condition keenly. He sank to a lower condition than before, and when his friend returned, he was surprised to find how much of his happiness depended on the sight of his jovial black face! "Now, Geo'ge," was the negro's first remark on seeing him, "you's down in de blues again!" "Well, I confess I have not been very bright in your absence, Peter. Not a soul to speak a word to; nothing but my own thoughts to entertain me; and poor entertainment they have been. D'you know, Peter, I think I should die if it were not for you." "Nebber a bit ob it, massa. You's too cheeky to die soon. I's noticed, in my 'sperience, dat de young slabes as has got most self-conceit an' imprence is allers hardest to kill." "I scarce know whether to take that as encouragement or otherwise," returned Foster, with the first laugh he had given vent to for a long time. "Take it how you please, Geo'ge, as de doctor said to de dyin' man-- won't matter much in de long-run. But come 'long wid me an' let's hab a talk ober it all. Let's go to de bower." In the bower the poor middy found some consolation by pouring his sorrows into the great black sympathetic breast of Peter the Great, though it must be confessed that Peter occasionally took a strange way to comfort him. One of the negro's perplexities lay in the difficulty he had to convince our midshipman of his great good-fortune in having fallen into the hands of a kind master, and having escaped the terrible fate of the many who had cruel tyrants as their owners, who were tortured and beaten when too ill to work, who had bad food to eat and not too much of it, and who were whipped to death sometimes when they rebelled. Although Foster listened and considered attentively, he failed to appreciate what his friend sought to impress, and continued in a state of almost overwhelming depression because of the simple fact that he was a slave--a bought and sold slave! "Now, look yar, Geo'ge," said the negro, remonstratively, "you _is_ a slabe; das a fact, an' no application ob fut rule or compasses, or the mul'plication table, or any oder table, kin change dat. Dere you am--a slabe! But you ain't a 'bused slabe, a whacked slabe, a tortered slabe, a dead slabe. You're all alibe an' kickin', Geo'ge! So you cheer up, an' somet'ing sure to come ob it; an' if not'ing comes ob it, w'y, de cheerin' up hab come ob it anyhow." Foster smiled faintly at this philosophical view of his case, and did make a brave effort to follow the advice of his friend. "Das right, now, Geo'ge; you laugh an' grow fat. Moreober, you go to work now, for if massa come an' find us here, he's bound to know de reason why! Go to work, Geo'ge, an' forgit your troubles. Das _my_ way--an' I's got a heap o' troubles, bress you!" So saying, Peter the Great rose and left our forlorn midshipman sitting in the arbour, where he remained for some time ruminating on past, present, and future instead of going to work. Apart from the fact of his being a slave, the youth's condition at the moment was by no means disagreeable, for he was seated in a garden which must have borne no little resemblance to the great original of Eden, in a climate that may well be described as heavenly, with a view before him of similar gardens which swept in all their rich luxuriance over the slopes in front of him until they terminated on the edge of the blue and sparkling sea. While seated there, lost in reverie, he was startled by the sound of approaching footsteps--very different indeed from the heavy tread of his friend Peter. A guilty conscience made him glance round for a way of escape, but there was only one entrance to the bower. While he was hesitating how to act, an opening in the foliage afforded him a passing glimpse of a female in the rich dress of a Moorish lady. He was greatly surprised, being well aware of the jealousy with which Mohammedans guard their ladies from the eyes of men. The explanation might lie in this, that Ben-Ahmed, being eccentric in this as in most other matters, afforded the inmates of his harem unusual liberty. Before he had time to think much on the subject, however, the lady in question turned into the arbour and stood before him. If the word "thunderstruck" did justice in any degree to the state of mind which we wish to describe we would gladly use it, but it does not. Every language, from Gaelic to Chinese, equally fails to furnish an adequate word. We therefore avoid the impossible and proceed, merely remarking that from the expression of both faces it was evident that each had met with a crushing surprise. We can understand somewhat the midshipman's state of mind, for the being who stood before him was--was--well, we are again nonplussed! Suffice it to say that she was a girl of fifteen summers--the other forty-five seasons being, of course, understood. Beauty of feature and complexion she had, but these were lost, as it were, and almost forgotten, in her beauty of expression--tenderness, gentleness, urbanity, simplicity, and benignity in a state of fusion! Now, do not run away, reader, with the idea of an Eastern princess, with gorgeous black eyes, raven hair, tall and graceful form, etcetera! This apparition was fair, blue-eyed, golden-haired, girlish, sylph-like. She was graceful, indeed, as the gazelle, but not tall, and with an air of suavity that was irresistibly attractive. She had a "good" face as well as a beautiful, and there was a slightly pitiful look about the eyebrows that seemed to want smoothing away. How earnestly George Foster desired--with a gush of pity, or something of that sort--to smooth it away. But he had too much delicacy of feeling as well as common sense to offer his services just then. "Oh, sir!" exclaimed the girl, in perfect English, as she hastily threw a thin gauze veil over her face, "forgive me! I did not know you were here--else--my veil--but why should _I_ mind such customs? You are an Englishman, I think?" Foster did not feel quite sure at that moment whether he was English, Irish, Scotch, or Dutch, so he looked foolish and said-- "Y-yes." "I knew it. I was sure of it! Oh! I am _so_ glad!" exclaimed the girl, clasping her delicate little hands together and bursting into tears. This was such a very unexpected climax, and so closely resembled the conduct of a child, that it suddenly restored our midshipman to self-possession. Stepping quickly forward, he took one of the girl's hands in his, laid his other hand on her shoulder, and said-- "Don't cry, my poor child! If I can help you in any way, I'll be only too glad; but pray don't, _don't_ cry so." "I--I--can't help it," sobbed the girl, pulling away her hand--not on account of propriety, by any means: that never entered her young head-- but for the purpose of searching for a kerchief in a pocket that was _always_ undiscoverable among bewildering folds. "If--if--you only knew how long, _long_ it is since I heard an English--(where _is_ that _thing_!)--an English voice, you would not wonder. And my father, my dear, dear, darling father--I have not heard of him for--for--" Here the poor thing broke down again and sobbed aloud, while the midshipman looked on, imbecile and helpless. "Pray, _don't_ cry," said Foster again earnestly. "Who are you? where did you come from? Who and where is your father? Do tell me, and how I can help you, for we may be interrupted?" This last remark did more to quiet the girl than anything else he had said. "You are right," she replied, drying her eyes quickly. "And, do you know the danger you run if found conversing with me?" "No--not great danger, I hope?" "The danger of being scourged to death, perhaps," she replied. "Then pray _do_ be quick, for I'd rather not get such a whipping--even for _your_ sake!" "But our owner is not cruel," continued the girl. "He is kind--" "Owner! Is he not, then, your husband?" "Oh, no. He says he is keeping me for his son, who is away on a long voyage. I have never seen him--and--I have such a dread of his coming back!" "But you are English, are you not?" "Yes." "And your father?" "He is also English, and a slave. We have not met, nor have I heard of him, since we were parted on board ship many months ago. Listen!" CHAPTER FIVE. THE MAIDEN'S STORY--PETER THE GREAT AND THE MIDDY GO FOR A HOLIDAY AND SEE AWFUL THINGS. During the conversation detailed in the last chapter the young English girl had spoken with her veil down. She now threw it carelessly back, and, sitting down on a bench opposite our midshipman, folded her hands in her lap and remained silent for a few seconds, during which George Foster said--not aloud, but very privately to himself, "Although your eyes are swelled and your little nose is red with crying, I never--no I never--did see such a dear, sweet, pretty little innocent face in all my life!" All unconscious of his thoughts, and still giving vent now and then to an irresistible sob, the poor child--for she was little more--looked up and began her sad tale. "About eight months ago my dear father, who is a merchant, resolved to take me with him on a voyage to some of the Mediterranean ports. My father's name is Hugh Sommers--" "And yours?" asked Foster. "Is Hester. We had only just entered the Mediterranean when one of those dreadful Algerine pirates took our vessel and made slaves of us all. My darling father, being a very big, strong, and brave man, fought like a tiger. Oh! I never imagined that his dear kind face _could_ have looked as it did that awful day. But although he knocked down and, I fear, killed many men, it was all of no use, they were so numerous and our men so few. The last I saw of my father was when they were lowering him into a boat in a state of insensibility, with an awful cut all down his brow and cheek, from which the blood was pouring in streams. "I tried to get to him, but they held me back and took me down into the cabin. There I met our owner, who, when he saw me, threw a veil over my head and bade me sit still. I was too terrified and too despairing about my father to think of disobeying. "I think Ben-Ahmed, our owner, must be a man of power, for everybody seemed to obey him that day as if he was the chief man, though he was not the captain of the ship. After a time he took my hand, put me into a small sailing boat, and took me ashore. I looked eagerly for my father on landing, but he was nowhere to be seen, and--I have not seen him since." "Nor heard of or from him?" asked Foster. "No." At this point, as there were symptoms of another breakdown, our middy became anxious, and entreated Hester to go on. With a strong effort she controlled her feelings. "Well, then, Ben-Ahmed brought me here, and, introducing me to his wives--he has four of them, only think!--said he had brought home a little wife for his son Osman. Of course I thought they were joking, for you know girls of my age are never allowed to marry in England; but after a time I began to see that they meant it, and, d'you know--By the way, what is your name?" "Foster--George Foster." "Well, Mr Foster, I was going to say that I _cannot_ help wishing and hoping that their son may _never_ come home! Isn't that sinful?" "I don't know much about the sin of it," said Foster, "but I fervently hope the same thing from the very bottom of my heart." "And, oh!" continued Hester, whimpering a little, "you can't think what a relief it is to be able to talk with you about it. It would have been a comfort to talk even to our big dog here about it, if it could only have understood English. But, now," continued the poor little creature, while the troubled look returned to her eyebrows, "what _is_ to be done?" "Escape--somehow!" said Foster promptly. "But nothing would induce me to even try to escape without my father," said Hester. This was a damper to our midshipman. To rescue a little girl seemed to him a mere nothing, in the glowing state of his heroic soul at that moment, but to rescue her "very big, strong, and brave" father at the same time did not appear so easy. Still, something _must_ be attempted in that way. "Tell me," he said, "what is your father like?" "Tall, handsome, sweet, ex--" "Yes, yes. I know. But I mean colour of hair, kind of nose, etcetera; be more particular, and do be quick! I don't like to hurry you, but remember the possible scourging to death that hangs over me!" "Well, he is very broad and strong, a Roman nose, large sweet mouth always smiling, large grey eyes--such loving eyes, too--with iron-grey hair, moustache, and beard. You see, although it is not the fashion in England to wear beards, my dear father thinks it right to do so, for he is fond, he says, of doing only those things that he can give a good reason for, and as he can see no reason whatever for shaving off his moustachios and beard, any more than the hair of his head and eyebrows, he lets them grow. I've heard people say that my father is wild in his notions, and some used to say, as if it was very awful, that," (she lowered her voice here), "he is a Radical! You know what a Radical is, I suppose?" "Oh yes," said Foster, with the first laugh he had indulged in during the interview, "a Radical is a man who wants to have everything his own way; to have all the property in the world equally divided among everybody; who wants all the power to be equally shared, and, in short, who wants everything turned upside down!" "Hush! don't laugh so loud!" said Hester, looking anxiously round, and holding up one of her pretty little fingers, "some one may hear you and find us! Strange," she added pensively, "surely you must be under some mistake, for I heard my dear father try to explain it once to a friend, who seemed to me unwilling to understand. I remember so well the quiet motion of his large, firm but sweet mouth as he spoke, and the look of his great, earnest eyes--`A Radical,' he said, `is one who wishes and tries to go to the root of every matter, and put all wrong things right without delay.'" What George Foster might have said to this definition of a Radical, coming, as it did, from such innocent lips, we cannot say, for the abrupt closing of a door at the other end of the garden caused Hester to jump up and run swiftly out of the bower. Foster followed her example, and, returning to the scene of his labours, threw off his coat and began to dig with an amount of zeal worthy of his friend the incorrigible "hyperkrite" himself. A few minutes later and Ben-Ahmed approached, in close conversation with Peter the Great. "Hallo!" exclaimed the latter, in stern tones, as they came up, "what you bin about, sar? what you bin doin'? Not'ing done since I was here more an hour past--eh, sar?" The midshipman explained, with a somewhat guilty look and blush, that he had been resting in the bower, and that he had stayed much longer than he had intended. "You just hab, you rascal! But I cure you ob dat," said the negro, catching up a piece of cane that was lying on the ground, with which he was about to administer condign chastisement to the idle slave, when his master stopped him. "Hurt him not," he said, raising his hand; "is not this his first offence?" "Yes, massa, de bery fust." "Well, tell him that the rod shall be applied next time he is found idling. Enough, follow me!" With a stately step the amiable Moor passed on. With a much more stately port Peter the Great followed him, but as he did so he bestowed on Foster a momentary look so ineffably sly, yet solemn, that the latter was obliged to seize the spade and dig like a very sexton in order to check his tendency to laugh aloud. Half an hour later the negro returned to him. "What you bin do all dis time?" he asked in surprise. "I was more'n half t'ink you desarve a lickin'!" "Perhaps I do, Peter," answered the young slave, in a tone so hearty and cheerful that the negro's great eyes increased considerably in size. "Well, Geo'ge," he said, with a sudden change in his expression, "I wouldn't hab expeck it ob you; no, I wouldn't, if my own mudder was to tell me! To t'ink dat one so young, too, would go on de sly to de rum-bottle! But where you kin find 'im's more'n I kin tell." "I have not been at the rum-bottle at all," returned the middy, resting on his spade, "but I have had something to raise my spirits and brace my energies, and take me out of myself. Come, let us go to the bower, and I will explain--that is, if we may safely go there." "Go whar?" "To the bower." "Do you know, sar," replied Peter, drawing himself up and expanding his great chest--"do you know, sar, dat I's kimmander-in-chief ob de army in dis yar gardin, an' kin order 'em about whar I please, an' do what I like? Go up to de bower, you small Bri'sh officer, an' look sharp if you don't want a whackin'!" The slave obeyed with alacrity, and when the two were seated he described his recent interview with Hester Sommers. No words can do full justice to the varied expressions that flitted across the negro's face as the midshipman's narrative went on. "So," he said slowly, when it was concluded, "you's bin an' had a long privit convissation wid one ob Ben-Ahmed's ladies! My! you know what dat means if it found out?" "Well, Miss Sommers herself was good enough to tell me that it would probably mean flogging to death." "_Floggin'_ to deaf!" echoed Peter. "P'r'aps so wid massa, for he's a kind man; but wid most any oder man it 'ud mean roastin' alibe ober a slow fire! Geo'ge, you's little better'n a dead man!" "I hope it's not so bad as that, for no one knows about it except the lady and yourself." "Das so; an' you're in luck, let me tell you. Now you go to work, an' I'll retire for some meditation--see what's to come ob all dis." Truly the changes that take place in the feelings and mind of man are not less sudden and complete than the physical changes which sometimes occur in lands that are swept by the tornado and desolated by the earthquake. That morning George Foster had risen from his straw bed a miserable white slave, hopeless, heartless, and down at spiritual zero-- or below it. That night he lay down on the same straw bed, a free man-- in soul, if not in body--a hero of the most ardent character--up at fever-heat in the spiritual thermometer, or above it, and all because his heart throbbed with a noble purpose--because an object worthy of his efforts was placed before him, and because he had made up his mind to do or die in a good cause! What that cause was he would have found it difficult to define clearly in detail. Sufficient for him that an unknown but stalwart father, with Radical tendencies, and a well-known and lovely daughter, were at the foundation of it, and that "Escape!" was the talismanic word which formed a battery, as it were, with which to supply his heart with electric energy. He lived on this diet for a week, with the hope of again seeing Hester; but he did not see her again for many weeks. One morning Peter the Great came to him as he was going out to work in the garden and said-- "You git ready and come wid me into town dis day." "Indeed," returned Foster, as much excited by the order as if it had been to go on some grand expedition. "For what purpose?" "You 'bey orders, sar, an' make your mind easy about purpisses." In a few minutes Foster was ready. No part of his original costume now remained to him. A blue-striped cotton jacket, with pants too short and too wide for him; a broad-brimmed straw hat, deeply sunburnt face and hands, with a pair of old boots two sizes too large, made him as unlike a British naval officer as he could well be. But he had never been particularly vain of his personal appearance, and the high purpose by which he was now actuated set him above all such trifling considerations. "Is your business a secret?" asked Foster, as he and his companion descended the picturesque road that led to the city. "No, it am no secret, 'cause I's got no business." "You seem to be in a mysterious mood this morning, Peter. What do you mean?" "I mean dat you an' me's out for a holiday--two slabes out for a holiday! T'ink ob dat!" The negro threw back his head, opened his capacious jaws, and gave vent to an almost silent chuckle. "That does indeed mound strange," returned Foster; "how has such a wonderful event been brought about?" "By lub, Geo'ge. Di'n't I tell you before dat hub am eberyt'ing?" "Yes; and my dear old mother told me, long before you did, that `love is the fulfilling of the law.'" "Well, I dun know much about law, 'xcep' dat I b'lieve it's a passel o' nonsense, for what we's got here an't o' no use--leastwise not for slabes." "But my mother did not refer to human laws," returned Foster. "She quoted what the Bible says about God's laws." "Oh! das a _bery_ diff'rent t'ing, massa, an' I s'pose your mudder was right. Anyway it was lub what obercame Ben-Ahmed. You see, I put it to 'im bery tender like. `Massa,' says I, `here I's bin wid you night an' day for six year, an' you's nebber say to me yet, "Peter de Great, go out for de day an' enjoy you'self." Now, massa, I wants to take dat small raskil Geo'ge Fuster to de town, an' show him a few t'ings as'll make him do his work better, an' dat'll make you lub 'im more, an' so we'll all be more comfrable.' Das what I say; an' when I was sayin' it, I see de wrinkles a-comin' round massa's eyes, so I feel sure; for w'en dem wrinkles come to de eyes, it is all right. An' massa, he say, `Go'--nuffin more; only `Go;' but ob course das nuff for me, so I hoed; an' now--we're bof goin'." At this point in the conversation they came to a place where the road forked. Here they met a number of Arabs, hasting towards the town in a somewhat excited frame of mind. Following these very slowly on a mule rode another Arab, whose dignified gravity seemed to be proof against all excitement. He might have been the Dey of Algiers himself, to judge from his bearing and the calm serenity with which he smoked a cigar. Yet neither his occupation nor position warranted his dignified air, for he was merely a seller of oranges, and sat on a huge market-saddle, somewhat in the lady-fashion--side-wise, with the baskets of golden fruit on either side of him. Going humbly towards this Arab, the negro asked him in Lingua Franca if there was anything unusual going on in the town? The Arab replied by a calm stare and a puff of smoke as he rode by. "I 'ope his pride won't bust 'im," muttered Peter, as he fell behind and rejoined his companion. "Do you think anything has happened, then?" "Dere's no sayin'. Wonderful geese dey is in dis city. Dey seem to t'ink robbery on the sea is just, an' robbery ob de poor an' helpless is just; but robbery ob de rich in Algiers--oh! dat awrful wicked! not to be tololerated on no account wa'somever. Konsikence is--de poor an' de helpless git some ob de strong an' de clebber to go on dere side, an' den dey bust up, strangle de Dey, rob de Jews, an' set up another guv'ment." "Rob the Jews, Peter! Why do they do that?" "Dun know, massa--" "Please don't call me massa any more, Peter, for I'm _not_ massa in any sense--being only your friend and fellow-slave." "Well, I won't, Geo'ge. I's a-goin' to say I s'pose dey plunder de Jews 'cause dey's got lots o' money an' got no friends. Eberybody rob de Jews w'en dere's a big rumpus. But I don't t'ink dere's a row jus' now--only a scare." The scare, if there was one, had passed away when they reached the town. On approaching the Bab-Azoun gate, Peter got ready their passports to show to the guard. As he did so, Foster observed, with a shudder, that shreds of a human carcass were still dangling from the large hooks on the wall. Suddenly their steps were arrested by a shriek, and several men immediately appeared on the top of the wall, holding fast a struggling victim. But the poor wretch's struggles were vain. He was led to the edge of the wall by four strong men, and not hurled, but dropped over, so that he should not fail to be caught on one of the several hooks below. Another shriek of terror burst from the man as he fell. It was followed by an appalling yell as one of the hooks caught him under the armpit, passed upwards right through his shoulder and into his jaws, while the blood poured down his convulsed and naked limbs. That yell was the poor man's last. The action of the hook had been mercifully directed, and after a few struggles, the body hung limp and lifeless. Oh! it is terrible to think of the cruelty that man is capable of practising on his fellows. The sight was enough, one would think, to rouse to indignation a heart of stone, yet the crowds that beheld this did not seem to be much affected by it. True, there were several faces that showed traces of pity, but few words of disapproval were uttered. "Come, come!" cried our midshipman, seizing his companion by the arm and dragging him away, "let us go. Horrible! They are not men but devils. Come away." They passed through the gate and along the main street of the city a considerable distance, before Foster could find words to express his feelings, and then he had difficulty in restraining his indignation on finding that the negro was not nearly as much affected as he himself was by the tragedy which they had just witnessed. "We's used to it, you know," said Peter in self-defence. "I's seen 'em hangin' alibe on dem hooks for hours. But dat's nuffin to what some on 'em do. Look dar; you see dat ole man a-sittin' ober dere wid de small t'ings for sale--him what's a-doin' nuffin, an' sayin' nuffin, an' almost expectin' nuffin? Well, I once saw dat ole man whacked for nuffin--or next to nuffin--on de sole ob his foots, so's he couldn't walk for 'bout two or t'ree mont's." They had reached the market-square by that time, and Foster saw that the man referred to was the identical old fellow with the blue coat and hood, the white beard, and the miscellaneous old articles for sale, whom he had observed on his first visit to the square. The old Arab gave Peter the Great a bright look and a cheerful nod as they passed. "He seems to know you," remarked Foster. "Oh yes. He know me. I used to carry him on my back ebery mornin' to his place here dat time when he couldn't walk. Bress you! dar's lots o' peepil knows me here. Come, I'll 'troduce you to some more friends, an' we'll hab a cup o' coffee." Saying this, he conducted our middy into a perfect labyrinth of narrow streets, through which he wended his way with a degree of certainty that told of intimate acquaintance. Foster observed that he nodded familiarly to many of those who crowded them--to Jews, Arabs, water-carriers, and negroes, as well as to the dignified men who kept little stalls and shops, many of which shops were mere niches in the sides of the houses. So close were the fronts of these houses to each other that in many places they almost met overhead and obscured much of the light. At last the middy and his friend stopped in front of a stair which descended into what appeared to be a dark cellar. Entering it, they found themselves in a low Arab coffee-house. CHAPTER SIX. OUR HERO SEES THE MOORS IN SEVERAL ASPECTS, AND MAKES A GREAT DISCOVERY. Whatever may be said of Mohammedanism as a religion, there can be no question, we should think, that it has done much among the Eastern nations to advance the cause of Temperance. We make no defence of Mohammed--very much the reverse--but we hold that even a false prophet cannot avoid teaching a certain modicum of truth in his system, and when Mohammed sternly put his foot down upon strong drink, and enforced the principle of total abstinence therefrom, he did signal service to a large portion of the human family. Although, for want of better teaching, Mohammedans cling to many vices, one never sees them howling through the streets in a state of wild ferocity, or staggering homewards in a condition of mild imbecility, from the effects of intoxicating drink. Instead of entering a low den where riot and revelry, with bad language and quarrelling, might be expected to prevail, George Foster found himself in a small white-washed apartment, where there sat several grave and sedate men, wrapped in the voluminous folds of Eastern drapery, sipping very small cups of coffee, and enjoying very large pipes of tobacco. The room was merely a cellar, the walls being thickly stuccoed and white-washed, and the ceiling arched; but, although plain, the place was reasonably clean and eminently quiet. The drinkers did not dispute. Conversation flowed in an undertone, and an air of respectability pervaded the whole place. At the further end of the apartment there was a curious-looking fireplace, which seemed to have been formed without the use of square or plummet, and around which were scattered and hung in comfortable confusion the implements and utensils of cookery. Nothing of the cook was visible except his bare legs and feet, the rest of him being shrouded in a recess. Beside the fireplace an Arab sat cross-legged on a bench, sipping his coffee. Beyond him in a recess another Arab was seated. He appeared to be sewing while he conversed with a negro who stood beside him. Elsewhere, in more or less remote and dim distances, other customers were seated indulging in the prevailing beverage. "You sit down here, Geo'ge; drink an' say not'ing, but wait for me." With this admonition Peter the Great whispered a few words to the man who owned the establishment, and hurriedly left the place. The middy naturally felt a little disconcerted at being thus left alone among strangers, but, knowing that in the circumstances he was absolutely helpless, he wisely and literally obeyed orders. Sitting down on a bench opposite the fire, from which point of observation he could see the entrance-door and all that went on around him, he waited and said nothing until the chief of the establishment presented him with a white cup of coffee, so very small that he felt almost equal to the swallowing of cup and coffee at one gulp. With a gracious bow and "Thank you," he accepted the attention, and began to sip. The dignified Arab who gave it to him did not condescend upon any reply, but turned to attend upon his other customers. Foster's first impulse was to spit out the sip he had taken, for to his surprise the coffee was thick with grounds. He swallowed it, however, and wondered. Then, on taking another sip and considering it, he perceived that the grounds were not as grounds to which he had been accustomed, but were reduced--no doubt by severe pounding--to a pasty condition, which made the beverage resemble chocolate. "Coffee-soup! with sugar--but no milk!" he muttered, as he tried another sip. This third one convinced him that the ideas of Arabs regarding coffee did not coincide with those of Englishmen, so he finished the cup at the fourth sip, much as he would have taken a dose of physic, and thereafter amused himself with contemplating the other coffee-sippers. At the time when our hero first arrived at Ben-Ahmed's home, he had been despoiled of his own garments while he was in bed--the slave costume having been left in their place. On application to his friend Peter, however, his pocket-knife, pencil, letters, and a few other things had been returned to him. Thus, while waiting, he was able to turn his time to account by making a sketch of the interior of the coffee-house, to the great surprise and gratification of the negroes there--perhaps, also, of the Moors--but these latter were too reticent and dignified to express any interest by word or look, whatever they might have felt. He was thus engaged when Peter returned. "Hallo, Geo'ge!" exclaimed the negro, "what you bin up to--makin' picturs?" "Only a little sketch," said Foster, holding it up. "A skitch!" repeated Peter, grasping the letter, and holding it out at arm's length with the air of a connoisseur, while he compared it with the original. "You call dis a skitch? Well! I neber see de like ob dis--no, neber. It's lubly. Dere's de kittles an' de pots an' de jars, an'--ha, ha! dere's de man wid de--de--wart on 'is nose! Oh! das fust-rate. Massa's awrful fond ob skitchin'. He wouldn't sell you now for ten t'ousand dollars." Fortunately the Arab with the wart on his nose was ignorant of English, otherwise he might have had some objection to being thus transferred to paper, and brought, as Arabs think, under "the power of the evil eye." Before the exact nature of what had been done, however, was quite understood, Peter had paid for the coffee, and, with the amateur artist, had left the place. "Nothing surprises me more," said Foster, as they walked along, "than to see such beautiful wells and fountains in streets so narrow that one actually has not enough room to step back and look at them properly. Look at that one now, with the negress, the Moor, and the water-carrier waiting their turn while the little girl fills her water-pot. See what labour has been thrown away on that fountain. What elegance of design, what columns of sculptured marble, and fine tessellated work stuck up where few people can see it, even when they try to." "True, Geo'ge. De water would run as well out ob a ugly fountain as a pritty one." "But it's not that I wonder at, Peter; it's the putting of such splendid work in such dark narrow lanes that surprises me. Why do they go to so much expense in such a place as this?" "Oh! as to expense, Geo'ge. Dey don't go to none. You see, we hab no end ob slabes here, ob all kinds, an' trades an' purfessions, what cost nuffin but a leetle black bread to keep 'em alibe, an' a whackin' now an' den to make 'em work. Bress you! dem marble fountains an' t'ings cost the pirits nuffin. Now we's goin' up to see the Kasba." "What is that, Peter?" "What! you not know what de Kasba am? My, how ignorant you is! De Kasba is de citad'l--de fort--where all de money an' t'ings--treasure you call it--am kep' safe. Strong place, de Kasba--awrful strong." "I'll be glad to see that," said Foster. "Ho yes. You be glad to see it _wid me_," returned the negro significantly, "but not so glad if you go dere wid chains on you legs an' pick or shovel on you shoulder. See--dere dey go!" As he spoke a band of slaves was seen advancing up the narrow street. Standing aside in a doorway to let them pass, Foster saw that the band was composed of men of many nations. Among them he observed the fair hair and blue eyes of the Saxon, the dark complexion and hair of the Spaniard and Italian, and the black skin of the negro--but all resembled each other in their looks and lines of care, and in the weary anxiety and suffering with which every countenance was stamped,--also in the more or less dejected air of the slaves, and the soiled ragged garments with which they were covered. But if some of the resemblances between these poor creatures were strong, some of their differences were still more striking. Among them were men whose robust frames had not yet been broken down, whose vigorous spirits had not been quite tamed, and whose scowling eyes and compressed lips revealed the fact that they were "dangerous." These walked along with clanking chains on their limbs--chains which were more or less weighty, according to the strength and character of the wearer. Others there were so reduced in health, strength, and spirit, that the chain of their own feebleness was heavy enough for them to drag to their daily toil. Among these were some with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, whose weary pilgrimage was evidently drawing to a close; but all, whether strong or weak, fierce or subdued, were made to tramp smartly up the steep street, being kept up to the mark by drivers, whose cruel whips cracked frequently on the shoulders of the lagging and the lazy. With a heart that felt as if ready to burst with conflicting emotions, the poor midshipman looked on, clenching his teeth to prevent unwise exclamations, and unclenching his fists to prevent the tendency to commit assault and battery! "This is dreadful," he said, in a low voice, when the gang had passed. "Yes, Geo'ge, it _is_ drefful--but we's used to it, you know. Come, we'll foller dis gang." Keeping about twenty yards behind, they followed the slaves into the Kasba, where they met with no interruption from the guards, who seemed to be well acquainted with Peter the Great, though they did not condescend to notice him, except by a passing glance. "How is it that every one lets you pass so easily?" asked Foster, when they had nearly reached the southern wall of the fortress. "Eberybody knows me so well--das one reason," answered the negro, with a grin of self-satisfaction. "I's quite a public krakter in dis yar city, you mus' know. Den, anoder t'ing is, dat our massa am a man ob power. He not got no partikler office in de state, 'cause he not require it, for he's a rich man, but he's got great power wid de Dey--we's bof got dat!" "Indeed; how so?" "Stand here, under dis doorway, and I tell you--dis way, where you can see de splendid view ob de whole city an' de harbour an' sea b'yond. We kin wait a bit here while de slabes are gittin' ready to work. You see de bit ob wall dat's damaged dere? Well, dey're goin' to repair dat. We'll go look at 'em by-an'-by." As the incident which Peter narrated might prove tedious if given in his own language, we take the liberty of relating it for him. One fine morning during the previous summer the Dey of Algiers mounted his horse--a fiery little Arab--and, attended by several of his courtiers, cantered away in the direction of the suburb which is now known by the name of Mustapha Superieur. When drawing near to the residence of Ben-Ahmed the Dey's horse became unmanageable and ran away. Being the best horse of the party, the courtiers were soon left far behind. It chanced that Ben-Ahmed and his man, Peter the Great, were walking together towards the city that day. On turning a sharp bend in the road where a high bank had shut out their view they saw a horseman approaching at a furious gallop. "It is the Dey!" exclaimed Ben-Ahmed. "So it am!" responded Peter. "He can't make the turn of the road and live!" cried the Moor, all his dignified self-possession vanishing as he prepared for action. "I will check the horse," he added, in a quick, low voice. "You break his fall, Peter. He'll come off on the left side." "Das so, massa," said Peter, as he sprang to the other side of the narrow road. He had barely done so, when the Dey came thundering towards them. "Stand aside!" he shouted as he came on, for he was a fearless horseman and quite collected, though in such peril. But Ben-Ahmed would not stand aside. Although an old man, he was still active and powerful. He seized the reins of the horse as it was passing, and, bringing his whole weight and strength to bear, checked it so far that it made a false step and stumbled. This had the effect of sending the Dey out of the saddle like a bomb from a mortar, and of hurling Ben-Ahmed to the ground. Ill would it have fared with the Dey at that moment if Peter the Great had not possessed a mechanical turn of mind, and a big, powerful body, as well as a keen, quick eye for possibilities. Correcting his distance in a moment by jumping back a couple of paces, he opened his arms and received the chief of Algiers into his broad black bosom! The shock was tremendous, for the Dey was by no means a light weight, and Peter the Great went down before it in the dust, while the great man arose, shaken indeed, and confused, but unhurt by the accident. Ben-Ahmed also arose uninjured, but Peter lay still where he had fallen. "W'en I come-to to myself," continued Peter, on reaching this point in his narrative, "de fus' t'ing I t'ink was dat I'd been bu'sted. Den I look up, an' I sees our black cook. She's a nigger, like myself, only a she one. "`Hallo, Angelica!' says I; `wass de matter?' "`Matter!' says she; `you's dead--a'most, an' dey lef' you here wid me, wid strik orders to take care ob you.' "`Das good,' says I; `an' you better look out an' obey your orders, else de bowstring bery soon go round your pritty little neck. But tell me, Angelica, who brought me here?' "`De Dey ob Algiers an' all his court,' says she, wid a larf dat shut up her eyes an' showed what a _enormous_ mout' she hab. "`Is _he_ all safe, Angelica,' says I--`massa, I mean?' "`Oh, I t'ought you meant de Dey!' says she. `Oh yes; massa's all right; nuffin'll kill massa, he's tough. And de Dey, he's all right too.' "`Das good, Angelica,' says I, feelin' quite sweet, for I was beginnin' to remember what had took place. "`Yes, das _is_ good,' says she; `an', Peter, your fortin's made!' "`Das awk'ard,' says I, `for I ain't got no chest or strong box ready to put it in. But now tell me, Angelica, if my fortin's made, will you marry me, an' help to spend it?' "`Yes, I will,' says she. "I was so took by surprise, Geo'ge, when she say dat, I sprung up on one elber, an' felled down agin wid a howl, for two o' my ribs had been broke. "`Neber mind de yells, Angelica,' says I, `it's only my leetle ways. But tell me why you allers refuse me before an' accep' me _now_. Is it--de--de fortin?' Oh, you should have seen her pout w'en I ax dat. Her mout' came out about two inch from her face. I could hab kissed it--but for de broken ribs. "`No, Peter, for shame!' says she, wid rijeous indignation. `De fortin hab nuffin to do wid it, but your own noble self-scarifyin' bravery in presentin' your buzzum to de Dey ob Algiers.' "`T'ank you, Angelica,' says I. `Das all comfrably settled. You's a good gall, kiss me now, an' go away.' "So she gib me a kiss an' I turn round an' went sweetly to sleep on de back ob dat--for I was awrful tired, an' de ribs was creakin' badly." "Did you marry Angelica?" asked our middy, with sympathetic interest. "Marry her! ob course I did. Two year ago. Don' you know it's her as cooks all our wittles?" "How could I know, Peter, for you never call her anything but `cook?' But I'm glad you have told me, for I'll regard her now with increased respect from this day forth." "Das right, Geo'ge. You can't pay 'er too much respec'. Now we'll go an' look at de works." The part of the wall which the slaves were repairing was built of great blocks of artificial stone or concrete, which were previously cast in wooden moulds, left to harden, and then put into their assigned places by slave-labour. As Foster was watching the conveyance of these blocks, it suddenly occurred to him that Hester Sommers's father might be amongst them, and he scanned every face keenly as the slaves passed to and fro, but saw no one who answered to the description given him by the daughter. From this scrutiny he was suddenly turned by a sharp cry drawn from one of a group who were slowly carrying a heavy stone to its place. The cry was drawn forth by the infliction of a cruel lash on the shoulders of a slave. He was a thin delicate youth with evidences of fatal consumption upon him. He had become faint from over-exertion, and one of the drivers had applied the whip by way of stimulus. The effect on the poor youth was to cause him to stumble, and instead of making him lift better, made him rest his weight on the stone, thus overbalancing it, and bringing it down. In falling the block caught the ankle of the youth, who fell with a piercing shriek to the ground, where he lay in a state of insensibility. At this a tall bearded man, with heavy fetters on his strong limbs, sprang to the young man's side, went down on his knees, and seized his hand. "Oh! Henri, my son," he cried, in French; but before he could say more a whip touched his back with a report like a pistol-shot, and the torn cotton shirt that he wore was instantly crimsoned with his blood! The man rose, and, making no more account of his fetters than if they had been straws, sprang like a tiger at the throat of his driver. He caught it, and the eyes and tongue of the cruel monster were protruding from his head before the enraged Frenchman could be torn away by four powerful janissaries. As it was, they had to bind him hand and foot ere they were able to carry him off--to torture, and probably to death. At the same time the poor, helpless form of Henri was borne from the place by two of his fellow-slaves. Of course a scene like this could not be witnessed unmoved by our midshipman. Indeed he would infallibly have rushed to the rescue of the bearded Frenchman if Peter's powerful grip on his shoulder had not restrained him. "Don't be a fool, Geo'ge," he whispered. "Remember, we _must_ submit!" Fortunately for George, the guards around were too much interested in watching the struggle to observe his state of mind, and it is doubtful whether he would have been held back even by the negro if his attention had not at the moment been attracted by a tall man who came on the scene just then with another gang of slaves. One glance sufficed to tell who the tall man was. Hester Sommers's portrait had been a true one--tall, handsome, strong; and even in the haggard, worn, and profoundly sad face, there shone a little of the "sweetness" which his daughter had emphasised. There were also the large grey eyes, the Roman nose, the iron-grey hair, moustache, and beard, and the large mouth, although the "smile" had fled from the face and the "lovingness" from the eyes. Foster was so sure of the man that, as he drew near to the place where he stood, he stepped forward and whispered "Sommers." The man started and turned pale as he looked keenly at our hero's face. "No time to explain," said the middy quickly. "Hester is well and _safe_! See you again! Hope on!" "What are you saying there?" thundered one of the drivers in Arabic. "What you say to dat feller? you raskil! you white slabe! Come 'long home!" cried Peter the Great, seizing Foster by the collar and dragging him forcibly away, at the same time administering several kicks so violent that his entire frame seemed to be dislocated, while the janissaries burst into a laugh at the big negro's seeming fury. "Oh! Geo'ge, Geo'ge," continued Peter, as he dragged the middy along, shaking him from time to time, "you'll be de deaf ob me, an' ob yourself too, if you don't larn to _submit_. An' see, too, what a hyperkrite you make me! I's 'bliged to kick hard, or dey wouldn't b'lieve me in arnist." "Well, well, Peter," returned our hero, who at once understood his friend's ruse to disarm suspicion, and get him away safely, "you need not call yourself a hypocrite this time, at all events, for your kicks and shakings have been uncommonly real--much too real for comfort." "Didn't I say I was _'bleeged_ to do it?" retorted Peter, with a pout that might have emulated that of his wife on the occasion of their engagement. "D'you s'pose dem raskils don' know a real kick from a sham one? I was marciful too, for if I'd kicked as I _could_, dere wouldn't be a whole bone in your carcass at dis momint! You's got to larn to be grateful, Geo'ge. Come along." Conversing thus pleasantly, the white slave and the black left the Kasba together and descended into the town. CHAPTER SEVEN. THE MIDDY OBTAINS A DECIDED ADVANCE, AND MAKES PETER THE GREAT HIS CONFIDANT. Many months passed, after the events narrated in the last chapter, before George Foster had the good-fortune to meet again with Hugh Sommers, and several weeks elapsed before he had the chance of another interview with the daughter. Indeed, he was beginning to despair of ever again seeing either the one or the other, and it required the utmost energy and the most original suggestions of a hopeful nature on the part of his faithful friend to prevent his giving way altogether, and having, as Peter expressed it, "anoder fit ob de blues." At last fortune favoured him. He was busy in the garden one day planting flowers, when Peter came to him and said-- "I's got news for you to-day, Geo'ge." "Indeed," said the middy, with a weary sigh; "what may your news be?" "You 'member dat pictur' ob de coffee-house in de town what you doo'd?" "Yes, now you mention it, I do, though I had almost forgotten it." "Ah! but I not forgit 'im! Well, yesterday I tuk it to massa, an' he bery much pleased. He say, bring you up to de house, an' he gib you some work to do." "I wish," returned Foster, "that he'd ask me to make a portrait of little Hester Sommers." "You forgit, Geo'ge, de Moors neber git deir portraits doo'd. Dey 'fraid ob de evil eye." "Well, when are we to go up?" "Now--I jist come for you." Throwing down his garden tools, Foster followed the negro to the house, and was ushered into a small chamber, the light of which was rendered soft and mellow, by the stained glass windows through which it passed. These windows were exceedingly small--not more than a foot high by eight inches broad--and they were placed in the walls at a height of nine feet or more from the ground. The walls of the room were decorated with richly-coloured tiles, and the floor was of white marble, but the part that attracted our hero most was the ceiling, which was arched, according to Moorish form, and enriched with elaborate designs in stucco--if not in white marble, the difference being difficult to distinguish. On the marble floor lay several shawls, richly embroidered in coloured silk and gold, a pair of small scarlet slippers, covered with gold thread, a thin veil, and several cushions of different sizes. On one of these last reposed a little tame gazelle, whose bright eyes greeted the two slaves with an inquiring look as they entered. From all these things Foster judged that this was one of the women's apartments, and wondered much that he had been admitted into such a jealously-guarded sanctuary, but relieved his mind by setting it down to that eccentricity for which Ben-Ahmed was noted. He had just arrived at this conclusion when a door opened, and Ben-Ahmed himself entered with the sketch of the coffee-house in his hand. "Tell him," said the Moor to Peter, "that I am much pleased with this drawing, and wish him to make one, a little larger in size, of this room. Let him put into it everything that he sees. He will find paper in that portfolio, and all else that he requires on this ottoman. Let him take time, and do it well. He need not work in the garden while thus employed." Pointing to the various things to which he referred, the Moor turned and left the apartment. "Now, Geo'ge, what you t'ink ob all dat?" asked Peter, with a broad grin, when he had translated the Moor's orders. "Really I don't know what to think of it. Undoubtedly it is a step upwards, as compared with working in the garden; but then, don't you see, Peter, it will give me much less of your company, which will be a tremendous drawback?" "Das well said. You's kite right. I hab notice from de fus' dat you hab a well-constitooted mind, an' appruciates de value ob friendship. I lub your smood face, Geo'ge!" "I hope you love more of me than my smooth face, Peter," returned the middy, "otherwise your love won't continue, for there are certain indications on my upper lip which assure me that the smoothness won't last long." "Hol' your tongue, sar! What you go on jabberin' so to me when you's got work to do, sar!" said Peter fiercely, with a threatening motion of his fist. "Go to work at once, you white slabe!" Our hero was taken aback for a moment by this sudden explosion, but the presence of a negro girl, who had entered softly by a door at his back, at once revealed to him the truth that Peter the Great had donned the garb of the hypocrite. Although unused and very much averse to such costume, he felt compelled in some degree to adopt it, and, bowing his head, not only humbly, but in humiliation, he went silently towards his drawing materials, while the girl placed a tumbler of water on a small table and retired. Turning round, he found that Peter had also disappeared from the scene. At first he imagined that the water was meant for his refreshment, but on examining the materials on the ottoman he found a box of water-colour paints, which accounted for its being sent. Although George Foster had never been instructed in painting, he possessed considerable natural talent, and was intensely fond of the art. It was, therefore, with feelings of delight which he had not experienced for many a day that he began to arrange his materials and set about this new and congenial work. Among other things he found a small easel, which had a very Anglican aspect about it. Wondering how it had got there, he set it up, with a sheet of paper on it, tried various parts of the room, in order to find out the best position for a picture, and went through that interesting series of steppings back and puttings of the head on one side which seem to be inseparably connected with true art. While thus engaged in the profound silence of that luxurious apartment, with its "dim religious light," now glancing at the rich ceiling, anon at the fair sheet of paper, he chanced to look below the margin of the latter and observed, through the legs of the easel, that the gorgeous eyes of the gazelle were fixed on him in apparent wonder. He advanced to it at once, holding out a hand coaxingly. The pretty creature allowed him to approach within a few inches, and then bounded from its cushion like a thing of india-rubber to the other end of the room, where it faced about and gazed again. "You gaze well, pretty creature," thought the embryo artist. "Perhaps that's the origin of your name! Humph! you won't come to me?" The latter part of his thoughts he expressed aloud, but the animal made no response. It evidently threw the responsibility of taking the initiative on the man. Our middy was naturally persevering in character. Laying aside his pencil, he sat down on the marble floor, put on his most seductive expression, held out his hand gently, and muttered soft encouragements-- such as, "Now then, Spunkie, come here, an' don't be silly--" and the like. But "Spunkie" still stood immovable and gazed. Then the middy took to advancing in a sitting posture--after a manner known to infants--at the same time intensifying the urbanity of his look and the wheedlement of his tone. The gazelle suffered him to approach until his fingers were within an inch of its nose. There the middy stopped. He had studied animal nature. He was aware that it takes two to love as well as to quarrel. He resolved to wait. Seeing this, the gazelle timidly advanced its little nose and touched his finger. He scratched gently! Spunkie seemed to like it. He scratched progressively up its forehead. Spunkie evidently enjoyed it. He scratched behind its ear, and--the victory was gained! The gazelle, dismissing all fear, advanced and rubbed its graceful head on his shoulder. "Well, you _are_ a nice little beast," said Foster, as he fondled it; "whoever owns you must be very kind to you, but I can't afford to waste more time with you. Must get to work." He rose and returned to his easel while the gazelle trotted to its cushion and lay down--to sleep? perchance to dream?--no, to gaze, as before, but in mitigated wonder. The amateur painter-slave now applied himself diligently to his work with ever-increasing interest; yet not altogether without an uncomfortable and humiliating conviction that if he did not do it with reasonable rapidity, and give moderate satisfaction, he ran the chance of being "whacked" if not worse! Let not the reader imagine that we are drawing the longbow here, and making these Moors to be more cruel than they really were. Though Ben-Ahmed was an amiable specimen, he was not a typical Algerine, for cruelty of the most dreadful kind was often perpetrated by these monsters in the punishment of trivial offences in those days. At the present hour there stands in the great square of Algiers an imposing mosque, which was designed by a Christian slave--an architect--whose head was cut off because he had built it--whether intentionally or accidentally we know not--in the form of a cross! For some hours Foster worked uninterruptedly with his pencil, for he believed, like our great Turner in his earlier days, (though Turner's sun had not yet arisen!) that the preliminary drawing for a picture cannot be too carefully or elaborately done. After having bumped himself against the wall twice, and tripped over an ottoman once--to the gazelle's intense surprise--in his efforts to take an artistic view of his work, Foster at last laid down his pencil, stretched himself to his full height, with his hands in the air by way of relaxation, and was beginning to remember that midday meals were not unknown to man, when the negress before mentioned entered with a small round brass tray, on which were two covered dishes. The middy lowered his hands in prompt confusion, for he had not attained to the Moors' sublime indifference to the opinion or thought of slaves. He was about to speak, but checked the impulse. It was wiser to hold his tongue! A kindliness of disposition, however, induced him to smile and nod--attentions which impelled the negress, as she retired, to display her teeth and gums to an extent that no one would believe if we were to describe it. On examination it was found that one of the dishes contained a savoury compound of rice and chicken, with plenty of butter and other substances--some of which were sweet. The other dish contained little rolls of bread. Both dishes appeared to Foster to be made of embossed gold--or brass, but he knew and cared not which. Coffee in a cup about the size and shape of an egg was his beverage. While engaged with the savoury and altogether unexpected meal, our hero felt his elbow touched. Looking round he saw the gazelle looking at him with an expression in its beautiful eyes that said plainly, "Give me my share." "You shall have it, my dear," said the artist, handing the creature a roll, with which it retired contentedly to its cushion. "Perhaps," thought the youth, as he pensively sipped his coffee, "this room may be sometimes used by Hester! It obviously forms part of the seraglio." Strange old fellow, Ben-Ahmed, to allow men like me to invade such a place. The thought of the ladies of the harem somehow suggested his mother and sister, and when poor George got upon this pair of rails he was apt to be run away with, and to forget time and place. The reverie into which he wandered was interrupted, however, by the gazelle asking for more. As there was no more, it was fain to content itself with a pat on the head as the painter rose to resume his work. The drawing was by this time all pencilled in most elaborately, and the middy opened the water-colour box to examine the paints. As he did so, he again remarked on the familiar English look of the materials, and was about to begin rubbing down a little of one of the cakes--moist colours had not been invented--when he observed some writing in red paint on the back of the palette. He started and flushed, while his heart beat faster, for the writing was, "_Expect me. Rub this out. H.S_." What could this mean? H.S? Hester Sommers of course. It was simple-- too simple. He wished for more--like the gazelle. Like it, too, he got no more. After gazing at the writing, until every letter was burnt into his memory, he obeyed the order and rubbed it out. Then, in a disturbed and anxious frame of mind, he tried to paint, casting many a glance, not only at his subject, but at the two doors which opened into the room. At last one of the doors opened--not the one he happened to be looking at, however. He started up, overturned his stool, and all but knocked down the easel, as the negress re-entered to remove the refreshment-tray. She called to the gazelle as she went out. It bounded lightly after her, and the young painter was left alone to recover his composure. "Ass that I am!" he said, knitting his brows, clenching his teeth, and putting a heavy dab of crimson-lake on the ceiling! At that moment the other door opened, yet so gently and slightly that he would not have observed it but for the sharp line of light which it let through. Determined not to be again taken by surprise, he became absorbed in putting little unmeaning lines round the dab of lake--not so busily, however, as to prevent his casting rapid furtive glances at the opening door. Gradually something white appeared in the aperture--it was a veil. Something blue--it was an eye. Something quite beyond description lovely--it was Hester herself, looking--if such be conceivable--like a scared angel! "Oh, Mr Foster!" she exclaimed, in a half-whisper, running lightly in, and holding up a finger by way of caution, "I have so longed to see you--" "So have I," interrupted the delighted middy. "Dear H---ah--Miss Sommers, I mean, I felt sure that--that--this _must_ be your room--no, what's its name? boudoir; and the gazelle--" "Yes, yes--oh! never mind that," interrupted the girl impatiently. "My father--darling father!--any news of _him_." Blushing with shame that he should have thought of his own feelings before her anxieties, Foster dropped the little hand which he had already grasped, and hastened to tell of the meeting with her father in the Kasba--the ease with which he had recognised him from her description, and the few hurried words of comfort he had been able to convey before the slave-driver interfered. Tears were coursing each other rapidly down Hester's cheeks while he was speaking; yet they were not tears of unmingled grief. "Oh, Mr Foster!" she said, seizing the middy's hand, and kissing it, "how shall I _ever_ thank you?" Before she could add another word, an unlucky touch of Foster's heel laid the easel, with an amazing clatter, flat on the marble floor! Hester bounded through the doorway more swiftly than her own gazelle, slammed the door behind her, and vanished like a vision. Poor Foster! Although young and enthusiastic, he was not a coxcomb. The thrill in the hand that had been kissed told him plainly that he was hopelessly in love! But a dull weight on his heart told him, he thought as plainly, that Hester was _not_ in the same condition. "Dear child!" he said, as he slowly gathered up the drawing materials, "if that innocent, transparent, almost infantine creature had been old enough to fall in love she would sooner have hit me on the nose with her lovely fist than have kissed my great ugly paw--even though she _was_ overwhelmed with joy at hearing about her father." Having replaced the easel and drawing, he seated himself on an ottoman, put his elbows on his knees, laid his forehead in his hands, and began to meditate aloud. "Yes," he said, with a profound sigh, "I love her--that's as clear as daylight; and she does not love me--that's clearer than daylight. Unrequited love! That's what I've come to! Nevertheless, I'm not in wild despair. How's that? I don't want to shoot or drown myself. How's that? On the contrary, I want to live and rescue her. I could serve or die for that child with pleasure--without even the reward of a smile! There must be something peculiar here. Is it--can it be Platonic love? Of course that must be it. Yes, I've often heard and read of that sort of love before. I _know_ it now, and--and--I rather like it!" "You don't look as if you did, Geo'ge," said a deep voice beside him. George started up with a face of scarlet. "Peter!" he exclaimed fiercely, "did you hear me speak? _What_ did you hear?" "Halo! Geo'ge, don't squeeze my arm so! You's hurtin' me. I hear you say somet'ing 'bout plotummik lub, but what sort o' lub that may be is more'n I kin tell." "Are you _sure_ that is all you--But come, Peter, I should have no secrets from _you_. The truth is," (he whispered low here), "I have seen Hester Sommers--here, in this room, not half an hour ago--and--and I feel that I am hopelessly in love with her--Platonically, that is--but I fear you won't understand what that means--" The midshipman stopped abruptly. For the first time since they became acquainted he saw a grave expression of decided disapproval on the face of his sable friend. "Geo'ge," said Peter solemnly, "you tell me you hab took 'vantage ob bein' invited to your master's house to make lub--plo--plotummikilly or oderwise--to your master's slabe?" "No, Peter, I told you nothing of the sort. The meeting with Hester was purely accidental--at least it was none of my seeking--and I did _not_ make love to her--" "Did _she_ make lub to you, Geo'ge--plo--plotummikilly." "Certainly not. She came to ask about her poor father, and I saw that she is far too young to _think_ of falling in love at all. What I said was that _I_ have fallen hopelessly in love, and that as I cannot hope that she will ever be--be _mine_, I have made up my mind to love her hopelessly, but loyally, to the end of life, and serve or die for her if need be." "Oh! das all right, Geo'ge. If dat's what you calls plo--plotummik lub--lub away, my boy, as hard's you kin. Same time, I's not kite so sure dat she's too young to hub. An' t'ings ain't allers as hopeless as dey seems. But now, what's dis you bin do here? My! How pritty. Oh! das _real_ bootiful. But what's you got in de ceiling--de sun, eh?" He pointed to the dab of crimson-lake. Foster explained that it was merely a "bit of colour." "Ob course! A cow wid half an eye could see dat!" "Well--but I mean--it's a sort of--a kind of--tone to paint up to." "H'm! das strange now. I don't hear no sound nowhar!" "Well, then, it's a shadow, Peter." "Geo'ge," said the negro, with a look of surprise, "I do t'ink your plo-plotummik lub hab disagreed wid you. Come 'long to de kitchen an' hab your supper--it's all ready." So saying, he went off with his friend and confidant to the culinary region, which was also the _salle a manger_ of the slaves. CHAPTER EIGHT. A SEVERE TRIAL--SECRET COMMUNICATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES, AND SUDDEN FLIGHT. The devotion of our middy to the fine arts was so satisfactory in its results that Ben-Ahmed set him to work at various other apartments in his dwelling when the first drawing was nearly finished. We say nearly finished, because, owing to some unaccountable whim, the Moor would not allow the first drawing to be completed. When Foster had finished a painting of the central court, his master was so pleased with the way in which he had drawn and coloured the various shrubs and flowers which grew there, that he ordered him forthwith to commence a series of drawings of the garden from various points of view. In one of these Foster introduced such a life-like portrait of Peter the Great that Ben-Ahmed was charmed, and immediately gave orders to have most of his slaves portrayed while engaged in their various occupations. In work of this kind many months were spent, for Foster was a painstaking worker. He finished all his paintings with minute care, having no capacity for off-hand or rapid sketching. During this period the engrossing nature of his work--of which he was extremely fond-- tended to prevent his mind from dwelling too much on his condition of slavery, but it was chiefly the knowledge that Hester Sommers was under the same roof, and the expectation that at any moment he might encounter her, which reconciled him to his fate, and even made him cheerful under it. But as week after week passed away, and month after month, without even a flutter of her dress being seen by him, his heart failed him again, and he began to fear that Ben-Ahmed's son Osman might have returned and carried her off as his bride, or that she might have been sold to some rich Moor--even to the Dey himself! Of course his black friend comforted him with the assurance that Osman had not returned, and that Ben-Ahmed was not the man to sell a slave he was fond of; but such assurances did not afford him much comfort. His mind was also burdened with anxiety about his mother and sister. He was sitting one day while in this state at an angle of the garden trying to devote his entire mind to the portrayal of a tree-fern, and vainly endeavouring to prevent Hester Sommers from coming between him and the paper, when he was summoned to attend upon Ben-Ahmed. As this was an event of by no means uncommon occurrence, he listlessly gathered up his materials and went into the house. He found the Moor seated cross-legged on a carpet, smoking his hookah, with only a negress in attendance. His easel, he found, was already placed, and, to his surprise, he observed that the original drawing with which his career as a painter had commenced was placed upon it. "I wish you to finish that picture by introducing a figure," said Ben-Ahmed, with solemn gravity. He spoke in Lingua Franca, which Foster understood pretty well by that time. It now became evident to him why the drawing of the room had been left unfinished, and he thought it probable that modesty--or, perhaps, a difficulty in overcoming the Moslem's dislike to being transferred to canvas at all--had caused the delay. "In what attitude do you wish to be painted?" asked the middy, as he moved the easel a little, and took a professional, head-on-one-side look at his subject. "In no attitude," returned the Moor gravely. "Pardon me," said Foster in surprise. "Did you not say that--that--" "I said that I wish you to finish the drawing by introducing a figure," returned Ben-Ahmed, taking a long draw at the hookah. "Just so--and may I ask--" "The figure," resumed the Moor, taking no notice of the interruption, "is to be one of my women slaves." Here he turned his head slightly and gave a brief order to the negress in waiting, who retired by the door behind her. The middy stood silent for a minute or so, lost in wonder and expectation, when another door opened and a female entered. She was gorgeously dressed, and closely veiled, so that her face was entirely concealed; nevertheless, George Foster's heart seemed to bound into his throat and half choke him, for he knew the size, air, and general effect of that female as well as if she had been his own mother. The Moor rose, led her to a cushion, and bade her sit down. She did so with the grace of Venus, and then the Moor removed her veil--looking fixedly at the painter as he did so. But the middy had recovered self-possession by that time. He was surprised as well as deeply concerned to observe that Hester's beautiful face was very pale, and her eyes were red and swollen, as if from much crying, but not a muscle in his stolid countenance betrayed the slightest emotion. He put his head a little to one side, in the orthodox manner, and looked steadily at her. Then he looked at his painting and frowned, as if considering the best spot in which to place this "figure." Then he began to work. Meanwhile the Moor sat down to smoke in such a position that he could see both painter and sitter. It was a severe test of our middy's capacity to act the "hyperkrite!" His heart was thumping at his ribs like a sledge-hammer anxious to get out. His hand trembled so that he could scarcely draw a line, and he was driven nearly mad with the necessity of presenting a calm, thoughtful exterior when the effervescence within, as he afterwards admitted, almost blew his head off like a champagne cork. By degrees he calmed down, ceased breaking the point of his pencil, and used his india-rubber less frequently. Then he took to colour and the brush, and here the tide began to turn in his favour. _Such_ a subject surely never before sat to painter since the world began! He became engrossed in his work. The eyes became intent, the hand steady, the heart regular, the whole man intense, while a tremendous frown and compressed lips told that he "meant business!" Not less intense was the attention of the Moor. Of course we cannot tell what his thoughts were, but it seemed not improbable that his eccentric recklessness in violating all his Mohammedan habits and traditions as to the seclusion of women, by thus exposing Hester to the gaze of a young infidel, had aroused feelings of jealousy and suspicion, which were not natural to his kindly and un-Moorish cast of soul. But while young Foster was employed in the application of his powers to energetic labour, the old Moor was engaged in the devotion of _his_ powers to the consumption of smoke. The natural results followed. While the painter became more and more absorbed, so as to forget all around save his sitter and his work, the Moor became more and more devoted to his hookah, till he forgot all around save the soporific influences of smoke. An almost oppressive silence ensued, broken only by the soft puffing of Ben-Ahmed's lips, and an occasional change in the attitude of the painter. And oh! how earnestly did that painter wish that Ben-Ahmed would retire--even for a minute--to give him a chance of exchanging a word or two with his subject. But the Moor was steady as a rock. Indeed he was too steady, for the curtains of his eyes suddenly fell, and shut in the owlish glare with which he had been regarding the middy. At the same moment a sharp click and clatter sent an electric thrill to the hearts of all. The Moor's mouthpiece had fallen on the marble floor! Ben-Ahmed picked it up and replaced it with severe gravity, yet a faint flicker of red in his cheek, and a very slight air of confusion, showed that even a magnificent Moor objects to be caught napping by his slaves. This incident turned Foster's thoughts into a new channel. If the Moor should again succumb to the demands of nature--or the influence of tobacco--how could he best make use of the opportunity? It was a puzzling question. To speak--in a whisper or otherwise--was not to be thought of. Detection would follow almost certainly. The dumb alphabet would have been splendid, though dangerous, but neither he nor Hester understood it. Signs might do. He would try signs, though he had never tried them before. What then? Did not "Never venture, never win," "Faint heart never won," etcetera, and a host of similar proverbs assure him that a midshipman, of all men, should "never say die." A few minutes more gave him the chance. Again the mouthpiece fell, but this time it dropped on the folds of the Moor's dress, and in another minute steady breathing told that Ben-Ahmed was in the land of Nod--if not of dreams. A sort of lightning change took place in the expressions of the young people. Hester's face beamed with intelligence. Foster's blazed with mute interrogation. The little maid clasped her little hands, gazed upwards anxiously, looked at the painter entreatingly, and glanced at the Moor dubiously. Foster tried hard to talk to her "only with his eyes." He even added some amazing motions of the lips which were meant to convey--"What's the matter with you?" but they conveyed nothing, for Hester only shook her head and looked miserable. A mild choke at that moment caused the maid to fall into statuesque composure, and the painter to put his frowning head tremendously to one side as he stepped back in order to make quite sure that the last touch was really equal, if not superior, to Michael Angelo himself! The Moor resumed his mouthpiece with a suspicious glance at both slaves, and Foster, with the air of a man who feels that Michael was fairly overthrown, stepped forward to continue his work. Truly, if Peter the Great had been there at the time he might have felt that he also was fairly eclipsed in his own particular line! Foster now became desperate, and his active mind began to rush wildly about in quest of useful ideas, while his steady hand pursued its labour until the Moor smoked himself into another slumber. Availing himself of the renewed opportunity, the middy wrapped a small piece of pencil in a little bit of paper, and, with the reckless daring of a man who had boarded a pirate single-handed, flung it at his lady-love. His aim was true--as that of a midshipman should be. The little bomb struck Hester on the nose and fell into her lap. She unrolled it quickly, and an expression of blank disappointment was the result, for the paper was blank and she had expected a communication. She looked up inquiringly, and beaming intelligence displaced the blank when she saw that Foster made as though he were writing large text on his drawing. She at once flattened the bit of paper on her knee--eyeing the Moor anxiously the while--and scribbled a few words on the paper. A loud cough from Foster, followed by a violent sneeze, caused her to crush the paper in her hand and again become intensely statuesque. Prompt though she was, this would not have saved her from detection if the violence of Foster's sneeze had not drawn the Moor's first glance away from her and towards himself. "Pardon me," said the middy, with a deprecatory air, "a sneeze is sometimes difficult to repress." "Does painting give Englishmen colds?" asked the Moor sternly. "Sometimes it does--especially if practised out of doors in bad weather," returned Foster softly. "H'm! That will do for to-day. You may return to your painting in the garden. It will, perhaps, cure your cold. Go!" he added, turning to Hester, who immediately rose, pushed the paper under the cushion on which she had been sitting, and left the room with her eyes fixed on the ground. As the cat watches the mouse, Foster had watched the girl's every movement while he bent over his paint-box. He saw where she put the paper. In conveying his materials from the room, strange to say, he slipped on the marble floor, close to the cushion, secured the paper as he rose, and, picking up his scattered things with an air of self-condemnation, retired humbly--yet elated--from the presence-chamber. Need we say that in the first convenient spot he could find he eagerly unrolled the paper, and read-- "I am lost! Oh, save me! Osman has come! I have _seen_ him! _Hateful_! He comes to-morrow to--" The writing ended abruptly. "My hideous sneeze did that!" growled Foster savagely. "But if I had been a moment later Ben-Ahmed might have--well, well; no matter. She _must_ be saved. She _shall_ be saved!" Having said this, clenched his teeth and hands, and glared, he began to wonder _how_ she was to be saved. Not being able to arrive at any conclusion on this point, he went off in search of his friend Peter the Great. He found that worthy man busy mending a rake in a tool-house, and in a few eager words explained how matters stood. At first the negro listened with his wonted, cheerful smile and helpful look, which hitherto had been a sort of beacon-light to the poor midshipman in his troubles, but when he came to the piece of paper and read its contents the smile vanished. "Osman home!" he said. "If Osman come back it's a black look-out for poor Hester! And the paper says to-morrow," cried Foster; "to take her away and marry her, no doubt. Peter, I tell you, she must be saved _to-night_! You and I must save her. If you won't aid me I will do it alone--or die in the attempt." "Geo'ge, if you was to die a t'ousan' times dat wouldn't sabe her. You know de Kasba?" "Yes, yes--go on!" "Well, if you was to take dat on your shoulders an' pitch 'im into de sea, _dat_ wouldn't sabe her." "Yes it would, you faint-hearted nigger!" cried the middy, losing all patience, "for if I could do that I'd be able to wring the neck of every pirate in Algiers--and I'd do it too!" "Now, Geo'ge, keep cool. I's on'y p'intin' out what you can't do; but p'r'aps somet'ing may be done. Yes," (he struck his forehead with his fist, as if to clinch a new idea),--"yes, I knows! I's hit it!" "What!" cried Foster eagerly. "Dat you's got nuffin to do wid," returned the negro decisively. "You must know not'ing, understand not'ing, hear an' see not'ing, for if you do you'll be whacked to deaf. Bery likely you'll be whacked anyhow, but dat not so bad. You must just shut your eyes an' mout' an' trust all to _me_. You understand, Geo'ge?" "I think I do," said the relieved middy, seizing the negro's right hand and wringing it gratefully. "Bless your black face! I trust you from the bottom of my soul." It was, indeed, a source of immense relief to poor Foster that his friend not only took up the matter with energy, but spoke in such a cheery, hopeful tone, for the more he thought of the subject the more hopeless did the case of poor Hester Sommers appear. He could of course die for her--and would, if need were--but this thought was always followed by the depressing question, "What good would that do to _her_?" Two hours after the foregoing conversation occurred Peter the Great was seated in a dark little back court in a low coffee-house in one of the darkest, narrowest, and most intricate streets of Algiers. He sat on an empty packing-box. In front of him was seated a stout negress, in whom an Ethiopian might have traced some family likeness to Peter himself. "Now, Dinah," said he, continuing an earnest conversation which had already lasted for some time, "you understand de case properly--eh?" "Ob course I does," said Dinah. "Well, den, you must go about it at once. Not a minute to lose. You'll find me at de gardin door. I'll let you in. You know who you's got to sabe, an' you must find out your own way to sabe her, an'--now, hol' your tongue! You's just a-goin' to speak--I must know nuffin'. Don' tell me one word about it. You's a cleber woman, Dinah." "Yes, my brudder. I wasn't born yesterday--no, nor yet the day before." "An', Samson, will you trust _him_?" "My husband is as good as gold. I trust him wid eberyt'ing!" replied this pattern wife. "An' Youssef--what ob him?" "He's more'n t'ree quarters blind. Kin see not'ing, an' understan's less." "Dinah, you's a good woman," remarked her appreciative brother, as he rose to depart. "Now, remember, dis am de most important job you an' I hab had to do since we was took by de pirits out ob de same ship. An' I do t'ink de Lord hab bin bery good to us, for He's gi'n us good massas at last, though we had some roughish ones at fust. Foller me as quick as you can." Dinah, being a warm-hearted woman, and very sympathetic, did not waste time. She reached Ben-Ahmed's villa only half an hour later than her brother, with a basket of groceries and other provisions that Peter had purchased in town. Peter took care that the young negress, whom we have already introduced as an attendant in the house, should be sent to receive the basket, and Dinah took care that she should not return to the house until she had received a bouquet of flowers to present to the young English girl in the harem. Inside of this bouquet was a little note written by Peter. It ran thus-- "Tri an git owt to de gardin soons yoo kan." When Hester Sommers discovered this note, the first ray of hope entered into her fluttering heart, and she resolved to profit by it. Meanwhile, Dinah, instead of quitting the place after delivering her basket, hid herself in the shrubbery. It was growing dark by that time, and Peter made a noisy demonstration of sending one of the slaves to see that the garden gate was locked for the night. Thereafter he remained all the rest of the evening in his own apartments in pretty loud conversation with the slaves. Suddenly there was a cry raised, and several slaves belonging to the inner household rushed into the outer house with glaring eyes, shouting that the English girl could not be found. "Not in de house?" cried Peter, starting up in wild excitement. "No--nowhar in de house!" "To de gardin, quick!" shouted Peter, leading the way, while Ben-Ahmed himself, with undignified haste, joined in the pursuit. Lanterns were lighted, and were soon flitting like fireflies all over the garden, but no trace of the fugitive was found. Peter entered into the search with profound interest, being as yet utterly ignorant of the method of escape devised by his sister. Suddenly one of the slaves discovered it. A pile of empty casks, laid against the wall in the form of a giant staircase, showed how Hester had climbed, and a crushed bush on the other side testified to her mode of descent. Ben-Ahmed and Peter ran up to the spot together. "Dey can't hab gone far, massa. You want de horses, eh?" asked the latter. "Yes. Two horses, quick!" Peter went off to the stables in hot haste, remarking as he ran-- "_What_ a hyperkrite I is, to be sure!" CHAPTER NINE. HESTER INTRODUCED TO A NEW HOME AND NEW FRIENDS UNDER PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES, AND A NEW NAME. Long before their flight was discovered Hester Sommers and Dinah had penetrated into a dense thicket, where the negress proceeded to produce a wonderful metamorphosis. "Now, my dear," she said, hastily undoing a large bundle which she carried, while Hester, panting and terrified, sat down on the grass beside her, "don't you be frighted. I's your fri'nd. I's Dinah, de sister ob Peter de Great, an' de fri'nd also ob Geo'ge. So you make your mind easy." "My mind is quite easy," said Hester; "and even if you were not Peter's sister, I'd trust you, because of the tone of your kind voice. But who is Geo'ge?" Dinah opened her eyes very wide at this question, for Peter had already enlightened her mind a little as to the middy's feelings towards Hester. "You not know Geo'ge?" she asked. "Never heard of him before, Dinah." "Geo'ge Foster?" "Oh, I understand! It was your way of pronouncing his name that puzzled me," returned the girl, with a faint smile. "I'm glad you are his friend, too, poor fellow!" "Well, you _is_ a babby!" exclaimed Dinah, who had been mixing up what appeared to be black paint in a wooden bowl. "Now, look yar, don't you be frighted. It's a matter ob life an' deaf, you know, but _I's_ your fri'nd! Jest you do zackly what I tells you." "Yes, Dinah," said Hester, alarmed, notwithstanding, by the earnestness and solemnity of her new friend, "what am I to do?" "You come yar, an' don't moob whateber I does to you. Dere, I's goin' to make you a nigger!" She applied a large brush to Hester's forehead, and drew it thence down her left cheek, under her chin, up the right cheek, and back to the starting point, thus producing a black band or circle two inches broad. "Now shut your bootiful eyes," she said, and proceeded to fill up the circle. In a quarter of an hour Hester was as black as the ace of spades--neck, hands, and arms, as well as face--her fair hair was effectually covered and concealed by a cotton kerchief, and then her dress was changed for the characteristic costume of negro women. "Now your own mudder wouldn't know you," said Dinah, stepping back to survey her work, and, strange to say, putting her black head quite artistically a little on one side. "You's a'most as good-lookin' as myself--if you was on'y a little fatter. Now, mind, you's a dumb gal! Can't speak a word. Don't forgit dat. An' your name's Geo'giana. Come along." Leaving her fine clothes concealed in a deep hole, Hester followed her companion as fast as she could. On returning to the road Dinah took her friend by the hand and helped her to run for a considerable distance. Then they walked, and then ran again, until poor Hester was almost exhausted. Resuming their walk after a short rest, they gained the main road and met with several people, who paid no attention to them whatever, much to Hester's relief, for she had made sure of being detected. At last they reached the city gate, which was still open, as the sun had not yet set. Passing through unchallenged, Dinah at once dived into a maze of narrow streets, and, for the first time since starting, felt comparatively safe. Fortunately for the success of their enterprise, the negress costume fitted loosely, so that the elegance of Hester's form was not revealed, and her exhaustion helped to damage the grace of her carriage! "Now, dearie, you come in yar an' rest a bit," said Dinah, turning into a dark cellar-like hole, from which issued both sounds and smells that were not agreeable. It was the abode of one of Dinah's friends--also a negress--who received her with effusive goodwill. Retiring to the coal-hole--or some such dark receptacle--Dinah held her friend in conversation for about a quarter of an hour, during which time several hearty Ethiopian chuckles were heard to burst forth. Then, returning to the cellar, Dinah introduced her friend to Hester as Missis Lilly, and Hester to Missis Lilly as Miss Geo'giana. Wondering why her friend had selected for her the name--if she remembered rightly--of one of Blue Beard's wives, Hester bowed, and was about to speak when Dinah put her flat nose close to hers and sternly said, "Dumb." "Moreober," she continued, "you mustn't bow like a lady, or you'll be diskivered 'mediately. You must bob. Sally!" This last word was shouted. The instant effect was the abrupt stoppage of one of the disagreeable sounds before referred to--a sound as of pounding--and the appearance of a black girl who seemed to rise out of a pit in the floor at the darkest end of the cellar. "Sally, show dis yar stoopid gal how to bob." The girl instantly broke off, so to speak, at the knees for a moment, and then came straight again. "Now, Geo'giana, you bob." Hester entered into the spirit of the thing and broke off admirably, whereat Dinah and Lilly threw back their heads and shook their sides with laughter. Sally so far joined them as to show all her teeth and gums. Otherwise she was expressionless. "Now you come yar wid me into dis room," said Dinah, taking Hester's hand and heading her along a passage which was so profoundly dark that the very walls and floor were invisible. Turning suddenly to the left, Dinah advanced a few paces and stood still. "You stop where you is, Geo'giana, till I gits a light. Don't stir," she said, and left her. A feeling of intense horror began to creep over the poor girl when she was thus left alone in such a horrible place, and she began almost to regret that she had forsaken the comfortable home of the Moor, and to blame herself for ingratitude. In her agony she was about to call aloud to her negro friend not to forsake her, when the words, "Call upon Me in the time of trouble," occurred to her, and, falling on her knees, she cast herself upon God. She was not kept waiting long. Only a minute or two had elapsed when Dinah returned with a candle and revealed the fact that they stood in a small low-roofed room, the brick floor of which was partially covered with casks, packing-cases, and general lumber. "Dis am to be your room, Geo'giana," said her friend, holding the candle over her head and surveying the place with much satisfaction. Poor Hester shuddered. "It is an awful place," she said faintly. "Yes, it am a awrful good place," said Dinah, with satisfaction. "Not easy to find you yar; an' if dey did git dis lengt' widout breakin' dere legs, dere's a nice leetil hole yar what you could git in an' larf to youself." She led the poor girl to the other end of the room, where, in a recess, there was a boarded part of the wall. Removing one of the boards, she disclosed an opening. "Das a small hole, Geo'giana, but it's big enough to hold _you_, an' when you's inside you've on'y got to pull de board into its place, and fix it--so." Setting down the candle, the woman stepped into the hole, and went through the performance that would devolve upon Hester in case of emergency. "But why leave me here at all?" pleaded Hester, when Dinah had exhausted her eulogy of the hiding-place. "Why not take me to your own home?" "Cause it's not so safe as dis," answered Dinah. "P'r'aps in time you may come dere--not now. Moreober, Missis Lilly is a fuss-rate creetur, most as good as myself, if her temper was a leetil more 'eavenly. But she's a winged serubim wid dem as don't rile 'er, an' she'll be awrful good to you for my sake an' Peter's. You see, we was all on us took by the pints at de same time, and we're all Christ'ns but ob course we don't say much about dat yar!" "And am I to be always dumb--never to speak at all?" asked Hester, in a rather melancholy tone. "Oh! no--bress you! It's on'y when you're in de front or outside dat you's dumb. When you's back yar you may speak to Lilly an' Sally much as you like, on'y not too loud; an' keep your eyes open, an' your ears sharp always. If you don't it's lost you will be. Don't forgit Osman!" Hester shuddered again; said that she would _never_ forget Osman, and would be as careful and attentive to orders as possible. "An' dey'll gib you a little work to do--not much--on'y a little. When peepil speak to you, just point to your ears and mout', an' shake your head. Das enuff. Dey won't boder you arter dat. Now, dearie, I must go. I'll come an' see you sometimes--neber fear. What's to become ob you in de long-run's more'n I kin tell, for it's Peter de Great as'll hab to settle dat kestion. You's in his hands. I knows not'ing, so you'll hab to be patient." Patient, indeed! Little did that poor painted slave think what demands would yet be made upon her patience. Full two months elapsed before she again saw Peter, or heard anything about Ben-Ahmed and her former friends at Mustapha! Meanwhile, Dinah having departed, she wisely set herself to make the most of her new friends. Mrs Lilly she soon found to be quite as amiable as Dinah had described her. She and Sally were slaves to the Moor who dwelt in the house which formed the superstructure of their cellars; but, unlike white slaves, they were allowed a good deal of personal liberty; first, because there was no danger of their running away, as they had no place to run to; second, because their master wanted them to buy and sell vegetables and other things, in order that he might reap the profit; and, last, because, being an easy-going man, the said master had no objection to see slaves happy as long as their happiness did not interfere in any way with his pleasure. "Now, Geo'giana," said Mrs Lilly, in the course of their first conversation, "my massa he neber come down yar, nor trouble his head about us, as long's I take him a leetle money ebery day, an' nobody else hab got a right to come, so you's pretty safe if dey don't send de janissaries to make a sarch--an' if dey do, you know whar to go. I'll tell massa we make more money if I gits anoder slabe-gal, an' he'll agree, for he agrees to eberyt'ing ob dat sort! Den he'll forgit all about it, an' den you an' Sally kin go about town what you like." "But I fear, Mrs Lilly, that I won't be able to help you to make more money," objected Hester timidly. "Oh yes, you will. You'll larn to 'broider de red an' blue slippers. Das pay well when neatly done, an' I kin see by de shape ob your fingers you do it neatly. You's hungry now, I darsay, so go to work at your grub, an' den I'll show you what to do." Somewhat comforted by the kindly tone and motherly bearing of Mrs Lilly, Hester went into one of the dark cellar-like rooms of the interior of her new home, and found it to be a sort of kitchen, which borrowed its light from the outer room by means of a convenient wall that was white-washed for the purpose of transmitting it. This reflector was not an eminent success, but it rendered darkness visible. At the time we write of, however, the sun having set, the kitchen was lighted by a smoky oil-lamp of classic form and dimness. Here she found Sally busy with her evening meal. Sally was apparently about as little of a human being as was consistent with the possession of a human form and the power of speech. Most of her qualities seemed to be negative--if we may say so. She was obviously not unamiable; she was not unkind; and she was not sulky, though very silent. In fact, she seemed to be the nearest possible approach to a human nonentity. She may be described as a black maid-of-all-work, but her chief occupation was the pounding of roasted coffee-beans. This operation she performed in the pit in the floor before mentioned, which may be described as a hole, into which you descended by four steps from the front room. As the front room itself was below the level of the street, it follows that the "pit" penetrated considerably deeper into the bowels of the earth. In this pit Sally laboured hard, almost day and night, pounding the coffee-beans in an iron mortar, with an iron pestle so heavy that she had to stand up and use it with both hands. She had got into the habit of relieving herself by an audible gasp each time she drove the pestle down. It was not a necessary gasp, only a remonstrative one, as it were, and conveyed more to the intelligent listener than most of the girl's average conversation did. This gasp was also one of the disagreeable sounds which had saluted the ears of Hester on her first entrance into the new home. "Mrs Lilly is very kind," said Hester, as she sat down at a small table beside her fellow-slave. Sally stopped eating for a moment and stared. Supposing that she had not understood the remark, Hester repeated it. "Yes," assented Sally, and then stopped the vocal orifice with a huge wooden spoonful of rice. Judging that her companion wished to eat in undisturbed silence, Hester helped herself to some rice, and quietly began supper. Sally eyed her all the time, but was too busy feeding herself to indulge in speech. At last she put down her spoon with a sigh of satisfaction, and said, "Das good!" with such an air of honest sincerity that Hester gave way to an irresistible laugh. "Yes, it is very good indeed. Did you cook it?" asked Hester, anxious to atone for her impoliteness. "Yes. I cook 'im. I do all de cookin' in dis yar ouse--an' most ob de eatin' too." "By the way, Sally, what is it that you keep pounding so constantly in that--that hole off the front room?" "Coffee," answered Sally, with a nod. "Indeed! Surely not the household coffee. You cannot drink such a quantity!" Sally stared for a minute; then opened her mouth, shut her eyes, threw back her head, and chuckled. "No," she said, with sudden gravity; "if we drink'd it all we'd all bu'st right off. I pounds it, Missis Lilly sells it, an' massa pockets de money." "Do you pound much?" asked Hester, in a tone of sympathy. "Oh! housefuls," said Sally, opening her eyes wide. "'Gin at daylight-- work till dark, 'cept when doin' oder t'ings. De Moors drink it. Awrful drinkers am de Moors. Mornin', noon, an' night dey swill leetle cups ob coffee. Das de reason dey's all so brown." "Indeed? I never heard before that the brown-ness of their complexion was owing to that. Are you sure?" "Oh yes; kite sure. Coffee comes troo de skin--das it," returned Sally, with perfect confidence of tone and manner. Suddenly she was smitten with a new idea, and stared for some time at her fellow-slave. At last she got it out. "Missis Lilly say dat you's dumb. How kin you speak so well if you's dumb?" Poor Hester was greatly perplexed. She did not know how far her companion had been let into the secret reason of her being there, and was afraid to answer. At last she made up her mind. "I am not really dumb, you know; I have only to be dumb when in the street, or when any visitor is in the house here; but when alone with Mrs Lilly or you I am allowed to speak low." A gleam of intelligence beamed on the black girl's face as she said, "No, you's not dumb. Moreober, you's not black!" "Oh, Sally!" exclaimed Hester, in quite a frightened tone; "how did you find that out?" "Hasn't I got eyes an' ears?" demanded Sally. "Your voice ain't nigger, your 'plexion ain't nigger, an' your mout' an' nose ain't nigger. Does you t'ink Sally's an ass?" "No, indeed, I am sure you are not; but--but, you--you won't betray me, Sally?" "Whas dat?" "You won't tell upon me? Oh, you can't think what dreadful punishment I shall get if I am found out! You won't tell on me, _dear_ Sally--won't you not?" entreated Hester, with tears in her eyes. "Dere, stop dat! Don't cry! Das wuss dan speakin', for de tearz'll wash all de black off your face! Tell on you? Dee see dat?" Hester certainly did see "dat," for Sally had suddenly protruded we fear to say how many inches of red flesh from her mouth. "I cut dat off wid de carvin'-knife sooner dan tell on you, for you's my fri'nd, because Peter de Great am your fri'nd. But you muss be dumb-- dumb as you kin, anyhow--an' you mus' neber--neber cry!" The earnestness of this remark caused Hester to laugh even when on the verge of weeping, so she grasped Sally's hand and shook it warmly, thus cementing the friendship which had so auspiciously begun. After the meal Mrs Lilly took her lodger into the front room and gave her embroidery work to do. She found it by no means difficult, having learned something like it during her residence with Ben-Ahmed's household. At night she retired to the dark lumber-room, but as Sally owned one of the corners of it Hester did not feel as lonely as she had feared, and although her bed was only made of straw, it was by no means uncomfortable, being spread thickly and covered with two blankets. She dreamed, of course, and it may easily be understood that her dreams were not pleasant, and that they partook largely of terrible flights from horrible dangers, and hairbreadth escapes from an ogre who, whatever shape he might assume, always displayed the head and features of the hated Osman. Next morning, however, she arose pretty well refreshed, and inexpressibly thankful to find that she was still safe. For a long time she remained thus in hiding. Then, as it was considered probable that search for her had been given up as useless, Mrs Lilly resolved to send her out with Sally to one of the obscurer market-places, to purchase some household necessaries. "You see, chile," said the motherly woman, "you git sick on my hands if you not go out, an' dere's no danger. Just keep your shawl well ober your face, an' hold your tongue. Don't forgit dat. Let 'em kill you if dey likes, but don't speak!" With this earnest caution ringing in her ears, Hester went forth with Sally to thread the mazes of the town. At first she was terribly frightened, and fancied that every one who looked at her saw through her disguise, but as time passed and no one took the least notice of her, her natural courage returned, and gradually she began to observe and take an interest in the strange persons and things she saw everywhere around her. CHAPTER TEN. TORTURE IS APPLIED IN VAIN, AND TRUE LOVE IS NOT TO BE DECEIVED. We must return now to the residence of Ben-Ahmed at Mustapha. When his son Osman--who had seen Hester only once and that for but a few minutes--discovered that the fair slave had fled, his rage knew no bounds. He immediately sent for Peter the Great and sternly asked him if he knew how the English girl had escaped. Their intercourse, we may remark, was carried on in the same curious manner as that referred to in connection with Ben-Ahmed. Osman spoke in Lingua Franca and Peter replied in his ordinary language. "Oh yes, massa, I know," said the latter, with intense earnestness; "she escaped ober de wall." "Blockhead!" exclaimed the irate Osman, who was a sturdy but ill-favoured specimen of Moslem humanity. "Of course I know that, but _how_ did she escape over the wall?" "Don' know dat, massa. You see I's not dere at de time, so can't 'zactly say. Moreober, it was bery dark, an' eben if I's dar, I couldn't see peepil in de dark." "You lie! you black scoundrel! and you know that you do. You could tell me much more about this if you chose." "No, indeed, I don't lie--if a slabe may dar to counterdick his massa," returned Peter humbly. "But you's right when you say I could tell you much more. Oh! I could tell you _heaps_ more! In de fuss place I was sotin' wid de oder slabes in de kitchen, enjoyin' ourselves arter supper, w'en we hear a cry! Oh my! how my heart jump! Den all our legs jump, and out we hoed wid lanterns an--" "Fool! don't I know all that? Now, tell me the truth, has the English slave, George Fos--Fos--I forget his name--" "Geo'ge Foster," suggested the negro, with an amiable look. "Yes; has Foster had no hand in the matter?" "Unpossible, I t'ink," said Peter. "You see he was wid me and all de oder slabes when de girl hoed off, an' I don't t'ink eben a Englishman kin be in two places at one time. But you kin ax him; he's in de gardin." "Go, fetch him," growled the young Moor, "and tell four of my men to come here. They are waiting outside." The negro retired, and, soon after, four stout Moorish seamen entered. They seemed worthy of their gruff commander, who ordered them to stand at the inner end of the room. As he spoke he took up an iron instrument, somewhat like a poker, and thrust it into a brazier which contained a glowing charcoal fire. Presently Peter the Great returned with young Foster. Osman did not condescend to speak directly to him, but held communication through the negro. Of course our hero could throw no light on the subject, being utterly ignorant of everything--as Peter had wisely taken the precaution to ensure--except of the bare fact that Hester was gone. "Now, it is my opinion," said Osman, with a savage frown, "that you are both deceiving me, and if you don't tell the truth I will take means to force it out of you." Saying this he turned to the brazier and pulled out the iron poker to see that it was becoming red-hot. The countenance of the negro became very grave as he observed this, and the midshipman's heart sank within him. "So you deliberately tell me," said the Moor abruptly, as he wheeled round and confronted Peter the Great, "that you have no knowledge as to where, or with whom, this girl is?" "No, massa," answered the negro, with solemn sincerity. "If you was to skin me alive I not able to tell you whar she is or who she is wid." Peter said no more than this aloud, but he added, internally, that he would sooner die than give any further information, even if he had it to give. Osman made a motion with his hand as a signal to the four seamen, who, advancing quickly, seized the negro, and held him fast. One of the men then stripped off the poor man's shirt. At the same moment Osman drew the red-hot iron from the fire, and deliberately laid it on Peter's back, the skin of which hissed and almost caught fire, while a cloud of smoke arose from it. The hapless victim did not struggle. He was well aware that resistance would be useless. He merely clenched his teeth and hands. But when Osman removed the iron and applied it to another part of his broad back a deep groan of agony burst from the poor fellow, and beads of perspiration rolled from his brow. At first George Foster could scarcely believe his eyes. He was almost paralysed by an intense feeling of horror. Then there came a tremendous rebound. Rage, astonishment, indignation, fury, and a host of cognate passions, met and exploded in his bosom. Uttering a yell that harmonised therewith, he sprang forward, hit Osman a straight English left-hander between the eyes, and followed it up with a right-hander in the gullet, which sent the cruel monster flat on the floor, and his head saluted the bricks with an effective bump. In his fall the Moor overturned the brazier, and brought the glowing fire upon his bosom, which it set alight--his garments being made of cotton. To leap up with a roar of pain and shake off the glowing cinders was the work of a moment. In the same moment two of the stout seamen threw themselves on the roused midshipman, and overcame him--not, however, before one of them had received a black eye and the other a bloody nose, for Moors do not understand the art of self-defence with the fists. "Down with him!" shouted Osman, when he had extinguished the flames. He seized a supple cane, or wand, as the seamen threw Foster down, and held his feet in the air, after tearing off his shoes. Wild with fury, Osman brought the cane down on the poor youth's soles. It was his first taste of the bastinado. The agony took him by surprise, and extorted a sharp yell. Next moment his teeth were in the calf of one of the men's legs, and his right hand grasped the baggy trousers of the other. A compound kick and plunge overturned them both, and as they all fell into a heap, the cheek of one seaman received a stinging blow that was meant for the middy's soles. Things had reached this crisis, and Peter the Great, having hurled aside his two assailants, was on the point of rushing to the rescue of his friend, when the door burst open, and Ben-Ahmed stood before them quivering with indignation. "Is this your return for my forbearance? Be-gone!" he shouted to his son in a voice of thunder. Osman knew his father too well to require a second bidding. He left the room angrily, and a look from Ben-Ahmed sent the four sailors after him. The Moor was too well accustomed to his wild son's ways to require any explanation of the cause of the fracas. Just giving one glance at his slaves, to make sure that neither was killed, he left the room as hastily as he had entered it. "My poor friend," exclaimed the middy, grasping the negro's hand with a gush of mingled enthusiasm and pity, "I trust you have not been much injured by that inhuman brute?" "Oh, bress you! no. It do smart a bit," returned Peter, as he put on his shirt uneasily, "an' I's used to it, Geo'ge, you know. But how's your poo' feet?" "Well, I'm not vary sure," replied Foster, making a wry face as he sat down to examine them. "How it did sting, Peter! I owe a heavy debt of gratitude to old Ben-Ahmed for cutting it short. No, the skin's not damaged, I see, but there are two or three most awful weals. D'you know, I never before this day felt sorry that I wasn't born a dog!" "Why's dat, Geo'ge?" Because then I should have been able to make my teeth meet in yon fellow's leg, and would have held on! Yes, I don't know what I would not have given just at that time to have been born a mastiff, or a huge Saint Bernard, or a thoroughbred British bull-dog, with double the usual allowance of canines and grinders! The negro threw back his head and began one of his silent laughs, but suddenly stopped, opened his eyes wide, pursed his lips, and moved his broad shoulders uneasily. "I mus' laugh _easy_ for some time to come," he remarked. "Poor fellow!" said Foster, "I fear you must. I say--how my soles do sting!" "Oh yes, _I_ knows," returned Peter, with a remarkably intelligent nod. "But come. We mus' go an' see what massa's a-goin' to do, for you bery sure he won't rest quiet till he's turned ebery stone to find Missy Hester." Peter the Great left the room with a brave effort to suppress a groan; while our middy followed with an equally valorous determination not to limp. In both efforts they were but partially successful. As Peter had prophesied, Ben-Ahmed did indeed leave no stone unturned to recover Hester Sommers, but there was one consideration which checked him a good deal, and prevented his undertaking the search as openly as he wished, and that was the fear that the Dey himself might get wind of what he was about, and so become inquisitive as to the cause of the stir which so noted a man was making about a runaway slave. For Ben-Ahmed feared--and so did Osman--that if the Dey saw Hester he might want to introduce her into his own household. The caution which they had therefore to observe in prosecuting the search was all in favour of the runaway. As time passed by, Hester, _alias_ Geo'giana, began to feel more at ease in her poor abode and among her new friends, who, although unrefined in manners, were full to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, so that at last the unfortunate English girl began to entertain positive affection for Mrs Lilly and her black handmaiden. She also began to feel more at ease in traversing the intricate streets of the city, for the crowds that passed her daily had evidently too much to do attending to their own business to bestow more than an indifferent glance at two negro girls. And if the features of one of the two was not according to the familiar negro type, it is probable that all the inhabitants of Algiers were aware of the fact that some of the tribes of black people in the interior of Africa possess the well-formed features and comparatively thin lips of Europeans. As Hester's anxieties about herself began to abate, however, her desire to find out where and how her father was became more and more intense. But the poor child was doomed to many months of hope deferred before that desire was gratified. Peter the Great did indeed make a few efforts to meet with him again-- sometimes in company with George Foster, more frequently alone, and occasionally he visited Hester--having been informed by his sister Dinah where to find her--in order to tell of his want of success, and to comfort her with earnest assurances that he would "neber forsake her," but would keep up a constant look-out for her fadder an' an eye on herself. Consideration for the girl's safety rendered it necessary that these visits should be few and far between, and, of course, owing to the same necessity, our middy was not permitted to visit her at all. Indeed, Peter refused to tell him even where she was hiding, all the information he condescended to give being that she was safe. "You see, my dear," said Peter to Hester, in a paternal tone, on the occasion of the first of these visits, "if I was to come yar oftin, massa--spec'ally Osman--would 'gin to wonder, an' de moment a man 'gins to wonder he 'gins to suspec', an' den he 'gins to watch; an' if it comes to dat it's all up wid you an' me. So you mus' jest keep close an' say nuffin till de tide 'gins to turn an' de wind blow fair. De good Lord kin turn wind an' tide when He likes, so keep your heart up, Geo'giana!" As he uttered the last word the negro put his great hand on the girl's shoulder and patted it. "_What_ a good name Geo'giana am," he continued, bringing his eyes to bear on the slender little black creature before him; "an' _what_ a good nigger you would make if on'y you had an elegant flat nose an' bootiful thick hips. Neber mind, you's better lookin' dan Sally, anyhow, an' no mortal could guess who you was, eben if he was told to look hard at you!" "But oh, Peter, this is such an anxious, weary life," began Hester, with a trembling lip. "Now, hold on dar!" interrupted the negro, almost sternly; "you _mus'_ _not_ cry, whateber you do, for it washes off de black. You mus' larn to cumtroul your feelin's." "I will try," returned Hester, attempting to smile. "But it is not that I am discontented with my lot, for they are as kind to me here as if they were my mother and sister, and I like doing the embroidery work very much--it's not that. It is the weary waiting, and hoping for, and expecting news of my darling father--news which _never_ comes." "Now, don't you t'ink like dat, Geo'giana, but larn to submit--submit-- das de word. De news'll come all in good time. An' news allers comes in a heap--suddently, so to speak. It _neber_ comes slow. Now, look yar. I wants you to make me a solum promise." "What is that?" asked Hester, smiling in spite of herself at the intensity of her dark friend's look and manner. "It am dis. Dat you will neber look surprised, nor speak surprised, no matter howeber much you may _feel_ surprised." "You impose a difficult task on me, Peter." "Ob course I do, Geo'giana, but as your life--an' p'r'aps mine, but dat ain't much--depends on it, you'll see de needcessity." "I will certainly try--for your sake as well as my own," returned Hester fervently. "Well, I t'ink you will, but it ain't easy, an' I'll test you some day." It was more than a month after that before Peter the Great paid her another visit, and, to the poor girl's grief, he still came without news of her father. He had been all over the Kasba, he said, and many other places where the slaves worked, but he meant to persevere. The city was big, and it would take time, but "Geo'giana" was to cheer up, for he would _neber_ gib in. One morning Peter announced to Foster that he was going into town to make purchases, and he wanted his assistance to carry the basket. "Are we going to make another search for poor Mr Sommers?" asked the middy, as he walked along the road holding one handle of the empty basket. "No, we's got no time for dat to-day. I mus' be back early. Got time on'y for one call on a friend ob mine. Das all." As the negro did not seem inclined for conversation, Foster forebore to trouble him, but observed, without remarking on the circumstance, that, instead of taking their accustomed way to the market-place, they passed along many narrow, steep, and intricate streets until they reached what the midshipman conceived to be the very heart of the city. "Dis am de house ob my friend," said Peter, stopping in front of an opening which descended into a cellar. "Foller me, Geo'ge, an' bring down de baskit wid you. Hallo, Missis Lilly! Is you widin?" "Hi! Das you, Peter de Great?" came in shrill tones from below as they descended. "Dumb!" exclaimed Peter, with peculiar emphasis on reaching the cellar. "How you do, Missis Lilly? Oberjoyed to see you lookin' so fresh. Just looked in to ax how you's gettin' along." Need we say that Peter's warning word was not thrown away on Hester Sommers, who was seated in her corner embroidering with gold thread a pair of red morocco slippers. But, forewarned though she was, her presence of mind was put to a tremendous test when, all unexpectedly, George Foster descended the steps and stood before her. Fortunately, while the youth was bestowing a hearty nautical greeting on Mrs Lilly-- for his greeting was always hearty, as well to new acquaintances as to old friends--Hester had time to bend over her work and thus conceal the sudden pallor followed by an equally sudden flush which changed her complexion from a bluish grey to a burnt sienna. When George turned to glance carelessly at her she was totally absorbed in the slipper. The negro watched the midshipman's glance with keen interest. When he saw that only a passing look was bestowed on Hester, and that he then turned his eyes with some interest to the hole where Sally was pounding coffee and gasping away with her wonted energy, he said to himself mentally, "Ho, Dinah, but you _am_ a cleber woman! Geo'ge don't rignise her more'n if she was a rigler coloured gal! I do b'lieve her own fadder wouldn't know her!" He then proceeded to have a talk with Mrs Lilly, and while he was thus engaged the middy, who had an inquiring disposition, began to look round the cellar and take mental-artistic notes of its appearance. Then he went up to Hester, and, taking up one of the finished slippers, examined it. "Most beautiful! Exquisite!" he said. "Does it take you long to do this sort of thing?" The girl did not reply. "She's dumb!" said Peter quickly. "Ah, poor thing!" returned Foster, in a voice of pity. "Deaf, too, I suppose?" "Well, I don't know as to dat, Geo'ge." "Is this one dumb too?" asked the middy, pointing to the coffee-hole. "Oh dear no!" interposed Lilly. "Sally a'n't dumb; she's awrful sharp with 'er tongue!" "She ought to be deaf anyhow, considering the row she kicks up down there!" "Come now, Geo'ge, it's time we was goin'. So pick up de baskit an' go ahead." Bidding Mrs Lilly an affectionate adieu, the two shaves left the cellar, to the intense relief of poor Hester, who scarce knew whether to laugh or cry over the visit. She had been so eagerly anxious to speak to Foster, yet had managed to keep her promise in spite of the peculiarly trying circumstances. "Peter," said the middy, when they had got well out of the town on their way home, "what made you say `dumb' so emphatically when you descended into that cellar?" "_Did_ I say `dumb?'" returned the negro, with an inquiring look at the clouds. "You certainly did." "'Phatically, too?" "Yes, most emphatically." "Well, now, das most remarkably strange!" "Not so strange as my finding Hester Sommers in a coal-hole making golden slippers!" At this Peter set down the basket, threw back his head, and took a prolonged silent laugh. "Now dat _is_ de strangest t'ing ob all. Didn't I t'ink you not rignise her one bit!" "Peter," returned the midshipman gravely, "you ought to know from experience that true love pierces every disguise." "Das troo, Geo'ge," said Peter, as he lifted his end of the basket and resumed the journey. "Lub is a wonderful t'ing, an' I ain't sure what might come ob it if I was took unawares to see my Angelica arter she'd bin painted white. But dere's one t'ing as comforts me a leetle, an' dat is, dat Peter de Great ain't de biggest hyperkrite in de world arter all, for de way you purtended not to know dat gal, an' de way she purtended not to know _you_, hab took de wind out ob my sails altogidder!" CHAPTER ELEVEN. DANGERS, VICISSITUDES, ESCAPES, NEW SURROUNDINGS, HOPES, AND FEARS. It was probably an advantage to Hester Sommers that she had been subjected to so severe a test at that time, for, not many weeks afterwards, she experienced a shock which put her powers of self-restraint to a much severer trial. It happened thus. Sally and she were on their way home from market one day; the former with a large basket of vegetables on her head, and the latter with a lighter basket of oranges on her arm, for the use of the master at home. They had come to one of the wider of the narrow streets of the town, where the small shops were numerous, and the throng of passers-by was considerable--as also was the noise, for Jews, Moors, Cabyles, and negroes were conversing and jostling each other in all directions. Presently a band of slaves approached, and, as it passed, Hester nearly fainted, for among them she beheld her father, with irons on his legs, and a shovel and pick on his shoulder. "Father!" she exclaimed, in a faint voice, and, stretching out her arms, made an effort to run towards him. Quick as lightning Sally grasped the situation, and, rising to the occasion with that prompt energy which betokens true genius, she seized Hester by the nape of the neck, hurled her to the ground, and sent her oranges flying in all directions! At the same time she began to storm at her with a volubility of invective that astonished herself as well as the amused bystanders. As for poor Hugh Sommers, the noise had prevented him from hearing the word "father!" and all that met his eyes was one black girl roughly using another. Alas! the poor man had been by that time so much accustomed to witness acts of cruelty that the incident gave him little concern. He passed doggedly onward to his thankless, unremitting toil, which had been rendered all the more severe of late in consequence of his despairing violence having compelled his drivers to put the heavy irons on his limbs. Meanwhile Sally, having made Hester pick up some of the oranges, seized her by an arm and hurried her away. Nor did she desist scolding until she had her fairly down in the back regions of their cellar-home. "I will never forgive you!" exclaimed Hester, with flashing eyes, doubling up her small fists, and apparently wishing that at least for one quarter of an hour she might be transformed into a female Samson. "Oh yes, you will," returned the negress coolly; "you'll forgib me when I tells you dat I hab sab' your fadder's life, an' p'r'aps your own too!" "How? What do you mean?" demanded Hester, relaxing her little fists slightly, though still coruscating in the region of the eyes. "I means dat if you got hold ob yer fadder dat time, he bery likely grip you tight an' refuse to part wid you at no price ebermore; so den, ob course, dey tear him away, an' he kick up a shindy an' try to kill somebody--p'r'aps _do_ it! Oh, its's allers de way. I's oftin seen it wid the big strong men--an' your fadder am big. Dat was him, wasn't it, wid de broad shoulders an' de nice face--a leetle wild-like, p'r'aps, but no wonder--an' de grey beard?" "Yes; that was him--my darling father!" "Well, ob course dey take him away an' bastinado him till he die, or strangle him, or frow him on de hooks; an' dey take you right away back to Osman, or wuss. I doo'd it for de best, Geo'giana." "Oh! Sally, dear, _dear_ Sally, forgive me! But it was such an awful disappointment to be hurried away so, _just_ as I saw him. I--I--am _very_ wicked, Sally, will you forgive me?" said poor little Hester, bursting suddenly into tears, throwing her arms round her friend's neck and kissing her. "Forgib you, Geo'giana! Das not difficult to do, but I'll _neber_ forgib you if you go slobberin' like dat, an' dirtyin' my face wid your black cheeks. Dar now, I's got to polish you up again!" This "polishing up," it may be remarked, was a duty which Sally was called on to perform rather frequently, in consequence of Hester's inveterate tendency to think of her father and shed tears! But her sable friend, whose stolid exterior concealed a wealth of affection, rather enjoyed the process of "polishing up," and while engaged in it broke out into quite eloquent dissertations as to the impropriety of washing one's face with tears when there was plenty of soap and water: coupled with earnest exhortations to "keep up heart," and recommendations not to "gib in," "neber to say die," and the like. On this particular occasion the sympathetic Sally gave her friend inexpressible comfort by assuring her that, having at last seen her father and the gang to which he belonged, she could now easily follow them up and find out where they were set to work. "And so, Geo'giana," said she, in conclusion, "somet'ing may come ob dis meetin', p'r'aps more'n you t'ink." Something certainly did come of it, as we shall see presently; but just now we must turn to another danger which threatened our English slave, and in regard to which the previous testing of her powers of self-restraint was but a trifle. One morning Hester was seated in the usual corner, busily engaged with her embroidery, and with her mind still more busily employed in devising all sorts of impossible schemes for the deliverance of her father--for Sally had discovered the exact spot on the fortifications where Hugh Sommers was at work, and only prevented Hester from rushing out at once to see him by resolutely refusing for a time to tell where that spot was. Mrs Lilly and Hester were alone at the time we refer to, Sally having gone out to the market. "Dearie, I 'spec's Peter de Great dis arternoon," said Mrs Lilly, raising herself from a culinary pot to which she had been devoting her attention. "Dis am about de time he or'nar'ly comes to see you and tell you how de land lies. Now dat he knows you's seed your fadder, he'll likely hab somet'ing 'tickler to say to you." "God grant that he may have something hopeful to suggest," said Hester, without looking up from her work. "You may be sure dat prayer is answered, dearie, for you trust de Lord, an' no one does dat in vain." As the woman spoke, the familiar voice was heard outside, "Hi, Missis Lilly! how's you all git along down dar?" At the same moment the opening to the street was darkened by Peter's bulky form as he descended the narrow stair. Shaking hands with Hester, who rose eagerly to greet him, the negro was about to begin an earnest talk with her as to how she should act in regard to her father if she should again meet him, when a voice was heard that sent a deadly chill alike to the hearts of Hester and the negro. "Is the cellar far from this?" asked the voice, which was that of Osman. "No; here it is! Guard your feet; the second step is broken, and the place is rather dark," replied the owner of the house. "Osman!" whispered Peter, glaring and clenching his fists in an agony of uncertainty how to act. Mrs Lilly, however, black-woman-like, rose to the occasion. "Go down dar, you black wretch!" she cried, thrusting Hester quickly down into the coffee-hole; "how you s'pose massa git his dollars if you not work? Go to work, or I'll skin you!" Truly those negroes, male and female, seemed to possess most effective capacity for, and original methods of, coming to the rescue of their friends in moments of danger! As Mrs Lilly uttered the last words the two visitors stood in the cellar. At the same instant the thud of the great pestle began, and so intelligently did Hester perform her part that the familiar gasp of Sally--admirably imitated--came up with every blow. "What, Peter the Great! You here!" cried Osman, in extreme surprise. "Yes, massa, I's here on a little bit ob business wid Missis Lilly. She's a fri'nd ob my sister Dinah," answered Peter humbly. "Oh, indeed! With my father's permission, I suppose?" "Yes, Massa Osman. I neber dar to come in de town widout your fadder's purmission." Osman turned and addressed a few words in an undertone to the master of the house, who thereupon turned to Mrs Lilly. "You are a wise woman, Lilly," he said, "so I have come to consult you. It seems that one of the slaves belonging to Ben-Ahmed of Mustapha has made her escape, and it is rumoured that she has taken refuge with some one in this very street, or in one not far from it. Now, as you are well acquainted with almost every one in the neighbourhood, I thought it best to come in the first place to you to ask your advice about the matter." The gasp that came from the coffee-hole when this speech was made had something very real in it, and immediately afterwards the pounding was redoubled. "Was the slabe white or black?" asked Mrs Lilly, with childlike simplicity, and more for the purpose of gaining time to think than anything else. "She was white," interposed Osman, "and very beautiful,--in fact, one of the ladies of the harem." On hearing this Mrs Lilly looked inquiringly upwards, as if she expected inspiration to flow from the bricks that formed the vaulted ceiling. Then she looked suddenly at Peter the Great, and said-- "Das mus' be de lady you was tole me about, Peter,--Ister--Hister--w'at you call 'er?" "Yes--Hester! Das so. De same as I tole you all about her 'scape," answered Peter, quaking with anxiety and astonishment at the woman's calm boldness, yet ready to fall in with any plan that her words might suggest. At the same time the gasping in the hole became more and more genuine, and the pounding more and more emphatic. "No, massa, I don' know of no white slabe as hab took refuge wid any ob our neighbours. Indeed I's kite sure dat none ob de neighbours knows not'ing at all about dis Is--Es--w'at you call her? Ester! Das so, Peter?" "Yes, das so, Missis Lilly." "Stop that horrible noise in the hole there! What is it?" said Osman impatiently. "It is only one of my negro slaves," said the master of the house. "Call her up, Lilly, and set her to something quieter until we go." Rendered desperate now, Peter the Great started forward with glaring eyes. "Massa," he said, "an idea hab just struck me. Will you come out a momint? I wants to tell you somet'ing _bery hard_." The appearance, not less than the earnestness, of the negro, inclined Osman to comply with his request; but, hesitating, he said-- "Why not tell me here, Peter? We are all friends, you know." "Oh yes, I know dat, Massa Osman; but womans can never be trusted wid t'ings ob importance, 'specially black womans! But ob course if you not 'fraid ob Missis Lilly, _I_ a'n't 'fraid ob her lettin' de secret out. I darsay she's as good a creetur as de best ob 'um." This readiness to give in was a politic stroke. Osman agreed to go outside with the negro, and while the latter was ascending the short stair to the street, he was making superhuman efforts to invent something, for, as yet, he had not the faintest idea what his intended communication should be. But Peter the Great was a genius, and it is one of the characteristics of genius to be bold even to recklessness. Trusting to some sort of inspiration, he began, with looks and tones of the deepest solemnity, "I s'pose you guess, Massa Osman, dat I've been inwestigatin' that coorious business ob de English gal what runned away?" "No, I did not guess that," answered the Moor shortly. "Oh! but it's true!" said Peter. "Eber since she flooed away I's bin goin' about dem suspekid places, lookin' arter her, and, do you know, Massa Osman, dat at last," (here he dropped his voice and looked unutterable things),--"at _last_ I's found--" "Well--found what?" asked the Moor eagerly. "Found her _fadder_!" "Bah! What do I care for her father, you fool?" "Das troo, massa; but don't you t'ink dat p'r'aps she'd be likely to try for find her fadder; an' if she find 'im she'd be likely to remain _wid_ her fadder? An' so all dat we'd hab to do would be to find her fadder too. Ob course I don't say she's doo'd all dat; but suppose, for de sake ob argiment, dat she _hab_ doo'd it all, won't we--won't we--we-- No, I's lost de t'read ob my discoorse. I'll begin again fro' de beginning. Das de on'y way I kin--" "Is that all you had to tell me?" interrupted the Moor, in rising wrath. "No--not kite all," returned Peter humbly. "Dey do say dat de fadder is at work on de for'fications on de sout' side ob de Kasba." "Well, you are a greater fool than I took you for," said Osman, in whom contempt was quickly taking the place of anger. "I s'pose I is, massa. An' I s'pose it am part ob my foolishness to be lookin' arter dis yar gal--but den, you see, I lubs Ben-Ahmed, so--" "Well, well, Peter, I believe you mean well--" "I's _sure_ I does, Massa Osman!" "Don't interrupt me, you black villain! Can't you see that if Hester's father is a Bagnio slave there is no chance of her having found refuge with him?" "Das true, massa. I do s'pose you's right. I's a born ijit altogidder. But, you know, when a man gits off de scent ob a t'ing, anyt'ing dat looks de least bit like a clue should be follered up. An' dere's no sayin' what might come ob seein' de fadder--for we's off de scent entirely jist now." "There's little doubt of that, Peter," said Osman, pausing, and looking meditatively at the ground. "Moreober," suggested the negro, "when a man wid a cleber head an' a purswavis tongue like you tackles a t'ing, it's bery strange indeed if not'ing comes ob it." "Well, you may be right after all," returned the Moor slowly. "I will go and see this father. At all events it can do no harm." "None whateber, massa. An' I better run back and send Ali arter you." "Why? What has he to do with it?" "Oh! I only t'ought dat you was huntin' togidder. It's ob no consikence. But I t'ink he knows de janissary officer what has charge ob de gang, an' if _you_ don't know him Ali might be useful." "There is wisdom in what you say." "Eben zough I _is_ a `fool?'" asked the negro simply. Osman laughed. "At all events you are an honest fool, Peter, and I'm sorry I burned your back the other day. You didn't deserve it." "Oh, nebber mind dat," returned Peter, feeling really uneasy. "De back's all right now. Moreober I _did_ deserb it, for I's an awrful sinner! Wuss dan you t'ink! Now, if you keep right up as you go, an' when you comes to de Kasba turn to de right an' keep so till you comes to de right angle ob de sout' wall. De fadder he work dar. I'll send Ali arter you, quick's I can." They parted, and while the Moor stalked sedately up the street, the negro hurried back to the cellar with a message to Ali to follow Osman without a moment's delay. Meanwhile Ali had been cleverly engaged by the ready-witted Mrs Lilly, who, after fiercely ordering the coffee-pounder to "stop her noise," come out of the hole, and retire to the kitchen, drew forth a large leathern purse, which she wisely chinked, and, going towards the stairs, invited her master to "come to de light an' receibe de money which she hab made by de last sale ob slippers." Of course the bait took--none other could have been half so successful. But Hester apparently had not courage to take advantage of the opportunity, for she did not quit the hole. Fortunately Peter arrived before the cash transaction was completed. On receiving Osman's message Ali balanced accounts promptly by thrusting the purse and its contents into his pocket and hastening away. Then Peter the Great and Lilly sat down, took a long grave look at each other, threw back their heads, opened their cavernous mouths, and indulged in a quiet but hearty laugh. "Now you kin come out, dearie," said Lilly, turning to the coffee-hole on recovering composure. But no response came from the "vasty deep." "De coast's cl'ar, my dear," said Peter, rising. Still no response, so Peter descended the few steps, and found Hester lying insensible on a heap of coffee-beans, and still firmly grasping the big pestle. The trial had been too much for the poor child, who had fainted, and Peter emerged with her in his arms, and an expression of solemn anxiety on his countenance. In a few minutes, however, she revived, and then Peter, hurrying her away from a locality which he felt was no longer safe, placed her under the charge of his sister Dinah--to the inexpressible regret of Mrs Lilly and her black maid-of-all-work. In her new home the fugitive's circumstances were much improved. Dinah and her husband had great influence over their owner, Youssef, the proprietor of the small coffee-house already described. They not only managed most of its details for him, but were permitted a good deal of personal liberty. Among other things they had been allowed to select the top of the house as their abode. To European ears this may sound rather strange, but those who have seen the flat roofs of Eastern lands will understand it. Youssef's house, like nearly all the other houses of the city, had a flat roof, with a surrounding parapet nearly breast-high. Here had been placed a few wooden boxes filled with earth and planted with flowering shrubs. These formed quite a little garden, to which Youssef had been wont to retreat of an evening for meditative and, we may add, smokative purposes. But as Youssef had grown old, his eyes had nearly, and his legs had quite, failed him. Hence, being unable to climb to his roof, he had latterly given it up entirely to the use of his black slaves, Samson and Dinah White. There was a small excrescence or hut on the roof--about ten feet by six in dimensions--which formed--their residence. Behind this, hiding itself as it were and almost invisible, nestled a smaller excrescence or offshoot. It was a mere bandbox of a thing, measuring five feet by four; it had a window about twelve inches square, and was entered by a door inside the larger hut. This was the apartment now assigned to Hester, who was quietly introduced into the household without the knowledge or consent of its blind proprietor. There was a little bed in the small room. True, it was only a trestle frame, and a straw-stuffed mattress with a couple of blankets, but it was clean, and the whole room was neat, and the sun shone brightly in at the small window at the moment that the new occupant was introduced. Poor Hester fell on her knees, laid her head on the bed, and thanked God fervently for the blessed change. Almost in the same moment she forgot herself, and prayed still more fervently for the deliverance of her father. The view over the housetops from the little window was absolutely magnificent, including as it did domes, minarets, mosques, palm-trees, shipping, and sea! Here, for a considerable time, Hester worked at her former occupation, for Dinah had a private plan to make a little money for her own pocket by means of embroidery. In this pleasant retreat our fugitive was visited one day by Peter the Great, the expression of whose visage betokened business. After some conversation, he said that he had come for the express purpose of taking Hester to see her father. "But not to talk to him," he added quickly--"not eben to make you'self known to him, for if you did, not'ing would keep 'im quiet, an' you an' he would be parted _for eber_. Mind dat--for _eber_!" "Yes, yes, I will remember," said the poor girl, who was profoundly agitated at the mere thought of such a meeting. "But you mus' _promise_," said Peter solemnly. "Promise on you' word ob honour dat you not say one word; not make a sound; not gib an unor'nary look; not try in any way to attrack his attention. Come--speak, else I go home ag'in." "I promise," said Hester, in a low voice. "An' you won't cry?" "I'll try not to." "Come 'long, den, wid me, an' see you' poor fadder." CHAPTER TWELVE. THE MIDDY, BECOMING DEFIANT AND VIOLENT, COMES TO GRIEF, AND HESTER'S BLACK FRIENDS DEVISE STRANGE THINGS. On the afternoon of the day in which Peter the Great paid his visit to Hester Sommers in the little boudoir, Ben-Ahmed sent for George Foster and bade him make a portrait of a favourite dog. It so happened that our artist had run short of some of his drawing materials, and said that he could not get on well without them. "Go to the town, then, got a supply, and return quickly," said Ben-Ahmed, who was smoking his hookah in the court at the time and playing gently with the lost Hester's pet gazelle. The graceful little creature had drooped since the departure of his mistress, as if he felt her loss keenly. Perhaps it was sympathy that drew it and Ben-Ahmed more together than in times past. Certainly there seemed to be a bond of some sort between them at that time which had not existed before, and the Moor was decidedly more silent and sad since Hester's flight. In his efforts to recover the runaway he had at first taken much trouble, but as time passed he left it in the hands of Osman, who seemed even more anxious than his father to recover the lost slave. As the midshipman was leaving the court the Moor called him back, addressing him as usual in Lingua Franca, while the youth, taking his cue from Peter the Great, answered in English. "You know something about this English girl?" he suddenly said, with a steady look at his slave. "I--I--yes, I _do_ know something about her," replied Foster, in some confusion. "Do you know where she hides?" "N-no; I do not." "I have been led to understand that British officers never tell lies," returned the Moor sternly. The blood rushed to the middy's face as he replied boldly, "You have been correctly informed--at least, in regard to those officers who are true gentlemen." "Why, then, do you hesitate?" retorted the Moor. "Do Englishmen blush and stammer when they tell the truth? Tell me the truth _now_. Do you know where the English girl hides?" The Moor spoke very sternly, but his slave, instead of becoming more confused, suddenly drew himself up, and replied in a voice and with a look as stern as his own-- "Ben-Ahmed, I told you the truth at first. I do _not_ know where she is hiding. I _did_, indeed, know some time ago, but the place of her abode has been changed, and I do not know now. I may as well however say at once that, if I did know, nothing that you can do would induce me to tell you where she hides. You may imprison, torture, or slay me if you choose, but in regard to Hester Sommers I am from this moment dumb!" There was a curious smile on the Moor's lips while the midshipman delivered this speech with flashing eyes and energetic action, but there was no anger in his tone as he replied-- "Englishman," he said quietly, "you _love_ this girl." If a bombshell had exploded under his feet our middy could hardly have been taken more by surprise. But he had been put on his mettle now, and scorned to show again a wavering front. "Yes, Moor," he replied, "I _do_ love her, though I have never told her so, nor have I the slightest reason to believe that she cares a fig for _me_. But I now tell you plainly that I will take advantage of every opportunity that comes in my way to serve her and help her to escape. I now also recall the promise--the word of honour--I gave you, not to try to escape. There was a time," continued the middy, in a softened tone, "when I thought of recalling this promise with defiance to you to do your worst; but, Ben-Ahmed, I have lived to learn that, after a fashion, you have been kind to me; that I might have fallen into worse hands; therefore I am not ungrateful, and I now recall the promise only with regret. All the same, my resolve is fixed." The curious smile still lingered on the Moor's lips as he said, almost in a jesting tone-- "But you will not try to escape to-day if I let you go into the town for colours?" "I make no promise, Ben-Ahmed. Yet this I may safely say, that I will not try to clear off on my own account. Unless to save Hester I will not at present try to escape; so far you may be sure of my return; but if I get the chance I will either rescue her or die for her--God helping me." The smile vanished from the Moor's lips as he turned, and said gravely-- "It is well, young man, that you confess to the true and only source of all help. You Christians, as you call yourselves, have ever seemed to me unwilling to mention the name of God save when cursing your fellows, and then you misuse it glibly enough. Yet there are some among you who are more consistent in their professions. Go, fulfil your commission. I will trust you." "Thank you, Ben-Ahmed," returned the middy; "but remember, if I never return, you will understand that I have not broken my word of honour." The Moor bowed his head in acquiescence, and took a long pull at his pipe as the midshipman went away. George Foster was half-way to the town before he recovered from his astonishment at the strange and unexpected way in which Ben-Ahmed had received his very plain speaking. He had expected that chains and the bastinado, if not worse, would certainly follow, but he had made up his mind to go through with it--if need be to die--for Hester's sake. To find himself, therefore, free to go where he pleased, and to help Hester to escape if the opportunity to do so should come in his way, was an amazing state of things which he could scarcely bring himself to believe. Of course, our hero had not the slightest expectation of encountering Hester that day, when he thus freed himself from his parole, and we need scarcely add that, even if he had met her, he could not have devised any sudden scheme for her deliverance. Nevertheless, the mere fact that he was at liberty to act as he pleased in her behalf had such an effect on him that he entered the town with a lighter heart than he had possessed for many a day. Humming a nautical air as he walked along, and almost if not quite, for the moment, oblivious of the fact of his condition of slavery, he became keenly interested in all that he saw as he passed through the crowded streets, now stopping to admire a picturesque group of figures with jars and pitchers, awaiting their turn to draw water from a public fountain, or pausing in front of a turner's shop to observe with curiosity and interest, the deft way in which the workman used his toes as well as his fingers in the operations of his trade. He was thus engaged, in calm contemplation with his back to the street, when he was very slightly jostled by a passer-by. He scarcely noticed the incident, but if he had known who it was that touched him he would not have remained so placid, for it was Hester herself, in company with Peter the Great, on their way to the city walls. As Hester's eyes were fixed on the ground and her thoughts on her father, while Foster's attention was concentrated on the turner's toes, neither observed the other, but Peter's sharp eyes had noted the middy, and he hurried past to prevent a recognition, which might be awkward, if not dangerous, at the moment. Presently Foster's attention was attracted by a Moor who was riding along the street, sitting side-wise as was the wont of Algerines of the trading-class. What struck Foster particularly about this man and his donkey was that the latter was trotting very fast, although it was a very small animal, and the man on its back a very large one. He also observed that the donkey tossed its head and put back its ears as if it were suffering pain. As the Moor's hand rested on the donkey's haunch, the reason at once occurred to Foster, for he had noticed the same thing before. It was the practice, among cruel men, to create, and keep open, a small sore on the haunch of each animal, by irritating which with a little bit of stick they managed to make their donkeys go in a way that a spur or a thick stick could not accomplish! Now, our middy possessed a tender heart, which shrank sensitively from the idea of giving pain to any living creature, and which almost exploded with indignation at the sight of wanton cruelty to dumb animals. When, therefore, the Moor came alongside of him, Foster gave him a look of tremendous indignation, at the same time exclaiming, "Shame on you!" The Moor turned on him a look of mingled surprise and scorn. At the same time muttering, "Christian dog!" he brought a stick smartly down on the middy's shoulders. This was too much to bear meekly. The boiling blood in the youth's heart boiled over into his face. He leaped forward, seized the donkey's rein with one hand, caught the man's left leg with the other, and hurled the rider backward to the ground. The bump with which the Moor's head came down had the effect of keeping it low, but the spectators of the incident, who were numerous, rushed upon the poor middy, seized him, and carried him straight to a court of justice. They had a summary method of transacting business in those courts, especially in simple cases like that of which we treat. The investigation was rapid; the evidence of the witnesses emphatic. Almost before he had recovered breath our hero was thrown down, his feet were raised by two strong attendants, his shoes plucked off, and the soles of his feet made to tingle as if they had been set on fire. After a few strokes, which he bore in silence, he was led to the common prison, thrust into it, and left to his meditations. Meanwhile, Peter the Great conducted Hester to that part of the city wall where her father was at work among the other slaves. It chanced to be the hour when the wretched creatures were allowed to cease work for a brief space in order to rest and eat. Poor Hugh Sommers chanced to have seated himself a little apart from the others, so as to get the benefit of a large stone for a seat. His figure was, therefore, prominent, as he sat there worn, weary, and dejected, consuming his allowance of black bread. Peter the Great knew him at once, having already, as the reader knows, seen him in his slave garb; but Hester's anxious eyes failed for a few moments to pick out the emaciated frame and strangely clad, ragged figure which represented her once jovial, stalwart, and well-clothed father. "Das him," whispered Peter, as he loosely grasped the girl's arm by way of precaution. "Where--oh, where?" asked the poor creature, glancing round among the slaves. "Now, 'member your promise. Spoil eberyt'ing if you screech or run to him. Look, dis way! De man what's settin' on de stone!" "Yes, yes, I see! Oh--" She stopped abruptly and trembled, for at the moment her father turned his woe-begone face unconsciously towards her. Even the much-increased grey tinge in the hair and beard, the lines of despair on the brow, and the hollow cheeks could not disguise the face that she loved so well. A sharp cry burst from her, and she made an attempt to rush towards him, but the iron grip of Peter restrained her. "It's a dead man he'll be if you do!" he said, in a stern but low tone. "Don't you see de janissary? Your _promise_--" "Yes, yes! I'll restrain myself _now_, Peter. Do let me stay a minute--just to look--" "No, _no_! Come 'long wid you--idle t'ing!" he exclaimed, with sudden severity, and apparent though not real violence, for at the moment his watchful eye had observed one of the slave guards approaching them. As the two went hurriedly past the place where Hugh Sommers was sitting, he looked up with an expression of pity. "Poor thing!" he said. "The black scoundrel is cruel to you, and I am powerless to kick him!" He clinked the fetters on his legs significantly as he spoke. The mingled pathos and indignation of the loved voice was too much for poor Hester. She was on the point of exclaiming "Father!" when Peter's great black paw extinguished her mouth, and was not removed till they were out of danger. "You's like all de rest ob de womans," said the negro, as they hurried through the streets; "awrful dif'cult to manidge. Come 'long, we'll go home and hab a talk ober it." Hester was too miserable to reply. She did not again speak till they were both safe in the boudoir. There she sat down on the bed, laid her face in her hands, and burst into a passion of tears, while Peter stood looking on, his head nearly touching the low ceiling, his bulky frame filling half the remainder of the little room, and two mighty unbidden tears in his great eyes. "Das right, Geo'giana," he said, in a soft voice; "cry away, it'll do you good. Nuffin like cryin' w'en you's fit to bust! An' w'en you's got it ober we'll talk all about it." "Oh, Peter!" cried Hester, drying her eyes somewhat impatiently; "how _could_ you be so cruel? Why--why could you not have waited just one minute to let me look at him?" "Because, my dear, de man wid de whip was comin', an' he'd bery soon hab laid it across my back," replied the negro gently. "And what if he had done so?" demanded Hester, with a slight touch of indignation; "could you not have suffered a little whipping for my sake?" "Yes, Geo'giana," returned Peter, with much humility, "I could suffer great deal more'n dat for your sake; but dere's no sich t'ings as _little_ whippin's know'd ob in dis yar town. W'en de lash am goin' he usu'lly makes de hair fly. Moreober, dey whip womans as well as mans, an' if he was to took de bit out ob your pretty shoulder, I couldn't suffer dat, you know. Likewise," continued Peter, becoming more argumentative in his manner, "you was just a-goin' to took de bit in your teef; an' if you'd bin allowed to frow your arms round your fadder's neck an' rub all de black ober his face what would hab bin de consikence?" Peter felt his position so strong at this point that he put the question almost triumphantly, and Hester was constrained to acknowledge that he had acted wisely after all. "But," continued she, with still a little of reproach in her tone, "what was the use of taking me to see my darling father at all, if this is all that is to come of it?" "You's a leetle obstropolous in you' fancies, Geo'giana. Dis am _not_ all what's to come ob it. You see, I has pity on your poo' heart, so I t'ink you might go ebery oder day an' hab a good look at your fadder; but how kin you go if you not know whar he works? So I tooked you to show you de way. But I's a'most sorry I did now, for you's got no self-'straint, an' if you goes by you'self you'll git took up for sartin', an' dey'll whip your fadder till he's dead, or frow him on de hooks, or skin him alive, or--" "Oh, horrible! Don't say such dreadful things, Peter!" exclaimed Hester, covering her face with her hands. Feeling that he had said quite enough to impress the poor girl with the absolute necessity of being careful, he promised earnestly never again to allude to such dreadful things. "But, Geo'giana," he added impressively, "you mus' promise me on your word ob honour, w'ich Geo'ge Foster says English gen'lemans _neber_ break--an' I s'pose he's right." "Yes, quite right, Peter; true gentlemen _never_ break their word." "An' I s'pose female gen'lemans am de same." "Of course! Go on," replied the girl, with a faint smile. "Well, as I was 'bout to say, you mus' promise me on your word ob honour, dat you'll neber go _alone_ to see your fadder, but allers in company wid Sally; dat you neber, neber speak to him, an' dat you neber make you'self know'd to him till de right time comes." "These are hard conditions, Peter, but I see the reasonableness of them all, and promise--at least I promise to do my best." "Das 'nuff, Geo'giana. Neezer man nor womans kin do more'n deir best. Now I mus' bid you good-day, so keep up your heart an' you'll see eberyt'ing come right in de end." With these cheering words the sympathetic negro took his leave; and Hester, resuming her embroidery, sat down at her little window, not to work, but to gaze dreamily at the beautiful sea, and cast about in her mind how she should act in order to alleviate if possible her father's sad condition. That very afternoon she received a visit from her stolid but affectionate friend Sally, who at once said that she knew of a splendid plan for doing him a great deal of good. "And what is your plan?" asked Hester eagerly. "Gib him two or t'ree biscuits," said Sally. Her friend received the suggestion with a look of disappointment. "What a stupid thing you are, Sally! How could that do him any good?" Sally looked at her friend with an air of pity. "Didn't you say he was awrful t'in?" she asked. "Thin? Oh yes--dreadfully thin." "Well, den, isn't dat 'cause he not hab 'nuff to eat? _I_ knows it, bress you! I's bin wid a missis as starved me. Sometimes I t'ink I could eat my shoes. Ob course I got awrful t'in--so t'in dat w'en I stood side-wise you could hardly see me. Well, what de way to get fat an' strong? Why, eat, ob course. Eat--eat--eat. Das de way. Now, your fadder git not'ing but black bread, an' not 'nuff ob dat; an' he git plenty hard work too, so he git t'in. So, what I prupposes is to gib him two good biskits ebery day. We couldn't gib him more'n two, 'cause he'd hab to hide what he couldn't eat at once, an' de drivers would be sure to diskiver 'em. But two biskits could be gobbled quick on de sly, an' would help to make him fat, an' to make you easy." "So they would," said Hester, eagerly entertaining the idea after this explanation; "you're a clever girl, Sally--" "You say I's stoopid jest now!" "So I did, Sally. Forgive me! I was stupid besides unkind for saying so. But how shall we manage it? Won't the guards see us doing it?" "No fear, Geo'giana! De guards am fools--t'ink dere's nobody like 'em. Dey forgit. All de asses in Algiers am like 'em. Dis de way ob it. You an' me we'll go to markit ebery day wid baskits on our arms, an we'll ob course go round by de walls, where your fadder works. No doubt it's a roundabout way, but what ob dat? We'll go at de hour your fadder feeds wid de oder slabes, an' as we pass we'll drop de two biskits in his lap." "But won't he be taken by surprise, Sally?" "De fust time--yes; but dat won't prevent him gobblin' up de biskits quick. Neber fear, you an' me'll manidge it 'tween us." "Thank you, dear Sally, I'll never, _never_ forget your kindness, and we will try your plan to-morrow." CHAPTER THIRTEEN. HESTER AND HER FATHER SEVERELY TESTED. The very next day, accordingly, Hester Sommers and her friend sallied forth to present Hugh Sommers with a couple of biscuits! It was arranged that the two girls should carry baskets of fruit on their heads, and that Hester should have the biscuits conveniently in her right hand, so as to be able to drop them into her father's lap without stopping or even checking her pace as they passed. Of course, Hester was by this time thoroughly alive to the danger of her intended proceedings, both to herself and her father, and was firmly resolved to restrain her feelings. Nevertheless, she could not help trembling when she came in sight of the gang, with which her father worked. Sally observed this and grasped her by the arm. "Geo'giana," she said, "if you gibs way, or speaks, or trembles, or busts up in any way, I grips you by de neck, as I once did before, an' shobes you along wid scolds and whacks--so you look out!" "Anxiety for my darling father will be a much more powerful restraint, Sally, than your threats," replied the poor girl. Nevertheless, the threat was not without its effect, for it showed Hester that she must have been on the point of giving way, and impressed on her more than ever the necessity of self-restraint. "W'ich am him? I don't see him," said the negress as they advanced. "There he is, don't you see, just before us," replied Hester, in a low, hurried voice. "No, I's growin' blind, I t'ink." "There--look! by himself, on the stone. He seems always to sit on the same spot at dinner-time." "Oh yes, I sees. Now you go on--stiddy. Mind what you's about!" With a brief prayer for help to control herself, Hester went straight to where her father sat. He was languidly chewing a piece of the regulation black bread at the time, and looked up at her with the vacant indifference born of despair. The desire to fall on his neck and kiss him was, need we say, almost irresistible, but the poor girl had received strength for the duty in hand. She went close to him--even brushed past him--and dropped the biscuits into his lap. At first the poor man was so astonished that he gazed after the retiring figure and made no effort to conceal this unexpected addition to his meal. Fortunately, his wits revived before any of the guards observed him. He slid the biscuits into his shirt bosom with conjurer-like facility, and at the same moment broke off a large bit of one, which he devoured with unwonted satisfaction. The addition did not indeed furnish the unfortunate slave with a full meal, but it at least tended towards that desirable end, and sent him to work with a full heart, because of the assurance that there was in the city, at all events, one human being--and that being, strange to say, a negress!--who pitied him in his forlorn condition. During the remainder of that day Hugh Sommers almost forgot his toils in consequence of his mind being so thoroughly taken up with meditation on the wonderful incident. At night, although wearied, almost worn out, and anxious to sleep, he found it impossible to rest in the dismal Bagnio. It chanced that he occupied the cell which had formerly been apportioned to George Foster on the occasion of his first visit to that cheerless prison, and his next neighbour was the despairing Frenchman who had given such poor comfort to the middy in his distress. Finding that this Frenchman spoke English so well, and that they worked together in the same gang during the day, Hugh Sommers had struck up an acquaintance with him, which, after they had spent some weeks together in toiling by day and groaning side by side at night, ripened into a curious sort of growling friendship. This friendship began with a quarrel. The night in which they were first placed in neighbouring cells, or niches, followed a day in which Sommers had received an application of the bastinado, and been put into irons for fierce rebellion. Being a man of strong emotions, he had groaned a little as he lay trying to sleep in spite of his suffering feet. Failing of his purpose, he took to thinking about Hester, and the groans which had been but feeble for himself became more intense on her account. "Can you not stop that noise?" growled the irate Frenchman, who was kept awake by it. "I'm sorry to disturb you, friend," said Sommers gently, for he was really an unselfish man; "but if you knew all I've had to suffer you would excuse me." "Oh, _I_ know what you have had to suffer!" said his comrade testily. "I saw you get the bastinado; I've had it often myself, but--it is bearable!" "It's not that, man!" returned the Englishman, with a touch of indignation. "If I had nothing to worry me but the pain of my feet I'd have been asleep by now. I have worse things to groan about than you can guess, maybe." "Well, well, monsieur," said the Frenchman, in a resigned tone, as he raised himself on one elbow and leaned his back against the stone wall, "since you have driven sleep from my eyes, perhaps you will give employment to my ears, by telling me for what it is that you groan?" There was something so peculiar in the tone and manner in which this was said--so cool and off-hand, yet withal so kind--that Sommers at once agreed. "I'll do it," he said, "if you will treat me to the same thing in return. Fair exchange! You see, I am by profession a merchant, and must have value for what I give." And thus on that night the two unfortunates had exchanged confidences, and formed the friendship to which we have referred. To this man, then--whose name was Edouard Laronde--Sommers related the incident that had occurred that day during the noontide period of rest. "It is strange. I know not what to think," said Laronde, when his friend concluded. "If it had been a white girl I could have understood that it might be your daughter in disguise, though even in this case there would have been several reasons against the theory, for, in the first place, you tell me that your daughter--your Hester--is very pretty, and no pretty English girl could go about this city in any disguise without being discovered at once. Now you tell me that this girl was black--a negress?" "Ay, as black as a coal," responded the merchant. "Well, if, as you say, your Hester is pretty--" "Pretty, man! She's not pretty," interrupted the Englishman impatiently; "I tell you she is beautiful!" "Of course, I understand," returned the other, with a smile that the darkness of the place concealed, "I should have said beautiful! Well, thick lips and flat nose and high cheek-bones and woolly hair are, you know, incompatible with beauty as understood by Englishmen--" "Or Frenchmen either," added Sommers. "That's quite true, Laronde, though I must confess that I paid no attention to her face when she was approaching me, and after she dropped the biscuits in my lap she was so far past that I only saw a bit of her black cheek and her back, which latter, you know, was enveloped from head to foot in that loose blue cotton thing which does not tell much about the wearer." "True, true," returned the Frenchman; "and, after all, even if the girl's features had not been negro-like, you could not have been sure that it was her, for some of the blacks who come from the interior of Africa have features quite as classical as our own." "Laronde," said the merchant impressively, "I wonder to hear you, who have a daughter of your own, suggest that I could fail to recognise my Hester in any disguise. Why, if she were to paint her face scarlet and her nose pea-green I'd see through it by the beautiful shape of the features and the sweet expression of her face." "Forgive me, Monsieur Sommers, I doubt not that you would. As to your reference to _my_ daughter, you forget that she was a little child when I last saw her, so I have no experience of a father's powers of penetrating disguises." Laronde sighed deeply at this point, and then hurriedly continued, as if to prevent further reference to his own sorrows. "It is possible, however," he said, "that she may pass you again to-morrow, and so give you another opportunity of seeing her features. But let me ask, my friend, what will you do if you discover that she _is_ your Hester?" "Do?" exclaimed the merchant, with an energetic action that caused his fetters to rattle. "I--I--I'll--well--I don't know what I'll do!" "Of course you don't!" returned Laronde, with something of the old cynicism in his tone. "You Englishmen are always so cock-sure--as you express it--of success that you make no provision for defeat or failure. It may seem very heroic, but it is mere pride and folly. Now, if you will take a real friend's advice, you will go out to-morrow with the determination to curb yourself and refrain from taking any notice whatever of this girl, whether she turns out to be your daughter or not, and leave her to work out her plan, for you may be quite sure she has some end in view. Just consider what would be the consequence of your giving way to your feelings and embracing her. You would by so doing expose her disguise, cause her to be taken up and sent to the harem of some one of the notables, and get heavier irons put on yourself, besides another touch, perhaps, of the bastinado. Be wise, and consider well what you intend to do." "Thank you, friend, for your warning. It is well timed. If you had not spoken I would certainly have gone forth to-morrow unprepared." "But what is your preparation? What will you do?" persisted the Frenchman. "What _can_ I do?" replied Sommers. "Have you not just shown me that I am utterly helpless? In such a case there is only one course left-- namely, to go to Him who can succour the helpless. I will ask counsel of God. The pride you have referred to I admit, though it is by no means confined to my own countrymen! Too long have I given way to it, and acted independently of my Maker. Perhaps God sent me here to convince me of my sin and helplessness." "There is no God. I do not believe in a God," said Laronde calmly. "Why not?" asked Sommers, in surprise. "Because," replied Laronde bitterly, "if there was a God He could not stand by and see me suffering such prolonged and awful misery." "If, instead of misery, you had been placed during the last twelve years in supreme felicity, would you have believed in a God?" asked Sommers. Laronde was silent. He saw that the reason which he had given for disbelief was untenable, and he was too straightforward to quibble about it. "I don't know," he said at last angrily. "No doubt there are hundreds of men in happy and favourable circumstances who say, as I do, that they don't believe in a God. I don't know. All I do know is that I am supremely miserable!" "Now you are reasonable," returned the merchant, "for you talk of what you do know, and you admit that in regard to God you `don't know,' but you began by stating that `there is no God.' Ah, my friend, I sympathise with you in your terrible sorrow, even as you have sympathised with me in mine, but don't let us give way to despair and cast the only Refuge that remains to us behind our backs. I will not ask you to join me in praying to One, in whom you say you do not believe, but I will pray _for_ you." Hugh Sommers got upon his knees and then and there--in the dark and dank prison-house--prayed most earnestly for guidance and spiritual light in the name of Jesus. At first the Frenchman listened with what we may style kindly contempt, and then with surprise, for the Englishman drew to the conclusion of his very brief prayer without any mention of his own name. Just at the close, however, Sommers said, "O God! show to my friend here that he is wrong, and that Thou art Love." It was with eager and trembling heart next day that Hugh Sommers watched, during the noontide meal, for the coming of his mysterious black friend, and it was with no less anxiety and trembling of heart that Hester approached her father at the same hour. "Now mind how you doos," said the doubtful Sally, as she glanced keenly at Hester's face. "Mind, I'll hab no marcy on you if you gibs way!" Hester made no reply, for she was drawing near to her father, and saw that he was gazing at her with fixed intensity. She raised her heart to God and received strength to pass without a word or look, dropping the biscuits as on the previous day. The man, however, proved less capable of self-restraint than the girl, for he could not resist whispering, "Hester!" The poor girl turned towards him as if by an irresistible impulse, but her black guardian angel was equal to the emergency. Seizing Hester by the shoulder, she pushed her violently forward, storming at her loudly as on the former occasion. "What, you black t'ing! Hab you neber seen slabes before? You no better'n de white folk, wastin' ob your purcious time. My! won't you get a whackin' fro' missis w'en you gits home!" Recovering herself, Hester at once submitted. At first the poor father was about to start up and run to embrace his child, as well as to rescue her from her rude companion, but, being what is termed a "sharp man of business," he received into his mind, as it were, a flash of light, and sat still. If this flash had been analysed it would probably have produced the following thoughts--"biscuits! kindness! companion a friend! ignorance impossible! violence unaccountable! a ruse, perhaps! sit still!" Thought, they say, is swifter than light. At all events, it was swift enough on the present occasion to prevent the shadow of a suspicion arising in the minds either of slaves or guards, who seemed to be rather amused at what they fancied was the bad temper of Sally. Next day the biscuit-dropping was repeated without the scene that had followed, and so wisely was this affair managed by all the parties concerned, that it was carried on for several weeks without a hitch. Under the influence of hope and improved fare, Hugh Sommers became so much brighter in spirits and better in health, and so much more tractable, that his guards at length removed his heavy fetters and allowed him to toil with free limbs, like the majority of the slaves. Hester also became almost cheerful under the wonderful influence of hope. But Hester and her father were each overwhelmed, more or less, by a wet blanket at that time, and, strange to say, their wet blankets happened to be their best friends. In the case of Hester, it was Sally. The more hopeful and cheery Hester became, the more did her black friend shake her woolly head and look dismal. "Why, Sally, dear, what's the matter with you?" asked the former one day, as they sat together in the bower on the roof, after returning from their visit to the slave-gang. A shake of the girl's head and an unutterable expression in her magnificent black eyes made Hester quite uneasy. "Do tell me, Sally. Is there anything the matter with you?" "De matter wid me? Oh no! Not'ing's neber de matter wid me--'cept when I eats too much--but it's you an' your fadder I's t'inkin' ob." "But we are both getting on very well, Sally, are we not? I am quite safe here, and darling father is growing stronger and fatter every day, thank God! and then our hope is very strong. Why should you be anxious?" Sally prefaced her reply with one of the professional gasps wherewith she was wont to bring down the iron pestle. "Well, now, you white folks am de greatest ijits eber was born. Do you t'ink you'll deliber your fadder from de Moors by feedin' him on biscuits an' _hope_? What's de end ob all dis to come to? das what I want to know. Ob course you can't go on for eber. You sure to be cotched at last, and de whole affair'll bust up. You'll be tooked away, an' your fadder'll be t'rowed on de hooks or whacked to deaf. Oh! I's most mis'rable!" The poor creature seemed inclined to howl at this point, but she constrained herself and didn't. In the gloom of the cheerless Bagnio, Hugh Sommers found his wet blanket in Edouard Laronde. "But it is unwise to look only at the bright side of things," said the Frenchman, after sympathising with his friend's joy in having discovered his daughter so unexpectedly and in such a curious manner. "No doubt, from her disguise, she must, as you say, be in hiding, and in comparative safety with friends, else she could not be moving so freely about this accursed city, but what is to be the end of it all?" Laronde unconsciously echoed Sally's question to Hester, but Hugh Sommers had not as much to say in reply as his daughter, for he was too well acquainted with the possibilities of life to suppose that biscuits and hope would do much towards the "end," although valuable auxiliaries in the meantime. "I see not the end, Laronde," he said, after a pause; "but the end is in the hands of God, and I will trust Him." "So is the middle, and so is the beginning, as well as the end," returned Laronde cynically; "why, then, are you so perplexed and anxious about these if the end is, as you seem to think, so sure? Why don't you trust God all through?" "I do trust God all through, my friend, but there is this difference-- that with the end I have nothing to do save to wait patiently and trustfully, whereas with the beginning and middle it is my duty to act and energise hopefully." "But why your anxiety if the whole matter is under safe guidance?" persisted the Frenchman. "Because, while I am absolutely certain that God will do His part wisely and well, I am by no means sure that I shall do my part either well or wisely. You forget, Laronde, that we are free agents as well as sinful and foolish, more or less, so that there is legitimate room for anxiety, which only becomes evil when we give way to it, or when it goes the length of questioning the love, wisdom, and power of the Creator!" "All mystery, all mystery, Sommers; you are only theorising about what you do not, cannot, know anything. You have no ground for what you hold." "As you confess never to have studied, or even seriously contemplated, the ground on which I hold it, there is--don't you think?--a slight touch of presumption on your part in criticising so severely what you do not, cannot, understand? I profess to have _good_ reasons for what I hold; you profess merely to disbelieve it. Is there not a vast difference here?" "Perhaps there is, but I'm too sleepy to see it. Would you oblige me by putting your foot on that centipede? He has made three ineffectual attempts to pass the night under my wing. Make sure work of him. Thanks. Now I will try to sleep. Oh! the weary, heart-sickness of hope deferred! Good-night, Sommers." "Good-night." CHAPTER FOURTEEN. A BRAVE DASH FOR LIFE AND FREEDOM. "Geo'ge, come wid me," said Peter the Great one afternoon, with face so solemn that the heart of the young midshipman beat faster as he followed his friend. They were in Ben-Ahmed's garden at the time--for the middy had been returned to his owner after a night in the common prison, and a threat of much severer treatment if he should ever again venture to lay his infidel hands on one of the faithful. Having led the middy to the familiar summer house, where most of their earnest or important confabulations were held, Peter sat down and groaned. "What's wrong now?" asked the middy, with anxious looks. "Oh! Geo'ge, eberyt'ing's wrong," he replied, flinging himself down on a rustic seat with a reckless air and rolling his eyes horribly. "Eberyt'ing's wrong. De world's all wrong togidder--upside down and inside out." The middy might have laughed at Peter's expression if he had not been terribly alarmed. "Come, Peter, tell me. Is Hester safe?" "I don' know, Geo'ge." "Don't know! Why d'you keep me in such anxiety? Speak, man, speak! What has happened?" "How kin I speak, Geo'ge, w'en I's a'most busted wid runnin' out here to tell you?" The perspiration that stood on Peter's sable brow, and the heaving of his mighty chest, told eloquently of the pace at which he had been running. "Dis is de way ob it, Geo'ge. I had it all fro' de lips ob Sally herself, what saw de whole t'ing." As the narrative which Peter the Great had to tell is rather too long to be related in his own "lingo," we will set it down in ordinary language. One day while Hester was, as usual, passing her father, and in the very act of dropping the customary supply of food, she observed that one of the slaves had drawn near and was watching her with keen interest. From the slave's garb and bearing any one at all acquainted with England could have seen at a glance that he was a British seaman, though hard service and severe treatment, with partial starvation, had changed him much. He was in truth the stout sailor-like man who had spoken a few words to Foster the day he landed in Algiers, and who had contemptuously asserted his utter ignorance of gardening. The slaves, we need hardly say, were not permitted to hold intercourse with each other for fear of their combining to form plans of rebellion and escape, but it was beyond the power of their drivers to be perpetually on the alert, so that sometimes they did manage to exchange a word or two without being observed. That afternoon it chanced that Sommers had to carry a stone to a certain part of the wall. It was too heavy for one man to lift, the sailor was therefore ordered to help him. While bearing the burden towards the wall, the following whispered conversation took place. "I say, old man," observed the sailor, "the little girl that gives you biscuits every day is no more a nigger than I am." "Right!" whispered the merchant anxiously, for he had supposed that no one had observed the daily gift; "she is my daughter." "I guessed as much by the cut o' your jibs. But she's in danger, for I noticed that one o' the drivers looked at her suspiciously to-day, and once suspicion is roused the villains never rest. Is there no means of preventing her coming this way to-morrow?" "None. I don't even know where she comes from or goes to. God help her! If suspected, she is lost, for she will be sure to come to-morrow." "Don't break down, old man; they'll observe you. If she is taken are you willing to fight?" "Yes," answered the merchant sternly. "I am with you, then. Your name?" "Sommers. Yours?" "Brown." A driver had been coming towards them, so that the last few words had been spoken in low whispers. A sharp cut of the whip on the shoulders of each showed that the driver had observed them talking. They received it in absolute silence and without any outward display of feeling. To that extent, at all events, they had both been "tamed." But the stout seaman had been for many weeks acting a part. At first, like Sommers, he had been put in heavy irons on account of his violence and ferocity; but after many weeks of childlike submission on his part, the irons were removed. Despite the vigilance of the guards, a plot had been hatched by the gang to which Brown belonged, and it was almost, though not quite, ripe for execution when the events we are describing occurred. Poor Hester's action next day precipitated matters and caused the failure of the plot--at least to some extent. She had gone as usual with Sally to visit the slave-gang, and had dropped her biscuits, when her anxious father said, in a low but hurried voice, "Pass quickly, and don't come again for some time!" Hester involuntarily stopped. "Darling father!" she said, restraining herself with difficulty from leaping into his arms, "why--oh! why am I not--" She had only got thus far when the janissary, whose suspicions had been aroused, pounced upon her, and, seizing her by the wrist, looked keenly into her face. "Ho! ho!" he exclaimed, glancing from the girl to her sire, "what mystery have we here? Come, we must investigate this." Poor Hester winced from the pain of the rude soldier's grip as he proceeded to drag her away. Her father, seeing that further concealment was impossible, and that final separation was inevitable, became desperate. With the bound of an enraged tiger he sprang on the soldier and throttled him. Both being powerful men they fell on the ground in a deadly struggle, at which sight Hester could only look on with clasped hands in helpless terror. But the British seaman was at hand. He had feared that some such mischief would arise. Seeing that two other soldiers were running to the aid of their fallen comrade, he suddenly gave the signal for the revolt of the slaves. It was premature. Taken by surprise, the half-hearted among the conspirators paid no attention to it, while the timid stood more or less bewildered. Only a few of the resolute and reckless obeyed the call, but these furnished full employment for their guards, for, knowing that failure meant death, if not worse, they fought like fiends. Meanwhile the first of the two soldiers who came running, sword in hand, towards Sommers, was met by Brown. With a piece of wood in his left hand, that worthy parried the blow that was delivered at his head. At the same time he sent his right fist into the countenance of his adversary with such force that he became limp and dropped like an empty topcoat. This was fortunate, for the companion janissary was close to him when he wheeled round. The blazing look of the seaman, however, induced so much caution in the Turk that, instead of using his sword, he drew a long pistol from his girdle and levelled it. Brown leaped upon him, caught the pistol as it exploded just in time to turn the muzzle aside, wrenched the weapon from his foe's grasp, and brought the butt of it down with such a whack on his head that it laid him beside his comrade. Turning quickly to the still struggling pair, he saw that the janissary was black in the face, and that Sommers was compressing his throat with both hands and had his knee on his stomach, while Hester and Sally were looking on horrified, but hopeful. At the same time he saw fresh soldiers running up the street to reinforce the guard. "Hester," he said sharply, and seizing the girl's hand, "come, bolt with me. I've knowed your father a good while. Quick!" "Impossible!" she cried, drawing back. "I will not leave my father now!" "You'll have to leave him anyhow," cried the sailor. "You can do him no good. If free you might--" A shout at the moment caused him to glance round. It proceeded both from slaves and guards, for both at the same moment caught sight of the approach of the reinforcements. The former scattered in all directions, and the latter gave chase, while pistol-shots and yells rent the air. Instead of wasting more breath in useless entreaty, Brown seized the light form of Hester in his arms and ran with her to the ramparts. In the confusion of the general skirmish he was not observed--or, if observed, unheeded--by any one but Sally, who followed him in anxious haste, thinking that the man was mad, for there could be no possible way of escape, she thought, in that direction. She was wrong. There was method in Brown's madness. He had for a long time previously studied all the possibilities with reference to the meditated uprising, and had laid down for himself several courses which he might pursue according to the success, failure, or partial failure of their plans. There was one part of the rampart they were engaged in repairing at that time which had given way and partly fallen into the ditch outside. The portion of the wall still remaining had been further demolished in order that a more secure foundation might be laid. The broken wall here had been but partially rebuilt, and was not nearly as high as the completed wall. A jump from this might be possible to a strong active man if the ground below were soft, or even level--though the risk of broken limbs was considerable. Brown had observed, however, that at this place a small tree grew out from a mass of rock which had been incorporated as part of the wall, and that just below it there stood a huge bush of the cactus kind. To these two he had made up his mind to intrust himself in the event of things coming to the worst. Accordingly it was to this part of the rampart he ran with Hester in his strong arms. We have said that Sally ran after the sailor with anxiety, but that feeling was deepened into dismay when she saw him approach the portion of the wall just described, and she gave out one of her loudest coffee-pestle gasps when she saw him jump straight off the wall without a moment's hesitation. Craning her neck and gazing downward, she saw the sailor go crashing through the little tree and alight with a squash in the heart of the watery cactus, out of which he leaped with such agility that Sally was led to exclaim under her breath-- "Hoh! don't de spikes make 'im jump!" Whether it was the spikes or other influences we cannot tell, but certain it is that Brown did jump with wonderful activity, considering the burden he carried, dashed up the opposite bank, cut across country like a hunted hare, and found shelter in a neighbouring wood before the revolt in the city was completely quelled. Here he pulled up and set the terrified Hester down. "You'll excuse me, miss," he said pantingly, as he wiped his brows with the sleeve of his shirt--which garment, with a pair of canvas trousers, a grass hat, and thin carpet shoes, constituted his costume. "I'm wery sorry to carry you off agin' your will, but you'll thank me for it yet, maybe, for if I had left you behind, you couldn't have helped your poor father, and they'd have took you off for sartin to be a slave. Now, d'ye see, if you an' I manage to escape, there's no sayin' what we may do in the way o' raisin' ransom to buy back your father. Anyway, he has been so anxious about you, an' afraid o' your bein' catched, an' the terrible fate in store for you if you are, that I made up my mind for _his_ sake to carry you off." To this explanation Hester listened with varying feelings. "I believe, from the honesty of your look and tone," she said, at last, "that you have acted for the best, whether wisely or not remains to be seen; but I thank you heartily for your intentions, and especially for your kind feelings towards my dear father; but now I must claim the right to use my own judgment. I will return to the city and succour my father, or perish with him. Yet, rest assured, I will never forget the brave seaman who has so nobly risked his life to save me. Your name is--" "Brown, miss--at your service." "Well, good-bye, Brown, and God's blessing attend you," she said, extending her black little hand. The seaman gently took it and gave it a timid pressure, as if he feared to crush it in his brawny hand. "I'll shake hands with you," he said, "but I won't say good-bye, for I'll steer back to the city with you." "Brown, this is sheer madness. There is no reason in what you propose to do. You cannot help me by sacrificing yourself." "That's exactly what yer father would say to you, miss, if he was alongside of us--`You can't help me by sacrificin' of yerself.' Then, p'r'aps he would foller up that obsarvation by sayin', `but you may an' can help me if you go wi' that sailor-friend o' mine, who may be rough and ready, but is sartinly true-blue, who knows the coast hereaway an' all its hidin'-places, an' who'll wentur his life to do me a good turn, cause why? I once wentured my life to do him a good turn o' the same kind.'" "Is this true, Brown? Did you know my father before meeting him here; and did he really render you some service?" "Yes, indeed, miss; I have sailed in one o' your father's wessels, an' once I was washed overboard by a heavy sea, and he flung over a lifebuoy arter me, and jumped into the water himself to keep me afloat till a boat picked us up, for I couldn't swim. Now, look 'ere, miss, if you'll consent to sail under my orders for a short spell, you'll have a better chance o' doin' your father a sarvice than by returnin' to that nest o' pirates. Moreover, you'll have to make up your mind pretty quick, for we've lost too much time already." "Go on, Brown, I will trust you," said Hester, placing her hand in that of the seaman, who, without another word, led her swiftly into the bush. Now, all this, and a great deal more was afterwards related by Hester herself to her friends; but at the time all that was known to Sally--the only witness of the exploit--was that Hester Sommers had been carried off in the manner related by an apparently friendly British sailor. This she told soon after to Peter the Great, and this was the substance of the communication which Peter the Great, with glaring eyes and bated breath, made to George Foster, who received it with feelings and expressions that varied amazingly as the narrative proceeded. "Is that all?" he asked, when the negro at length came to a decided stop. "Das all--an' it's enuff too! 'Pears to me you's not so much cut up about dis leetle business as I 'spected you would be." "I am anxious, of course, about Hester," returned the middy; "but at the same time greatly relieved, first, to know that she is in the hands of a respectable British sailor; and, second, that she is _not_ in the hands of these bloodthirsty piratical Moors. But what about her father? Nothing more, I suppose, is known about his fate?" "Not'ing, on'y it's as sure as if we did know it. If his carcass isn't on de hooks by dis time it'll soon be." As the negro spoke the midshipman started up with flashing eyes, exclaimed angrily, "It shall _never_ be," and ran out of the bower. Entering the house, he went straight to Ben-Ahmed's private chamber, which he entered boldly, without even knocking at the door. The Moor was seated cross-legs on a mat, solacing himself, as usual, with a pipe. He was not a little surprised, and at first was inclined to be angry, at the abrupt entrance of his slave. "Ben-Ahmed," said the middy, with vehemence, "the father of the English girl you are so fond of--and whom I _love_--is in terrible danger, and if you are a true man--as I firmly believe you are--you will save him." The Moor smiled very slightly at the youth's vehemence, pointed with the mouthpiece of his hookah to a cushion, and bade him sit down and tell him all about it. The middy at once squatted _a la Turk_, not on the cushion, but on the floor, in front of his master, and, with earnest voice and gesture, related the story which Peter the Great had just told him. Ben-Ahmed was visibly affected by it. "But how can I save him?" he asked, with a look of perplexity. "Did you not once save the life of the Dey?" asked Foster. "I did. How came you to know that?" "I heard it from Peter the Great, who aided you on the occasion. And he told me that the Dey has often since then offered to do you some good turn, but that you have always declined." "That is true," said Ben-Ahmed, with the look of a man into whose mind a new idea had been introduced. "Yes, something may be done in that way, and it would grieve me that the father of my poor little Hester should die. I will try. Go, have my horse saddled, and send Peter to me." Our midshipman bounded rather than rose from the floor, and uttered an irresistible, "God bless you," as he vanished through the doorway on his errand. "Peter," he cried--encountering that worthy as he ran--"we'll manage it! Go to Ben-Ahmed! He wants you--quick! I'm off to fetch his horse." Foster was much too anxious to have the thing done quickly to give the order to the head groom. He ran direct to the stable, and, choosing the fleetest of the Moor's Arab steeds, quickly put on its crimson saddle, with its un-European peaks before and behind, and the other gay portions of harness with which Easterns are wont to caparison their horses. In a wonderfully short space of time he had the steed round to the front door, and sent another slave to tell his master that it was ready. The Moor had also caparisoned himself, if we may say so, for the intended visit, and he had evidently done it in haste. Nevertheless, his gait was stately, and his movements were slow, as he gravely mounted the horse and rode away. The impatience of the middy was somewhat relieved, however, when he saw that Ben-Ahmed, on reaching the main road, put spurs to his horse, and rode towards the city at full gallop. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. A STRANGE VISIT, A STRANGE COMMISSION, AND A STRANGE DISPLAY OF TEMPER. After Ben-Ahmed had departed on his mission to the Dey of Algiers, George Foster and Peter the Great re-entered the house, and in the seclusion of the bower continued to discuss the hopes, fears, and possibilities connected with the situation. "Dat was a clebber dodge ob yours, Geo'ge," remarked the negro, "an' I's got good hope dat somet'ing will come ob it, for massa's pretty sure to succeed w'en he take a t'ing in hand." "I'm glad you think so, Peter. And, to say truth, I am myself very sanguine." "But dere's one t'ing dat 'plexes me bery much. What is we to do about poo' Hester's fadder w'en he's pardoned? De Dey can spare his life, but he won't set him free--an' if he don't set him free de slabe-drivers 'll be sure to kill 'im out ob spite." The middy was silent, for he could not see his way out of this difficulty. "Perhaps," he said, "Ben-Ahmed may have thought of that, and will provide against it, for of course he knows all the outs and ins of Moorish life, and he is a thoughtful man." "Das true, Geo'ge. He _am_ a t'oughtful man. Anyhow, we kin do not'ing more, 'cept wait an' see. But I's much more 'plexed about Hester, for eben if de sailor am a good an' true man, as you say, he can't keep her or his-self alibe on not'ing in de mountains, no more'n he could swim wid her on his back across de Mederainyon!" Again the middy was silent for a time. He could by no means see his way out of this greater difficulty, and his heart almost failed him as he thought of the poor girl wandering in the wilderness without food or shelter. "P'r'aps," suggested Peter, "she may manage to git into de town an' pass for a nigger as she's dood before, an' make tracks for her old place wid Missis Lilly--or wid Dinah." "No doubt she may," cried Foster, grasping at the hope as a drowning man grasps at a plank. "Nothing more likely. Wouldn't it be a good plan for you to go into town at once and make inquiry?" "Dessay it would," returned the negro. "Das just what I'll do, an' if she's not dere, Dinah may gib my int'lec' a jog. She's a wonderful woman, Dinah, for workin' up de human mind w'en it's like goin' to sleep. Poo' Samson hab diskivered dat many times. I'll go at once." "Do, Peter, my fine fellow, and you'll lay me for ever under the deepest ob--" He was interrupted by a slave who at the moment approached the bower and said that a man wanted to see Peter the Great. "To see Ben-Ahmed, you mean," said Peter. "No--to see yourself," returned the slave. "Sen' 'im here," said the negro, with a magnificent wave of the hand. In a few minutes the slave returned accompanied by a negro, who limped so badly that he was obliged to use a stick, and whose head was bandaged up with a blue cloth. Arrived at the bower, he stood before Peter the Great and groaned. "You may go," said Peter to the slave, who lingered as if anxious to hear the news of the visitor. When he was out of hearing, Peter turned to the lame man, looked him sharply in the face, and said-- "You's bery black in de face, my frind, but you's much blacker in de h'art. What business hab you to come here widout washin' your white face clean?" "Well, you're a pretty smart chap for a nigger. An' I dare say you'll understand that I'd have had some difficulty in fetchin' this here port at all if I'd washed my face," answered the lame man, in excellent nautical English. While he spoke, Foster ran towards him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and looked earnestly into his face. "You are the British sailor," he said, "who rescued Hes--Miss Sommers from the janissaries?" "That's me to a tee," replied the sailor, with a broad grin. "Is Miss Sommers safe?" asked the middy anxiously. "Ay! safe as any woman can be in this world. Leastwise, she's in a cave wi' three o' the toughest sea-dogs as any man could wish to see--one o' them bein' a Maltese an' the other two bein' true-blue John Bulls as well as Jack Tars. But Miss Sommers gave me orders to say my say to Peter the Great, so if this nigger is him, I'll be obleeged if he'll have a little private conversation wi' me." "Did Miss Sommers say that I was not to hear the message?" asked the middy, in some surprise. "She made no mention o' _you_, or anybody else at all, as I knows on," returned the sailor firmly, "an' as my orders was to Peter the Great, an' as this seems to be him, from Sally's description--a monstrous big, fine-lookin' nigger, with a lively face--I'll say my say to him _alone_, with your leave." "You may say it where you is, for dis yar gen'lem'n is a frind ob mine, an' a hofficer in the Bri'sh navy, an' a most 'tickler friend of Hester Sommers, so we all frinds togidder." "You'll excuse me, sir," said the seaman, touching his forelock, "but you don't look much like a' officer in your present costoom. Well, then, here's wot I've got to say--" "Don't waste your time, Brown, in spinning the yarn of your rescue of the girl," said Foster, interrupting; "we've heard all about it already from Sally, and can never sufficiently express our thanks to you for your brave conduct. Tell us, now, what happened after you disappeared from Sally's view." The sailor thereupon told them all about his subsequent proceedings--how he had persuaded Hester to accompany him through the woods and by a round about route to a part of the coast where he expected ere long to find friends to rescue him. From some reason or other best known to himself, he was very secretive in regard to the way in which these friends had managed to communicate with him. "You see I'm not free to speak out all I knows," he said. "But surely it's enough to say that my friends have not failed me; that I found them waitin' there with a small boat, so light that they had dragged it up an' concealed it among the rocks, an' that I'd have bin on my way to old England at this good hour if it hadn't bin for poor Miss Sommers, whom we couldn't think of desartin'." "Then she refused to go with you?" said Foster. "Refused! I should think she did! Nothing, she said, would indooce her to leave Algiers while her father was in it. One o' my mates was for forcing her into the boat, an' carryin' her off, willin' or not willin', but I stood out agin' him, as I'd done enough o' that to the poor thing already. Then she axed me to come along here an' ax Peter the Great if he knowed anything about her father. `But I don't know Peter the Great,' says I, `nor where he lives.' `Go to Sally,' says she, `an' you'll get all the information you need.' `But I'll never get the length o' Sally without being nabbed,' says I. `Oh!' says she, `no fear o' that. Just you let me make a nigger of you. I always keep the stuff about me in my pocket, for I so often cry it off that I need to renew it frequently.' An' with that she out with a parcel o' black stuff and made me into a nigger before you could say Jack Robinson. Fort'nately, I've got a pretty fat lump of a nose of my own, an' my lips are pretty thick by natur', so that with a little what you may call hard poutin' when I had to pass guards, janissaries, an' such like, I managed to get to where Missis Lilly an' Sally lived, an' they sent me on here. An' now the question is, what's to be done, for it's quite clear that my mates an' me can't remain for ever hidin' among the rocks. We must be off; an' I want to know, are we to take this poor gal with us, or are we to leave her behind, an', if so, what are her friends a-goin' to do for her?" "There's no fear of your friends going off without you, I suppose?" "Well, as they risked their precious lives to rescue me, it ain't likely," returned the seaman. "Would it not be well to keep Brown here till Ben-Ahmed returns?" asked Foster, turning to Peter the Great. The negro knitted his brows and looked vacantly up through the leafy roof of the bower, as if in profound meditation. Some of the brighter stars were beginning to twinkle in the darkening sky by that time, and one of them seemed to wink at him encouragingly, for he suddenly turned to the middy with all the energy of his nature, exclaiming, "I's got it!" and brought his great palm down on his greater thigh with a resounding slap. "If it's in your breeches pocket you must have squashed it, then!" said Brown--referring to the slap. "Anyhow, if you've got it, hold on to it an' let's hear what it is." "No--not now. All in good time. Patience, my frind, is a virtoo wuf cultivation--" "You needn't go for to tell _that_ to a Bagnio slave like me, Mister Peter. Your greatness might have made you aware o' that," returned the sailor quietly. An eye-shutting grin was Peter's reply to this, and further converse was stopped by the sound of clattering hoofs. "Massa!" exclaimed the negro, listening. "Das good. No time lost. Come wid me, you sham nigger, an' I's gib you somet'ing to tickle you stummik. You go an' look arter de hoss, Geo'ge." While the middy ran to the gate to receive his master, Peter the Great led the sham nigger to the culinary regions, where, in a sequestered corner, he supplied him with a bowl containing a savoury compound of chicken and rice. "I hope that all has gone well?" Foster ventured to ask as the Moor dismounted. "All well. Send Peter to me immediately," he replied, and, without another word, hurried into the house. Calling another slave and handing over the smoking horse to him, Foster ran to the kitchen. "Peter, you're--" "Wanted 'meeditly--yes, yes--I knows dat. What a t'ing it is to be in'spensible to anybody! I don't know how he'll eber git along widout me." Saying which he hurried away, leaving the middy to do the honours of the house to the sailor. "I s'pose, sir, you haven't a notion what sort o' plans that nigger has got in his head?" asked the latter. "Not the least idea. All I know is that he is a very clever fellow and never seems very confident about anything without good reason." "Well, whatever he's a-goin' to do, I hope he'll look sharp about it, for poor Miss Sommers's fate and the lives o' my mates, to say nothin' of my own, is hangin' at this moment on a hair--so to speak," returned the sailor, as he carefully scraped up and consumed the very last grain of the savoury mess, murmuring, as he did so, that it was out o' sight the wery best blow-out he'd had since he enjoyed his last Christmas dinner in old England. "Will you have some more?" asked the sympathetic middy. "No more, sir, thankee. I'm loaded fairly down to the water-line. Another grain would bust up the hatches; but if I might ventur' to putt forth a wish now, a glass o'--no? well, no matter, a drop o' water'll do. I'm well used to it now, havin' drunk enough to float a seventy-four since I come to this city o' pirates." "You will find coffee much more agreeable as well as better for you. I have learned that from experience," said the middy, pouring out a tiny cupful from an earthen coffee-pot that always stood simmering beside the charcoal fire. "Another of that same, sir, if you please," said the seaman, tossing off the cupful, which, indeed, scarcely sufficed to fill his capacious mouth. "Why they should take their liquor in these parts out o' things that ain't much bigger than my old mother's thimble, passes my comprehension. You wouldn't mind another?--thankee." "As many as you please, Brown," said the middy, laughing, as he poured out cupful after cupful; "there's no fear of your getting half-seas-over on that tipple!" "I only wish I _was_ half-seas-over, or even a quarter that length. Your health, sir!" returned Brown, with a sigh, as he drained the last cup. Just then Peter the Great burst into the kitchen in a very elated condition. "Geo'ge," he cried, "you be off. Massa wants you--'meeditly. But fust, let me ax--you understan' de place among de rocks whar Brown's mates and de boat am hidden?" "Yes, I know the place well." "You knows how to get to it?" "Of course I do." "Das all right; now come along--come along, you sham nigger, wid me. Has you got enuff?" "Bustin'--all but." "Das good now; you follow me; do what you's tol'; hol' you tongue, an' look sharp, if you don' want your head cut off." "Heave ahead, cap'n; I'm your man." The two left the house together and took the road that led to the hill country in rear of the dwelling. Meanwhile George Foster went to the chamber of the Moor. He found his master seated, as was his wont, with the hookah before him, but with the mouthpiece lying idly on his knee, and his forehead resting on one hand. So deeply was he absorbed in communing with his own thoughts, that he did not observe the entrance of his slave until he had been twice addressed. Then, looking up as if he had been slightly startled, he bade him sit down. "George Foster," he began impressively, at the same time applying a light to his hookah and puffing sedately, "you will be glad to hear that I have been successful with my suit to the Dey. God has favoured me; but a great deal yet remains to be done, and that must be done by _you_--else--" He stopped here, looked pointedly at the middy, and delivered the remainder of his meaning in pufflets of smoke. "I suppose you would say, sir, that unless it is done by me it won't be done at all?" To this the Moor nodded twice emphatically, and blew a thin cloud towards the ceiling. "Then you may count upon my doing my utmost, if that which I am to do is in the interest of Hester Sommers or her father, as no doubt it is." "Yes, it is in their interest," rejoined Ben-Ahmed. "I have done my part, but dare not go further; for much though I love little Hester--who has been to me as a sweet daughter--I must not risk my neck for her unnecessarily. But, if I mistake not, you are not unwilling to risk that?" "Ay, fifty necks would I risk for her sake if I had them," returned our middy with enthusiasm, for he was in that stage of love which glories in the acknowledgment of thraldom. Ben-Ahmed looked at him with interest, sighed, and sought solace in the pipe. After a few meditative puffs, he continued-- "After all, you run little risk, as you shall see. When I asked the Dey, with whom I am familiar, for the pardon of the slave Sommers, he did not seem pleased, and objected that there had been too many revolts of late; that this man's case was a bad one, and that it was necessary to make an example or two. "`Very true, your highness,' I replied, `but may I beg you to make an example of some other slaves, and forgive Sommers?' "`Why do you take so much interest in this man?' demanded the Dey, who seemed to me rather short in his temper at the time. "`Because he is the father of one of my female slaves, your highness,' I replied; `and it is the fear that they will be separated for ever that makes the man desperate and the girl miserable. If you will permit me, I should like to reunite them. Your highness has often expressed a wish to do me some kindness for the privilege I once had of saving your highness's life. Will you now refuse me this man's life?' `Nay, I will not refuse you, Ben-Ahmed. But I do not see that my granting your request will reunite the father and child, unless, indeed, you are prepared to purchase the man.' "`I am prepared to do so, your highness,' I said. "`In that case you are at liberty to go to the Bagnio and take him out. Here is my ring.' "Now, Foster," continued the Moor, drawing the ring in question from his vest-pocket, "take this. Show it to the captain of the guard at the Bagnio, who will admit you. Tell him that I sent you for one of the slaves. After that your own intelligence must guide you. Go, and God go with you." "I will do as you command, Ben-Ahmed," said Foster; "but I must tell you frankly that I will not--" "Silence!" thundered the Moor, with a look of ferocity which the amazed midshipman could not account for. "Have you not understood me?" "Yes, sir, perfectly, but--" "When a slave receives a command," cried Ben-Ahmed in rising wrath, "it is his duty to obey in silence. Again I say--go!" The middy bowed with feelings of indignation, but on reaching the door paused, and again essayed to speak. "I give you fair warning, Ben-Ahmed, that I will _not_--" "Silence!" again roared the Moor, seizing an ornamental box and hurling it violently at his slave, who, dipping his head, allowed it to go crashing against the wall, while he went out and shut the door. "Well, old boy, I'm absolved from any allegiance to _you_," he muttered, as he walked smartly down the garden walk towards the gate; "so if I do a good deal more than your bidding you mustn't be surprised. But your sudden burst of anger is incomprehensible. However, that's not my business now." Had any one been there to observe the Moor after the middy had taken his departure, he would have seen that the passion he had displayed evaporated as rapidly as it had arisen, and that he resumed the amber mouthpiece of his hookah with a peculiar smile and an air of calm contentment. Thereafter he ordered out his horse, mounted it in his usual dignified manner, and quietly rode away into the darkness of the night. It may be observed here our middy had improved greatly in the matter of costume since his appointment to the rank of limner to Ben-Ahmed. The old canvas jacket, straw hat, etcetera, had given place to a picturesque Moorish costume which, with the middy's fine figure and natural bearing, led people to suppose him a man of some note, so that his appearance was not unsuited to the mission he had in hand. We need scarcely say that his spirit was greatly agitated, as he walked towards the town, by uncertainty as to how he ought to act in the present emergency, and his mind was much confused by the varied, and, to some extent, inexplicable incidents of the evening. His thoughts crystallised, however, as he went along, and he had finally made up his mind what to do by the time he passed the portals Bab-Azoun and entered the streets of Algiers. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. MYSTERIOUS AND DARING DEEDS ARE CROWNED WITH SUCCESS. Threading his way carefully through the badly lighted streets, our middy went straight to the Kasba, and, rapping boldly at the gate, demanded admittance. "Show me to the guard-room. I wish to speak with the officer in command," he said, in the tone of one accustomed to obedience. The soldier who admitted him introduced him to the officer in charge for the night. "I come, sir," said Foster, with quiet gentlemanly assurance, "to demand an escort for slaves." "By whose orders?" asked the officer. "The order of his Highness the Dey," answered Foster, producing the ring. The officer examined it, touched his forehead with it in token of submission, and asked how many men were required. "Six will do," returned the middy, in a slow, meditative manner, as if a little uncertain on the point--"yes, six will suffice. I only wish their escort beyond the gates. Friends might attempt a rescue in the town. When I have them a short distance beyond the gates I can manage without assistance." He touched, as he spoke, the handle of a silver-mounted pistol which he carried in his belt. Of course, as he spoke Lingua Franca, the officer of the guard knew quite well that he was a foreigner, but as the notables and Deys of Algiers were in the habit of using all kinds of trusted messengers and agents to do their work, he saw nothing unusual in the circumstance. Six armed soldiers were at once turned out, and with these obedient, unquestioning slaves he marched down the tortuous streets to the Bagnio. The ring procured him admittance at once, and the same talisman converted the head jailer into an obsequious servant. "I have come for one of your slaves," said the middy, walking smartly into the court where most of the miserable creatures had already forgotten their wretchedness in the profound sleep of the weary. The tramp of the soldiers on the stone pavement and the clang of their arms awoke some of them. "The name of the man I want is Hugh Sommers." On hearing this one of the slaves was observed to reach out his hand and shake another slave who still slumbered. "Rouse up, Sommers! You are wanted, my poor friend." "What say you, Laronde?" exclaimed the merchant, starting up and rubbing his eyes. "Get up and follow me," said Foster, in a stern commanding tone. "And who are _you_, that orders me as if I were a dog?" fiercely returned Sommers, who, since the day of the unsuccessful mutiny, had again become desperate, and was in consequence heavily ironed. "The Dey of Algiers gives the order through me," replied Foster, pointing to the soldiers, "and it will be your highest wisdom to obey without question. Knock off his irons," he added, turning abruptly to the chief jailer. The air of insolent authority which our `hipperkritical' middy assumed was so effective that even Sommers was slightly overawed. While the irons were being removed, the unhappy Frenchman, Edouard Laronde, sought to console him. "I told you it would soon come to this," he said in English. "I only wish I was going to die with you." "Knock off this man's irons also," said the middy, to whom a new idea had suddenly occurred, and who was glad to find that his altered costume and bearing proved such a complete disguise that his old comrade in sorrow did not recognise him. "I thought," said the jailer, "that you said only one slave was wanted." "I say _two_ slaves are wanted," growled the midshipman, with a look so fierce that the jailer promptly ordered the removal of Laronde's fetters. "Did I not often tell you," muttered Hugh Sommers, "that your unguarded tongue would bring you to grief?" "It matters not. I submit, and am ready," returned the Frenchman in a sad tone. "If it were not for my poor wife and child, the world would be well rid of such a useless rebel as I." When the two slaves were ready, Foster demanded a piece of rope with which he fastened the left and right wrists of the two men together. Then, placing them in the midst of the soldiers, he led them out of the prison and along the main street in the direction of the western gate of the city. Passing through this the little party advanced into the suburbs until they reached a part of the road beyond which pedestrians usually found it convenient not to travel after dark. Here Foster called a halt. "I thank you," he said to the leader of the soldiers, at the same time giving him a piece of money. "There is no further occasion for your services, all danger of rescue being past. I can now take care of them myself, being armed, as you see, while they are bound. Convey my thanks and compliments to your commanding officer." The soldier acknowledged the piece of money with a grave inclination of the head, ordered his men to right-about-face, and marched back to the Kasba, leaving the three slaves standing not far from the seashore, and gazing at each other in silence. "You seem to have forgotten me, friends," said the middy in English, pulling a clasp-knife out of his pocket. "Yet you have both met me before when we were slaves." "_Were_ slaves!" repeated the Frenchman, who was the first to recover from his astonishment, "are we not still slaves?" he asked, glancing at the cords that bound their wrists. "Not now," said Foster, cutting the cords with his knife--"at least we shall soon be free if we make good use of our opportunities." "Free!" exclaimed both men together, with the energy of a sudden and almost overwhelming hope. "Ay, free! But this is no time for explanation. Follow me closely, and in silence." Scarcely crediting their senses, and more than half disposed to believe that the whole affair was one of their too familiar dreams, yet strangely convinced at the same time that it was a reality, the two men followed their young leader with alacrity. The reader will remember that before parting from Foster that day Peter the Great had taken special care to ascertain that he knew the whereabouts of the rocks where the boat belonging to Brown and his friends was concealed. As Foster walked along in the dark he thought a good deal about this, and felt convinced that Peter must have had some idea of the event that was likely to follow from his mission to the Bagnio. But he was much perplexed in attempting to account for his reticence in the matter. Altogether, there was mystery about it which he could not see through, so he wisely gave up thinking about it, and braced his energies to the carrying out of his own little plot. This was, to lead Hugh Sommers to his daughter and assist them to escape in the boat, along with Brown the sailor and his companions--intending, of course, to escape along with them! His taking advantage of the opportunity to free Edouard Laronde was the result of a sudden inspiration--a mere afterthought! The distance to the spot for which they were making was considerable, and at first the fugitives proceeded with caution and in silence, but as their distance from the pirate city increased, and the danger of pursuit diminished, the middy relaxed a little, gave his companions interjectional scraps of information, and finally revealed to them all that he knew and purposed. Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by the sight of something moving at the side of the road. It looked too small for a man, yet its movements seemed too intelligent for a dog or a stray donkey. "Stay here, I will soon find out," whispered Foster, drawing his pistol, and bounding towards the object in question. It ran from him, but our middy was swift of foot. He quickly overtook it, and seized firmly by the arm what in the dark he thought to be a boy. A slight scream undeceived him, and at the same time caused his heart to bound. "Oh, you hurt me!" exclaimed a well-remembered voice. "Hester!" cried the youth, and next moment, folding her in his arms, he kissed her--quite unintentionally, but irresistibly. Thrusting him away with indignation, the maiden said, with flashing eyes, "You forget yourself, sir, and take advantage of my defenceless position." "No--no, indeed! I did not intend to frighten you, dear child," (in his desperation the middy assumed the paternal _role_). "Pray forgive me, it was only my joy at the prospect of reuniting you to your father, and--" "My father!" cried Hester, forgetting her offended dignity. "Where is he? You are alone! Peter the Great sent me here to meet him, but he did not say I should meet _you_." "Peter the Great sent you here--and alone!" exclaimed Foster, in amazement. "Yes; he went out first to make sure that my father was coming, and then sent me to meet him that we might be alone. But Peter is close at hand." "Ho, yis! bery close at hand, Geo'ge!" said Peter himself, suddenly emerging from a place of concealment. "Now you come along wid me, sar, an' let dat poo' chile meet her fadder in private." "But she cannot do that, Peter, for Edouard Laronde is with him." "Who'n all de wurld's Eddard Larongd?" Before Foster could reply Hester had bounded from his side, and next moment was locked in her father's arms. "Come away, Geo'ge--an' you too, Eddard La--La-whatever-it-is!" cried the negro, grasping the latter by the arm and hurrying him along the road in the direction of the seashore, while the reunited father and child knelt down together and poured out their gratitude to God. "Dey'll foller us in a minnit or two," continued the negro. "What kep' you so long, Geo'ge?" "Couldn't manage it sooner. But can you guess, Peter, why Ben-Ahmed behaved in the strange way he has done? He got into a rage when I attempted to tell him honestly, that I did not intend to go back to him, or to take Sommers to his house, and that I'd try to escape along with him if I could, but he would not listen or let me say a word." "Did you t'ink ob tellin' him all dat?" asked Peter. "I certainly did." "Well, you're not half such a hipperkrite as I t'ink you was." "I'm glad to hear you say so, for I don't like to play the part of a hypocrite, Peter; I like to be all fair and above-board." "Was it all fair an' above-board, Geo'ge, to kiss dat leetle gal when she was all alone and unpurtected? Was it all fair an' above-board to call her you dear _chile_, as if you was her fadder?" "Come, come, Peter, `everything is fair,' you know, `in love and war.' But that's not the point. Can you guess, I ask, Ben-Ahmed's motive for acting so oddly?" "Oh! yis, Geo'ge, I kin guess a'most anybody's motives, zough, p'r'aps, I mightn't guess right. I shouldn't wonder, now, if Ben-Ahmed will hab to account to do Dey for de tottle disappearance of Hugh Sommers--to say not'ing ob Eddard La--La--what's-'is-name--an' p'r'aps he'd like to be able to say he'd no notion o' what de man he sent to fetch de slabe was goin' to do. Now he couldn't hab say dat, you know, if he let you tell him all about it--like a goose as you was. So he let you go off, d'ye see, gib you your orders so far, an' labes de rest to your good sense-- zough dere wasn't too much ob dat to leab it to, or you wouldn't hab bring away Eddard La--La--t'ing-um-bob." "But do you really mean to tell me, Peter, that Ben-Ahmed intended me and Hugh Sommers to escape?" "Das really what I means to tell you, Geo'ge." "Then why didn't you tell me all, this before, and save me from a deal of uncertainty?" "Cause, in de fuss' place, I had no time to tell you; in de second place, I was ordered not to tell you; in de t'ird place, it's good for midshipmen to be put on deir mettle, an' lef' to find deir own way out ob diffikilties, an', in de fourf place, slabes hab no business to be axin' de outs an' ins, de whys an' de wherefores of deir massa's affairs." "Well, I always knew Ben-Ahmed had a kind heart, but little thought it was so kind and self-sacrificing as to buy Sommers for the very purpose of setting him free. I regret, deeply, that I did not know this sooner, and that I cannot now have the chance of thanking him with all my heart and soul, and bidding the good man farewell. It is one comfort, however, that I'll be able to send a message back by you. And I'm also glad that I shall not have to part from you, my dear Peter, without telling you how much I love you and how sorry, very, _very_ sorry, I am to say good-bye." "Geo'ge," returned the negro earnestly, "don't you count your cheekins afore dey's hatched! You're not away yit." Foster made no reply. To say truth, he felt a little hurt by the way in which his protestations of regard were received, and, by way of changing the subject, he asked if Peter had ever heard anything about the old Dane and his wife and daughter who had been captured at the same time with himself. "Dey's bin ransom'd, all ob dem. Got rich friends, you see. Hole your tongue now, Geo'ge, we's comin' to de place." By that time Sommers and his daughter had overtaken the party. As they all proceeded silently along the road, wondering how the matter would end, they observed a figure, like that of a female, glide, as it were, out of the darkness, and, taking Peter quietly by the arm, walk along with him. Impelled by curiosity, Foster went forward and looked into her face. "Angelica!" he exclaimed in surprise. "Ob course!" answered her husband for her, "you don't suppose de wife ob Peter de Great would let Geo'ge Foster go away widout comin' to de boat to see him off?" Ere the middy could recover from his astonishment, the party came suddenly upon a small cavern in which a light glimmered. At its entrance lay a boat, and beside it, engaged in putting it to rights, were Brown and his three companions--the two British tars and the Maltese seaman. "Is all right?" asked Brown, in a low voice, as they approached. "All right," answered Peter. "Now, Geo'ge, you go in." The middy entered the cave, and with, if possible, increased surprise, he found Ben-Ahmed standing there! "You are astonished, my friend," said the Moor with a gentle smile, as he extended his hand. "I am indeed," returned the middy, heartily grasping and warmly shaking it, "but I am also rejoiced that I have the opportunity--which I had not hoped for--of thanking you for all your great kindness to me in time past--especially for this crowning act." "You have not to thank me," returned the Moor, "you have to thank the little English girl;" as he spoke he made a graceful motion of the hand towards Hester, who, with her father, entered the cave at the moment. "Little Hester has taught me--not by word but by example--the grand lesson of your Christian Scriptures, that a man should do to others what he would have others do to him. I have resolved to keep no more slaves, and, as a first step, I now set you all free!" "God's blessing rest on you for that, sir," said Hugh Sommers, stepping forward and grasping the hand that Foster had relinquished. "Have you, then, forsaken the faith of Mohammed and adopted that of Christ?" "Be not over-curious," said the Moor reprovingly. "Sufficient for you to know that fresh water cannot spring from a salt fountain. We must not waste time. The boat is in the water by this time. Farewell. Kiss me, my child. We may not meet again on earth, but--we shall certainly meet hereafter!" Hester, who saw the Moor assume all shapes and sizes through the tears that filled her eyes, ran to him, and, throwing her arms round his neck gave him a hug that made even her father jealous. "Now, away, all of you," cried Ben-Ahmed, when he was released, "and may the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob go with you." While he was yet speaking the clatter of horses' hoofs in the distance was heard. Instantly the party made for the boat. There was no time for last adieux. Ben-Ahmed helped to shove off the boat and bundle them in. "You will hear pistol-shots," he cried, "but fear not for me. My horse can outrun the best in Algiers. I will only fire to decoy them away. Farewell!" He ran up into the shrubbery that bordered the road, and next minute the sound of the horse's feet was heard in the distance, as the boat skimmed swiftly out to sea under the powerful impulse of its stalwart crew. A few minutes later and, as the Moor had prophesied, pistol-shots were heard on shore. From the sound they appeared to come from a short distance in the interior of the land, but musket-shots were also heard among them, and from the flashes on the beach it became evident that the Moor had not succeeded in turning all their pursuers off the scent--a fact which was further illustrated by the skipping of a musket ball close past the boat. Just then it struck George Foster that Peter the Great and his wife were seated beside him. "Hallo, Peter!" he exclaimed; "how are you and Angelica to get on shore?" "We's not goin' on shore at all, Geo'ge." "What do you mean, Peter?" "I means what I says. De fact is, Geo'ge, dat I's come to de conclusion dat I couldn't lib widout you. Angelica's ob de same opinion, so we's made up our minds, wid massa's purmission, to go wid you to ole England. We's all goin' togidder, Geo'ge. Ain't dat jolly?" "But how can we ever get to England in a small boat like this?" asked the middy, in much anxiety, for in the hurry and excitement of the start the difficulty had not occurred to him. "No fear about that, sir," answered Brown, who pulled the bow oar; "we ain't such fools as to make the voyage in a cockle-shell like this! The boat b'longs to a privateer as is owned by a friend o' mine, an' the wessel's lyin' off an' on waitin' for us." "There she goes!" said one of the sailors. "Look out!" As he spoke a large schooner loomed up against the dark sky, and was hailed. A gruff voice replied. Another moment the sails flapped, and the boat was towing alongside. Our middy was first to leap on deck--and not without a purpose in view, for he was thus in a position to hand up the passengers. "Do you forgive me, Hester?" he whispered humbly, as he stooped to grasp her little hand. "I forgive you!" she whispered timidly, as she passed him, and was led by her father into the vessel's cabin. That night two of the swiftest of the piratical war-vessels were seen to warp out from the Mole, and put to sea, but long before the land breeze filled their peaked sails the privateer was cleaving her way, homeward bound, through the dark waters of the Mediterranean. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. THE LAST. "Geo'ge, your mudder wants you." Such were the words which aroused George Foster from a reverie one morning as he stood at the window of a villa on the coast of Kent, fastening his necktie and contemplating the sea. "Nothing wrong, I hope," said the middy, turning quickly round, and regarding with some anxiety the unusually solemn visage of Peter the Great. "Wheder dere's anyfing wrong or not, 'snot for me to say, massa, but I t'ink dere's suffin' up, for she seems in a carfuffle." "Tell her I shall be with her instantly." Completing his toilet hastily, our hero repaired to his mother's apartment, where he found her seated in dishabille with an open letter in her hand, and some excitement in her face. "Is Laronde better this morning?" she asked as her son sat down on a sofa at the foot of her bed. "I don't know, mother--haven't been to his room this morning. Why do you ask? Has anything happened?" "I will tell you presently, but first let me know what success you have had in your search." "Nothing but failure," said the middy, in a desponding tone. "If there had been anything good to tell you I would have come to your room last night despite the lateness of the hour. We were later than usual in arriving because a trace broke, and after that one of the horses cast a shoe." "Where did you make inquiries, George?" "At the solicitors' office, of course. It is through them that we obtained what we hoped would be a clue, and it is to them that poor Marie Laronde used to go to inquire whether there was any chance of her husband being released for a smaller sum than was at first demanded. They had heard of a dressmaker who employed a girl or woman named Laronde in the West End, so I hunted her up with rather sanguine expectations, but she turned out to be a girl of sixteen, dark instead of fair, and unmarried! But again I ask, mother, what news, for I see by your face that you have something to tell me. That is a letter from Minnie, is it not?" "It is, George, and I am very hopeful that while you have been away on the wrong scent in the West End of London, Minnie has fallen, quite unexpectedly, on the right scent in one of the low quarters of Liverpool. You know that she has been nursing Aunt Jeanette there for more than a fortnight." "Yes, I know it only too well," answered the middy. "It is too bad that Aunt Jeanette should take it into her head to get ill and send for Minnie just three weeks after my return from slavery!--But what do you mean by her having fallen on the right scent? Surely she has not found leisure and strength both to hunt and nurse at the same time!" "Yes, indeed, she has. Our last winter in that charming south of France has so completely restored her--through the blessing of God--that she has found herself equal to almost anything. It happens that Aunt Jeanette has got a friend living close to her who is an enthusiastic worker amongst the poor of the town, and she has taken your sister several times to visit the districts where the very poor people live. It was while she was thus engaged, probably never thinking of poor Laronde's wife at all, that she--but here is the letter. Read it for yourself, you need not trouble yourself to read the last page--just down to here." Retiring to the window the middy read as follows:-- "Darling Mother,--I must begin at once with what my mind is full of, just remarking, by the way, that Aunt Jeanette is improving steadily, and that I hope to be home again in less than a week. "Well, I told you in my last that Miss Love--who is most appropriately named--had taken me out once or twice on her visits among the poor. And, do you know, it has opened up a new world of ideas and feelings to me. It is such a terrible revelation of the intensity of sorrow and suffering that is endured by a large mass of our fellow-creatures! I am persuaded that thousands of the well-to-do and the rich have no conception of it, for it must be seen to be understood. I feel as if my heart had become a great fountain of pity! And I can well--at least better--understand how our dear Saviour, when He wanted to give evidence of the truth and character of His mission, said, `The poor have the gospel preached unto them,' for if any class of beings on the face of this earth stand in need of good news it is the poor. God help and bless them! "Well, the other day Miss Love came to ask me to go out with her to visit some of her poor people, among others one--a very singular character--a woman who was reported to be a desperate miser, insomuch that she starved herself and her child for the sake of saving money. It was said that she was very ill at the time--thought to be dying-- and seemed to be in a wretched state of destitution. Her name, Miss Love told me, was Lundy. "As Auntie was pretty well that day I gladly accompanied my friend to her district. And it _was_ an awful place! I shudder even now when I think of the sights and sounds and dreadful language I saw and heard there--but I must not turn aside from what I have to tell. I pass over our visits to various families and come at once to the reputed miser. She was in bed, and from her flushed face and glittering eyes I could see that she was in high fever. She started, raised herself on an elbow, and glared at us as we entered. "I was deeply interested in her from the first moment. Although worn and thin, with lines of prolonged suffering indelibly stamped on her, she had a beautiful and refined face. Her age appeared to be about thirty-five. A lovely, but wretchedly clothed girl, of about fourteen years of age, sat on a low stool at her bedside. And oh! such a bed it was. Merely a heap of straw with a piece of sacking over it, on a broken bedstead. One worn blanket covered her thin form. Besides these things, a small table, and a corner cupboard, there was literally nothing else in the room. "The girl rose to receive us, and expressed regret that she had no chairs to offer. While Miss Love went forward and talked tenderly to the mother, I drew the girl aside, took her hand affectionately, and said, `You have not always been as poor as you now are?' "`No indeed,' she said, while tears filled her eyes, `but work failed us in London, where we once lived, and mother came to Liverpool to a brother, who said he would help her, but he died soon after our arrival, and then mother got ill and I had to begin and spend our savings--savings that darling mother had scraped and toiled so hard to gain--and this made her much worse, for she was _so_ anxious to save money!' "This last remark reminded me of the reports about the mother's miserly nature, so I asked a question that made the poor girl reply quickly-- "`Oh! you mustn't think that darling mother is a miser. People so often fall into that mistake! She has been saving for ever so many years to buy father back--' "`Buy father back!' I repeated, with a sudden start. "`Yes, to buy him from the Algerine pirates--' "I waited for no more, but, running to the bedside, looked the poor woman steadily in the face. There could be no doubt about it. There was the fair hair, blue eyes, and clear complexion, though the last was sadly faded from ill-health. "You should have seen the look of surprise she gave me. But I had been foolishly precipitate. Her mind had been wandering a little before we came in. The shock seemed to throw it further off the balance, for she suddenly looked at me with a calm sweet smile. "`Yes,' she said, `he always called me Marie, though my name was Mary, being a Frenchman, you know--his little Marie he called me! I often think how pleased he will be to see another little Marie grown big when we get him back--but oh! how long--how _long_ they are about sending him, though I have sent the money over and over again. Hush!' "She looked round with a terrified expression and clutched my shawl with her thin hand. `You won't tell, will you?' she went on; `you have a kind face, I am sure you will not tell, but I have been saving--saving--saving, to send more money to the Moors. I keep it in a bag here under my pillow, but I often fear that some one will discover and steal it. Oh! these Moors must have hard, hard hearts to keep him from me so long--so _very_ long!' "Here she thrust me from her with unexpected violence, burst into a wild laugh, and began in her delirium to rave against the Moors. Yet, even in the midst of her reproaches, the poor thing prayed that God would soften their hearts and forgive her for being so revengeful. "Now, mother, I want to know what is to be done, for when we sent for a doctor he said that not a word must be said about the return of her husband until she is out of danger and restored to some degree of health." Thus far the middy read the letter. "Mother," he said, firmly, "the doctor may say what he likes, but I am convinced that the best cure for fever and every other disease under the sun is joy--administered judiciously, in small or large doses as the patient is able to bear it! Now, the primary cause of poor Marie's illness is the loss of her husband, therefore the removal of the cause-- that is, the recovery of her husband--" "With God's blessing," interjected Mrs Foster. "Admitted--with the blessing of the Great Physician--that is the natural cure." "Very true, George, but you wisely spoke of small doses. I am not sure that it would be safe to tell Monsieur Laronde that we have actually found his wife and child. He also is too weak to bear much agitation." "Not so weak as you think, mother, though the sufferings of slave-life and subsequent anxiety have brought him very near to the grave. But I will break it to him judiciously. We will get my dear little Hester to do it." "_Your_ Hester!" exclaimed Mrs Foster, in surprise. "I trust, George, that you, a mere midshipman, have not dared to speak to that child of--" "Make your mind easy, mother," replied the middy, with a laugh, "I have not said a word. Haven't required to. We have both spoken to each other with our eyes, and that is quite enough at present. I feel as sure of my little Hester as if we were fairly spliced. There goes the breakfast-bell. Will you be down soon?" "No. I am too happy to-day to be able to eat in public, George. Send it up to me." The breakfast-room in that seaside villa presented an interesting company, for the fugitives had stuck together with feelings of powerful sympathy since they had landed in England. Hugh Sommers was there, but it was not easy to recognise in the fine, massive, genial gentleman, in a shooting suit of grey, the ragged, wretched slave who, not long before, had struggled like a tiger with the janissaries on the walls of Algiers. And Hester was there, of course, with her sunny hair and sunny looks and general aspect of human sunniness all over, as unlike to the veiled and timid Moorish lady, or the little thin-nosed negress, as chalk is to cheese! Edouard Laronde was also there, and he, like the others, had undergone wonderful transformation in the matter of clothing, but he had also changed in body, for a severe illness had seized him when he landed, and it required all Mrs Foster's careful nursing to "pull him through," as the middy styled it. Brown the sailor was also there, for, being a pleasant as well as a sharp man, young Foster resolved to get him into the Navy, and, if possible, into the same ship with himself. Meanwhile he retained him to assist in the search for Marie Laronde and her daughter. Last, but by no means least, Peter the Great was there--not as one of the breakfast party, but as a waiter. Peter had from the first positively refused to sit down to meals in a dining-party room! "No, Geo'ge," he said, when our middy proposed it to him, on the occasion of their arrival at his mother's home--"No, Geo'ge. I _won't_ do it. Das flat! I's not bin used to it. My proper speer is de kitchen. Besides, do you t'ink I'd forsake my Angelica an' leabe her to feed alone downstairs, w'ile her husband was a-gorgin' of his-self above? Neber! It's no use for you, Geo'ge, to say you'd be happy to see her too, for she wouldn't do it, an' she's as obsnit as me--an' more! Now you make your mind easy, I'll be your mudder's black flunkey--for lub, not for munny. So you hole your tongue, Geo'ge!" Thus the arrangement came to be made--at least for a time. The middy was unusually grave that morning as he sat down to breakfast. They were all aware that he had returned from London late the previous night, and were more or less eager to know the result of his visit, but on observing his gravity they forbore to ask questions. Only the poor Frenchman ventured to say sadly, "Failed again, I see." "Not absolutely," said Foster, who was anxious that the invalid should not have his breakfast spoilt by being excited. "The visit I paid to the solicitor did indeed turn out a failure, but--but I have still strong hopes," he added cheerily. "So hab I, Geo'ge," remarked Peter the Great, from behind the chair of Miss Sommers, who presided at the breakfast table, for although Peter had resigned his right to equality as to feeding, he by no means gave up his claim to that of social intercourse. "Come, Laronde. Cheer up, my friend," said Hugh Sommers heartily; "I feel sure that we'll manage it amongst us, for we have all entered on the search heart and soul." "Right you are, sir," ejaculated Brown, through a mouthful of buttered toast. "It only requires patience," said the middy, "for London is a big place, you know, and can't be gone over in a week or two." "Das so, Geo'ge," said Peter, nodding approval. After breakfast Foster sought a private interview with Hester, who undertook, with much fear, to communicate the news to Laronde. "You see, I think it will come best from you, Hester," said George in a grave fatherly manner, "because a woman always does these sort of things better than a man, and besides, poor Laronde is uncommonly fond of you, as--" He was going to have said "as everybody is," but, with much sagacity, he stopped short and sneezed instead. He felt that a commonplace cough from a man with a sound chest would inevitably have betrayed him--so he sneezed. "A hyperkrite as usual!" he thought, and continued aloud-- "So, you see, Hester, it is very important that you should undertake it, and it will be very kind of you, too." "I would gladly undertake a great deal more than that for the poor man," said Hester earnestly. "When must I do it?" "Now--at once. The sooner the better. He usually goes to the bower at the foot of the garden after breakfast." Without a word, but with a glance that spoke volumes, the maiden ran to the bower. What she said to the Frenchman we need not write down in detail. It is sufficient to note the result. In the course of a short time after she had entered the bower, a loud shout was heard, and next moment Laronde was seen rushing towards the house with a flushed countenance and the vigour of an athlete! "My little girl has been too precipitate, I fear," remarked Hugh Sommers to the middy. "Your little girl is never `_too_'--anything!" replied the middy to Hugh, with much gravity. The ex-Bagnio slave smiled, but whether at the reply or at the rushing Frenchman we cannot tell. When Laronde reached his room he found Peter the Great there, on his knees, packing a small valise. "Hallo! Peter, what are you doing? I want that." "Yes, Eddard, I know dat. Das why I's packin'." "You're a good fellow, Peter, a true friend, but let me do it; I'm in terrible haste!" "No, sar, you's not in haste. Dere's lots ob time." (He pulled out a watch of the warming-pan type and consulted it.) "De coach don't start till one o'clock; it's now eleben; so dere's no hurry. You jest lie down on de bed an' I'll pack de bag." Instead of lying down the poor Frenchman fell on his knees beside the bed and laid his face in his hands. "Yes--das better. Dere's some sense in _dat_," muttered the negro as he quietly continued to pack the valise. Two hours later and Laronde was dashing across country as fast as four good horses could take him, with George Foster on one side, Peter the Great on the other, and Brown on the box-seat--the fo'c'sl, he called it--beside the red-coated driver. Whatever may be true of your modern forty-mile-an-hour iron horse, there can be no question that the ten-mile-an-hour of those days, behind a spanking team with clattering wheels, and swaying springs, and cracking whip, and sounding horn, _felt_ uncommonly swift and satisfactory. Laronde shut his eyes and enjoyed it at first. But the strength engendered by excitement soon began to fail. The long weary journey helped to make things worse, and when at last they arrived at the journey's end, and went with Miss Love and Minnie to the lodging, poor Laronde had scarcely strength left to totter to his wife's bedside. This was fortunate, however, for he was the better able to restrain his feelings. "She has had a long satisfactory sleep--is still sleeping--and is much better," was the nurse's report as they entered. The daughter looked with surprise at the weak worn man who was led forward. Laronde did not observe her. His eyes were fixed on the bed where the pale thin figure lay. One of Marie's hands lay outside the blanket. The husband knelt, took it gently and laid his cheek on it. Then he began to stroke it softly. The action awoke the sleeper, but she did not open her eyes. "Go on," she murmured gently; "you always used to do that when I was ill or tired--don't stop it yet, as you _always_ do now, and go away." The sound of her own voice seemed to awake her. She turned her head and her eyes opened wide while she gazed in his face with a steady stare. Uttering a sharp cry she seized him round the neck, exclaiming, "Praise the Lord!" "Yes, Marie--my own! Praise the Lord, for He has been merciful to me--a sinner." The unbeliever, whom lash, torture, toil, and woe could not soften, was broken now, for "the goodness of the Lord had led him to repentance." Did the middy, after all, marry Hester, _alias_ Geo'giana Sommers? No, of course, he did not! He was a full-fledged lieutenant in his Majesty's navy when he did that! But it was not long--only a couple of years after his return from slavery--when he threw little Hester into a state of tremendous consternation one day by abruptly proposing that they should get spliced immediately, and thenceforward sail the sea of life in company. Hester said timidly she couldn't think of it. George said boldly he didn't want her to _think_ of it, but to _do it_! This was putting the subject in quite a new light, so she smiled, blushed, and hurriedly hid her face on his shoulder! Of course all the fugitive slaves were at the wedding. There was likewise a large quantity of dark-blue cloth, gold lace, and brass buttons at it. Peter the Great came out strong upon that occasion. Although he consented to do menial work, he utterly refused to accept a menial position. Indeed he claimed as much right to, and interest in, the bride as her own radiant "fadder," for had he not been the chief instrument in "sabing dem bof from de Moors?" As no one ventured to deny the claim, Peter retired to the privacy of the back kitchen, put his arm round Angelica's neck, told her that he had got a gift of enough money to "ransom his sister Dinah," laid his woolly head on her shoulder, and absolutely howled for joy. It may be well to remark, in conclusion, that Peter the Great finally agreed to become Mrs Foster's gardener, as being the surest way of seeing "Geo'ge" during his periodical visits home. For much the same reason Hugh Sommers settled down in a small house near them. Laronde obtained a situation as French master in an academy not far off, and his wife and daughter soon gave evidence that joy is indeed a wonderful medicine! As for George Foster himself, he rose to the top of his profession. How could it be otherwise with such an experience--and such a wife? And when, in after years, his sons and daughters clamoured, as they were often wont to do, for "stories from father," he would invariably send for Peter the Great, in order that he might listen and corroborate or correct what he related of his wonderful adventures when he was a Middy among the Moors. THE END. 
4271	----	Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org A MODERN TELEMACHUS {'Be still' illustration: p1.jpg} 'Be still; I want to hear what they are saying.'--P. 2. ILLUSTRATED BY W. J. HENNESSY. London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1889 _All rights reserved_ _First Edition_ (2 _Vols. Crown_ 8_vo_) 1886 _Reprinted_ 1887, 1889 PREFACE The idea of this tale was taken from _The Mariners' Chronicle_, compiled by a person named Scott early in the last century--a curious book of narratives of maritime adventures, with exceedingly quaint illustrations. Nothing has ever shown me more plainly that truth is stranger than fiction, for all that is most improbable here is the actual fact. The Comte de Bourke was really an Irish Jacobite, naturalised in France, and married to the daughter of the Marquis de Varennes, as well as in high favour with the Marshal Duke of Berwick. In 1719, just when the ambition of Elizabeth Farnese, the second wife of Philip V. of Spain, had involved that country in a war with England, France, and Austria, the Count was transferred from the Spanish Embassy to that of Sweden, and sent for his wife and two elder children to join him at a Spanish port. This arrangement was so strange that I can only account for it by supposing that as this was the date of a feeble Spanish attempt on behalf of the Jacobites in Scotland, Comte de Bourke may not have ventured by the direct route. Or it may not have been etiquette for him to re-enter France when appointed ambassador. At any rate, the poor Countess did take this route to the South, and I am inclined to think the narrative must be correct, as all the side-lights I have been able to gain perfectly agree with it, often in an unexpected manner. The suite and the baggage were just as related in the story--the only liberty I have taken being the bestowal of names. 'M. Arture' was really of the party, but I have made him Scotch instead of Irish, and I have no knowledge that the lackey was not French. The imbecility of the Abbe is merely a deduction from his helplessness, but of course this may have been caused by illness. The meeting with M. de Varennes at Avignon, Berwick's offer of an escort, and the Countess's dread of the Pyrenees, are all facts, as well as her embarkation in the Genoese tartane bound for Barcelona, and its capture by the Algerine corsair commanded by a Dutch renegade, who treated her well, and to whom she gave her watch. Algerine history confirms what is said of his treatment. Louis XIV. had bombarded the pirate city, and compelled the Dey to receive a consul and to liberate French prisoners and French property; but the lady having been taken in an Italian ship, the Dutchman was afraid to set her ashore without first taking her to Algiers, lest he should fall under suspicion. He would not venture on taking so many women on board his own vessel, being evidently afraid of his crew of more than two hundred Turks and Moors, but sent seven men on board the prize and took it in tow. Curiously enough, history mentions the very tempest which drove the tartane apart from her captor, for it also shattered the French transports and interfered with Berwick's Spanish campaign. The circumstances of the wreck have been closely followed. 'M. Arture' actually saved Mademoiselle de Bourke, and placed her in the arms of the _maitre d'hotel_, who had reached a rock, together with the Abbe, the lackey, and one out of the four maids. The other three were all in the cabin with their mistress and her son, and shared their fate. The real 'Arture' tried to swim to the shore, but never was seen again, so that his adventures with the little boy are wholly imaginary. But the little girl's conduct is perfectly true. When in the steward's arms she declared that the savages might take her life, but never should make her deny her faith. The account of these captors was a great difficulty, till in the old _Universal History_ I found a description of Algeria which tallied wonderfully with the narrative. It was taken from a survey of the coast made a few years later by English officials. The tribe inhabiting Mounts Araz and Couco, and bordering on Djigheli Bay, were really wild Arabs, claiming high descent, but very loose Mohammedans, and savage in their habits. Their name of Cabeleyzes is said--with what truth I know not--to mean 'revolted,' and they held themselves independent of the Dey. They were in the habit of murdering or enslaving all shipwrecked travellers, except subjects of Algiers, whom they released with nothing but their lives. All this perfectly explains the sufferings of Mademoiselle de Bourke. The history of the plundering, the threats, the savage treatment of the corpses, the wild dogs, the councils of the tribe, the separation of the captives, and the child's heroism, is all literally true--the expedient of Victorine's defence alone being an invention. It is also true that the little girl and the _maitre d'hotel_ wrote four letters, and sent them by different chances to Algiers, but only the last ever arrived, and it created a great sensation. M. Dessault is a real personage, and the kindness of the Dey and of the Moors was exactly as related, also the expedient of sending the Marabout of Bugia to negotiate. Mr. Thomas Thompson was really the English Consul at the time, but his share in the matter is imaginary, as it depends on Arthur's adventures. The account of the Marabout system comes from the _Universal History_; but the arrival, the negotiations, and the desire of the sheyk to detain the young French lady for a wife to his son, are from the narrative. He really did claim to be an equal match for her, were she daughter of the King of France, since he was King of the Mountains. The welcome at Algiers and the _Te Deum_ in the Consul's chapel also are related in the book that serves me for authority. It adds that Mademoiselle de Bourke finally married a Marquis de B---, and lived much respected in Provence, dying shortly before the Revolution. I will only mention further that a rescued Abyssinian slave named Fareek (happily not tongueless) was well known to me many years ago in the household of the late Warden Barter of Winchester College. Since writing the above I have by the kindness of friends been enabled to discover Mr. Scott's authority, namely, a book entitled _Voyage pour la Redemption des captifs aux Royaumes d'Alger et de Tunis_, _fait en_ 1720 _par les P.P. Francois Comelin_, _Philemon de la Motte_, _et Joseph Bernard_, _de l'Ordre de la Sainte Trinite_, _dit Mathurine_. This Order was established by Jean Matha for the ransom and rescue of prisoners in the hands of the Moors. A translation of the adventures of the Comtesse de Bourke and her daughter was published in the _Catholic World_, New York, July 1881. It exactly agrees with the narration in _The Mariners' Chronicle_ except that, in the true spirit of the eighteenth century, Mr. Scott thought fit to suppress that these ecclesiastics were at Algiers at the time of the arrival of Mademoiselle de Bourke's letter, that they interested themselves actively on her behalf, and that they wrote the narrative from the lips of the _maitre d'hotel_ (who indeed may clearly be traced throughout). It seems also that the gold cups were chalices, and that a complete set of altar equipments fell a prey to the Cabeleyzes, whose name the good fathers endeavour to connect with _Cabale_--with about as much reason as if we endeavoured to derive that word from the ministry of Charles II. Had I known in time of the assistance of these benevolent brethren I would certainly have introduced them with all due honour, but, like the Abbe Vertot, I have to say, _Mon histoire est ecrite_, and what is worse--printed. Moreover, they do not seem to have gone on the mission with the Marabout from Bugia, so that their presence really only accounts for the _Te Deum_ with which the redeemed captives were welcomed. It does not seem quite certain whether M. Dessault was Consul or Envoy; I incline to think the latter. The translation in the _Catholic World_ speaks of Sir Arthur, but Mr. Scott's 'M. Arture' is much more _vraisemblable_. He probably had either a surname to be concealed or else unpronounceable to French lips. Scott must have had some further information of the after history of Mademoiselle de Bourke since he mentions her marriage, which could hardly have taken place when Pere Comelin's book was published in 1720. C. M. YONGE. CHAPTER I--COMPANIONS OF THE VOYAGE 'Make mention thereto Touching my much loved father's safe return, If of his whereabouts I may best hear.' _Odyssey_ (MUSGRAVE). 'Oh! brother, I wish they had named you Telemaque, and then it would have been all right!' 'Why so, sister? Why should I be called by so ugly a name? I like Ulysses much better; and it is also the name of my papa.' 'That is the very thing. His name is Ulysses, and we are going to seek for him.' 'Oh! I hope that cruel old Mentor is not coming to tumble us down over a great rook, like Telemaque in the picture.' 'You mean Pere le Brun?' 'Yes; you know he always says he is our Mentor. And I wish he would change into a goddess with a helmet and a shield, with an ugly face, and go off in a cloud. Do you think he will, Estelle?' 'Do not be so silly, Ulick; there are no goddesses now.' 'I heard M. de la Mede tell that pretty lady with the diamond butterfly that she was his goddess; so there are!' 'You do not understand, brother. That was only flattery and compliment. Goddesses were only in the Greek mythology, and were all over long ago!' 'But are we really going to see our papa?' 'Oh yes, mamma told me so. He is made Ambassador to Sweden, you know.' 'Is that greater than Envoy to Spain?' 'Very, very much greater. They call mamma Madame l'Ambassadrice; and she is having three complete new dresses made. See, there are _la bonne_ and Laurent talking. It is English, and if we go near with our cups and balls we shall hear all about it. Laurent always knows, because my uncle tells him.' 'You must call him _La Juenesse_ now he is made mamma's lackey. Is he not beautiful in his new livery?' 'Be still now, brother; I want to hear what they are saying.' This may sound somewhat sly, but French children, before Rousseau had made them the fashion, were kept in the background, and were reduced to picking up intelligence as best they could without any sense of its being dishonourable to do so; and, indeed, it was more neglect than desire of concealment that left their uninformed. This was in 1719, four years after the accession of Louis XV., a puny infant, to the French throne, and in the midst of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans. The scene was a broad walk in the Tuileries gardens, beneath a closely-clipped wall of greenery, along which were disposed alternately busts upon pedestals, and stone vases of flowers, while beyond lay formal beds of flowers, the gravel walks between radiating from a fountain, at present quiescent, for it was only ten o'clock in the forenoon, and the gardens were chiefly frequented at that hour by children and their attendants, who, like Estelle and Ulysse de Bourke, were taking an early walk on their way home from mass. They were a miniature lady and gentleman of the period in costume, with the single exception that, in consideration of their being only nine and seven years old, their hair was free from powder. Estelle's light, almost flaxen locks were brushed back from her forehead, and tied behind with a rose-coloured ribbon, but uncovered, except by a tiny lace cap on the crown of her head; Ulick's darker hair was carefully arranged in great curls on his back and shoulders, as like a full-bottomed wig as nature would permit, and over it he wore a little cocked hat edged with gold lace. He had a rich laced cravat, a double-breasted waistcoat of pale blue satin, and breeches to match, a brown velvet coat with blue embroidery on the pockets, collar, and skirts, silk stockings to match, as well as the knot of the tiny scabbard of the semblance of a sword at his side, shoes with silver buckles, and altogether he might have been a full-grown Comte or Vicomte seen through a diminishing glass. His sister was in a full-hooped dress, with tight long waist, and sleeves reaching to her elbows, the under skirt a pale pink, the upper a deeper rose colour; but stiff as was the attire, she had managed to give it a slight general air of disarrangement, to get her cap a little on one side, a stray curl loose on her forehead, to tear a bit of the dangling lace on her arms, and to splash her robe with a puddle. He was in air, feature, and complexion a perfect little dark Frenchman. The contour of her face, still more its rosy glow, were more in accordance with her surname, and so especially were the large deep blue eyes with the long dark lashes and pencilled brows. And there was a lively restless air about her full of intelligence, as she manoeuvred her brother towards a stone seat, guarded by a couple of cupids reining in sleepy-looking lions in stone, where, under the shade of a lime-tree, her little petticoated brother of two years old was asleep, cradled in the lap of a large, portly, handsome woman, in a dark dress, a white cap and apron, and dark crimson cloak, loosely put back, as it was an August day. Native costumes were then, as now, always worn by French nurses; but this was not the garb of any province of the kingdom, and was as Irish as the brogue in which she was conversing with the tall fine young man who stood at ease beside her. He was in a magnificent green and gold livery suit, his hair powdered, and fastened in a _queue_, the whiteness contrasting with the dark brows, and the eyes and complexion of that fine Irish type that it is the fashion to call Milesian. He looked proud of his dress, which was viewed in those days as eminently becoming, and did in fact display his well-made figure and limbs to great advantage; but he looked anxiously about, and his first inquiry on coming on the scene in attendance upon the little boy had been-- 'The top of the morning to ye, mother! And where is Victorine?' 'Arrah, and what would ye want with Victorine?' demanded the _bonne_. 'Is not the old mother enough for one while, to feast her eyes on her an' Lanty Callaghan, now he has shed the _marmiton's_ slough, and come out in old Ireland's colours, like a butterfly from a palmer? La Jeunesse, instead of Laurent here, and Laurent there.' La Pierre and La Jeunesse were the stereotyped names of all pairs of lackeys in French noble houses, and the title was a mark of promotion; but Lanty winced and said, 'Have done with that, mother. You know that never the pot nor the kettle has blacked my fingers since Master Phelim went to the good fathers' school with me to carry his books and insinse him with the larning. 'Tis all one, as his own body-servant that I have been, as was fitting for his own foster-brother, till now, when not one of the servants, barring myself and Maitre Hebert, the steward, will follow Madame la Comtesse beyond the four walls of Paris. "Will you desert us too, Laurent?" says the lady. "And is it me you mane, Madame," says I, "Sorrah a Callaghan ever deserted a Burke!" "Then," says she, "if you will go with us to Sweden, you shall have two lackey's suits, and a couple of _louis d'or_ to cross your pocket with by the year, forbye the fee and bounty of all the visitors to M. le Comte." "Is it M. l'Abbe goes with Madame?" says I. "And why not," says she. "Then," says I, "'tis myself that is mightily obliged to your ladyship, and am ready to put on her colours and do all in reason in her service, so as I am free to attend to Master Phelim, that is M. l'Abbe, whenever he needs me, that am in duty bound as his own foster-brother." "Ah, Laurent," says she, "'tis you that are the faithful domestic. We shall all stand in need of such good offices as we can do to one another, for we shall have a long and troublesome, if not dangerous journey, both before and after we have met M. le Comte."' Estelle here nodded her head with a certain satisfaction, while the nurse replied-- 'And what other answer could the son of your father make--Heavens be his bed--that was shot through the head by the masther's side in the weary wars in Spain? and whom could ye be bound to serve barring Master Phelim, that's lain in the same cradle with yees--' 'Is not Victorine here, mother?' still restlessly demanded Lanty. 'Never you heed Victorine,' replied she. 'Sure she may have a little arrand of her own, and ye might have a word for the old mother that never parted with you before.' 'You not going, mother!' he exclaimed. ''Tis my heart that will go with you and Masther Phelim, my jewel; but Madame la Comtesse will have it that this weeny little darlint'--caressing the child in her lap--'could never bear the cold of that bare and dissolute place in the north you are bound for, and old Madame la Marquise, her mother, would be mad entirely if all the children left her; but our own lady can't quit the little one without leaving his own nurse Honor with him!' 'That's news to me intirely, mother,' said Lanty; 'bad luck to it!' Honor laughed that half-proud, half-sad laugh of mothers when their sons outgrow them. 'Fine talking! Much he cares for the old mother if he can see the young girl go with him.' For Lanty's eyes had brightened at sight of a slight little figure, trim to the last degree, with a jaunty little cap on her dark hair, gay trimmings to the black apron, dainty shoes and stockings that came tripping down the path. His tongue instantly changed to French from what he called English, as in pathetic insinuating modulations he demanded how she could be making him weary his very heart out. 'Who bade you?' she retorted. 'I never asked you to waste your time here!' 'And will ye not give me a glance of the eyes that have made a cinder of my poor heart, when I am going away into the desolate north, among the bears and the savages and the heretics?' 'There will be plenty of eyes there to look at your fine green and gold, for the sake of the Paris cut; though a great lumbering fellow like you does not know how to show it off!' 'And if I bring back a heretic _bru_ to break the heart of the mother, will it not be all the fault of the cruelty of Mademoiselle Victorine?' Here Estelle, unable to withstand Lanty's piteous intonations, broke in, 'Never mind, Laurent, Victorine goes with us. She went to be measured for a new pair of slices on purpose!' 'Ah! I thought I should disembarrass myself of a great troublesome Irishman!' 'No!' retorted the boy, 'you knew Laurent was going, for Maitre Hebert had just come in to say he must have a lackey's suit!' 'Yes,' said Estelle, 'that was when you took me in your arms and kissed me, and said you would follow Madame la Comtesse to the end of the world.' The old nurse laughed heartily, but Victorine cried out, 'Does Mademoiselle think I am going to follow naughty little girls who invent follies? It is still free to me to change my mind. Poor Simon Claquette is gnawing his heart out, and he is to be left _concierge_!' The clock at the palace chimed eleven, Estelle took her brother's hand, Honor rose with little Jacques in her arms, Victorine paced beside her, and Lanty as La Jeunesse followed, puffing out his breast, and wielding his cane, as they all went home to _dejeuner_. Twenty-nine years before the opening of this narrative, just after the battle of Boyne Water had ruined the hopes of the Stewarts in Ireland, Sir Ulick Burke had attended James II. in his flight from Waterford; and his wife had followed him, attended by her two faithful servants, Patrick Callaghan, and his wife Honor, carrying her mistress's child on her bosom, and her own on her back. Sir Ulick, or Le Chevalier Bourke, as the French called him, had no scruple in taking service in the armies of Louis XIV. Callaghan followed him everywhere, while Honor remained a devoted attendant on her lady, doubly bound to her by exile and sorrow. Little Ulick Burke's foster-sister died, perhaps because she had always been made second to him through all the hardships and exposure of the journey. Other babes of both lady and nurse had succumbed to the mortality which beset the children of that generation, and the only survivors besides the eldest Burke and one daughter were the two youngest of each mother, and they had arrived so nearly at the same time that Honor Callaghan could again be foster-mother to Phelim Burke, a sickly child, reared with great difficulty. The family were becoming almost French. Sir Ulick was an intimate friend of one of the noblest men of the day, James Fitz-James, Marshal Duke of Berwick, who united military talent, almost equal to that of his uncle of Marlborough, to an unswerving honour and integrity very rare in those evil times. Under him, Sir Ulick fought in the campaigns that finally established the House of Bourbon upon the throne of Spain, and the younger Ulick or Ulysse, as his name had been classicalised and Frenchified, was making his first campaign as a mere boy at the time of the battle of Almanza, that solitary British defeat, for which our national consolation is that the French were commanded by an Englishman, the Duke of Berwick, and the English by a Frenchman, the Huguenot Rubigne, Earl of Galway. The first English charge was, however, fatal to the Chevalier Bourke, who fell mortally wounded, and in the endeavour to carry him off the field the faithful Callaghan likewise fell. Sir Ulick lived long enough to be visited by the Duke, and to commend his children to his friend's protection. Berwick was held to be dry and stiff, but he was a faithful friend, and well redeemed his promise. The eldest son, young as he was, obtained as wife the daughter of the Marquis de Varennes, and soon distinguished himself both in war and policy, so as to receive the title of Comte de Bourke. The French Church was called on to provide for the other two children. The daughter, Alice, became a nun in one of the Parisian convents, with promises of promotion. The younger son, Phelim, was weakly in health, and of intellect feeble, if not deficient, and was almost dependent on the devoted care and tenderness of his foster-brother, Laurence Callaghan. Nobody was startled when Berwick's interest procured for the dull boy of ten years old the Abbey of St. Eudoce in Champagne. To be sure the responsibilities were not great, for the Abbey had been burnt down a century and a half ago by the Huguenots, and there had never been any monks in it since, so the only effect was that little Phelim Burke went by the imposing title of Monsieur l'Abbe de St. Eudoce, and his family enjoyed as much of the revenues of the estates of the Abbey as the Intendant thought proper to transmit to them. He was, to a certain degree, ecclesiastically educated, having just memory enough to retain for recitation the tasks that Lanty helped him to learn, and he could copy the themes or translations made for him by his faithful companion. Neither boy had the least notion of unfairness or deception in this arrangement: it was only the natural service of the one to the other, and if it were perceived in the Fathers of the Seminary, whither Lanty daily conducted the young Abbot, they winked at it. Nor, though the quick-witted Lanty thus acquired a considerable amount of learning, no idea occurred to him of availing himself of it for his own advantage. It sat outside him, as it were, for 'Masther Phelim's' use; and he no more thought of applying it to his own elevation than he did of wearing the _soutane_ he brushed for his young master. The Abbe was now five-and-twenty, had received the tonsure, and had been admitted to minor Orders, but there was no necessity for him to proceed any farther unless higher promotion should be accorded to him in recompense of his brother's services. He was a gentle, amiable being, not at all fit to take care of himself; and since the death of his mother, he had been the charge of his brother and sister-in-law, or perhaps more correctly speaking, of the Dowager Marquise de Varennes, for all the branches of the family lived together in the Hotel de Varennes at Paris, or its chateau in the country, and the fine old lady ruled over all, her son and son-in-law being often absent, as was the case at present. A fresh European war had been provoked by the ambition of the second wife of Philip V. of Spain, the Prince for whose cause Berwick had fought. This Queen, Elizabeth Farnese, wanted rank and dominion for her own son; moreover, Philip looked with longing eyes at his native kingdom of France, all claim to which he had resigned when Spain was bequeathed to him; but now that only a sickly child, Louis XV., stood between him and the succession in right of blood, he felt his rights superior to those of the Duke of Orleans. Thus Spain was induced to become hostile to France, and to commence the war known as that of the Quadruple Alliance. While there was still hope of accommodation, the Comte de Bourke had been sent as a special envoy to Madrid, and there continued even after the war had broken out, and the Duke of Berwick, resigning all the estates he had received from the gratitude of Philip V., had led an army across the frontier. The Count had, however, just been appointed Ambassador to Sweden, and was anxious to be joined by his family on the way thither. The tidings had created great commotion. Madame de Varennes looked on Sweden as an Ultima Thule of frost and snow, but knew that a lady's presence was essential to the display required of an ambassador. She strove, however, to have the children left with her; but her daughter declared that she could not part with Estelle, who was already a companion and friend, and that Ulysse must be with his father, who longed for his eldest son, so that only little Jacques, a delicate child, was to be left to console his grandmother. CHAPTER II--A JACOBITE WAIF 'Sac now he's o'er the floods sae gray, And Lord Maxwell has ta'en his good-night.' LORD MAXWELL'S _Good-night_. Madame La Comtesse de Bourke was by no means a helpless fine lady. She had several times accompanied her husband on his expeditions, and had only not gone with him to Madrid because he did not expect to be long absent, and she sorely rued the separation. She was very busy in her own room, superintending the packing, and assisting in it, when her own clever fingers were more effective than those of her maids. She was in her _robe de chambre_, a dark blue wrapper, embroidered with white, and put on more neatly than was always the case with French ladies in _deshabille_. The hoop, long stiff stays, rich brocade robe, and fabric of powdered hair were equally unsuitable to ease or exertion, and consequently were seldom assumed till late in the day, when the toilette was often made in public. So Madame de Bourke's hair was simply rolled out of her way, and she appeared in her true colours, as a little brisk, bonny woman, with no actual beauty, but very expressive light gray eyes, furnished with intensely long black lashes, and a sweet, mobile, lively countenance. Estelle was trying to amuse little Jacques, and prevent him from trotting between the boxes, putting all sorts of undesirable goods into them; and Ulysse had collected his toys, and was pleading earnestly that a headless wooden horse and a kite, twice as tall as himself, of Lanty's manufacture, might go with them. He was told that another _cerf-volant_ should be made for him at the journey's end; but was only partially consoled, and his mother was fain to compound for a box of woolly lambs. Estelle winked away a tear when her doll was rejected, a wooden, highly painted lady, bedizened in brocade, and so dear to her soul that it was hard to be told that she was too old for such toys, and that the Swedes would be shocked to see the Ambassador's daughter embracing a doll. She had, however, to preserve her character of a reasonable child, and tried to derive consolation from the permission to bestow 'Mademoiselle' upon the _concierge's_ little sick daughter, who would be sure to cherish her duly. 'But, oh mamma, I pray you to let me take my book!' 'Assuredly, my child. Let us see! What? Telemaque? Not "Prince Percinet and Princess Gracieuse?"' 'I am tired of them, mamma.' 'Nor Madame d'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales?' 'Oh no, thank you, mamma; I love nothing so well as Telemaque.' 'Thou art a droll child!' said her mother. 'Ah, but we are going to be like Telemaque.' 'Heaven forfend!' said the poor lady. 'Yes, dear mamma, I am glad you are going with us instead of staying at home to weave and unweave webs. If Penelope had been like you, she would have gone!' 'Take care, is not Jacques acting Penelope?' said Madame de Bourke, unable to help smiling at her little daughter's glib mythology, while going to the rescue of the embroidery silks, in which her youngest son was entangling himself. At that moment there was a knock at the door, and a message was brought that the Countess of Nithsdale begged the favour of a few minutes' conversation in private with Madame. The Scottish title fared better on the lips of La Jeunesse than it would have done on those of his predecessor. There was considerable intimacy among all the Jacobite exiles in and about Paris; and Winifred, Countess of Nithsdale, though living a very quiet and secluded life, was held in high estimation among all who recollected the act of wifely heroism by which she had rescued her husband from the block. Madame de Bourke bade the maids carry off the little Jacques, and Ulysse followed; but Estelle, who had often listened with rapt attention to the story of the escape, and longed to feast her eyes on the heroine, remained in her corner, usefully employed in disentangling the embroilment of silks, and with the illustrations to her beloved Telemaque as a resource in case the conversation should be tedious. Children who have hundreds of picture-books to rustle through can little guess how their predecessors could once dream over one. Estelle made her low reverence unnoticed, and watched with eager eyes as the slight figure entered, clad in the stately costume that was regarded as proper respect to her hostess; but the long loose sacque of blue silk was faded, the _feuille-morte_ velvet petticoat frayed, the lace on the neck and sleeves washed and mended; there were no jewels on the sleeves, though the long gloves fitted exquisitely, no gems in the buckles of the high-heeled shoes, and the only ornament in the carefully rolled and powdered hair, a white rose. Her face was thin and worn, with pleasant brown eyes. Estelle could not think her as beautiful as Calypso inconsolable for Ulysses, or Antiope receiving the boar's a head. 'I know she is better than either,' thought the little maid; 'but I wish she was more like Minerva.' The Countesses met with the lowest of curtseys, and apologies on the one side for intrusion, on the other for _deshabille_, so they concluded with an embrace really affectionate, though consideration for powder made it necessarily somewhat theatrical in appearance. These were the stiffest of days, just before formality had become unbearable, and the reaction of simplicity had set in; and Estelle had undone two desperate knots in the green and yellow silks before the preliminary compliments were over, and Lady Nithsdale arrived at the point. 'Madame is about to rejoin _Monsieur son Mari_.' 'I am about to have that happiness.' 'That is the reason I have been bold enough to derange her.' 'Do not mention it. It is always a delight to see _Madame la Comtesse_.' 'Ah! what will Madame say when she hears that it is to ask a great favour of her.' 'Madame may reckon on me for whatever she would command.' 'If you can grant it--oh! Madame,' cried the Scottish Countess, beginning to drop her formality in her eagerness, 'we shall be for ever beholden to you, and you will make a wounded heart to sing, besides perhaps saving a noble young spirit.' 'Madame makes me impatient to hear what she would have of me,' said the French Countess, becoming a little on her guard, as the wife of a diplomatist, recollecting, too, that peace with George I. might mean war with the Jacobites. 'I know not whether a young kinsman of my Lord's has ever been presented to Madame. His name is Arthur Maxwell Hope; but we call him usually by his Christian name.' 'A tall, dark, handsome youth, almost like a Spaniard, or a picture by Vandyke? It seems to me that I have seen him with M. le Comte.' (Madame de Bourke could not venture on such a word as Nithsdale.) 'Madame is right. The mother of the boy is a Maxwell, a cousin not far removed from my Lord, but he could not hinder her from being given in marriage as second wife to Sir David Hope, already an old man. He was good to her, but when he died, the sons by the first wife were harsh and unkind to her and to her son, of whom they had always been jealous. The eldest was a creature of my Lord Stair, and altogether a Whig; indeed, he now holds an office at the Court of the Elector of Hanover, and has been created one of _his_ peers. (The scorn with which the gentle Winifred uttered those words was worth seeing, and the other noble lady gave a little derisive laugh.) 'These half-brothers declared that Lady Hope was nurturing the young Arthur in Toryism and disaffection, and they made it a plea for separating him from her, and sending him to an old minister, who kept a school, and who was very severe and even cruel to the poor boy. But I am wearying Madame.' 'Oh no, I listen with the deepest interest.' 'Finally, when the King was expected in Scotland, and men's minds were full of anger and bitterness, as well as hope and spirit, the boy--he was then only fourteen years of age--boasted of his grandfather's having fought at Killiecrankie, and used language which the tutor pronounced treasonable. He was punished and confined to his room; but in the night he made his escape and joined the royal army. My husband was grieved to see him, told him he had no right to political opinions, and tried to send him home in time to make his peace before all was lost. Alas! no. The little fellow did, indeed, pass out safely from Preston, but only to join my Lord Mar. He was among the gentlemen who embarked at Banff; and when my Lord, by Heaven's mercy, had escaped from the Tower of London, and we arrived at Paris, almost the first person we saw was little Arthur, whom we thought to have been safe at home. We have kept him with us, and I contrived to let his mother know that he is living, for she had mourned him as among the slain.' 'Poor mother.' 'You may well pity her, Madame. She writes to me that if Arthur had returned at once from Preston, as my Lord advised, all would have been passed over as a schoolboy frolic; and, indeed, he has never been attainted; but there is nothing that his eldest brother, Lord Burnside as they call him, dreads so much as that it should be known that one of his family was engaged in the campaign, or that he is keeping such ill company as we are. Therefore, at her request, we have never called him Hope, but let him go by our name of Maxwell, which is his by baptism; and now she tells me that if he could make his way to Scotland, not as if coming from Paris or Bar-le-Duc, but merely as if travelling on the Continent, his brother would consent to his return.' 'Would she be willing that he should live under the usurper?' 'Madame, to tell you the truth,' said Lady Nithsdale, 'the Lady Hope is not one to heed the question of usurpers, so long as her son is safe and a good lad. Nay, for my part, we all lived peaceably and happily enough under Queen Anne; and by all I hear, so they still do at home under the Elector of Hanover.' 'The Regent has acknowledged him,' put in the French lady. 'Well,' said the poor exile, 'I know my Lord felt that it was his duty to obey the summons of his lawful sovereign, and that, as he said when he took up arms, one can only do one's duty and take the consequences; but oh! when I look at the misery and desolation that has come of it, when I think of the wives not so happy as I am, when I see my dear Lord wearing out his life in banishment, and think of our dear home and our poor people, I am tempted to wonder whether it were indeed a duty, or whether there were any right to call on brave men without a more steadfast purpose not to abandon them!' 'It would have been very different if the Duke of Berwick had led the way,' observed Madame de Bourke. 'Then my husband would have gone, but, being French subjects, honour stayed both him and the Duke as long as the Regent made no move.' The good lady, of course, thought that the Marshal Duke and her own Count must secure victory; but Lady Nithsdale was intent on her own branch of the subject, and did not pursue 'what might have been.' 'After all,' she said, 'poor Arthur, at fourteen, could have no true political convictions. He merely fled because he was harshly treated, heard his grandfather branded as a traitor, and had an enthusiasm for my husband, who had been kind to him. It was a mere boy's escapade, and if he had returned home when my Lord bade him, it would only have been remembered as such. He knows it now, and I frankly tell you, Madame, that what he has seen of our exiled court has not increased his ardour in the cause.' 'Alas, no,' said Madame de Bourke. 'If the Chevalier de St. George were other than he is, it would be easier to act in his behalf.' 'And you agree with me, Madame,' continued the visitor, 'that nothing can be worse or more hopeless for a youth than the life to which we are constrained here, with our whole shadow of hope in intrigue; and for our men, no occupation worthy of their sex. We women are not so ill off, with our children and domestic affairs; but it breaks my heart to see brave gentlemen's lives thus wasted. We have done our best for Arthur. He has studied with one of our good clergy, and my Lord himself has taught him to fence; but we cannot treat him any longer as a boy, and I know not what is to be his future, unless we can return him to his own country.' 'Our army,' suggested Madame de Bourke. 'Ah! but he is Protestant.' 'A heretic!' exclaimed the lady, drawing herself up. 'But--' 'Oh, do not refuse me on that account. He is a good lad, and has lived enough among Catholics to keep his opinions in the background. But you understand that it is another reason for wishing to convey him, if not to Scotland, to some land like Sweden or Prussia, where his faith would not be a bar to his promotion.' 'What is it you would have me do?' said Madame de Bourke, more coldly. 'If Madame would permit him to be included in her passport, as about to join the Ambassador's suite, and thus conduct him to Sweden; Lady Hope would find means to communicate with him from thence, the poor young man would be saved from a ruined career, and the heart of the widow and mother would bless you for ever. Madame de Bourke was touched, but she was a prudent woman, and paused to ask whether the youth had shown any tendency to run into temptation, from which Lady Nithsdale wished to remove him. 'Oh no,' she answered; 'he was a perfectly good docile lad, though high- spirited, submissive to the Earl, and a kind playfellow to her little girls; it was his very excellence that made it so unfortunate that he should thus be stranded in early youth in consequence of one boyish folly.' The Countess began to yield. She thought he might go as secretary to her Lord, and she owned that if he was a brave young man, he would be an addition to her little escort, which only numbered two men besides her brother-in-law, the Abbe, who was of almost as little account as his young nephew. 'But I should warn you, Madame,' added Madame de Bourke, 'that it may be a very dangerous journey. I own to you, though I would not tell my poor mother, that my heart fails me when I think of it, and were it not for the express commands of their father, I would not risk my poor children on it.' 'I do not think you will find Sweden otherwise than a cheerful and pleasant abode,' said Lady Nithsdale. 'Ah! if we were only in Sweden, or with my husband, all would be well!' replied the other lady; 'but we have to pass through the mountains, and the Catalans are always ill-affected to us French.' 'Nay; but you are a party of women, and belong to an ambassador!' was the answer. 'What do those robbers care for that? We are all the better prey for them! I have heard histories of Spanish cruelty and lawlessness that would make you shudder! You cannot guess at the dreadful presentiments that have haunted me ever since I had my husband's letter.' 'There is danger everywhere, dear friend,' said Lady Nithsdale kindly; 'but God finds a way for us through all.' 'Ah! you have experienced it,' said Madame de Bourke. 'Let us proceed to the affairs. I only thought I should tell you the truth.' Lady Nithsdale answered for the courage of her _protege_, and it was further determined that he should be presented to her that evening by the Earl, at the farewell reception which Madame de Varennes was to hold on her daughter's behalf, when it could be determined in what capacity he should be named in the passport. Estelle, who had been listening with all her ears, and trying to find a character in Fenelon's romance to be represented by Arthur Hope, now further heard it explained that the party were to go southward to meet her father at one of the Mediterranean ports, as the English Government were so suspicious of Jacobites that he did not venture on taking the direct route by sea, but meant to travel through Germany. Madame de Bourke expected to meet her brother at Avignon, and to obtain his advice as to her further route. Estelle heard this with great satisfaction. 'We shall go to the Mediterranean Sea and be in danger,' she said to herself, unfolding the map at the beginning of her Telemaque; 'that is quite right! Perhaps we shall see Calypso's island.' She begged hard to be allowed to sit up that evening to see the hero of the escape from the Tower of London, as well as the travelling companion destined for her, and she prevailed, for mamma pronounced that she had been very sage and reasonable all day, and the grandmamma, who was so soon to part with her, could refuse her nothing. So she was full dressed, with hair curled, and permitted to stand by the tall high-backed chair where the old lady sat to receive her visitors. The Marquise de Varennes was a small withered woman, with keen eyes, and a sort of sparkle of manner, and power of setting people at ease, that made her the more charming the older she grew. An experienced eye could detect that she retained the costume of the prime of Louis XIV., when headdresses were less high than that which her daughter was obliged to wear. For the two last mortal hours of that busy day had poor Madame de Bourke been compelled to sit under the hands of the hairdresser, who was building up, with paste and powder and the like, an original conception of his, namely, a northern landscape, with snow-laden trees, drifts of snow, diamond icicles, and even a cottage beside an ice-bound stream. She could ill spare the time, and longed to be excused; but the artist had begged so hard to be allowed to carry out his brilliant and unique idea, this last time of attending on Madame l'Ambassadrice, that there was no resisting him, and perhaps her strange forebodings made her less willing to inflict a disappointment on the poor man. It would have been strange to contrast the fabric of vanity building up outside her head, with the melancholy bodings within it, as she sat motionless under the hairdresser's fingers; but at the end she roused herself to smile gratefully, and give the admiration that was felt to be due to the monstrosity that crowned her. Forbearance and Christian patience may be exercised even on a toilette a la Louis XV. Long practice enabled her to walk about, seat herself, rise and curtsey without detriment to the edifice, or bestowing the powder either on her neighbours or on the richly-flowered white brocade she wore; while she received the compliments, one after another, of ladies in even more gorgeous array, and gentlemen in velvet coats, adorned with gold lace, cravats of exquisite fabric, and diamond shoe buckles. Phelim Burke, otherwise l'Abbe de St. Eudoce, stood near her. He was a thin, yellow, and freckled youth, with sandy hair and typical Irish features, but without their drollery, and his face was what might have been expected in a half-starved, half-clad gossoon in a cabin, rather than surmounting a silken _soutane_ in a Parisian salon; but he had a pleasant smile when kindly addressed by his friends. Presently Lady Nithsdale drew near, accompanied by a tall, grave gentleman, and bringing with them a still taller youth, with the stiffest of backs and the longest of legs, who, when presented, made a bow apparently from the end of his spine, like Estelle's lamented Dutch-jointed doll when made to sit down. Moreover, he was more shabbily dressed than any other gentleman present, with a general outgrown look about his coat, and darns in his silk stockings; and though they were made by the hand of a Countess, that did not add to their elegance. And as he stood as stiff as a ramrod or as a sentinel, Estelle's good breeding was all called into play, and her mother's heart quailed as she said to herself, 'A great raw Scot! What can be done with him? Lord Nithsdale spoke for him, thinking he had better go as secretary, and showing some handwriting of good quality. 'Did he know any languages?' 'French, English, Latin, and some Greek.' 'And, Madame,' added Lord Nithsdale, 'not only is his French much better than mine, as you would hear if the boy durst open his mouth, but our broad Scotch is so like Swedish that he will almost be an interpreter there.' However hopeless Madame de Bourke felt, she smiled and professed herself rejoiced to hear it, and it was further decided that Arthur Maxwell Hope, aged eighteen, Scot by birth, should be mentioned among those of the Ambassador's household for whom she demanded passports. Her position rendered this no matter of difficulty, and it was wiser to give the full truth to the home authorities; but as it was desirable that it should not be reported to the English Government that Lord Burnside's brother was in the suite of the Jacobite Comte de Bourke, he was only to be known to the public by his first name, which was not much harder to French lips than Maxwell or Hope. 'Tall and black and awkward,' said Estelle, describing him to her brother. 'I shall not like him--I shall call him Phalante instead of Arthur.' 'Arthur,' said Ulysse; 'King Arthur was turned into a crow!' 'Well, this Arthur is like a crow--a great black skinny crow with torn feathers.' CHAPTER III--ON THE RHONE 'Fairer scenes the opening eye Of the day can scarce descry, Fairer sight he looks not on Than the pleasant banks of Rhone.' ARCHBISHOP TRENCH. Long legs may be in the abstract an advantage, but scarcely so in what was called in France _une grande Berline_. This was the favourite travelling carriage of the eighteenth century, and consisted of a close carriage or coach proper, with arrangements on the top for luggage, and behind it another seat open, but provided with a large leathern hood, and in front another place for the coachman and his companions. Each seat was wide enough to hold three persons, and thus within sat Madame de Bourke, her brother-in-law, the two children, Arthur Hope, and Mademoiselle Julienne, an elderly woman of the artisan class, _femme de chambre_ to the Countess. Victorine, who was attendant on the children, would travel under the hood with two more maids; and the front seat would be occupied by the coachman, Laurence Callaghan--otherwise La Jeunesse, and Maitre Hebert, the _maitre d'hotel_. Fain would Arthur have shared their elevation, so far as ease and comfort of mind and body went, and the Countess's wishes may have gone the same way; but besides that it would have been an insult to class him with the servants, the horses of the home establishment, driven by their own coachman, took the party the first stage out of Paris; and though afterwards the post-horses or mules, six in number, would be ridden by their own postilions, there was such an amount of luggage as to leave little or no space for a third person outside. It had been a perfect sight to see the carriage packed; when Arthur, convoyed by Lord Nithsdale, arrived in the courtyard of the Hotel de Varennes. Madame de Bourke was taking with her all the paraphernalia of an ambassador--a service of plate, in a huge chest stowed under the seat, a portrait of Philip V., in a gold frame set with diamonds, being included among her jewellery--and Lord Nithsdale, standing by, could not but drily remark, 'Yonder is more than we brought with us, Arthur.' The two walked up and down the court together, unwilling to intrude on the parting which, as they well knew, would be made in floods of tears. Sad enough indeed it was, for Madame de Varennes was advanced in years, and her daughter had not only to part with her, but with the baby Jacques, for an unknown space of time; but the self-command and restraint of grief for the sake of each other was absolutely unknown. It was a point of honour and sentiment to weep as much as possible, and it would have been regarded as frigid and unnatural not to go on crying too much to eat or speak for a whole day beforehand, and at least two afterwards. So when the travellers descended the steps to take their seats, each face was enveloped in a handkerchief, and there were passionate embraces, literal pressings to the breast, and violent sobs, as each victim, one after the other, ascended the carriage steps and fell back on the seat; while in the background, Honor Callaghan was uttering Irish wails over the Abbe and Laurence, and the lamentable sound set the little lap-dog and the big watch-dog howling in chorus. Arthur Hope, probably as miserable as any of them in parting with his friend and hero, was only standing like a stake, and an embarrassed stake (if that be possible), and Lord Nithsdale, though anxious for him, heartily pitying all, was nevertheless haunted by a queer recollection of Lance and his dog, and thinking that French dogs were not devoid of sympathy, and that the part of Crab was left for Arthur. However, the last embrace was given, and the ladies were all packed in, while the Abbe with his breast heaving with sobs, his big hat in one hand, and a huge silk pocket-handkerchief in the other, did not forget his manners, but waved to Arthur to ascend the steps first. 'Secretary, not guest. You must remember that another time,' said Lord Nithsdale. 'God bless you, my dear lad, and bring you safe back to bonny Scotland, a true and leal heart.' Arthur wrung his friend's hand once more, and disappeared into the vehicle; Nurse Honor made one more rush, and uttered another 'Ohone' over Abbe Phelim, who followed into the carriage; the door was shut; there was a last wail over 'Lanty, the sunbeam of me heart,' as he climbed to the box seat; the harness jingled; coachman and postilions cracked their whips, the impatient horses dashed out at the _porte cochere_; and Arthur, after endeavouring to dispose of his legs, looked about him, and saw, opposite to him, Madame de Bourke lying back in the corner in a transport of grief, one arm round her daughter, and her little son lying across her lap, both sobbing and crying; and on one side of him the Abbe, sunk in his corner, his yellow silk handkerchief over his face; on the other, Mademoiselle Julienne, who was crying too, but with more moderation, perhaps more out of propriety or from infection than from actual grief: at any rate she had more of her senses about her than any one else, and managed to dispose of the various loose articles that had been thrown after the travellers, in pockets and under cushions. Arthur would have assisted, but only succeeded in treading on various toes and eliciting some small shrieks, which disconcerted him all the more, and made Mademoiselle Julienne look daggers at him, as she relieved her lady of little Ulysse, lifting him to her own knee, where, as he was absolutely exhausted with crying, he fell asleep. Arthur hoped the others would do the same, and perhaps there was more dozing than they would have confessed; but whenever there was a movement, and some familiar object in the streets of Paris struck the eye of Madame, the Abbe, or Estelle, there was a little cry, and they went off on a fresh score. 'Poor wretched weak creatures!' he said to himself, as he thought the traditions of Scottish heroic women in whose heroism he had gloated. And yet he was wrong: Madame de Bourke was capable of as much resolute self- devotion as any of the ladies on the other side of the Channel, but tears were a tribute required by the times. So she gave way to them--just as no doubt the women of former days saw nothing absurd in bottling them. Arthur's position among all these weeping figures was extremely awkward, all the more so that he carried his sword upright between his legs, not daring to disturb the lachrymose company enough to dispose of it in the sword case appropriated to weapons. He longed to take out the little pocket Virgil, which Lord Nithsdale had given him, so as to have some occupation for his eyes, but he durst not, lest he should be thought rude, till, at a halt at a cabaret to water the horses, the striking of a clock reminded the Abbe that it was the time for reading the Hours, and when the breviary was taken out, Arthur thought his book might follow it. By and by there was a halt at Corbeil, where was the nunnery of Alice Bourke, of whom her brother and sister-in-law were to take leave. They, with the children, were set down there, while Arthur went on with the carriage and servants to the inn to dine. It was the first visit of Ulysse to the convent, and he was much amazed at peeping at his aunt's hooded face through a grating. However, the family were admitted to dine in the refectory; but poor Madame de Bourke was fit for nothing but to lie on a bed, attended affectionately by her sister-in-law, Soeur Ste. Madeleine. 'O sister, sister,' was her cry, 'I must say it to you--I would not to my poor mother--that I have the most horrible presentiments I shall never see her again, nor my poor child. No, nor my husband; I knew it when he took leave of me for that terrible Spain.' 'Yet you see he is safe, and you will be with him, sister,' returned the nun. 'Ah! that I knew I should! But think of those fearful Pyrenees, and the bandits that infest them--and all the valuables we carry with us!' 'Surely I heard that Marshal Berwick had offered you an escort.' 'That will only attract the attention of the brigands and bring them in greater force. O sister, sister, my heart sinks at the thought of my poor children in the hands of those savages! I dream of them every night.' 'The suite of an ambassador is sacred.' 'Ah! but what do they care for that, the robbers? I know destruction lies that way!' 'Nay, sister, this is not like you. You always were brave, and trusted heaven, when you had to follow Ulick.' 'Alas! never had I this sinking of heart, which tells me I shall be torn from my poor children and never rejoin him.' Sister Ste. Madeleine caressed and prayed with the poor lady, and did her utmost to reassure and comfort her, promising a _neuvaine_ for her safe journey and meeting with her husband. 'For the children,' said the poor Countess. 'I know I never shall see him more.' However, the cheerfulness of the bright Irish-woman had done her some good, and she was better by the time she rose to pursue her journey. Estelle and Ulysse had been much petted by the nuns, and when all met again, to the great relief of Arthur, he found continuous weeping was not _de rigueur_. When they got in again, he was able to get rid of his sword, and only trod on two pair of toes, and got his legs twice tumbled over. Moreover, Madame de Bourke had recovered the faculty of making pretty speeches, and when the weapon was put into the sword case, she observed with a sad little smile, 'Ah, Monsieur! we look to you as our defender!' 'And me too!' cried little Ulysse, making a violent demonstration with his tiny blade, and so nearly poking out his uncle's eye that the article was relegated to the same hiding-place as 'Monsieur Arture's,' and the boy was assured that this was a proof of his manliness. He had quite recovered his spirits, and as his mother and sister were still exhausted with weeping, he was not easy to manage, till Arthur took heart of grace, and offering him a perch on his knee, let him look out at the window, explaining the objects on the way, which were all quite new to the little Parisian boy. Fortunately he spoke French well, with scarcely any foreign accent, and his answers to the little fellow's eager questions interspersed with observations on 'What they do in my country,' not only kept Ulysse occupied, but gained Estelle's attention, though she was too weary and languid, and perhaps, child as she was, too much bound by the requirements of sympathy to manifest her interest, otherwise than by moving near enough to listen. That evening the party reached the banks of one of the canals which connected the rivers of France, and which was to convey them to the Loire and thence to the Rhone, in a huge flat-bottomed barge, called a _coche d'eau_, a sort of ark, with cabins, where travellers could be fairly comfortable, space where the berlin could be stowed away in the rear, and a deck with an awning where the passengers could disport themselves. From the days of Sully to those of the Revolution, this was by far the most convenient and secure mode of transport, especially in the south of France. It was very convenient to the Bourke party; who were soon established on the deck. The lady's dress was better adapted to travelling than the full costume of Paris. It was what she called _en Amazone_--namely, a clothe riding-habit faced with blue, with a short skirt, with open coat and waistcoat, like a man's, hair unpowdered and tied behind, and a large shady feathered hat. Estelle wore a miniature of the same, and rejoiced in her freedom from the whalebone stiffness of her Paris life, skipping about the deck with her brother, like fairies, Lanty said, or, as she preferred to make it, 'like a nymph.' {The cohe d'eau: p40.jpg} The water coach moved only by day, and was already arrived before the land one brought the weary party to the meeting-place--a picturesque water-side inn with a high roof, and a trellised passage down to the landing-place, covered by a vine, hung with clusters of ripe grapes. Here the travellers supped on omelettes and _vin ordinaire_, and went off to bed--Madame and her child in one bed, with the maids on the floor, and in another room the Abbe and secretary, each in a _grabat_, the two men- servants in like manner, on the floor. Such was the privacy of the eighteenth century, and Arthur, used to waiting on himself, looked on with wonder to see the Abbe like a baby in the hands of his faithful foster-brother, who talked away in a queer mixture of Irish-English and French all the time until they knelt down and said their prayers together in Latin, to which Arthur diligently closed his Protestant ears. Early the next morning the family embarked, the carriage having been already put on board; and the journey became very agreeable as they glided slowly, almost dreamily along, borne chiefly by the current, although a couple of horses towed the barge by a rope on the bank, in case of need, in places where the water was more sluggish, but nothing more was wanting in the descent towards the Mediterranean. The accommodation was not of a high order, but whenever there was a halt near a good inn, Madame de Bourke and the children landed for the night. And in the fine days of early autumn the deck was delightful, and to dine there on the provisions brought on board was a perpetual feast to Estelle and Ulysse. The weather was beautiful, and there was a constant panorama of fair sights and scenes. Harvest first, a perfectly new spectacle to the children and then, as they went farther south, the vintage. The beauty was great as they glided along the pleasant banks of Rhone. Tiers of vines on the hillsides were mostly cut and trimmed like currant bushes, and disappointed Arthur, who had expected festoons on trellises. But this was the special time for beauty. The whole population, in picturesque costumes, were filling huge baskets with the clusters, and snatches of their merry songs came pealing down to the _coche d'eau_, as it quietly crept along. Towards evening groups were seen with piled baskets on their heads, or borne between them, youths and maidens crowned with vines, half-naked children dancing like little Bacchanalians, which awoke classical recollections in Arthur and delighted the children. Poor Madame de Bourke was still much depressed, and would sit dreaming half the day, except when roused by some need of her children, some question, or some appeal for her admiration. Otherwise, the lovely heights, surmounted with tall towers, extinguisher-capped, of castle, convent, or church, the clear reaches of river, the beautiful turns, the little villages and towns gleaming white among the trees, seemed to pass unseen before her eyes, and she might be seen to shudder when the children pressed her to say how many days it would be before they saw their father. An observer with a mind at ease might have been much entertained with the airs and graces that the two maids, Rosette and Babette, lavished upon Laurence, their only squire; for Maitre Hebert was far too distant and elderly a person for their little coquetries. Rosette dealt in little terrors, and, if he was at hand, durst not step across a plank without his hand, was sure she heard wolves howling in the woods, and that every peasant was '_ce barbare_;' while Babette, who in conjunction with Maitre Hebert acted cook in case of need, plied him with dainty morsels, which he was only too apt to bestow on the beggars, or the lean and hungry lad who attended on the horses. Victorine, on the other hand, by far the prettiest and most sprightly of the three, affected the most supreme indifference to him and his attentions, and hardly deigned to give him a civil word, or to accept the cornflowers and late roses he brought her from time to time. 'Mere weeds,' she said. And the grapes and Queen Claude plums he brought her were always sour. Yet a something deep blue might often be seen peeping above her trim little apron. Not that Lanty had much time to disport himself in this fashion, for the Abbe was his care, and was perfectly happy with a rod of his arranging, with which to fish over the side. Little Ulysse was of course fired with the same emulation, and dangled his line for an hour together. Estelle would have liked to do the same, but her mother and Mademoiselle Julienne considered the sport not _convenable_ for a _demoiselle_. Arthur was once or twice induced to try the Abbe's rod, but he found it as mere a toy as that of the boy; and the mere action of throwing it made his heart so sick with the contrast with the 'paidling in the burns' of his childhood, that he had no inclination to continue the attempt, either in the slow canal or the broadening river. He was still very shy with the Countess, who was not in spirits to set him at ease; and the Abbe puzzled him, as is often the case when inexperienced strangers encounter unacknowledged deficiency. The perpetual coaxing chatter, and undisguised familiarity of La Jeunesse with the young ecclesiastic did not seem to the somewhat haughty cast of his young Scotch mind quite becoming, and he held aloof; but with the two children he was quite at ease, and was in truth their great resource. He made Ulysse's fishing-rod, baited it, and held the boy when he used it--nay, he once even captured a tiny fish with it, to the ecstatic pity of both children. He played quiet games with them, and told them stories--conversed on Telemaque with Estelle, or read to her from his one book, which was Robinson Crusoe--a little black copy in pale print, with the margins almost thumbed away, which he had carried in his pocket when he ran away from school, and nearly knew by heart. Estelle was deeply interested in it, and varied in opinion whether she should prefer Calypso's island or Crusoe's, which she took for as much matter of fact as did, a century later, Madame Talleyrand, when, out of civility to Mr. Robinson, she inquired after '_ce bon Vendredi_.' She inclined to think she should prefer Friday to the nymphs. 'A whole quantity of troublesome womenfolk to fash one,' said Arthur, who had not arrived at the age of gallantry. 'You would never stay there!' said Estelle; 'you would push us over the rock like Mentor. I think you are our Mentor, for I am sure you tell us a great deal, and you don't scold.' 'Mentor was a cross old man,' said Ulysse. To which Estelle replied that he was a goddess; and Arthur very decidedly disclaimed either character, especially the pushing over rocks. And thus they glided on, spending a night in the great, busy, bewildering city of Lyon, already the centre of silk industry; but more interesting to the travellers as the shrine of the martyrdoms. All went to pray at the Cathedral except Arthur. The time was not come for heeding church architecture or primitive history; and he only wandered about the narrow crooked streets, gazing at the toy piles of market produce, and looking at the stalls of merchandise, but as one unable to purchase. His mother had indeed contrived to send him twenty guineas, but he knew that he must husband them well in case of emergencies, and Lady Nithsdale had sewn them all up, except one, in a belt which he wore under his clothes. He had arrived at the front of the Cathedral when the party came out. Madame de Bourke had been weeping, but looked more peaceful than he had yet seen her, and Estelle was much excited. She had bought a little book, which she insisted on her Mentor's reading with her, though his Protestant feelings recoiled. 'Ah!' said Estelle, 'but you are not Christian.' 'Yes, truly, Mademoiselle.' 'And these died for the Christian faith. Do you know mamma said it comforted her to pray there; for she was sure that whatever happened, the good God can make us strong, as He made the young girl who sat in the red- hot chair. We saw her picture, and it was dreadful. Do read about her, Monsieur Arture.' They read, and Arthur had candour enough to perceive that this was the simple primitive narrative of the death of martyrs struggling for Christian truth, long ere the days of superstition and division. Estelle's face lighted with enthusiasm. 'Is it not noble to be a martyr?' she asked. 'Oh!' cried Ulysse; 'to sit in a red-hot chair! It would be worse than to be thrown off a rock! But there are no martyrs in these days, sister?' he added, pressing up to Arthur as if for protection. 'There are those who die for the right,' said Arthur, thinking of Lord Derwentwater, who in Jacobite eyes was a martyr. 'And the good God makes them strong,' said Estelle, in a low voice. 'Mamma told me no one could tell how soon we might be tried, and that I was to pray that He would make us as brave as St. Blandina! What do you think could harm us, Monsieur, when we are going to my dear papa?' It was Lanty who answered, from behind the Abbe, on whose angling endeavours he was attending. 'Arrah then, nothing at all, Mademoiselle. Nothing in the four corners of the world shall hurt one curl of your blessed little head, while Lanty Callaghan is to the fore.' 'Ah! but you are not God, Lanty,' said Estelle gravely; 'you cannot keep things from happening.' 'The Powers forbid that I should spake such blasphemy!' said Lanty, taking off his hat. ''Twas not that I meant, but only that poor Lanty would die ten thousand deaths--worse than them as was thrown to the beasts--before one of them should harm the tip of that little finger of yours!' Perhaps the same vow was in Arthur's heart, though not spoken in such strong terms. Thus they drifted on till the old city of Avignon rose on the eyes of the travellers, a dark pile of buildings where the massive houses, built round courts, with few external windows, recalled that these had once been the palaces of cardinals accustomed to the Italian city feuds, which made every house become a fortress. On the wharf stood a gentleman in a resplendent uniform of blue and gold, whom the children hailed with cries of joy and outstretched arms, as their uncle. The Marquis de Varennes was soon on board, embracing his sister and her children, and conducting them to one of the great palaces, where he had rooms, being then in garrison. Arthur followed, at a sign from the lady, who presented him to her brother as 'Monsieur Arture'--a young Scottish gentleman who will do my husband the favour of acting as his secretary. She used the word _gentilhomme_, which conveyed the sense of nobility of blood, and the Marquis acknowledged the introduction with one of those graceful bows that Arthur hated, because they made him doubly feel the stiffness of his own limitation. He was glad to linger with Lanty, who was looking in wonder at the grim buildings. 'And did the holy Father live here?' said he. 'Faith, and 'twas a quare taste he must have had; I wonder now if there would be vartue in a bit of a stone from his palace. It would mightily please my old mother if there were.' 'I thought it was the wrong popes that lived here,' suggested Arthur. Lanty looked at him a moment as if in doubt whether to accept a heretic suggestion, but the education received through the Abbe came to mind, and he exclaimed-- 'May be you are in the right of it, sir; and I'd best let the stones alone till I can tell which is the true and which is the false. By the same token, little is the difference it would make to her, unless she knew it; and if she did, she'd as soon I brought her a hair of the old dragon's bristles.' Lanty found another day or two's journey bring him very nearly in contact with the old dragon, for at Tarascon was the cave in which St. Martha was said to have demolished the great dragon of Provence with the sign of the cross. Madame de Bourke and her children made a devout pilgrimage thereto; but when Arthur found that it was the actual Martha of Bethany to whom the legend was appended, he grew indignant, and would not accompany the party. 'It was a very different thing from the martyrs of Lyon and Vienne! Their history was credible, but this--' 'Speak not so loud, my friend,' said M. de Varennes. 'Their shrines are equally good to console women and children.' Arthur did not quite understand the tone, nor know whether to be gratified at being treated as a man, or to be shocked at the Marquis's defection from his own faith. The Marquis, who was able to accompany his sister as far as Montpelier, was amused at her two followers, Scotch and Irish, both fine young men--almost too fine, he averred. 'You will have to keep a careful watch on them when you enter Germany, sister,' he said, 'or the King of Prussia will certainly kidnap them for his tall regiment of grenadiers.' 'O brother, do not speak of any more dangers: I see quite enough before me ere I can even rejoin my dear husband.' A very serious council was held between the brother and sister. The French army under Marshal Berwick had marched across on the south side on the Pyrenees, and was probably by this time in the county of Rousillon, intending to besiege Rosas. Once with them all would be well, but between lay the mountain roads, and the very quarter of Spain that had been most unwilling to accept French rule. The Marquis had been authorised to place an escort at his sister's service, but though the numbers might guard her against mere mountain banditti, they would not be sufficient to protect her from hostile troops, such as might only too possibly be on the way to encounter Berwick. The expense and difficulty of the journey on the mountain roads would likewise be great, and it seemed advisable to avoid these dangers by going by sea. Madame de Bourke eagerly acceded to this plan, her terror of the wild Pyrenean passes and wilder inhabitants had always been such that she was glad to catch at any means of avoiding them, and she had made more than one voyage before. Estelle was gratified to find they were to go by sea, since Telemachus did so in a Phoenician ship, and, in that odd dreamy way in which children blend fiction and reality, wondered if they should come on Calypso's island; and Arthur, who had read the Odyssey, delighted her and terrified Ulysse with the cave of Polyphemus. M. de Varennes could only go with his sister as far as Montpelier. Then he took leave of her, and the party proceeded along the shores of the lagoons, in the carriage to the seaport of Cette, one of the old Greek towns of the Gulf of Lyon, and with a fine harbour full of ships. Maitre Hebert was sent to take a passage on board of one, while his lady and her party repaired to an inn, and waited all the afternoon before he returned with tidings that he could find no French vessel about to sail for Spain, but that there was a Genoese tartane, bound for Barcelona, on which Madame la Comtesse could secure a passage for herself and her suite, and which would take her thither in twenty-four hours. The town was full of troops, waiting a summons to join Marshal Berwick's army. Several resplendent officers had already paid their respects to Madame l'Ambassadrice, and they concurred in the advice, unless she would prefer waiting for the arrival of one of the French transports which were to take men and provisions to the army in Spain. This, however, she declined, and only accepted the services of the gentlemen so far as to have her passports renewed, as was needful, since they were to be conveyed by the vessel of an independent power, though always an ally of France. The tartane was a beautiful object, a one-decked, single-masted vessel, with a long bowsprit, and a huge lateen sail like a wing, and the children fell in love with her at first sight. Estelle was quite sure that she was just such a ship as Mentor borrowed for Telemachus; but the poor maids were horribly frightened, and Babette might be heard declaring she had never engaged herself to be at the mercy of the waves, like a bit of lemon peel in a glass of _eau sucree_. 'You may return,' said Madame de Bourke. 'I compel no one to share our dangers and hardships.' But Babette threw herself on her knees, and declared that nothing should ever separate her from Madame! She was a good creature, but she could not deny herself the luxury of the sobs and tears that showed to all beholders the extent of her sacrifice. Madame de Bourke knew that there would be considerable discomfort in a vessel so little adapted for passengers, and with only one small cabin, which the captain, who spoke French, resigned to her use. It would only, however, be for a short time, and though it was near the end of October, the blue expanse of sea was calm as only the Mediterranean can be, so that she trusted that no harm would result to those who would have to spend the night on dock. It was a beautiful evening which the little Genoese vessel left the harbour and Cette receded in the distance, looking fairer the farther it was left behind. The children were put to bed as soon as they could be persuaded to cease from watching the lights in the harbour and the phosphorescent wake of the vessel in the water. That night and the next day were pleasant and peaceful; there was no rough weather, and little sickness among the travellers. Madame de Bourke congratulated herself on having escaped the horrors of the Pyrenean journey, and the Genoese captain assured her that unless the weather should change rapidly, they would wake in sight of the Spanish coast the next morning. If the sea were not almost too calm, they would be there already. The evening was again so delightful that the children were glad to hear that they would have again to return by sea, and Arthur, who somewhat shrank from his presentation to the Count, regretted that the end of the voyage was so near, though Ulysse assured him that '_Mon papa_ would love him, because he could tell such charming stories,' and Lanty testified that 'M. le Comte was a mighty friendly gentleman.' Arthur was lying asleep on deck, wrapped in his cloak, when he was awakened by a commotion among the sailors. He started up and found that it was early morning, the sun rising above the sea, and the sailors all gazing eagerly in that direction. He eagerly made his way to ask if they were in sight of land, recollecting, however, as he made the first step, that Spain lay to the west of them--not to the east. He distinguished the cry from the Genoese sailors, '_Ii Moro--Il Moro_,' in tones of horror and consternation, and almost at the same moment received a shock from Maitre Hebert, who came stumbling against him. 'Pardon, pardon, Monsieur; I go to prepare Madame! It's the accursed Moors. Let me pass--_misericorde_, what will become of us?' Arthur struggled on in search of such of the crew as could speak French, but all were in too much consternation to attend to him, and he could only watch that to which their eyes were directed, a white sail, bright in the morning light, coming up with a rapidity strange and fearful in its precision, like a hawk pouncing on its prey, for it did not depend on its sails alone, but was propelled by oars. The next moment Madame de Bourke was on deck, holding by the Abbe's arm, and Estelle, her hair on her shoulders, clinging to her. She looked very pale, but her calmness was in contrast to the Italian sailors, who were throwing themselves with gestures of despair, screaming out vows to the Madonna and saints, and shouting imprecations. The skipper came to speak to her. 'Madame,' he said, 'I implore you to remain in your cabin. After the first, you and all yours will be safe. They cannot harm a French subject; alas! alas would it were so with us.' 'How then will it be with you?' she asked. He made a gesture of deprecation. 'For me it will be ruin; for my poor fellows slavery; that is, if we survive the onset. Madame, I entreat of you, take shelter in the cabin, yourself and all yours. None can answer for what the first rush of these fiends may be! _Diavoli_! _veri diavola_! Ah! for which of my sins is it that after fifty voyages I should be condemned to lose my all?' A fresh outburst of screams from the crew summoned the captain. 'They are putting out the long-boat,' was the cry; 'they will board us!' 'Madame! I entreat of you, shut yourself into the cabin.' And the four maids in various stages of _deshabille_, adding their cries to those of the sailors, tried to drag her in, but she looked about for Arthur. 'Come with us, Monsieur,' she said quietly, for after all her previous depressions and alarms, her spirit rose to endurance in the actual stress of danger. 'Come with us, I entreat of you,' she said. 'You are named in our passports, and the treaties are such that neither French nor English subjects can be maltreated nor enslaved by these wretches. As the captain says, the danger is only in the first attack.' 'I will protect you, Madame, with my life,' declared Arthur, drawing his sword, as his cheeks and eyes lighted. 'Ah, put that away. What could you do but lose your own?' cried the lady. 'Remember, you have a mother--' The Genoese captain here turned to insist that Madame and all the women should shut themselves instantly into the cabin. Estelle dragged hard at Arthur's hand, with entreaties that he would come, but he lifted her down the ladder, and then closed the door on her, Lanty and he being both left outside. 'To be shut into a hole like a rat in a trap when there's blows to the fore, is more than flesh could stand,' said Lanty, who had seized on a hand-spike and was waving it about his head, true shillelagh fashion, by hereditary instinct in one who had never behold a faction fight, in what ought to have been his native land. The Genoese captain looked at him as a madman, and shouted in a confused mixture of French and Italian to lay down his weapon. '_Quei cattivi--ces scelerats_ were armed to the teeth--would fire. All lie flat on the deck.' The gesture spoke for itself. With a fearful howl all the Italians dropped flat; but neither Scotch nor Irish blood brooked to follow their example, or perhaps fully perceived the urgency of the need, till a volley of bullets were whistling about their ears, though happily without injury, the mast and the rigging having protected them, for the sail was riddled with holes, and the smoke dimmed their vision as the report sounded in their ears. In another second the turbaned, scimitared figures were leaping on board. The Genoese still lay flat offering no resistance, but Lanty and Arthur stood on either side of the ladder, and hurled back the two who first approached; but four or five more rushed upon them, and they would have been instantly cut down, had it not been for a shout from the Genoese, '_Franchi_! _Franchi_!' At that magic word, which was evidently understood, the pirates only held the two youths tightly, vituperating them no doubt in bad Arabic,--Lanty grinding his teeth with rage, though scarcely feeling the pain of the two sabre cuts he had received, and pouring forth a volley of exclamations, chiefly, however, directed against the white-livered spalpeens of sailors, who had not lifted so much as a hand to help him. Fortunately no one understood a word he said but Arthur, who had military experience enough to know there was nothing for it but to stand still in the grasp of his captor, a wiry-looking Moor, with a fez and a striped sash round his waist. The leader, a sturdy Turk in a dirty white turban, with a huge sabre in his hand, was listening to the eager words, poured out with many gesticulations by the Genoese captain, in a language utterly incomprehensible to the Scot, but which was the _lingua Franca_ of the Mediterranean ports. It resulted in four men being placed on guard at the hatchway leading to the cabin, while all the rest, including Arthur, Hebert, Laurence, were driven toward the prow, and made to understand by signs that they must not move on peril of their lives. A Tuck was placed at the helm, and the tartane's head turned towards the pirate captor; and all the others, who were not employed otherwise, began to ransack the vessel and feast on the provisions. Some hams were thrown overboard, with shouts of evident scorn as belonging to the unclean beast, but the wine was eagerly drank, and Maitre Hebert uttered a wail of dismay as he saw five Moors gorging large pieces of his finest _pate_. CHAPTER IV--WRECKED 'They had na sailed upon the sea A day but barely three, When the lift grew dark and the wind blew cauld And gurly grew the sea. 'Oh where will I find a little wee boy Will tak my helm in hand, Till I gae up to my top mast And see for some dry land.' SIR PATRICK SPENS. It was bad enough on the deck of the unfortunate Genoese tartane, but far worse below, where eight persons were shut into the stifling atmosphere of the cabin, deprived of the knowledge of what was going on above, except from the terrific sounds they heard. Estelle, on being shut into the cabin, announced that the Phoenician ship was taken by the vessels of Sesostris, but this did not afford any one else the same satisfaction as she appeared to derive from it. Babette and Rosette were echoing every scream of the crew, and quite certain that all would be massacred, and little Ulysse, wakened by the hubbub, rolled round in his berth and began to cry. Madame de Bourke, very white, but quite calm, insisted on silence and then said, 'I do not think the danger is very great to ourselves if you will keep silence and not attract attention. But our hope is in Heaven. My brother, will you lead our prayers? Recite our office.' Obediently the Abbe fell on his knees, and his example was followed by the others. His voice went monotonously on throughout with the Latin. The lady, no doubt, followed in her heart, and she made the responses as did the others, fitfully; but her hands and eyes were busy, looking to the priming of two small pistols, which she took out of her jewel case, and the sight of which provoked fresh shrieks from the maids. Mademoiselle Julienne meantime was dressing Ulysse, and standing guard over him, Estelle watching all with eager bright eyes, scarcely frightened, but burning to ask questions, from which her uncle's prayers debarred her. At the volley of shot, Rosette was reduced to quiet by a swoon, but Victorine, screaming that the wretches would have killed Laurent, would have rushed on deck, had not her mistress forcibly withheld her. There ensued a prodigious yelling and howling, trampling and scuffling, then the sounds of strange languages in vituperation or command, steps coming down the ladder, sounds of altercation, retreat, splashes in the sea, the feeling that the ship was put about--and ever the trampling, the wild cries of exultation, which over and over again made the prisoners feel choked with the horror of some frightful crisis close at hand. And all the time they were in ignorance, their little window in the stern showed them nothing but sea; and even if Madame de Bourke's determination had not hindered Victorine from peeping out of the cabin, whether prison or fortress, the Moorish sentries outside kept the door closed. How long this continued was scarcely to be guessed. It was hours by their own feelings; Ulysse began to cry from hunger, and his mother gave him and Estelle some cakes that were within reach. Mademoiselle Julienne begged her lady to share the repast, reminding her that she would need all her strength. The Abbe, too, was hungry enough, and some wine and preserved fruits coming to light all the prisoners made a meal which heartened most of them considerably; although the heat was becoming terrible, as the sun rose higher in the sky, and very little air could be obtained through the window, so that poor Julienne could not eat, and Rosette fell into a heavy sleep in the midst of her sighs. Even Estelle, who had got out her Telemaque, like a sort of oracle in the course of being verified, was asleep over it, when fresh noises and grating sounds were board, new steps on deck, and there were steps and voices. The Genoese captain was heard exclaiming, 'Open, Madame! you can do so safely. This is the Algerine captain, who is bound to protect you.' The maids huddled together behind their lady, who stood forward as the door opened to admit a stout, squarely-built man in the typical dress of a Turk,--white turban, purple coat, broad sash crammed with weapons, and ample trousers,--a truculent-looking figure which made the maids shudder and embrace one another with suppressed shrieks, but which somehow, even in the midst of his Eastern salaam, gave the Countess a sense that he was acting a comedy, and carried her involuntarily back to the Moors whom she had seen in the _Cid_ on the stage. And looking again, she perceived that though brown and weather-beaten, there was a certain Northern ruddiness inherent in his complexion; that his eyes were gray, so far as they were visible between the surrounding puckers; and his eyebrows, moustache, and beard not nearly so dark as the hair of the Genoese who stood cringing beside him as interpreter. She formed her own conclusions and adhered to them, though he spoke in bad Arabic to the skipper, who proceeded to explain that El Reis Hamed would offer no injury to Madame la Comtesse, her suite or property, being bound by treaty between the Dey and the King of France, but that he required to see her passport. There was a little blundering in the Italian's French rendering, and Madame de Bourke was quick to detect the perception of it in the countenance of the Reis, stolid though it was. She felt no doubt that he was a renegade of European birth, and watched, with much anxiety as well as curiosity, his manner of dealing with her passports, which she would not let out of her own hand. She saw in a moment that though he let the Genoese begin to interpret them, his eyes were following intelligently; and she hazarded the observation, 'You understand, sir. You are Frank.' He turned one startled glance towards the door to see if there were any listeners, and answered, 'Hollander, Madame.' The Countess had travelled with diplomatists all her life, and knew a little of the vernacular of most languages, and it was in Dutch--broken indeed, but still Dutch--that she declared that she was sure that she might rely on his protection--a security which in truth she was far from feeling; for while some of these unfortunate men, renegades only from weakness, yearned after their compatriots and their lost home and faith, others out-heroded the Moors themselves in ferocity, especially towards the Christian captives; nor was a Dutchman likely to have any special tenderness in his composition, above all towards the French. However, there was a certain smile on the lips of Reis Hamed, and he answered with a very hearty, 'Ja! ja! Madame. Upon my soul I will let no harm come to you or the pretty little ones, nor the young vrouwkins either, if they will keep close. You are safe by treaty. A Reis would have to pay a heavy reckoning with Mehemed Dey if a French ambassador had to complain of him, and you will bear me witness, Madame, that I have not touched a hair of any of your heads!' 'I am sure you wish me well, sir,' said Madame de Bourke in a dignified way, 'but I require to be certified of the safety of the rest of my suite, my steward, my lackey, and my husband's secretary, a young gentleman of noble birth.' 'They are safe, Madame. This Italian slave can bear me witness that no creature has been harmed since my crew boarded this vessel.' 'I desire then that they may be released, as being named in my passport.' To this the Dutchman consented. Whereupon the skipper began to wring his hands, and piteously to beseech Madame to intercede for him, but the Dutchman cut him short before she could speak. 'Dog of an Italian, the lady knows better! You and your fellows are our prize--poor enough after all the trouble you have given us in chasing you.' Madame de Bourke spoke kindly to the poor man, telling him that though she could do nothing for him now, it was possible that she might when she should have rejoined her husband, and she then requested the Reis to land her and her suite in his long-boat on the Spanish coast, which could be seen in the distance, promising him ample reward if he could do so. To this he replied: 'Madame, you ask what would be death to me.' He went on to explain that if he landed her on Christian ground, without first presenting her and her passport to the Dey and the French Consul, his men might represent him as acting in the interests of the Christians, and as a traitor to the Algerine power, by taking a bribe from a person belonging to a hostile state, in which case the bowstring would be the utmost mercy he could expect; and the reigning Dey, Mehemed, having been only recently chosen, it was impossible to guess how he might deal with such cases. Once at Algiers, he assured Madame de Bourke that she would have nothing to fear, as she would be under the protection of the French Consul; and she had no choice but to submit, though much concerned for the continued anxiety to her husband, as well as the long delay and uncertainty of finding him. Still, when she perceived that it was inevitable, she complained no more, and the Dutchman went on with a certain bluff kindness--as one touched by her courtesy--to offer her the choice of remaining in the tartane or coming on board his larger vessel. The latter he did not recommend, as he had a crew of full two hundred Turks and Moors, and it would be necessary to keep herself and all her women as closely as possible secluded in the cabins; and even then, he added, that if once seen he could hardly answer for some of those corsairs not endeavouring to secure a fair young Frank girl for his harem; and as his eye fell on Rosette, she bridled and hid herself behind Mademoiselle Julienne. He must, he said, remove all the Genoese, but he would send on board the tartane only seven men on whom he could perfectly depend for respectful behaviour, so that the captives would be able to take the air on deck as freely as before. There was no doubt that he was in earnest, and the lady accepted his offer with thanks, all the stronger since she and all around her were panting and sick for want of fresh air. It was a great relief when he took her on deck with him that she might identify the three men whom she claimed as belonging to her suite. Arthur, Lanty, and Hebert, who, in their vague knowledge of the circumstances, had been dreading the oar for the rest of their lives, could hardly believe their good fortune when she called them up to her, and the Abbe gripped Lanty's arm as if he would never let him go again. The poor Italians seemed to feel their fate all the harder for the deliverance of those three, and sobbed, howled, and wept so piteously that Arthur wondered how strong men could so give way, while Lanty's tears sprang forth in sympathy, and he uttered assurances and made signs that he would never cease to pray for their rescue. 'Though,' as he observed, 'they were poor creatures that hadn't the heart of a midge, when there was such a chance of a fight while the haythen spalpeens were coming on board.' Here Lanty was called on to assist Hebert in identifying his lady's bales of goods, when all those of the unfortunate Genoese were put on board the corsair's vessel. A sail-cloth partition was extended across the deck by the care of the Dutchman, 'who'--as Lanty said--'for a haythen apostate was a very dacent man.' He evidently had a strong compassion and fellow- feeling for the Christian lady, and assured her that she might safely take the air and sit on deck as much as she pleased behind its shelter; and he likewise carefully selected the seven of his crew whom he sent on board to work the ship, the chief being a heavy-looking old Turk, with a chocolate-coloured visage between a huge white beard and eyebrows, and the others mere lads, except one, who, from an indefinable European air about him, was evidently a renegade, and could speak a sort of French, so as to hold communication with the captives, especially Lanty, who was much quicker than any of the rest in picking up languages, perhaps from having from his infancy talked French and English (or rather Irish), and likewise learnt Latin with his foster-brother. This man was the only one permitted to go astern of the partition, in case of need, to attend to the helm; but the vessel was taken in tow by the corsair, and needed little management. The old Turk seemed to regard the Frankish women like so many basilisks, and avoided turning a glance in their direction, roaring at his crew if he only saw them approaching the sail-cloth, and keeping a close watch upon the lithe black-eyed youths, whose brown limbs carried them up the mast with the agility of monkeys. There was one in especial--a slight, well-made fellow about twenty, with a white turban cleaner than the rest--who contrived to cast wonderful glances from the masthead over the barrier at Rosette, who actually smiled in return at _ce pauvre garcon_, and smiled the more for Mademoiselle Julienne's indignation. Suddenly, however, a shrill shout made him descend hastily, and the old Turk's voice might be heard in its highest key, no doubt shrieking out maledictions on all the ancestry of the son of a dog who durst defile his eyes with gazing at the shameless daughters of the Frank. Little Ulysse was, however, allowed to disport himself wherever he pleased; and after once, under Arthur's protection, going forward, he found himself made very welcome, and offered various curiosities, such as shells, corals, and a curious dried little hippocampus or seahorse. This he brought back in triumph, to the extreme delight of his sister's classical mind. 'Oh mamma, mamma,' she cried, 'Ulysse really has got the skeleton of a Triton. It is exactly like the stone creatures in the Champs Elysees.' There was no denying the resemblance, and it so increased the confusion in Estelle's mind between the actual and the mythological, that Arthur told her that she was looking out for the car of Amphitrite to arise from the waters. Anxiety and trouble had made him much better acquainted with Madame de Bourke, who was grateful to him for his kindness to her children, and not without concern as to whether she should be able to procure his release as well as her own at Algiers. For Laurence Callaghan she had no fears, since he was born at Paris, and a naturalised French subject like her husband and his brother; but Arthur was undoubtedly a Briton, and unless she could pass him off as one of her suite, it would depend on the temper of the English Consul whether he should be viewed as a subject or as a rebel, or simply left to captivity until his Scottish relations should have the choice of ransoming him. She took a good deal of pains to explain the circumstances to him as well as to all who could understand them; for though she hoped to keep all together, and to be able to act for them herself, no one could guess how they might be separated, and she could not shake off that foreboding of misfortune which had haunted her from the first. The kingdom of Algiers was, she told them, tributary to the Turkish Sultan, who kept a guard of Janissaries there, from among whom they themselves elected the Dey. He was supposed to govern by the consent of a divan, but was practically as despotic as any Eastern sovereign; and the Aga of the Janissaries was next in authority to him. Piracy on the Mediterranean was, as all knew, the chief occupation of the Turks and Moors of any spirit or enterprise, a Turk being in authority in each vessel to secure that the Sultan had his share, and that the capture was so conducted as not to involve Turkey in dangerous wars with European powers. Capture by the Moors had for several centuries been one of the ordinary contingencies of a voyage, and the misfortune that had happened to the party was not at all an unusual one. In 1687, however, the nuisance had grown to such a height that Admiral Du Quesne bombarded the town of Algiers, and destroyed all the fortifications, peace being only granted on condition that a French Consul should reside at Algiers, and that French ships and subjects should be exempt from this violence of the corsairs. The like treaties existed with the English, but had been very little heeded by the Algerines till recently, when the possession of Gibraltar and Minorca had provided harbours for British ships, which exercised a salutary supervision over these Southern sea-kings. The last Dey, Baba Hali, had been a wise and prudent man, anxious to repress outrage, and to be on good terms with the two great European powers; but he had died in the spring of the current year, 1718, and the temper of his successor, Mehemed, had not yet been proved. Madame de Bourke had some trust in the Dutch Reis, renegade though he was. She had given him her beautiful watch, set with brilliants, and he had taken it with a certain gruff reluctance, declaring that he did not want it,--he was ready enough to serve her without such a toy. Nevertheless the lady thought it well to impress on each and all, in case of any separation or further disaster, that their appeal must be to the French Consul, explaining minutely the forms in which it should be made. 'I cannot tell you,' she said to Arthur, 'how great a comfort it is to me to have with me a gentleman, one of intelligence and education to whom I can confide my poor children. I know you will do your utmost to protect them and restore them to their father.' 'With my very heart's blood, Madame.' 'I hope that may not be asked of you, Monsieur,' she returned with a faint smile,--'though I fear there may be much of perplexity and difficulty in the way before again rejoining him. You see where I have placed our passports? My daughter knows it likewise; but in case of their being taken from you, or any other accident happening to you, I have written these two letters, which you had better bear about your person. One is, as you see, to our Consul at Algiers, and may serve as credentials; the other is to my husband, to whom I have already written respecting you.' 'A thousand thanks, Madame,' returned Arthur. 'But I hope and trust we may all reach M. le Comte in safety together. You yourself said that you expected only a brief detention before he could be communicated with, and this captain, renegade though he be, evidently has a respect for you.' 'That is quite true,' she returned, 'and it may only be my foolish heart that forebodes evil; nevertheless, I cannot but recollect that _c'est l'imprevu qui arrive_.' 'Then, Madame, that is the very reason there should be no misfortune,' returned Arthur. It was on the second day after the capture of the tartane that the sun set in a purple angry-looking bank of cloud, and the sea began to heave in a manner which renewed the earlier distresses of the voyage to such as were bad sailors. The sails both of the corsair and of the tartane were taken in, and it was plain that a rough night was to be expected. The children were lashed into their berths, and all prepared themselves to endure. The last time Arthur saw Madame de Bourke's face, by the light of the lamp swinging furiously from the cabin roof, as he assisted in putting in the dead lights, it bore the same fixed expression of fortitude and resignation as when she was preparing to be boarded by the pirates. He remained on deck, but it was very perilous, for the vessel was so low in the water that the waves dashed over it so wildly that he could hardly help being swept away. It was pitch dark, too, and the lantern of the other vessel could only just be seen, now high above their heads, now sinking in the trouble of the sea, while the little tartane was lifted up as though on a mountain; and in a kind of giddy dream, he thought of falling headlong upon her deck. Finally he found himself falling. Was he washed overboard? No; a sharp blow showed him that he had only fallen down the hatchway, and after lying still a moment, he heard the voices of Lanty and Hebert, and presently they were all tossed together by another lurch of the ship. It was a night of miseries that seemed endless, and when a certain amount of light appeared, and Arthur and Lanty crawled upon deck, the tempest was unabated. They found themselves still dashed, as if their vessel were a mere cork, on the huge waves; rushes of water coming over them, whether from sea or sky there was no knowing, for all seemed blended together in one mass of dark lurid gray; and where was the Algerine ship--so lately their great enemy, now watched for as their guide and guardian? It was no place nor time for questions, even could they have been heard or understood. It was scarcely possible even to be heard by one another, and it was some time before they convinced themselves that the large vessel had disappeared. The cable must have parted in the night, and they were running with bare poles before the gale; the seamanship of the man at the helm being confined to avoiding the more direct blows of the waves, on the huge crests of which the little tartane rode--gallantly perhaps in mariners' eyes, but very wretchedly to the feelings of the unhappy landsmen within her. Arthur thought of St. Paul, and remembered with dismay that it was many days before sun or moon appeared. He managed to communicate his recollection to Lanty, who exclaimed, 'And he was a holy man, and he was a prisoner too. He will feel for us if any man can in this sore strait! _Sancte Paule_, _ora pro nobis_. An' haven't I got the blessed scapulary about me neck that will bring me through worse than this?' The three managed to get down to tell the unfortunate inmates of the cabin what was the state of things, and to carry them some food, though at the expense of many falls and severe blows; and almost all of them were too faint or nauseated to be able to swallow such food as could survive the transport under such circumstances. Yet high-spirited little Estelle entreated to be carried on deck, to see what a storm was like. She had read of them so often, and wanted to see as well as to feel. She was almost ready to cry when Arthur assured her it was quite impossible, and her mother added a grave order not to trouble him. Madame de Bourke looked so exhausted by the continual buffeting and the closeness of the cabin, and her voice was so weak, that Arthur grieved over the impossibility of giving her any air. Julienne tried to make her swallow some _eau de vie_; but the effort of steadying her hand seemed too much for her, and after a terrible lurch of the ship, which lodged the poor _bonne_ in the opposite corner of the cabin, the lady shook her head and gave up the attempt. Indeed, she seemed so worn out that Arthur--little used to the sight of fainting--began to fear that her forebodings of dying before she could rejoin her husband were on the point of being realised. However, the gale abated towards evening, and the youth himself was so much worn out that the first respite was spent in sleep. When he awoke, the sea was much calmer, and the eastern sun was rising in glory over it; the Turks, with their prayer carpets in a line, were simultaneously kneeling and bowing in prayer, with their faces turned towards it. Lanty uttered an only too emphatic curse upon the misbelievers, and Arthur vainly tried to make him believe that their 'Allah il Allah' was neither addressed to Mohammed nor the sun. 'Sure and if not, why did they make their obeisance to it all one as the Persians in the big history-book Master Phelim had at school?' 'It's to the east they turn Lanty, not to the sun.' 'And what right have the haythen spalpeens to turn to the east like good Christians?' ''Tis to their Prophet's tomb they look, at Mecca.' 'There, an' I tould you they were no better than haythens,' returned Lanty, 'to be praying and knocking their heads on the bare boards--that have as much sense as they have--to a dead man's tomb.' Arthur's Scotch mind thought the Moors might have had the best of it in argument when he recollected Lanty's trust in his scapulary. They tried to hold a conversation with the Reis, between _lingua Franca_ and the Provencal of the renegade; and they came to the conclusion that no one had the least idea where they were, or where they were going; the ship's compass had been broken in the boarding, and there was no chart more available than the little map in the beginning of Estelle's precious copy of Telemaque. The Turkish Reis did not trouble himself about it, but squatted himself down with his chibouque, abandoning all guidance of the ship, and letting her drift at the will of wind and wave, or, as he said, the will of Allah. When asked where he thought she was going, he replied with solemn indifference, 'Kismet;' and all the survivors of the crew--for one had been washed overboard--seemed to share his resignation. The only thing he did seem to care for was that if the infidel woman chose to persist in coming on deck, the canvas screen--which had been washed overboard--should be restored. This was done, and Madame de Bourke was assisted to a couch that had been prepared for her with cloaks, where the air revived her a little; but she listened with a faint smile to the assurances of Arthur, backed by Hebert, that this abandonment to fate gave the best chance. They might either be picked up by a Christian vessel or go ashore on a Christian coast; but Madame de Bourke did not build much on these hopes. She knew too well what were the habits of wreckers of all nations, to think that it would make much difference whether they were driven on the coast of Sicily or of Africa--'barring,' as Lanty said, 'that they should get Christian burial in the former case.' 'We are in the hands of a good God. That at least we know,' said the Countess. 'And He can hear us through, whether for life in Paradise, or trial a little longer here below.' 'Like Blandina,' observed Estelle. 'Ah! my child, who knows whether trials like even that blessed saint's may not be in reserve even for your tender age. When I think of these miserable men, who have renounced their faith, I see what fearful ordeals there may be for those who fall into the hands of those unbelievers. Strong men have yielded. How may it not be with my poor children?' 'God made Blandina brave, mamma. I will pray that He may make me so.' Land was in sight at last. Purple mountains rose to the south in wild forms, looking strangely thunderous and red in the light of the sinking sun. A bay, with rocks jutting out far into the sea, seemed to embrace them with its arms. Soundings were made, and presently the Reis decided on anchoring. It was a rocky coast, with cliffs descending into the sea, covered with verdure, and the water beneath was clear as glass. 'Have we escaped the Syrtes to fall upon AEneas' cave?' murmured Arthur to himself. 'And if we could meet Queen Dido, or maybe Venus herself, 'twould be no bad thing!' observed Lanty, who remembered his Virgil on occasion. 'For there's not a drop of wather left barring _eau de vie_, and if these Moors get at that, 'tis raving madmen they would be.' 'Do they know where we are?' asked Arthur. 'Sorrah a bit!' returned Lanty, 'tho' 'tis a pretty place enough. If my old mother was here, 'tis her heart would warm to the mountains.' 'Is it Calypso's Island?' whispered Ulysse to his sister. 'See, what are they doing?' cried Estelle. 'There are people--don't you see, white specks crowding down to the water.' There was just then a splash, and two bronzed figures were seen setting forth from the tartane to swim to shore. The Turkish Reis had despatched them, to ascertain whether the vessel had drifted, and who the inhabitants might be. A good while elapsed before one of these scouts returned. There was a great deal of talk and gesticulating round him, and Lanty, mingling with it, brought back word that the place was the Bay of Golo, not far from Djigheli, and just beyond the Algerine frontier. The people were Cabeleyzes, a wild race of savage dogs, which means dogs according the Moors, living in the mountains, and independent of the Dey. A considerable number rushed to the coast, armed, and in great numbers, perceiving the tartane to be an Italian vessel, and expecting a raid by Sicilian robbers on their cattle; but the Moors had informed them that it was no such thing, but a prize taken in the name of the Dey of Algiers, in which an illustrious French Bey's harem was being conveyed to Algiers. From that city the tartane was now about a day's sail, having been driven to the eastward of it during the storm. 'The Turkish commander evidently does not like the neighbourhood,' said Arthur, 'judging by his gestures.' 'Dogs and sons of dogs are the best names he has for them,' rejoined Lanty. 'See! They have cut the cable! Are we not to wait for the other man who swam ashore?' So it was. A favourable wind was blowing, and the Reis, being by no means certain of the disposition of the Cabeleyzes, chose to leave them behind him as soon as possible, and make his way to Algiers, which began to appear to his unfortunate passengers like a haven of safety. They were not, however, out of the bay when the wind suddenly veered, and before the great lateen sail could be reefed, it had almost caused the vessel to be blown over. There was a pitching and tossing almost as violent as in the storm, and then wind and current began carrying the tartane towards the rocky shore. The Reis called the men to the oars, but their numbers were too few to be availing, and in a very few minutes more the vessel was driven hopelessly towards a mass of rocks. Arthur, the Abbe, Hebert, and Lanty were all standing together at the head of the vessel. The poor Abbe seemed dazed, and kept dreamily fingering his rosary, and murmuring to himself. The other three consulted in a low voice. 'Were it not better to have the women here on deck?' asked Arthur. '_Eh_, _non_!' sobbed Master Hebert. 'Let not my poor mistress see what is coming on her and her little ones!' 'Ah! and 'tis better if the innocent creatures must be drowned, that it should be without being insensed of it till they wake in our Lady's blessed arms,' added Lanty. 'Hark! and they are at their prayers.' But just then Victorine rushed up from below, and throwing her arms round Lanty, cried, 'Oh! Laurent, Laurent. It is not true that it is all over with us, is it? Oh! save me! save me!' 'And if I cannot save you, mine own heart's core, we'll die together,' returned the poor fellow, holding her fast. 'It won't last long, Victorine, and the saints have a hold of my scapulary.' He had scarcely spoken when, lifted upon a wave, the tartane dashed upon the rocks, and there was at once a horrible shivering and crashing throughout her--a frightful mingling of shrieks and yells of despair with the wild roar of the waves that poured over her. The party at the head of the vessel were conscious of clinging to something, and when the first burly-burly ceased a little they found themselves all together against the bulwark, the vessel almost on her beam ends, wedged into the rocks, their portion high and dry, but the stern, where the cabin was, entirely under water. Victorine screamed aloud, 'My lady! my poor lady.' 'I see--I see something,' cried Arthur, who had already thrown off his coat, and in another moment he had brought up Estelle in his arms, alive, sobbing and panting. Giving her over to the steward, he made another dive, but then was lost sight of, and returned no more, nor was anything to be seen of the rest. Shut up in the cabin, Madame de Bourke, Ulysse, and the three maids must have been instantly drowned, and none of the crew were to be seen. Maitre Hebert hold the little girl in his arms, glad that, though living, she was only half-conscious. Victorine, sobbing, hung heavily on Lanty, and before he could free his hands he perceived to his dismay that the Abbe, unassisted, was climbing down from the wreck upon the rock, scarcely perhaps aware of his danger. Lanty tried to put Victorine aside, and called out, 'Your reverence, wait--Masther Phelim, wait till I come and help you.' But the girl, frantic with terror, grappled him fast, screaming to him not to let her go--and at the same moment a wave broke over the Abbe. Lanty, almost wild, was ready to leap into it after him, thinking he must be sucked back with it, but behold! he still remained clinging to the rock. Instinct seemed to serve him, for he had stuck his knife into the rock and was holding on by it. There seemed no foothold, and while Lanty was deliberating how to go to his assistance, another wave washed him off and bore him to the next rock, which was only separated from the mainland by a channel of smoother water. He tried to catch at a floating plank, but in vain; however, an oar next drifted towards him, and by it he gained the land, but only to be instantly surrounded by a mob of Cabeleyzes, who seemed to be stripping off his garments. By this time many were swimming towards the wreck; and Estelle, who had recovered breath and senses, looked over Hebert's shoulder at them. 'The savages! the infidels!' she said. 'Will they kill me? or will they try to make me renounce my faith? They shall kill me rather than make me yield.' 'Ah! yes, my dear _demoiselle_, that is right. That is the only way. It is my resolution likewise,' returned Hebert. 'God give us grace to persist.' 'My mamma said so,' repeated the child. 'Is she drowned, Maitre Hebert?' 'She is happier than we are, my dear young lady.' 'And my little brother too! Ah! then I shall remember that they are only sending me to them in Paradise.' By this time the natives were near the wreck, and Estelle, shuddering, clung closer to Hebert; but he had made up his mind what to do. 'I must commit you to these men, Mademoiselle,' he said; 'the water is rising--we shall perish if we remain here.' 'Ah! but it would not hurt so much to be drowned,' said Estelle, who had made up her mind to Blandina's chair. 'I must endeavour to save you for your father, Mademoiselle, and your poor grandmother! There! be a good child! Do not struggle.' He had attracted the attention of some of the swimmers, and he now flung her to them. One caught her by an arm, another by a leg, and she was safely taken to the shore, where at once a shoe and a stocking were taken from her, in token of her becoming a captive; but otherwise her garments were not meddled with; in which she was happier than her uncle, whom she found crouched up on a rock, stripped almost to the skin, so that he shrank from her, when she sprang to his side amid the Babel of wild men and women, who were shouting in exultation and wonder over his big flapped hat, his _soutane_ and bands, pointing at his white limbs and yellow hair--or, what amazed them even more, Estelle's light, flaxen locks, which hung soaked around her. She felt a hand pulling them to see whether anything so strange actually grew on her head, and she turned round to confront them with a little gesture of defiant dignity that evidently awed them, for they kept their hands off her, and did not interfere as she stood sentry over her poor shivering uncle. Lanty was by this time trying to drag Victorine over the rocks and through the water. The poor Parisienne was very helpless, falling, hurting herself, and screaming continually; and trebly, when a couple of natives seized upon her, and dragged her ashore, where they immediately snatched away her mantle and cap, pulled off her gold chain and cross, and tore out her earrings with howls of delight. Lanty, struggling on, was likewise pounced upon, and bereft of his fine green and gold livery coat and waistcoat, which, though by no means his best, and stained with the sea water, were grasped with ecstasy, quarrelled over, and displayed in triumph. The steward had secured a rope by which he likewise reached the shore, only to become the prey of the savages, who instantly made prize of his watch and purse, as well as of almost all his garments. The five unfortunate survivors would fain have remained huddled together, but the natives pointing to some huts on the hillside, urged them thither by the language of shouts and blows. 'Faith and I'm not an ox,' exclaimed Lanty, as if the fellow could have understood him, 'and is it to the shambles you're driving me?' 'Best not resist! There's nothing for it but to obey them,' said the steward, 'and at least there will be shelter for the child.' No objection was made to his lifting her in his arms, and he carried her, as the party, half-drowned, nearly starved and exhausted, stumbled on along the rocky paths which cut their feet cruelly, since their shoes had all been taken from them. Lanty gave what help he could to the Abbe and Victorine, who were both in a miserable plight, but ere long he was obliged to take his turn in carrying Estelle, whose weight had become too much for the worn out Hebert. He was alarmed to find, on transferring her, that her head sank on his shoulder as if in a sleep of exhaustion, which, however, shielded her from much terror. For, as they arrived at a cluster of five or six tents, built of clay and the branches of trees, out rushed a host of women, children, and large fierce dogs, all making as much noise as they were capable of. The dogs flew at the strange white forms, no doubt utterly new to them. Victorine was severely bitten, and Lanty, trying to rescue her, had his leg torn. These two were driven into one hut; Estelle, who was evidently considered as the greatest prize, was taken into another and rather better one, together with the steward and the Abbe. The Moors, who had swum ashore, had probably told them that she was the Frankish Bey's daughter; for this, miserable place though it was, appeared to be the best hut in the hamlet, nor was she deprived of her clothes. A sort of bournouse or haik, of coarse texture and very dirty, was given to each of the others, and some rye cakes baked in the ashes. Poor little Estelle turned away her head at first, but Hebert, alarmed at her shivering in her wet clothes, contrived to make her swallow a little, and then took off the soaked dress, and wrapped her in the bournouse. She was by this time almost unconscious from weariness, and made no resistance to the unaccustomed hands, or the disgusting coarseness and uncleanness of her wrapper, but dropped asleep the moment he laid her down, and he applied himself to trying to dry her clothes at a little fire of sticks that had been lighted outside the open space, round which the huts stood. The Abbe too had fallen asleep, as Hebert managed to assure poor Lanty, who rushed out of the other tent, nearly naked, and bloodstained in many places, but more concerned at his separation from his foster-brother than at anything else that had befallen him. Men, women, children, and dogs were all after him, supposing him to be trying to escape, and he was seized upon and dragged back by main force, but not before the steward had called out-- 'M. l'Abbe sleeps--sleeps sound--he is not hurt! For Heaven's sake, Laurent, be quiet--do not enrage them! It is the only hope for him, as for Mademoiselle and the rest of us.' Lanty, on hearing of the Abbe's safety, allowed himself to be taken back, making himself, however, a passive dead weight on his captor's hands. 'Arrah,' he muttered to himself, 'if ye will have me, ye shall have the trouble of me, bad luck to you. 'Tis little like ye are to the barbarous people St. Paul was thrown with; but then what right have I to expect the treatment of a holy man, the like of him? If so be, I can save that poor orphan that's left, and bring off Master Phelim safe, and save poor Victorine from being taken for some dirty spalpeen's wife, when he has half a dozen more to the fore--'tis little it matters what becomes of Lanty Callaghan; they might give him to their big brutes of dogs, and mighty lean meat they would find him!' So came down the first night upon the captives. CHAPTER V--CAPTIVITY 'Hold fast thy hope and Heaven will not Forsake thee in thine hour. Good angels will be near thee, And evil ones will fear thee, And Faith will give thee power.' SOUTHEY. The whole northern coast of Africa is inhabited by a medley of tribes, all owning a kind of subjection to the Sultan, but more in the sense of Pope than of King. The part of the coast where the tartane had been driven on the rocks was beneath Mount Araz, a spur of the Atlas, and was in the possession of the Arab tribe called Cabeleyze, which is said to mean 'the revolted.' The revolt had been from the Algerine power, which had never been able to pursue them into the fastnesses of the mountains, and they remained a wild independent race, following all those Ishmaelite traditions and customs that are innate in the blood of the Arab. When Estelle awoke from her long sleep of exhaustion, she was conscious of a stifling atmosphere, and moreover of the crow of a cock in her immediate vicinity, then of a dog growling, and a lamb beginning to bleat. She raised herself a little, and beheld, lying on the ground around her, dark heaps with human feet protruding from them. These were interspersed with sheep, goats, dogs, and fowls, all seen by the yellow light of the rising sun which made its way in not only through the doorless aperture, but through the reeds and branches which formed the walls. Close as the air was, she felt the chill of the morning and shivered. At the same moment she perceived poor Maitre Hebert covering himself as best he could with a dirty brown garment, and bending over her with much solicitude, but making signs to make as little noise as possible, while he whispered, 'How goes it with Mademoiselle?' 'Ah,' said Estelle, recollecting herself, 'we are shipwrecked. We shall have to confess our faith! Where are the rest?' 'There is M. l'Abbe,' said Hebert, pointing to a white pair of the bare feet. 'Poor Laurent and Victorine have been carried elsewhere.' 'And mamma? And my brother?' 'Ah! Mademoiselle, give the good God thanks that he has spared them our trial.' 'Mamma! Ah, she was in the cabin when the water came in? But my brother! I had hold of his hand, he came out with me. I saw M. Arture swim away with him. Yes, Maitre Hebert, indeed I did.' Hebert had not the least hope that they could be saved, but he would not grieve the child by saying so, and his present object was to get her dressed before any one was awake to watch, and perhaps appropriate her upper garments. He was a fatherly old man, and she let him help her with her fastenings, and comb out her hair with the tiny comb in her _etui_. Indeed, _friseurs_ were the rule in France, and she was not unused to male attendants at the toilette, so that she was not shocked at being left to his care. For the rest, the child had always dwelt in an imaginary world, a curious compound of the Lives of the Saints and of Telemaque. Martyrs and heroes alike had been shipwrecked, taken captive, and tormented; and there was a certain sense of realised day-dream about her, as if she had become one of the number and must act up to her part. She asked Hebert if there were a Sainte Estelle, what was the day of the month, and if she should be placed in the Calendar if she never complained, do what these barbarians might to her. She hoped she should hold out, for she would like to be able to help all whom she loved, poor papa and all. But it was hard that mamma, who was so good, could not be a martyr too; but she was a saint in Paradise all the same, and thus Estelle made her little prayer in hope. There was no conceit or over confidence in the tone, though of course the poor child little knew what she was ready to accept; but it was a spark of the martyr's trust that gleamed in her eye, and gave her a sense of exaltation that took off the sharpest edge of grief and fear. By this time, however, the animals were stirring, and with them the human beings who had lain down in their clothes. Peace was over; the Abbe awoke, and began to call for Laurent and his clothes and his beads; but this aroused the master of the house, who started up, and threatening with a huge stick, roared at him what must have been orders to be quiet. Estelle indignantly flew between and cried, 'You shall not hurt my uncle.' The commanding gesture spoke for itself; and, besides, poor Phelim cowered behind her with an air that caused a word and sign to pass round, which the captives found was equivalent to innocent or imbecile; and the Mohammedan respect and tenderness for the demented spared him all further violence or molestation, except that he was lost and miserable without the attentions of his foster-brother; and indeed the shocks he had undergone seemed to have mobbed him of much of the small degree of sense he had once possessed. Coming into the space before the doorway, Estelle found herself the object of universal gaze and astonishment, as her long fair hair gleamed in the sunshine, every one coming to touch it, and even pull it to see if it was real. She was a good deal frightened, but too high-spirited to show it more than she could help, as the dark-skinned, bearded men crowded round with cries of wonder. The other two prisoners likewise appeared: Victorine looking wretchedly ill, and hardly able to hold up her head; Lanty creeping towards the Abbe, and trying to arrange his remnant of clothing. There was a short respite, while the Arabs, all turning eastwards, chanted their morning devotions with a solemnity that struck their captives. The scene was a fine one, if there had been any heart to admire. The huts were placed on the verge of a fine forest of chestnut and cork trees--and beyond towered up mountain peaks in every variety of dazzling colour--red and purple beneath, glowing red and gold where the snowy peaks caught the morning sun, lately broken from behind them. The slopes around were covered with rich grass, flourishing after the summer heats, and to which the herds were now betaking themselves, excepting such as were detained to be milked by the women, who came pouring out of some of the other huts in dark blue garments; and in front, still shadowed by the mountain, lay the bay, deep, beautiful, pellucid green near the land, and shut in by fantastic and picturesque rocks--some bare, some clothed with splendid foliage, winter though it was--while beyond lay the exquisite blue stretching to the horizon. Little recked the poor prisoners of the scene so fair; they only saw the remnant of the wreck below, the sea that parted them from hope, the savage rocks behind, the barbarous people around, the squalor and dirt of the adowara, as the hamlet was called. {Estelle: p96.jpg} Comparatively, the Moor who had swum ashore to reconnoitre seemed like a friend when he came forward and saluted Estelle and the Abbe respectfully. Moreover the _lingua Franca_ Lanty had picked up established a very imperfect double system of interpretation by the help of many gestures. This was Lanty's explanation to the rest: in French, of course, but, like all his speech, Irish-English in construction. 'This Moor, Hassan, wants to stand our friend in his own fashion, but he says they care not the value of an empty mussel-shell for the French, and no more for the Dey of Algiers than I do for the Elector of Hanover. He has told them that M. l'Abbe and Mademoiselle are brother and daughter to a great Bey--but it is little they care for that. Holy Virgin, they took Mademoiselle for a boy! That is why they are gazing at her so impudently. Would that I could give them a taste of my cane! Do you see those broken walls, and a bit of a castle on yonder headland jutting out into the sea? They are bidding Hassan say that the French built that, and garrisoned it with the help of the Dey; but there fell out a war, and these fellows, or their fathers, surprised it, sacked it, and carried off four hundred prisoners into slavery. Holy Mother defend us! Here are all the rogues coming to see what they will do with us!' For the open space in front of the huts, whence all the animals had now been driven, was becoming thronged with figures with the haik laid over their heads, spear or blunderbuss in hand, fine bearing, and sometimes truculent, though handsome, browse countenances. They gazed at the captives, and uttered what sounded like loud hurrahs or shouts; but after listening to Hassan, Lanty turned round trembling. 'The miserables! Some are for sacrificing us outright on the spot, but this decent man declares that he will make them sensible that their prophet was not out-and-out as bad as that. Never you fear, Mademoiselle.' 'I am not afraid,' said Estelle, drawing up her head. 'We shall be martyrs.' Lanty was engaged in listening to a moan from his foster-brother for food, and Hebert joined in observing that they might as well be sacrificed as starved to death; whereupon the Irishman's words and gesticulations induced the Moor to make representations which resulted in some dry pieces of _samh_ cake, a few dates, and a gourd of water being brought by one of the women; a scanty amount for the number, even though poor Victorine was too ill to touch anything but the water; while the Abbe seemed unable to understand that the servants durst not demand anything better, and devoured her share and a quarter of Lanty's as well as his own. Meantime the Cabeleyzes had all ranged themselves in rows, cross-legged on the ground, opposite to the five unfortunate captives, to sit in judgment on them. As they kept together in one group, happily in the shade of a hut, Victorine, too faint and sick fully to know what was going on, lay with her head on the lap of her young mistress, who sat with her bright and strangely fearless eyes confronting the wild figures opposite. Her uncle, frightened, though not comprehending the extent of his danger, crouched behind Lanty, who with Hebert stood somewhat in advance, the would-be guardians of the more helpless ones. There was an immense amount of deafening shrieking and gesticulating among the Arabs. Hassan was responding, and finally turned to Lanty, when the anxious watchers could perceive signs as if of paying down coin made interrogatively. 'Promise them anything, everything,' cried Hebert; 'M. le Comte would give his last sou--so would Madame la Marquise--to save Mademoiselle.' 'I have told him so,' said Laurence presently; 'I bade him let them know it is little they can make of us, specially now they have stripped us as bare as themselves, the rascals! but that their fortunes would be made--and little they would know what to do with them--if they would only send M. l'Abbe and Mademoiselle to Algiers safe and sound. There! he is trying to incense them. Never fear, Master Phelim, dear, there never was a rogue yet, black or white, or the colour of poor Madame's frothed chocolate, who did not love gold better than blood, unless indeed 'twas for the sweet morsel of revenge; and these, for all their rolling eyes and screeching tongues, have not the ghost of a quarrel with us.' 'My beads, my breviary,' sighed the Abbe. 'Get them for me, Lanty.' 'I wish they would end it quickly,' said Estelle. 'My head aches so, and I want to be with mamma. Poor Victorine! yours is worse,' she added, and soaked her handkerchief in the few drops of water left in the gourd to lay it on the maid's forehead. The howling and shrieking betokened consultation, but was suddenly interrupted by some half-grown lads, who came running in with their hands full of what Lanty recognised to his horror as garments worn by his mistress and fellow-servants, also a big kettle and a handspike. They pointed down to the sea, and with yells of haste and exultation all the wild conclave started up to snatch, handle, and examine, then began rushing headlong to the beach. Hassan's explanations were scarcely needed to show that they were about to ransack the ship, and he evidently took credit to himself for having induced them to spare the prisoners in case their assistance should be requisite to gain full possession of the plunder. Estelle and Victorine were committed to the charge of a forbidding-looking old hag, the mother of the sheyk of the party; the Abbe was allowed to stray about as he pleased, but the two men were driven to the shore by the eloquence of the club. Victorine revived enough for a burst of tears and a sobbing cry, 'Oh, they will be killed! We shall never see them again!' 'No,' said Estelle, with her quiet yet childlike resolution, 'they are not going to kill any of us yet. They said so. You are so tired, poor Victorine! Now all the hubbub is over, suppose you lie still and sleep. My uncle,' as he roamed round her, mourning for his rosary, 'I am afraid your beads are lost; but see here, these little round seeds, I can pierce them if you will gather some more for me, and make you another set. See, these will be the Aves, and here are shells in the grass for the Paters.' The long fibre of grass served for the string, and the sight of the Giaour girl's employment brought round her all the female population who had not repaired to the coast. Her first rosary was torn from her to adorn an almost naked baby; but the Abbe began to whimper, and to her surprise the mother restored it to him. She then made signs that she would construct another necklace for the child, and she was rewarded by a gourd being brought to her full of milk, which she was able to share with her two companions, and which did something to revive poor Victorine. Estelle was kept threading these necklaces and bracelets all the wakeful hours of the day--for every one fell asleep about noon--though still so jealous a watch was kept on her that she was hardly allowed to shift her position so as to get out of the sun, which even at that season was distressingly scorching in the middle of the day. Parties were continually coming up from the beach laden with spoils of all kinds from the wreck, Lanty, Hebert, and a couple of negroes being driven up repeatedly, so heavily burthened as to be almost bent double. All was thrown down in a heap at the other end of the adowara, and the old sheyk kept guard over it, allowing no one to touch it. This went on till darkness was coming on, when, while the cattle were being collected for the night, the prisoners were allowed an interval, in which Hebert and Lanty told how the natives, swimming like ducks, had torn everything out of the wreck: all the bales and boxes that poor Maitre Hebert had secured with so much care, and many of which he was now forced himself to open for the pleasure of these barbarians. That, however, was not the worst. Hebert concealed from his little lady what Lanty did not spare Victorine. 'And there--enough to melt the heart of a stone--there lay on the beach poor Madame la Comtesse, and all the three. Good was it for you, Victorine, my jewel, that you were not in the cabin with them.' 'I know not,' said the dejected Victorine; 'they are better off than we?' 'You would not say so, if you had seen what I have,' said Lanty, shuddering. 'The dogs!--they cut off Madame's poor white fingers to get at her rings, and not with knives either, lest her blessed flesh should defile them, they said, and her poor face was an angel's all the time. Nay, nor that was not the worst. The villainous boys, what must they do but pelt the poor swollen bodies with stones! Ay, well you may scream, Victorine. We went down on our knees, Maitre Hebert and I, to pray they might let us give them burial, but they mocked us, and bade Hassan say they never bury dogs. I went round the steeper path, for all the load at my back, or I should have been flying at the throats of the cowardly vultures, and then what would have become of M. l'Abbe?' Victorine trembled and wept bitterly for her companions, and then asked if Lanty had seen the corpse of the little Chevalier. 'Not a sight of him or M. Arthur either,' returned Lanty; 'only the ugly face of the old Turk captain and another of his crew, and them they buried decently, being Moslem hounds like themselves; while my poor lady that is a saint in heaven--' and he, too, shed tears of hot grief and indignation, recovering enough to warn Victorine by no means to let the poor young girl know of this additional horror. There was little opportunity, for they had been appropriated by different masters: Estelle, the Abbe, and Hebert to the sheyk, or headman of the clan; and Lanty and Victorine to a big, strong, fierce-looking fellow, of inferior degree but greater might. This time Estelle was to be kept for the night among the sheyk's women, who, though too unsophisticated to veil their faces, had a part of the hut closed off with a screen of reeds, but quite as bare as the outside. Hebert, who could not endure to think of her sleeping on the ground, and saw a large heap of grass or straw provided for a little brown cow, endeavoured to take an armful for her. Unluckily it belonged to Lanty's master, Eyoub, who instantly flew at him in a fury, dragged him to a log of wood, caught up an axe, and had not Estelle's screams brought up the sheyk, with Hassan and one or two other men, the poor Maitre d'Hotel's head would have been off. There was a sharp altercation between the sheyk and Eyoub, while Estelle held the faithful servant's hand, saying, 'You did it for me! Oh, Hebert, do not make them angry again. It would be beautiful to die for one's faith, but not for a handful of hay.' 'Ah! my dear _demoiselle_, what would my poor ladies say to see you sleeping on the bare ground in a filthy hut?' 'I slept well last night,' returned Estelle; 'indeed, I do not mind! It is only the more like the dungeon at Lyon, you know! And I pray you, Hebert, do not get yourself killed for nothing too soon, or else we shall not all stand out and confess together, like St. Blandina and St. Ponticus and St Epagathius.' 'Alas, the dear child! The long names run off her tongue as glibly as ever,' sighed Hebert, who, though determined not to forsake his faith, by no means partook her enthusiasm for martyrdom. Hassan, however, having explained what the purpose had been, Hebert was pardoned, though the sheyk scornfully observed that what was good enough for the daughters of a Hadji was good enough for the unclean child of the Frankish infidels. The hay might perhaps have spared a little stiffness, but it would not have ameliorated the chief annoyances--the closeness, the dirt, and the vermin. It was well that it was winter, or the first of these would have been far worse, and, fortunately for Estelle, she was one of those whom suffocating air rather lulls than rouses. Eyoub's hovel did not rejoice in the refinement of a partition, but his family, together with their animals, lay on the rocky floor as best they might; and Victorine's fever came on again, so that she lay in great misery, greeted by a growl from a great white dog whenever she tried to relieve her restless aching limbs by the slightest movement, or to reach one of the gourds of water laid near the sleepers, like Saul's cruse at his pillow. Towards morning, however, Lanty, who had been sitting with his back against the wall, awoke from the sleep well earned by acting as a beast of burthen. The dog growled a little, but Lanty--though his leg still showed its teeth-marks--had made friends with it, and his hand on its head quieted it directly, so that he was able cautiously to hand a gourd to Victorine. The Arabs were heavy sleepers, and the two were able to talk under their breath; as, in reply to a kind word from Lanty, poor Victorine moaned her envy of the fate of Rosette and Babette; and he, with something of their little mistress's spirit, declared that he had no doubt but that 'one way or the other they should be out of it: either get safe home, or be blessed martyrs, without even a taste of purgatory.' 'Ah! but there's worse for me,' sighed Victorine. 'This demon brought another to stare in my face--I know he wants to make me his wife! Kill me first, Laurent.' 'It is I that would rather espouse you, my jewel,' returned a tender whisper. 'How can you talk of such things at such a moment?' ''Tis a pity M. l'Abbe is not a priest,' sighed Lanty. 'But, you know, Victorine, who is the boy you always meant to take.' 'You need not be so sure of that,' she said, the coy coquetry not quite extinct. 'Come, as you said, it is no time for fooling. Give me your word and troth to be my wife so soon as we have the good luck to come by a Christian priest by our Lady's help, and I'll outface them all--were it Mohammed the Prophet himself, that you are my espoused and betrothed, and woe to him that puts a finger on you.' 'You would only get yourself killed.' 'And would not I be proud to be killed for your sake? Besides, I'll show them cause not to kill me if I have the chance. Trust me, Victorine, my darling--it is but a chance among these murdering villains, but it is the only one; and, sure, if you pretended to turn the back of your hand to me when there were plenty of Christian men to compliment you, yet you would rather have poor Lanty than a thundering rogue of a pagan Mohammedan.' 'I hope I shall die,' sighed poor Victorine faintly. 'It will only be your death!' 'That is my affair,' responded Lanty. 'Come, here's daylight coming in; reach me your hand before this _canaille_ wakes, and here's this good beast of a dog, and yonder grave old goat with a face like Pere Michel's for our witnesses--and by good luck, here's a bit of gilt wire off my shoulder-knot that I've made into a couple of rings while I've been speaking.' The strange betrothal had barely taken place before there was a stir, and what was no doubt a yelling imprecation on the 'dog Giaours' for the noise they made. The morning began as before, with the exception that Estelle had established a certain understanding with a little chocolate-coloured cupid of a boy of the size of her brother, and his lesser sister, by letting them stroke her hair, and showing them the mysteries of cat's cradle. They shared their gourd of goat's-milk with her, but would not let her give any to her companions. However, the Abbe had only to hold out his hand to be fed, and the others were far too anxious to care much about their food. A much larger number of Cabeleyzes came streaming into the forum of the adowara, and the prisoners were all again placed in a row, while the new- comers passed before them, staring hard, and manifestly making personal remarks which perhaps it was well that they did not understand. The sheyk and Eyoub evidently regarded them as private property, stood in front, and permitted nobody to handle them, which was so far a comfort. Then followed a sort of council, with much gesticulation, in which Hassan took his share. Then, followed by the sheyk, Eyoub, and some other headmen, he advanced, and demanded that the captives should become true believers. This was eked out with gestures betokening that thus they would be free, in that case; while, if they refused, the sword and the smouldering flame were pointed to, while the whole host loudly shouted 'Islam!' Victorine trembled, sobbed, tried to hide herself; but Estelle stood up, her young face lighted up, her dark eyes gleaming, as if she were realising a daydream, as she shook her head, cried out to Lanty, 'Tell him, No--never!' and held to her breast a little cross of sticks that she had been forming to complete her uncle's rosary. Her gesture was understood. A man better clad than the rest, with a turban and a broad crimson sash, rushed up to her, seized her by the hair, and waved his scimitar over her head. The child felt herself close to her mother. She looked up in his face with radiant eyes and a smile on her lips. It absolutely daunted the fellow: his arm dropped, and he gazed at her like some supernatural creature; and the sheyk, enraged at the interference with his property, darted forth to defend it, and there was a general wrangling. Seconded by their interpreter, Hassan, who knew that the Koran did not prescribe the destruction of Christians, Hebert and Lanty endeavoured to show that their conversion was out of the question, and that their slaughter would only be the loss of an exceedingly valuable ransom, which would be paid if they were handed over safe and sound and in good condition. There was no knowing what was the effect of this, for the council again ended in a rush to secure the remaining pillage of the wreck. Hebert and Lanty dreaded what they might see, but to their great relief those poor remains had disappeared. They shuddered as they remembered the hyenas' laughs and the jackals' howls they had heard at nightfall; but though they hoped that the sea had been merciful, they could even have been grateful to the animals that had spared them the sight of conscious insults. The wreck was finally cleared, and among the fragments were found several portions of books. These the Arabs disregarded, being too ignorant even to read their own Koran, and yet aware of the Mohammedan scruple which forbids the destruction of any scrap of paper lest it should bear the name of Allah. Lanty secured the greater part of the Abbe's breviary, and a good many pages of Estelle's beloved Telemaque; while the steward gained possession of his writing case, and was permitted to retain it when the Cabeleyzes, glutted with plunder, had ascertained that it contained nothing of value to them. After everything had been dragged up to the adowara, there ensued a sort of auction or division of the plunder. Poor Maitre Hebert was doomed to see the boxes and bales he had so diligently watched broken open by these barbarians,--nay, he had to assist in their own dissection when the secrets were too much for the Arabs. There was the King of Spain's portrait rent from its costly setting and stamped upon as an idolatrous image. The miniature of the Count, worn by the poor lady, had previously shared the same fate, but that happily was out of sight and knowledge. Here was the splendid plate, presented by crowned heads, howled over by savages ignorant of its use. The silver they seemed to value; but there were three precious gold cups which the salt water had discoloured, so that they were taken for copper and sold for a very small price to a Jew, who somehow was attracted to the scene, 'like a raven to the slaughter,' said Lanty. This man likewise secured some of the poor lady's store of rich dresses, but a good many more were appropriated to make sashes for the men, and the smaller articles, including stockings, were wound turban fashion round the children's heads. Lanty could not help observing, 'And if the saints are merciful to us, and get us out of this, we shall have stories to tell that will last our lives!' as he watched the solemn old chief smelling to the perfumes, swallowing the rouge as splendid medicine, and finally fingering a snuff- box, while half a dozen more crowded round to assist in the opening, and in another moment sneezing, weeping, tingling, dancing frantically about, vituperating the Christian's magic. This gave Lanty an idea. A little round box lay near, which, as he remembered, contained a Jack-in-the-box, or Polichinelle, which the poor little Chevalier had bought at the fair at Tarascon. This he contrived to secrete and hand to Victorine. 'Keep the secret,' he said, 'and you will find your best guardian in that bit of a box.' And when that very evening an Arab showed some intentions of adding her to his harem, Victorine bethought herself of the box, and unhooked in desperation. Up sprang Punch, long-nosed and fur-capped, right in the bearded face. Back the man almost fell; 'Shaitan, Shaitan!' was the cry, as the inhabitants tumbled pell-mell out of the hovel, and Victorine and Punch remained masters of the situation. She heard Lanty haranguing in broken Arabic and _lingua Franca_, and presently he came in, shaking with suppressed laughter. 'If ever we get home,' said he, 'we'll make a pilgrimage to Tarascon! Blessings on good St. Martha that put that sweet little imp in my way! The rogues think he is the very genie that the fisherman let out of the bottle in Mademoiselle's book of the Thousand and One Nights, and thought to see him towering over the whole place. And a fine figure he would be with his hook nose and long beard. They sent me to beg you fairly to put up your little Shaitan again. I told them that Shaitan, as they call him, is always in it when there's meddling between an espoused pair--which is as true as though the Holy Father at Rome had said it--and as long as they were civil, Shaitan would rest; but if they durst molest you, there was no saying where he would be, if once you had to let him out! To think of the virtue of that ugly face and bit of a coil of wire!' Meantime Hebert, having ascertained that both the Jew and Hassan were going away, the one to Constantina, the other to Algiers, wrote, and so did Estelle, to the Consul at Algiers, explaining their position and entreating to be ransomed. Though only nine years old, Estelle could write a very fair letter, and the amazement of the Arabs was unbounded that any female creature should wield a pen. Marabouts and merchants were known to read the Koran, but if one of the goats had begun to write, their wonder could hardly have been greater; and such crowds came to witness the extraordinary operation that she could scarcely breathe or see. It seemed to establish her in their estimation as a sort of supernatural being, for she was always treated with more consideration than the rest of the captives, never deprived of the clothes she wore, and allowed to appropriate a few of the toilette necessaries that were quite incomprehensible to those around her. She learnt the names for bread, chestnuts, dates, milk, and water, and these were never denied to her; and her little ingenuities in nursery games won the goodwill of the women and children around her, though others used to come and make ugly faces at her, and cry out at her as an unclean thing. The Abbe was allowed to wander about at will, and keep his Hours, with Estelle to make the responses, and sometimes Hebert. He was the only one that might visit the other two captives; Lanty was kept hard at work over the crop of chestnuts that the clan had come down from their mountains to gather in; and poor Victorine, who was consumed by a low fever, and almost too weak to move, lay all day in the dreary and dirty hut, expecting, but dreading death. Some days later there was great excitement, shouting, and rage. It proved that the Bey of Constantina had sent to demand the party, threatening to send an armed force to compel their surrender; but, alas! the hope of a return to comparative civilisation was instantly quashed, for the sheyk showed himself furious. He and Eyoub stood brandishing their scimitars, and with eyes flashing like a panther's in the dark, declaring that they were free, no subjects of the Dey nor the Bey either; and that they would shed the blood of every one of the captives rather than yield them to the dogs and sons of dogs at Constantina. This embassy only increased the jealousy with which the prisoners were guarded. None of them were allowed to stir without a man with a halbert, and they had the greatest difficulty in entrusting a third letter to the Moor in command of the party. Indeed, it was only managed by Estelle's coaxing of the little Abou Daoud, who was growing devoted to her, and would do anything for the reward of hearing her sing life _Malbrook s'en va-t'-n guerre_. It might have been in consequence of this threat of the Bey, much as they affected to despise it, that the Cabeleyzes prepared to return to the heights of Mount Araz, whence they had only descended during the autumn to find fresh pasture for their cattle, and to collect dates and chestnuts from the forest. 'Alas!' said Hubert, 'this is worse than ever. As long as we were near the sea, I had hope, but now all trace of us will be lost, even if the Consul should send after us.' 'Never fear, Maitre Hubert,' said Estelle; 'you know Telemaque was a prisoner and tamed the wild peasants in Egypt.' 'Ah! the poor demoiselle, she always seems as if she were acting a comedy.' This was happily true. Estelle seemed to be in a curious manner borne through the dangers and discomforts of her surroundings by a strange dreamy sense of living up to her part, sometimes as a possible martyr, sometimes as a figure in the mythological or Arcadian romance that had filtered into her nursery. CHAPTER VI--A MOORISH VILLAGE 'Our laws and our worship on thee thou shalt take, And this shalt thou first do for Zulema's sake.' SCOTT. When Arthur Hope dashed back from the party on the prow of the wrecked tartane in search of little Ulysse, he succeeded in grasping the child, but at the same moment a huge breaker washed him off the slipperily-sloping deck, and after a scarce conscious struggle he found himself, still retaining his clutch of the boy, in the trough between it and another. He was happily an expert swimmer, and holding the little fellow's clothes in his teeth, he was able to avoid the dash, and to rise on another wave. Then he perceived that he was no longer near the vessel, but had been carried out to some little distance, and his efforts only succeeded in keeping afloat, not in approaching the shore. Happily a plank drifted so near him that he was able to seize it and throw himself across it, thus obtaining some support, and being able to raise the child farther above the water. At the same time he became convinced that a strong current, probably from a river or stream, was carrying him out to sea, away from the bay. He saw the black heads of two or three of the Moorish crew likewise floating on spars, and yielding themselves to the stream, and this made him better satisfied to follow their example. It was a sort of rest, and gave him time to recover from the first exhaustion to convince himself that the little boy was not dead, and to lash him to the plank with a handkerchief. By and by--he knew not how soon--calls and shouts passed between the Moors; only two seemed to survive, and they no longer obeyed the direction of the current, but turned resolutely towards the land, where Arthur dimly saw a green valley opening towards the sea. This was a much severer effort, but by this time immediate self-preservation had become the only thought, and happily both wind and the very slight tide were favourable, so that, just as the sun sank beneath the western waves, Arthur felt foothold on a sloping beach of white sand, even as his powers became exhausted. He struggled up out of reach of the sea, and then sank down, exhausted and unconscious. His first impression was of cries and shrieks round him, as he gasped and panted, then saw as in a dream forms flitting round him, and then--feeling for the child and missing him--he raised himself in consternation, and the movement was greeted by fresh unintelligible exclamations, while a not unkindly hand lifted him up. It belonged to a man in a sort of loose white garment and drawers, with a thin dark-bearded face; and Arthur, recollecting that the Spanish word _nino_ passed current for child in _lingua Franca_, uttered it with an accent of despairing anxiety. He was answered with a volley of words that he only understood to be in a consoling tone, and the speaker pointed inland. Various persons, among whom Arthur saw his recent shipmates, seemed to be going in that direction, and he obeyed his guide, though scarcely able to move from exhaustion and cold, the garments he had retained clinging about him. Some one, however, ran down towards him with a vessel containing a draught of sour milk. This revived him enough to see clearly and follow his guides. After walking a distance, which appeared to him most laborious, he found himself entering a sort of village, and was ushered through a courtyard into a kind of room. In the centre a fire was burning; several figures were busy round it, and in another moment he perceived that they were rubbing, chafing, and otherwise restoring his little companion. Indeed Ulysse had just recovered enough to be terribly frightened, and as his friend's voice answered his screams, he sprang from the kind brown hands, and, darting on Arthur, clung to him with face hidden on his shoulder. The women who had been attending to him fell back as the white stranger entered, and almost instantly dry clothes were brought, and while Arthur was warming himself and putting them on, a little table about a foot high was set, the contents of a cauldron of a kind of soup which had been suspended over the fire were poured into a large round green crock, and in which all were expected to dip their spoons and fingers. Little Ulysse was exceedingly amazed, and observed that _ces gens_ were not _bien eleves_ to eat out of the dish; but he was too hungry to make any objection to being fed with the wooden spoon that had been handed to Arthur; and when the warm soup, and the meat floating in it, had refreshed them, signs were made to them to lie down on a mat within an open door, and both were worn out enough to sleep soundly. It was daylight when Arthur was awakened by poor little Ulysse sitting up and crying out for his _bonne_, his mother, and sister, 'Oh! take me to them,' he cried; 'I do not like this dark place.' For dark the room was, being windowless, though the golden sunlight could be seen beyond the open doorway, which was under a sort of cloister or verandah overhung by some climbing plant. Arthur, collecting himself, reminded the child how the waves had borne them away from the rest, with earnest soothing promises of care, and endeavouring to get back to the rest. 'Say your prayers that God will take care of you and bring you back to your sister,' Arthur added, for he did not think it possible that the child's mother should have been saved from the waves; and his heart throbbed at thoughts of his promise to the poor lady. 'But I want my _bonne_,' sighed Ulysse; 'I want my clothes. This is an ugly _robe de nuit_, and there is no bed.' 'Perhaps we can find your clothes,' said Arthur. 'They were too wet to be kept on last night.' So they emerged into the court, which had a kind of farmyard appearance; women with rows of coins hanging over their brows were milking cows and goats, and there was a continuous confusion of sound of their voices, and the lowing and bleating of cattle. At the appearance of Arthur and the boy, there was a general shout, and people seemed to throng in to gaze at them, the men handsome, stately, and bearded, with white full drawers, and a bournouse laid so as first to form a flat hood over the head, and then belted in at the waist, with a more or less handsome sash, into which were stuck a spoon and knife, and in some cases one or two pistols. They did not seem ill-disposed, though their language was perfectly incomprehensible. Ulysse's clothes were lying dried by the hearth and no objection was made to his resuming them. Arthur made gestures of washing or bathing, and was conducted outside the court, to a little stream of pure water descending rapidly to the sea. It was so cold that Ulysse screamed at the touch, as Arthur, with more spectators than he could have desired, did his best to perform their toilettes. He had divested himself of most of his own garments for the convenience of swimming, but his pockets were left and a comb in them; and though poor Mademoiselle Julienne would have been shocked at the result of his efforts, and the little silken laced suit was sadly tarnished with sea water, Ulysse became such an astonishing sight that the children danced round him, the women screamed with wonder, and the men said 'Mashallah!' The young Scotsman's height was perhaps equally amazing, for he saw them pointing up to his head as if measuring his stature. He saw that he was in a village of low houses, with walls of unhewn stone, enclosing yards, and set in the midst of fruit-trees and gardens. Though so far on in the autumn there was a rich luxuriant appearance; roots and fruits, corn and flax, were laid out to dry, and girls and boys were driving the cattle out to pasture. He could not doubt that he had landed among a settled and not utterly uncivilised people, but he was too spent and weary to exert himself, or even to care for much beyond present safety; and had no sooner returned to his former quarters, and shared with Ulysse a bowl of curds, than they both feel asleep again in the shade of the gourd plant trained on a trellised roof over the wall. When he next awoke, Ulysse was very happily at play with some little brown children, as if the sports of childhood defied the curse of Babel, and a sailor from the tartane was being greeted by the master of the house. Arthur hoped that some communication would now be possible, but, unfortunately, the man knew very little of the _lingua Franca_ of the Mediterranean, and Arthur knew still less. However, he made out that he was the only one of the shipwrecked crew who had managed to reach the land, and that this was a village of Moors--settled agricultural Moors, not Arabs, good Moslems--who would do him no harm. This, and he pointed to a fine-looking elderly man, was the sheyk of the village, Abou Ben Zegri, and if the young Giaours would conform to the true faith all would be _salem_ with them. Arthur shook his head, and tried by word and sign to indicate his anxiety for the rest of his companions. The sailor threw up his hands, and pointed towards the sea, to show that he believed them to be all lost; but Arthur insisted that five--marking them off on his fingers--were on _gebal_, a rock, and emphatically indicated his desire of reaching them. The Moor returned the word 'Cabeleyzes,' with gestures signifying throat-cutting and slavery, also that these present hosts regarded them as banditti. How far off they were it was not possible to make out, for of course Arthur's own sensations were no guide; but he knew that the wreck had taken place early in the afternoon, and that he had come on shore in the dusk, which was then at about five o'clock. There was certainly a promontory, made by the ridge of a hill, and also a river between him and any survivors there might be. This was all that he could gather, and he was not sure of even thus much, but he was still too much wearied and battered for any exertion of thought or even anxiety. Three days' tempest in a cockle-shell of a ship, and then three hours' tossing on a plank, had left him little but the desire of repose, and the Moors were merciful and let him alone. It was a beautiful place--that he already knew. A Scot, and used to the sea- coast, his eye felt at home as it ranged to the grand heights in the dim distance, with winter caps of snow, and shaded in the most gorgeous tints of colouring forests beneath, slopes covered with the exquisite green of young wheat. Autumn though it was, the orange-trees, laden with fruit, the cork-trees, ilexes, and fan-palms, gave plenty of greenery, shading the gardens with prickly pear hedges; and though many of the fruit-trees had lost their leaves, fig, peach, and olive, and mulberry, caper plants, vines with foliage of every tint of red and purple, which were trained over the trellised courts of the houses, made everything have a look of rural plenty and peace, most unlike all that Arthur had ever heard or imagined of the Moors, who, as he owned to himself, were certainly not all savage pirates and slave-drivers. The whole within was surrounded by a stone wall, with a deep horse-shoe-arched gateway, the fields and pastures lying beyond with some more slightly-walled enclosures meant for the protection of the flocks and herds at night. He saw various arts going on. One man was working in iron over a little charcoal fire, with a boy to blow up his bellows, and several more were busied over some pottery, while the women alternated their grinding between two mill stones, and other domestic cares, with spinning, weaving, and beautiful embroidery. To Arthur, who looked on, with no one to speak to except little Ulysse, it was strangely like seeing the life of the Israelites in the Old Testament when they dwelt under their own vines and fig-trees--like reading a chapter in the Bible, as he said to himself, as again and again he saw some allusion to Eastern customs illustrated. He was still more struck--when, after the various herds of kine, sheep, and goats, with one camel, several asses, and a few slender- limbed Barbary horses had been driven in for the night--by the sight of the population, as the sun sank behind the mountains, all suspending whatever they were about, spreading their prayer carpets, turning eastwards, performing their ablutions, and uttering their brief prayer with one voice so devoutly that he was almost struck with awe. 'Are they saying their prayers?' whispered Ulysse, startled by the instant change in his play-fellows, and as Arthur acquiesced, 'Then they are good.' 'If it were the true faith,' said Arthur, thinking of the wide difference between this little fellow and Estelle; but though not two years younger, Ulysse was far more childish than his sister, and when she was no longer present to lead him with her enthusiasm, sank at once to his own level. He opened wide his eyes at Arthur's reply, and said, 'I do not see their idols.' 'They have none,' said Arthur, who could not help thinking that Ulysse might look nearer home for idols--but chiefly concerned at the moment to keep the child quiet, lest he should bring danger on them by interruption. They were sitting in the embowered porch of the sheyk's court when, a few seconds after the villagers had risen up from their prayer, they saw a figure enter at the village gateway, and the sheyk rise and go forward. There were low bending in salutation, hands placed on the breast, then kisses exchanged, after which the Sheyk Abou Ben Zegri went out with the stranger, and great excitement and pleasure seemed to prevail among the villagers, especially the women. Arthur heard the word 'Yusuf' often repeated, and by the time darkness had fallen on the village, the sheyk ushered the guest into his court, bringing with him a donkey with some especially precious load--which was removed; after which the supper was served as before in the large low apartment, with a handsomely tiled floor, and an opening in the roof for the issue of the smoke from the fire, which became agreeable in the evening at this season. Before supper, however, the stranger's feet and hands were washed by a black slave in Eastern fashion; and then all, as before, sat on mats or cushions round the central bowl, each being furnished with a spoon and thin flat soft piece of bread to dip into the mess of stewed kid, flakes of which might be extracted with the fingers. The women, who had fastened a piece of linen across their faces, ran about and waited on the guests, who included three or four of the principal men of the village, as well as the stranger, who, as Arthur observed, was not of the uniform brown of the rest, but had some colour in his cheeks, light eyes, and a ruddy beard, and also was of a larger frame than these Moors, who, though graceful, lithe, and exceedingly stately and dignified, hardly reached above young Hope's own shoulder. Conversation was going on all the time, and Arthur soon perceived that he was the subject of it. As soon as the meal was over, the new-comer addressed him, to his great joy, in French. It was the worst French imaginable--perhaps more correctly _lingua Franca_, with a French instead of an Arabic foundation, but it was more comprehensible than that of the Moorish sailor, and bore some relation to a civilised language; besides which there was something indescribably familiar in the tone of voice, although Arthur's good French often missed of being comprehended. 'Son of a great man? Ambassador, French!' The greatness seemed impressed, but whether ambassador was understood was another thing, though it was accepted as relating to the boy. 'Secretary to the Ambassador' seemed to be an equal problem. The man shook his head, but he took in better the story of the wreck, though, like the sailor, he shook his head over the chance of there being any survivors, and utterly negatived the idea of joining them. The great point that Arthur tried to convey was that there would be a very considerable ransom if the child could be conveyed to Algiers, and he endeavoured to persuade the stranger, who was evidently a sort of travelling merchant, and, as he began to suspect, a renegade, to convey them thither; but he only got shakes of the head as answers, and something to the effect that they were a good deal out of the Dey's reach in those parts, together with what he feared was an intimation that they were altogether in the power of Sheyk Abou Ben Zegri. They were interrupted by a servant of the merchant, who came to bring him some message as well as a pipe and tobacco. The pipe was carried by a negro boy, at sight of whom Ulysse gave a cry of ecstasy, 'Juba! Juba! Grandmother's Juba! Why do not you speak to me?' as the little black, no bigger than Ulysse himself, grinned with all his white teeth, quite uncomprehending. 'Ah! my poor laddie,' exclaimed Arthur in his native tongue, which he often used with the boy, 'it is only another negro. You are far enough from home.' The words had an astonishing effect on the merchant. He turned round with the exclamation, 'Ye'll be frae Scotland!' 'And so are you!' cried Arthur, holding out his hand. 'Tak tent, tak tent,' said the merchant hastily, yet with a certain hesitation, as though speaking a long unfamiliar tongue. 'The loons might jalouse our being overfriendly thegither.' Then he returned to the sheyk, to whom he seemed to be making explanations, and presenting some of his tobacco, which probably was of a superior quality in preparation to what was grown in the village. They solemnly smoked together and conversed, while Arthur watched them anxiously, relieved that he had found an interpreter, but very doubtful whether a renegade could be a friend, even though he were indeed a fellow- countryman. It was not till several pipes had been consumed, and the village worthies had, with considerable ceremony, taken leave, that the merchant again spoke to Arthur. 'I'll see ye the morn; I hae tell'd the sheyk we are frae the same parts. Maybe I can serve you, if ye ken what's for your guid, but I canna say mair the noo.' The sheyk escorted him out of the court, for he slept in one of the two striped horse-hair tents, which had been spread within the enclosures belonging to the village, around which were tethered the mules and asses that carried his wares. Arthur meanwhile arranged his little charge for the night. He felt that among these enemies to their faith he must do what was in his power to keep up that of the child, and not allow his prayers to be neglected; but not being able to repeat the Latin forms, and thinking them unprofitable to the boy himself, he prompted the saying of the Creed and Lord's Prayer in English, and caused them to be repeated after him, though very sleepily and imperfectly. All the men of the establishment seemed to take their night's rest on a mat, wrapped in a bournouse, wherever they chanced to find themselves, provided it was under shelter; the women in some _penetralia_ beyond a doorway, though they were not otherwise secluded, and only partially veiled their faces at sight of a stranger. Arthur had by this time made out that the sheyk, who was a very handsome man over middle-age, seemed to have two wives; one probably of his own age, and though withered up into a brown old mummy, evidently the ruler at home, wearing the most ornaments, and issuing her orders in a shrill, cracked tone. There was a much younger and handsome one, the mother apparently of two or three little girls from ten or twelve years old to five, and there was a mere girl, with beautiful melancholy gazelle-like eyes, and a baby in her arms. She wore no ornaments, but did not seem to be classed with the slaves who ran about at the commands of the elder dame. However, his own position was a matter of much more anxious care, although he had more hope of discovering what it really was. He had, however, to be patient. The sunrise orisons were no sooner paid than there was a continual resort to the tent of the merchant, who was found sitting there calmly smoking his long pipe, and ready to offer the like, also a cup of coffee, to all who came to traffic with him. He seemed to have a miscellaneous stock of coffee, tobacco, pipes, preparations of sugar, ornaments in gold and silver, jewellery, charms, pistols, and a host of other articles in stock, and to be ready to purchase or barter these for the wax, embroidered handkerchiefs, yarn, and other productions and manufactures of the place. Not a single purchase could be made on either side without a tremendous haggling, shouting, and gesticulating, as if the parties were on the verge of coming to blows; whereas all was in good fellowship, and a pleasing excitement and diversion where time was of no value to anybody. Arthur began to despair of ever gaining attention. He was allowed to wander about as he pleased within the village gates, and Ulysse was apparently quite happy with the little children, who were beautiful and active, although kept dirty and ragged as a protection from the evil eye. Somehow the engrossing occupation of every one, especially of the only two creatures with whom he could converse, made Arthur more desolate than ever. He lay down under an ilex, and his heart ached with a sick longing he had not experienced since he had been with the Nithsdales, for his mother and his home--the tall narrow-gabled house that had sprung up close to the grim old peel tower, the smell of the sea, the tinkling of the burn. He fell asleep in the heat of the day, and it was to him as if he were once more sitting by the old shepherd on the braeside, hearing him tell the old tales of Johnnie Armstrong or Willie o' the wudspurs. Actually a Scottish voice was in his ears, as he looked up and saw the turbaned head of Yusuf the merchant bending over him, and saying--'Wake up, my bonny laddie; we can hae our crack in peace while these folks are taking their noonday sleep. Awed, and where are ye frae, and how do you ca' yersel'?' 'I am from Berwickshire,' responded the youth, and as the man started--'My name is Arthur Maxwell Hope of Burnside.' 'Eh! No a son of auld Sir Davie?' 'His youngest son.' The man clasped his hands, and uttered a strange sound as if in the extremity of amazement, and there was a curious unconscious change of tone, as he said--'Sir Davie's son! Ye'll never have heard tell of Partan Jeannie?' he added. 'A very old fishwife,' said Arthur, 'who used to come her rounds to our door? Was she of kin to you?' 'My mither, sir. Mony's the time I hae peepit out on the cuddie's back between the creels at the door of the braw house of Burnside, and mony's the bannock and cookie the gude lady gied me. My minnie'll no be living thae noo,' he added, not very tenderly. 'I should fear not,' said Arthur. 'I had not seen or heard of her for some time before I left home, and that is now three years since. She looked very old then, and I remember my mother saying she was not fit to come her rounds.' 'She wasna that auld,' returned the merchant gravely; 'but she had led sic a life as falls to the lot of nae wife in this country.' Arthur had almost said, 'Whose fault was that?' but he durst not offend a possible protector, and softened his words into, 'It is strange to find you here, and a Mohammedan too.' 'Hoots, Maister Arthur, let that flea stick by the wa'. We maun do at Rome as Rome does, as ye'll soon find'--and disregarding Arthur's exclamation--'and the bit bairn, I thocht ye said he was no Scot, when I was daundering awa' at the French yestreen.' 'No, he is half-Irish, half-French, eldest son of Count Burke, a good Jacobite, who got into trouble with the Prince of Orange, and is high in the French service.' 'And what gars your father's son to be _secretaire_, as ye ca'd it, to Frenchman or Irishman either?' 'Well, it was my own fault. I was foolish enough to run away from school to join the rising for our own King's--' 'Eh, sirs! And has there been a rising on the Border side against the English pock puddings? Oh, gin I had kenned it!' Yusuf's knowledge of English politics had been dim at the best, and he had apparently left Scotland before even Queen Anne was on the throne. When he understood Arthur's story, he communicated his own. He had been engaged in a serious brawl with some English fishers, and in fear of the consequences had fled from Eyemouth, and after casting about as a common sailor in various merchant ships, had been captured by a Moorish vessel, and had found it expedient to purchase his freedom by conversion to Islam, after which his Scottish shrewdness and thrift had resulted in his becoming a prosperous itinerant merchant, with his headquarters at Bona. He expressed himself willing and anxious to do all he could for his young countryman; but it would be almost impossible to do so unless Arthur would accept the religion of his captors; and he explained that the two boys were the absolute property of the tribe, who had discovered and rescued them when going to the seashore to gather kelp for the glass work practised by the Moors in their little furnaces. 'Forsake my religion? Never!' cried Arthur indignantly. 'Saftly, saftly,' said Yusuf; 'nae doot ye trow as I did that they are a' mere pagans and savage heathens, worshipping Baal and Ashtaroth, but I fand myself quite mista'en. They hae no idols, and girn at the blinded Papists as muckle as auld Deacon Shortcoats himsel'.' 'I know that,' threw in Arthur. 'Ay, and they are a hantle mair pious and devout than ever a body I hae seen in Eyemouth, or a' the country side to boot; forbye, my minnie's auld auntie, that sat graning by the ingle, and ay banned us when we came ben. The meneester himsel' dinna gae about blessing and praying over ilka sma' matter like the meenest of us here, and for a' the din they make at hame about the honorable Sabbath, wha thinks of praying five times the day? While as for being the waur for liquor, these folks kenna the very taste of it. Put yon sheyk down on the wharf at Eyemouth, and what wad he say to the Christian folk there?' A shock of conviction passed over Arthur, though he tried to lose it in indignant defence; but Yusuf did not venture to stay any longer with him, and bidding him think over what had been said, since slavery or Islam were the only alternatives, returned to the tents of merchandise. First thoughts with the youth had of course been of horror at the bare idea of apostacy, and yet as he watched his Moorish hosts, he could not but own to himself that he never had dreamt that to be among them would be so like dwelling under the oak of Mamre, in the tents of Abraham. From what he remembered of Partan Jeannie's reputation as a being only tolerated and assisted by his mother, on account of her extreme misery and destitution, he could believe that the ne'er-do-weel son, who must have forsaken her before he himself was born, might have really been raised in morality by association with the grave, faithful, and temperate followers of Mohammed, rather than the scum of the port of Eyemouth. For himself and the boy, what did slavery mean? He hoped to understand better from Yusuf, and at any rate to persuade the man to become the medium of communication with the outside world, beyond that 'dissociable ocean,' over which his wistful gaze wandered. Then the ransom of the little Chevalier de Bourke would be certain, and, if there were any gratitude in the world, his own. But how long would this take, and what might befall them in the meantime? Ulysse all this time seemed perfectly happy with the small Moors, who all romped together without distinction of rank, of master, slave or colour, for Yusuf's little negro was freely received among them. At night, however, Ulysse's old home self seemed to revive; he crept back to Arthur, tired and weary, fretting for mother, sister, and home; and even after he had fallen asleep, waking again to cry for Julienne. Poor Arthur, he was a rough nurse, but pity kept him patient, and he was even glad to see that the child had not forgotten his home. Meantime, ever since the sunset prayer, there had been smoking of pipes and drinking of coffee, and earnest discussion between the sheyk and the merchant, and by and by Yusuf came and sat himself down by Arthur, smiling a little at the young man's difficulty in disposing of those long legs upon the ground. 'Ye'll have to learn this and other things, sir,' said he, as he crossed his own under him, Eastern fashion; but his demeanour was on the whole that of the fisher to the laird's son, and he evidently thought that he had a grand proposal to make, for which Master Arthur ought to be infinitely obliged. He explained to Arthur that Sheyk Abou Ben Zegri had never had more than two sons, and that both had been killed the year before in trying to recover their cattle from the Cabeleyzes, 'a sort of Hieland caterans.' The girl whom Arthur had noticed was the widow of the elder of the two, and the child was only a daughter. The sheyk had been much impressed by Arthur's exploit in swimming or floating round the headland and saving the child, and regarded his height as something gigantic. Moreover, Yusuf had asserted that he was son to a great Bey in his own country, and in consequence Abou Ben Zegri was willing to adopt him as his son, provided he would embrace the true faith, and marry Ayesha, the widow. 'And,' said Yusuf, 'these women are no that ill for wives, as I ken owre weel'--and he sighed. 'I had as gude and douce a wee wifie at Bona as heart culd wish, and twa bonny bairnies; but when I cam' back frae my rounds, the plague had been there before me. They were a' gone, even Ali, that had just began to ca' me Ab, Ab, and I hae never had heart to gang back to the town house. She was a gude wife--nae flying, nae rampauging. She wad hae died wi' shame to be likened to thae randy wives at hame. Ye might do waur than tak' such a fair offer, Maister Arthur.' 'You mean it all kindly,' said Arthur, touched; 'but for nothing--no, for nothing, can a Christian deny his Lord, or yield up his hopes for hereafter.' 'As for that,' returned Yusuf, 'the meneester and Beacon Shortcoats, and my auld auntie, and the lave of them, aye ca'ed me a vessel of destruction. That was the best name they had for puir Tam. So what odds culd it mak, if I took up with the Prophet, and I was ower lang leggit to row in a galley? Forbye, here they say that a man who prays and gies awmous, and keeps frae wine, is sicker to win to Paradise and a' the houris. I had rather it war my puir Zorah than any strange houri of them a'; but any way, I hae been a better man sin' I took up wi' them than ever I was as a cursing, swearing, drunken, fechting sailor lad wha feared neither God nor devil.' 'That was scarce the fault of the Christian faith,' said Arthur. 'Aweel, the first answer in the Shorter Carritch was a' they ever garred me learn, and that is what we here say of Allah. I see no muckle to choose, and I _ken_ ane thing,--it is a hell on earth at ance gin ye gang not alang wi' them. And that's sicker, as ye'll find to your cost, sir, gin ye be na the better guided.' 'With hope, infinite hope beyond,' said Arthur, trying to fortify himself. 'No, I cannot, cannot deny my Lord--my Lord that bought me!' 'We own Issa Ben Mariam for a Prophet,' said Yusuf. 'But He is my only Master, my Redeemer, and God. No, come what may, I can never renounce Him,' said Arthur with vehemence. 'Wed, awed,' said Yusuf, 'maybe ye'll see in time what's for your gude. I'll tell the sheyk it would misbecome your father's son to do sic a deed owre lichtly, and strive to gar him wait while I am in these parts to get your word, and nae doot it will be wiselike at the last.' CHAPTER VII--MASTER AND SLAVE 'I only heard the reckless waters roar, Those waves that would not hear me from the shore; I only marked the glorious sun and sky Too bright, too blue for my captivity, And felt that all which Freedom's bosom cheers, Must break my chain before it dried my tears.' BYRON (_The Corsair_). At the rate at which the traffic in Yusuf's tent proceeded, Arthur Hope was likely to have some little time for deliberation on the question presented to him whether to be a free Moslem sheyk or a Christian slave. Not only had almost every household in El Arnieh to chaffer with the merchant for his wares and to dispose of home-made commodities, but from other adowaras and from hill-farms Moors and Cabyles came in with their produce of wax, wool or silk, to barter--if not with Yusuf, with the inhabitants of El Arnieh, who could weave and embroider, forge cutlery, and make glass from the raw material these supplied. Other Cabyles, divers from the coast, came up, with coral and sponges, the latter of which was the article in which Yusuf preferred to deal, though nothing came amiss to him that he could carry, or that could carry itself--such as a young foal; even the little black boy had been taken on speculation--and so indeed had the big Abyssinian, who, though dumb, was the most useful, ready, and alert of his five slaves. Every bargain seemed to occupy at least an hour, and perhaps Yusuf lingered the longer in order to give Arthur more time for consideration; or it might be that his native tongue, once heard, exercised an irresistible fascination over him. He never failed to have what he called a 'crack' with his young countryman at the hour of the siesta, or at night, perhaps persuading the sheyk that it was controversial, though it was more apt to be on circumstances of the day's trade or the news of the Border-side. Controversy indeed there could be little with one so ignorant as kirk treatment in that century was apt to leave the outcasts of society, nor had conversion to Islam given him much instruction in its tenets; so that the conversation generally was on earthly topics, though it always ended in assurances that Master Arthur would suffer for it if he did not perceive what was for his good. To which Arthur replied to the effect that he must suffer rather than deny his faith; and Yusuf, declaring that a wilful man maun have his way, and that he would rue it too late, went off affronted, but always returned to the charge at the next opportunity. Meantime Arthur was free to wander about unmolested and pick up the language, in which, however, Ulysse made far more rapid progress, and could be heard chattering away as fast, if not as correctly, as if it were French or English. The delicious climate and the open-air life were filling the little fellow with a strength and vigour unknown to him in a Parisian salon, and he was in the highest spirits among his brown playfellows, ceasing to pine for his mother and sister; and though he still came to Arthur for the night, or in any trouble, it was more and more difficult to get him to submit to be washed and dressed in his tight European clothes, or to say his prayers. He was always sleepy at night and volatile in the morning, and could not be got to listen to the little instructions with which Arthur tried to arm him against Mohammedanism into which the poor little fellow was likely to drift as ignorantly and unconsciously as Yusuf himself. And what was the alternative? Arthur himself never wavered, nor indeed actually felt that he had a choice; but the prospect before him was gloomy, and Yusuf did not soften it. The sheyk would sell him, and he would either be made to work in some mountain-farm, or put on board a galley; and Yusuf had sufficient experience of the horrors of the latter to assure him emphatically that the gude leddy of Burnside would break her heart to think of her bonny laddie there. 'It would more surely break her heart to think of her son giving up his faith,' returned Arthur. As to the child, the opinion of the tribe seemed to be that he was just fit to be sent to the Sultan to be bred as a Janissary. 'He will come that gate to be as great a man as in his ain countree,' said Yusuf; 'wi' horse to ride, and sword to bear, and braws to wear, like King Solomon in all his glory.' 'While his father and mother would far rather he were lying dead with her under the waves in that cruel bay,' returned Arthur. 'Hout, mon, ye dinna ken what's for his gude, nor for your ain neither,' retorted Yusuf. 'Good here is not good hereafter.' 'The life of a dog and waur here,' muttered Yusuf; 'ye'll mind me when it is too late.' 'Nay, Yusuf, if you will only take word of our condition to Algiers, we shall--at least the boy--be assuredly redeemed, and you would win a high reward.' 'I am no free to gang to Algiers,' said Yusuf. 'I fell out with a loon there, one of those Janissaries that gang hectoring aboot as though the world were not gude enough for them, and if I hadna made the best of my way out of the toon, my pow wad be a worricow on the wa's of the tower.' 'There are French at Bona, you say. Remember, I ask you to put yourself in no danger, only to bear the tidings to any European,' entreated Arthur. 'And how are they to find ye?' demanded Yusuf. 'Abou Ben Zegri will never keep you here after having evened his gude-daughter to ye. He'll sell you to some corsair captain, and then the best that could betide ye wad be that a shot frae the Knights of Malta should make quick work wi' ye. Or look at the dumbie there, Fareek. A Christian, he ca's himsel', too, though 'tis of a by ordinar' fashion, such as Deacon Shortcoats would scarce own. I coft him dog cheap at Tunis, when his master, the Vizier, had had his tongue cut out--for but knowing o' some deed that suld ne'er have been done--and his puir feet bastinadoed to a jelly. Gin a' the siller in the Dey's treasury ransomed ye, what gude would it do ye after that?' 'I cannot help that--I cannot forsake my God. I must trust Him not to forsake me.' And, as usual, Yusuf went off angrily muttering, 'He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar.' Perhaps Arthur's resistance had begun more for the sake of honour, and instinctive clinging to hereditary faith, without the sense of heroism or enthusiasm for martyrdom which sustained Estelle, and rather with the feeling that inconstancy to his faith and his Lord would be base and disloyal. But, as the long days rolled on, if the future of toil and dreary misery developed itself before him, the sense of personal love and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him. Neither the gazelle-eyed Ayesha nor the prosperous village life presented any great temptation. He would have given them all for one bleak day of mist on a Border moss; it was the appalling contrast with the hold of a Moorish galley that at times startled him, together with the only too great probability that he should be utterly incapable of saving poor little Ulysse from unconscious apostacy. Once Yusuf observed, that if he would only make outward submission to Moslem law, he might retain his own belief and trust in the Lord he seemed so much to love, and of whom he said more good than any Moslem did of the Prophet. 'If I deny Him, He will deny me,' said Arthur. 'And will na He forgive ane as is hard pressed?' asked Yusuf. 'It is a very different thing to go against the light, as I should be doing,' said Arthur, 'and what it might be for that poor bairn, whom Cod preserve.' 'And wow! sir. 'Tis far different wi' you that had the best of gude learning frae the gude leddy,' muttered Yusuf. 'My minnie aye needit me to sort the fish and gang her errands, and wad scarce hae sent me to scule, gin I wad hae gane where they girned at me for Partan Jeannie's wean, and gied me mair o' the tawse than of the hornbook. Gin the Lord, as ye ca' Him, had ever seemed to me what ye say He is to you, Maister Arthur, I micht hae thocht twice o'er the matter. But there's nae ganging back the noo. A Christian's life they harm na, though they mak' it a mere weariness to him; but for him that quits the Prophet, tearing the flesh wi' iron cleeks is the best they hae for him.' This time Yusuf retreated, not as usual in anger, but as if the bare idea he had broached was too terrible to be dwelt upon. He had by the end of a fortnight completed all his business at El Arnieh, and Arthur, having by this time picked up enough of the language to make himself comprehensible, and to know fully what was set before him, was called upon to make his decision, so that either he might be admitted by regular ritual into the Moslem faith, and adopted by the sheyk, or else be advertised by Yusuf at the next town as a strong young slave. Sitting in the gate among the village magnates, like an elder of old, Sheyk Abou Ben Zegri, with considerable grace and dignity, set the choice before the Son of the Sea in most affectionate terms, asking of him to become the child of his old age, and to heal the breach left by the swords of the robbers of the mountains. The old man's fine dark eyes filled with tears, and there was a pathos in his noble manner that made Arthur greatly grieved to disappoint him, and sorry not to have sufficient knowledge of the language to qualify more graciously the resolute reply he had so often rehearsed to himself, expressing his hearty thanks, but declaring that nothing could induce him to forsake the religion of his fathers. 'Wilt thou remain a dog of an unbeliever, and receive the treatment of dogs?' 'I must,' said Arthur. 'The youth is a goodly youth,' said the sheyk; 'it is ill that his heart is blind. Once again, young man, Issa Ben Mariam and slavery, or Mohammed and freedom?' 'I cannot deny my Lord Christ.' There was a pause. Arthur stood upright, with lips compressed, hands clasped together, while the sheyk and his companions seemed struck by his courage and high spirit. Then one of them--a small, ugly fellow, who had some pretensions to be considered the sheyk's next heir--cried, 'Out on the infidel dog!' and set the example of throwing a handful of dust at him. The crowd who watched around were not slow to follow the example, and Arthur thought he was actually being stoned; but the missiles were for the most part not harmful, only disgusting, blinding, and confusing. There was a tremendous hubbub of vituperation, and he was at last actually stunned by a blow, waking to find himself alone, and with hands and feet bound, in a dirty little shed appropriated to camels. Should he ever be allowed to see poor little Ulysse again, or to speak to Yusuf, in whom lay their only faint hope of redemption? He was helpless, and the boy was at the mercy of the Moors. Was he utterly forsaken? It was growing late in the day, and he had had no food for many hours. Was he to be neglected and starved? At last he heard steps approaching, and the door was opened by the man who had led the assault on him, who addressed him as 'Son of an old ass--dog of a slave,' bade him stand up and show his height, at the same time cutting the cords that bound him. It was an additional pang that it was to Yusuf that he was thus to exhibit himself, no doubt in order that the merchant should carry a description of him to some likely purchaser. He could not comprehend the words that passed, but it was very bitter to be handled like a horse at a fair--doubly so that he, a Hope of Burnside, should thus be treated by Partan Jeannie's son. There ensued outside the shrieking and roaring which always accompanied a bargain, and which lasted two full hours. Finally Yusuf looked into the hut, and roughly said in Arabic, 'Come over to me, dog; thou art mine. Kiss the shoe of thy master'--adding in his native tongue, 'For ance, sir. It maun be done before these loons.' Certainly the ceremony would have been felt as less humiliating towards almost anybody else, but Arthur endured it; and then was led away to the tents beyond the gate. 'There, sir,' said Yusuf, 'it ill sorts your father's son to be in sic a case, but it canna be helpit. I culd na leave behind the bonny Scots tongue, let alane the gude Leddy Hope's son.' 'You have been very good to me, Yusuf,' said Arthur, his pride much softened by the merchant's evident sense of the situation. 'I know you mean me well, but the boy--' 'Hoots! the bairn is happy eno'. He will come to higher preferment than even you or I. Why, mon, an Aga of the Janissaries is as good as the Deuk himsel'.' 'Yusuf, I am very grateful--I believe you must have paid heavily to spare me from ill usage.' 'Ye may say that, sir. Forty piastres of Tunis, and eight mules, and twa pair of silver-mounted pistols. The extortionate rogue wad hae had the little dagger, but I stood out against that.' 'I see, I am deeply beholden,' said Arthur; 'but it would be tenfold better if you would take him instead of me!' 'What for suld I do that? He is nae countryman of mine--one side French and the other Irish. He is naught to me.' 'He is heir to a noble house,' waged Arthur. 'They will reward you amply for saving him.' 'Mair like to girn at me for a Moor. Na, na! Hae na I dune enough for ye, Maister Arthur--giving half my beasties, and more than half my silver? Canna ye be content without that whining bairn?' 'I should be a forsworn man to be content to leave the child, whose dead mother prayed me to protect him, and those who will turn him from her faith. See, now, I am a man, and can guard myself, by the grace of God; but to leave the poor child here would be letting these men work their will on him ere any ransom could come. His mother would deem it giving him up to perdition. Let me remain here, and take the helpless child. You know how to bargain. His price might be my ransom.' 'Ay, when the jackals and hyenas have picked your banes, or you have died under the lash, chained to the oar, as I hae seen, Maister Arthur.' 'Better so than betray the dead woman's trust. How no--' For there was a pattering of feet, a cry of 'Arthur, Arthur!' and sobbing, screaming, and crying, Ulysse threw himself on his friend's breast. He was pursued by one or two of the hangers-on of the sheyk's household, and the first comer seized him by the arm; but he clung to Arthur, screamed and kicked, and the old nurse who had come hobbling after coaxed in vain. He cried out in a mixture of Arabic and French that he _would_ sleep with Arthur--Arthur must put him to bed; no one should take him away. 'Let him stay,' responded Yusuf; 'his time will come soon enough.' Indulgence to children was the rule, and there was an easy good-nature about the race, which made them ready to defer the storm, and acquiesce in the poor little fellow remaining for another evening with that last remnant of his home to whom he always reverted at nightfall. He held trembling by Arthur till all were gone, then looked about in terror, and required to be assured that no one was coming to take him away. 'They shall not,' he cried. 'Arthur, you will not leave me alone? They are all gone--Mamma, and Estelle, and _la bonne_, and Laurent, and my uncle, and all, and you will not go.' 'Not now, not to-night, my dear little mannie,' said Arthur, tears in his eyes for the first time throughout these misfortunes. 'Not now! No, never!' said the boy hugging him almost to choking. 'That naughty Ben Kader said they had sold you for a slave, and you were going away; but I knew I should find you--you are not a slave!--you are not black--' 'Ah! Ulysse, it is too true; I am--' 'No! no! no!' the child stamped, and hung on him in a passion of tears. 'You shall not be a slave. My papa shall come with his soldiers and set you free.' Altogether the boy's vehemence, agitation, and terror were such that Arthur found it impossible to do anything but soothe and hush him, as best might be, till his sobs subsided gradually, still heaving his little chest even after he fell asleep in the arms of his unaccustomed nurse, who found himself thus baffled in using this last and only opportunity of trying to strengthen the child's faith, and was also hindered from pursuing Yusuf, who had left the tent. And if it were separation that caused all this distress, what likelihood that Yusuf would encumber himself with a child who had shown such powers of wailing and screaming? He durst not stir nor speak for fear of wakening the boy, even when Yusuf returned and stretched himself on his mat, drawing a thick woollen cloth over him, for the nights were chill. Long did Arthur lie awake under the strange sense of slavery and helplessness, and utter uncertainty as to his fate, expecting, in fact, that Yusuf meant to keep him as a sort of tame animal to talk Scotch; but hoping to work on him in time to favour an escape, and at any rate to despatch a letter to Algiers, as a forlorn hope for the ultimate redemption of the poor little unconscious child who lay warm and heavy across his breast. Certainly, Arthur had never so prayed for aid, light, and deliverance as now! CHAPTER VIII--THE SEARCH 'The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks, The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs. The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.' TENNYSON. Arthur fell asleep at last, and did not waken till after sunrise, nor did Ulysse, who must have been exhausted with crying and struggling. When they did awaken, Arthur thinking with heavy heart that the moment of parting was come, he saw indeed the other three slaves busied in making bales of the merchandise; but the master, as well as the Abyssinian, Fareek, and the little negro were all missing. Bekir, who was a kind of foreman, and looked on the new white slave with some jealousy, roughly pointed to some coarse food, and in reply to the question whether the merchant was taking leave of the sheyk, intimated that it was no business of theirs, and assumed authority to make his new fellow-slave assist in the hardest of the packing. Arthur had no heart to resist, much as it galled him to be ordered about by this rude fellow. It was only a taste, as he well knew, of what he had embraced, and he was touched by poor little Ulysse's persistency in keeping as close as possible, though his playfellows came down and tried first to lure, then to drag him away, and finally remained to watch the process of packing up. Though Bekir was too disdainful to reply to his fellow-slave's questions, Arthur picked up from answers to the Moors who came down that Yusuf had recollected that he had not finished his transactions with a little village of Cabyle coral and sponge-fishers on the coast, and had gone down thither, taking the little negro, to whom the headman seemed to have taken a fancy, so as to become a possible purchaser, and with the Abyssinian to attend to the mules. A little before sundown Yusuf returned. Fareek lifted down a pannier covered by a crimson and yellow kerchief, and Yusuf declared, with much apparent annoyance, that the child was sick, and that this had frustrated the sale. He was asleep, must be carried into the tent, and not disturbed: for though the Cabyles had not purchased him, there was no affording to loose anything of so much value. Moreover, observing Ulysse still hovering round the Scot, he said, 'You may bide here the night, laddie, I ha tell't the sheyk;' and he repeated the same to the slaves in Arabic, dismissing them to hold a parting feast on a lamb stuffed with pistachio nuts, together with their village friends. Then drawing near to Arthur, he said, 'Can ye gar yon wean keep a quiet sough, if we make him pass for the little black?' Arthur started with joy, and stammered some words of intense relief and gratitude. 'The deed's no dune yet,' said Yusuf, 'and it is ower like to end in our leaving a' our banes on the sands! But a wilfu' man maun have his way,' he repeated; 'so, sir, if it be your wull, ye'd better speak to the bairn, for we must make a blackamoor of him while there is licht to do it, or Bekir, whom I dinna lippen to, comes back frae the feast.' Ulysse, being used to Irish-English, had little understanding of Yusuf's broad Scotch; but he was looking anxiously from one to the other of the speakers, and when Arthur explained to him that the disguise, together with perfect silence, was the only hope of not being left behind among the Moors, and the best chance of getting back to his home and dear ones again, he perfectly understood. As to the blackening, for which Yusuf had prepared a mixture to be laid on with a feather, it was perfectly enchanting to _faire la comedie_. He laughed so much that he had to be peremptorily hushed, and they were sensible of the danger that in case of a search he might betray himself to his Moorish friends; and Arthur tried to make him comprehend the extreme danger, making him cry so that his cheeks had to be touched up. His eyes and hair were dark, and the latter was cut to its shortest by Yusuf, who further managed to fasten some tufts of wool dipped in the black unguent to the kerchief that bound his head. The childish features had something of the Irish cast, which lent itself to the transformation, and in the scanty garments of the little negro Arthur owned that he should never have known the small French gentleman. Arthur was full of joy--Yusuf gruff, brief, anxious, like one acting under some compulsion most unwillingly, and even despondently, but apparently constrained by a certain instinctive feudal feeling, which made him follow the desires of the young Border laird's son. All had been packed beforehand, and there was nothing to be done but to strike the tents, saddle the mules, and start. Ulysse, still very sleepy, was lifted into the pannier, almost at the first streak of dawn, while the slaves were grumbling at being so early called up; and to a Moor who wakened up and offered to take charge of the little Bey, Yusuf replied that the child had been left in the sheyk's house. So they were safely out at the outer gate, and proceeding along a beautiful path leading above the cliffs. The mules kept in one long string, Bekir with the foremost, which was thus at some distance from the hindmost, which carried Ulysse and was attended by Arthur, while the master rode his own animals and gave directions. The fiction of illness was kept up, and when the bright eyes looked up in too lively a manner, Yusuf produced some of the sweets, which were always part of his stock in trade, as a bribe to quietness. At sunrise, the halt for prayer was a trial to Arthur's intense anxiety, and far more so was the noontide one for sleep. He even ventured a remonstrance, but was answered, 'Mair haste, worse speed. Our lives are no worth a boddle till the search is over.' They were on the shady side of a great rock overhung by a beautiful creeping plant, and with a spring near at hand, and Yusuf, in leisurely fashion, squatted down, caused Arthur to lift out the child, who was fast asleep again, and the mules to be allowed to feed, and distributed some dried goat's flesh and dates; but Ulysse, somewhat to Arthur's alarm, did not wake sufficiently to partake. Looking up in alarm, he met a sign from Yusuf and presently a whisper, 'No hurt done--'tis safer thus--' And by this time there were alarming sounds on the air. The sheyk and two of the chief men of El Arnieh were on horseback and armed with matchlocks; and the whole '_posse_ of the village were following on foot, with yells and vituperations of the entire ancestry of the merchant, and far more complicated and furious threats than Arthur could follow; but he saw Yusuf go forward to meet them with the utmost cool courtesy. They seemed somewhat discomposed: Yusuf appeared to condole with them on the loss, and, waving his hands, put all his baggage at their service for a search, letting them run spears through the bales, and overturn the baskets of sponges, and search behind every rock. When they approached the sleeping boy, Arthur, with throbbing heart, dimly comprehended that Yusuf was repeating the story of the disappointment of a purchase caused by his illness, and lifting for a moment the covering laid over him to show the bare black legs and arms. There might also have been some hint of infection which, in spite of all Moslem belief in fate, deterred Abou Ben Zegri from an over-close inspection. Yusuf further invented a story of having put the little Frank in charge of a Moorish woman in the adowara; but added he was so much attached to the Son of the Sea, that most likely he had wandered out in search of him, and the only wise course would be to seek him before he was devoured by any of the wild beasts near home. Nevertheless, there was a courteous and leisurely smoking of pipes and drinking of coffee before the sheyk and his followers turned homewards. To Arthur's alarm and surprise, however, Yusuf did not resume the journey, but told Bekir that there would hardly be a better halting-place within their powers, as the sun was already some way on his downward course; and besides, it would take some time to repack the goods which had been cast about in every direction during the search. The days were at their shortest, though that was not very short, closing in at about five o'clock, so that there was not much time to spare. Arthur began to feel some alarm at the continued drowsiness of the little boy, who only once muttered something, turned round, and slept again. 'What have you done to him?' asked Arthur anxiously. 'The poppy,' responded Yusuf. 'Never fash yoursel'. The bairn willna be a hair the waur, and 'tis better so than that he shuld rax a' our craigs.' Yusuf's peril was so much the greater, that it was impossible to object to any of his precautions, especially as he might take offence and throw the whole matter over; but it was impossible not to chafe secretly at the delay, which seemed incomprehensible. Indeed, the merchant was avoiding private communication with Arthur, only assuming the master, and ordering about in a peremptory fashion which it was very hard to digest. After the sunset orisons had been performed, Yusuf regaled his slaves with a donation of coffee and tobacco, but with a warning to Arthur not to partake, and to keep to windward of them. So too did the Abyssinian, and the cause of the warning was soon evident, as Bekir and his companion nodded, and then sank into a slumber as sound as that of the little Frenchman. Indeed, Arthur himself was weary enough to fall asleep soon after sundown, in spite of his anxiety, and the stars were shining like great lamps when Yusuf awoke him. One mule stood equipped beside him, and held by the Abyssinian. Yusuf pointed to the child, and said, 'Lift him upon it.' Arthur obeyed, finding a pannier empty on one side to receive the child, who only muttered and writhed instead of awaking. The other side seemed laden. Yusuf led the animal, retracing their way, while fire-flies flitted around with their green lights, and the distant laughter of hyenas gave Arthur a thrill of loathing horror. Huge bats fluttered round, and once or twice grim shapes crossed their path. 'Uncanny beasties,' quoth Yusuf; 'but they will soon be behind us.' He turned into a rapidly-sloping path. Arthur felt a fresh salt breeze in his face, and his heart leapt up with hope. In about an hour and a half they had reached a cove, shut in by dark rocks which in the night looked immeasurable, but on the white beach a few little huts were dimly discernible, one with a light in it. The sluggish dash of waves could be heard on the shore; there was a sense of infinite space and breadth before them; and Jupiter sitting in the north- west was like an enormous lamp, casting a pathway of light shimmering on the waters to lead the exiles home. Three or four boats were drawn up on the beach; a man rose up from within one, and words in a low voice were exchanged between him and Yusuf; while Fareek, grinning so that his white teeth could be seen in the starlight, unloaded the mule, placing its packs, a long Turkish blunderbuss, and two skins of water, in the boat, and arranging a mat on which Arthur could lay the sleeping child. Well might the youth's heart bound with gratitude, as, unmindful of all the further risks and uncertainties to be encountered, he almost saw his way back to Burnside! CHAPTER IX--ESCAPE 'Beside the helm he sat, steering expert, Nor sleep fell ever on his eyes that watch'd Intent the Pleiads, tardy in decline, Bootes and the Bear, call'd else the Wain, Which in his polar prison circling, looks Direct towards Orion, and alone Of these sinks never to the briny deep.' _Odyssey_ (COWPER). The boat was pushed off, the Abyssinian leapt into it; Arthur paused to pour out his thankfulness to Yusuf, but was met with the reply, 'Hout awa'! Time enugh for that--in wi' ye.' And fancying there was some alarm, he sprang in, and to his amazement found Yusuf instantly at his side, taking the rudder, and giving some order to Fareek, who had taken possession of a pair of oars; while the waters seemed to flash and glitter a welcome at every dip. 'You are coming! you are coming!' exclaimed Arthur, clasping the merchant's hand, almost beside himself with joy. 'Sma' hope wad there be of a callant like yersel' and the wean there winning awa' by yer lane,' growled Yusuf. 'You have given up all for us.' 'There wasna muckle to gie,' returned the sponge merchant. 'Sin' the gudewife and her bit bairnies at Bona were gane, I hadna the heart to gang thereawa', nor quit the sound o' the bonny Scots tongue. I wad as soon gang to the bottom as to the toom house. For dinna ye trow yersells ower sicker e'en the noo.' 'Is there fear of pursuit?' 'No mickle o' that. The folk here are what they ca' Cabyles, a douce set, not forgathering with Arabs nor wi' Moors. I wad na gang among them till the search was over to-day; but yesterday I saw yon carle, and coft the boatie frae him for the wee blackamoor and the mule. The Moors at El Aziz are not seafaring; and gin the morn they jalouse what we have done, we have the start of them. Na, I'm not feared for them; but forbye that, this is no the season for an open boatie wi' a crew of three and a wean. Gin we met an Algerian or Tunisian cruiser, as we are maist like to do, a bullet or drooning wad be ower gude in their e'en for us--for me, that is to say. They wad spare the bairn, and may think you too likely a lad to hang on the walls like a split corbie on the woodsman's lodge.' 'Well, Yusuf, my name is Hope, you know,' said Arthur. 'God has brought us so far, and will scarce leave us now. I feel three times the man that I was when I lay down this evening. Do we keep to the north, where we are sure to come to a Christian land in time?' 'Easier said than done. Ye little ken what the currents are in this same sea, or deed ye'll soon ken when we get into them.' Arthur satisfied himself that they were making for the north by looking at the Pole Star, so much lower than he was used to see it in Scotland that he hardly recognised his old friend; but, as he watched the studded belt of the Hunter and the glittering Pleiades, the Horatian dread of _Nimbosus Orion_ occurred to him as a thought to be put away. Meantime there was a breeze from the land, and the sail was hoisted. Yusuf bade both Arthur and Fareek lie down to sleep, for their exertions would be wanted by and by, since it would not be safe to use the sail by daylight. It was very cold--wild blasts coming down from the mountains; but Arthur crept under the woollen mantle that had been laid over Ulysse, and was weary enough to sleep soundly. Both were awakened by the hauling down of the mast; and the little boy, who had quite slept off the drug, scrambling out from under the covering, was astonished beyond measure at finding himself between the glittering, sparkling expanse of sea and the sky, where the sun had just leapt up in a blaze of gold. The white summits of Atlas were tipped with rosy light, beautiful to behold, though the voyagers had much rather have been out of sight of them. 'How much have we made, Yusuf?' began Arthur. 'Tam Armstrong, so please you, sir! Yusuf's dead and buried the noo; and if I were farther beyant the grip of them that kenned him, my thrapple would feel all the sounder!' This day was, he further explained, the most perilous one, since they were by no means beyond the track of vessels plying on the coast; and as a very jagged and broken cluster of rocks lay near, he decided on availing themselves of the shelter they afforded. The boat was steered into a narrow channel between two which stood up like the fangs of a great tooth, and afforded a pleasant shade; but there was such a screaming and calling of gulls, terns, cormorants, and all manner of other birds, as they entered the little strait, and such a cloud of them hovered and whirled overhead, that Tam uttered imprecations on their skirling, and bade his companions lie close and keep quiet till they had settled again, lest the commotion should betray that the rocks were the lair of fugitives. It was not easy to keep Ulysse quiet, for he was in raptures at the rush of winged creatures, and no less so at the wonderful sea-anemones and starfish in the pools, where long streamers of weed of beautiful colours floated on the limpid water. Nothing reduced him to stillness but the sight of the dried goat's flesh and dates that Tam Armstrong produced, and for which all had appetites, which had to be checked, since no one could tell how long it would be before any kind of haven could be reached. Arthur bathed himself and his charge in a pool, after Tam had ascertained that no many-armed squid or cuttlefish lurked within it. And while Ulysse disported himself like a little fish, Arthur did his best to restore him to his natural complexion, and tried to cleanse the little garments, which showed only too plainly the lack of any change, and which were the only Frank or Christian clothes among them, since young Hope himself had been almost stripped when he came ashore, and wore the usual garb of Yusuf's slaves. Presently Fareek made an imperative sign to hush the child's merry tongue; and peering forth in intense anxiety, the others perceived a lateen sail passing perilously near, but happily keeping aloof from the sharp reef of rocks around their shelter. Arthur had forgotten the child's prayers and his own, but Ulysse connected them with dressing, and the alarm of the passing ship had recalled them to the young man's mind, though he felt shy as he found that Tam Armstrong was not asleep, but was listening and watching with his keen gray eyes under their grizzled brows. Presently, when Ulysse was dropping to sleep again, the ex-merchant began to ask questions with the intelligence of his shrewd Scottish brains. The stern Calvinism of the North was wont to consign to utter neglect the outcast border of civilisation, where there were no decent parents to pledge themselves; and Partan Jeannie's son had grown up well-nigh in heathen ignorance among fisher lads and merchant sailors, till it had been left for him to learn among the Mohammedans both temperance and devotional habits. His whole faith and understanding would have been satisfied for ever; but there had been strange yearnings within him ever since he had lost his wife and children, and these had not passed away when Arthur Hope came in his path. Like many another renegade, he could not withstand the attraction of his native tongue; and in this case it was doubled by the feudal attachment of the district to the family of Burnside, and a grateful remembrance of the lady who had been one of the very few persons who had ever done a kindly deed by the little outcast. He had broken with all his Moslem ties for Arthur Hope's sake; and these being left behind, he began to make some inquiries about that Christian faith to which he must needs return--if return be the right word in the case of one who knew it so little when he had abjured it. And Arthur had not been bred to the grim reading of the doctrine of predestination which had condemned poor Tam, even before he had embraced the faith of the Prophet. Boyish, and not over thoughtful, the youth, when brought face to face with apostacy, had been ready to give life or liberty rather than deny his Lord; and deepened by that great decision, he could hold up that Lord and Redeemer in colours that made Tam see that his clinging to his faith was not out of mere honour and constancy, but that Mohammed had been a poor and wretched substitute for Him whom the poor fellow had denied, not knowing what he did. 'Weel!' he said, 'gin the Deacon and the auld aunties had tellt me as mickle about Him, thae Moors might ha' preached their thrapples sair for Tam. Mashallah! Maister Arthur, do ye think, noo, He can forgie a puir carle for turning frae Him an' disowning Him?' 'I am sure of it, Tam. He forgives all who come to Him--and you--you did it in ignorance.' 'And you trow na that I am a vessel of wrath, as they aye said?' 'No, no, no, Tam. How could that be with one who has done what you have for us? There is good in you--noble goodness, Tam; and who could have put it there but God, the Holy Spirit? I believe myself He was leading you all the time, though you did not know it; making you a better man first, and now, through this brave kindness to us, bringing you back to be a real true Christian and know Him.' Arthur felt as if something put the words into his mouth, but he felt them with all his heart, and the tears were in his eyes. At sundown Tam grew restless. Force of habit impelled him to turn to Mecca and make his devotions as usual, and after nearly kneeling down on the flat stone, he turned to Arthur and said, 'I canna wed do without the bit prayer, sir. 'No, indeed, Tam. Only let it be in the right Name.' And Arthur knelt down beside him and said the Lord's Prayer--then, under a spell of bashfulness, muttered special entreaty for protection and safety. They were to embark again now that darkness would veil their movements, but the wind blew so much from the north that they could not raise the sail. The oars were taken by Tam and Fareek at first, but when they came into difficult currents Arthur changed places with the former. And thus the hours passed. The Mediterranean may be in our eyes a European lake, but it was quite large enough to be a desert of sea and sky to the little crew of an open boat, even though they were favoured by the weather. Otherwise, indeed, they must have perished in the first storm. They durst not sail except by night, and then only with northerly winds, nor could there be much rest, since they could not lay to, and drift with the currents, lest they should be carried back to the African coast. Only one of the three men could sleep at a time, and that by one of the others taking both oars, and in time this could not but become very exhausting. It was true that all the coasts to the north were of Christian lands; but in their Moorish garments and in perfect ignorance of Italian, strangers might fare no better in Sardinia or Sicily than in Africa, and Spain might be no better; but Tam endeavoured to keep a north- westerly course, thinking from what Arthur had said that in this direction there was more chance of being picked up by a French vessel. Would their strength and provisions hold out? Of this there was serious doubt. Late in the year as it was, the heat and glare were as distressing by day as was the cold by night, and the continued exertion of rowing produced thirst, which made it very difficult to husband the water in the skins. Tam and Fareek were both tough, and inured to heat and privation; but Arthur, scarce yet come to his full height, and far from having attained proportionate robustness and muscular strength, could not help flagging, though, whenever steering was of minor importance, Tam gave him the rudder, moved by his wan looks, for he never complained, even when fragments of dry goat's flesh almost choked his parched mouth. The boy was never allowed to want for anything save water; but it was very hard to hear him fretting for it. Tam took the goatskin into his own keeping, and more than once uttered a rough reproof, and yet Arthur saw him give the child half his own precious ration when it must have involved grievous suffering. The promise about giving the cup of cold water to a little one could not but rise to his lips. 'Cauld! and I wish it were cauld!' was all the response Tam made; but his face showed some gratification. This was no season for traffic, and they had barely seen a sail or two in the distance, and these only such as the experienced eyes of the ex-sponge merchant held to be dangerous. Deadly lassitude began to seize the young Scot; he began scarcely to heed what was to become of them, and had not energy to try to console Ulysse, who, having in an unwatched moment managed to swallow some sea water, was crying and wailing under the additional misery he had inflicted on himself. The sun beat down with noontide force, when on that fourth day, turning from its scorching, his languid eye espied a sail on the northern horizon. 'See,' he cried; 'that is not the way of the Moors.' 'Bismillah! I beg your pardon, sir,' cried Tam, but said no more, only looked intently. Gradually, gradually the spectacle rose on their view fuller and fuller, not the ruddy wings of the Algerine or Italian, but the square white castle-like tiers of sails rising one above another, bearing along in a south-easterly direction. 'English or French,' said Tam, with a long breath, for her colours and build were not yet discernible. 'Mashallah! I beg pardon. I mean, God grant she pass us not by!' The mast was hastily raised, with Tam's turban unrolled, floating at the top of it; and while he and Fareek plied their oars with might and main, he bade Arthur fire off at intervals the blunderbuss, which had hitherto lain idle at the bottom of the boat. How long the intense suspense lasted they knew not ere Arthur cried, 'They are slackening sail! Thank God. Tam, you have saved us! English!' 'Not so fast!' Tam uttered an Arabic and then a Scottish interjection. Their signal had been seen by other eyes. An unmistakable Algerine, with the crescent flag, was bearing down on them from the opposite direction. 'Rascals. Do they not dread the British flag?' cried Arthur. 'Surely that will protect us?' 'They are smaller and lighter, and with their galley slaves can defy the wind, and loup off like a flea in a blanket,' returned Tam, grimly. 'Mair by token, they guess what we are, and will hold on to hae my life's bluid if naething mair! Here! Gie us a soup of the water, and the last bite of flesh. 'Twill serve us the noo, find we shall need it nae mair any way.' Arthur fed him, for he durst not slacken rowing for a moment. Then seeing Fareek, who had borne the brunt of the fatigue, looking spent, the youth, after swallowing a few morsels and a little foul-smelling drink, took the second oar, while double force seemed given to the long arms lately so weary, and both pulled on in silent, grim desperation. Ulysse had given one scream at seeing the last of the water swallowed, but he too, understood the situation, and obeyed Arthur's brief words, 'Kneel down and pray for us, my boy.' The Abyssinian was evidently doing the same, after having loaded the blunderbuss; but it was no longer necessary to use this as a signal, since the frigate had lowered her boat, which was rapidly coming towards them. But, alas! still more swiftly, as it seemed to those terrified eyes, came the Moorish boat--longer, narrower, more favoured by currents and winds, flying like a falcon towards its prey. It was a fearful race. Arthur's head began to swim, his breath to labour, his arms to move stiffly as a thresher's flail; but, just as power was failing him, an English cheer came over the waters, and restored strength for a few more resolute strokes. Then came some puffs of smoke from the pirate's boat, a report, a jerk to their own, a fresh dash forward, even as Fareek fired, giving a moment's check to the enemy. There was a louder cheer, several shots from the English boat, a cloud from the ship's side. Then Arthur was sensible of a relaxation of effort, and that the chase was over, then that the British boat was alongside, friendly voices ringing in his ears, 'How now, mates? Runaways, eh? Where d'ye hail from?' 'Scottish! British!' panted out Arthur, unable to utter more, faint, giddy, and astounded by the cheers around him, and the hands stretched out in welcome. He scarcely saw or understood. 'Queer customers here! What! a child! Who are you, my little man? And what's this? A Moor! He's hit--pretty hard too.' This brought back Arthur's reeling senses in one flash of horror, at the sight of Tam, bleeding fast in the bottom of the boat. 'O Tam! Tam! He saved me! He is Scottish too,' cried Arthur. 'Sir, is he alive?' 'I think so,' said the officer, who had bent over Tam. 'We'll have him aboard in a minute, and see what the doctor can do with him. You seem to have had a narrow escape.' Arthur was too busy endeavouring to staunch the blood which flowed fast from poor Tam's side to make much reply, but Ulysse, perched on the officer's knee, was answering for him in mixed English and French. 'Moi, je suis le Chevalier de Bourke! My papa is ambassador to Sweden. This gentleman is his secretary. We were shipwrecked--and M. Arture and I swam away together. The Moors were good to us, and wanted to make us Moors; but M. Arture said it would be wicked. And Yusuf bought him for a slave; but that was only from _faire la comedie_. He is _bon Chretien_ after all, and so is poor Fareek, only he is dumb. Yusuf--that is, Tam--made me all black, and changed me for his little negro boy; and we got into the boat, and it was very hot, and oh! I am so thirsty. And now M. Arture will take me to Monsieur mon Pere, and get me some nice clothes again,' concluded the young gentleman, who, in this moment of return to civilised society, had become perfectly aware of his own rank and importance. Arthur only looked up to verify the child's statements, which had much struck the lieutenant. Their boat had by this time been towed alongside of the frigate, and poor Tam was hoisted on board, and the surgeon was instantly at hand; but he said at once that the poor fellow was fast dying, and that it would be useless torture to carry him below for examination. A few words passed with the captain, and then the little Chevalier was led away to tell his own tale, which he was doing with a full sense of his own importance; but presently the captain returned, and beckoned to Arthur, who had been kneeling beside poor Tam, moistening his lips, and bathing his face, as he lay gasping and apparently unconscious, except that he had gripped hold of his broad sash or girdle when it was taken off. 'The child tells me he is Comte de Bourke's son,' said the captain, in a tentative manner, as if doubtful whether he should be understood, and certainly Arthur looked more Moorish than European. 'Yes, sir! He was on his way with his mother to join his father when we were taken by a Moorish corsair.' 'But you are not French?' said the captain, recognising the tones. 'No, sir; Scottish--Arthur Maxwell Hope. I was to have gone as the Count's secretary.' 'You have escaped from the Moors? I could not understand what the boy said. Where are the lady and the rest?' Arthur as briefly as he could, for he was very anxious to return to poor Tam, explained the wreck and the subsequent adventures, saying that he feared the poor Countess was lost, but that he had seen her daughter and some of her suite on a rock. Captain Beresford was horrified at the idea of a Christian child among the wild Arabs. His station was Minorca, but he had just been at the Bay of Rosas, where poor Comte de Bourke's anxiety and distress about his wife and children were known, and he had received a request amounting to orders to try to obtain intelligence about them, so that he held it to be within his duty to make at once for Djigheli Bay. For further conversation was cut short by sounds of articulate speech from poor Tam. Arthur turned hastily, and the captain proceeded to give his orders. 'Is Maister Hope here?' 'Here! Yes. O Tam, dear Tam, if I could do anything!' cried Arthur. 'I canna see that well,' said Tam, with a sound of anxiety. 'Where's my sash?' 'This is it, in your own hand,' said Arthur, thinking he was wandering, but the other hand sought one of the ample folds, which was sewn over, and weighty. 'Tak' it; tak' tent of it; ye'll need the siller. Four hunder piastres of Tunis, not countin' zeechins, and other sma' coin.' 'Shall I send them to any one at Eyemouth?' Tam almost laughed. 'Na, na; keep them and use them yersell, sir. There's nane at hame that wad own puir Tam. The leddy, your mither, an' you hae been mair to me than a' beside that's above ground, and what wad ye do wi'out the siller?' 'O Tam! I owe all and everything to you. And now--' Tam looked up, as Arthur's utterance was choked, and a great tear fell on his face. 'Wha wad hae said,' murmured he, 'that a son of Burnside wad be greetin' for Partan Jeannie's son?' 'For my best friend. What have you not saved me from! and I can do nothing!' 'Nay, sir. Say but thae words again.' 'Oh for a clergyman! Or if I had a Bible to read you the promises.' 'You shall have one,' said the captain, who had returned to his side. The surgeon muttered that the lad seemed as good as a parson; but Arthur heard him not, and was saying what prayers came to his mind in this stress, when, even as the captain returned, the last struggle came on. Once more Tam looked up, saying, 'Ye'll be good to puir Fareek;' and with a word more, 'Oh, Christ: will He save such as I?' all was over. 'Come away, you can do nothing more,' said the doctor. 'You want looking to yourself.' For Arthur tottered as he tried to rise, and needed the captain's kind hand as he gained his feet. 'Sir,' he said, as the tears gushed to his eyes, 'he _does_ deserve all honour--my only friend and deliverer.' 'I see,' said Captain Beresford, much moved; 'whatever he has been, he died a Christian. He shall have Christian burial. And this fellow?' pointing to poor Fareek, whose grief was taking vent in moans and sobs. 'Christian--Abyssinian, but dumb,' Arthur explained; and having his promise that all respect should be paid to poor Tam's corpse, he let the doctor lead him away, for he had now time to feel how sun-scorched and exhausted he was, with giddy, aching head, and legs cramped and stiff, arms strained and shoulders painful after his three days and nights of the boat. His thirst, too, seemed unquenchable, in spite of drinks almost unconsciously taken, and though hungry he had little will to eat. The surgeon made him take a warm bath, and then fed him with soup, after which, on a promise of being called in due time, he consented to deposit himself in a hammock, and presently fell asleep. When he awoke he found that clothes had been provided for him--naval uniforms; but that could not be helped, and the comfort was great. He was refreshed, but still very stiff. However, he dressed and was just ready, when the surgeon came to see whether he were in condition to be summoned, for it was near sundown, and all hands were piped up to attend poor Tam's funeral rites. His generous and faithful deed had eclipsed the memory that he was a renegade, and, indeed, it had been in such ignorance that he had had little to deny. All the sailors stood as respectfully as if he had been one of themselves while the captain read a portion of the Burial Office. Such honours would never have been his in his native land, where at that time even Episcopalians themselves could not have ventured on any out-door rites; and Arthur was thus doubly struck and impressed, when, as the corpse, sewn in sail-cloth and heavily weighted, was launched into the blue waves, he heard the words committing the body to the deep, till the sea should give up her dead. He longed to be able to translate them to poor Fareek, who was weeping and howling so inconsolably as to attest how good a master he had lost. Perhaps Tam's newly-found or recovered Christianity might have been put to hard shocks as to the virtues he had learnt among the Moslems. At any rate Arthur often had reason to declare in after life that the poor renegade might have put many a better-trained Christian to shame. CHAPTER X--ON BOARD THE 'CALYPSO' 'From when this youth? His country, name, and birth declare!' SCOTT. 'You had forgotten this legacy, Mr. Hope,' said Captain Beresford, taking Arthur into his cabin, 'and, judging by its weight, it is hardly to be neglected. I put it into my locker for security.' 'Thank you, sir,' said Arthur. 'The question is whether I ought to take it. I wished for your advice.' 'I heard what passed,' said the captain. 'I should call your right as complete as if you had a will made by a half a dozen lawyers. When we get into port, a few crowns to the ship's company to drink your health, and all will be right. Will you count it?' The folds were undone, and little piles made of the gold, but neither the captain nor Arthur were much the wiser. The purser might have computed it, but Captain Beresford did not propose this, thinking perhaps that it was safer that no report of a treasure should get abroad in the ship. He made a good many inquiries, which he had deferred till Arthur should be in a fitter condition for answering, first about the capture and wreck, and what the young man had been able to gather about the Cabeleyzes. Then, as the replies showed that he had a gentleman before him, Captain Beresford added that he could not help asking, '_Que diable allait il faire dans cette galere_?' 'Sir,' said Arthur, 'I do not know whether you will think it your duty to make me a prisoner, but I had better tell you the whole truth.' 'Oho!' said the captain; 'but you are too young! You could never have been out with--with--we'll call him the Chevalier.' 'I ran away from school,' replied Arthur, colouring. 'I was a mere boy, and I never was attainted,' explained Arthur, blushing. 'I have been with my Lord Nithsdale, and my mother thought I could safely come home, and that if I came from Sweden my brother could not think I compromised him.' 'Your brother?' 'Lord Burnside. He is at Court, in favour, they say, with King George. He is my half-brother; my mother is a Maxwell.' 'There is a Hope in garrison at Port Mahon--a captain,' said the captain. 'Perhaps he will advise you what to do if you are sick of Jacobite intrigue and mystery, and ready to serve King George.' Arthur's face lighted up. 'Will it be James Hope of Ryelands, or Dickie Hope of the Lynn, or--?' Captain Beresford held up his hands. 'Time must show that, my young friend,' he said, smiling. 'And now I think the officers expect you to join their mess in the gunroom.' There Arthur found the little Chevalier strutting about in an adaptation of the smallest midshipman's uniform, and the centre of an admiring party, who were equally diverted by his consequential airs and by his accounts of his sports among the Moors. Happy fellow, he could adapt himself to any society, and was ready to be the pet and plaything of the ship's company, believing himself, when he thought of anything beyond the present, to be full on the road to his friends again. Fareek was a much more difficult charge, for Arthur had hardly a word that he could understand. He found the poor fellow coiled up in a corner, just where he had seen his former master's remains disappear, still moaning and weeping bitterly. As Arthur called to him he looked up for a moment, then crawled forward, striking his forehead at intervals against the deck. He was about to kiss the feet of his former fellow- slave, the glittering gold, blue, and white of whose borrowed dress no doubt impressed him. Arthur hastily started back, to the amazement of the spectators, and called out a negative--one of the words sure to be first learnt. He tried to take Fareek's hand and raise him from his abject attitude; but the poor fellow continued kneeling, and not only were no words available to tell him that he was free, but it was extremely doubtful whether freedom was any boon to him. One thing, however, he did evidently understand--he pointed to the St. George's pennant with the red cross, made the sign, looked an interrogation, and on Arthur's reply, 'Christians,' and reiteration of the word 'Salem,' _peace_, he folded his arms and looked reassured. 'Ay, ay, my hearty,' said the big boatswain, 'ye've got under the old flag, and we'll soon make you see the difference. Cut out your poor tongue, have they, the rascals, and made a dummy of you? I wish my cat was about their ears! Come along with you, and you shall find what British grog is made of.' And a remarkable friendship arose between the two, the boatswain patronising Fareek on every occasion, and roaring at him as if he were deaf as well as dumb, and Fareek appearing quite confident under his protection, and establishing a system of signs, which were fortunately a universal language. The Abyssinian evidently viewed himself as young Hope's servant or slave, probably thinking himself part of his late master's bequest, and there was no common language between them in which to explain the difference or ascertain the poor fellow's wishes. He was a slightly-made, dexterous man, probably about five and twenty years of age, and he caught up very quickly, by imitation, the care he could take of Arthur's clothes, and the habit of waiting on him at meals. Meantime the _Calypso_ held her course to the south-east, till the chart declared the coast to be that of Djigheli Bay, and Arthur recognised the headlands whither the unfortunate tartane had drifted to her destruction. Anchoring outside the hay, Captain Beresford sent the first lieutenant, Mr. Bullock, in the long-boat, with Arthur and a well-armed force, with instructions to offer no violence, but to reconnoitre; and if they found Mademoiselle de Bourke, or any others of the party, to do their best for their release by promises of ransom or representations of the consequences of detaining them. Arthur was prepared to offer his own piastres at once in case of need of immediate payment. He was by this time tolerably versed in the vernacular of the Mediterranean, and a cook's boy, shipped at Gibraltar, was also supposed to be capable of interpreting. The beautiful bay, almost realising the description of AEneas' landing- place, lay before them, the still green waters within reflecting the fantastic rocks and the wreaths of verdure which crowned them, while the white mountain-tops rose like clouds in the far distance against the azure sky. Arthur could only, however, think of all this fair scene as a cruel prison, and those sharp rocks as the jaws of a trap, when he saw the ribs of the tartane still jammed into the rock where she had struck, and where he had saved the two children as they were washed up the hatchway. He saw the rock where the other three had clung, and where he had left the little girl. He remembered the crowd of howling, yelling savages, leaping and gesticulating on the beach, and his heart trembled as he wondered how it had ended. Where were the Cabeleyzes who had thus greeted them? The bay seemed perfectly lonely. Not a sound was to be heard but the regular dip of the oars, the cry of a startled bird, and the splash of a flock of seals, which had been sunning themselves on the shore, and which floundered into the sea like Proteus' flock of yore before Ulysses. Would that Proteus himself had still been there to be captured and interrogated! For the place was so entirely deserted that, saving for the remains of the wreck, he must have believed himself mistaken in the locality, and the lieutenant began to question him whether it had been daylight when he came ashore. Could the natives have hidden themselves at sight of an armed vessel? Mr. Bullock resolved on landing, very cautiously, and with a sufficient guard. On the shore some fragments of broken boxes and packing cases appeared; and a sailor pointed out the European lettering painted on one--sse de B---. It plainly was part of the address to the Comtesse de Bourke. This encouraged the party in their search. They ascended the path which poor Hebert and Lanty Callaghan had so often painfully climbed, and found themselves before the square of reed hovels, also deserted, but with black marks where fires had been lighted, and with traces of recent habitation. Arthur picked up a rag of the Bourke livery, and another of a brocade which he had seen the poor Countess wearing. Was this all the relic that he should ever be able to take to her husband? He peered about anxiously in hopes of discovering further tokens, and Mr. Bullock was becoming impatient of his lingering, when suddenly his eye was struck by a score on the bark of a chestnut tree like a cross, cut with a feeble hand. Beneath, close to the trunk, was a stone, beyond the corner of which appeared a bit of paper. He pounced upon it. It was the title-page of Estelle's precious Telemaque, and on the back was written in French, If any good Christian ever finds this, I pray him to carry it to M. the French Consul at Algiers. We are five poor prisoners, the Abbe de St. Eudoce, Estelle, daughter of the Comte de Bourke, and our servants, Jacques Hebert, Laurent Callaghan, Victorine Renouf. The Cabeleyzes are taking us away to their mountains. We are in slavery, in hunger, filth, and deprivation of all things. We pray day and night that the good God will send some one to rescue us, for we are in great misery, and they persecute us to make us deny our faith. O, whoever you may be, come and deliver us while we are yet alive.' Arthur was almost choked with tears as he translated this piteous letter to the lieutenant, and recollected the engaging, enthusiastic little maiden, as he had seen her on the Rhone, but now brought to such a state. He implored Mr. Bullock to pursue the track up the mountain, and was grieved at this being treated as absurdly impossible, but then recollecting himself, 'You could not, sir, but I might follow her and make them understand that she must be saved--' 'And give them another captive,' said Bullock; 'I thought you had had enough of that. You will do more good to this flame of yours--' 'No flame, sir. She is a mere child, little older than her brother. But she must not remain among these lawless savages.' 'No! But we don't throw the helve after the hatchet, my lad! All you can do is to take this epistle to the French Consul, who might find it hard to understand without your explanations. At any rate, my orders are to bring you safe on board again.' Arthur had no choice but to submit, and Captain Beresford, who had a wife and children at home, was greatly touched by the sight of the childish writing of the poor little motherless girl; above all when Arthur explained that the high-sounding title of Abbe de St. Eudoce only meant one who was more likely to be a charge than a help to her. France was for the nonce allied with England, and the dread of passing to Sweden through British seas had apparently been quite futile, since, if Captain Beresford recollected the Irish blood of the Count, it was only as an additional cause for taking interest in him. Towards the Moorish pirates the interest of the two nations united them. It was intolerable to think of the condition of the captives; and the captain, anxious to lose no time, rejoiced that his orders were such as to justify him in sailing at once for Algiers to take effectual measures with the consul before letting the family know the situation of the poor Demoiselle de Bourke. CHAPTER XI--THE PIRATE CITY 'With dazed vision unawares From the long alley's latticed shade Emerged, I came upon the great Pavilion of the Caliphat. Right to the carven cedarn doors, Flung inward over spangled floors, Broad-based flights of marble stairs Ran up with golden balustrade, After the fashion of the time, And humour of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.' TENNYSON. Civilised and innocuous existence has no doubt been a blessing to Algiers as well as to the entire Mediterranean, but it has not improved the picturesqueness of its aspect any more than the wild and splendid 'tiger, tiger burning bright,' would be more ornamental with his claws pared, the fiery gleam of his yellow eyes quenched, and his spirit tamed, so as to render him only an exaggerated domestic cat. The steamer, whether of peace or war, is a melancholy substitute for the splendid though sinister galley, with her ranks of oars and towers of canvas, or for the dainty lateen-sailed vessels, skimming the waters like flying fish, and the Frank garb ill replaces the graceful Arab dress. The Paris-like block of houses ill replaces the graceful Moorish architecture, undisturbed when the _Calypso_ sailed into the harbour, and the amphitheatre-like city rose before her, in successive terraces of dazzling white, interspersed with palms and other trees here and there, with mosques and minarets rising above them, and with a crown of strong fortifications. The harbour itself was protected by a strongly-fortified mole, and some parley passed with the governor of the strong and grim-looking castle adjacent--a huge round tower erected by the Spaniards, and showing three ranks of brazen teeth in the shape of guns. Finally, the Algerines having been recently brought to their bearings, as Captain Beresford said, entrance was permitted, and the _Calypso_ enjoyed the shelter of the mole; while he, in full-dress uniform, took boat and went ashore, and with him the two escaped prisoners. Fareek remained on board till the English Consul could be consulted on his fate. England and France were on curious terms with Algiers. The French had bombarded the city in 1686, and had obtained a treaty by which a consul constantly resided in the city, and the persons and property of French subjects were secured from piracy, or if captured were always released. The English had made use of the possession of Gibraltar and Minorca to enforce a like treaty. There was a little colony of European merchants--English, French, and Dutch--in the lower town, near the harbour, above which the Arab town rose, as it still rises, in a steep stair. Ships of all these nations traded at the port, and quite recently the English Consul, Thomas Thompson by name, had vindicated the honour of his flag by citing before the Dey a man who had insulted him on the narrow causeway of the mole. The Moor was sentenced to receive 2200 strokes of bastinado on the feet, 1000 the first day, 1200 on the second, and he died in consequence, so that Englishmen safely walked the narrow streets. The Dey who had inflicted this punishment was, however, lately dead. Mehemed had been elected and installed by the chief Janissaries, and it remained to be proved whether he would show himself equally anxious to be on good terms with the Christian Powers. Arthur's heart had learnt to beat at sight of the British ensign with emotions very unlike those with which he had seen it wave at Sheriffmuir; but it looked strange above the low walls of a Moorish house, plain outside, but with a richly cusped and painted horse-shoe arch at the entrance to a lovely cloistered court, with a sparkling fountain surrounded by orange trees with fruit of all shades from green to gold. Servants in white garments and scarlet fezzes, black, brown, or white (by courtesy), seemed to swarm in all directions; and one of them called a youth in European garb, but equally dark-faced with the rest, and not too good an English scholar. However, he conducted them through a still more beautiful court, lined with brilliant mosaics in the spandrels of the exquisite arches supported on slender shining marble columns. Mr. Thompson's English coat and hearty English face looked incongruous, as at sight of the blue and white uniform he came forward with all the hospitable courtesy due to a post-captain. There was shaking of hands, and doffing of cocked hats, and calling for wine, and pipes, and coffee, in the Alhambra-like hall, where a table covered with papers tied with red tape, in front of a homely leathern chair, looked more homelike than suitable. Other chairs there were for Frank guests, who preferred them to the divan and piles of cushions on which the Moors transacted business. 'What can I do for you, sir?' he asked of the captain, 'or for this little master,' he added, looking at Ulysse, who was standing by Arthur. 'He is serving the King early.' 'I don't belong to your King George,' broke out the young gentleman. 'He is an _usurpateur_. I have only this uniform on till I can get my proper clothes. I am the son of the Comte de Bourke, Ambassador to Spain and Sweden. I serve no one but King Louis!' 'That is plain to be seen!' said Mr. Thompson. 'The Gallic cock crows early. But is he indeed the son of Count Bourke, about whom the French Consul has been in such trouble?' 'Even so, sir,' replied the captain. 'I am come to ask you to present him, with this gentleman, Mr. Hope, to your French colleague. Mr. Hope, to whom the child's life and liberty are alike owing, has information to give which may lead to the rescue of the boy's sister and uncle with their servants.' Mr. Thompson had heard of a Moorish galley coming in with an account of having lost a Genoese prize, with ladies on board, in the late storm. He was sure that the tidings Mr. Hope brought would be most welcome, but he knew that the French Consul was gone up with a distinguished visitor, M. Dessault, for an audience of the Dey; and, in the meantime, his guests must dine with him. And Arthur narrated his adventures. The Consul shook his head when he heard of Djigheli Bay. 'Those fellows, the Cabeleyzes, hate the French, and make little enough of the Dey, though they do send home Moors who fall into their hands. Did you see a ruined fort on a promontory? That was the Bastion de France. The old King Louis put it up and garrisoned it, but these rogues contrived a surprise, and made four hundred prisoners, and ever since they have been neither to have nor to hold. Well for you, young gentleman, that you did not fall into their hands, but those of the country Moors--very decent folk--descended, they say, from the Spanish Moors. A renegade got you off, did he? Yes, they will sometimes do that, though at an awful risk. If they are caught, they are hung up alive on hooks to the walls. You had an escape, I can tell you, and so had he, poor fellow, of being taken alive.' 'He knew the risk!' said Arthur, in a low voice; 'but my mother had once been good to him, and he dared everything for me.' The Consul readily estimated Arthur's legacy as amounting to little less than 200 pounds, and was also ready to give him bills of exchange for it. The next question was as to Fareek. To return him to his own country was impossible; and though the Consul offered to buy him of Arthur, not only did the young Scot revolt at the idea of making traffic of the faithful fellow, but Mr. Thompson owned that there might be some risk in Algiers of his being recognised as a runaway; and though this was very slight, it was better not to give any cause of offence. Captain Beresford thought the poor man might be disposed of at Port Mahon, and Arthur kept to himself that Tam's bequest was sacred to him. His next wish was for clothes to which he might have a better right than to the uniform of the senior midshipman of H.M.S. _Calypso_--a garb in which he did not like to appear before the French Consul. Mr. Thompson consulted his Greek clerk, and a chest belonging to a captured merchantman, which had been claimed as British property, but had not found an owner, was opened, and proved to contain a wardrobe sufficient to equip Arthur like other gentlemen of the day, in a dark crimson coat, with a little gold lace about it, and the rest of the dress white, a wide beaver hat, looped up with a rosette, and everything, indeed, except shoes, and he was obliged to retain those of the senior midshipman. With his dark hair tied back, and a suspicion of powder, he found himself more like the youth whom Lady Nithsdale had introduced in Madame de Varennes' _salon_ than he had felt for the last month; and, moreover, his shyness and awkwardness had in great measure disappeared during his vicissitudes, and he had made many steps towards manhood. Ulysse had in the meantime been consigned to a kind, motherly, portly Mrs. Thompson, who, accustomed as she was to hearing of strange adventures, was aghast at what the child had undergone, and was enchanted with the little French gentleman who spoke English so well, and to whom his Grand Seigneur airs returned by instinct in contact with a European lady; but his eye instantly sought Arthur, nor would he be content without a seat next to his protector at the dinner, early as were all dinners then, and a compound of Eastern and Western dishes, the latter very welcome to the travellers, and affording the Consul's wife themes of discourse on her difficulties in compounding them. Pipes, siesta, and coffee followed, Mr. Thompson assuring them that his French colleague would not be ready to receive them till after the like repose had been undergone, and that he had already sent a billet to announce their coming. The French Consulate was not distant. The _fleur-de-lis_ waved over a house similar to Mr. Thompson's, but they were admitted with greater ceremony, when Mr. Thompson at length conducted them. Servants and slaves, brown and black, clad in white with blue sashes, and white officials in blue liveries, were drawn up in the first court in two lines to receive them; and the Chevalier, taking it all to himself, paraded in front with the utmost grandeur, until, at the next archway, two gentlemen, resplendent in gold lace, came forward with low bows. At sight of the little fellow there were cries of joy. M. Dessault spread out his arms, clasped the child to his breast, and shed tears over him, so that the less emotional Englishmen thought at first that they must be kinsmen. However, Arthur came in for a like embrace as the boy's preserver; and if Captain Beresford had not stepped back and looked uncomprehending and rigid he might have come in for the same. Seated in the verandah, Arthur told his tale and presented the letter, over which there were more tears, as, indeed, well there might be over the condition of the little girl and her simple mode of describing it. It was nearly a month since the corsair had arrived, and the story of the Genoese tartane being captured and lost with French ladies on board had leaked out. The French Consul had himself seen and interrogated the Dutch renegade captain, had become convinced of the identity of the unfortunate passengers, and had given up all hopes of them, so that he greeted the boy as one risen from the dead. To know that the boy's sister and uncle were still in the hands of the Cabeleyzes was almost worse news than the death of his mother, for this wild Arab tribe had a terrible reputation even among the Moors and Turks. The only thing that could be devised after consultation between the two consuls, the French envoy, and the English captain, was that an audience should be demanded of the Dey, and Estelle's letter presented the next morning. Meanwhile Arthur and Ulysse were to remain as guests at the English Consulate. The French one would have made them welcome, but there was no lady in his house; and Mrs. Thompson had given Arthur a hint that his little charge would be the better for womanly care. There was further consultation whether young Hope, as a runaway slave--who had, however, carried off a relapsed renegade with him--would be safe on shore beyond the precincts of the Consulate; but as no one had any claim on him, and it might be desirable to have his evidence at hand, it was thought safe that he should remain, and Captain Beresford promised to come ashore in the morning to join the petitioners to the Dey. Perhaps he was not sorry, any more than was Arthur, for the opportunity of beholding the wonderful city and palace, which were like a dream of beauty. He came ashore early, with two or three officers, all in full uniform; and the audience having been granted, the whole party--consuls, M. Dessault, and their attendants--mounted the steep, narrow stone steps leading up the hill between the walls of houses with fantastically carved doorways or lattices; while bare-legged Arabs niched themselves into every coigne of vantage with baskets of fruit or eggs, or else embroidering pillows and slippers with exquisite taste. The beauty of the buildings was unspeakable, and they projected enough to make a cool shade--only a narrow fragment of deep blue sky being visible above them. The party did not, however, ascend the whole 497 steps, as the abode of the Dey was then not the citadel, but the palace of Djenina in the heart of the city. Turning aside, they made their way thither over terraces partly in the rock, partly on the roofs of houses. Fierce-looking Janissaries, splendidly equipped, guarded the entrance, with an air so proud and consequential as to remind Arthur of poor Yusuf's assurances of the magnificence that might await little Ulysse as an Aga of that corps. Even as they admitted the infidels they looked defiance at them from under the manifold snowy folds of their mighty turbans. {The pirate city: p0.jpg} If the beauty of the consuls' houses had struck and startled Arthur, far more did the region into which he was now admitted seem like a dream of fairyland as he passed through ranks of orange trees round sparkling fountains--worthy of Versailles itself--courts surrounded with cloisters, sparkling with priceless mosaics, in those brilliant colours which Eastern taste alone can combine so as to avoid gaudiness, arches and columns of ineffable grace and richness, halls with domes emulating the sky, or else ceiled with white marble lacework, whose tracery seemed delicate and varied as the richest Venice point! But the wonderful beauty seemed to him to have in it something terrible and weird, like that fairyland of his native country, whose glory and charm is overshadowed by the knowledge of the teinds to be paid to hell. It was an unnatural, incomprehensible world; and from longing to admire and examine, he only wished to be out of it, felt it a relief to fix his eyes upon the uniforms of the captain and the consuls, and did not wonder that Ulysse, instead of proudly heading the procession, shrank up to him and clasped his hand as his protector. The human figures were as strange as the architecture; the glittering of Janissaries in the outer court, which seemed a sort of guardroom, the lines of those on duty in the next, and in the third court the black slaves in white garments, enhancing the blackness of their limbs, each with a formidable curved scimitar. At the golden cusped archway beyond, all had to remove their shoes as though entering a mosque. The Consuls bade the new-comers submit to this, adding that it was only since the recent victory that it had not been needful to lay aside the sword on entering the Dey's august presence. The chamber seemed to the eyes of the strangers one web of magic splendour--gold-crusted lacework above, arches on one side open to a beauteous garden, and opposite semicircles of richly-robed Janissary officers, all culminating in a dazzling throne, where sat a white-turbaned figure, before whom the visitors all had to bow lower than European independence could well brook. The Dey's features were not very distinctly seen at the distance where etiquette required them to stand; but Arthur thought him hardly worthy to be master of such fine-looking beings as Abou Ben Zegri and many others of the Moors, being in fact a little sturdy Turk, with Tartar features, not nearly so graceful as the Moors and Arabs, nor so handsome and imposing as the Janissaries of Circassian blood. Turkish was the court language; and even if he understood any other, an interpreter was a necessary part of the etiquette. M. Dessault instructed the interpreter, who understood with a readiness which betrayed that he was one of the many renegades in the Algerine service. The Dey was too dignified to betray much emotion; but he spoke a few words, and these were understood to profess his willingness to assist in the matter. A richly-clad official, who was, Mr. Thompson whispered, a Secretary of State, came to attend the party in a smaller but equally beautiful room, where pipes and coffee were served, and a consultation took place with the two Consuls, which was, of course, incomprehensible to the anxious listeners. M. Dessault's interest was deeply concerned in the matter, since he was a connection of the Varennes family, to which poor Madame de Bourke belonged. Commands from the Dey, it was presently explained, would be utterly disregarded by these wild mountaineers--nay, would probably lead to the murder of the captives in defiance. But it was known that if these wild beings paid deference to any one, it was to the Grand Marabout at Bugia; and the Secretary promised to send a letter in the Dey's name, which, with a considerable present, might induce him to undertake the negotiation. Therewith the audience terminated, after M. Dessault had laid a splendid diamond snuff-box at the feet of the Secretary. The Consuls were somewhat disgusted at the notion of having recourse to the Marabouts, whom the French Consul called _vilains charlatan_, and the English one filthy scoundrels and impostors. Like the Indian Fakirs, opined Captain Beresford; like the begging friars, said M. Dessault, and to this the Consuls assented. Just, however, as the Dominicans, besides the low class of barefooted friars, had a learned and cultivated set of brethren in high repute at the Universities, and a general at Rome, so it appeared that the Marabouts, besides their wild crew of masterful beggars, living at free quarters, partly through pretended sanctity, partly through the awe inspired by cabalistic arts, had a higher class who dwelt in cities, and were highly esteemed, for the sake of either ten years' abstinence from food or the attainment of fifty sciences, by one or other of which means an angelic nature was held to be attained. Fifty sciences! This greatly astonished the strangers, but they were told by the residents that all the knowledge of the highly cultivated Arabs of Bagdad and the Moors of Spain had been handed on to the select few of their African descendants, and that really beautiful poetry was still produced by the Marabouts. Certainly no one present could doubt of the architectural skill and taste of the Algerines, and Mr. Thompson declared that not a tithe of the wonders of their mechanical art had been seen, describing the wonderful silver tree of Tlemcen, covered with birds, who, by the action of wind, were made to produce the songs of each different species which they represented, till a falcon on the topmost branch uttered a harsh cry, and all became silent. General education had, however, fallen to a low ebb among the population, and the wisdom of the ancients was chiefly concentrated among the higher class of Marabouts, whose headquarters were at Bugia, and their present chief, Hadji Eseb Ben Hassan, had the reputation of a saint, which the Consuls believed to be well founded. The Cabeleyzes, though most irregular Moslems, were extremely superstitious as regarded the supernatural arts supposed to be possessed by the Marabouts, and if these could be induced to take up the cause of the prisoners, there would be at least some chance of their success. And not long after the party had arrived at the French Consulate, where they were to dine, a messenger arrived with a parcel rolled up in silk, embroidered with gold, and containing a strip of paper beautifully emblazoned, and in Turkish characters. The Consul read it, and found it to be a really strong recommendation to the Marabout to do his utmost for the servants of the Dey's brother, the King of France, now in the hands of the children of Shaitan. 'Well purchased,' said M. Dessault; 'though that snuff-box came from the hands of the Elector of Bavaria!' As soon as the meal was over, the French Consul, instead of taking his siesta as usual, began to take measures for chartering a French tartane to go to Bugia immediately. He found there was great interest excited, not only among the Christian merchants, but among Turks, Moors, and Jews, so horrible was the idea of captivity among the Cabeleyzes. The Dey set the example of sending down five purses of sequins towards the young lady's ransom, and many more contributions came in unasked. It was true that the bearers expected no small consideration in return, but this was willingly given, and the feeling manifested was a perfect astonishment to all the friends at the Consulate. The French national interpreter, Ibrahim Aga, was charged with the negotiations with the Marabout. Arthur entreated to go with him, and with some hesitation this was agreed to, since the sight of an old friend might be needed to reassure any survivors of the poor captives--for it was hardly thought possible that all could still survive the hardships of the mountains in the depth of winter, even if they were spared by the ferocity of their captors. Ulysse, the little son and heir, was not to be exposed to the perils of the seas till his sister's fate was decided, and accordingly he was to remain under the care of Mrs. Thompson; while Captain Beresford meant to cruise about in the neighbourhood, having a great desire to know the result of the enterprise, and hoping also that if Mademoiselle de Bourke still lived he might be permitted to restore her to her relations. Letters, clothes, and comforts were provided, and placed under the charge of the interpreter and of Arthur, together with a considerable gratuity for the Marabout, and authority for any ransom that Cabeleyze rapacity might require,--still, however, with great doubt whether all might not be too late. CHAPTER XII--ON THE MOUNTAINS 'We cannot miss him. He doth make our fire, Fetch in our wood, and serve in offices That profit us.' _Tempest_. Bugia, though midway on the 'European lake,' is almost unknown to modern travellers, though it has become a French possession. It looked extremely beautiful when the French tartane entered it, rising from the sea like a magnificent amphitheatre, at the foot of the mountains that circled round it, and guarded by stern battlemented castles, while the arches of one of the great old Roman aqueducts made a noble cord to the arc described by the lower part of the town. The harbour, a finer one naturally than that of Algiers, contained numerous tartanes and other vessels, for, as Ibrahim Aga, who could talk French very well, informed Arthur, the inhabitants were good workers in iron, and drove a trade in plough-shares and other implements, besides wax and oil. But it was no resort of Franks, and he insisted that Arthur should only come on shore in a Moorish dress, which had been provided at Algiers. Thanks to young Hope's naturally dark complexion, and the exposure of the last month, he might very well pass for a Moor: and he had learnt to wear the white caftan, wide trousers, broad sash, and scarlet fez, circled with muslin, so naturally that he was not likely to be noticed as a European. The city, in spite of its external beauty, proved to be ruinous within, and in the midst of the Moorish houses and courts still were visible remnants of the old Roman town that had in past ages flourished there. Like Algiers, it had narrow climbing streets, excluding sunshine, and through these the guide Ibrahim had secured led the way; while in single file came the interpreter, Arthur, two black slaves bearing presents for the Marabout, and four men besides as escort. Once or twice there was a vista down a broader space, with an awning over it, where selling and buying were going on, always of some single species of merchandise. Thus they arrived at one of those Moorish houses, to whose beauty Arthur was becoming accustomed. It had, however, a less luxurious and grave aspect than the palaces of Algiers, and the green colour sacred to the Prophet prevailed in the inlaid work, which Ibrahim Aga told him consisted chiefly of maxims from the Koran. No soldiers were on guard, but there were a good many young men wholly clad in white--neophytes endeavouring to study the fifty sciences, mostly sitting on the ground, writing copies, either of the sacred books, or of the treatises on science and medicine which had descended from time almost immemorial; all rehearsed aloud what they learnt or wrote, so as to produce a strange hum. A grave official, similarly clad, but with a green sash, came to meet them, and told them that the chief Marabout was sick; but on hearing from the interpreter that they were bearers of a letter from the Dey, he went back with the intelligence, and presently returned salaaming very low, to introduce them to another of the large halls with lacework ceilings, where it was explained that the Grand Marabout was, who was suffering from ague. The fit was passing off, and he would be able to attend of the coffee and the pipes which were presented to his honoured guests so soon as they had partaken them. After a delay, very trying to Arthur's anxiety, though beguiled by such coffee and tobacco as he was never likely to encounter again, Hadji Eseb Ben Hassan, a venerable-looking man, appeared, with a fine white beard and keen eyes, slenderly formed, and with an air of very considerable ability--much more so than the Dey, in all his glittering splendour of gold, jewels, and embroidery, whereas this old man wore the pure white woollen garments of the Moor, with the green sash, and an emerald to fasten the folds of his white turban. Ibrahim Aga prostrated himself as if before the Dey, and laid before the Marabout, as a first gift, a gold watch; then, after a blessing had been given in return, he produced with great ceremony the Dey's letter, to which every one in the apartment did obeisance by touching the floor with their foreheads, and the Grand Marabout further rubbed it on his brow before proceeding to read it, which he chose to do for himself, chanting it out in a low, humming voice. It was only a recommendation, and the other letter was from the French Consul containing all particulars. The Marabout seemed much startled, and interrogated the interpreter. Arthur could follow them in some degree, and presently the keen eye of the old man seemed to detect his interest, for there was a pointing to him, an explanation that he had been there, and presently Hadji Eseb addressed a question to him in the vernacular Arabic. He understood and answered, but the imperfect language or his looks betrayed him, for Hadji Eseb demanded, 'Thou art Frank, my son?' Ibrahim Aga, mortally afraid of the consequences of having brought a disguised Giaour into these sacred precincts, began what Arthur perceived to be a lying assurance of his having embraced Islam; and he was on the point of breaking in upon the speech, when the Marabout observed his gesture, and said gravely, 'My son, falsehood is not needed to shield a brave Christian; a faithful worshipper of Issa Ben Mariam receives honour if he does justice and works righteousness according to his own creed, even though he be blind to the true faith. Is it true, good youth, that thou art--not as this man would have me believe--one of the crew from Algiers, but art come to strive for the release of thy sister?' Arthur gave the history as best he could, for his month's practice had made him able to speak the vernacular so as to be fairly comprehensible, and the Marabout, who was evidently a man of very high abilities, often met him half way, and suggested the word at which he stumbled. He was greatly touched by the account, even in the imperfect manner in which the youth could give it; and there was no doubt that he was a man of enlarged mind and beneficence, who had not only mastered the fifty sciences, but had seen something of the world. He had not only made his pilgrimage to Mecca more than once, but had been at Constantinople, and likewise at Tunis and Tripoli; thus, with powers both acute and awake, he understood more than his countrymen of European Powers and their relation to one another. As a civilised and cultivated man, he was horrified at the notion of the tenderly-nurtured child being in the clutches of savages like the Cabeleyzes; but the first difficulty was to find out where she was; for, as he said, pointing towards the mountains, they were a wide space, and it would be hunting a partridge on the hills. Looking at his chief councillor, Azim Reverdi, he demanded whether some of the wanderers of their order, whom he named, could not be sent through the mountains to discover where any such prisoners might be; but after going into the court in quest of these persons, Azim returned with tidings that a Turkish soldier had returned on the previous day to the town, and had mentioned that on Mount Couco, Sheyk Abderrahman was almost at war with his subordinates, Eyoub and Ben Yakoub, about some shipwrecked Frank captives, if they had not already settled the matter by murdering them all, and, as was well known, nothing would persuade this ignorant, lawless tribe that nothing was more abhorrent to the Prophet than human sacrifices. Azim had already sent two disciples to summon the Turk to the presence of the Grand Marabout, and in due time he appeared--a rough, heavy, truculent fellow enough, but making awkward salaams as one in great awe of the presence in which he stood--unwilling awe perhaps--full of superstitious fear tempered by pride--for the haughty Turks revolted against homage to one of the subject race of Moors. His language was only now and then comprehensible to Arthur, but Ibrahim kept up a running translation into French for his benefit. There were captives--infidels--saved from the wreck, he knew not how many, but he was sure of one--a little maid with hair like the unwound cocoon, so that they called her the Daughter of the Silkworm. It was about her that the chief struggle was. She had fallen to the lot of Ben Yakoub, who had been chestnut-gathering by the sea at the time of the wreck; but when he arrived on Mount Couco the Sheyk Abderrahman had claimed her and hers as the head of the tribe, and had carried her off to his own adowara in the valley of Ein Gebel. The Turk, Murad, had been induced by Yakoub to join him and sixteen more armed men whom he had got together to demand her. For it was he who had rescued her from the waves, carried her up the mountains, fed her all this time, and he would not have her snatched away from him, though for his part Murad thought it would have been well to be quit of them, for not only were they Giaours, but he verily believed them to be of the race of Jinns. The little fair-haired maid had papers with strange signs on them. She wrote--actually wrote--a thing that he believed no Sultana Velide even had ever been known to do at Stamboul. Moreover, she twisted strings about on her hands in a manner that was fearful to look at. It was said to be only to amuse the children, but for his part he believed it was for some evil spell. What was certain was that the other, a woman full grown, could, whenever any one offended her, raise a Jinn in a cloud of smoke, which caused such sneezing that she was lost sight of. And yet these creatures had so bewitched their captors that there were like to be hard blows before they were disposed of, unless his advice were taken to make an end of them altogether. Indeed, two of the men, the mad Santon and the chief slave, had been taken behind a bush to be sacrificed, when the Daughter of the Silkworm came between with her incantations, and fear came upon Sheyk Yakoub. Murad evidently thought it highly advisable that the chief Marabout should intervene to put a stop to these doings, and counteract the mysterious influence exercised by these strange beings. High time, truly, Arthur and Ibrahim Aga likewise felt it, to go to the rescue, since terror and jealousy might, it appeared, at any time impel _ces barbares feroces_, as Ibrahim called them, to slaughter their prisoners. To their great joy, the Marabout proved to be of the same opinion, in spite of his sickness, which, being an intermitting ague, would leave him free for a couple of days, and might be driven off by the mountain air. He promised to set forth early the next day, and kept the young man and the interpreter as his guests for the night, Ibrahim going first on board to fetch the parcel of clothes and provisions which M. Dessault had sent for the Abbe and Mademoiselle de Bourke, and for an instalment of the ransom, which the Hadji Eseb assured him might safely be carried under his own sacred protection. Arthur did not see much of his host, who seemed to be very busy consulting with his second in command on the preparations, for probably the expedition was a delicate undertaking, even for him, and his companions had to be carefully chosen. Ibrahim had advised Arthur to stay quietly where he was, and not venture into the city, and he spent his time as he best might by the help of a _narghile_, which was hospitably presented to him, though the strictness of Marabout life forbade the use alike of tobacco and coffee. Before dawn the courts of the house were astir. Mules, handsomely trapped, were provided to carry the principal persons of the party wherever it might be possible, and there were some spare ones, ridden at first by inferiors, but intended for the captives, should they be recovered. It was very cold, being the last week in November, and all were wrapped in heavy woollen haiks over their white garments, except one wild-looking fellow, whose legs and arms were bare, and who only seemed to possess one garment of coarse dark sackcloth. He skipped and ran by the side of the mules, chanting and muttering, and Ibrahim observed in French that he was one of the Sunakites, or fanatic Marabouts, and advised Arthur to beware of him; but, though dangerous in himself, his presence would be a sufficient protection from all other thieves or vagabonds. Indeed, Arthur saw the fellow glaring unpleasantly at him, when the sun summoned all the rest to their morning devotions. He was glad that he had made the fact of his Christianity known, for he could no more act Moslem than _be_ one, and Hadji Eseb kept the Sunakite in check by a stern glance, so that no harm ensued. Afterwards Arthur was bidden to ride near the chief, who talked a good deal, asking intelligent questions. Gibraltar had impressed him greatly, and it also appeared that in one of his pilgrimages the merchant vessel he was in had been rescued from some Albanian pirates by an English ship, which held the Turks as allies, and thus saved them from undergoing vengeance for the sufferings of the Greeks. Thus the good old man felt that he owed a debt of gratitude which Allah required him to pay, even to the infidel. Up steep roads the mules climbed. The first night the halt was at a Cabyle village, where hospitality was eagerly offered to persons of such high reputation for sanctity as the Marabouts; but afterwards habitations grew more scanty as the ground rose higher, and there was no choice but to encamp in the tents brought by the attendants, and which seemed to Arthur a good exchange for the dirty Cabyle huts. Altogether the journey took six days. The mules climbed along wild paths on the verge of giddy precipices, where even on foot Arthur would have hesitated to venture. The scenery would now be thought magnificent, but it was simply frightful to the mind of the early eighteenth century, especially when a constant watch had to be kept to avoid the rush of stones, or avalanches, on an almost imperceptible, nearly perpendicular path, where it was needful to trust to the guidance of the Sunakite, the only one of the cavalcade who had been there before. On the last day they found themselves on the borders of a slope of pines and other mountain-growing trees, bordering a wide valley or ravine where the Sunakite hinted that Abderrahman might be found. The cavalcade pursued a path slightly indicated by the treading of feet and hoofs, and presently there emerged on them from a slighter side track between the red stems of the great pines a figure nearly bent double under the weight of two huge faggots, with a basket of great solid fir- cones on the top of them. Very scanty garments seemed to be vouchsafed to him, and the bare arms and legs were so white, as well as of a length so unusual among Arabs or Moors, that simultaneously the Marabout exclaimed, 'One of the Giaour captives,' and Arthur cried out, 'La Jeunesse! Laurence!' There was only just time for a start and a response, 'M. Arture! And is it yourself?' before a howl of vituperation was heard--of abuse of all the ancestry of the cur of an infidel slave, the father of tardiness--and a savage-looking man appeared, brandishing a cudgel, with which he was about to belabour his unfortunate slave, when he was arrested by astonishment, and perhaps terror, at the goodly company of Marabouts. Hadji Eseb entered into conversation with him, and meanwhile Lanty broke forth, 'O wirrah, wirrah, Master Arthur! an' have they made a haythen Moor of ye? By the powers, but this is worse than all. What will Mademoiselle say?--she that has held up the faith of every one of us, like a little saint and martyr as she is! Though, to be sure, ye are but a Protestant; only these folks don't know the differ.' 'If you would let me speak, Laurence,' said Arthur, 'you would hear that I am no more a Moslem than yourself, only my Frank dress might lead to trouble. We are come to deliver you all, with a ransom from the French Consul. Are you all safe--Mademoiselle and all? and how many of you?' 'Mademoiselle and M. l'Abbe were safe and well three days since,' said Lanty; 'but that spalpeen there is my master and poor Victorine's, and will not let us put a foot near them.' 'Where are they? How many?' anxiously asked Arthur. 'There are five of us altogether,' said Lanty; 'praise be to Him who has saved us thus far. We know the touch of cold steel at our throats, as well as ever I knew the poor misthress' handbell; and unless our Lady, and St. Lawrence, and the rest of them, keep the better watch on us, the rascals will only ransom us without our heads, so jealous and bloodthirsty they are. The Bey of Constantina sent for us once, but all we got by that was worse usage than the very dogs in Paris, and being dragged up these weary hills, where Maitre Hubert and I carried Mademoiselle every foot of the way on our backs, and she begging our pardon so prettily--only she could not walk, the rocks had so bruised her darlin' little feet.' 'This is their chief holy man, Lanty. If any one can prevail on these savages to release you it is he.' 'And how come you to be hand and glove with them, Masther Arthur--you that I thought drownded with poor Madame and the little Chevalier and the rest?' 'The Chevalier is not drowned, Laurent. He is safe in the Consul's house at Algiers.' 'Now heaven and all the saints be praised! The Chevalier safe and well! 'Tis a very miracle!' cried Lanty, letting fall his burthen, as he clasped his hands in ecstasy and performed a caper which, in spite of all his master Eyoub's respect for the Marabouts, brought a furious yell of rage, and a tremendous blow with the cudgel, which Lanty, in his joy, seemed to receive as if it had been a feather. Hadji Eseb averted a further blow; and understanding from Arthur that the poor fellow's transport was caused by the tidings of the safety of his master's son, he seemed touched, and bade that he and Eyoub should lead the way to the place of durance of the chief prisoners. On the way Ibrahim Aga interrogated both Eyoub in vernacular Arabic and Lanty in French. The former was sullen, only speaking from his evident awe of the Marabouts, the latter voluble with joy and hope. Arthur learnt that the letter he had found under the stone was the fourth that Estelle and Hebert had written. There had been a terrible journey up the mountains, when Lanty had fully thought Victorine must close her sufferings in some frightful ravine; but, nevertheless, she had recovered health and strength with every day's ascent above the close, narrow valley. They were guarded all the way by Arabs armed to the teeth to prevent a rescue by the Bey of Constantina. On their arrival at the valley, which was the headquarters of the tribe, the sheyk of the entire clan had laid claim to the principal captives, and had carried off the young lady and her uncle; and in his dwelling she had a boarded floor to sleep on, and had been made much more comfortable than in the squalid huts below. Her original master, Yakoub, had, however, come to seize her, with the force described by Murad. Then it was that again there was a threat to kill rather than resign them; but on this occasion it was averted by Sheyk Abderrahman's son, a boy of about fourteen, who threw himself on his knees before Mademoiselle, and prayed his father earnestly for her life. 'They spared her then,' said Lanty, 'and, mayhap, worse still may come of that. Yakoub, the villain, ended by getting her back till they can have a council of their tribe, and there she is in his filthy hut; but the gossoon, Selim, as they call him, prowls about the place as if he were bewitched. All the children are, for that matter, wherever she goes. She makes cats' cradles for them, and sings to them, and tells them stories in her own sweet way out of the sacred history--such as may bring her into trouble one of these days. Maitre Hebert heard her one day telling them the story of Moses, and he warned her that if she went on in that fashion it might be the death of us all. "But," says she, "suppose we made Selim, and little Zuleika, and all the rest of them, Christians? Suppose we brought all the tribe to come down and ask baptism, like as St. Nona did in the _Lives of the Saints_?" He told her it was more like that they would only get her darling little head cut off, if no worse, but he could not get her to think that mattered at all at all. She would have a crown and a palm up in heaven, and after her name in the Calendar on earth, bless her.' Then he went on to tell that Yakoub was furious at the notion of resigning his prize, and (Agamemnon-like) declared that if she were taken from him he should demand Victorine from Eyoub. Unfortunately she was recovering her good looks in the mountain air; and, worse still, the spring of her 'blessed little Polichinelle' was broken, though happily no one guessed it, and hitherto it had been enough to show them the box. CHAPTER XIII--CHRYSEIS AND BRISEIS 'The child Restore, I pray, her proffered ransom take, And in His priest, the Lord of Light revere. Then through the ranks assenting murmurs rang, The priest to reverence, and the ransom take.' HOMER (DERBY). For one moment, before emerging from the forest, looking through an opening in the trees, down a steep slope, a group of children could be seen on the grass in front of the huts composing the adowara, little brown figures in scanty garments, lying about evidently listening intently to the figure, the gleam of whose blonde hair showed her instantly to be Estelle de Bourke. However, either the deputation had been descried, or Eyoub may have made some signal, for when the calvalcade had wound about through the remaining trees, and arrived among the huts, no one was to be seen. There was only the irregular square of huts built of rough stones and thatched with reeds, with big stones to keep the thatch on in the storm; a few goats were tethered near, and there was a rush of the great savage dogs, but they recognised Eyoub and Lanty, and were presently quieted. 'This is the chief danger,' whispered Lanty. 'Pray heaven the rogues do not murder them rather than give them up!' The Sunakite, beginning to make strange contortions and mutterings in a low voice, seemed to terrify Eyoub greatly. Whether he pointed it out or not, or whether Eyoub was induced by his gestures to show it, was not clear to Arthur's mind; but at the chief abode, an assemblage of two stone hovels and rudely-built walls, the party halted, and made a loud knocking at the door, Hadji Eseb's solemn tones bidding those within to open in the name of Allah. It was done, disclosing a vista of men with drawn scimitars. The Marabout demanded without ceremony where were the prisoners. 'At yonder house,' he was answered by Yakoub himself, pointing to the farther end of the village. 'Dog of a liar,' burst forth the Sunakite. 'Dost thou think to blind the eyes of the beloved of Allah, who knoweth the secrets of heaven and earth, and hath the sigil of Suleiman Ben Daoud, wherewith to penetrate the secret places of the false?' The ferocious-looking guardians looked at each other as though under the influence of supernatural terror, and then Hadji Eseb spoke: 'Salaam Aleikum, my children; no man need fear who listens to the will of Allah, and honours his messengers.' All made way for the dignified old man and his suite, and they advanced into the court, where two men with drawn swords were keeping guard over the captives, who were on their knees in a corner of the court. The sabres were sheathed, and there was a shuffling away at the advance of the Marabouts, Sheyk Yakoub making some apology about having delayed to admit such guests, but excusing himself on the score of supposing they were emissaries sent by those whose authority he so defied that he had sworn to slaughter his prisoners rather than surrender them. Hadji Eseb replied with a quotation from the Koran forbidding cruelty to the helpless, and sternly denounced wrath on the transgressors, bidding Yakoub draw off his savage bodyguard. The man was plainly alarmed, more especially as the Sunakite broke out into one of his wild wails of denunciation, waving his hands like a prophet of wrath, and predicting famine, disease, pestilence, to these slack observers of the law of Mohammed. This completed the alarm. The bodyguard fled away pell-mell, Yakoub after them. His women shut themselves into some innermost recesses, and the field was left to the Marabouts and the prisoners, who, not understanding what all this meant, were still kneeling in their corner. Hadji Eseb bade Arthur and the interpreter go to reassure them. At their advance a miserable embrowned figure, barefooted and half clad in a ragged haik, roped round his waist, threw himself before the fair- haired child, crying out in imperfect Arabic, 'Spare her, spare her, great Lord! much is to be won by saving her.' 'We are come to save her,' said Arthur in French. 'Maitre Hebert, do you not know me?' Hubert looked up. 'M. Arture! M. Arture! Risen from the dead!' he cried, threw himself into the young man's arms, and burst out into a vehement sob; but in a second he recovered his manners and fell back, while Estelle looked up. 'M. Arture,' she repeated. 'Ah! is it you? Then, is my mamma alive and safe?' 'Alas! no,' replied Arthur; 'but your little brother is safe and well at Algiers, and this good man, the Marabout, is come to deliver you.' 'My mamma said you would protect us, and I knew you would come, like Mentor, to save us,' said Estelle, clasping her hands with ineffable joy. 'Oh, Monsieur! I thank you next to the good God and the saints!' and she began fervently kissing Arthur's hand. He turned to salute the Abbe, but was shocked to see how much more vacant the poor gentleman's stare had become, and how little he seemed to comprehend. 'Ah!' said Estelle, with her pretty, tender, motherly air, 'my poor uncle has never seemed to understand since that dreadful day when they dragged him and Maitre Hebert out into the wood and were going to kill them. And he has fever every night. But, oh, M. Arture, did you say my brother was safe?' she repeated, as if not able to dwell enough upon the glad tidings. 'And I hope you will soon be with him,' said Arthur. 'But, Mademoiselle, let me present you to the Grand Marabout, a sort of Moslem Abbe, who has come all this way to obtain your release.' He led Estelle forward, when she made a courtesy fit for her grandmother's _salon_, and in very fluent Cabeleyze dialect gave thanks for the kindness of coming to release her, and begged him to excuse her uncle, who was sick, and, as you say here, 'stricken of Allah.' The little French demoiselle's grace and politeness were by no means lost on the Marabout, who replied to her graciously; and at the sight of her reading M. Dessault's letter, which the interpreter presented to her, one of the suite could not help exclaiming, 'Ah! if women such as this will be went abroad in our streets, there would be nothing to hope for in Paradise.' Estelle did not seem to have suffered in health; indeed, in Arthur's eyes, she seemed in these six weeks to have grown, and to have more colour, while her expression had become less childish, deeper, and higher. Her hair did not look neglected, though her dress--the same dark blue which she had worn on the voyage--had become very ragged and soiled, and her shoes were broken, and tied on with strips of rag. She gave a little scream of joy when the parcel of clothes sent by the French Consul was given to her, only longing to send some to Victorine before she retired to enjoy the comfort of clean and respectable clothes; and in the meantime something was attempted for the comfort of her companions, though it would not have been safe to put them into Frankish garments, and none had been brought. Poor Hebert was the very ghost of the stout and important _maitre d'hotel_, and, indeed, the faithful man had borne the brunt of all the privations and sufferings, doing his utmost to shield and protect his little mistress and her helpless uncle. When Estelle reappeared, dressed once more like a little French lady (at least in the eyes of those who were not particular about fit), she found a little feast being prepared for her out of the provisions sent by the consuls; but she could not sit down to it till Arthur, escorted by several of the Marabout's suite, had carried a share both of the food and the garments to Lanty and Victorine. They, however, were not to be found. The whole adowara seemed to be deserted except by a few frightened women and children, and Victorine and her Irish swain had no doubt been driven off into the woods by Eyoub--no Achilles certainly, but equally unwilling with the great Pelides to resign Briseis as a substitute for Chryseis. It was too late to attempt anything more that night; indeed, at sundown it became very cold. A fire was lighted in the larger room, in the centre, where there was a hole for the exit of the smoke. The Marabouts seemed to be praying or reciting the Koran on one side of it, for there was a continuous chant or hum going on there; but they seemed to have no objection to the Christians sitting together on the other side conversing and exchanging accounts of their adventures. Maitre Hebert could not sufficiently dilate on the spirit, cheerfulness, and patience that Mademoiselle had displayed through all. He only had to lament her imprudence in trying to talk of the Christian faith to the children, telling them stories of the saints, and doing what, if all the tribe had not been so ignorant, would have brought destruction on them all. 'I would not have Monseigneur there know of it for worlds,' said he, glancing at the Grand Marabout. 'Selim loves to hear such things,' said Estelle composedly. 'I have taught him to say the Paternoster, and the meaning of it, and Zuleika can nearly say them.' '_Misericorde_!' cried M. Hubert. 'What may not the child have brought on herself!' 'Selim will be a chief,' returned Estelle. 'He will make his people do as he pleases, or he would do so; but now there will be no one to tell him about the true God and the blessed Saviour,' she added sadly. 'Mademoiselle!' cried Hebert in indignant anger--'Mademoiselle would not be ungrateful for our safety from these horrors.' 'Oh no!' exclaimed the child. 'I am very happy to return to my poor papa, and my brothers, and my grandmamma. But I am sorry for Selim! Perhaps some good mission fathers would go out to them like those we heard of in Arcadia; and by and by, when I am grown up, I can come back with some sisters to teach the women to wash their children and not scold and fight.' The _maitre d'hotel_ sighed, and was relieved when Estelle retired to the deserted women's apartments for the night. He seemed to think her dangerous language might be understood and reported. The next morning the Marabout sent messengers, who brought back Yakoub and his people, and before many hours a sort of council was convened in the court of Yakoub's house, consisting of all the neighbouring heads of families, brown men, whose eyes gleamed fiercely out from under their haiks, and who were armed to the teeth with sabres, daggers, and, if possible, pistols and blunderbusses of all the worn-out patterns in Europe--some no doubt as old as the Thirty Years War; while those who could not attain to these weapons had the long spears of their ancestors, and were no bad representatives of the Amalekites of old. After all had solemnly taken their seats there was a fresh arrival of Sheyk Abderrahman and his ferocious-looking following. He himself was a man of fine bearing, with a great black beard, and a gold-embroidered sash stuck full of pistols and knives, and with poor Madame de Bourke's best pearl necklace round his neck. His son Selim was with him, a slim youth, with beautiful soft eyes glancing out from under a haik, striped with many colours, such as may have been the coat that marked Joseph as the heir. There were many salaams and formalities, and then the chief Marabout made a speech, explaining the purpose of his coming, diplomatically allowing that the Cabeleyzes were not subject to the Dey of Algiers, but showing that they enjoyed the advantages of the treaty with France, and that therefore they were bound to release the unfortunate shipwrecked captives, whom they had already plundered of all their property. So far Estelle and Arthur, who were anxiously watching, crouching behind the wall of the deserted house court, could follow. Then arose yells and shouts of denial, and words too rapid to be followed. In a lull, Hadji Eseb might be heard proffering ransom, while the cries and shrieks so well known to accompany bargaining broke out. Ibrahim Aga, who stood by the wall, here told them that Yakoub and Eyoub seemed not unwilling to consent to the redemption of the male captives, but that they claimed both the females. Hebert clenched his teeth, and bade Ibrahim interfere and declare that he would never be set free without his little lady. Here, however, the tumult lulled a little, and Abderrahman's voice was heard declaring that he claimed the Daughter of the Silkworm as a wife for his son. Ibrahim then sprang to the Marabout's side, and was heard representing that the young lady was of high and noble blood. To which Abderrahman replied with the dignity of an old lion, that were she the daughter of the King of the Franks himself, she would only be a fit mate for the son of the King of the Mountains. A fresh roar of jangling and disputing began, during which Estelle whispered, 'Poor Selim, I know he would believe--he half does already. It would be like Clotilda.' 'And then he would be cruelly murdered, and you too,' returned Arthur. 'We should be martyrs,' said Estelle, as she had so often said before; and as Hubert shuddered and cried, 'Do not speak of such things, Mademoiselle, just as there is hope,' she answered, 'Oh no! do not think I want to stay in this dreadful place--only if I should have to do so--I long to go to my brother and my poor papa. Then I can send some good fathers to convert them.' 'Ha!' cried Arthur; 'what now! They are at one another's throats!' Yakoub and Eyoub with flashing sabres were actually flying at each other, but Marabouts were seizing them and holding them back, and the Sunakite's chant arose above all the uproar. Ibrahim was able to explain that Yakoub insisted that if the mistress were appropriated by Abderrahman, the maid should be his compensation. Eyoub, who had been the foremost in the rescue from the wreck, was furious at the demand, and they were on the point of fighting when thus withheld; while the Sunakite was denouncing woes on the spoiler and the lover of Christians, which made the blood of the Cabeleyzes run cold. Their flocks would be diseased, storms from the mountains would overwhelm them, their children would die, their name and race be cut off, if infidel girls were permitted to bewitch them and turn them from the faith of the Prophet. He pointed to young Selim, and demanded whether he were not already spellbound by the silken daughter of the Giaour to join in her idolatry. There were howls of rage, a leaping up, a drawing of swords, a demand that the unbelievers should die at once. It was a cry the captives knew only too well. Arthur grasped a pistol, and loosened his sword, but young Selim had thrown himself at the Marabout's feet, sobbing out entreaties that the maiden's life might be saved, and assurances that he was a staunch believer; while his father, scandalised at such an exhibition on behalf of any such chattel as a female, roughly snatched him from the ground, and insisted on his silence. The Marabouts had, at their chief's signal, ranged themselves in front of the inner court, and the authority of the Hadji had imposed silence even on the fanatic. He spoke again, making them understand that Frankish vengeance in case of a massacre could reach them even in their mountains when backed by the Dey. And to Abderrahman he represented that the only safety for his son, the only peace for his tribe, was in the surrender of these two dangerous causes of altercation. The 'King of the Mountains' was convinced by the scene that had just taken place of the inexpedience of retaining the prisoners alive. And some pieces of gold thrust into his hand by Ibrahim may have shown him that much might be lost by slaughtering them. The Babel which next arose was of the amicable bargaining sort. And after another hour of suspense the interpreter came to announce that the mountaineers, out of their great respect, not for the Dey, but the Marabout, had agreed to accept 900 piastres as the ransom of all the five captives, and that the Marabout recommended an immediate start, lest anything should rouse the ferocity of the tribe again. Estelle's warm heart would fain have taken leave of the few who had been kind to her; but this was impossible, for the women were in hiding, and she could only leave one or two kerchiefs sent from Algiers, hoping Zuleika might have one of them. Ibrahim insisted on her being veiled as closely as a Mohammedan woman as she passed out. One look between her and Selim might have been fatal to all; though hers may have been in all childish innocence, she did not know how the fiery youth was writhing in his father's indignant grasp, forcibly withheld from rushing after one who had been a new life and revelation to him. Mayhap the passion was as fleeting as it was violent, but the Marabout knew it boded danger to the captives to whom he had pledged his honour. He sent them, mounted on mules, on in front, while he and his company remained in the rear, watching till Lanty and Victorine were driven up like cattle by Eyoub, to whom he paid an earnest of his special share of the ransom. He permitted no pause, not even for a greeting between Estelle and poor Victorine, nor to clothe the two unfortunates, more than by throwing a mantle to poor Victorine, who had nothing but a short petticoat and a scanty, ragged, filthy bournouse. She shrouded herself as well as she could when lifted on her mule, scarce perhaps yet aware what had happened to her, only that Lanty was near, muttering benedictions and thanksgivings as he vibrated between her mule and that of the Abbe. It was only at the evening halt that, in a cave on the mountain-side, Estelle and Victorine could cling to each other in a close embrace with sobs of joy; and while Estelle eagerly produced clothes from her little store of gifts, the poor _femme de chambre_ wept for joy to feel indeed that she was free, and shed a fresh shower of tears of joy at the sight of a brush and comb. Lanty was purring over his foster-brother, and cosseting him like a cat over a newly-recovered kitten, resolved not to see how much shaken the poor Abbe's intellect had been, and quite sure that the reverend father would be altogether himself when he only had his _soutane_ again. CHAPTER XIV--WELCOME 'Well hath the Prophet-chief your bidding done.' MOORE (_Lalla Rookh_). Bugia was thoroughly Moorish, and subject to attacks of fanaticism. Perhaps the Grand Marabout did not wholly trust the Sunakite not to stir up the populace, for he would not take the recovered captives to his palace, avoided the city as much as possible, and took them down to the harbour, where, beside the old Roman quay, he caused his trusty attendant, Reverdi, to hire a boat to take them out to the French tartane--Reverdi himself going with them to ensure the fidelity of the boatmen. Estelle would have kissed the good old man's hand in fervent thanks, but, child as she was, he shrank from her touch as an unholy thing; and it was enforced on her and Victorine that they were by no means to remove their heavy mufflings till they were safe on board the tartane, and even out of harbour. The Frenchman in command of the vessel was evidently of the same mind, and, though enchanted to receive them, sent them at once below. He said his men had been in danger of being mobbed in the streets, and that there were reports abroad that the harem of a great Frank chief, and all his treasure, were being recovered from the Cabeleyzes, so that he doubted whether all the influence of the Grand Marabout might prevent their being pursued by corsairs. Right glad was he to recognise the pennant of the _Calypso_ outside the harbour, and he instantly ran up a signal flag to intimate success. A boat was immediately put off from the frigate, containing not only Lieutenant Bullock, but an officer in scarlet, who had no sooner come on deck than he shook Arthur eagerly by the hand, exclaiming, ''Tis you, then! I cannot be mistaken in poor Davie's son, though you were a mere bit bairn when I saw you last!' 'Archie Hope!' exclaimed Arthur, joyfully. 'Can you tell me anything of my mother?' 'She was well when last I heard of her, only sore vexed that you should be cut off from her by your own fule deed, my lad! Ye've thought better of it now?' Major Hope was here interrupted by the lieutenant, who brought an invitation from Captain Beresford to the whole French party to bestow themselves on board the _Calypso_. After ascertaining that the Marabout had taken up their cause, and that the journey up Mount Couco and back again could not occupy less than twelve or fourteen days, he had sailed for Minorca, where he had obtained sanction to convey any of the captives who might be rescued to Algiers. He had also seen Major Hope, who, on hearing of the adventures of his young kinsman, asked leave of absence to come in search of him, and became the guest of the officers of the _Calypso_. Arthur found himself virtually the head of the party, and, after consultation with Ibrahim Aga and Maitre Hebert, it was agreed that there would be far more safety, as well as better accommodation, in the British ship than in the French tartane, and Arthur went down to communicate the proposal to Estelle, whom the close, little, evil-smelling cabin was already making much paler than all her privations had done. 'An English ship,' she said. 'Would my papa approve?' and her little prim diplomatic air sat comically on her. 'Oh yes,' said Arthur. 'He himself asked the captain to seek for you, Mademoiselle. There is peace between our countries, you know.' 'That is good,' she said, jumping up. 'For oh! this cabin is worse than it is inside Yakoub's hut! Oh take me on deck before I am ill!' She was able to be her own little charming French and Irish self when Arthur led her on deck; and her gracious thanks and pretty courtesy made them agree that it would have been ten thousand pities if such a creature could not have been redeemed from the savage Arabs. The whole six were speedily on board the _Calypso_, where Captain Beresford received the little heroine with politeness worthy of her own manners. He had given up his own cabin for her and Victorine, purchased at Port Mahon all he thought she could need, and had even recollected to procure clerical garments for the Abbe--a sight which rejoiced Lanty's faithful heart, though the poor Abbe was too ill all the time of the voyage to leave his berth. Arthur's arrival was greeted by the Abyssinian with an inarticulate howl of delight, as the poor fellow crawled to his feet, and began kissing them before he could prevent it. Fareek had been the pet of the sailors, and well taken care of by the boatswain. He was handy, quick, and useful, and Captain Bullock thought he might pick up a living as an attendant in the galley; but he showed that he held himself to belong absolutely to Arthur, and rendered every service to him that he could, picking up what was needful in the care of European clothes by imitation of the captain's servant, and showing a dexterity that made it probable that his cleverness had been the cause of the loss of a tongue that might have betrayed too much. To young Hope he seemed like a sacred legacy from poor Tam, and a perplexing one, such as he could hardly leave in his dumbness to take the chances of life among sailors. His own plans were likewise to be considered, and Major Hope concerned himself much about them. He was a second cousin--a near relation in Scottish estimation--and no distant neighbour. His family were Tories, though content to submit to the House of Hanover, and had always been on friendly terms with Lady Hope. 'I writ at once, on hearing of you, to let her know you were in safety,' said the major. 'And what do you intend the noo?' 'Can I win home?' anxiously asked Arthur. 'You know I never was attainted!' 'And what would ye do if you were at home?' 'I should see my mother.' 'Small doubt of the welcome she would have for you, my poor laddie,' said the major; 'but what next?' And as Arthur hesitated, 'I misdoubt greatly whether Burnside would give you a helping hand if you came fresh from colloguing with French Jacobites, though my father and all the rest of us at the Lynn aye told him that he might thank himself and his dour old dominie for your prank--you were but a schoolboy then--you are a man now; and though your poor mother would be blithe to set eyes on you, she would be sairly perplexed what gate you had best turn thereafter. Now, see here! There's talk of our being sent to dislodge the Spaniards from Sicily. You are a likely lad, and the colonel would take my word for you if you came back with me to Port Mahon as a volunteer; and once under King George's colours, there would be pressure enough from all of us Hopes upon Burnside to gar him get you a commission, unless you win one for yourself. Then you could gang hame when the time was served, a credit and an honour to all!' 'I had rather win my own way than be beholden to Burnside,' said Arthur, his face lighting at the proposal. 'Hout, man! That will be as the chances of war may turn out. As to your kit, we'll see to that! Never fear. Your mother will make it up.' 'Thanks, Archie, with all my heart, but I am not so destitute,' and he mentioned Yusuf's legacy, which the major held that he was perfectly justified in appropriating; and in answer to his next question, assured him that he would be able to retain Fareek as his servant. This was enough for Arthur, who knew that the relief to his mother's mind of his safety and acceptance as a subject would outweigh any disappointment at not seeing his face, when he would only be an unforgiven exile, liable to be informed against by any malicious neighbour. He borrowed materials, and had written a long letter to her before the _Calypso_ put in at Algiers. The little swift tartane had forestalled her; and every one was on the watch, when Estelle, who had been treated like a little princess on board, was brought in the long-boat with all her party to the quay. Though it was at daybreak, not only the European inhabitants, but Turks, Arabs, Moors, and Jews thronged the wharf in welcome; and there were jubilant cries as all the five captives could be seen seated in the boat in the light of the rising sun. M. Dessault, with Ulysse in his hand, stood foremost on the quay, and the two children were instantly in each other's embrace. Their uncle had to be helped out. He was more bewildered than gratified by the welcome. He required to be assured that the multitudes assembled meant him no harm, and would not move without Lanty; and though he bowed low in return to M. Dessault's greeting, it was like an automaton, and with no recognition. Estelle, between her brother and her friend, and followed by all the rest, was conducted by the French Consul to the chapel, arranged in one of the Moorish rooms. There stood beside the altar his two chaplains, and at once mass was commenced, while all threw themselves on their knees in thankfulness; and at the well-known sound a ray of intelligence and joy began to brighten even poor Phelim's features. Arthur, in overflowing joy, could not but kneel with the others; and when the service concluded with the Te Deum's lofty praise, his tears dropped for joy and gratitude that the captivity was over, the children safe, and himself no longer an outcast and exile. He had, however, to take leave of the children sooner than he wished, for the _Calypso_ had to sail the next day. Ulysse wept bitterly, clung to him, and persisted that he _was_ their secretary, and must go with them. Estelle, too, had tears in her eyes; but she said, half in earnest, 'You know, Mentor vanished when Telemaque came home! Some day, Monsieur, you will come to see us at Paris, and we shall know how to show our gratitude!' Both Lanty and Maitre Hebert promised to write to M. Arture; and in due time he received not only their letters but fervent acknowledgments from the Comte de Bourke, who knew that to him was owing the life and liberty of the children. From Lanty Arthur further heard that the poor Abbe had languished and died soon after reaching home. His faithful foster-brother was deeply distressed, though the family had rewarded the fidelity of the servants by promoting Hebert to be intendant of the Provencal estates, while Lanty was wedded to Victorine, with a _dot_ that enabled them to start a flourishing _perruquier's_ shop, and make a home for his mother when little Jacques outgrew her care. Estelle was in due time married to a French nobleman, and in after years 'General Sir Arthur Hope' took his son and daughter to pay her a long visit in her Provencal _chateau_, and to converse on the strange adventures that seemed like a dream. He found her a noble lady, well fulfilling the promise of her heroic girlhood, and still lamenting the impossibility of sending any mission to open the eyes of the half-converted Selim. 
59084	----	Methuen's Colonial Library A MODERN LEGIONARY UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME A FRONTIERSMAN By Roger Pocock A MODERN LEGIONARY BY JOHN PATRICK LE POER METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON 1904 _Colonial Library_ A MODERN LEGIONARY CHAPTER I On a January morning in the early eighties I found myself in Paris with less than a dozen francs in my purse, or rather my pockets, for I have always had a habit of distributing my money between waistcoat and trousers, so that if one pocket be picked the contents of the others may have a chance of remaining still in my possession. How I arrived in Paris is easily explained. After two years and a half in a boarding-school I had become so tired of its monotonous routine and, indeed, of the idleness which prevailed there--for the masters never tried to teach, and, naturally, the boys never tried to learn--that I resolved, when the Christmas vacation came to an end, to leave my home in the south of Ireland and seek my fortune through the world. Accordingly, instead of going back to school, I set out for Dublin, whence I started for London by the first boat. In London I spent a day, and then came on to Paris, filled with vague hopes and vaguer misgivings as to my future. Thus it happened that I at the age of sixteen was walking the streets of Paris on the 6th of January 188-. I considered anxiously what lay before me. I could not go home, even if pride did not forbid. True, I could write for money, having enough to maintain myself until it came, but that would be too great a humiliation. To dig I was not able, and to beg I was ashamed, so I saw but one course open to me--to enlist. Having made up my mind, which I did the more easily as I had been brought up in a garrison town, and like most boys loved to follow the soldiers in their bright uniforms and to march along with head erect, keeping step to the music of the band, I at once set about carrying my resolve into effect. I was not long in beginning. As I walked along the streets I saw a soldier with a gold chevron on his arm, and, going across the road, I addressed him. I did not speak French very well, but had something more than the usual schoolboy knowledge of it, as I had read a good many French books and papers when I should have been at Greek or Mathematics in the study hall. Very soon, therefore, he learned my purpose, and a conversation ensued, somewhat as follows:-- "You are English; is it not so?" "No; I am Irish, from the south of Ireland." "Very well, my friend; but you must go to the Foreign Legion, and that will not be very pleasant, you may well believe. Always in Algeria, except when serving in Tonquin and other devil's colonies on the earth." "I do not mind that; in the English army one has to go to India and South Africa, so what matter?" "Ah! and you are doubtless without money, and one has to live." "Let us go in here," said I, pointing to a wine shop. "We can talk better over a glass." "Good comrade! good comrade!" he cried, slapping me on the shoulder; "I see that you will be a soldier after my own heart. Have no fear," he continued; "I will tell you all, and you may rely on me as a loyal friend." When we entered the shop my new-found friend asked me whether I should drink _eau-de-vie_ or _vin ordinaire_, and, on my refusing the brandy, commended my discretion, saying that young soldiers should never touch brandy as it interfered with their chances of promotion, and, moreover, they did not usually have money enough to pay for it. Thereupon he called for _eau-de-vie_ for himself and some wine, rather sour I thought it, for his young friend, and when we had clinked glasses and drunk, our conversation was resumed. I shall not try to reproduce the dialogue, which would, indeed, be wearisome, as we sat and talked for full two hours, with many repetitions. During this time I drank little, and the sergeant, though he had his glass filled more than once, took no more than he could safely bear. One thing I must say of him, that although he painted the soldier's life in glowing colours yet he always kept me in mind of the fact that he spoke of the French army in general and his own regiment in particular. What he said had no reference to the Foreign Legion. That corps was not to be compared to his. There were in it men who had fled from justice; from Russia, though, indeed, the offences of these were in most cases political; from Germany, and yet many were Alsatians and Lorrainers who wished to become French citizens; from Austria, Belgium, Spain; from every country in the world. And, whatever their crimes had been, they were of a surety being punished, for their stations were on the borders of the great desert, where were sand and sun and tedium so great that an Arab raid was a pleasant relief. "But there were French soldiers also there, were there not?" "Oh yes; the zephyrs, the bad ones who could not be reclaimed to duty, to discipline, or even to decency, and who were sent to form what one might call convict battalions in places to which no one wished to send good soldiers--men who respected themselves and the flag." "But the Foreign Legion could not be always in Algeria, on the borders of the desert?" "Oh no; there were many of them in Tonquin on active service, and these, of course, were just as well or as ill-off as the regular French troops, but still they were rascals, though, he would confess, very good fighting men. There was a war in Tonquin against great bands of marauders who carried a variety of flags, by the colours of which they were known: I must have heard of the principal ones--the infamous Black Flags, who gave no quarter to the wounded and who mutilated the dead. These were helped by the regular Chinese soldiers, and had among them many Europeans, dogs that they were, who gave them advice and instruction, because these Europeans were Prussians or English who hated the great French Republic and viewed its expansion with dislike and distrust." "But was there not a good chance of promotion in the Legion?" "Oh yes; if one did one's duty and willingly obeyed orders and did not get into trouble. Oh yes; there was always justice for the good as well as for the bad. If one was not a corporal in five years there was little use in staying; one could take his discharge and go away." That decided me. I was sixteen--in five years I should be twenty-one--better spend the time learning experience in the world than in the dull, dreary idleness to which I was accustomed, and which filled me with disgust. I said so to the sergeant. He looked me up and down, and said: "How old?" "Sixteen," I replied. "You cannot enlist; the recruit must be at least eighteen." I thought a moment. "I will be eighteen; they cannot see the registers of my parish." "Very well, very well, my son; you are resolved. I will say no more to prevent you--I will help you--you shall be a soldier of the Republic to-morrow." He kept his word. We spent the day together; he showed me his barrack, his room in it, where to dine and sleep, and leaving me at nine o'clock, with a parting injunction to meet him at eight in the morning at the barrack gate, went away saying: "Poor devil! poor devil!" On the following morning at ten minutes to eight I was at the gate. Indeed, I might easily have been there at six, but as the morning was cold and nothing could be gained by being out and about too soon I remained snugly between the sheets until seven. Punctually at eight the sergeant appeared, and we walked towards one another smiling. I asked him to join me at breakfast. He readily consented, and soon we were seated together in a small restaurant before a table at which we appeased the hunger induced by the sharp morning air with eggs, bread and butter, and coffee. Breakfast over, the sergeant asked, as he said, for the last time, if I were still resolved to join the Foreign Legion. I replied that I was, if I should be accepted. "Very good; we have half-an-hour, let us walk about until it is time to meet the doctor." While strolling through the streets he gave me much advice. I was to be respectful, alert, step smartly, and, above all, be observant. "Watch the others," he said, "and you will very soon learn soldiers' manners." I promised to do so, and reminded him that I had grown two years older in a single night. He smiled, and said encouragingly: "Good child! good child!--alas! poor devil!" I asked him what he meant by alluding to me as a poor devil, and again he abused the Foreign Legion with a vocabulary as insulting as it was extensive. I had never heard or read one-tenth of the words, but it was not hard to guess the meaning. I stopped him by laying my hand upon his arm, and said: "You forget that I may be one of the Foreign Legion before noon." "True, true; but I do not apply the expressions to you, only to those who are already there." And he pointed with his finger towards the south. "Very good; but surely not to all? What can you say against the political refugees from Russia?" "Ah! they are different; they----" I stopped him again, and said: "And what can you say against a political refugee from Ireland?" "Ah, ah! I understand; now I see clearly. Oh, my friend, why did you not tell me yesterday?" From that moment he believed me, a schoolboy of sixteen, to be a head centre of the Fenians, or at least a prominent member of some Irish league. This belief had consequences shortly afterwards, pleasant and unpleasant, but we live down our sorrows as, unfortunately, we live down our joys. Well, soon it was time to "meet the doctor," so we went towards the barrack, and passing the gate approached a portion of the square where about twelve men in civil dress were already assembled. I was told that these also were would-be recruits, not all, however, for the Foreign Legion, as some were Frenchmen who volunteered at as early an age as possible instead of waiting to be called up. Not far off a small party of _sous-officiers_ stood, criticising the recruits, and laughing sarcastically at an occasional witticism. These the sergeant joined, and I was at leisure to observe my companions. They were of all sorts and conditions. One, a tall man with white hands, at least I saw that the right one was white, but the left one was gloved, who wore a silk hat, frock coat, and excellently got-up linen, looked rather superciliously at us all. Another, in a workman's blouse and dirt-covered trousers and boots, had his hands in his pockets, and, curving his shoulders, looked intently at the ground. A third, about eighteen, in a schoolboy's cap and jacket, was humming the Marseillaise; he was a French lad who _would_ be a soldier. There was a dark-browed man, a Spaniard as I learnt afterwards, tugging at his small moustache; a few others whom I have forgotten; and, lastly, standing somewhat apart from the crowd, three or four medium-sized, heavily-built men, with the look of the farm about them, and, indeed, the smell of it too, who proved to be Alsatians. I was still engaged in observing the others when a door was thrown open, and we were all ordered into a large room on the ground floor of a building, over the entrance to which were painted some words which I now forget. Here we had to strip to shirt and trousers, but as there was a stove in the place, and the windows and doors were closed, that did not hurt too much. After a short delay the tall man was summoned, and left the room by a door opposite to that by which we had entered. Others were called afterwards, and I, as it happened, was the last. As I passed out the sergeant--I forgot to mention that he and the other _sous-officiers_ had come in with us, and all had spoken encouragingly to me, having been told that I was a rebel against "perfide Albion"--the sergeant, I say, tapped me on the shoulder, and said: "Have no fear, be quiet, respectful, attentive, good lad." I thanked him with a nod and a smile and passed in. I now found myself in a smaller room, where an old soldier with a long grey moustache--I thought at once of the old guard--gruffly bade me take off my shirt and trousers. I did so, and felt a slight shiver--it was January--as I stood naked on the floor. I had scarcely finished shivering when the schoolboy came from the doctor's room looking as happy and proud as a king on his coronation day. It was quite evident that he had been accepted, and already his early dreams of military renown seemed on the point of realisation. Poor devil! as the sergeant said of me. I met him afterwards twice; the first time he was a prisoner under guard for some offence, the second time he was calling out huskily for water in the delirium before death. As he went towards his clothing I entered the apartment he had just left It was a large white-walled room, with a couple of chairs and tables, a desk and stool, and a weighing machine in a corner, as its chief furniture. A couple of soldiers were present, but evidently the chief personage in the room was a tall, thin man with a hooked nose and sharp grey eyes, whose moustache bristled out on each side. He was dressed in uniform, and wore some decorations, but I cannot recall more than that now. I doubt, indeed, if I ever fully grasped how he was dressed--his eyes attracted my attention so much. A few questions were asked--my name, age, country, occupation, and others--which were answered by me at once and shortly. I did not forget the sergeant's advice. Then followed a most careful observation of my body. My height and weight were noted, as well as other things which I did not understand. I remember I had to breathe deeply, and then hold my breath as long as I could, to jump, to hop, and to go through every form of work of which the human body or any part of it is capable. My eyes were examined in various ways, and there was not a region of my person left unexplored by the stethoscope or by the bony fingers of my examiner. All the while he called out various words and sentences, just as a tailor calls out while he measures you for a suit of clothes, and a soldier at the desk took them down. The other soldier acted as his chief's assistant, covering my right eye with his hand while the left one was being tested, holding a stick for me to jump and hop over, putting on the weights while I was on the machine, and doing all these things at a nod or other sign from the doctor. At last the examination was over. The doctor took the sheet of blue paper on which the soldier at the desk had been writing, and, looking alternately at it and at me, seemed carefully considering. I stood erect, hands by my sides, looking steadily and respectfully at him. It was very quiet. After some time he said: "How old are you?" (in English, with just a trace of an accent). I waited a moment, but that moment was enough. "Eighteen, sir." Had I answered on the spot he would have learned the truth. He paused a little, still keeping his eyes on me, and then, slightly lifting his eyelids, asked: "Seventeen?" "No, sir," I replied; "eighteen to-day." "When and where were you born?" "Seventh of January, sir, in the year ----, and at the town of ----, in the south of Ireland." He still gazed at me in doubt, but I met his gaze steadily. Suddenly a door opened--not the one through which I had come--and a short, stout, bustling man, dressed in blue coat and red trousers, with a gold-laced cap on his head, came in and, glancing carelessly at me, shook hands warmly with the doctor. In the conversation which ensued it was apparent by their glances and gestures that I had more than my share of their attention. Finally they approached, and the short man asked me my age. I replied as before. Turning sharp round he said with a merry smile, which ended in a short, quick laugh: "Oh, my friend, he is eighteen; he says so, and who knows better? Would you destroy the enthusiasm of a volunteer by doubting his word? My fine fellow"--this to me--"you will be eighteen before you leave us." That settled it I was accepted, sent away to dress, and, as I had said to the sergeant, before noon I was a sworn member of the Foreign Legion, sworn in for five years. The swearing-in was not impressive. All I remember about it is that in a room with a very wide door an officer in a gold-laced cap sat at a table, repeated a form of words which I in turn repeated, holding up my right hand the while, and then I kissed a book tendered to me by a _sous-officier_. Some questions were asked, and I answered, telling the truth, as, indeed, I had told the truth all through, except about my age, and also except about the insinuation that I was a political refugee. That night I slept in the barrack. About eighteen or twenty other recruits for the Foreign Legion occupied a large room with me. We were of all countries in Europe, but the Alsatians outnumbered the representatives of any other, and next to them came the Belgians and Lorrainers. A couple of Poles, a Russian, a Hungarian, a Croat, the Spaniard whom I have already mentioned, and myself completed the list. We looked at one another rather suspiciously at first, but after some time we became more sociable, and tried to explain, each in his own execrable French, how we had come to enlist, and it struck me that, if all were to be believed, my comrades were the most unfortunate and persecuted set of honest men that the sun had ever shone upon. I changed my opinion in the morning when I found that the last franc I had, nay the last sou, had been taken from my pockets during the night, but what was the use of complaining? It was a lesson I had to learn, therefore the sooner I learned it the better, and it was well that I learned it at no greater expense than a couple of francs. When we got a blue tunic, red trousers, and kepi, with boots and other things, I sold my civilian clothes to a Jew for one-tenth of their original cost, and that money did not leave my possession without my consent. I did not spend it all upon myself, but neither did I spend it indiscriminately, a jolly Belgian and the Russian had most of the benefit. A little circumstance occurred which at first gave me great pleasure, though afterwards its effects were rather serious, at least in my opinion at the time. I had not been an hour in the room when the sergeant came and gave me some tobacco and a small bottle of wine. I insisted on his sharing the latter; as for the tobacco, that went in the night along with my money. I saw some very like it afterwards with one of the Poles. When going he shook hands warmly, bade me be of good courage, and was about turning away when someone, an Alsatian, I think, jostled against him. Immediately the flood-gates of his eloquence were opened, he cursed and swore, and that not alone at the cause of his anger but also at others who were near. No reply was made, and he went away, still cursing and fuming with anger. How this event affected me will be told in due course; suffice it to say that, young as I was, I saw that his evident partiality for me and his undoubted contempt for the others would likely bring unpleasant results before long. In two days our numbers had increased to about thirty, and we were despatched to Algeria under the orders of a sergeant and two corporals. During the journey we learned a little more about discipline, but all that and the journey itself must wait for a new chapter. CHAPTER II Let me first describe the sergeant who was in chief command of our party. He was a small, active, sharp-tongued man, wearing a couple of medals and the Cross of the Legion of Honour on his breast, neat in his dress--I believe he would, if it were possible, polish his boots forty times a day--having a constant eye to us, such an eye as a collie has for the flock. When he gave an order, it was clear and abrupt; when he censured, you felt no doubt about his meaning, for tongue and tone and eye and gesture all united to convey contempt and abuse; if he gave ten minutes for a meal, we had to fill our stomachs in that time or go half hungry; and as for accepting a drink from one of us--for some had a little money--he would as soon have thought, he let us know, of accepting a glass of hell-fire from Satan. He was one of those men found in every army in the world--men who cannot live out of barracks, who feel comfortable only in uniform, who look upon civilians as beings to be pitied for not having the military sense, just as the ordinary man pities the blind, the deaf, or the dumb. Such men's minds receive few, and these transient, impressions from outside their own corps. To hear the regiment rated soundly on inspection day is a greater calamity than the cutting off of a squadron by Berbers or the ambushing of half a battalion by Black Flags; in fine, they are soldiers of the regiment rather than of the army. We were divided into two squads, each under the immediate control of a corporal. My corporal was a jolly, good-humoured fellow, a bit malicious, a Parisian gamin in uniform. He told us terrible stories of the Foreign Legion, and said that we should get through our purgatory if we only lived in it long enough. But in the end he defeated his own object, for, as some tales were obviously untrue, we had no difficulty in persuading ourselves that all were lies. The other corporal, a tall, lank man, seemed to me moody or, perhaps I should say, pensive. However, he had nothing to do with me, so I scarcely observed him. With regard to the journey, I can only say that we marched from the barrack to a railway station, travelled by train to Marseilles, thence by transport to Oran, where we were handed over by the sergeant to a _sous-officier_ of our own corps. Some incidents and scenes of the journey I must relate, as they show how my military education began. And first I must tell about the unpleasantness which I spoke of in the first chapter. Of course, a woman was the exciting cause--the match to the gunpowder. Women can't help it; they are born with the desire of getting you to do something for them. The average woman merely gets her husband to support her; she would like to have every other woman in the parish there to see the weekly wages handed over, the wages which, if he were a bachelor, would represent so much fun and frolic and reckless gaiety. But there are women who would incite you to commit murder or to save a life with equal eagerness, just to feel that their influence over you was unbounded. However, this has little to do with the present case, which was merely a casual flirtation and its ending. At a certain station, which had more than its due share of loungers, our train was stopped for some reason. We were allowed to get out during the delay, and the report quickly spread that a squad or two of recruits for the Foreign Legion had halted at the place. We were soon surrounded by a curious group, many of which passed by no means complimentary remarks upon our personal appearance and the crimes they supposed us to have committed in our own countries before we came, or rather escaped, to France. In the crowd was a rather handsome woman of about thirty who pretended great fear of us, as if we were cannibals from the Congo. The sergeant, however, reassured her, told her that we were quite quiet under his control--pleasant for us to listen to, wasn't it?--and volunteered to give her all information about us. Well, he gave us information about ourselves too. He described the Pole as a dirty Prussian who had robbed his employer and then made his escape to Paris. The Spaniard became a South American who had more murders on his soul than a professional bravo of the Middle Ages. The Russian was a Nihilist who had first attempted to blow up the Tsar and afterwards betrayed his accomplices, so that in the Foreign Legion, and there only, could he hope to escape at once justice and revenge. An Alsatian was described as a Hungarian brute: "these Hungarian dogs are so mean, sneaking, filthy, and cowardly"; while the poor Hungarian, who had heard all this, almost at once found himself pointed out as an Austrian, a slave of an emperor who was afraid of Germany. Unfortunately, as it turned out afterwards, I escaped his notice, and what I congratulated myself upon at the time I had reason afterwards to regret. While the sergeant was thus trying to advance himself--the vain fool!--in the handsome woman's favour and was getting on to his own satisfaction, if not to ours, into the crowd struts a young corporal of chasseurs. As soon as she saw him the woman turned her back upon our sergeant, put her arm affectionately through the corporal's, and brought him, vacuously smiling, down to us to tell the sergeant's stories over again. She muddled them, but that was of course. We never minded anything she said; but weren't we delighted to see our _sous-officier_ so excellently snubbed! "And where, my dear Marie, did you learn all this?" queried the happy and smiling chasseur. "Oh, pioupiou told me." And she pointed with the tip of her parasol at the man who a moment before had mentally added her to the list of his conquests. And pioupiou was angry; his cheeks got all white with just a spot of red in the centre, his eyes glared, he twisted his moustache savagely; he turned on us and ordered us back to the carriages. But that was not all: the crowd laughed, Marie laughed, the corporal--another fool--laughed. Some of us laughed, and we paid for all the laughter in the end. Nothing was said while we were in the station, but as soon as the train was again on the move the sergeant began. The first to feel uncomfortable was the corporal of my squad. He was told that he did not enforce discipline, that he was too free with these rascals, these pigs, that he had no self-respect, that he was ill-bred, and much more to the same effect. We came in for worse abuse, the Hungarian and a Belgian being made special marks for the sergeant's anger because they had been the first to laugh when Marie called him "pioupiou." The abuse was kept up, with occasional intermissions, for over half-an-hour, and no one was sorry when our tormentor sought solace of a more soothing nature in his pipe. It is very hard for men to listen to angry words which they know they cannot resent, and, sooner than have no relief for their pent-up passion, they will vent it on one of themselves, as I found out before long. We had stopped for ten minutes' interval at a station, and the three _sous-officiers_ had gone to a small refreshment room after ordering us, on various pains and penalties, not to leave our seats. Scarcely were they on the platform when the Belgian, who had been most insulted, began to rail at me. I was astonished. My surprise increased when the others joined with him. I was asked why I should be spared while better men were being treated as dogs and worse than dogs. The visit of my friend, the kindly sergeant who brought me wine and tobacco, was raked up as an instance of favouritism, and the rather violent language which he had applied to others in the barrack room was also recalled. I felt indignant at the injustice but knew not how to reply. Indeed, there was but a small chance of doing so, as all were speaking loudly, and some even shaking their fists at me. At last the Belgian, who had started the affair, struck me lightly on the cheek. This was too much. I jumped at him, had him tightly by the throat with the left hand, and set to giving him the right hand straight from the shoulder as quickly and as strongly as I could. He was altogether taken aback, and, moreover, was almost stunned by my assault, for every blow drove the back of his head against the woodwork of the carriage. Before anyone could interfere I had given him his fill of fighting, and when I was torn off his mouth and nose were bleeding and the skin around both eyes was rapidly changing colour. Before the fight could be renewed the sub-officers returned, and we all sat silent and sullen in our places. The sergeant at once grasped the situation. "What, fighting like wolves with one another already! Very well, my fine fellows, it does not end here; to-day the fight and the arrest, to-morrow the inquiry and the punishment." Thereupon he ordered the men on each side of us to consider themselves our warders. "If they escape, if they fight again, there will be a more severe punishment for you, whose prisoners they are." "A beautiful way to begin soldiering," he continued, looking alternately at the Belgian and myself; "go on like this, and life will be most happy for you." At the next station he ordered the Belgian to be transferred to the compartment in which the other squad, under the silent corporal, travelled. When he left, to give orders, I suppose, about the prisoner, the jolly corporal turned to me, and said: "My worthy fellow, you have begun well; where did you learn to use your hands? No matter, the commandant will talk to you; he will settle all. But, my son, what was it about; did he insult you?" "It was all the fault of the sergeant," I cried---- "Hold, hold!" interrupted the corporal; "take care, you are foolish to accuse your officer, and, besides, he was not present." This gave me a hint. "No; he was not here, and the corporals were not here either." "Then it was my fault too?" "Not yours so much as the sergeant's--you merely deserted your post--but he in addition to that abused the men so much before going away that their passion was aroused, and when men are angry they cannot help fighting." "Yes, yes," said the corporal; "he did abuse people, there is no doubt that he was in bad humour, and would have abused his own brother at the time." Little more was said, but the corporal was very thoughtful, and evidently was chewing a cud he did not like. At the first opportunity, it was when we halted for a meal, the corporal took the sergeant aside, and a long conversation ensued. The upshot was that I was taken from my guards and brought by the corporal to where his comrade stood. The latter asked me to tell him the truth about the quarrel, and I spoke as he wished me to. I mentioned everything--the kindness of the first sergeant to me and his abuse of the others, his own harsh treatment of us from the beginning, his wrong and malicious descriptions to the woman--he winced when I mentioned her name--his fearful abuse of the men afterwards, and I took care to point out that I was the one who had been least hurt by his tongue, and I wound up by declaring that, if he and the corporals had not gone away, leaving us without any _sous-officier_ in charge, the affair would not have taken place. "I believe you have told me the truth," he said. And I knew well that he knew it, for all the time that I was speaking he kept his keen eyes fixed upon mine, and they seemed to read me through and through. The Belgian and I were almost immediately relieved from arrest, but my opponent received strict orders to stay in the centre of the squad while marching, so that as little chance as possible might be given to the curious to note his bruises. He was furthermore told that for his own sake he had better tell anyone in authority who might chance to make inquiries that he had been suddenly, and when off his guard, assaulted by a drunken man at a wayside railway station. He afterwards did tell this tale when interrogated by an officer, and, as we others corroborated his statement, he escaped all punishment, and so did I. All the same, the sneers and whisperings of my companions during the remainder of the journey were at least as painful to me as his injuries were to the Belgian. In fact, I was more than boycotted by all, and the fact that none of my comrades would associate with me in even the slightest degree was gall and wormwood to the mind of a sensitive youth. How I wished that the first sergeant had not been so kind and the second so sparing of abuse to me. I was glad that in the depot for recruits I was altogether separated from the rest, and I may add now that, when I met some of them afterwards in the East, they seemed to have forgotten all the little annoyances of our first acquaintance. I wish to say but little now about the rest of the way. The chief thing that remains in my memory is the scene aboard the transport that carried us from Marseilles to Oran. It was so striking that I fancy I shall never forget it. There were troops of all arms aboard. I need not describe the party I was with, as I have said enough about it already, and of most of the others I can only recall that the various uniforms, the different numbers on the caps, all impressed me with the idea that I belonged to one of the great armies of the world. Having been, as I have already mentioned, brought up in a garrison town I at once noticed distinctions which another might pass over as trivial. I saw, for instance, that all the soldiers of the line did not belong to the same regiment in spite of the strong likeness the various corps showed to one another, and I knew that the same held true of the chasseurs and zouaves. I admired the way in which disorder was reduced to order; the steady composure of those who had no work to do, which contrasted so much with the quick movement and tireless exertion of the men told off for fatigue; the sharp eyes and short, clear orders of the sergeants; and, above all, the calm, assured air of authority of the officer who superintended the embarkation. While I was noting all this my glance fell on a party of men, about fifty in number, wearing the usual blue tunic and red trousers, who had no mark or number in their caps. Now the Frenchmen of the line had each the number of his regiment on the front of the kepi, and we of the Foreign Legion had grenades on ours. Moreover, these men were set apart from all the rest and were guarded by a dozen soldiers with fixed bayonets. The men seemed sullen and careless of their personal appearance, and when a Frenchman forgets his neatness you may be sure that he has already forgotten his self-respect. Curiosity made me apply for information to the corporal over my squad, and he told me that these were men who for their offences in regiments stationed in France were now being transferred to disciplinary battalions in Algeria, where they would forfeit, practically, all a soldier's privileges and be treated more like convicts than recruits. I at once remembered what the sergeant whose acquaintance I had first made had said about the zephyrs, the men that could not be reclaimed. I saw them often afterwards, and, though in most of the battalions they are not very bad and are treated fairly enough, in others which contain the incorrigible ones the officers and sub-officers have to go armed with revolvers, and the giving out of cartridges, when it can't be helped, is looked upon as the sure forerunner of a murder. Figure to yourself what a hated warder's life would be worth if the convicts in Dartmoor had rifles and bayonets and if the governor had occasionally to serve out packets of cartridges, it being well understood that all--governor, warders, and convicts--are supposed to be transferred to, let us say, Fashoda, where there is now and then a chance of a Baggara raid. I don't know much about the voyage across the Mediterranean as I was almost, but not quite, sea-sick. It has always been so with me, the gentlest sea plays havoc with my stomach. We got into Oran at about six o'clock in the evening, and our party at once disembarked. We were met on the quay by a sergeant of the Foreign Legion, who showed us the way to a barrack, where we were formally handed over to his control. That night we stayed in the barrack, and I suffered a little annoyance from my comrades, from all of whom I was separated next day, when we were transferred to our depot at a place called Saida. I do not know whether this is to-day the depot for the Foreign Legion or not, as I heard men say that an intention existed on the part of the military authorities to place it farther south. Here I spent some time learning drill, discipline, and all the duties of a soldier, and this was the hardest period of my military life, for my knowledge of French had to be considerably increased before I could quite grasp the meaning of an order, and very often I was abused by a corporal for laziness when I had the best will in the world to do what I was told, if I could only understand it. CHAPTER III When we arrived at the depot we were at once divided into small parties, each of which was sent to a company for drill. I was attached to No. 1 Company, and though four others of my comrades came to it with me they did not remain there long. Two of them were Belgians, one an Alsatian, and the fourth a Pole. All spoke French well, and it was very soon seen that they had learned something about drill already in other armies, and, therefore, they were sent almost at once to the battalions on service at the edge of the great desert. Thus it was that I found myself the only member of the detachment in No. 1, and of this I was very glad, for my last experience with them had not been of the most pleasant kind. And now let me put on record the only complaint I have to make about my life at Saida. On account of my speaking English all agreed that I must be an Englishman, and the Englishman is well hated abroad. Consequently on the drill ground and in the barrack room I was continually addressed by the expressive sobriquet of "English pig." Now "cochon anglais" is not a nice nickname, and though I dared not resent it from the corporals and other sub-officers I made up my mind that from my equals in rank it was not to be endured. There was a big Alsatian in my squad who was most persistent in insulting me, though I had often tried to explain to him that I was neither a pig nor an Englishman. With him, therefore, I resolved to deal, confident that, if I could put a stop to his insolence, the rest would be quiet enough. I determined, as he was my superior in age, strength, weight, and length of arm, that it would be only right to take him unawares and, if possible, finish the business before he could quite understand what I was about. For three or four days after settling this matter in my mind I got no opportunity such as I wished for. Seeing me take the nickname quietly, for I no longer even remonstrated with him, the Alsatian went further than before and raised my anger to boiling point. At last the chance came. As I entered the room one afternoon I noticed lying near the door a rather large billet of wood. The corporal was out, so were most of the men, and those who remained, five or six in number, were lazily lounging in various attitudes about the room. I put aside rifle, belt, and bayonet, for I had just come in from a punishment parade--that is, an extra parade ordered to men for some slight irregularity--and looked straight at the big brute, as if to challenge him. "Ah, my fine fellow, how do English pigs like punishment parades in this weather?" he began. "As well," I answered, picking up, carelessly as it were, the billet, "as Alsatian dogs like this." And I brought the heavy block down upon his head with all my strength. The cap, though utterly destroyed, saved his head, but still he was so stupefied by the sudden assault and by the force of the blow that I had time to strike him again and again. The others jumped up quickly and seized me, crying out that the Alsatian was dead. And, indeed, he looked as if he were dead, for his head was covered with blood, and one almost imagined that his brains would protrude through the wounds. However, after some time he came to himself again, and truly no one was better pleased than I, for as I cooled down I began to be fearful of consequences. When the corporal heard about the affair he told the sergeant, the sergeant went to the captain, and the captain came down to investigate the matter for himself. I told him how I was continually annoyed, and when he asked me why I struck the other when off his guard, I pointed out that to do so gave me the only chance of revenge. He measured us both with his eyes and seemed to agree with me. Anyway, the Alsatian was sent to get his wounds dressed and I was ordered extra drills, extra fatigues, and to remain altogether in barracks for a fortnight. Now I wondered how I got off so lightly. Well, in the Foreign Legion a fight between men of the same squad is not considered half so serious as one between men belonging to different squads, just as no one minds so much about a fight between brothers as about one between members of separate families. If a soldier of No. 1 squad beats a soldier of No. 2 all the men of No. 2 will look for revenge, and all the men of No. 1 will know that, and, therefore, at any moment thirty or more men may be, to use an expressive phrase, "into" one another with Nature's weapons and anything lying handy that will do a man damage. Sometimes when the quarrel is more serious than usual--as, for instance, when it is about women--bayonets may be used, but, indeed, the soldier very seldom has recourse to his accustomed weapons in a fight with comrades. But if a dispute arises between a battalion of zephyrs and another of the Foreign Legion there is but one way of restoring order--call out the cavalry and the guns. As the Alsatian and I belonged to the same squad the captain contented himself with punishing me slightly and warning us both against a renewal of the quarrel. The story went around, and I don't believe I was called an English pig ever afterwards except by an Irishman or an Irish-American, who, of course, spoke only in jest. Our company consisted of from 160 to 200 men. Sometimes it was strong for a week after the arrival of a number of recruits, then again it would go down as a squad or two departed for the regiment. My squad varied, I think, from ten to seventeen, and, taking us all round, we weren't very bad, as soldiers go. What language did we speak? French on the drill ground and on duty and in reply to superior officers; amongst ourselves a Lingua Franca, made up chiefly of French, especially the Argot, but with a plentiful admixture of German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and other languages, including in some squads even Russian, Turkish, and Arabic. What I say now refers not merely to the depot but to the Foreign Legion in general: every battalion, every company, I might almost say every squad, had its own peculiarity of idiom; Sapristi and Parbleu gave place often to Caramba, Diavolo, and Mein Gott. In fact, before I was six months in the Legion I could swear fluently in every European language except English; the only English curse they taught me was Goddam. The _sous-officiers_ were pretty strict with us in the depot, but the punishments were not too severe. The favourite one was to keep you altogether in the barrack and compel you to sleep during the night in your ordinary uniform on a plank bed in the guard room. That was the worst of it, in the day no one minded the confinement to barracks--for what was the use in wandering about a dirty town if one had no money in his pocket, and our pay did not last long?--but in the night the plank bed was not an ideal resting-place. I did not get into much trouble, the row with the Alsatian was my chief offence, and what kept me right was the dread of sleeping in the guard room at night. We drilled every day except Sunday, but there is no use in telling about that, as drill is the same all the world over. Our drill instructors were certainly eloquent--all had copious vocabularies--and the wealth of abuse and cursing that any of them could expend in an hour's work was, indeed, extraordinary. While I was unable to fully understand I felt angry; by the time I understood every word I was too philosophical to care. Moreover, I am sorry to have to say that I was rapidly acquiring a fairly extensive vocabulary of my own, and every time I heard a curse directed at myself I thought one for the benefit of the drill instructor's soul. It's a tradition in every army just as it is in every navy, fighting and mercantile, that nothing can be got out of men without bad language, and I do believe that there is a good deal of truth in the tradition. One would fancy that skippers and sergeants wish to familiarise their men with the names at least of the lower regions and their ruler, in the firm belief that the men will at some time make the acquaintance of both. That's as it may be; at anyrate we learned a good deal more than our drill from our instructors. We had a remarkably fine band. It was chiefly composed of Germans, I think, and it does seem strange that ten years after the Franco-Prussian war the majority of a French regimental band should be composed of the sons of the men who crushed Napoleon the Third at Sedan. The band played very often in the square, and every evening that it turned out I felt no desire to leave the barrack. I don't understand music but I like it. In the square the women and children of the depot used to walk about listening, talking and laughing; the officers' wives at one side and the wives of the _sous-officiers_ at another. As for us, we lounged about at a short distance and made remarks, not always in the best taste, about the women of both classes. A good deal of quiet, oh, very quiet, flirtation used to go on, and this gave rise amongst us to rather broad jests and hints. Of course, many people from the town came in also, and these we considered fair game as well. One very fat man, accompanied by a tall, extremely thin woman, evidently his wife--they seemed to have no children--came regularly at least three times a week to listen to the music. If he and his lady knew all the fun they provided for us and the jokes uttered at their expense, I fancy that the square would never see them again. What they did not know did not trouble them, and so they came as long as I remained in the depot and I daresay for long enough after I left it. A very important consideration with a soldier, as with any other man, is his food. I think we got nearly enough--that is, the fellows who were used to it got enough--but the poor devils who were not used to slops and bread were badly off, especially those who, like myself, had schoolboy appetites. I have seen--this was in the battalion--veterans leaving part of their rations untouched and young soldiers, men under twenty-five, hungry the whole day long. Early in my soldiering I learned the blessed consolation of tobacco. Often when I was more hungry after a meal than before it, the soup and bread rather exciting my stomach than satisfying it, I have smoked till no sensation of emptiness remained. I don't know what a soldier in a Continental army would do without tobacco. Nearly all our scanty pay went to buy it, and, wretched stuff as it was, I have never enjoyed the best Havana as I used to enjoy the delicious smoke when all work and drill for the day were over and the pipe of comfort and blessed forgetfulness made paradise of a barrack room. We were good enough to one another. If the Spaniard had no tobacco he could generally get some, unless it were too scarce indeed, and then he had to be satisfied with half-a-dozen puffs from every pipe in the room. I say the Spaniard advisedly, for he was always without money; he had such an unfortunate trick of getting into trouble and losing his pay. At the same time I too have had to do with the whiffs when I longed for a pipeful of my own, and when you wanted to feel the taste of the weed in your mouth it was very good to get even them. When tobacco was very scarce with all we had more than one device for getting a smoke; but there, these are only silly things, not that they seemed silly to us at the time. While at our drill we were the most obedient fellows in the world, so were we too when doing the ordinary work of the soldier. But when the day's labour was done we were not to be ordered about at the will of any sergeant or corporal. Well they knew it too. Why, when a squad in No. 2 Company was bullied--out of hours, be it well understood--by their corporal a strange thing occurred. The corporal was found one afternoon--at least the corporal's body was found--in one of the latrines, and it was quite evident to the doctors that he had been suffocated. Suspicion fell at once upon the squad he commanded, but, and this was the strange thing, every one of them could prove that it was impossible for him to have hand, act or part, in the business, for some were on guard, and others were at drill, and others--rather peculiar, wasn't it?--had been directly under the eyes of the sergeant-major of the company. There was a sentry near the latrine, who, of course, had not left his post, and this man could tell within five minutes the time the corporal entered. He saw no others enter at or about the same time, but that was easily explained: a large hole had been broken through the back of one of the compartments, and half-a-dozen men could easily get through this in as many seconds, and, once in without being observed, the rest was easy. Nobody was ever even court-martialled for the murder, and, though many might be able to guess the names of the murderers, he would be a fool who did his guessing within earshot of even a corporal. One thing is certain, we had a fairly quiet time afterwards while I was in the depot, not that we weren't sworn at and abused just as much on parade--oh yes, we were--but when the quiet time came the _sous-officiers_ had sense enough to leave us to ourselves. Well, it's all over now. The man who carried the business through died in Tonquin--he was a Russian--and he will turn up again in this narrative as ringleader of one of the most exciting incidents of my life. I did not form any friendships in the depot. True, there were fellows in the squad whom I liked better than others, but I never showed preference even for them. One thing chiefly prevented me from making friends: I was beginning to learn something about the world and its ways, or perhaps I should say about human nature, for with us conventionality was dropped when the belt came off for the last time in the evening and we spoke very freely to one another. If you liked something in a comrade's words or acts you told him so; if you disliked anything you were equally outspoken. Did a thought enter your mind worthy of being communicated, in your opinion, to the rest it made no difference whether it were immoral, or blasphemous, or against the law, or contrary to discipline, out it came, and generally with a garnishment of oaths and obscene expressions. We very seldom spoke of what is good, except to laugh at and revile it. When we saw a woman evidently very fond of her husband we said: "Ah, she is throwing dust in his eyes; she has more than one lover." If we noticed a husband very devoted to his wife, why, it was certain that the devotion was only an excuse for watchfulness. Everything good was looked on with suspicion; everything bad was natural, right, and obviously true. We were always looking forward to the future. When in the depot we yearned to be with the regiment; afterwards, when with the regiment in the south of Algeria, I found my comrades and myself thinking eagerly of the chances of going to the East. Life in Tonquin could not be so monotonous; there was always fighting going on, and in any case you got the chance of looting on the sly after a battle or even a petty skirmish. This looking forward is, however, common to most men, but we had a special reason for it, inasmuch as we were never comfortable or content, our lives being made up for the most part of work and drill and punishment, with an occasional fight, which wonderfully enlivened the time for those who had not to pay for it. When we had learned our drill pretty well the officers began to take more interest in us. Don't imagine that they were kind and nice to us, that they complimented us on our smartness and intelligence, or that they even dreamt of standing us a drink in the canteen. Oh no; they were somewhat worse than the sergeants, and if their language was not so coarse it was equally cutting and abusive. By this time, however, we were case-hardened, and, besides, we knew that at last we were leaving the depot for ever, and the excitement induced by the expected change was in itself a source of joy. We who were about to go went around smiling and in good humour with ourselves and all the world. The men who knew that their stay would last for some time longer consoled themselves with the thought that at last it too must come to an end. Simple philosophy, wasn't it? but wonderfully comforting. We speculated about the battalions, about the stations, about the Arabs, about the Moors, about the war in Tonquin, about everything that we could think of as possibly affecting our after-life. I, mere schoolboy that I was, was one of the most excited, and indulged in the most extravagant fancies and dreamt the most extraordinary dreams. At last the glorious day came. We were aroused at three o'clock in the morning, had finished breakfast, and were on the parade-ground at a little after four in full marching order. There we were addressed in a farewell speech by the commandant, who called us "my children," as if he cared especially for each and all of us. I had almost to smile, but a smile at such a time would surely entail punishment. The band played us out of the gate, and off we marched, about 200 strong, all in good health and spirits, for the little station where lay the battalion for which we were designed. CHAPTER IV We went altogether by march route to our destination. Every day was like the preceding one, and a short description of any day will do for all. Reveille at four o'clock, then while some pulled down and folded up the tents others cooked the morning coffee, at five or a little after we were _en route_, at eight usually, but sometimes later, a halt was called for the morning soup; that over, we put our best foot foremost until about eleven or half-past. Now came the pleasantest and sleepiest part of the twenty-four hours. We ate a little, we smoked a little, we slept, or rather dozed, a little, until the bugles warned us at half-past three that another stretch of dry, dusty, throat-provoking road had to be accounted for. On again at four until six or seven or eight, with occasional rests of ten minutes each, and then there was nothing but cleaning up after the evening soup. When all was right and the sentries had been posted for the night you might talk and smoke if you liked, but as a rule you smoked first and fell asleep afterwards. It was not strange that we, who had been cooped up in the depot so long, enjoyed this march. It seemed to us that we were soldiers at last, not mere recruits, and dust and thirst and other inconveniences were matters to be put up with and laughed at. On the road we often sang; at the end of the midday halt, while we helped one another with knapsack and belts, you might often hear songs of every country from the Urals to the Atlantic. Every man's spirits were high; the long-expected change had worked wonders, and the officers, nay, even the sergeants and the corporals, had little of abuse or swearing for us. True, our _sous-officiers_ were not drill instructors; of all things in the world teaching is the most wearing on the temper, and perhaps that is why there was so great a difference between the sergeants in the depot and the sergeants on the march. I think we did on an average about three miles an hour. It was good enough too, for there were the rifle and the knapsack to be carried, and the greatcoat and the blanket and the ammunition, and all the other impedimenta of the soldier. The straps of the knapsack galled me a bit, and I soon found out the difference between a march out from barracks for a few hours and a day-after-day tramp through the heat and the dust with the knowledge that you carried your bed and most of your board upon your person. The rest at the end of the hour, for we always halted for ten minutes after a fifty minutes' march, was a great help; and, again, I was a little too proud, or too vain if you like to call it so, to fall out of the ranks while my comrades were steadily marching on. After all, pride or vanity, call it what you will, never hurts a youngster, though it should make him slightly overwork himself in trying to keep up with those who are his seniors in age and his betters in endurance. All the same, when the day's march was over, it was delightful to pull off knapsack, boots and all, and to feel that there were before you eight or nine hours of complete freedom from toil. One night, however, things were not quite so well with me. It was my turn for guard, and when we halted for the night I with others was turned out of the ranks at once. The first sentries were soon posted, and the remainder of us had a couple of hours in or near the guard tent to enjoy our evening meal. When that was over we all had a smoke, and at nine--we had halted at seven--the reliefs were wanted. I felt very lazy as I got up, took my rifle, and set out with the corporal of the guard to my post. There I remained until eleven, was relieved until one, and went again on sentinel duty until three. At four the usual routine began, and I remember that, after the wakeful night, the day's march seemed very long. When we halted at midday I fell asleep, and when the march was over I forgot to smoke, and, curling myself up in my greatcoat and blanket, became utterly oblivious of all that occurred until the reveille next morning awakened me to another day. I don't remember much of the country through which we passed. Most of the time my ears were more engaged than my eyes, for many a good story was told and many a happy jest passed as we tramped along in the dust and sun. Some fellows told us stories of life in their own countries, and if they did not adhere exactly to the truth, why, that only made the stories better. Others could not see a man or a woman--especially a woman--on either flank but straightway they criticised and joked, and very clever we used to fancy the criticisms and jokes were. Some again were good singers, and these were constantly shouted at to sing, especially the men who sang comic songs. I daresay some of these songs, if not all, were scarcely fit for a drawing-room, but as no ladies were present it did not seem to make much difference. Then we had a bugle march occasionally--say half-a-dozen times a day--and I for one found the bugles wonderfully inspiriting. While the bugles were playing none of us seemed to feel the road beneath our feet; we stopped talking, we almost gave up smoking, the step became more regular, and the ranks closed up. I suppose a musician would call a bugle march monotonous; well, it may be so, but how many men out of 200 are musicians? But we had more music than that. Some of the fellows had brought along musical instruments of small size--tin whistles, flageolets, and such things. Very well they played too. Many were fairly good whistlers, and so there was a variety of means to drive away dull care; indeed, I think we were the jolliest and most careless set in the world. Even when the sun had been very hot and the road more than usually dusty we had always the thought that the end of the annoyance would come when we reached our battalion and that every day brought us nearer to the men who were to take the place of home and country, friends and relations, for five years. We fancied that they would be just like ourselves, and we liked one another too well not to be satisfied. It was while on this march that I first saw how soldiers are punished when there is no prison near or when it is deemed best to give a short, sharp punishment to an offender. Of course, I refer to cases where the offence does not merit a court-martial. We had halted for the evening near a small village, and some fellows had gone to it, more, I suppose, out of curiosity than because they had any business there. I was not with them, and I never fully learned what occurred but I know there was a woman in the case. Whether she deserted the corporal for the private soldier, or refused to leave the private when his superior made advances to her I cannot tell, but some words passed between the men, and the corporal made a report to the sergeant, who passed it on to the captain. Very few questions were asked; the man was taken to a spot near the guard tent, where he would be directly under the eyes of a sentry, and there he was put, as we termed it, _en crapaudine_. This is how it was done. First his hands were pinioned behind his back, then his ankles were shackled tightly to each other, afterwards the fastenings of his wrists were bound closely to the ankle bonds, so that he was compelled to remain in a kneeling posture with his head and body drawn back. After some time pains began to be felt in the arms, across the abdomen, and at the knees and ankles. These pains increased rapidly, and at last became intolerable. Yet he dared not cry out, or at least no one would cry out until he could not help it, for the sleeping men ought not to be disturbed, and at the first cry a gag was placed between the teeth. This poor devil did not get much punishment. I think he was _en crapaudine_ for only an hour or so, but, take my word for it, if you place a man in that position for four, five, or six hours, he will be in no hurry to get himself into trouble again. There are other punishments too--the silo, for instance--but I shall not describe these now, as I shall have occasion further on to tell all about them when I am dealing with life in the regiment. We did not always lie under canvas on the march. Sometimes we halted at a garrison town or at cantonments, and then some, if not all, of us were placed in huts for the night. We saw all kinds of soldiers there. We met zouaves, chasseurs, turcos, spahis, zephyrs, but with none had we much intercourse. This was due to several reasons. We came in hot and tired and with little desire for anything except food and rest, and besides we had to clean up clothes, boots, and arms for the parade and inspection in the early morning. Then the regular French troops, and even, I must admit, the native Algerian soldiers, looked with contempt upon us, and you may be sure that we of the Legion returned the contempt and the contemptuous words with interest. They never went very far in showing their feelings towards our fellows, for we had an ugly reputation; more than once a company or two of Legionaries had made a desperate attack on a battalion even, and it was well known through Algeria that when the Legionaries began a fight there would be, as was often said, "blood upon shirts" before the fight was over. Therefore the others stood rather in awe of our men, and they did not quite like the idea of having anything to do with us, even though we were only recruits on the way to the battalion, for every soldier knows that the recruit is even more anxious to follow the regimental tradition than the veteran. The latter feels that he is part and parcel of the corps and that his reputation is not likely to suffer; the former is only too eager to show that he accepts, wholly and unreservedly, the ideas handed down to him, and, besides, he has not been altogether brought under discipline. Thus, though we saw men in many uniforms we got to know very little about them--indeed, all our information came from the corporals--and I may add here that the corporals impressed upon us that we were never to fight individually with Frenchmen or natives, but that, if a general quarrel took place, we were to remember our duty to the Legion and make it "warm weather" for our opponents. Afterwards on more than one occasion we followed that advice. Once or twice a little unpleasantness arose amongst ourselves. It never went very far; the others, who were not desirous of seeing their comrades get into trouble, always put an end to the business before any real harm was done. I had nothing to do with any of these disputes save once, when, in the _rôle_ of peacemaker, I sat with another fellow for more than half-an-hour on an Italian who was thirsting for the blood of a Portuguese. The Portuguese was receiving similar attentions from two others at the opposite side of the tent. It was funny how the thing came about. The Italian had got, somewhere or somehow--I suppose he stole it--a bottle of brandy, and, instead of sharing all round, gave half to his comrade the Portuguese and drank the other half himself. When they returned to the tent they were quarrelling, and evidently drunk. After some time they began to fight, and we left them alone, as they had been so mean about the liquor, until we saw the Italian reaching for his bayonet. Then the rest of us joined in, and the precious pair of rascals, who had forgotten their comrades when they were happy, got something which made them rise in the morning with more aches in the body than they had in the head. They apologised the next day and we forgave them. This was another lesson to me. I saw that when a man got anything outside his ordinary share of good things he was supposed to go share and share alike with the rest of his squad. Many a time afterwards I have seen men who had at one time been of good position at home, and whose relatives could and would send them money, openly show the amount received in tent or hut or barrack room, and we others went out to spend that money when the evening came with just as much belief in our right to do so as if the money had been sent to the squad and not to the man. Well, the rich ones did not lose in the end, for they got many a favour from their comrades which the average soldier would be a fool to expect. The corporal of my squad on the march south was a rather good fellow. I am not quite sure whether he was a German or an Austrian by birth. He had seen a good deal of Algerian life, and was determined as soon as his term was up to get clear away for ever from Africa. This was not pleasant news. Here was a corporal, a man of over four years' service, whose whole and sole idea it was to leave the Legion and the country. It plainly proved that the life before us was not the most attractive in the world, and the thought often crossed my mind that perhaps I had been a fool to try soldiering in such a corps. With the happy-go-lucky recklessness of youth, however, I quickly got rid of these fancies, and I could console myself that five years would not be long passing, and at the very worst I should have learned more, situated as I was, than if I were to spend the term at school, and at such a school as the one I had been attending. I got on fairly well with the others of my squad. I have never been inclined to affront people, and I can honestly say that I have never shirked my work, and these qualities, added to a natural cheerfulness of disposition which caused me to look at the bright side of things, helped me very much all through my stay in the Foreign Legion. Indeed, there was only one man who was disliked by all. He was a Pole, a German Pole, I believe, and he had the most sarcastic tongue of all the men I've ever met. His sneering smile was almost as bad as his cutting tongue. While speaking politely he said little things that one could not very well resent, and that, therefore, hurt one the more. It's bad to be an idler, and worse to have a nasty way of openly abusing and insulting people, but the worst gift of God to a man is the gift of sarcasm. The sarcastic man never has a friend. There are, of course, always men who will fawn upon and flatter him, but that will be only through fear of his tongue--even they who most court him rejoice inwardly at his misfortunes. He can't be always lucky, he must take his bad fortune as it comes, and when it does come he cannot help knowing that all who know him are glad. It was well, I think, for our friend the Pole that the journey did not last a week longer. Somebody or other would be sure to lose his temper, and if one blow were struck, twenty would surely follow, for we all hated him. He said something about a gorilla one day, looking hard all the while at the Italian already mentioned, and it was a wonder that there was no fight. There would have been, I feel sure, but that the bugles sounded the assemble for the last march of the day, and the Italian, who was no beauty, had a few hours of marching to get cool. The Pole was quiet enough for the next couple of days, and by that time we were within six hours' march of our destination. Before describing the battalion to which I now belonged I must say a few words about the Foreign Legion in general, so that the peculiar characteristics of the corps may be understood. All that I shall mention in this chapter is that one sunny afternoon about four o'clock we marched into camp on the borders of the Sahara amid the cheers of our future comrades, and that within an hour our 200 men were divided amongst the four companies that constituted the 2nd Battalion of the First Regiment of the _Légion étrangère_. CHAPTER V For centuries the armies of France have had a certain proportion of foreign troops. Readers of Scott will remember the Scottish archers, and there is a regiment in the British army to-day which was at one time a Scottish corps in the service of the Most Christian Kings of France. Almost everyone has heard of the Irish Brigade, a force whose records fill many a bloody and glorious page of European history and whose prowess more than once turned the ebb-tide of defeat into the full flood of victory. It has been computed that almost 500,000 Irishmen died in the French service; and we may well imagine that half-a-million dashing soldiers did not yield up their lives for nothing. In the time of the great Napoleon there were many foreign brigades in the grand army. Everybody has read of the famous Polish lancers who time and again shattered the chivalry of Prussia, Austria, and Muscovy in those combats of giants, when kingdoms were the prizes and marshalships and duchies mere consolations for the less lucky ones. These Poles were magnificent fools. Poniatowski and his riders clung to Napoleon, led the way in his advances, covered the rear in his retreats, and all the while the cynical emperor had little, if any, thought of restoring the ancient glories of Poland, and thus repaying the country for the valour and devotion of her sons. Other foreign cavalry he had as well, but they became more or less mixed with the native Frenchmen, and thus do not stand out so boldly to our mental vision as the Poles. Chief amongst the great emperor's foreign infantry brigades was the Irish one. Indeed, to this one alone of them an eagle was entrusted, and it may do no harm to remark here that that eagle, much as it was coveted by certain enemies, was never lost, and was handed back to French custody when the Irish Brigade ceased to exist as an independent body after the final defeat at Waterloo. Most of the brigade, not caring for the monarchy after having so long and so faithfully served the empire, took advantage of the offer made to them of taking service under the British monarch, and were incorporated in various regiments of the British army. Indeed, in the late twenties and early thirties of the nineteenth century it was by no means uncommon to meet in Irish villages a war-worn veteran who had been in most of the great European battles--Jena, Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo--and had finished his soldiering under the burning suns of Hindostan. In the Crimea, again, a foreign legion, somewhat like the legion formed by the British Government for the same campaign, was amongst the troops sent out by Napoleon the Third. I know very little about this corps, but I am quite sure that it got its full share, and more, of danger, hard work, and privations. Anyway the Crimean campaign, except for a few battles, was more a contest against nature than against the enemy. In the Franco-Prussian war we next find mention of the Legionaries. At the battle of Orleans, when that city was captured by the Prussians, the Foreign Legion and the Pontifical Zouaves covered the French retreat. When we learn that out of 1500 of the former only 36 remained at the end of the day there will be little need to ask where were the Legionaries during the rest of the war. It must be remembered also, that the 1500 men who fought and fell outside Orleans were the remains of the Legionaries brought from Algeria, and that their comrades left behind were amongst the most distinguished of those who quelled the rebellion of the Kabyles in the year '71. It is only just to mention that the Pontifical Zouaves covered themselves with glory at this fight; they went into action along with the Legion on the 11th of October 1870, 370 strong, of whom only 17 survived the day. The Foreign Legion, as I knew it, consisted, as I believe it still consists, of two regiments, each containing four battalions. As a battalion numbers 1000 men the total strength of the service soldiers may be put at 8000. In addition there are depot men, including band, drill instructors, and recruits; but I have said enough about the depot already, so I shall now confine myself altogether to the service soldiers. Every battalion is divided into four companies, and thus a company contains, approximately, 250 officers, sub-officers, and soldiers. The officers are three--captain, lieutenant, and sub-lieutenant. Next comes the sergeant-major of the company, a sub-officer who keeps the accounts. There are two sergeants, one for each of the two sections into which the company is divided, and under them a number of corporals in command of squads, every squad being, be it understood, a distinct unit in the economy of the section to which it belongs. The men are divided into two classes, the first and the second, and from the first class are chosen the corporals as vacancies arise. The uniform consists of kepi with a brass grenade in front, blue tunic with black belt, red trousers, or white, according to the season. With the red trousers go black gaiters, with the white ones white spats, somewhat like those worn by Highland soldiers in the British army. The knapsack, greatcoat, and other impedimenta are rather heavy, especially when 150 rounds of ball cartridge are included. I don't know the exact weight, but I remember that I used to feel an ugly drag on my shoulders at the end of a day's march. The pouch for ammunition at the side also pressed heavily against the body, and we often wished that those who had the arrangement of a man's equipment should wear it on the march, day in day out, if only for a month. There might be some common-sense displayed by them after that. But in all ages and nations a man's accoutrements--I use the word in the most general sense--have been decided on by tailors and good-for-nothing generals--oh, there are plenty of them in every army in the world--and, worst of all, by women, who twist and turn the said generals around their little fingers. Look at a private soldier of any army when standing at attention in full marching order; you are pleased with the sight; his head is erect, his straightened shoulders seem easily to support the heavy pack behind; the twin pouches look so beautifully symmetrical. Ask that soldier how he feels at the end of a thirty-mile march. If he isn't a liar, he will tell you that the rifle is rather heavy, but he doesn't mind that; that the pack galls a bit, but that's to be expected; and that the pouches weighted with ammunition have given him a dull, heavy pain in each side just above, he imagines, where the kidneys are, and if that pain could be avoided he would think little of all the rest. Many a time I have taken the packets of cartridges from the pouches before we had gone a quarter of a mile and stowed them away between the buttons of my tunic--there they had ribs and breast bone to rest against. Why don't the people whose business and interest it is to get the best out of the private soldier give the private soldier a chance? But they won't. Of all the humbugs on the face of God's earth the military officer of, say, twenty years' service is the worst. The soldier of the second class wore no decoration on his sleeve, the soldier of the first class had a red chevron, the corporal wore two red chevrons, the sergeant a single gold one, and the sergeant-major two gold ones. It was a good thing to be a soldier of the first class, not because you wore a chevron or got extra pay, but because, when a charge was made against you by sergeant or corporal, the officers would listen carefully to your defence, and you generally got what the second-class man rarely got--a fair chance as well as a patient hearing. Squad etiquette was rather peculiar. You were assigned to a squad, and on entering were made free, as I may say, of the mess, and how you got on afterwards with your enforced comrades depended largely on yourself. You might be very well liked, or thoroughly disliked, but violent likes and dislikes were rather uncommon. As a rule, you had just a little trouble in asserting your right to a fair share, and that always, of what was going. If you had a dispute with another your comrades looked on and listened; if you came to blows they prevented the affair from going too far; and unless the corporal was a brute he allowed his squad to arrange their own affairs out of working hours in their own way. But you dared not form friendships with men outside the squad; if you did you were set upon and punished in every way by your comrades, and your friend was served in the same way by his. Let me give an instance. A rather nice, quiet fellow, an Alsatian, was in my squad at a place called Zenina when we received a new draft of recruits from the depot. Amongst these was another Alsatian, who came from the same place as my comrade, and, as was natural, the two became fast friends. Under the circumstances nothing was said at first, and had either asked for a transfer to his friend's squad all would have been well. After some time, however, the comrades of both began to object. Why, we asked one another, should Schmidt openly abandon us and our genial company for a man who should by right be good comrade with others? Well, Schmidt was abused, and bore the abuse calmly; he got only half a share at meals, and still did not go further than a meek protest; he came back after seeing his chum, and found all his kit flung outside the door of the hut, his rifle fouled, his bayonet covered with salt water, his straps dirty, and his buckles dull; still he bore with all. Next evening he went to visit his friend, and, while he was absent, we formed a soldiers' court-martial and tried him. One man represented the accuser, another took the part of Schmidt, but the result was quite evident from the first. He was found guilty of neglecting his duties as a comrade, and as he had openly abandoned his squad and thereby shown his contempt for it, at the same time exposing us to the derision of all the battalion, it was high time that the squad should adequately punish him and thus vindicate its character. The chief difficulty was about the punishment. It was first proposed that we should put him _en crapaudine_ for a night, seizing and binding him while all in the cantonments were asleep, and releasing him in the morning before the reveille. However, it was pointed out that the corporal would not be likely to permit that, and, if he did permit it, Schmidt might report the matter and get the corporal into trouble. Now the corporal was a good fellow. He swore at us and abused us and would allow not even a sullen muttering in reply, but he would not, if he could help it, of course, get a man into trouble with the sergeant or the captain or the commandant. Occasionally he would find a bottle of wine, half-a-bottle of brandy, or a score or two of cigarettes in his corner. He said nothing, and as soon as the bottle was empty he did not have anything more to do with it: it was removed without a word by some one of us and quietly, I may say unostentatiously, deposited where its presence need not be accounted for by any of our squad. After a good deal of talking we finally settled on a plan. What it was will appear in a short time. That night we could not do as we had resolved, for the corporal came in at an early hour in the evening as drunk and as abusive as a man could be. He rolled against me, and cursed me for a dirty, drunken pig, who could not carry his liquor like a soldier. He stood tottering in his corner of the room, and gave out more bad language than he had ever done before. And we were not quiet. He got quite as much as he gave; we described for his benefit our conceptions of his father and his mother--his father was a dog and his mother the female of the same species--we attributed to himself all the bad qualities that we could think of; we even called him coward, and dared him to report us at once to the sergeant or the captain. He knew, and we knew, that if he did so his arrest would at once follow and that the chevrons on his arm would not be worth one of the brass buttons on his tunic. We overpowered him with abuse at length, and he fell asleep muttering curses and threats, which were altogether forgotten in the morning. Next evening the chance came. The corporal had taken a hint that it would be just as well for him for his own sake to have some appointment that would keep him away until the last moment before roll call. I may admit that when he woke in the morning he looked, and I suppose felt, very ill, and even refused his morning coffee when it was first offered to him. I took the coffee then from the man who had offered it, and, while all the rest, as it had been arranged, turned their backs, poured into it nearly a quarter of a pint of brandy. He saw what I was doing and took the mixture from me. Smelling it carefully first, he swallowed a little; liking the taste, he swallowed some more; and in less than two minutes he handed back the empty vessel to me, with a wink and a nod of the head that told me how delightful had been the little surprise prepared for him. As he was going out another man held out his hand with a couple of cigarettes. "Thanks, my comrade, how you are kind!" said the _sous-officier_. When he came in for soup, I again poured some brandy from the bottle into a tin cup in such a way that the corporal saw but the rest did not, being discreetly engaged. He did not wait to have it carried to him, he came swiftly round, took the cup, and drained it at a gulp. Then somebody left six or eight cigarettes near the corporal's bedplace, and all walked out except the corporal and myself. I went to the door, looked out, came back to my own bunk, took out a bottle of wine nearly three-quarters full and the tin cup, walked over to the corporal, filled the cup to the brim, and dutifully offered it to my superior officer. He drank, and returned the empty cup to me. Filling it for myself, I finished the contents, and then asked him for a cigarette--just one. The corporal gave it me, and I began the conversation. "Bad for us others if you lost the chevrons, corporal." "Why? Why? what did I say last night?" "Oh, nothing to speak about; but, corporal----" Then I stopped and looked straight at him. "Well, my comrade, what do you wish to say?" Now he was afraid; he began to fear something hidden by the kindness. "But, my corporal, could you not make an appointment now, so that after the evening soup you would be engaged until roll call--away from this place and in good company?" "Oh yes, yes; that is easy." "And your comrade might like to smoke and drink a little; if so, my corporal, after the evening soup, when we others leave the room, look behind your knapsack." "Good comrade; but will anything happen?" "Yes; a man will go to hospital for a week." "To hospital?" "Yes." "Only to hospital?" "My honour; only to hospital." "And for a week?" "Well, perhaps for ten days." "But only to hospital?" "Have I not pledged my honour?" "Very good; I will see my good friend Jean this evening. But you, you will remember, only the hospital." After the evening soup, as all were going out, he called me. "It is settled, my comrade; only the hospital?" "But yes," I answered. "Not this?" said the corporal, fingering a bayonet. I shook my head. "Not this?" and he touched the butt of a rifle. I answered as before. "And only hospital; word of honour?" "Word of honour," I replied. "Be it so then; I am well content." Then he looked behind his knapsack and found half-a-bottle of brandy, a bottle of wine, and six cigars. He turned, put out his hand to me, and said: "You are my good comrade. Have no fear; if there should be trouble, it is you, it is you that I will save." I laughed and shook his hand; he gave me a cigar, and the next moment was sorry for his generosity. Schmidt went off after the evening soup to see his chum. "Very well, very well," we said to one another. Lots were quickly drawn--we had not a son amongst us to toss with--and Nicholas the Russian, Guillaume the Belgian, Jean Jacques from Lorraine, and I were chosen as executioners of justice. The others lounged outside in different places, all anxious to let us know in good time of the arrival of the condemned. About an hour after soup we were warned that he was coming towards the hut. At once the blanket which was ready was laid on the ground directly inside the door, and each man stood at his corner waiting for the victim. The others outside gaily saluted him, and the fool did not suspect the unusual courtesy; he was humming an air to himself as he stepped through the doorway on to the blanket. In a second we had raised it at the corners; he stumbled and fell, in a limp heap, in the bottom. We jerked the blanket upward, and crash came his head against the roof of the hut. We let go at the word of command, given by the Russian; flop went his body against the floor. Again and again this was repeated, till our arms were tired, and the others who had crowded in and had been excited by the fun swore that he had not been punished sufficiently and that they would take our places. I was glad enough to surrender my corner to an Italian, for, indeed, my arms were weary, and my feelings--I was only a boy, you must remember--were shocked at the sight of the unresisting and almost insensible bit of humanity in the blanket. After a short time the Russian said the game should stop, and we, the other appointed dispensers of punishment, backed him up. Some grumbled, but Nicholas, to give him his due, was not a man to be turned from his purpose, and his reputation was such that nobody was very anxious to fall out with him. So the blanket was dropped for the last time, pulled from under the Alsatian, replaced on his bed, and we all went out, leaving the wretched fellow groaning on the ground. After a short talk we came back, gave him a drink, put him to bed, and prepared to meet the corporal on his return. The corporal came in a little before roll call. "What's wrong?" he asked as he heard the moaning of the Alsatian. Nobody answered. The corporal went across to the injured man's cot and again inquired. The poor devil told him as well as he could, and the _sous-officier_ at once ordered us all not to leave the hut until his return. He went out, and came back in a few minutes with the sergeant of the section. There is no need in telling all about the inquiry that followed; suffice it to say that the corporal was the only man sleeping in the room that night--the Alsatian was in hospital and we others under guard. Of course, our conduct was approved of throughout the battalion. Regimental tradition is dearer than justice, and we were regarded as good soldiers and good comrades who had merely vindicated our honour. But the army tradition is: when a charge is made and proved, punish. Officers _may_ sympathise, but they _must_ punish. Therefore we of the squad, corporal and Alsatian excepted, were sentenced to do extra drill every day for a month and sleep in our clothes under guard every night. It was a hard punishment. The weather was hot, we had little change of underclothing, and when we lay down on the planks for the night with the shirts and drawers on that we had worn during the day our sleep was restless, fitful, and uneasy. It is a wonder we did not mutiny; however, that would be going too far, so we counted the days and nights that intervened until we should be free soldiers again. The Alsatian was transferred from the hospital to another battalion, and I came across him again, and was glad to find that he bore no malice; indeed, he admitted that we were justified in acting as we had done and that it was his own fault, as he had not asked for a transfer. The incident I have related will give some idea of my life in the corps. I shall have soon to relate another story, which will show that jealousy might arise between companies as well as in a squad. CHAPTER VI About this time there were signs of a disturbance amongst the semi-savage tribes that hold the oases on the borders of the great desert. These are not, and I daresay never will be, brought completely under subjection. They are to the French in Algeria what the hill tribes of the Himalayas are to the British in Hindostan. They are by nature, proud, fierce, suspicious; by religion, contemptuous of Christian dogs; by habit, predatory. They are fairly well armed, indeed, they make their own weapons and ammunition. When they go on the warpath there is always more trouble than one would expect, considering their numbers; they are so elusive, so trained to forced marches, so dashing in attack and swift in retreat, that the Government has to allow at least three men for every Arab. If a general could corner them and get well home with the bayonet after the usual preliminaries of shell firing and musketry, or if the rascals would only come on and have done with it, a quarter of the number would suffice. But these pleasant things don't occur--I mean pleasant for the man with the modern rifle--at least, if they do, it is only when all the oases of the district have been seized, and then the Arabs may prefer to hazard all on a big fight, but as a rule they bow to destiny and surrender. Well, one morning we noticed the commandant and other officers jubilant and smiling, and very soon the news got down to us through the _sous-officiers_ that our battalion was for active service. How delighted we were! All punishments in the battalion were at once remitted; we had no more to suffer for the affair of the Alsatian; and the other squad, which had treated Alsatian number two in a similar manner, was also included in the pardon. We were not long getting ready for the march. The day after the good news came the battalion tramped out of cantonments nearly 1100 strong, every man in good condition, and with 150 cartridges in his pouches. A significant order was given on the parade ground, when we formed up for the last time in column of companies. We were told to break open each man a packet of cartridges and to load. We did so, and the commandant addressed us, and gave us fair warning that he could not permit _accidents_--he laid great stress on the word and repeated it more than once--he told us that if an _accident_ did occur it would be bad for the man whose rifle should be found to be discharged; he quoted the Bible to us, saying something about "a life for a life and a tooth"--yes, I think it was a tooth--"for a tooth." The old soldiers understood, and we others learned the meaning before we came to the first halting-place. The fact is, in every regiment, and nowhere more than in the Foreign Legion, there are unpopular officers and sub-officers, and there are feuds amongst the men, and what is easier than to loose off a rifle accidentally and, accidentally as it were, hit the man you dislike? In action the thing is done far more commonly than people suppose--and that is the safest time to do it; but after a fight, when all the men's rifles are foul, and when a cartridge can be flung away as soon as used, a bullet is sometimes sent through a tent on the off-chance of hitting the right man within. So the commandant was justified when he warned and threatened us about accidents. We marched about twenty-five kilometres every day, and did it cheerfully. We did not mind the country through which we passed, for all our thoughts were turned to the work before us. The veterans were in good humour. What advice they gave! "When the Arab charges you, mon enfant, or when you charge the Arab, which is better, thrust at his face the first time and at his body the second." "But why?" "Ah, my boy, give him the bayonet in the body and still he will strike; give it to him in the head, and then you can finish with a second stroke. And, again, the glint of the bayonet will disturb his aim, and, even should you miss with the first thrust, you can always get your weapon back and send it home before he recovers--of course, that is if you are quick enough. Moreover, the Arab expects you to lunge at his body, and you must always, if you are a good soldier, disappoint your enemy. Then there is no protection for his face; but a button or a piece of brass, even a secretly-worn cuirass, may turn your point and leave you at his mercy." We eagerly drank in all this and similar hints from the men of experience. The old soldiers were delighted. We were all as happy as schoolboys out for a holiday; we endured the heat and dust without muttering a complaint; nay, even old quarrels were forgotten, and the man who would not look at his detested comrade a month before now helped him with his knapsack or offered some tobacco, with a friendly smile. When the halt was called in the evening, the sentries were posted, the fires lit, the little tents put up, the messes cooked for the squads; but very soon the air of bustle and activity gave place to an appearance of quiet ease. When the last meal of the day was over, and the rifles, bayonets, straps, clothes, and everything else had been cleaned, we lay about the camp in small parties, here two or three, there half-a-dozen, yonder a full squad. Again we listened to the _vieux soldats_; we made them repeat their stories of war and pillage; we eagerly questioned them about the chances of loot. Some of our fellows had fought in the Russo-Turkish war of '78; Nicholas, whom I have mentioned, was believed to have commanded a company of Russian guards at the siege of Plevna, and, though he never said in so many words that he had even carried a rifle and knapsack in that war, he told us stories of it that could be told only by an onlooker, and it was easy to see that he was a man of birth and education, and, judging by the money with which his purse was often filled--not for long though, as he was a prince to spend--of wealth as well. It was during this march that I learned for the first time the privileges of a soldier as the soldier conceives them--I mean his chances when the fighting is over and the enemy's camp, village, or town is in his hands. Perhaps I had best say nothing or, if anything at all, but little of them. One thing I may mention; it is foolish for people to suppose that fighting men of to-day are at all different from their compeers of yore--the only change is that the rapine and the pillage are not boasted of so openly--but there is just as little of the spirit of Christianity in a so-called civilised army as there used to be in a legion of Julius Cæsar, perhaps even less. Many people will regret this, and yet you always find the goody-goodies and even the women loudest in crying out for war to avenge the wrongs, or fancied wrongs, of their country or to acquire new territory and new trade. I say this: if the women of the world only once realised to the full what war means to the women of the losers they would throw all their weight into the scale of peace. And remember, armaments are such to-day that no nation is absolutely safe from invasion; social questions, the relations between capital and labour, the currency, slave labour amongst whites, even in the United States--most happily situated of all countries--the eternal feud between whites and blacks in the South--any of these may at any moment cause a war worse than a war of invasion, because more bitter, more relentless, more capable of leaving a heritage of hate. Who is the more to be blamed: the rigid moralist at home who admits that most wars are the devil's work but proclaims that the war which he favours and shouts for is really blessed by God; or the soldier who, after dreary weeks or months of weary marching, with broken boots or no boots at all during the day, and chilling nights with only a tattered greatcoat or a ragged blanket to save him from the dew, with the memory upon him of hunger and thirst, of dust and fatigue, of constant knowledge that any moment may see him a corpse or a maimed weakling on the ground, forgets the Ten Commandments and even his natural humanity when the final charge has been successful and the chance has at last come for, in part at least, repaying himself, as soldiers have since war began repaid themselves, for toil and trouble and danger in the conquered town? Blame the man who does wrong if you will, but blame more the foolish people who, fancying that rapine and pillage can never stalk abroad in their own happy land, let loose the dogs of war upon their neighbours. The Carthaginian maids and matrons acclaimed their returning heroes; the day came when the Roman legionaries taught those very maids and matrons the real meaning of war. How proud the Roman women were of their gallant warriors when the gorgeous triumph unfolded itself on the long road to the Capitol! With what different feelings did they look on war as the news came that Attila had forced his way into the rich plains of Lombardy; or, even before that, with what agonised apprehension did they not look forth from the walls at the red glare in the sky that told of the presence of Hannibal? We abuse Turks and Arabs, Filipinos and Chinese, the Baggara from the desert and the tribal mountaineers from the borders of Afghanistan because, forsooth, they do not make war as Christianity dictates. And what about the allied armies in China of late? They were Christians--by repute at least; but what were they in reality? Just a little worse than the Boxers, that is all. Do I blame them? No; I know the temptations; I know how quickly the soldiers of Christian, so-called Christian, armies are taught to forget the Ten Commandments. I am not surprised, nor do I feel called upon to censure. I shall leave the casting of stones to the people who are always strong to resist their passions, especially those passions which soldiers feel and yield to most readily--lust of others' property, which your virtuous stockbroker will never allow to enter into his bosom; lust of strong drink, which never affects the shouters for war in the streets; lust of--well, another lust which need not be spoken of here, as I have already hinted more than enough of it and its consequences. However, I've done with moralising. We young soldiers heard, and heard with an awakening of delight, of pleasurable anticipation, the things that might happen when the fighting for the day was done. And war does not seem all war. You've got to cook and eat, to forage and drink, to mount guard or sleep, just as if you were back in cantonments, and the daily routine soon grows upon a man--at any rate it soon grew upon me. At last we joined the general. We were the first of his reinforcements, and very soon, as others arrived, the defensive gave place to the offensive. I can't tell about the progress of the little campaign; all I know is our share of it, and for me that was quite enough. For a few weeks we were cornering the enemy, seizing a well here, a caravan of provisions there, and having slight brushes, in which a dozen or two men killed and wounded represented our losses. The Arabs, having been beaten back by the men originally attacked, did not seem to care to give the general a good stand-up fight now that his forces had been increased, and after some time we began to fancy that they were merely holding out for good terms and would at last surrender in the usual way. Not that we grew careless about our guards, pickets, and vedettes, discipline prevented that, and luckily, for when all the oases had been seized and garrisoned except one, the Arabs, in desperation I believe, determined to throw all upon the hazard of a battle. This was my first real experience of fighting, for I don't count it fighting to advance in skirmishing order and fire at constantly moving figures half-a-mile away. I judged their opinion of us by ours of them, and, indeed, we never even ducked the head, for we could not fear bullets at such a range. Our cavalry had been pushed forward to locate the enemy and hold him if possible. My company and two companies of native infantry and three or four guns were sent in support, and the main body, coming along slowly and laboriously owing to difficulties of transport, moved in our rear, the flanks well protected by outlying horse. One evening when we were about fifteen kilometres in front of the general--too far, of course, but some officers do so want to distinguish themselves when they get a separate command--the chasseurs d'Afrique and the spahis rode back upon us. They reported the enemy in a strong position at the last oasis left to them, about twelve kilometres away, and our commanding officer sent back the news at once, halting meanwhile for instructions. He acted somewhat wisely too in getting us to throw up a sort of fortification on a piece of rising ground. A circular trench was dug; the stuff taken out formed a weak rampart; a biscuit or two and a glass of brandy were served out to every man; and then we lay down on the hard ground without a tent or even a blanket for shelter or covering. The horsemen fell back on the main body; their work was done, and they would be worse than useless in a night attack. Most of the night passed quietly, and I, who had done two hours sentry-go before midnight without seeing or hearing anything which could disquiet me, began to hope that the savage devils would wait to be attacked. About an hour before sunrise the corporal in charge of the outlying picket called me for another turn of duty. I arose from where I lay, took my rifle from the ground, and prepared to set out for my post, about eighty paces in front. I was to relieve Nicholas the Russian. As I took his place he whispered: "Look out, young one; the dangerous hour!" When the corporal and his party went away I gazed intently into the darkness towards the south. I knew by experience gained in many a night watch that very soon the sun would, as it always seemed to me, born and bred in a northern land, jump up on the horizon and send his welcome arrows of light across shrub and rock and sand. Once the light came the sudden rush in upon the camp would be impossible; the modern rifle would stave off all attack; spear and bayonet would clash together only when our leaders saw that the time had come when we should be on the rush and the enemy on the run. As I gazed I fancied that there was a movement in my front. I could not at the time, nor can I now, though I am a man of wider experience to-day, swear that I actually saw anything, but that an impalpable, strange, indefinite change was coming over the blackness of the desert, I neither doubted nor misunderstood. Raising my rifle to my shoulder, quietly and cautiously as one does whose own body may be in a second the target for countless bullets, I aimed steadily at the blackest part of the blackness and fired. As I turned to run to the picket an awful shriek rang out, telling me that my bullet had found a billet, and then, while I ran shouting: "Aux armes, aux armes!" a hideous, savage cry ran in a great circle all about the camp. When I closed on the picket the corporal was giving his orders: "One volley, and run for the camp." The volley was fired, and we all ran madly back to the entrenchments, crying: "Aux armes, les ennemis!" not, indeed, to warn our comrades of their danger, but to let them know that we were the men of the outlying picket fleeing to camp and not the mad vanguard of the attack. We got inside the little rampart, helped over by willing arms, and at once the crash of musketry began. Our men had their bayonets fixed; for a double purpose this--for defence if the Arabs came home in the charge, to lower the muzzle if only shooting were necessary. Luckily our firing became so successful that the Arabs stopped to reply, and, you may take my word for it, when a charging man halts to fire he is already weakening for retreat. Well, we kept the enemy at a safe distance till the blessed sun sprang up and turned the chances to our side. Yet still they hung around, and a dropping fire was maintained on both sides. They did not now surround the little camp; they had all collected in almost a semicircle on the southern side. While the desultory firing went on our commandant eagerly turned his gaze from time to time towards the north, and he was at last rewarded. He sent orders to give a ration of brandy to every man--the rascal! He had seen the glint of lance heads on the horizon, and he wanted to take a little of the pursuer's glory from the cavalrymen. Glory, glory! what follies are committed in thy name! The brandy was given out, the news went around that the horse were coming up at the gallop, the men looked with blood-lust in their eyes at the lying-down semicircle to the south, the commandant flung off jacket, belt, scabbard, keeping only sabre and pistol, and with a wild cheer and cries of "Kill, kill!" we rushed from the camp straight at the enemy. They were not cowards. They gave us a wild, scattered fire, and then, flinging away their rifles and flintlocks, came daringly, with loud cries of "Allah!" to meet us. And in their charge they covered a greater distance than we did in ours, for they came along every man at racing speed, and their line grew more and more irregular, whereas we, disciplined and trained to move all as one man, easily fell into the regulation _pas gymnastique_, and so went forward a solid, steady, cheering line, officers leading, and clarions at our backs sounding the charge. As we neared one another a great shout went up from us. Nicholas the Russian, who was my front-rank man, dashed forward and stabbed a yelling demon rushing at him with uplifted spear. I ran into his place, and saw almost at once a dusky madman, with a short, scanty beard, coming straight at me with murder in his eyes. I remembered the advice given by the _vieux soldats_, and as he raised his sword I plunged my bayonet with all my force into his face. He half reeled, he almost fell, and as he recovered again I lunged and struck him fair and full on the breast bone. Again he reeled, yet still he tried to strike; I thrust a third time, and now at his bare neck; the spouting blood followed out the bayonet as I drew it forth and back to strike again. Before I had time to do so the Arab fell, a convulsive tremor passed over his body, the limbs contracted, the eyes opened wide to the sky, the jaw fell, and for the first time I saw my enemy lie stark and cold in death before me. I stood watching, with a curious feeling at my heart, the body that lay so strangely still upon the sand. I felt no desire that life should return to the corpse, nor did I feel at all inclined to drive my weapon home again; it seemed to me that my assailant and the dead were not one and the same, and the animosity which I had felt for the living foe was lost, nay, utterly extinguished, in wonder at the awful change my handiwork had produced. Remember, I was only a boy, and I had taken that which no man can restore. Many times since have I looked without a shudder, almost without a thought, on the face of my dead foeman, but on that morning in the desert my mind was shocked by the new experience. Suddenly I heard a trumpet and a cry. I looked towards the right; the spahis were riding at top speed with levelled lances on the foe. Our men were scattered, fighting in squads and parties over the plain, driving the Arabs back. The press of battle had gone beyond me. In a moment the horsemen swept into the Arab ranks; the lances rose and fell with terrible significance as the mass rolled on. Our work was over; the cavalry so rushed and harried the fleeing enemy that the rebellion was practically at an end, for that time of course, before noon. When the main body came up the chiefs were in our camp, prepared to accept any terms offered by the general. These were hard enough. All arms to be surrendered, a heavy fine to be paid, their villages to be kept in our possession till all the petty fortifications should be dismantled. Yes; my company kept a village and an oasis, and I fancy that the next generation of Arabs was whiter than their forbears. But that is war; and the people--the goody-goodies and the stockbrokers and the foolish women--who believe that honour dwells in the heart of a soldier on active service will lament our wickedness and get ready for the next occasion when they can send off their own soldiers to war, glorious war! CHAPTER VII Not long after the end of the little war my company and another were ordered on garrison duty to a place which we called, for what reason I know not, Three Fountains. I never saw three springs in the place; of course, there was an oasis but whether this, before being walled in, had really been divided into three separate wells I cannot say. Probably the name was a fanciful one given by a soldier and taken up by his comrades. Alongside us lay about five or six hundred Turcos. They did not like us and we did not care overmuch for them, so you might imagine that here were pretty grounds and opportunity for a quarrel. Not so, indeed; they kept away from us, for they knew well what would happen should one of them dare to enter our lines. We gave them a wide berth, for the African is always--like the Asiatic and the American and the European--ripe for treachery to men of another race and colour. No; the races did not fight, but we of the higher breed,--how angels and devils must laugh when people speak of higher breeds!--had a very pretty fight amongst ourselves. It came about in an unusual way, but for the invariable cause. There was a Portuguese in No. 4 Company who loved a girl--a Cooloolie girl who had followed him in all his marches and campaignings. A Cooloolie, I may explain, is the offspring of a Turkish father and an Arab or Christian mother, and as a rule when a Cooloolie woman gives herself to a man she does it in a thorough manner and without any reservation save one--the woman's right to change her mind. And this lassie did change her mind, and of her own accord made love to a Greek who belonged to my company, as handsome and well-formed a man as I have ever had the good fortune to see, and a downright good soldier. Certainly I should not care to see him too near my knapsack--brushes and such things have a strange knack of disappearing--but I know very well that he was a right man in a fight and a trump to spend his money when he had it. He did not have it often, and when he had you generally heard next morning that an officer's tent had been visited--yes, visited is a good word--by someone not invited. Well, the Cooloolie girl flung over the Portuguese, with bad words and worse insinuations, and openly followed the Greek around, like a dog after its master. And Apollo, of course, who probably did not care a button about the woman, must go here and there, head up, with smiling face, cheery talk, and queer jests. He visited every corner of the camp: first the part where we, his own company lay; then, still followed by the woman, the Turcos, who showed their white teeth and grinned and muttered: by Jove, he was a handsome man, and she, though rather dusky and stout, looked a perfect beauty in such a place, remote from civilisation; last of all he came towards us through the company of his predecessor in the Cooloolie girl's favour. Flesh and blood, least of all the hot blood of a Peninsular, could not stand it; with a hoarse cry and an awful oath the Portuguese rushed at the Greek, but Apollo was quite prepared. Slipping aside he struck the poor devil full under the ear at the base of the skull and sent him headlong to the earth, senseless. Apollo, seeing that his opponent did not rise, calmly walked to his own quarters, the girl now hanging upon his arm and uttering all the endearing words she could think of, looking up the while into his face as one entranced. None of the men of No. 4 Company interfered. It was a common thing enough for two men to quarrel about a woman, and, though they must have felt sore that their comrade had been worsted, still that was no reason why outsiders should interfere. The matter would have been settled by the interested parties for themselves had it not been for the devilish desire of creating mischief that always possessed Nicholas the Russian. Indeed, Nicholas loved mischief like a woman. Now Nicholas was a man who often had money and spent it like a gentleman, a soldier, and a rascal. He never got all that was sent to him, any more than the Crown gets all the revenues collected in its name: to greasy palms coins will always stick. If 1000 francs were his due--sent by friends, of course--he reckoned himself lucky to be able to spend half. This time he must have received a more than ordinary sum, for instead of following the custom of the Legion and showing us, his comrades, a little bit of paper, which the commandant would cash next day, so that we, his good comrades, the men who liked and loved him, might know exactly how much drink and other things to be had for money each might fairly reckon on, he said: "Our comrade, Apollo I mean, has taken the girl; let us be good comrades to him; let us take the two cabarets to-morrow, and keep all the drink and all the tobacco and all the cigars for ourselves, and give the happy pair a right good wedding." He pulled his moustache as he spoke, and then, turning his eyes round the squad, he showed devilment and fun enough in them to entice the ordinary good man to break not only the laws of God but to do a still more risky thing--to break the laws of his society. The word was passed around quickly that the Russian would be a good friend to all the company, and not merely to his own section or his own squad. Everybody was happy; we forgot squad distinctions and shook hands with one another and handed freely round our tobacco, for was not to-morrow the glorious day when _eau-de-vie_ and wine and cigars and tobacco were to be had by every one of us, even without the asking? Ah! the good Russian, the worthy comrade! Ah! the handsome Greek! Ah! the wise woman, who knows the company to select her lover from! Ah! you, good soldier, of another squad it is true; shall we not drink and smoke together to-morrow and curse the pigs of No. 4? How they will groan and curse and envy us to-morrow! Good-night, brave comrade; good-bye till I see you again to-morrow! The morrow came, with its drills and fatigues and duties. Some of ours were for guard, others for camp picket; how they envied us who were free for all the fun of the evening! The last meal was over, the last duty for the day done, when Nicholas and Le Grand and I went out to negotiate with the two cabaret keepers of the place. Let me say something here about Le Grand. He was the biggest man in the battalion, some fellows said in the Legion, but there were others who denied this; anyway he was a fine, strapping Dubliner, whose real name I do not care to give. He was in my company, but not in my squad, not even in my section, so he and I passed each other when we met with a friendly "English pig!" "Irish pig!" "Go to the devil!" "Yes, yes; have you any tobacco?" "Yes; here, do not forget me to-morrow." Another word and we separated. But let me pay here my tribute to the comrade of whom I shall more than once have occasion to speak. He was brave--I learned that on the battlefield, I have it not by hearsay; he was generous--I learned that many a time when we were together in Tonquin; he was kind and honest--that is, honest for a soldier--to all he met with, and his only fault was hastiness of temper, which made him knock you down one moment and, with the corresponding virtue, pick you up the next. But he never struck a boy, he never struck a veteran whose limbs and features showed the effects of war, he would die of thirst sooner than take a drop of water from the hot-tongued youngster in the fight who had the desire to go forward and the weariness of the rifle and pack, and the moist heat of socks and the dull, heavy, deadly pain of pouches at the sides. I do not know where you are to-day, Le Grand; wherever you are take a little, a very little, tribute from one of your comrades. Great as was your frame, our liking and love for you were greater. Well, we walked slowly, as befitted men bent on so important a mission, down to the collection of mud huts where the sutlers were. Nicholas, as the giver of the feast, had the centre, Le Grand was on his right, and I, the youngest and least of the three, supported the Russian on the left. We did not speak, but Nicholas now and then laughed, while a constant smile, cynical, sarcastic, and malicious, was on his lips. The Russian was evidently calculating on the fun he would have, for he, if no one else did, forecasted accurately the result. He was paying, and paying for a purpose; excitement was to him the breath of life; he had no fear of consequences; if he were punished he would take his punishment with that calm ease of manner which was the despair of all his superiors from the commandant down. The first cabaret we visited was kept by a retired soldier--a man who had spent most of his life in Algeria, who had in fact, almost forgotten France. An ugly, old Kabyle woman, whom, I daresay, he had picked up a young girl in some forgotten desert raid, lived with him, cooked his meals, and helped to swindle us poor fellows out of the wretched pittance we were paid. When we entered the host came forward, smiling, gloating I should say, on Nicholas. The fellow evidently knew about the money. The Russian came straight to the point. "How much, _mon vieux_, for all in this hole?" "What! all?" "Well, you may leave out madame and the domestic furniture. How much, I ask you, for the hut, the drink, the tobacco, the glasses, the tables and forms, and all the rest of your property?" "Well, well, I do not understand." "Let us go to the Jew then," said Nicholas to Le Grand. "Very well." "What do you say, my friend?" This to me. "A Jew can't swindle more than this old ruffian." We turned to leave. "No, no, no; I will sell all," cried the sutler. "Very well," said Nicholas; "show me all you have, and quickly. I will make an offer; if you take it I will pay the money at once." The sutler showed us what he had: so much brandy, the strongest in France, he said--so much wine; how beautiful, would we not take a glass?--so much tobacco, and so on; he praising and Nicholas critically valuing as the goods were shown. When everything had been shown Nicholas offered 500 francs for all. "Oh no, not at all; that would ruin me." "Very well; let us go to the Jew." As we were passing out he ran out after Nicholas, and said: "Six hundred." "Five," said Nicholas. The sutler shook his head. "Give me five hundred and fifty and take all, in the name of the devil." "For the last time, five hundred." "Oh, you have a hard heart, very hard for so young and brave a soldier." The temptation was too great; he would not let us go to the Jew, so he accepted. The money was paid, and Nicholas gave the old soldier and his wife ten minutes to get out their personal belongings, leaving me on guard to see that nothing else went out by mistake. A similar scene, Le Grand afterwards told me, took place in the Jew's. At anyrate, in about a quarter of an hour Nicholas came back alone, having left our comrade to watch the other sutler's departure, and told me that he was going away to summon the rest. "Fill a couple of glasses for ourselves first," he said; "I want to give the Jew time to get his things away." The old soldier cocked his ears. "You have bought the Jew's stuff too, my boy?" "Yes," said Nicholas; "my company will drink, this evening. Get madame and your property to a safe distance, as there may be trouble." The old man took the hint and hurried away; he was too experienced a soldier not to easily guess what would happen when a poor and thirsty company looked on at the carousal of a rich and happy one. Well, down came the company, laughing, clapping one another on the back, jumping about, for all the world looking partly like schoolboys out for an unexpected and unhoped-for holiday, partly like a commando, as the Dutch say, from the lower regions. There was not room for all in the huts, but the barrels were quickly rolled out and broached with due care, for who would spill good liquor? There was no scrambling or pushing; in spite of the excitement every man waited good-humouredly for his turn, for was there not enough for all? Eight or ten of us selected by Nicholas were filling the glasses; a man came to me and asked for brandy, I gave him a glassful, he drank, passed on to a second and got a ration of wine, and then went off to the place where the tobacco was distributed, giving way to another. This went on continuously until all had received an allowance of brandy and another of wine and a third of tobacco, and then Nicholas, this time also accompanied by Le Grand and me, went for the _nouveaux mariés_, as he called them. We brought them down in triumph, Apollo smiling and bowing, the Cooloolie girl beaming with happiness, Nicholas as solemn as a judge, Le Grand and I breaking our sides with laughter. Such cheering and such compliments! Such a babel of tongues! The soldiers were all shouting out, every man, or almost every man, in his own tongue, and those words I caught and understood did not certainly err on the score of modesty. Nicholas amidst renewed cheering handed an immense vessel of wine to the lady; she drank some and passed it to Apollo, who drained it to the bottom. When the cries had somewhat subsided Nicholas made a short speech. He alluded in graceful terms to the happy pair, and hoped that their children's children would in the years to come follow the flag in the old Legion, in the old regiment, in the old battalion, above all, in the old company. He praised the company; he said we could fight any other company on the face of the earth; as, he concluded by saying, our well-loved comrade has taken, and will keep, the woman he wants without asking any man's permission, so we have taken, and will keep for ourselves, the liquor in the camp. He spoke in a loud tone, so that certain men of the other company might hear. These were looking enviously on at the orgy, and were quite near enough to make out the general tenor of his remarks. And Nicholas meant them to hear his words. He was no fool, and he knew what his speech would provoke; he was no coward, when the fight came, he stood up to his work like a man; he was no liar, for at the investigation he told exactly what he had done, and kept back only his purpose in doing it. I may mention here that there were no _sous-officiers_ and no soldiers of the first class at the carousal. We were all men of the second class, who neither hoped nor wished for promotion, therefore we were quite careless as to what might happen. Very soon the fellows of No. 4 Company began to come out of their quarters by twos and threes. As we saw them approaching we raised our voices, we shouted, sang, danced, cried out toasts, and did everything in our power to make them at once angry and jealous. The Cooloolie was in the centre, seated in Apollo's lap, the Greek himself having improvised a sort of arm-chair out of the staves and ends of an empty barrel. Even then things might not have been too bad, but nothing can keep a woman quiet, especially when her tongue is loosened with wine. She called to the men of No. 4 to go and fetch the Portuguese, and we all laughed. She openly and without shame showered kisses and other endearments on her lover, and the laughter was redoubled. She called out to the poor, thirsty and tantalised devils outside the charmed circle that her old sweetheart was--well, let me leave her words to the imagination of those who have ever listened to an angry, reckless woman's tongue--and she ended by saying that the Portuguese was only a fair sample of his comrades. The men of No. 4 were now all around us, and those of us who, like myself, had partaken only sparingly of the wine began to scent a fight. There was no premeditation, I believe, on the part of the others; indeed, the only man who desired to make trouble from the beginning was Nicholas the Russian, and truly he got his wish gratified to the full. A few bad words passed between some of theirs and some of ours, a blow was struck and replied to; in a moment a wild rush towards the combatants was made by all. A general melee ensued, and in a second almost, as it seemed, a little spot of ground was covered with the struggling, twisting, writhing bodies of four hundred angry, swearing men. As I was running down to where the press of fighting was, I came full tilt against a man of No. 4. He and I staggered and almost fell from the shock. Luckily I had a half-empty bottle in my hand, and though when he recovered himself he almost made me totter with a swinging blow on the chest, yet I sent him fairly down with an ugly stroke of the bottle across the head. The next man I crossed tumbled me fairly over. What followed immediately afterwards I do not know. The next thing I remember is that I was standing on a table, striking out on all sides with the leg of a chair. A sudden rush on the part of the men of No. 4 drove back our company, the table was overturned, and I found myself sprawling on the ground, trying as best I could to regain my feet. Our fellows rallied and pushed back the others, and a tacit armistice took place. Not for long, though. The others got together in a mass, we formed up in a circle round the barrels and the tobacco, and the fight re-commenced. And the Cooloolie woman was the best combatant of all, for though she herself did not do more than claw a man or two, who broke away at once, not wishing to hurt a woman beloved by men of both companies, yet with her cries and execrations she lashed them and us into a fury of fighting which made all men perfect devils. I have seen worse fighting, but then we had weapons. This fight was really the most savage save one, which I shall speak of afterwards, for there was no care of hurting comrades, there was no hanging back in the rush, there was no yielding of even a foot in the defence, and all the while the white guards looked on in horror, and the Turcos crept back to their part of the encampment with deadly terror in their hearts. Half-a-dozen times we stopped for a moment or two to take breath. Then one of ours would rush at a man of No. 4, or one of No. 4 would come with an oath against a man of ours, and in a second the fray would be re-commenced. The officers and the _sous-officiers_, the guard and the picket, tried to separate us. It was all in vain; they might just as well have tried to pull apart two packs of wolves. Moreover, half of the soldiers brought down to quell the trouble belonged to ours, and half to No. 4, and the commanding officer was very much afraid that these might join in the fight, and they carried arms and ammunition. But, you will say, why not use the Turcos? Ah, that would never do. The commanding officer might succeed in putting an end to the disturbance with their assistance, it is true, but the consequences which were sure to follow were too serious, for the Turcos would never afterwards be safe from an attack. All the legionaries, not merely the men of the companies in the camp, but all the legionaries throughout Algeria, would resent the interference of the native troops, and heaven only knows what scenes of bloodshed might arise in unexpected quarters, and from trivial causes. Had there been even half-a-company of Frenchmen in camp all would have been well, but the nearest French soldiers, a squadron or two of chasseurs, lay a few kilometres away. To them, however, a mounted messenger was sent, and when we were almost weary of fighting, and began to think it time to look after the wounded--the place looked like a battlefield where regular weapons had been employed--we heard the trumpets of the cavalry and saw not a hundred yards away the long line of horsemen thundering down with raised swords at the charge. Before the chasseurs we broke and fled, but they were on us too soon for safety, and many a man went down before the charge. As I was running to a hut a sergeant of chasseurs overtook me. Instinctively I jumped aside and lifted my right arm to protect my head. It was no use; down came the flat of the heavy sabre on my shoulder, and almost at the same time the charger's forequarter struck me sideways on the breast. I fell, and wisely remained quiet and motionless on the ground until the charge had passed. I then got up and reached the hut, which I found almost packed with men of both companies, whose appetite for fighting had altogether disappeared. In a short time we were all prisoners. My company was marched to the north side of the camp and No. 4 to the south, and we lay out all the night; and nights are very cold in these warm countries--the more so by contrast with the heat of the day. Now about the casualties. I cannot tell the exact number killed outright in the quarrel or charge, or of wounded who afterwards died, but it was certainly not less than a score. More than 100 were seriously injured, and there was not a man of all the fighters without several ugly marks on his body. The Greek, who had fought well until, as I heard, a blow of a stone brought him insensible to the ground, had his brains knocked out by a horse's hoof; the Portuguese, we learned, died in hospital of his hurts. As for the Cooloolie girl--well, what would you expect? She wept for a week, and then took to herself a new lover out of the many who sought her favour, for your famous or notorious woman does not long lack suitors. How we made up the quarrel and escaped severe punishment--heaven knows we punished ourselves enough as it was--must be told in a new chapter. CHAPTER VIII Nobody was surprised when, on the morning after the affray, a corporal of chasseurs and half-a-dozen men came to escort Nicholas, Le Grand, and me to the commandant's quarters in the camp. Nicholas had his head swathed in rags, and limped more than slightly with the left foot; Le Grand showed a beautiful pair of black eyes and confessed to a racking headache. Every part of my body felt its own particular pain, my right eye was closed up, and I had an ugly cut on the forehead, the scar of which still remains. When we arrived at the place of inquiry, we found every officer in the camp, our own officers and those of the chasseurs and Turcos, assembled around the commandant. For a few moments there was silence, while they eyed us and we looked steadily at the commandant. At last this officer spoke, slowly and in a quiet tone: "The affair of yesterday was serious, indeed serious." He fixed his gaze on Nicholas. "You, I hear, bought all the drink and tobacco from the sutlers. Did that lead to the quarrel?" Nicholas saluted respectfully and asked permission to make a statement. When it was accorded he began to tell all the story, just, indeed, as it happened, or almost as it happened. In narrating the dispute between the rivals he placed all the blame upon the Greek, for he knew at the time that the Greek was dead and therefore could not be punished. He said nothing, however, about certain encouragement that Apollo had received before and during his vainglorious parade through the camp with his new love on his arm; nor did he mention certain sarcastic expressions concerning the Portuguese which he himself had uttered in the hearing of the Cooloolie girl; also, he seemed to forget that these very expressions were used most frequently and with most infuriating effect by her when she was sitting, almost lying indeed, in the Greek's arms just before the fight. No; he told the truth, but not all the truth, and he told everything in so open and candid a way that Le Grand and I were almost deceived. He let fall the nickname Apollo, as it were by accident, and then, turning respectfully to the captain of chasseurs, who could not be supposed to know the man, he explained: "We called him so, monsieur le capitaine, because he was so handsome." "Quite true, quite true," acquiesced the commandant; "he was a veritable Apollo." Afterwards we heard that the cavalry officers went to see the Greek as he lay stripped in the hut of the dead, and, although the face was disfigured out of all human semblance by the horse's hoof, yet the beautiful curves and splendid proportions of his body, marked even as it was by countless bruises, proved that the nickname was well deserved. One good effect was produced by Nicholas' statement. Everything was so honest and straightforward, so natural and true-seeming, that anything he might afterwards say was likely to be believed. Moreover, though the officers had not seen the parade of the lovers through the camp, yet they had evidently heard of it; and, again, the _sous-officiers_ could be brought to prove the truth of that part of the story. When the Russian was asked about the buying of the sutlers' property for the use of only one company, he again begged leave to make a rather long statement, partly, he admitted, about himself, but chiefly about the customs of the corps. He said that without such a statement the business could not be clearly and thoroughly understood by the officers, especially by those officers who did not belong to the Legion. Again leave was granted to him to tell his story in his own way, and the commandant was graciously pleased to allow Le Grand and me to stand at ease; he even said to Nicholas: "You need not stand altogether to attention, make gestures if you wish, speak freely, just as if you were telling a story to your friends." Nicholas bowed with a courtier's grace; he wore no kepi, being a prisoner at the tribunal; the chasseurs looked at one another in astonishment, wondering at the aristocratic air that could not be concealed even under a private soldier's tunic or by a bruised and battered face. Ah! little they knew of the wrecked lives, the lost souls, that came to us from every country in Europe, that made the Foreign Legion, if I may say so, a real cemetery of the living. Nicholas explained that, when a man had money, he was bound by all the rules of the corps to spend it with the men of his squad; that, when the money was more than usually plentiful, he was supposed to entertain his section; that, in the rare cases when thousands of francs--how the chasseurs opened their eyes at this!--were in a man's possession, all the rules of regimental etiquette obliged him to spend the money royally and loyally with his comrades of the company. Beyond the company one could not go. Were one as rich as a Rothschild one could not do more than give a few francs to a man of another company if he were a fellow-countryman--all, or nearly all, had to be spent with one's comrades of the company. Our officers recognised the truth of this, they understood our unwritten laws, and again Nicholas added to his reputation for veracity. But he said nothing at all about giving a percentage to the sergeant-major, nor about the taxes levied by the sergeant of the section and the corporal of the squad. The sergeant-major, who was present, looked relieved when this part of the Russian's statement came to an end--for were not two hundred francs of the Russian's money in his pocket at the time? Nicholas knew what to tell and what to keep back; there would be no use in alluding to the money which he was practically compelled to give to his superior officers; it would only cause anger at the time and produce trouble and a heavier punishment for us afterwards. Nicholas went on to state that he had received a large amount of money from a friend in Europe, and that he had at once resolved to pay for a good spree for his comrades. For a joke he called the affair a wedding _déjeuner_ in honour of the Greek and the Cooloolie girl. He thought--at least he said he thought--that the other company would not mind; they knew the rules of the Legion as well as he; a little fun about the new connection ought to hurt nobody except the Portuguese. But, poor, misguided fellow that he was, he had never calculated the damage that might be done by a woman's tongue; he, simple, ignorant baby, thought that we should have a couple of hours of jollity and drinking and that then all would go quietly back to quarters. He had always held the men of No. 4 in great respect; he would, indeed, be the last in the world to insult them, or in the slightest degree to make little of the company. He admitted with sorrow--the hypocrite--that his action had been injudicious--it would have been all right only for the woman; he had paid for drink and tobacco, but not for insults to any man or men of No. 4; it was the woman who insulted people; he did not want to fight with anybody, least of all with the men of No. 4, but, when his company became engaged in an affray, he would have been indeed a bad comrade, nay, a coward, had he remained out of the fight. We wished for only the drink and the tobacco; we soldiers had no desire but to enjoy ourselves in peace and quietness in the evening after the hard work of a hot and dusty day; we had no malice, not even now did we harbour evil thoughts, towards our fellow-soldiers of No. 4; but what will you? who can stop a woman's tongue?--we could not even expostulate with her without insulting our good comrade Apollo; if she drove the others to attack us by her ugly words, were we, men not afraid of death, to tamely surrender? That, they all knew, was impossible. Without actually saying it he flung the whole blame for the fight on the woman's shoulders. I thought at first that this was not quite fair, but I soon saw that Nicholas was really doing his best to save us all. Everybody knew the wild way she spoke and acted before the first blow was struck, but Nicholas knew quite well that nobody would hold her accountable for her language, while everybody would admit that the men of No. 4 had reasonable grounds for attacking us, and, of course, we when attacked were quite justified in defending ourselves. This was what the Russian was aiming at all along: to put the blame on the Cooloolie girl, who in the first place could not be court-martialled for a soldiers' quarrel, and in the second would most undoubtedly be sympathised with for the loss of her lover. At the same time, a case of extenuating circumstances was made out for No. 4 Company, and we, the attacked party, who did not apparently seek to provoke an attack, would be adjudged guiltless of offence because we merely resisted. It was a splendid plan--it saved us--but we had, in addition to becoming reconciled with our comrades and getting some punishment, to volunteer for the war. That, however, will be told of in its own time and place. When the Russian had finished his statement a few questions were asked of him, not in the nature of a cross-examination, but for the evident purpose of clearing up matters that were not quite understood by the hearers. He answered these with readiness and to the point, preserving always the bearing and language of an aristocrat, with the tone and temper of a simple soldier in presence of his superiors. When they had done with him the commandant questioned first Le Grand and then me, but we merely corroborated our comrade's story. Not that there was at the time any doubt in our minds that Nicholas had desired a fight and had paid for the gratification of his desire, but who can give evidence of what has passed in another's mind, and who would betray a generous comrade? At last the commandant sent us away, and we returned under escort to the place where our company lay under guard, hungry, thirsty, without change of clothing, and every man aching all over, and cursing as the effects of the fight began to make themselves felt. The other men crowded around us to learn what had happened. Nicholas, in the centre of a ring of eager, interested listeners, told exactly, without change, addition or omission, in a loud voice so that all might hear, the tale of the inquiry. All were satisfied so far, many, indeed, gave up their preconceived beliefs, and thought that the Russian's account of the affray and what led up to it was "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." We, Le Grand and I, confirmed the account, we made no secret of our belief that all would yet be well, we swore it was the woman who led our good friends of No. 4 to assault us, and surely no one could blame us for defending ourselves. After some time Nicholas called Le Grand and me apart, and we held a consultation for nearly a quarter of an hour. The others marked us, they noted the earnest words and persuasive gestures of the Russian, they watched the eager, attentive looks of Le Grand and me. When we had settled the matter to our own satisfaction apparently Nicholas led the way to the centre of the little camp--prison I should call it, for the sentries looked inwards and not outwards. In a moment, as it seemed, every man that was able to drag himself forward was in a group around our little party. Nicholas waited until a hush fell upon the meeting, and then addressed them somewhat in the words that follow. I have no doubt about the essence of what he said, but I cannot hope to reproduce the eloquent language, the expressive features, the seductive tones, above all, the general air of the born orator that Nicholas assumed. From time to time he appealed to Le Grand or to me for confirmation of his words. There was, indeed, no necessity, the men were at his will before he had spoken for two minutes. In brief, this was what he said: "My comrades, we have had an ugly quarrel with our fellow-soldiers of No. 4, and we cannot, I think, blame them for attacking us, nor can they with justice blame us for defending ourselves. But there is no doubt about the real origin of the affair. The woman used to belong to one of theirs; she chose, as she had a right to do--that everyone admits--to give up her lover in their company and to give herself to a man of ours. Well, we must acknowledge that she and the Greek were not discreet, and I will confess that, for my own part, I did not act with discretion either, but what could I do when I had money in my pocket but spend it with my companions of the encampment and the battlefield? If there had been no jealousy about a woman, we should have had a peaceful, enjoyable evening; if there had been no money in the company, the jealousy would have been settled by a fair fight between the rivals in the usual way that we all understand and appreciate, without four or five hundred men being drawn into the quarrel. We are under guard and are sure of punishment; in all respects they are faring, and will fare, no better than we. Let us try, now that the Greek is dead and the Portuguese, as I hear, is dying, to become reconciled to our comrades of No. 4. Trust me, if we can settle the matter amongst ourselves, so that all may understand that we shall not renew the quarrel, the officers will be only too glad to have an excuse for passing over the affair as lightly as possible. What I recommend then is this: let a deputation of four be appointed from amongst us; let us ask permission to visit the prison camp of No. 4; let us ask them to appoint four of their number to confer with us; believe me, we shall soon, for the sake of the men of both companies, come to a satisfactory arrangement, and we all shall be friends again, and, indeed, be better friends than ever before, because we have learned to respect one another." The Russian's proposal was agreed to on the spot. Someone said that Nicholas ought to be chief of our embassy, but this he would not agree to. He would be a member, if they wished, but only with the same rights and the same responsibilities as the others. Le Grand, a Hungarian, and I were chosen as his partners in the delicate business, and some way or other we all seemed to be satisfied that our troubles would soon come to an end. The first thing to be done was to get permission to go across, under escort be it well understood, to the prisoners of No. 4. This was obtained by the aid of our sergeant-major. He must have spoken very strongly to the commandant, for the latter came down to us in a great hurry, asked Nicholas point-blank whether we were serious in the attempt to settle the affair amicably, and if he thought we had any chance of succeeding. Things were bad enough, heaven knows, as they were, but it was rather risky to keep nearly 400 fighting men without their weapons and ammunition in the very centre of the scene of the recent operations. Had the Kabyles attacked the camp on the night after the quarrel, they would have slaughtered us, the unarmed ones, like sheep, and in all probability would have easily carried with a rush the little fortification that had been set up around the huts. Therefore the commandant was only too glad to get a chance to put us under arms again, if he could only believe that we would not use them against one another. The quarrel was an ugly thing, but that could be explained, and we should in any case receive punishment, but a disaster to his command would spell ruin for his chances of promotion. He was pleased, therefore, when Nicholas laid his hand upon his heart and promised upon his honour--yes, he said upon his honour--that we would do our best to settle matters, that we would in no way again raise the anger of the men of No. 4, and, finally, that he was himself prepared to apologise for his part in the affair. This expression, I am sure, the commandant took to refer to the buying up of all the drink and the tobacco; we, who knew better, remembered the irritating speech that the Russian had made after the _nouveaux mariés_ had pledged each other. Well, after a little hesitation he let us go across. We were escorted this time by the men of our own company--soldiers of the first class, who had taken no part in the fight, and soldiers of the second class who had been either on guard or on camp picket. The escort was under the command of our sergeant-major, and I am sure that he was sent so that the commandant might get a trustworthy account of the negotiations. We could not object to any arrangement; we were very well satisfied to get the chance of making it up again with our fellow-soldiers, for, as I have already said, the nights are cold in Algeria, and we feared that news of the quarrel might have already spread amongst the Kabyles, and we knew that the exposed position in which we were placed left us completely at their mercy, should they make up their minds to attack. Moreover, the soldier, even in a peaceful country, hates to be deprived of his weapons and his belts; how much more then did we, in a hostile land, dislike the deprivation of them! When we arrived at the cordon of sentries around No. 4 Company we were halted, and Nicholas, standing slightly in advance of us, his fellow-ambassadors, told them why we came and asked them to be so kind as to appoint four men of theirs to confer with us, so that the dispute might be settled and the companies be at peace with each other again. He was listened to with attention, and when he had finished his message he said that we four should wait, with the sergeant-major's kind permission, for half-an-hour to give them time to deliberate and, if they should agree to the proposal, to select their delegates. Before the half-hour was over the men of No. 4 Company had made up their minds to accept the proposal, and at once appointed four of theirs to arrange matters with us. Two of the four were Alsatians, one a Lorrainer, and the fourth, and, indeed, the most important--their Nicholas, as I may say--a bronzed, sharp-eyed and sharp-witted Italian. As soon as these ambassadors were nominated, our sergeant-major took the eight of us away a short distance from the escort and told us that we might speak freely, as he and the sergeant-major of No. 4 would be the only listeners, and they would in every way respect our confidence. The second sergeant-major said the same thing: "Speak freely," he continued, "and, for the love of God, settle the affair for ever. It is not pleasant to see so many brave soldiers without arms in such a region; who knows when the Kabyles will attack?" The hint was not lost upon us, and I believe that the seven others felt, as I did, that the sooner we were again good friends and under arms the better. Nicholas made the first speech, and said in almost the same words what he had already told the commandant. He did this, I believe, purposely. Our sergeant-major was very attentive, and Nicholas guessed, as all did, that he would make a report to the officers, and it would be just as well that the statement made then at this meeting should be on all-fours with the statement made previously at the tribunal. But he went further. He explained that he had made up his mind to give a good evening to his company when money came to him from Europe, and surely no one would blame him for that. Then he went on to say that he was truly sorry for the affray and for any language or acts of his that might have brought it about. Had he but remotely guessed what would be the result, he would have burned the money sooner than let it be the cause of strife between companies which had been so lately fighting side by side against the enemy and which had never before fallen out with each other. For his own part, he hoped and prayed that the former good relations might once more exist between us, and he believed that they would, and that we should respect one another more than ever on account of the gallantry which No. 4 Company and his own had displayed in that unfortunate struggle. Many other things he said to the same effect, and when he had finished it was easy to see that all, with the exception of the Italian, were satisfied. Not that the Italian desired to prolong the disagreement, but he saw--what his fellow-delegates either did not see, or, for the sake of peace, pretended not to see--that Nicholas had deliberately resolved, when the money arrived, to get up a quarrel between the companies through pure devilment and love of excitement. The Italian wanted to show clearly to all that he at least understood and was determined to publish his opinion, and it must be admitted that he was quite within his rights in doing so, though it would have been more discreet on his part to keep his thoughts, for the moment any way, to himself. He developed his plan of attack in a Socratic manner. "Why," he questioned the Russian (I may mention that all through he ignored the rest of us), "why did you not spend the money with all?" "Because I never go outside my company," replied Nicholas. "Very good; but why did you buy up all the drink in the two cabarets? Why did you not leave some in one of them for us?" "Because I thought that all would be scarcely enough for my own comrades, and one thinks only of his own." "True," continued the Italian; "but then why did you not give us notice that you were taking all for yourself and your companions?" "Because I thought that such a notice would be an insult and would certainly provoke a quarrel, a thing which I was most anxious to avoid." A low muttering of approval followed this, but Cecco only smiled like one unconvinced. I was looking at Nicholas at the time; truly he had the air and bearing of one who would suffer martyrdom rather than tell a lie. He puzzled me. For a moment I almost believed him innocent, he seemed so calm and steadfast, his manner was so open and ingenuous. Here, a stranger might remark, is an upright, God-fearing man, whose heart knows no guile, whose mind is lofty and self-respecting, whose bosom swells with love and friendship for his fellow-man. Cecco's comrades seemed almost to believe, but the Italian was too cunning, too experienced in the world--above all, too full of knowledge of his own rascality--to be convinced. "Well, well, well," he said; "we were insulted, and you best of all know it. Shall we not have even an apology? There cannot," he went on, "be an excuse. No matter about the woman and her fickleness; no matter about the wine and the tobacco; what can be said of the ugly words spoken of us, the comrades of the Portuguese?" "Ah," replied Nicholas in a tone of contrition and with an assumption of sorrow that would have deceived Vidocq himself, "that is what wounds me. I, alas! have been indiscreet. I confess that I was overjoyed when I saw around me my comrades happy and free from care, and that in a moment of excitement I said things which were altogether wrong and uncalled for. Let me beg your forgiveness for my offence, and, as an evidence of my regret and a proof of your forgiveness, let us spend, both companies together, the remainder of the money sent to me by a kind friend in my own country." The admission that the Russian still had money, and enough too to provide fun and pleasure for both companies, was quite sufficient to settle the whole affair. Even Cecco was satisfied, as he remarked: "What was the use of abusing one another for a thing that could not be undone, when it was so much better to shake hands and clink glasses and be good friends as of old?" "What indeed?" assented the Lorrainer. "What indeed?" said we all. We shook hands earnestly and gladly with one another, and each quartette departed to its own company. All were pleased to hear the report. The men of No. 4, indeed, cheered Nicholas as loudly as we did. The commandant was satisfied; he knew well that the men were only too glad to become reconciled, but he took care when the rest of the Russian's money was spent that it was spent in the encampment and that half-a-squadron of chasseurs were standing by their saddled horses until the last man had gone quietly home to quarters. They were not wanted, indeed, but the cunning fox was taking no chances, as a serious renewal of the fight would, if not at once put down, be bad for his military reputation. So we became friends again. But we suffered a little, and judged it best to volunteer for the war in Tonquin, for the soldier going on active service, especially as a volunteer, generally gets his punishments remitted, and is received back again into the favour of his superiors. CHAPTER IX Of course, the affair did not altogether end with the reconciliation of the companies. Punishment had to be awarded to both, and as ours was the more guilty one we received more than the men of No. 4. As so many were included it was obviously impossible to punish us in any of the ordinary ways, but we got extra drills, extra duties, unnecessary most of them, and in addition each of the companies had to furnish all the guards and pickets for the little camp on alternate days. This relieved the Turcos and those of our men who had not been in the fight, but it was very hard for us others to do double drill and double fatigue, let us say on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays to be on sentry or on picket during the day and to sleep in our clothes, with only a greatcoat to cover us, during the night. And even then there was no chance of sleeping much, for when night fell one of the sections was on guard and outlying picket for two hours, and then the other relieved the first for the next two. Thus, if my section went on duty at eight o'clock in the evening after, be it well understood, doing our fair share of guard and camp-picket work from eight in the morning, we were relieved at ten for a little rest, went on again at midnight, and were relieved at two; took up the duty once more at four, and remained on until six, and then we had two hours to get our morning coffee and clean up our things to come off guard at eight. You might think that it was hardest on the officers, sergeants, and corporals; but no, only one officer and one-third of the _sous-officiers_ mounted guard on any morning, so that all of these got five nights in bed out of every six, whereas we, the troublesome ones, got only one night in every two. We bore it well enough, however, though I must admit that we used bad language occasionally, but, as there were so many of us included in the punishment, no one minded it so much as if he were the only delinquent. It helps a man wonderfully to bear hardship and disgrace when he sees many others undergoing the same misfortunes as himself, and this is the rule even though he does not wish evil to his comrades in distress. One man on a sinking raft will in all probability go mad before it takes its final plunge beneath the waves; a dozen men similarly situated will have less fear of the great deep and the great unknown, because each is, as it were, consoled by the knowledge that others too must pass through the grim portals of death at the same time and place and by the same means as he. Thus it was that, though we grumbled and cursed one minute, the next we laughed and rallied one another; and we had, moreover, one great consolation--we knew that the story would rapidly run through the Legion, and that our good comrades, 8000 in number, would laugh with fierce delight when they heard of the encounter and its causes, and would admire and envy the men who had the spirit and the devilment to provide such a relief from _ennui_ in the little camp on the border of the desert. We eagerly figured to ourselves how they would gloat over the story of the Cooloolie girl and her lovers--the handsome Greek and the passionate Portuguese; we knew how they would envy Nicholas and his money; we felt quite certain that the story would go down to succeeding legionaries with embelishments, as was natural, and finally become one of the best-loved traditions of the corps. It is still too early to call it a tradition; but, take my word for it, the fight between the two companies at Three Fountains is talked of to-day in many a barrack-room, in many a lonely village round an oasis in the Sahara, over many a camp and watch fire, in many a canteen and cabaret, where the _vieux soldats_ pull their grey moustaches and tell the eager-eyed recruits over the _eau-de-vie_ and the _vin ordinaire_ the wonderful story of what happened when a Cooloolie girl changed her lover and a Russian prince, in exile and disgrace, received thousands of francs from a friend, "most likely a woman, _mes enfants_," in Europe and spent it as a soldier should. Ay, even the officers are proud of the story to-day, and, when they go to France on leave, our little escapade is told in the family circle and to all the friends and relations who are continually asking for tales of _ces affreux légionnaires_. I had almost forgotten another part of our punishment. While all the others turned out for parade without knapsacks, those of us who had been in the affray had to appear in heavy marching order, as English soldiers say--that is, with all our _buffleterie_, knapsack, and pouches on our persons. In fact, looking at us one would imagine that we were just about to start on a campaign. Another thing was that Nicholas, Le Grand, and I, as to all appearance the ringleaders in the affair, were not allowed to stir out of the camp or even to go much through it; a sergeant or a corporal would quickly order us back to our own quarters, if we were seen at any distance from them. Moreover, we three lost all our pay; but that made little difference, it was not much anyway, and our comrades gave us as much tobacco as we wanted and as much wine as we really cared about or they could spare. While we were thus getting a foretaste of purgatory, into the camp one sultry afternoon rode the colonel of the regiment. That evening he spent in talking to the officers and examining some sergeants and corporals, who were believed to have most knowledge of the quarrel and of those engaged in it, especially the corporals who commanded the squads in which the Russian, Le Grand, and I were. Le Grand, I have already said, did not belong to our squad, not even to our section. Next morning at six a company of Turcos relieved No. 4 Company, which had been on guard and outlying picket all the night, and at seven, immediately after the morning coffee, the two companies of legionaries were formed up in line first and inspected, and then in column of sections, No. 1 section of mine being the front, and No. 2 of No. 4 Company the rear, of the half-battalion. While in this formation we were addressed by the colonel of the regiment. I cannot give a detailed account here of what he said; all I remember is that he abused, threatened and cursed us for nearly half-an-hour. We did not mind that, however, as we were case-hardened enough already; but what we did mind was the Parthian shaft he let fly as he turned to leave the ground: "Remember, remember well, that all the punishment has not been endured; when the commandant is satisfied I shall wish to be satisfied too." To say truth, then, he frightened us. When we were dismissed from parade, we indulged in many gloomy speculations as to the extra punishment awaiting us. We knew, or rather guessed, two things at once--first, that the extra fatigues and guards would soon be discontinued, for our officers were not likely to make us disgusted with our duties, because we should then become careless, and who could foretell what danger might arise from the inattention of a sentry or the unwilling response to orders on the part of an advance-guard? Secondly, we quite understood that very soon we should turn our backs on Three Fountains, where everything kept us from forgetting the dispute and the fight, especially the little mound at the eastern side of the camp, that marked the last resting-place of the Greek and the Portuguese and our other comrades who had fallen--an ugly reminder of an ugly fray. As soon, therefore, as other white troops could be sent to our camp we should pack and march--the question was, whither? Now, there are many bad stations in the south of Algeria. There are places where one may often not wash his face and hands for a week, so scarce is water there. To do the French Government justice, these places are usually held by native troops who do not mind thirst and dirt so much as Europeans, but it was well known that white men had on more than one occasion been sent to such stations and kept there until they almost despaired of ever becoming civilised again. Moreover, in these spots there is a great lack of other things besides water; there is no wine save that which comes to the officers; there is only the tobacco sold to one by the Government. Worst of all, a woman must be very much in love or very ugly before she will consent to follow a man thither. These are the suicide stations, if I may call them so--the stations where a shot rings out in the night and all rush to arms, fearing an attack of Touareks or Kabyles, but when dawn comes there is only a dead sentry making black the yellow sand at a post. When one man shoots himself an epidemic seems to set in; men hear every day in hut or tent or guard room the ill-omened report; soon they go about looking fearfully at one another, for no one knows but that he is looking into the eyes of a comrade who has made up his mind to die. The corporal counts his squad, "fourteen, fifteen--ah! there were sixteen yesterday," so he says; he thinks: How long until I have only fourteen, and who will be the next man to quit _la gamelle_? We thought of all these things during the day, and we noted, more with anxiety than relief, that for us there were no drills or fatigues. My company was, indeed, warned to be ready to relieve the Turcos on guard at eight o'clock in the evening, but we were allowed to lounge about our quarters and talk with one another all the day. The different squads kept to themselves; a grave crisis either dispels all squad distinctions or accentuates them, and it was the latter that took place on this occasion. We ate our meals in gloomy silence, but in the intervals between them we speculated incessantly on what the colonel meant by saying that when the commandant had punished us he would take care to punish us too. Though we thought of everything that might occur, yet we were not satisfied; the indefiniteness of the threat was its chief terror. If one knows with certainty the worst, why, one can prepare to meet it, but when some fate, terrible but not tangible, certain but not understood, hangs over a man or a number of men courage is apt to ooze out at the finger ends. Talk of the sword of Damocles, that was nothing;--it simply meant death at some uncertain time--why, we all have such swords over our heads, and yet we eat and drink and sleep, we pray and curse, we laugh and weep, we hurt or help our neighbour, we gain or spend, as if life were the one thing safe and sure, safe and sure for ever. No one thinks much of his future beyond the grave; it is the future on this side of the Styx that we most earnestly dwell on. Why, even the man condemned to death thinks far less of what may happen to his soul, if he believes that he has a soul, when it leaves the body, than of the years of gladness and fellowship with men that the law is about to take from him. The uncertainty and the suspense united made us discontented and gloomy; we spoke to one another, it is true, but not in the old and pleasant way. There was not much cursing or swearing--we had gone beyond such solace or relief--but there was plenty of morose ill-humour, and as for _bonne camaraderie_, there was less of it in a company than there had been the day before in a single squad. After the evening soup Nicholas nodded to me to come over to him. I was not sorry to go across the little space between us; he was the first who had even been commonly polite to me that day. When we were together he spoke in a low tone and in English--I may remark here that Nicholas was very well educated and spoke at least half-a-dozen languages with purity and ease--asking me what I intended to do. "Nothing," I replied. "I see nothing that I can do." "Nothing?" he queried. "Nothing. And you?" "Oh! I," said he, "do not intend to stay in Algeria any longer; my physician orders me to a warmer climate somewhere in the East." "Yes," he went on; "I fancy that Tonquin will suit my present ailment; anyway, better see life along with the others who are now campaigning there than stagnate in a desert hole." "You do not mean----" I began, but he interrupted me. "Yes, I do mean it; and I know that they will be only too glad to get such volunteers as we are." "They" (by "they" he meant the military authorities) "know very well that we shall be trying to escape from the fire to the frying-pan, and that we shall have only two things to depend upon to get us out of the latter--valour and good conduct. So we shall be the very best of soldiers, because, while others have merely to keep their good reputation, we shall have to earn ours over again. Trust me, they will be glad to accept us as volunteers for the war, and, listen, I know these French, when we volunteer they will almost altogether forgive us. They are very hard and strict, especially with us, and they are too nice about their honour, and they stand overmuch on ceremony and punctilio, but they are really generous, often more generous than just. When they find us trying to retrieve our good name they will give us every opportunity to do so. We shall have many vacancies in the ranks, it is true, and many a good comrade will not answer at the evening roll call, but it will be well with the survivors. In any case, I am tired of soldiering here. Why should I not see the world, not as I saw it before," he smiled sadly, as I thought, when he said this, "but as millions of men have seen it--a nameless unit in a crowd? After all, many of Cæsar's legionaries had happier lives than Cæsar." When he ceased speaking there was silence between us for some moments. Then he asked: "And you, young one, what will you do?" "I will volunteer," I answered; "there surely cannot be worse fighting in Tonquin than there was here at Three Fountains a short while ago." He smiled, and said: "Was it not good practice for war? Was it not better than all the drill in the world?" "Yes," I replied; "if someone got a thousand francs every week, we should be the finest fighting men on the earth. I mean those of us who did not go out there," and I nodded towards the mound on the eastern side of the camp. He shook his head. "Say nothing about that; it is all over now. I do not mind your saying what you think to me alone, but do not, I ask you, speak too freely to our comrades. They will soon forget everything, if they are not constantly reminded of things." After some further conversation we separated. I said nothing to the others about our resolve, as I wished that the Russian should be the first to explain matters to our comrades. I had more than one reason for doing this. In the first place, Nicholas, as he was known in the corps--what his real name and rank were we never learned--was my senior in age and experience; in the second, he was a man of infinitely greater influence than I or any other in the company, partly on account of his money and generosity, but still more because of his manner, bearing, and unconscious air of authority; moreover, he was the clearest and most convincing speaker I have ever heard. Again, he had brought us into trouble and had done a good deal to get us out of it; to him, therefore, all looked for further deliverance. I felt sure that, when he told the rest of his intention, all of ours, and probably all of No. 4 Company, would volunteer along with him. It would be much better for us if companies volunteered instead of merely men or squads or sections. The greater the number going of their own accord to the war, the more lenient would our officers be; and, furthermore, no man would be likely to be sent amongst strangers--we should probably all soldier together. Should Nicholas and I go out by ourselves, we should be transferred with bad reputations to a company already in Tonquin, and for that neither he nor I had any liking. If all volunteered, we might still remain an unchanged unit, even though in a new battalion, and one must never forget that when a man has been for some time living and working and fighting, yes, and looting, and perhaps doing worse, along with certain companions, he has a feeling of _camaraderie_, of yearning for their society, which makes it very hard for him to leave them, though it must be acknowledged that a soldier easily makes new friends and new attachments wherever he goes. Nicholas did not ponder long before he announced his intention of volunteering for Tonquin. I don't think it took the others much by surprise, perhaps because recent events had prepared them for anything, perhaps because the Russian's acts, no matter how strange they might appear in another man, were only ordinary, natural, and to be expected in him. Any way they merely nodded or smiled, and at first no one asked for an explanation. This, however, the Russian gave of his own accord. "You know, _mes camarades_," he began, "that the colonel is very angry with us and that he has it in his power to make things very uncomfortable for those who have displeased him. Now I do not care to stay under his command if I can get away from it, and there is but one course, as far as I know, by which I can avoid his anger and perhaps regain the reputation of being a good soldier and one not likely to disgrace the flag. There is, as we all are aware, a war against savages going on at this moment in Tonquin. I mean to volunteer to go thither; it will be easier to campaign against Black Flags, who will kill me if they can and whom I will kill if I am able, than to suffer in a camp of hell in the desert, where one cannot resist nor even complain. Better, far better, will it be to march and fight, even to starve and die, like a soldier in an enemy's country than to live a life worse than a convict's in some one of those awful cantonments where even the native soldiers are discontented and restless. You all have heard, as I have, of the woes of poor soldiers in such places. The officers and sub-officers are hard enough here--I mean no offence to our own corporal, he has always been good comrade to his squad--but there they are veritable demons, there they carry revolvers by day and by night, and, if a sergeant should lose his temper and shoot a simple soldier, there is no redress, there is no punishment, unless the dead man's comrades themselves take a just vengeance on the murderer. And then there will be executions and deprivation of pay, and the last state of the company will be worse than the first. Again, in those places, where not even our poor amusements and relaxations are possible, where one can enjoy neither wine nor the society of women, men go mad and men commit suicide, and men deliberately break the laws in sheer despair, and, worst of all, men die lingering deaths from settled melancholy, thinking always, as they cannot help thinking, of home and former friends and the pleasant, happy days of youth. But I, for my part, will not, if I can avoid those places, go thither to starve, to mope, to rot alive, and to die--hopeless, friendless--for there men are not friends but only associates--with a curse upon my lips and heavy anger with God and man in my heart. No; rather will I volunteer for Tonquin. There I shall be, if no better, at least no worse than thousands of others who are fighting bravely, and are ready, if need be, to bravely die." When Nicholas stopped speaking an Alsatian said: "I too will volunteer." That was all; Alsatians are not inclined to talk much, but they are good, hardworking, steadfast men in action. If you are fighting and an Alsatian is your comrade, your rear-rank man let us say, don't be a bit afraid to go forward, the Alsatian will be always there, backing you up. They are not men who are anxious to lead a bayonet charge, but they won't refuse to follow, and where they go they generally stay, for just as they don't begin an advance they won't, on the other hand, begin a retreat. Put a Parisian, a Gascon, or a Breton at the head of a company of Alsatians and you have practically resurrected a company of the Old Guard. There was some confused talking after this. Nicholas, the Alsatian, and I kept out of the conversation, smoking our pipes in quiet contemplation of the rest; the corporal of the squad was seated on his camp-cot, a cigarette between his lips, looking with a cynical smile at the Russian. At last it was decided--all the squad would volunteer. As soon as the corporal found that we were unanimous he seized his kepi and ran out of the hut without uttering a word save: _Bons soldats, bons camarades_. We learned afterwards that he rushed straight off to the captain and told him of our decision. This was welcome news, as all the officers were chafing and fuming because they had not been selected for the front. I may here mention that our corporal was the first to gladden the captain's heart and bring him some hope of gaining glory and promotion, and, when the captain got the chance of giving promotion, our corporal exchanged the two red chevrons on his sleeve for the single gold one of a sergeant. Well, when the others heard of this, there was much earnest conversation and still more earnest gesticulation in the little camp. All were excited; the desire to get away from the punishment stations, the eager wish for change, the natural impulse of soldiers to put into practice the teaching of the drill-ground and the manoeuvres, all combined to render the men anxious to follow the example of our squad. Before we went on duty that night my company had volunteered to a man, and, when we dismounted guard in the morning, we were not a whit surprised to find ourselves relieved by native troops, for that told us that we had guessed aright and that No. 4 Company, our friends and erstwhile foes, had thrown in their lot with us and would be our _compagnons d'armes et de voyage_. We were very glad of that. Together we were a half battalion, a weak one, it is true--the mound on the east and the hospital held so many of our comrades--but still strong enough to demand and command respect. While we were enjoying our morning soup the officers of the company came round. How different everything was then compared with the day before! The captain, a bronzed, heavy-moustached man, whose military career had not been very successful--he was a good soldier and a good officer, but he had made the great mistake of falling in love, as a _sous-lieutenant_, with his colonel's wife, and the colonel, now a general, had not forgotten--was in great good humour. He remembered our crime, only to laugh at it, and said that the men who could give so good an account of themselves against the heroes of No. 4 were just the soldiers he wished to lead into action. He told us to be very careful. If we misconducted ourselves again the company might be distributed amongst the four battalions of the other regiment of the Legion, and that would be bad for us and bad for him as well. "Let us only be allowed to remain together," he said. "We shall all go out to Tonquin, and then there will be plenty of excitement, and promotion must come." He was thinking, I suppose, of his own disappointments. It must be very hard on a man to be passed in the race by others who were boys at school when he was wearing a sword; why, the commandant of the battalion was younger than he. The other officers were also pleased; the lieutenant a handsome fellow of twenty-five or so, was anxious to get his company; the sub-lieutenant, a stern, hard-featured man of forty, who had risen from the ranks, was quite satisfied to go to a place where he might have a chance of picking up unconsidered trifles. Ah! _ces vieux militaires_ are the quietest and most thorough-going pillagers in the world. Nothing comes amiss to them--they could teach even Cossacks how to loot--and how they manage to keep this loot and get it safely home to wife or mistress--for they have always a woman on their private pay-sheet--I cannot for the life of me imagine. They do it, however, and they are not only in the Foreign Legion or in the French army--you will find them in every army, nay, in every regiment in the world. Well, the sergeants and corporals were well pleased too. They kept us for all that under strict discipline until the day we found ourselves aboard the transport at Marseilles. But I am anticipating. At about five o'clock in the evening both companies were paraded and inspected just as on the day before, but there was a great change in the colonel's manner. He was not over friendly with us, but he did not abuse or threaten. He called us sharply to attention, and then said: "Every man in the front rank who wishes to volunteer for Tonquin will march one pace to the front; every man in the rear rank who wishes to volunteer for Tonquin will march one pace to the rear. Volunteers, march!" At once the ranks separated. All in front stepped one pace forward; all in the rear took one pace backward. He walked down between the ranks, saw that all had volunteered, took up his former position in front of us, and ordered us back to our original formation. "All have volunteered. I am well satisfied. Dismiss the parade, monsieur le commandant." For some time after we were busy getting ready to leave Three Fountains, and no one was sorry when we presented arms to a detachment of zephyrs that came to take our place. As soon as they had returned the compliment we fell into marching array in columns of fours, wheeled to the left, passed by the flank of the zephyrs, saluted the Turcos of the main guard at the gate, and stepped out on our first march northward. Truly, we were glad to leave behind the cantonment of Three Fountains and its associations. Always fond of change, we dropped our sadness, the sadness which one cannot choose but feel when leaving behind for ever even one's temporary home. Before we had finished the first league spirits were as high, laughter as gay, jests as plentiful as on my very first march, when with the other two hundred recruits I went from the depot to the battalion. Normally the two companies should be about five hundred strong, but death and the doctor detained so many that I do not believe we were quite four hundred all told. However, at the depot, which we reached in good time, doing a fair day's march every day, we received additions to our numbers--self-styled recruits, really men who had learned more than a little of soldiering in other armies, and whom ill-luck or bad character or desire of French citizenship had driven or induced into the Foreign Legion. At the depot we received our outfit for the East. The kepi was exchanged for the white helmet, lighter underclothing was served out to us, all clothing and footwear was renewed, and I may say without boasting that when, fully five hundred strong, we paraded for the last time before entraining for Oran, in order to hear the farewell address of the depot commandant, we presented as smart and soldier-like an appearance as any commanding officer could wish to see. The depot commandant made a short speech, shook hands with our commanding officer, wished him and us _bon voyage et prompt retour_, and then, with the band at the head of the column, we marched out of the gate, saluting the guard as we passed, amidst the ringing cheers of the veterans and recruits left behind. When we were safely in the train all discipline was at an end: we shouted, cheered, laughed and sang, and so began our journey to the land where more than half my comrades lie--as quiet as the Greek and the Portuguese under the little mound on the eastern side of the mud huts of _Trois Fontaines_. CHAPTER X On a beautiful summer morning we marched down to the quay to join the transport that was to carry us and five or six hundred others to our destination in the East. All was bustle, excitement, and confusion for some time, but matters quickly arranged themselves, and, when the last of the stores had been safely stowed away, we marched in single file up the gangway and stood to attention by squads on the deck. Each squad was led off by its corporal to the place assigned to it, and in a short time our quarters looked for all the world like a barrack on shore, save that one saw no bed-cots there. Our rifles and equipments were put in their proper places, the roll was called below for the last time, we were reported "all present and all correct," and then we were allowed to troop up on deck, to get our last glimpse of the land that many of us would never see again. As the ship cast off, we raised a cheer which was responded to by the people on the quay, a band ashore struck up the Marseillaise, the Frenchmen first, and then we others of the Legion took up the refrain, and thus amid cheering, singing, and waving of helmets and handkerchiefs we started on our voyage to Tonquin. There were not many friends of those aboard weeping on the quay; we legionaries had none, and the Frenchmen were zephyrs--that is, men of bad character who had been assigned to convict battalions, and their friends, no doubt, were not over sad about their departure. There were some ladies and children who were affected, but they belonged to the officers--the sub-officers and the men had no friends, no relations, no home, one might say, save the barrack, the cantonment hut, the tent, or, as at the time, the troopship. Well, so much the better: having nothing to lose but life, and that as a rule a wretched one, we should be the more reckless when recklessness was needed, and the French generals took care that we, the zephyrs and the legionaries, were put in the fighting line as much as possible and that the good men, the respectable soldiers, should only come into the fray when the burden of the fight was over and when we others were so spent with toil that reliefs were absolutely necessary. Let no one misunderstand me. I do not wish to convey that the French soldier or officer shirks danger; on the contrary, I believe Frenchmen to be amongst the most daring soldiers in the world and the most cheerful under hardships, but the generals did not see any good in putting worthy citizens, future fathers of respectable families, into the most dangerous positions when they had ready to their hands men who bore so bad a reputation as the zephyrs and the legionaries gathered from every country under the sun. They were quite right in this, but all the same we might sometimes, just once in a while, have been allowed to dawdle along with the reserve instead of being continually on the jump where the bullets were. Of course, though we grumbled, we were proud too that the most difficult and most dangerous work fell to our share. For the first couple of days out I was very sea-sick, but the horrible _mal-de-mer_ in the end passed off, and I was able to take an interest in things around me as before. I don't mean to say much of the life aboard. Such a tale would be only a recital of troubles and grievances, but troops on a transport cannot expect a very pleasant time. One thing we were glad of--there were no women and children aboard. The veterans told us why we should rejoice at this, and any man who has travelled on a troopship with women and their babies will easily guess the reason. The worst part of the voyage was while we were going through the Red Sea. There one loathed his morning coffee and growled at his evening soup. The dull, deadly, oppressive heat in that region almost killed us. We lay around, unable almost to curse, and the soldier who finds himself too weak to do that, must be in a very bad way indeed. Only once in the Red Sea did we show signs of life. It was when a French troopship passed us on her way home with sick and wounded from the war. The convalescents crowded on her deck and raised a feeble shout. We cheered heartily in reply, and we kept up the cheering until it was impossible for them any longer to hear. We pitied them, poor devils. How they must have in turn pitied us, going as we were to the wretched land where they had left behind health and many good comrades, and where we too should pay our quota of dead and receive our quota of wounds and illness. Anyway the sight of them roused us for a time, but we quickly fell back into the languor induced by the excessive heat. Here let me make a remark which may be of interest to many. We legionaries had men, as I have already said more than once, from every country in Europe, and from some outside of it, and one might imagine that men of different nations would be differently affected by the heat, aggravated, as it was, by cramped quarters and wretched food. Well, I cannot single out any country whose natives endured the discomfort better or worse than the others, but there were undoubtedly two classes of men aboard, one of which was far more lively, far less given to grumbling, and altogether possessed of more buoyancy and resilience of temperament than the other. These were the men of fair complexion. All the fair-haired, blue-eyed soldiers seemed to be able to withstand bad conditions of living more easily and better than their dark-complexioned comrades. I offer no explanation of the fact, but I noted during the voyage for the first time, and afterwards I had many opportunities of confirming my original impression, that fair men are superior to dark ones in endurance and in everything connected with war except the actual fighting; with regard to that, complexion does not count. I have noticed in fever hospitals that the black moustaches far outnumbered the reddish ones; in a field hospital there was never such a disparity. I cannot say that other observers agree with me. I merely put on record a thing that I noticed and that produced a deep impression on me, but I never mentioned it to my comrades, nor shall I now write down the various speculations with regard to men and nations that I was led by it to indulge in. All I say is: I thank my stars that my moustache is rather red--that seems to me a token of endurance, if not of strength. In due time we arrived off Singapore, and put in there. I must now mention a few incidents of our stay in that harbour; they were, indeed, the chief events of the voyage. The reason why we put into Singapore was that coal had run short, and the captain of the troopship did not like to go on to Saigon with the small supply left. Those of us who did not know that Singapore belonged to Great Britain soon learned the fact, and more than one eagerly desired to get clear of the ship to land, and thus regain his freedom. Now, I am no apologist for desertion. I think it a mean and cowardly crime, but, if there be any excuse for it, surely many of ours must be held excused. Remember that we were foreigners in the French service, that many of ours had had good reason to flee from justice in their own countries, that we all had a bad reputation with our officers and our French comrades, and, above all, that recent events--the fight at Three Fountains and the morbidly suggestive mound at the east side of the camp there; the ugly fear of a horrible desert station and the intolerable heat of the Red Sea--had made many men think anxiously, constantly, longingly of getting away, at a stroke as it were, from ugly memories and gloomy forebodings begotten of them. Men don't desert from their colours without grave reason. Even the most flighty man will think twice and thrice before taking the risk of the court-martial that awaits detection or recapture. Moreover, in our case sentries with loaded rifles were on duty at all points; one would imagine that not even a rat could leave the ship unnoticed. Well, the vessel was brought near the wharf and two gangways were run out, one for the coolies carrying in the full baskets, the other for the coolies going out with the empty ones. These coolies carried their baskets on their heads, as you often see women carrying loads in other countries. As each one passed the bunker he tipped the contents of his basket in, and then went under a little archway, and crossed out by the second gangway for a new load. Now there was one man of my company--a Bulgarian--who was under confinement for some slight offence against discipline, and, as the heat was almost unbearable, he had been brought up by the guard--acting with the commandant's permission, be it well understood--and allowed to sit under this archway during the heat of the day. I was the nearest sentry to him, being placed at the outgoing gangway, and one of my orders was to watch this man. Like many other orders I remembered this one only in order to be able to repeat it to the officer of the day, and never imagined that there was any necessity of caring more about it. I was mistaken. As the coolies passed under the archway, a good deal of coal dust accumulated there. This dropped from the baskets, which they often carried mouth downward in their hands, when empty. The prisoner had a vessel of water, and this he carefully mixed with coal dust until he had enough to stain all his body black. I must mention that part of his little apartment was screened off from view by a half-partition, and while in this recess he could be seen only by the coolies as they passed through. Here he undressed and carefully blackened his person, and then, watching a favourable opportunity when my attention was completely taken up by a dispute on the quay, he throttled a coolie passing through, forcibly seized his basket, gave him--as payment, I suppose--a knock-down blow on the point of the jaw, and started for the gangway. This he gained unperceived by me. Half-a-dozen steps carried him ashore, and once on British soil he was safe from all arrest. He flung the basket on the ground, and at once ran at his utmost speed towards the town. A cry from those on shore called my notice to the running man, and I knew at once, by his size and carriage, that the Bulgarian had escaped. The moaning of the coolie, who was rapidly coming to after the sudden and savage assault on him, was another intimation that I had of the escape. I was put under arrest at once, and kept in close confinement until we reached Saigon, but the officer in command did not punish me further. The ingenuity displayed by the deserter was so evident, that no one blamed me very much for being taken off my guard and allowing a wrong man to go ashore, and, moreover, as we neared Tonquin, all thought more and more of the fighting and less and less of punishing a man who was not flagrantly in the wrong. Of course, there was no chance of recapturing the Bulgarian; he had reached foreign soil, and there is no act of extradition affecting men guilty of merely military offences. It was well for him, however, that my eyes were turned towards the dispute on the quay; all the blackening would scarcely have deceived me, and I should have shot him dead on the gangway before he could have time to reach the land. For all that I was glad that he got safely away, for, though a man will do his duty no matter how disagreeable it may be, yet he is not at all sorry when he misses the chance of doing such duty as mine would have been, had I noticed the runaway in time. Further on I shall have occasion to mention the case of another deserter, a man who deserted from a certain European army to French soil, and it was strange--oh, very strange--that neither the French nor the other sentries could hit him at less than a hundred yards' range, while he was making a desperate rush across the strip of undefined territory that marked the frontier. Some other incidents occurred at Singapore, but, as I was under arrest, I can only speak of them as I heard about them from my comrades. After the Bulgarian's escape a far stricter watch was kept--double sentries were posted--but to a determined man nothing is impossible. More than one was found absent at morning roll call, and at last it became evident that, in some cases at least, connivance on the part of a pair of sentries had permitted the escape. If a man once got down into the water, he was practically free. Certainly a shark--and sharks do abound in these waters, and especially in the harbours, where they pick up all sorts of garbage--might cross his path, but there was not much danger, as the distance to the land was so small. No one of ours, as far as we could know, was caught in such a way. One, however, was caught by something almost as bad, but I must give a new paragraph to describing the hero of the tale before I begin the story about him. The man I refer to I have already mentioned in connection with the negotiations between the companies after the fight at Three Fountains. He was the Italian that held the same leading place in the deputation from No. 4 Company as Nicholas the Russian did in ours. Without education--I don't believe that he could write his name--he possessed a fund of shrewdness and a faculty of quick observation that made him more than the equal of scholars--and many men of good education were in our ranks. Not at all desirous of a quarrel, he was pre-eminently one to avoid fighting with, for in a row he forgot all about his own safety and seemed not to care what hurt he received so long as he hurt his enemy, and any weapon that lay at hand would be used by him without hesitation at the time or remorse or shame afterwards. A smart, clean, active soldier; yet he was always getting into trouble and disgrace, now with his corporal, at another time with the sergeant of the section, but never with the officers. Fellows said that he belonged either to the Mafia or the Camorra, but opinions were divided as to whether he came to the Legion to avoid arrest by the Italian Government for crimes committed in the course of business or punishment from his association for treachery or some other offence against their laws. Anyway he was with us, and though not liked, still respected; though we did not fear him, yet we took good care to let him alone. He was not a man--to his credit be it said--who interfered with others. Why, then, should others interfere with him? About five feet five in height, of carriage alert rather than steady, with quick, black eyes, dark complexion, small, black moustache, regular features and even, white teeth, he was certainly one to attract anyone's attention, especially a woman's. He was very cynical with regard to the sex, not valuing woman's fondness much, but, all the same, so long as he was a girl's lover he allowed no poaching on his preserves. He sang well--French songs as well as Italian--and played on more than one musical instrument, his favourite one being a small flageolet, and with this he lightened more than one weary hour for us on shipboard. He never told anyone, I believe, of his intention to desert. I fancy he was too cautious for that. When he did go, no sentry connived at the business, for, even had our men been doing duty, not one of us cared so much for the Italian as to risk a court-martial for his sake. I must here remark that the legionaries had been relieved of sentry duty, as so many of them had gone away without even bidding good-bye to anyone. The French soldiers, the zephyrs, were now doing all this duty; and they did it so well, I must admit, that no man got clear away while they were on the watch--at least until the Italian left the ship--but his absence was not a long one. All our coal had been taken in, and the vessel had moved away from the wharf out into the harbour, so that it lay about 200 yards from shore. The sentries must have thought that no man would be so mad as to attempt to swim such a distance, since the water was full of sharks, and in all probability their vigilance had decreased. The morning after the ship had moved out the Italian did not answer at roll call, and it was at once assumed, and truly, that he had escaped, and, as no cry from the water had been heard by the men on duty, that he had got safely to land. Before the hour of departure the French consul came off in his own boat, to see the officers of the ship and of the troops. This, of course, was natural, but everyone was surprised to see him, as soon as he gained the deck, rush forward with malicious joy in his eyes to greet the commandant. "Ah, mon commandant, I have a present for you." "Thanks, thanks, my friend; how you are good!" "A most charming present. I bring you a friend whom you most earnestly desire to see." Leaning over the side he shouted out some orders to his sailors, and they, going under an awning at the stern, carried out the Italian bound hand and foot. How the commandant cursed him; how the Frenchmen smiled and jeered; how we, his comrades, felt sad that our worthy comrade should have been caught almost on the threshold of liberty! _Camaraderie_ overcame all other feelings, and we pitied the poor wretch, for we guessed that a court-martial would have little mercy on a soldier, especially a soldier of the Legion, captured in the act of deserting from his company while on the way to the seat of war. As for the Italian, he was calm and collected, but, if he were free and had a knife and were within striking distance of the commandant, that officer would surely have had an end put to his cursing on the spot. In a moment the Italian was brought aboard and at once sent down to the prisoners' quarters, where he found several comrades, myself among the number, eagerly speculating on the noise and confusion above. As soon as the guard had gone away someone asked the Italian what the noise on deck was about. He answered sharply: "About a better man than you--about me." None of us cared to put any further questions; Cecco was in very bad humour indeed. However, in about ten minutes he told us all, saying he had slipped over the side of the vessel when four sentries had come close enough to chat--this, you must remember, meant only the approach to one another of two posts, as all sentries had been doubled--that he had been in the water for about three minutes when he came close to a boat, which he boarded; that, like a fool, he made himself and his intention known before he found out the character of his hosts; that he was at once seized, and was told, when bound, that the boat belonged to the French consul and therefore he was still on French territory. "The rest you know," said he, "or can guess." We were sorry, and told him so. He thanked us graciously enough, and hoped we might have better luck in our enterprises than he had had in his, and, in reply to a question as to what he thought would happen, he said at first that he did not know and he did not care, but he would dearly like to have the commandant at his mercy just long enough to kill him. "Listen carefully," he went on. "I shall be shot in all probability, but they will give me a chance of saying a prayer and making my confession before I die. The commandant will also be shot, but he will get no notice, and, unless he be very lucky indeed, no priest will be present to send him absolved from sin into the presence of God." For the rest of the voyage the Italian and we got on well together. He got the best of the dinner, not that he thanked us or that we wanted thanks; he knew why we did it, and we should have been very bad soldiers indeed if we did not do a little to keep up the spirits of a man doomed, as we knew him to be, to a sudden and early death. Let me anticipate once more. After our arrival at Saigon, Cecco was court-martialled, openly insulted the officers composing the court, was sentenced to death, and shot the following morning. And the commandant was shot in the back in a little skirmish in Tonquin--a brilliant little affair that would have brought him promotion had he lived. It may have been an accident, but there was at least a dozen Italians in the company immediately behind him, and in the heat of action bullets do occasionally go astray. How do I know that he was shot in the back? Well, I don't _know_, but I suspect for two reasons: first, there was a sort of investigation, which naturally led to nothing; and, secondly, the Italian's words came back to my mind directly I heard of the commandant's death. After all, is it not bad enough for an officer to punish a man or to get him punishment? Why should he swear at the poor devil and abuse him as if he had no spirit, no sense of shame, no soul? Any man will take his punishment fairly and honestly, if he believes that he has deserved it; no man will stand abuse without paying in full for it when he gets his chance, for abuse is not fair to the man who is waiting for his court-martial. But all, or nearly all, officers are either fools or brutes. Another thing that happened at Singapore Le Grand told me afterwards. In the early days of desertion a fellow--I think he was a Belgian--came to Le Grand and proposed that they should go away together. "I am," said the Belgian, "a baker by trade; you speak English well and can teach me. Let us go together. You will interpret for me and I will work for both. We shall get enough of money in six months to carry us to the United States, and there we shall separate as soon as I know enough of the language to make myself understood." "No," replied Le Grand; "I volunteered for the war, and I mean to see what fighting means in Tonquin. Moreover, if I went away now, no one I care about would ever have any respect for me again. It is bad enough with me as it is; I will do nothing to make it worse. The most people can allege against me now is folly; no one shall ever be able to charge me with cowardice as well." Many times the baker renewed his entreaties to Le Grand to go away. Le Grand would not: he knew that hardships--perhaps sickness or wounds or death--lay before him, but better anything than self-reproach and loss of self-respect. Le Grand was right in his own way, because he was, and is (for he is still alive and in a good position), a gentleman; the Belgian baker was wise too in his generation and according to his own lights. He slipped off before the Frenchmen were ordered to supply all the guards. No one knows whether he fell a prey to the sharks or not, and, I may add, no one--not even Le Grand--cares. The only other important thing that was told to me was that our fellows and the zephyrs became rather dangerous to one another. From the beginning we were not too amiable, but when the commandant put us--at least the other legionaries, for I was at the time in the prisoners' quarters on account of the Bulgarian's escape--to do most of the duties about the ship and put Frenchmen only on sentry, so that no more men of the Legion might desert, things rapidly came to a head. The commandant was lucky in two respects--the voyage to Saigon was short, and a French war vessel accompanied the transport. Had there been a twenty days' voyage without an escort the decks would have been washed red with blood, for, be it remembered, though the average French soldier can conduct himself with propriety in almost any place, the zephyr is a military convict pure and simple. No matter how bad we were, the zephyrs were worse. Well, let me put it in another way: the zephyrs aboard were the bad characters of the French army; we others, the legionaries, were the bad characters of all the other armies of Europe. They, the zephyrs, had no chance of regaining their characters in their own country, where their misdeeds were known; our fellows had started, each with a clean sheet, on joining an alien army. Thus our reputation as a body was bad, but no man had any very ugly charge against his name; the zephyrs were bad by man, by squad, by company, and by battalion. However, they are really amongst the finest fighting men in the world; some people, indeed, say that the zephyrs are second only to the legionaries. There was no fight. The big war-vessel lay not so far away, and all knew what its shells could do. Strange that we met these very zephyrs afterwards, and our companies and theirs, certainly aided by others, did a hard afternoon's bayonet-work together. We were friends after that, so much so that I believe that one battalion, and that a battalion of zephyrs, is the only one of the French army to speak with liking--all, of course, speak with respect, unless at a distance--of the Foreign Legion. But everything to its own place. At last we reached Pingeh--a fine harbour. I was set free, as well as all other prisoners save the Italian, and we disembarked, happy again at the change, to take our share in the war against the Black Flags, thinking more of the relief from the cramped quarters than of any dangers that lay before us. CHAPTER XI When we arrived at Pingeh, the port of Saigon, the zephyrs disembarked first, and we followed. Straightway most of us were marched off to a camping-field where tents and other impedimenta were awaiting us, and in a short time we had formed a fairly creditable camp. Those of ours who were kept behind on the quay were employed in sorting out our baggage as the coolies carried the troopship's load ashore. Considering that all except the officers carried their belongings on their backs, this was not hard work, and most of them were satisfied, but the dozen or so left on guard over the ammunition cases brought out by the transport were not at all lucky, as they got no meal, not even a cup of coffee, for fully twelve hours. That's always the way. Your ordinary officer can't understand why everybody is not satisfied when he is. If the captain has a good lunch and a better dinner, the simple soldier may tighten his belt and put a bit of tobacco between his teeth--that is good enough for him. Well, there are officers who care for their men, but they are so few that, if you know a hundred captains, you may easily reckon the good ones on the fingers of a hand. Some are inclined to be good, but though physically brave they are morally cowards; they cannot stand the sneering of those who look upon the men as mere instruments for gaining decorations and promotion, and it is so very easy to acquire the habit of doing as most of your equals do. It is wrong--oh! I who have felt it know how wrong it is!--for a man who has rank and a better lot than others to forget the responsibility attached to his position, to let the men under him understand hour by hour and day by day and week by week how little he cares for their comfort, to swear at the sick, to sneer at the wounded, to order the dead to be thrown any way into a trench, and to abuse the burial party because they did not cover the carcasses quickly enough. War is war, as an Alsatian in my company used to say; but why should a man, or rather men, come into camp for the night after a long march, and perhaps a sharp fight, to be sworn at and abused by the officers who, for their own sakes even, should try to make things cheerful for all? But again I am digressing. We spent about a week at Saigon, under canvas all the time. Of course, we got our share of inspection; first the chief officer--I forget now who he was, not that he was at all worth remembering--then the medical officer, then a quartermaster--the best of all, for he supplied deficiencies in clothing. I must say this: when a French soldier goes on campaign he is well fitted out--they took from us every article that showed any signs of wear, and a new one was at once issued. At first we thought that we should have to pay out of our scanty means for the new supplies. We were only too glad to find that, instead of taking our money under false pretences, as they do in other armies, our pay was increased, and we were told, and truly told, that the increase would last while we were on active service. Take my word for it, no matter how bad the officers may be, the French Government is the best in the world to its troops on active service. If men suffer, it is not the fault of those in Paris; put the blame rather on the underlings--I mean the commandants and the captains. But, remember, what I have just said I have said only of the Republic--of the monarchy and the empire I know nothing. Another reason for this delay was that the French, if they can by any chance do it, keep men quiet on land for some days after a voyage. This is very sensible. No man gets what I may call his land legs until some time after he has come ashore from a transport, where space is small and men are many, where food is wretched, and water mawkishly warm and suspiciously sweet. The rest did us good; the new clothing and the extra pay put us in good humour. When at last we put on our knapsacks for the march into the interior, we were altogether different from the 500 semi-mutinous scarecrows who had landed from the troopship only six or seven days before. Every man had 150 rounds of ball cartridge in his pouch; all rifles were loaded; we were evidently to be kept on the _qui vive_ from the earliest possible moment; talking in the ranks was often stopped without any visible cause; the sentries were visited half-a-dozen times a night; discipline was in all respects as strict as it could be; and we were made to understand, as if we had learned nothing in Algeria, that we were in front of a cautious, skilful, and sometimes daring, enemy, and that every man was responsible for his own and his comrades' lives. Now I have no intention of writing a history of the war in Tonquin. I shall merely give details of the most important events of my life there, and of these the first in order was the battle of Noui-Bop. We had not been long in the East, and were by no means acclimatised, when the battalion to which our two companies had been sent was ordered to join a mixed force of French soldiers and natives under the command of a distinguished French general, whose name is of no importance to my narrative. This general was operating against a large force of Black Flags, and, as a result of his operations, there was every prospect of a hot engagement, and this was exactly to our taste. Ever since we had joined the battalion we had been looked upon with suspicion by the officers, for the news of the fight between the companies at Three Fountains had travelled to Tonquin, and many believed that it was a foolish thing to allow both companies to soldier together, as there might be at any moment a renewal of the fray. Even our comrades of the two other companies in the battalion at first thought that we might again fall out, but very soon they saw what the officers could not, or would not, see--that No. 4 and ours were as friendly as possible to each other and that there was not the slightest chance of ill-feeling showing itself between us. Thus we were anxious to be in a big battle; we trusted in ourselves, and every man was determined, by showing reckless bravery in the field, to wipe away the disgrace which we knew attached to us, partly for our little fight and partly for the desertions at Singapore. After a good deal of manoeuvring, of which we bore our share, at last it was evident that the eventful day had come. Some chasseurs d'Afrique who were with us had located the Black Flags and their allies, many of whom were regular soldiers of the Chinese army, in a strong position at a place called Noui-Bop. Our native scouts confirmed this, and also reported that there were several white officers amongst them--these we guessed to be English or Prussians, or a mixture of both. We knew that the enemy had good rifles and plenty of ammunition, that they held favourable ground, that there was no chance of outflanking them owing to their superiority in numbers and the nature of the country, and that the frontal attack should be pushed well home if it were to succeed. Well, so much the better, we said to ourselves. On the morning of the battle we were aroused a little after sunrise. This was because, in the East, it is best for European soldiers to get the work of the day done before the sun becomes too hot. After breakfast my battalion was ordered to leave knapsacks, greatcoats, blankets--everything, indeed, save our arms and the clothing we stood up in--in the quarters which we had occupied during the night, and about fifty men were told off to see that there was no looting of their comrades' belongings while the fight was going on. Then we went forward, and took up our position in the centre of the fighting line. On our right there were Annamite tirailleurs, backed up by some French soldiers, I think zouaves; on our left a half-battalion of a French regiment of the line--if I do not mistake, the 143rd. We waited and smoked awhile, some laughed and joked, others puffed at their pipes in silence, the officers were talking and looking always to the rear. At last a dull booming was heard--the guns were beginning behind us--we could see the shells passing over our heads and bursting more than a thousand yards away in our front. Pipes were put up, but still we sat quietly on the ground, listening to the roar of the guns and watching the shells as they searched the line where our enemies lay. A staff officer galloped up to our commandant, and we all got up without waiting for the word of command. After a short colloquy the staff officer galloped back to the general, the orders came clear and abrupt from commandant and captains, and before we could well understand what we were doing No. 4 Company and mine were extended in skirmishing order, with the other two companies of the battalion behind us in support. We had not advanced very far in this formation when a man, five or six files on my right, flung up his arms and came to the ground with a groan. Just then we began to fire, our firing being kept strictly under control by the officers and sub-officers, who saw no use in allowing us, as soldiers naturally do, to blaze away all our ammunition at too long a range against a well-protected enemy. We went along almost too well; not alone had the officers to control our fire, they had also to work hard to keep us in hand as we went forward in the attack. All was well. A man fell here and another there, but the losses were not enough to speak about until we came to the dangerous zone. Now let me explain what is meant by the dangerous zone. I did not understand it at the time, but I afterwards learned all about it, and many a time I thanked my stars when the order came to fix bayonets, for then I knew that I was safely through the ugly place and that most, if not all, of the chances were in my favour. The Chinese--at least those of them whom we were fighting--never put the rifle to the shoulder as Europeans do when about to fire. Instead, they tuck the rifle-butt into the armpit and try to drop the bullet, as it were, on the attacking party. They cannot well do this until the attack comes within five hundred yards of the defence, nor can they do it when the enemy is within two hundred yards of their line, but they succeed fairly well--that is, well for such clumsy shooters--while the fighting line of the advance is between five hundred and two hundred yards of their position. This was pointed out to us by our officers, and we could easily see for ourselves that what they said was true. Looking back--of course, when the battle was over--we saw only scattered bodies lying for the first three or four hundred yards of our advance, then a comparatively large number in the dangerous zone, after that few, for, as we closed with the bayonet and were practically at point-blank range, the Black Flags wavered and fired at the sky rather than at us. Well, we had got along fairly until we came to within about five hundred yards of the enemy's trenches. Then the men went down fast, and the officers, sergeants, corporals, and veterans shouted out to us neophytes to run. And we did run; we covered about three hundred yards of heavy ground--we were attacking through rice fields, you must know--as quickly as men ever did before or since. I was pretty blown when I heard the order given to lie down, and down we lay, with bullets flying overhead, until we regained our breath. Above us the shells from our guns were shrieking, in front they were exploding; it gave us all--at least it gave me--a feeling of heartfelt gratitude that the big guns were on our side. After some time we were ordered forward again. We ran a bit, fired a round, ran again a little way and fired another cartridge, not at the foe, for as yet we could see no men in our front, but at the long line of smoke that overhung the trenches where the Black Flags and their allies, the Chinese regulars, were waiting for our charge. In this fashion we managed to get to within about eighty yards of the enemy's trenches, and were then ordered to halt, lie down, and fire as often as possible at the heads and figures that we were now beginning to distinguish where the little puffs of smoke arose. A light breeze was sweeping down the battlefield, and this lifted the blue-white clouds, so that men on both sides could easily make out their enemies. An officer sprang up about twenty yards away from me, waved his sword, and shouted out something which I could not hear, so incessant was the rattle of musketry. I saw the others fixing their bayonets, and I reached round to my left side to pluck out mine. As I did so, I saw the supporting companies of ours running up to join us. Very soon they were at our side, and the four companies, nearly a thousand strong, poured in a hot fire for a minute or two. Then we heard the clear notes of the charge. In a second, commandant, officers, sub-officers, and simple soldiers were all racing for the trenches like madmen, shouting: "Kill, kill!" How I got there I do not know. I was in, anyway, if not amongst the first, certainly not amongst the last, and when there a horrible scene lay before my eyes. On all sides were dead and dying men, some of the dead quiet and calm in appearance, as if only sleeping, with just a little spot of red on the forehead or staining the breast; others torn to pieces by the deadly shells. Some of the wounded were quite passive and resigned; others were crying out, I suppose for mercy. But it was not of them we thought, our business lay with a large body of men, led by a big chief in yellow tunic and wide yellow trousers, who met us with bayonet, sword, and spear and tried to retrieve the fortunes of the day. Our officers--bad as they were, they were brave--rushed straight at this band. We followed like wolf-hounds rushing at wolves. Their hoarse cries and imprecations soon died away as with bloody bayonets we thrust and dug our way through them from front to rear. Once more the Asiatic went down before the European, and in five minutes from the time our foremost entered the trenches we had left not a single Black Flag or Chinese regular standing on his feet. Some of the wounded fired at us as they lay upon the ground; that work, however, was very soon stopped. Meanwhile the half-battalion of French troops of the line had gallantly carried their part of the entrenchments, but on the right the native troops, the Annamite tirailleurs, were in trouble. Some Frenchmen were with them, but these were too few of themselves to make head against the enemy, who thronged like bees to flowers where they saw a good chance of throwing back the attack. My captain, a good soldier and a bad man, hastily collected about a hundred of his men, and getting us into some sort of order gave us the word--and the example too, indeed--to charge. We fell upon the exposed flank of the barbarians. In a couple of minutes we drove it in upon the main left of the enemy, and very soon the Annamites, taking their courage in both hands, returned to the attack. Some of ours again went round and charged the enemy in the rear, and then the game was up--the battle was over. I wish I need say no more about the fighting, but many would not surrender, and these, of course, were promptly shot or bayoneted where they stood. Some wounded also suffered, but I must say that when a white man, zouave or legionary, put a wounded enemy out of pain it was only after the savage had tried to shoot or stab a passing soldier. Well, if a wounded man will try to kill there is only one thing to do--put it as soon as possible out of his power to do serious damage. I don't blame the savages much for firing or cutting at our fellows; as they never gave quarter to whites, they naturally believed, I suppose, that whites would give no quarter to them. Some of the Annamite tirailleurs did, I am afraid, a little unjustifiable killing. Well, it's the way with these people; they think as little of killing a wounded man as a hungry legionary would of killing a providentially sent chicken. We must make allowances; but I am very doubtful about the wisdom of European nations in supplying arms and teaching modern drill to the yellows, the blacks, and the browns. You may make any of these very good imitations of white soldiers, but the leopard cannot change his spots, and the effects of centuries of cruelty cannot be eradicated in a day. The Annamites had one excuse--they were merely doing to the Black Flags what the Black Flags would have done to them and to us had the issue of the fight been different. This is a poor excuse, I admit, but then any excuse is better than none at all. The white officers attached to our native levies did their best to keep their men in hand, but orders are not always minded, even by the very best soldiers, in the heat of action or the flush of victory. No one must assume that what I have written is a full account of the battle of Noui-Bop. I merely tell what happened under my own eyes. I know nothing whatever of the events that occurred in other parts of the battlefield, nor must it be considered that the troops I have mentioned were the only attacking ones. There were others advancing far away to the right and to the left--we were only the centre of the advance--and when I speak of right and left, I mean right and left of the central attack, not extreme right and left of the firing line. When we had cleared the Black Flags and their comrades out of the entrenchments, we had a short rest under arms. Very soon, however, we received orders to advance, but cautiously, so as not to get too far in front of the rest. In our rear we could see the artillerymen bringing up their guns to new positions. Occasionally a gun would be unlimbered and a shell or two thrown into a part of the enemy trying to re-form. These shells did not do much damage to the enemy, but they did a great deal of good to us; it was so pleasant to watch the projectiles hissing through the air and to know that our friends the Black Flags were also watching them, but with very different feelings. One of our fellows, a happy-go-lucky Andalusian, called the shells _lettres d'avis_--warning notices that we were coming and that it would be best for the barbarians to be "not at home." Only twice in this advance had we to make a regular attack, and in each case the men who opposed us did not wait to allow us to get to close quarters; they fled with a hail of bullets about their ears before we got within two hundred yards. The French advance on the extreme right seemed to have more difficulty. I fancy an attempt was made to take them in flank. Anyway, we heard a continuous roll of musketry, with the heavy booming of guns, for about ten or fifteen minutes, and then only a dropping fire, when the attack had evidently been repulsed. On the left no trouble was experienced; our comrades there swept forward, driving the men opposed to them like sheep. About eleven o'clock we were halted. The native levies were sent on in pursuit, as they were better able than European soldiers to follow up a retreating enemy in the heat of the noonday sun. We lay down and rested, happy in the thought that our first fight in Tonquin was over and won. We were not allowed to remain long at our ease after the fight. First two companies, and afterwards the other two, were sent back to get the knapsacks and other impedimenta left behind by the general's order before the advance. About half-past four in the afternoon we got some bread and soup, and a little after five, when the great heat of the day was over, we set forward on our march in the track of the retreating enemy and the pursuing tirailleurs. We kept on until nearly nine o'clock at night, occasionally halting for a rest. In spite of the Annamite levies being in front of us on this march we took all possible precautions against a surprise; we had a section of a company in front, and, in advance of that again, one of its squads. Other squads were out far to the right and to the left. These precautions may seem unnecessary, as our own friends were in front, but, indeed, they were very useful for several reasons. In the first place we saw that, no matter how triumphant our arms might be, there was to be no relaxation of precaution or of discipline; in the second, it was possible that our irregulars might have allowed a large body of the enemy to slip in behind them, and these might ambush us; again, all the men of the main body felt a sense of security, and consequently their nerves were not kept constantly strained--a material advantage in warfare. It is a good maxim to put all the watchfulness on a few and to allow the main body to rest or march in security; so an officer will have better soldiers in action. The best men in the world can't help feeling worried and depressed by constant expectation of an attack. A battle is nothing--very often it is, indeed, a relief--but always waiting and always speculating on an attack, and always wondering from what side it will come, will wear out the strongest nerves. Then come dogged sullenness, loss of interest in one's work, carelessness in duty, and slovenliness in the little things that all soldiers take pride in, and in the end disaster. That night we lay about fifteen or sixteen kilometres from the place where we had rested the previous night. It was lucky that it was not my turn for guard; I felt so sleepy after the morning fight and the evening march. I had scarcely rolled myself up snugly in my greatcoat and blanket when I fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep, and I could almost swear that I had not had two minutes' rest when the reveille went in the morning. I felt very hungry, and that made me get up quickly from the spot of hard ground on which I had been sleeping, to help the others to light the fire for the squad's morning coffee. Nicholas the Russian asked me how I felt. "Hungry, my comrade, hungry," I replied. And everyone, even the captain, who was passing at the time, laughed as if I had said a good thing. Soldiers are very like schoolboys; the simplest thing said or done by one they know far surpasses anything said, no matter how brilliant, anything done, no matter how renowned, by those they do not know. On active service they are even more easily amused. We often laughed heartily at sayings that, considered calmly by me now, show not the slightest trace of humour. When the tale of dead and wounded was made up it was seen that our battalion had suffered more than any other corps in the fight, and that of the four companies constituting it mine had the greatest number of losses. This was not bad for me. For some reason or other the captain made me a soldier of the first class, and I was very glad indeed that Nicholas the Russian and Le Grand were also promoted to wear the single red stripe on their right sleeves. We laughed heartily as we thought of our advance in rank and of what we should have got instead of promotion if all were known about the quarrel at Three Fountains. Well, what people don't know won't trouble them. For some time after this our battalion was always on hard duty. We on some days marched only ten or twelve kilometres; on others, in pursuit of a band of marauders, we covered as much as twenty-five or thirty. Remember, we had to do all this in a country where roads are bad and travelling over fields almost impossible, with heavy packs on our backs, and never less than a hundred rounds of ball cartridge in our pouches. Then no matter how pleasant the greatcoat and the blanket might be at night, they were no light load during the day, and especially between the hours of eleven in the forenoon and four in the afternoon, when we had to go forward if there was the slightest chance of catching up with some or other band of scoundrels. Moreover, when soldiers are on flying duty, they seldom get enough to eat, and what they do get is not the very best or nicest food in the world. One day we came in at the hour of evening soup to a little camp where some zouaves and marine fusiliers were. They were very good to us indeed; the soup they had just prepared for themselves they gave to us, and they took, good fellows that they were, the dry bread and unboiled rice that we had in our haversacks. They were decent men, these French soldiers; they saw that we had been on tramp for some time, and they hesitated not a moment to give us the savoury soup when they saw the hungry longing in our eyes and the convulsive twitch of nostrils, as the grateful odour was perceived. They did more; they gave us some wine and native spirit, and I do not know whether we were more pleased with the gifts or with the free, generous dispositions of the givers. Well, we did as much afterwards for Frenchmen. This victory at Noui-Bop gave the French control over a large strip of country. Moreover, many new recruits joined the Annamite tirailleurs, for the Asiatic, like all others, wants to be on the winning side. There were promotions, of course, but the only ones I was at all interested in were those that gave the single red chevrons to Nicholas, Le Grand, and myself. We had got to like one another very much, and I believe that the promotion of one gave more pleasure to his comrades than to himself. I may say here that Nicholas and Le Grand afterwards refused further promotion; I, a boy and fool, took it when offered, but I must tell how that came about in another chapter. CHAPTER XII I will not weary the reader with an account of our marches to and fro, hunting straggling bands of marauders. This work soon became monotonous, and the recital of our doings would, I am sure, prove monotonous as well. Only one thing impressed itself strongly on my mind at the time, and this was that a man who fell out of the ranks had no chance of getting mercy from the Black Flags. Occasionally, we came across the horribly mutilated body of a French soldier or an Annamite tirailleur, and the sight was sickening. One circumstance, which I must now relate, made our blood boil over and, if we learned to give no quarter, the enemy had no one to blame but themselves. We arrived at a small village one morning about nine o'clock, having been on the march continuously since five. Here we rested during the heat of the day, and one of the men of my squad and I went to a little shop to buy tobacco. We saw some fruit there--I don't know what kind it was--and my comrade purchased some and gave a share to me. We ate it, and thought no more about the business, but the fruit cost my poor friend his life. When we were on the march that afternoon, I felt very sick. My comrade--I forgot to mention that he came from Lorraine and was serving with us in order that, when his time was up, he might become a French citizen--was even worse, and both of us had to fall out of the ranks. However, we again caught up with the company, but a second time we were compelled to stay behind, and this time the captain ordered our rifles and ammunition to be taken from us and carried by our comrades. "The Black Flags," he said, "may get you if they like, but they sha'n't have your arms or ammunition." I don't blame the officer, he was quite right. The same thing was done with every man who showed signs of weakness or weariness, for we had no ambulance in these hurried pursuits, and the abandoned soldier kept only his bayonet for defence against the human wolves that hung on our flanks and rear. Not much good that, for the cowards used to overpower the poor devils with stones, and, as soon as they were beaten to the ground, the brutes would seize them and execute their horrible tortures on their bodies before death came--a merciful release. Again, however, we struggled back to the company. Nicholas, who was carrying my rifle and ammunition in addition to his own, said: "Cheer up, my good friend; keep on a little longer; we shall soon be in camp." Le Grand, who was in the squad immediately behind mine, got permission to carry my knapsack, another man took my greatcoat, and still another my blanket, but, in spite of the relief thus afforded me, it was with the utmost difficulty that I kept on. The Lorrainer was similarly aided, but he was too unwell, and had for the third and last time to fall out. He never rejoined the company, and we could at the time only speculate upon his fate, but very soon we were to learn the truth. Helped on by my comrades, I managed to stagger into the little collection of huts where we were to pass the night. Nicholas and Le Grand foraged for me, and got somewhere and somehow a supply of native spirit. Le Grand made me a stiff glass of boiling hot punch, and this I was compelled to drink, though my stomach rebelled at all things. I fell asleep soon after, and woke in the morning, qualmish, indeed, and weak, but completely rid of all the bad effects brought on by indulgence in the fruit. Nicholas insisted on my taking some of the spirit in my morning coffee, and also filled my water bottle with coffee containing about a glass of the fiery stuff, so that I might have medicine on the march. All the others of the squad were sympathetic, and Le Grand, though not of my squad, came over to our hut to inquire about me. Nobody minded this--it was no breach of squad etiquette, as we were both Irishmen--but, of course, it would not do for us to be too much together--we remembered the punishment given to the Alsatians. Some information received by our officers made us return by the route passed over on the previous day. When we came near the place where the unfortunate Lorrainer had fallen out, a great cloud of birds rose up from the ground and flew, crying hoarsely, away. Very soon we learned the meaning of this. The captain of my company, who was riding in front, suddenly shouted out: "Halt!" and dismounting, gave the reins to his orderly and crossed into a rice field that bordered the way. What he saw there seemed to fill him with disgust and horror. He called out to the other officers to come and see; then the sergeants and the corporals were summoned; finally we private soldiers went by fours to view the sight. What a horrible thing met our gaze! On the ground lay the dead body of the Lorrainer, hacked and mutilated in a fashion that I cannot describe. We were almost sickened by the sight. Often before we had seen mutilated bodies, but never one so savagely disfigured as this, and, moreover, this was the body of one who had been our good comrade only the day before. "Ah," said the captain to me, "was it not well that you struggled on?" "My captain," said Nicholas, speaking before I could get out a word, "I will never again give mercy to a Black Flag. As they do to us, let us do to them." The captain answered nothing to this, but sent us back to our ranks. Before we left the spot we buried the poor Lorrainer. All that day we spoke of nothing but the horrible sight we had seen in the morning. We were angry; we made resolutions to take a sharp and speedy vengeance for the death of our comrade and the indignity shown to his corpse; we encouraged one another in the desire for revenge; we spoke of what might happen to any one of us who fell faint or wounded on the way; we were gloomy and sullen, not with despair, but with the gloom and sullenness of incensed men. Had we met any enemies that day, not even the commander-in-chief of the army in Tonquin could have prevented us from treating them as they had treated our poor comrade, and, when we did get the chance, we took a bloody vengeance on the barbarians--such a vengeance as even in the Legion was spoken of with bated breath. Now at this time the battalion had been divided into three parts--two companies held a depot of stores and ammunition, the remaining two were out as small flying columns through the country. It was our turn to go into garrison and rest a while, and two days after burying our unfortunate comrade we marched into the depot. The day after our friends of No. 4 Company came in, and the two companies, Nos. 1 and 2, that we relieved started off on a ten days' trip through the country, seeking the enemy but, as a rule, not finding them. While we were resting in garrison we told the story of the Lorrainer's sad fate to the men of No. 4, and we also made them acquainted with our determination to have satisfaction at all costs for the brutality of those who had tortured to death a poor, sick soldier, to all intents and purposes unarmed, and then disfigured his body in so revolting a manner. I give no details of the mutilation here, but we described it fully to our comrades, and they too were filled with horror and anger. The two companies had got a strange sort of liking for each other, arising out of the fight at Three Fountains, and we could not have met men more willing to back us up in our resolve than they were, and fate sent us other allies almost as good too. A few days before our turn came to go out on the tiresome tramp after quickly disappearing enemies, two companies of Frenchmen came into our little camp. To our surprise, and, indeed, at first to our disgust, they were the two companies of zephyrs that had come out with us in the transport. We had not lain alongside of them since we parted at Saigon, and then our feelings towards one another were not at all friendly. However, if soldiers quickly fall out, often they become friends again as easily, and so it happened with us. The zephyrs were not a day in camp before they knew all about the Lorrainer and our desire to avenge him, and, since they considered the people of Lorraine as their own flesh and blood, they felt almost as angry as we did. Very soon we all were, if not friends, at least allies for the purpose of obtaining vengeance on the Black Flags, and it was tacitly understood amongst the soldiers of the four companies that, when next we went into action, no quarter was to be given and that the commands, even the entreaties, of our officers to show mercy were to be disregarded. As soldiers we all recognised that it would be impossible to punish so many men, and we saw also that, if we took a terrible vengeance, the officers would do their best to hide the fact, and, though it might become known throughout the army, yet there was no chance of the general giving it official recognition by giving us official punishment. Now the two companies of zephyrs numbered at the time about 300 men and No. 4 and mine about 350; the rest were in the hospital or the grave. When No. 1 and No. 2 Companies of my battalion came into camp, the zephyrs and we others marched out. At the end of the first day's march we picked up a couple of companies of Annamite tirailleurs, weak ones they were, and angry, as they had had a couple of fights recently with the Black Flags and got by no means the best of the fighting. Another weak company of native levies joined us the next day, so that altogether our commandant had at his disposal about 650 Europeans and about 300 Asiatic tirailleurs. There were no guns with us, but we did not mind their absence, this time we meant to depend solely on the bayonet. I have often wondered whether or not our officers knew of our resolution. Certainly the corporals and sergeants did, but these _sous-officiers_ were too experienced to say anything to us about it; they might as well have tried to turn back Niagara as to change our minds. That they knew, and they knew also that we were dangerous men to cross when united and feeling strongly about anything. Bullets don't always fly towards the enemy. Many a man with a private grudge against sergeant or corporal might be only too glad to salve his conscience, or what stood for his conscience, by saying to himself that he was merely executing justice on behalf of his section or his squad. If the officers knew, they kept silent, but one thing was certain, however it came about: we were the quietest and most subdued force, to all appearance, in the world. The officers and sub-officers were strangely easy with us; we in the ranks dropped all the boisterous gaiety that usually distinguishes soldiers; we were well behaved, respectful, attentive to our duties--in short, for the time being we were model troops. One evening our scouts brought in word that a fairly large body of the enemy, from two to three thousand strong, lay within two hours' march of our encampment. These were evidently the men who had driven back the Annamite tirailleurs, and our yellow friends were quite well aware of what had happened to their wounded, whom they had been compelled to abandon on the field. "So much the better," whispered we to one another; "the native levies will be our very good brothers this time." Next morning we were aroused without sound of bugle, and after the morning meal had been disposed of, every man received a ration of wine. Some fellows drank this at once, most of us, however, put it into our water bottles for use during the day. Soon we were on the march, due precautions being taken against a flank attack or a surprise, and about eight o'clock or half-past we arrived within sight of the enemy. They were not disposed to stir on our account, and we were quite satisfied. We had begun to despise them--I mean when we met them in fair fight. That is the way with all Europeans; a white man gets to know his yellow brother only to despise him. Towards nine o'clock the regular advance began. No. 4 Company of legionaries attacked on the right, my company being in support, with half-a-section, supported by some Annamite tirailleurs, flung out to guard against a flank attack on the part of the enemy; on the left a company of zephyrs were extended, the second company of Frenchmen doing the same duty on the left as mine did on the right; in reserve were the rest of the Annamite tirailleurs. Our men advanced in the usual way until they came within charging distance of the enemy's entrenchment. At this time a slight diversion was caused on the left by a feeble attempt to outflank and throw into confusion the white soldiers and native levies advancing in support. This attempt failed, and, just as we knew that it had failed, a similar one was made on us. We quickly put an end to it, pouring in a heavy fire at short range, and when these attacks were repulsed a considerable body of the Black Flags left the field. But the firing line in front had still to reckon with the soldiers manning the trenches, and these certainly fought with admirable spirit and determination. Better for them had they run away! When the time came, in the commandant's opinion, for the charge which was to end the fight, one section of my company was ordered forward to join No. 4, the other section, the one to the right, with about 100 Annamite tirailleurs, to overlap the enemy in that direction and, if possible, to take them in the rear. As we ran along we heard first the heavy, continuous firing that always precedes the bayonet charge, and then the hoarse roar of "Kill, kill!" that told us that our comrades were going up with the bayonet. We redoubled our exertions, slaughtered to a man a small body of Black Flags that tried to block the way, and very soon we were clear past the end of the entrenchments and were moving inwards--that is, to the left--to catch the savages in the rear. We just succeeded. The enemy, driven out of the entrenchments by the frontal attack, were pouring out in hundreds along their line of retreat We rushed at them with cries of exultation and revenge, and as we drove back the fugitives on one side a section of zephyrs and some natives drove them back on the other. We had now completely hemmed them in. Roughly speaking, on the south were a company and a half of legionaries and a company and a half of zephyrs, with a few Annamites who had come up from the reserves; on the north, half a company of legionaries, half a company of zephyrs, and about a hundred and fifty native tirailleurs; between these two forces about six or seven hundred Black Flags and their allies. It was now a game of battledore and shuttlecock: our comrades on the south drove the savages on to our bayonets; we sent them yelling back again. Once more our fellows attacked and pushed them towards us; we, who had re-formed the ranks, again closed and used the bayonet mercilessly until they tried to break away. This went on for some time, but every charge brought the opposed lines of white soldiers closer, and thus diminished the little space in which the Black Flags could move. At last we were all a dense crowd, in the centre a mob of savages so closely packed together that they had scarcely room to thrust or cut, around this a circle of maddened men stabbing furiously and crying out: "Vengeance for our comrade; kill, kill!" By scores the central mob went down. At last not more than fifty or sixty were left, and these were on their knees or thrown prone upon the ground crying out for quarter. We opened our ranks and let all the Annamites through; in three minutes not a Black Flag was left alive. In plain words, this was a massacre--of that there can be no doubt. It is only fair, however, to put the responsibility on the proper shoulders. Therefore I say that it was meditated upon and carried out by the simple soldiers; the officers and sub-officers merely fought well while there was any show of resistance. It would be unjust to the men to say that the officers led us, for we were far too anxious to get to close quarters to require leading, but when the resistance had ceased the captains and lieutenants vehemently ordered, and, when orders were disregarded, begged of us to stop. The sergeants and the corporals asked us to refrain from killing, but they were not over-earnest about it--they understood us better than the leaders of higher rank--and they knew quite well that our desire of vengeance could be appeased only by blood. The corporal of my squad said to us afterwards: "No doubt it was wrong, but perhaps it was necessary." But, it will be asked, were there no leaders in the affair? Yes; there were leaders--indeed, the very best leaders that could be found for such a deed. You must understand that we had in our ranks men of education and refinement; gentlemen, let me say, who had gone astray. These were of many nations and of various crimes. I have already mentioned Nicholas the Russian. I could also tell you something of a Prussian ex-lieutenant of hussars; of an English infantry officer, son of a high official in the Colonies, who had sent in his papers after a five minutes' interview with his colonel; of the Austrian _beau sabreur_ who loved women better than their honour and preferred cards to his own; of many others who came to the Legion as a means of committing social suicide, and who--unhappy rascals that they were--were yet good, honest, fighting men, and not bad comrades if one only put a guard upon his tongue. Two of them could not live in the same squad, and the authorities knew it. Every one of them was a second corporal, so to speak, and really, to take the case of the man I knew best, Nicholas was far more respected amongst us than our authorised superior, and the corporal was as well aware of the fact as we. Well, these were the leaders. When the officers and sub-officers, who thought only of victory and perhaps promotion, would have had us show mercy when the fight was over, these men, born and trained leaders, encouraged us to slay and spare not, and showed us an example of fierce brutality which we, angry on account of the murder and mutilation of our comrade, only too faithfully followed. We should certainly have done some unfair killing in any case, but we others should not, I believe, have been guilty of such excesses were it not for the ruined gentlemen who for once saw a chance of giving vent to their long pent-up feelings of anger with all the world--especially their world--that had for ever cast them out Long ago there was an Italian proverb: "Inglese Italianato e diavolo incarnato," and I believe it to have contained a good deal of truth at the time. Nowadays the "devil incarnate" is the gentleman by birth and breeding who has been rejected by his natural society because he has been so unlucky as to be found out. Well, the fight was over, and we, having cleaned our bayonets, rested quietly on the field. Nobody in the ranks said a word; the sergeants stood apart from us and from each other; a little knot of officers gathered together and spoke in whispers. The commandant rode up and spoke in a low tone to them, then he went away, and the sections were ordered to fall into ranks. The zephyrs and we were marched a little way from the place, and were ordered to prepare a small encampment; the Annamite tirailleurs were sent out scouting while this was being done; there was not the slightest thought in any man's mind of pursuing the flying enemy. Indeed, pursuit would have been useless; those who had got away had too long a start, and we were very tired and in no mood for further fighting that day. About two hundred legionaries and some zephyrs were after a short time sent out to bury the dead. I should mention that our wounded had been first carried to the place where we were forming the little camp. I was glad that I was not with the burial party; those who formed it had no stomach for their evening soup. Towards nightfall all things necessary had been done--the wounded cared for, the dead buried four deep in a long trench, this for the Black Flags, and two shorter trenches, one for the legionaries and the zephyrs, the other for the Annamite tirailleurs. The camp was very quiet; the men not on guard or outlying picket lay about smoking, but with very little conversation; the officers of all detachments had assembled in the centre, and were talking earnestly about the events of the day. Nothing was ever said to us about this ugly affair. It was over and done with; there was no use in talking about it In any case, how could eight or nine hundred men--that is, including the Annamite tirailleurs--be punished? Cæsar could decimate his legions--the day is gone by for such punishment; moreover, even if special soldiers were selected for trial by court-martial their comrades would surely have revenge on the officers, the sergeants, and the corporals. It is dangerous--take my word for it, very dangerous--to go too far with any regiment in any army. With us it would be even worse, for no one, not even the general in chief command, would be safe from our bullets if only a chance arose. I believe that we were at once the worst used and the most feared corps on the face of the earth. Not long afterwards No. 4 Company and mine rejoined our comrades of Nos. 1 and 2. We parted from the zephyrs in a very friendly way; they told us that they liked us very much, and we paid them a similar compliment. Often afterwards we heard from other legionaries that a certain corps of zephyrs had shown them singular friendliness. In a short time the story went round about the affair, and people began to understand why this battalion of zephyrs was so well able to get on with the soldiers of the Legion. Our fellows were good comrades to them, just as they were good comrades to ours. If the zephyr had money, the legionary had a share; if the legionary had money, the zephyr did not find himself without wine and tobacco and the other things that money procures. Frenchmen of other corps did not mind. After all, it was none of their business; besides, the zephyr as well as the legionary had a rather ugly camp reputation; both were too ready to fight with men of other regiments on the slightest provocation. In a short time we received some recruits, and the four companies of the battalion were brought up to a fairly respectable strength. Every company now numbered more than two hundred men, and at long last promotion came in the ranks. The sergeant of my section had died of wounds soon after the little affair I have just mentioned. My corporal was promoted in his stead. It will be remembered that the corporal of my squad had given the first intimation to the captain that we were about to volunteer for active service; the captain now took the opportunity of rewarding him for bringing the joyful news. There were only two soldiers of the first class in the squad--Nicholas the Russian and I. Nicholas, as the older and better soldier, was offered the rank of corporal. He refused it, as was natural. It was all right to become a soldier of the first class, because that rank saved him from many disagreeable duties, but the idea of one who had commanded a company accepting the control of a squad and receiving curses and abuse from the company officers when a soldier got into trouble was not to be entertained for a moment. The second chevron was then offered to me. I accepted it on the spot, and by none was I more heartily congratulated than by Nicholas. He went further than mere compliments and good wishes: he asked me if I wanted money to pay for some drink and tobacco for the men. Luckily, I had a few francs saved out of my scanty pay, and so I was able to decline his generous offer. At the same time I assured him that, if I wanted the loan of money from any man, I would rather be in his debt than in another's. And I paid him the further compliment--its truth pleased him--that I was, indeed, corporal on parade but that he was corporal in camp, and that I should find it hard to prove superior rank to his in a fight I knew--everybody knew--that Nicholas had more influence than any corporal or, for that matter, than either of the sergeants. He was glad that I openly admitted it to him, and a more loyal soldier never helped a sub-officer when help was really needed than he. I, probably the youngest corporal in the army--not yet seventeen--had a more orderly and well-disciplined squad than any other corporal in the service. Partly, I believe, this was due to my own desire to give fair play to all the men, but chiefly, I know, to the thorough-going way in which Nicholas supported me in everything. Every man under me felt that I would do my best to screen him if he broke the regulations, to save him as much as possible if he were brought before the captain or the commandant by sergeant or sergeant-major. Often I deliberately shut my eyes to things that were wrong in themselves but dear to the heart of the soldier, and one day I went so far as warmly to defend before the captain a man charged by the sergeant-major with a serious military offence, though everybody knew that the man's sole claim to be helped by me was that he was a member of my squad. Nicholas told me that I had acted imprudently. "The sergeant-major," he said, "will be your enemy; but there is one consolation, the squad is more than pleased. The Austrian, however," he went on, "had no right to get himself into such trouble and, as it were, compel you to save him from the consequences of his own guilt. We will punish him; get permission to go outside the camp this evening, and leave him to us." I understood. I got permission to be absent for four hours--from seven in the evening until eleven. When I came back the Austrian was lying on the floor of the hut with a blanket thrown over him, dead. "It was an accident, my corporal," said Nicholas. "Yes; an accident," said a Belgian; "we did not mean to break his neck." I examined the body. It was quite true that he was dead; already his jaw had fallen, and a coldness and rigidity had seized upon his limbs. I thought for a minute. The lights were out, only a feeble ray of moonlight shone through the door. "Is there anything to be done?" said I to Nicholas. "Yes," he replied; "if we are all true comrades." The others swore that they would be loyal to the death; as for me, there was no need of asseveration: if I tried to save the men of the squad, it was sink or swim for me with all. "Let us bring him out," said Nicholas, "and put him outside the camp. Then let nobody know anything of him save that he lay down at the usual hour. You, corporal, must say that he was present when you came in; I will give the rest of the evidence." We had some difficulty in getting out the dead body, but when Nicholas had interviewed a sentry we managed the rest easily enough. We left it about two hundred paces from the camp, fully dressed, and with a bayonet in the right hand. In the morning the nearest sentry called out for the sergeant of the guard. He on coming up recognised the body as that of a French soldier. It was carried to the guard-hut, and there lay awaiting identification. I reported the absence of the Austrian when the sergeant came round, and soon afterwards I was ordered to go to the guard-hut. There I identified the body. All the squad and myself were examined about the matter. Nicholas was the only one who knew anything, and his story was that, lying awake at night, he had heard the Austrian getting up, and asked him was he unwell. The Austrian had said: "A little, not much; don't disturb anyone about me." He had then gone out, and Nicholas had fallen asleep. Everyone believed that he had left the camp to visit some female friend, and that he had been suddenly fallen upon by natives and beaten to death. Such a little thing was quickly forgotten, and we of the squad took particular pains to avoid even mentioning his name. After this event the squad would do anything for Nicholas and for me. That was why it was so good a squad. Why, the captain looked surprised when a man of mine was brought up before him. Well, if I were good to them, they were good to me, and I had the pleasant consciousness that no man would try to shoot me in the back when the bayonets were fixed for the charge. I kept aloof from the other corporals, and was rather distant with the men--that is, with all except Nicholas. To him I never hesitated to confide my thoughts, and many a time he gave me advice well worth the having. He had read much and had travelled and mixed constantly with men, and all the worldly wisdom he had gained was at my disposal; indeed, I often felt secretly pleased that the Prince, as we sometimes called him in his absence, was so frank and free with me. He had, I knew, been exiled by the Tsar, or at any rate compelled by circumstances to leave his country. I knew of some things he had done--and they were guilty deeds--but he was so clever, so superior to us others in manner and bearing, so generous when he had money, and, best of all virtues in a soldier's eyes, so loyal to his comrades, that a far more experienced man than I might have easily fallen under his influence. I shall have more to say of the Russian in the next chapter, and soon after that he will disappear for ever from these pages. I shall not anticipate, however, but let the tale unfold itself in its proper order, making but one more observation here--namely, that when the account of the last fight which I have mentioned went through the Legion, and I believe I may say through all the army, it, coupled with the story of the fight at Three Fountains, gave No. 4 Company and mine a most unenviable reputation. In a way this was good; nobody felt inclined to quarrel with us, and a most unusual calm and quietness prevailed in every camp where we lay. At the same time the generals gave us our fill of fighting--more than our share, indeed--but these things will come in their own place afterwards. And so I close this chapter--the chapter of the slaughter. CHAPTER XIII The next important event of my life in Tonquin was the first battle of Lang-Son. This was, to put it bluntly, a defeat for our troops and a really creditable victory for our enemies. Of course, reasons are given by the beaten side for every mishap. "Rank bad luck," for instance, unknown and unforeseen difficulties of country, unsuspected numerical superiority of the victors--anything and everything except a fair and straight admission of an honest beating in open warfare. Now these are all nonsense. Why should a general talk of "rank bad luck"? If he ascribes a defeat to this, may not people fairly ascribe his victories to good luck, and that alone? As for saying that the lie of the land was not known, that is merely a confession of ignorance, and worse--of carelessness in using his mounted men and his scouts. That an enemy may succeed in massing a great number of men at a given point without the knowledge or even suspicion of his opponent is quite conceivable; is it not what every general who knows his business tries to do? Read the history of any campaign and you will find that all the decisive actions were won by a swift and secret concentration of troops against an important place held by comparatively weak numbers. If I were a general, I should try to divide my enemy's forces and concentrate my own. Ah, when a man is beaten let him say so honestly; let him point out, if he wishes, how his opponent out-manoeuvred him; and let him, in the name of all the gods, say nothing about luck, and, above all, be discreetly silent about anything that might hint at his own carelessness or the worthlessness of his scouts. Now, let me try to show how our defeat came about. But first let me again say that the enemy beat us fairly and squarely in the engagement; that we retreated is good enough proof of that. Well, in the first place, the generals and the other officers firmly believed that the Black Flags and their allies would never be able to stand up against either our rifle fire or our charge. They had good reason, I admit, for assuming this. Unfortunately, they never reckoned on having to fight regular troops, officered and disciplined by Europeans, and it was these regular troops, well armed, well drilled, well led, and showing an amount of courage and staying power which one does not usually attribute to Asiatics, that drove us off the field. There were Black Flags and other barbarians in the fight, but these we could have easily first stalled off with the rifle and afterwards cut to pieces with the bayonet: it was really the men in uniforms who won the fight. In the second place, we soldiers had learned to depend implicitly on our commanders. They had led us so well that we had as much confidence in their foresight and military skill as they had in our courage and steadfastness. The day before we were driven from Lang-Son no man even dreamt that our generals could be ignorant of anything occurring within a radius of a hundred miles; that a numerous and well-appointed army was within striking distance without their knowledge seemed, or would seem, if such a thing entered our minds, the fancy of a fool or the vain imagining of a coward. When the fight was going on we were surprised at the gallant manner in which our foes stood up against us. After a time, when more than once we had hurled them back with the bayonet, we recognised that we were dealing with the most formidable force that we had yet encountered. They gave us bullet for bullet, thrust for thrust. They were good men, and when the bayonets crossed they fought quietly and earnestly, and died without a murmur, almost without a groan. They could never hold out long against us in a charge--they were too light--and, another point to be noted, though the Asiatic will face death by the hands of the executioner with far more stoicism than the European, in the press of the battle the white man's enthusiasm is infinitely better than the yellow man's contempt of death. But in the firing they more than held their own, they were more numerous, their ammunition was evidently plentiful, and, to tell the plain truth, in spite of our bayonet charges they fairly shot us off the field. To put the matter in a nutshell: we were defeated because our generals did not know the kind and the number of troops opposed to them. Let me add, our overweening confidence in our own prowess gave way to something very different as we saw ourselves slowly but surely forced back, and noted that the bayonet was not used to gain ground for a fresh advance but merely to drive back for a moment a too closely pressing enemy. At the same time it is but justice to admit that the defence was a good one. We retired, undoubtedly, but we showed no confusion beyond that certain amount that always shows on a battlefield, nay, even at a peaceful review. I must now go on to my own part in the unlucky fight. After the first repulse my battalion had been constantly engaged in covering the rear of the retreat. On our right flank some French line regiment was busy in the same way. All the other troops, as far as I could judge--but a corporal sees very little of a battle outside the part borne in it by his own company--had been withdrawn, and were hard at work getting ready a new line of defence, while we who were just in front of the enemy kept them back in order to gain time. At last we could scarcely hold them at bay, and the order was given that our battalion should retire by companies. Nos. 2 and 4 quickly left the firing line; No. 1 was the next to leave, and my company poured in as hot a fire as we could until the order was given to run at top speed to the rear. I, as luck had it, had just loaded. I fired deliberately at a white man I saw about three hundred yards away cheering on the enemy, and saw him fall. I then turned and ran as fast as I could after my comrades. These were now some distance in advance, but as I went along I saw a good path leading slightly away from the point where the company would naturally fall into ranks again for another volley or two at the enemy and to allow the men time to regain their breath. This path, though slightly diverging from my route, at any rate would bring me away from the enemy, and I could, when at a safe distance from the Chinese, cut across country to rejoin my squad. I was running through rice-fields, and I knew that I could vastly increase my speed on the path. My one object at the time was to get away; I had no desire to fall, wounded or unwounded, into my pursuers' hands. I therefore turned and fled along the path, which ran by the side of a small stream. As I ran, I noticed that the ground on the other side of the path gradually rose and at length formed a fairly high mound. This, however, I did not mind; every step took me further from the savages. I gradually slackened speed as my breath gave out, and instinctively flung away the cartridge, that I had fired at the white officer and put my hand into the pouch at my right side for a fresh one. Just as my thumb and forefinger closed on a cartridge, a sudden apparition met my gaze. I was rounding a corner, and there, not twenty yards away, was a Chinaman, evidently as astonished as I at the rencontre. I have never been so frightened in my life as at this totally unexpected meeting with an enemy in such a place. I had no power to take the cartridge from the pouch and fit it into the rifle. I was thunderstruck; I felt an awful horror of impending death. The Chinaman--he seemed a giant in my eyes--hastily tucked the butt of his gun into his right armpit and fired. I ducked instinctively, and at once knew that he had missed. The awkward way he fired and the sudden movement on my part had saved my life. In a second I had a cartridge in the rifle and the rifle at my shoulder; the Chinaman dropped his weapon and fled. Now the pathway was quite straight and level for a distance of about two hundred yards. There was no means of making a hasty escape to one side or the other; on the right ran the stream, on the left stood up a mound about eight or nine feet high. I saw, therefore, that I could let my man go a good distance without firing at him. This I desired, for my rifle kicked a little. When he was about a hundred and fifty yards away I aimed carefully at the back of his knee, pulled the trigger, and probably took him fairly in the small of the back. He flung up his arms, reeled, and fell face downwards in the water, and lay there quite still. I was satisfied. I felt a natural and yet an unreasonable anger with the man who had sought to take my life--natural, because every man hates those who attack him; unreasonable, because why should not he try to do to me as I should have tried to do to him were the positions changed? But soon my anger gave place to caution. I reloaded and clambered up the bank, determined to leave the path, as I could not know that other Chinese might not stop my way with better success than the first. After crossing through some low shrubs and brushwood the sound of volleys quickly repeated led me to the company. I fell into my proper place. Nobody said anything except the captain--a new man not with us a month--who sarcastically asked if I had seen a ghost. We gradually fell back towards the new line of defence. The regulars attacking wasted no time, and pushed us rather rapidly along. At last a staff officer came with a message to our captain, and we hurriedly poured a heavy fire into the advancing enemy, then we all turned and ran towards the point whither the captain led us. We got a good start and covered the ground quickly; at a little line of small trees and underwood lay safety. As we straggled into this we were ordered to face about and lie down. We saw the Chinese regulars coming along with hoarse cries of joy, not extended in skirmishing order, but in dense masses of men, who pressed and struggled to the front. A bugle call rang out, and suddenly a horrible rattle of musketry began. The enemy were fairly caught. Every rifle of ours was blazing away at about two hundred yards' range at the easy target they presented. In a moment, as it seemed to me, the attack withered away. Where a minute before were triumphant soldiers rushing in pursuit of a fleeing foe, one saw now nothing but prostrate bodies on the ground. Many, no doubt, flung themselves down as the first shots rang out, but the vast majority must have been swept into eternity by our fire. But this was not all. Our guns began, and even those who were a thousand yards away felt staggered in their advance. For ten minutes we heard nothing but the rattle of musketry, the booming of the guns, the noise of the shells as they hurtled through the air, and then the explosions a thousand yards away. The cries and shrieking of the wounded were unheard and unheeded. If the enemy had driven us from the field and could fairly claim a victory, we in the end taught them such a lesson surely as defeated never before taught their conquerors. That last firing more than equalised losses, and, better still, gave us the bitter-sweet of vengeance, and restored the old feeling of self-confidence that had been so rudely shaken on that day. This was really the close of the battle. In various parts firing still went on, but an attack in force by either side was manifestly impossible. The Chinese regulars had been too much cut up towards the close of the fighting; as for us, there was only one course to be taken--retreat towards our base in order to prevent being outflanked. The new line of defence had served its purpose. It was not strong enough, nor were we numerous enough, to withstand an attack in force on the morrow, especially as our opponents were strong enough to hold us in front while flanking columns got round even to our rear. After an hour's rest, which we badly wanted, the order was given to retire, and for seven hours we struggled on, angry, weary and hungry. At last we formed a little camp; some rice and brandy were served out--we had no soup or coffee--and so, in bad humour with ourselves, the enemy, and our rations, we lay down on the ground to forget in sleep discomfort and defeat. Luckily, the enemy did not press their advantage as they should. We were soon reinforced, and when we had recovered from the fatigue of the fight and the retreat, we again tried conclusions with them with better success. The story of the second battle of Lang-Son will be told in due course. I must now narrate an incident that occurred between the battles, while we were still retreating and somewhat pressed by the foe. First, it must be understood that my battalion formed part of the rear-guard. There were French soldiers of several corps and native levies as well, and I may say here that the Frenchmen showed as much steady courage in retiring before overwhelming masses of the enemy as they usually show of gallantry and _élan_ in a charge. I can never again believe that the Frenchman is good only when advancing; given capable officers, he is a perfect soldier at all points. This retreat proved the fact. We were half starved; there was the continual fear of being wounded and left to the merciless Black Flags; for all that, while the legionaries were furious and occasionally downcast, though doing their duty like brave men, the men of the line, the zouaves, the marine fusiliers, the chasseurs--and I believe the rear-guard had men of all these--were, after the first feeling of anger and disappointment, cheerful, making light of difficulties, almost gaily prophesying a speedy revenge. Now one evening my battalion halted after a weary, heart-breaking tramp during the day. We had had little food, and that unsuitable, for some time. In my squad was a man whose country I have good reasons for not mentioning; suffice it to say that he came from a land lying on the eastern frontier of France. I shall call him Jean, though that was not his name. All the day he was saying: "Quelle misère, quelle misère!" until we were sick of the words, and I told him, rather roughly I am sorry to say, to keep his troubles to himself. When we came into camp great precautions were adopted to prevent surprise, and I may detail these so that everything may be quite plain. Moreover, they will show how careful our officers were. Now, as I have often mentioned, a battalion has four companies. Normally a company has two hundred and fifty men, but at this time the strongest company of my battalion numbered only about a hundred and sixty. In the camp the battalion lay in square, so that each company had one side of the square to protect in case of attack, and had to furnish all the guards and outlying pickets on that side. My company lay on the side nearest the enemy, or, as I should rather say, nearest the quarter whence an attack would most probably come. When the company was halted and faced outwards, a corporal and his squad--say seventeen all told--were detached to furnish the inner sentries. Of these eight men were posted at intervals about fifty paces from the main body; the corporal and the eight reliefs lay half-way between them and the company. Thus every soldier was on sentry for two hours at a time, and then had two hours to rest as well as he could on the bare ground. This squad constituted the guard. Now two squads with their respective corporals, having an officer or sergeant in chief command, formed the outlying pickets of the company or, if you wish, of one side of the square encampment. Half of each squad acted as sentries about seventy-five yards from the inner line of watching men; between the two lines of sentries the reliefs of the outlying pickets rested. The sentries of the guard stood up, the sentries of the outlying pickets lay down; no glint of buckle or bayonet was allowed to show. It was next to impossible to surprise the camp, even if the darkness should prevent the outer line of sentinels from seeing the approach of an enemy, by placing their ears to the ground they could easily hear the tread of any considerable body of troops, and it would require a very considerable body of men to surprise effectively--that is, to annihilate--about six hundred good soldiers, who knew how useless it was to ask for quarter from such enemies. I hope I have made this matter clear: military men, I know, will understand, and I hope that others may be able to comprehend it too. My squad was for outlying picket that night, and as it contained only fifteen men I had to borrow one from the corporal of the next squad for duty. This happened to be the one in which Le Grand was, and I asked for him. My request was granted, and Le Grand was attached for twelve hours to my little party. The sub-lieutenant of the company was in charge of the picket, and having led us out to our places he ordered the other corporal and me to post the first sentries. I posted eight men, amongst them Jean, who was still suffering from melancholy, and returned to the spot where the reliefs were to lie. Nicholas, Le Grand, and I lay near one another on the ground and began a whispered conversation in English, a language that the Russian spoke with great purity and ease. In the course of this I mentioned to Le Grand the strange way in which Jean had been speaking all the day, and Nicholas volunteered to tell us the poor fellow's strange story. I can only give the merest outline of it. I wish I could tell it just as I heard it that night, but Nicholas was a born storyteller; indeed, he was clever in all things. I must try to give it in my own words. Jean had been a light cavalryman in the army of his own country, which bordered on France. He was, in his own words, a _mauvais sujet_, always getting into trouble. He could not resist the charms of female society, and many a dreary hour he passed in prison for staying away from his duties because he could not tear himself away from some newly-found angel. Things in the end came to such a pass that his life in barracks became unbearable, as his comrades had now turned against him. A cavalryman's horse must be attended to, and if the rider be absent his comrades have to do extra work. Now extra work is merely a cause of extra swearing when the proper man for the duty is ill or absent on leave, or even absent without permission once in a while, but when a man is continually staying out and then getting sent to cells the affair is altogether different. In no army will soldiers stand that. It is quite enough, men say, for each to groom and feed his own charger, but it is very unfair that a soldier, his own work done, should be ordered to do the work of another who is away enjoying himself or paying for his pleasure in the guard-room. So Jean had been rather roughly disciplined by his fellow-soldiers, and this punishment did him so much more good than any inflicted by the officers that for nearly two months he was a fairly steady soldier. Seeing this, the other fellows became again friendly with him, never, indeed, having borne malice, and only desiring that he should do his share of the work. Well, one night a big gamble was carried on in the barrack-room. Some recruits had come in for training, and two or three of these were fairly well off. The old soldiers thought that card-playing would tend to a more equal distribution of the money, and preparations were accordingly made for a wakeful night. A few bottles of brandy and wine were smuggled in, and when all the lights were out blankets were judiciously placed over the windows, the lower edge of the door, and even the keyhole, so that by no accident might the game be interrupted. Then some candles were lit, and after the men had been cordially invited to drink, some game or other was begun, and, as was natural, the more equable distribution of the money began. Now Jean was a very good card-player, and the little pile of silver and coppers at his corner of the table steadily increased, and when the little party broke up at reveille, his head was heavy with sleep and his pockets with money. He got through the duties of the day as well as he could, and when evening came dressed to go out, just merely, as he said to Nicholas afterwards, for a walk and a glass of wine. Of course, he took all his money with him: that was an obvious precaution. Soon after passing through the gate he met a lady whose acquaintance he had made some time before. She was pretty and clever, knew how to dress, and was by no means averse to the society of a handsome light cavalryman whose pockets were well lined and whose reputation for generosity in his dealings with the fair sex was so well established as our friend's. The pair had ever so much to say to each other, and Jean admitted that he had a little money, sent to him by a rich aunt, he said, who would some day die and leave him a nice little property--oh, merely a few thousand shillings a year. (I use the word shillings as it gives no clue to Jean's country.) "How good she was!" said the pretty girl. "And I," she went on; "oh, you would never guess what I am doing now." Jean guessed, and guessed, and guessed again. It was all no use; he had to pay for a pair of gloves before his curiosity would be gratified. Then she told him that a certain rich bachelor, a Government official, had gone for a cure to some watering-place and had left her in sole charge of his domicile until his return. "Oh," said Jean, "I guessed the rich man, and yet I had to pay for the gloves." "True, my friend, very true indeed," she answered; "but you did not guess the visit to the baths, and is not that, my handsome fellow, the most important thing?" There was no denying this. Surely it must rejoice youth and health to find age and pain so careful, so thoughtful, for self and others! Jean was generous; he could well afford to be, as he had won a large sum, for a soldier; the girl, to give her her due, was not too exacting. An idyllic life was lived by both in the beautifully furnished house of Dives Senex for almost a week. Jean went out only at dark, and then merely for a walk around the unfrequented parts of the town for an hour. As he wore the old man's clothes, which fitted fairly well, there was little danger of his being recognised. At last the dreaded morning came when Jean should leave the house. He knew that sharp punishment awaited him at the barracks, but he had made up his mind to make a bold bid for liberty. This time he feared the anger of his comrades more than a court-martial, for he had been guilty of the unpardonable sin of winning money and spending it without the aid of the other troopers, while all the work of barrack-room and stable was left to them. He knew very well that the consequences would be ugly, and he determined to desert from his corps, more from fear of the squad court-martial than of the regular one presided over by an officer. Of course, his desertion was nothing--that is common in all armies--but Jean's plan of deserting was unique. I at least have never heard of a similar case. Now the town in which Jean's regiment lay was not very far from the French frontier. At this place there was a debatable ground about a hundred yards wide, and on each side a line of sentries, French on the west, Jean's countrymen on the east. Jean had quite made up his mind to cross to French territory; he believed that, if he could only get there and get a few kilometres away from the frontier, the French authorities would not trouble themselves to capture him and send him back. Moreover, desertion, as I have already had occasion to mention, is not an extraditable offence. The difficulties were to get to the frontier, to cross it safely, and to travel some distance into France. Well, Jean knew that at a certain hour that day his regiment would be out of barracks for cavalry drill. He also knew a way of getting into his quarters without passing any men of his own regiment on duty. An infantry guard lay at a certain gate. They would in all probability let him pass; he could then cross the infantry parade ground, go under an archway or through a gate--I am not quite certain about this--and enter the cavalry barracks. Once there he would act as circumstances required. To make as certain as possible of passing the guard, he bought a blue envelope, put a sheet of paper inside, fastened the edges, and wrote the address of some high officer upon it, and then placed the seemingly official document between his belt and tunic. Anybody would thus mistake him for an orderly carrying a despatch, and so no one would think of interfering. Thus prepared he easily passed the infantry guard, nodding genially to some of the men, and made his way across the parade ground to the entrance to the cavalry quarters. Here he was in luck; no one was about except a couple of recruits doing sentry duty--one at the stables, the other about fifty yards away. Jean was not recognised by either, and, going to his room, put on his sword, and dressed himself as if for general parade. He then went down to the stables, saddled his charger, which was the only animal in the place, mounted, and rode back the way he came. Again he passed without suspicion the infantry guard at the gate, and soon found himself smartly trotting towards the frontier. He was in high spirits. Everything had gone so well, surely luck would not desert him now. As he neared the frontier he trotted towards a guard-house on the side of the road. The sentry near the door looked carelessly at him as he came up, the sergeant did not condescend to come forward to meet him: he was evidently only a light cavalryman sent with some ridiculous message or other from the town. When only a few yards from the guard-house, instead of pulling up and delivering the blue envelope which he now held in his hand, he flung it on the ground, and driving the spurs into his horse's sides he passed the astonished sentry and galloped into the debatable land. A gap in the hedge allowed him into the fields that bordered the road. He heard as he went through the report of a rifle behind, but the sudden turn saved him. He now went towards the French line at a spot about equidistant from two French sentries, and as he did so he lowered his head to his horse's neck. The French sentries also fired and missed. You can scarcely blame them; their surprise must have been so great when they saw a presumably mad light horseman invading single-handed the sacred soil of France. In less time than it takes to tell Jean was through the second line of guards and careering wildly across country, taking hedges, streams and ditches like the winning jockey of the Grand National. A few scattered bullets whizzed about his ears, but rider and horse were untouched. He was now safe from the fire of his fellow-countrymen, and the French sentinels probably did not want to hit him; his escapade, serious though it might be for the others, was only a good joke to them. Moreover, a private soldier must be very bad-minded indeed when he tries to shoot another private, though of a different army, who has evidently got into trouble and is seeking to escape. Certain things excite compassionate feelings amongst men of all armies--amongst the simple soldiers, I mean. As for the sergeants and corporals, the thoughts of the chevrons they have and those they hope for make them dead to all feelings of pity for a man in trouble. After some time Jean began to feel somewhat at ease. He pulled up under cover of a small wood and began to consider his next move. If he could only get rid of the uniform he fancied he should be comparatively safe. This had to be done quickly, as he was not more than three miles from the frontier, and the French cavalry would soon be on his track. While he was thinking he glanced around to see if he were observed, and saw an old man, evidently of the farming class, looking at him with surprise. Jean determined to appeal for aid, and going towards the peasant frankly told his story. The peasant smiled at first and then laughed heartily. "My good friend," said he, "take off the saddle and bridle and put them here," at the same time pointing to a place where the underwood was very thick. Jean did so, and the old man carefully concealed them. "Now lead your horse by the mane to that field where you see the cows grazing, and return." Jean obeyed. "Now come to my house"--he pointed it out--"in ten minutes: no one will be within. You will find clothes on a chair, but be sure to take away again your uniform, belts and sword--they would be of no use to me; hide them where they will not be likely to be found." Jean did as he was told. He found some old clothes on the chair just inside the door; on a table were some bread and milk. He drank the latter and pocketed the former when he had put on the disguise, and then flung all his military clothing and equipments into a stagnant pool. On that day he did not travel far, but found a secure hiding-place until the darkness should allow him to go his way in safety. During the night he tramped about twenty-five kilometres, keeping his eyes and ears on guard, but only once was he in danger. He heard the footfalls of horses at a distance and left the road. Two mounted gendarmes passed, and after a short interval Jean resumed his journey. At daybreak again he sought and found a hiding-place, and there slept for some hours. When he awoke he felt hungry and thirsty, and resolved to try to buy something at a farmhouse that was visible about five hundred yards away. As Jean spoke good French he anticipated no difficulty on the score of language, and, having some silver in his pockets, there surely ought to be no difficulty in the way of obtaining supplies. When he went to the farmhouse he was met by an old woman, who at once pitied the tired wayfarer with the handsome face and the ragged clothes; she gave him bread and meat and a glass of wine, refusing all payment. She was so good and looked so trustworthy that Jean told her his story, omitting, however, all mention of women, and explaining that his desertion was due altogether to the tyranny of the officers. The good old woman pitied him the more for his sad tale; she even gave him a suit of fairly good clothing belonging to her son, at the time serving with his regiment. How the women of Europe love and honour the soldier and pity his misfortunes! There the army has hostages from all homes. She even pressed money on him, but this he refused to take. He had money enough in his pocket to carry him a good way towards Paris, and, even if he had to tramp a bit of the way, with his new clothing he felt independent and free from care. In the end Jean entered Paris, and immediately volunteered for the Foreign Legion. At once he was accepted, and after a short time in Algeria was sent to Tonquin. There he was taken into my battalion, and handed over to me to help to make up the number of the squad. And now he was amongst us, calling out every moment the unlucky words: "Quelle misère, quelle misère!" Nicholas took up a longer time in telling this story than I, but you must remember that the Russian was very clever and had the story at first-hand. I have only given the general outline; most of the details have been forgotten by me after so many years. Well, at last the sub-lieutenant in charge of both squads of the outlying picket ordered the reliefs to be posted. I took Nicholas the Russian, Le Grand the Irishman, and six others of various nationalities to relieve the half-squad that had done sentry duty for the previous two hours. I remember I put Le Grand in place of poor Jean. When we--that is, I, the corporal, and the eight men relieved--came back to the lying-down place I dismissed quietly the men, of course only from duty, not from the place, and lay down on my back, shut my eyes, and began to muse. Almost before I felt it I was in a half-doze, when suddenly the report of a rifle caused me to jump up. As I opened my eyes I saw, so quickly did the alarm arouse me, the falling body of a man. I hurriedly called out the names of the reliefs--the men relieved were now the reliefs--all answered except Jean. "I think, my corporal," said an Alsatian, "that he has shot himself." The whole camp was roused; the sub-lieutenant ran down and called me to account for the alarm. I went over to the prone figure, passed my hand across the face, and found it at once warm and wet. Poor Jean, as we saw when dawn came, had blown away the top of his head. There was no enemy, it was true, but I fancy the legionaries did not sleep any more that night; a dead comrade in the camp is worse, a thousand times worse, than a living foe outside. Now I won't moralise over this. Jean, as I have called him, was a good comrade, especially when he had money; he was fickle, but so were all, amongst the women; he chose to shoot himself, that was his business and not mine. And that is all that I, his corporal, have to say. CHAPTER XIV A little time after the suicide of Jean we found ourselves in a position to attempt the recapture of Lang-Son. We went forward cautiously, doing at most ten kilometres a day. Then even at the end of a day's march we were in fit condition for a battle, in case the enemy elected to attack us in the evening or during the night. As we again went forward our spirits rose. We were extremely glad to have done with the constant retirement in front of the enemy; of all things in the world the most disheartening is a withdrawal after a defeat. A victory means hard work, and a pursuit harder, but a retreat is the hardest of all. I am not speaking of the glory of victory or the disgrace of defeat. Like most soldiers I think only of my private troubles and the troubles of my comrades, and I can assure the reader that, when a battalion is falling back on the base, supplies are bad and insufficient, anxiety on the part of all is heart-breaking, an attack in force is always to be expected, and no one can safely say that those who have beaten his side once may not do so again and more decisively. Even in a pursuit, when the rations are short, one feels that the enemy is suffering more than himself, and the thought that the battalion is pressing on their rear, giving them no peace or ease or quietness, adds a zest to the bad and scanty food which makes it palatable and satisfying. Let no one run away with the idea that we simple soldiers did not feel the sting of defeat--indeed, we felt it, and sorely too--but while one can forgive himself for a disaster, he finds it very hard to forgive the enemy for following it up. It is bad enough to be driven off a stricken field; it is infinitely worse to be harassed afterwards. War is like gambling: if you win first, even though you lose afterwards, you like to keep on playing the game; but if you lose in the beginning, you will at once imagine that the game is not worth the candle. The young soldier who in his first battle tastes the bitterness of defeat and endures the hardships of the hurried march, the wakeful rest under arms, the wretched food, the dirt and worse than dirt, the continual strain upon the nerves, and all things else which are the portion of the conquered, will see war divested of all its seeming glory; his voice at least will never be for war. The Black Flags and their allies, the Chinese regulars, gave us very little trouble on our march towards Lang-Son. What little fighting did take place on the way cannot be described by me, as my battalion had nothing to do with it. Annamite tirailleurs with some French soldiers and legionaries formed the first line of the advance. They easily overcame all the opposition offered to them; it was only when the grand assault in force had to be made that we others came into the fighting line. While advancing rations again were both good and sufficient; occasionally too we got an allowance of wine or brandy, and these extra rations pleased us very much, for it is wonderfully easy to make soldiers happy. Our guards and pickets were just as well set and kept as ever--our officers were taking no risks--and God help the man of ours who slept at his post. We acquiesed cheerfully in this; and in any case we were so accustomed to exact discipline and perfect precautions against surprise that constant guard and picket-mounting seemed as natural as getting one's morning coffee or evening soup. Since we did not march much any day there was always a fairly long time in camp, and when we entered camp in the evening, the men who had been up the night before lay down and rested while the others, who had had, thanks to their comrades' watchfulness, a good night's rest, lit the fires and cooked the evening meal and performed all the other duties that soldiers have to do in the field. This had a good effect upon all; it was just as if one man said to another: "You watched last night while I slept in safety, I will now work while you rest in comfort and wait for your soup." The officers, I am sure, noted this and were glad: anything that makes soldiers better comrades tends also to make them better fighting men. At last the day came when we were within striking distance of the enemy. All ranks were satisfied. We knew that very soon the disgrace of the last action would be wiped away, and we in the ranks were just as eager to clean the slate as our officers. I do not think that many were thinking of gaining promotion or distinction in the fight. The important thing was to show to all the world, or at least to that part of it which was interested in the campaign, that our reverse was but an accident of war and its effects only temporary. Again, we all desired satisfaction for the torments and annoyances of the retreat; these were too recent to be easily forgotten. The battle was begun, as usual, by the artillery. They, however, were not long the only men engaged, for very soon after the cannonade had begun the long lines of infantry were extended to right and left. My company was in the right attack, and we went gaily forward in skirmishing order until a man or two fell. Then we opened fire at a pretty long range at the place where the cloud of smoke told us that our friends the enemy lay. This firing did not delay the advance. On the contrary, it hastened it, for now we fired and ran forward, fired again and made another dash towards the front. Indeed, our officers and sergeants had a good deal of work to keep us from going along too quickly, and in the end we corporals were commanded to cease firing and to devote our attention exclusively to keeping our squads well in hand, so that the line might advance evenly and the men be brought up in sound wind and condition to the point where the bayonets would be fixed for the final charge. Of course, I know you will say that the corporals should have been doing this from the very outset, but it is very hard for a man to carry a rifle and cartridges without making some use of them. Why, I have seen officers, and those of high rank too, take the rifle of a dead man and half-a-dozen cartridges from his pouch in order to have the satisfaction of firing a few shots at the enemy. It is human nature, or rather the nature of soldiers in a fight; one likes to feel that he is doing something on his own account to help his comrades and to hurt the foe. Well, the officers and the sub-officers worked well together, and the men, to give them their due, obeyed orders willingly, especially when the excitement of the first firing had passed away and they had settled down to the steady work of the advance. When we came within about four hundred yards of the entrenchments the rushes succeeded one another more rapidly, and men went a greater distance between shots. Thus we gradually approached, until finally we were all ordered to lie down and fix bayonets. As we did so the supports joined the fighting line--they were somewhat blown with the last race forward--and so we lay about eighty yards or less from the enemy's position, firing as quickly as possible. The Chinese regulars and the Black Flags were not remiss either in their volleys. A hail of bullets crossed the zone between us, but their fire slowly slackened, especially as a very storm of shells was falling towards their rear. Their supports, we saw, could not easily come up. At length the guns in our rear ceased shelling the position; at the same time the fire had greatly diminished in front. The commandant saw that the time had come, and at the sound of the charge we sprang up, ran at the regulation _pas gymnastique_ towards the trenches, and, when about twenty yards away, rushed at the top of our speed, with the usual charging cry of "Kill, kill," at the fortifications, which had been already so badly damaged by the guns. In a few seconds we were in and using the bayonet with deadly earnestness and a grim determination to wash away in blood the memory of our recent defeat. The Black Flags flung down their weapons and ran out at the back of the entrenchments, but the Chinese regulars fought very well indeed. Well as the Chinese fought they could not long stand up against us. I have already mentioned that they are very light; indeed, I doubt if the average weight is much more than seven stone and a half. Then they can stand bayoneting without shrinking, but they are by no means quick in using the bayonet themselves; again, if a Chinaman gets you on the ground he will drive his weapon home six or seven times more than are needed, and will never notice your comrade coming along, quietly, with lowered head and levelled bayonet to attack. It seems to me that the Chinese go into a fight with something ugly to foreigners to meet, but altogether unlike what we Europeans call courage; they just go in, they kill, they are killed, and that is all there is about it. Yet they are not cowards; if they are, why did they not run like the Black Flags? And they will charge wounded men with spirit, if I may use the word in that connection; and with just as much steady calmness they will await the onset of the foreign devils when they rush the mound, get into the ditch and slay, and, not yet slaked with blood, rush out at the rear of the entrenchments with bloody bayonets, and loot and murder and rapine in their minds. We got in, and in a few moments not a man was left standing up in the trenches. We looked around. What was the next thing to do? "No. 1 Company, remain here," shouted the commandant as he tried to staunch the blood that ran down the left side of his face from an ugly sabre slash on the temple; "the other companies advance." We three companies got out at the rear of the field fortifications and awaited orders again. "Go up that hill, captain"--this to my captain from the commandant--"and help the soldiers of the line to carry it." "Yes, my commandant," said the captain. We turned towards the right and looked at the little hill. It was about three hundred yards only from level ground to crest; the top was fortified, but only slightly; the soldiers of the line were half-way up on their side, but they were meeting with a very gallant resistance. The rifles above showed no signs of slackening; a heavy, dense smoke covered the crest of the hill; midway down you saw the spirts of flame and little smoke clouds where the French were going up. That smoke quickly disappeared, for the men never fired twice in the same spot. We ran at first up the hill, and were not noticed; very soon we went more easily, as the hill grew steeper and the rifles above began to pay us attention. Then we fired upwards in return, but our bayonets were fixed, and we knew very well that in these alone lay any chance of success. How could we hit men above us whom we could not see? It was impossible, but we could, and did, send bullets so near their heads that aiming down was almost as fruitless for them as aiming up was for the soldiers of the line and ourselves. As we went along an officer ran up almost to the top, waving his sword, and crying out to the men to follow. We went a little more quickly. Just as he reached a point about ten paces from the outer face of the entrenchments he fell, shot through the heart. A great cry arose from us; we sprang up, disregarding all cover, and madly raced for the summit of the little hill. Volley after volley was fired at us, but with little damage. Take my word for it, when the Asiatic sees the European charging with bayonet on rifle-barrel his aim is not quite so good as usual, and in any case his best is not much. So we rushed, and when we came to the little fortification we had small difficulty in getting in; by that time the French soldiers of the line had crowned the height on their side and were over the entrenchments. We were almost shoved back by the fugitives running from the Frenchmen, but we steadied ourselves and gave them the bayonet, until at last they were all down, and the soldiers of the line and the legionaries alone stood facing one another on the little hill with ugly curses and bloody steel. Not that they cursed us or we them; only when you are using the bayonet, and for a while afterwards, your language is a real reflex of your thoughts. It was the Frenchmen who really carried the hill; we had only come in towards the end to their assistance. So we left them on the ground that they had so gallantly won, and, going down the side nearest the remnants of our opponents, we looked for more work, more excitement, more glory, and more revenge. And we found them all very soon. We had scarcely reached the bottom of the hill when a crowd of Chinese regulars, with some Black Flags who had not run away, charged us with loud cries and imprecations. We met them fairly and squarely, and pushed them at the point of the bayonet a few yards back. They were reinforced, and by sheer weight of numbers made us for a time give way. Our officers fought like devils; truth to tell, though we did not like them, we could not help admiring their courage in a fight. The captain was down, so was the sub-lieutenant, the lieutenant had been wounded at the beginning of the battle; the one sergeant who was left took up the command and led us back from a short retreat in an ugly rush against the enemy. I saw a Black Flag carrying a standard in his left hand, while he cut all around at our fellows with the sword in his right. I determined to have that flag, or at least to make a bold try for it, and went with levelled bayonet at the barbarian. He cut down a man of ours as I came, and had not time to parry my thrust with his sword, and failed to do so with the staff of the banner. He took the point fairly in the left side, and I had only just time to get my weapon back when he delivered a furious slash at my head. Receiving this on the middle of the rifle-barrel I thrust a second time, and sent him fairly to the ground. Reversing my rifle--that is, holding it at the left side instead of the right--I stabbed straight down, and pinned his right hand to the ground. Pressing then on the rifle with my left hand, so that he could not free his sword arm, I plucked away the banner with my right. Nicholas at the time shouted out: "Look out, corporal, look out." And, looking up, I saw half-a-dozen Black Flags coming straight at me. I flung the banner on the ground, pulled my bayonet out of the savage's hand, and, just in time, got into a posture of defence. The first man I stopped with a lunge in the face just between the eyes, but the others would have killed me were it not that now the squad came to my assistance. Nicholas and the others soon finished the half-dozen who had attacked me, but others came up too, and very soon about a dozen of us were desperately resisting a desperate attack. They outnumbered us by about four to one, but we were heavier, steadier, and, above all, quicker with the bayonet. All the same, man after man of ours went down till half our number lay dead or dying on the ground. Luckily, Le Grand noticed our difficulty and, calling together six or eight men of his own squad, came to our assistance. Le Grand and his comrades took the Black Flags in the flank; the new assailants overwhelmed them; they gave way sullenly at first, but in the end broke and fled, leaving more than half their number on the field. I was happy in retaining the banner, but I almost at once learned how dear that banner was to me. A cry from Le Grand made me turn round, and I saw Nicholas lying on the ground and a wounded Black Flag cutting at him with a sabre, while the poor Russian did his best to ward off the blows with his hands. As I looked, a Spaniard of Le Grand's squad drove his bayonet up to the rifle-muzzle three times in quick succession into the body of the wounded savage who was trying to kill our good comrade. I ran to Nicholas and, laying down rifle and captured flag, asked him how he felt, was he badly wounded, and without waiting for an answer began to bind his wounded arms and hands. He shook his head sadly. "It is no use, my comrade; I have got worse than that." Indeed he had, for his left side was torn open. Nicholas nodded his head towards a dead Black Flag, and we saw at once the weapon that had inflicted so horrible a wound. It was shaped somewhat like a bill-hook, but could be used for thrusting as well as cutting, about four inches of the end being shaped like a broad-bladed knife, the remainder of the steel rather resembling a narrow-bladed hatchet. The poor Russian, in spite of the severe wound, had managed to kill his enemy. I am glad he did so, for, had the barbarian been only wounded, I should have been sorely tempted to finish the work, and though one may kill a helpless man without pity when "seeing red" or to avenge a friend, yet afterwards the thought of such slaughter is unpleasant. After some time we stopped the bleeding, and were glad to be able to give him a good long drink, and then to refill his own water bottle with the few drops still remaining in the bottoms of ours. We left him only when we had to rejoin the company. The sergeant who now commanded it asked me gruffly where I had been. I showed him the captured banner, and in a few words told of the desperate fight made by the Black Flags to regain it. He seemed satisfied, and asked how many men I had lost. "Nine," I replied. He counted us, and said: "Nine lost and nine left; that is rather serious; a banner is not worth so many men." But you may be sure that it would have been worth a whole section in the sergeant's eyes, had he taken it. There was little more fighting to be done that day. All along the line the French had been successful, and already linesmen, chasseurs, zouaves, legionaries, and tirailleurs were bivouacking in Lang-Son. My battalion searched out its wounded and brought them to an appointed spot; you may be sure that poor Nicholas was carried as gently as possible to the place. I went back for him before I thought of looking for anyone else, even an officer. He was lying quietly where we had left him, and I found that already he had drunk all the water in the bottle. Luckily, as I was going back, I passed the dead body of a white officer of our opponents; he was dressed in a yellow tunic and trousers, with tan boots; his white helmet lay a foot or so from his head; a heavy, fair moustache curled outwards on both cheeks; his jaw had fallen, and his wide-open blue eyes were staring upwards at the sky; at least a dozen gashes showed red upon the body, and a bloody sword in one hand, an empty revolver in the other, were evidence that his death had been amply paid for. A white man fights well when he knows that there is no quarter for him. Luckily, as I have said, I came across this body, for slung round the right shoulder and resting at the left hip was a leather bottle. I took this, and was glad to find that it was more than half full of brandy and water. "A share, corporal," said a comrade. "No," I answered; "all for Nicholas." "Pardon me, corporal; I forgot." Nicholas thanked me with a glance and a nod. With some rifles and a couple of greatcoats we made a fairly good litter, and bore him to the quarter where the surgeons were working in their shirt sleeves. There we left him with the attendants and went out to bring in others. When I was leaving the hospital, if I may call it so, for the last time, as every wounded man had been brought in, Nicholas beckoned to me. I went over, and he whispered: "I am dying. I make you the heir to all I possess. Very little--but still all; here it is." He pressed a small bag into my hand. I said: "Not at all, good comrade; you will want it when you recover, or at least to get better attendance and a few delicacies in hospital." "No, my friend; I am leaving _la gamelle_. Take it and I shall be pleased. Try to see me in the morning; to-morrow evening it will be too late." He forced the little bag again into my hand. I had to take it, but I resolved to see him in the morning and to return it if he were still alive, though I could not help feeling an ugly presentiment that my poor friend was really dying and that the best friend I had in the little world of the Foreign Legion was about to leave me for ever. After soup had been served out to all the men the sergeant, who still commanded the company, told me that I was wanted at the hospital. I, thinking only of Nicholas, said that I should go thither at once. "Do you know, corporal," said he, "where it is?" "Certainly, yes," I answered. "Did I not help to bring many wounded there to-day?" "Of whom are you thinking?" he asked. "Nicholas, the prince, you understand. Do you not remember Three Fountains?" "Very well--too well, indeed," the sergeant replied; "but it is not the Russian who desires to see you, it is the captain." Calling to a hospital attendant passing at the time he inquired if the man were going to the officers' hospital. He was not going there, but would pass it on his way to his own destination. "Go with him," said the sergeant to me; "he will show you the place. Ask for our captain." I went away with the hospital orderly, and was shown the officers' hospital quarters by him. On giving name, company, and battalion--they saw my rank upon my sleeve--I was told to wait until the surgeon-in-charge could be told that I wished to see a patient. Very soon the surgeon came. He asked me quite abruptly whom I desired to see. I told him with military directness, but respectfully, and he said that I might be brought to where the captain lay. I went there with an orderly. The captain had a wound on the right arm not of much account; it certainly did not keep him in hospital, but, as he had been knocked down and stunned by a blow of a musket-butt on the left temple, the surgeons would, and did, detain him for awhile. Several times while I was with him he put his hands to his head and swore a little. But, of course, that was none of my business. He asked me about the banner I had taken--"not, you must remember," said he, "that that was very useful or very creditable." I told the story, and especially laid stress on the facts that poor Nicholas had warned me of the first attack and that he was now dying in the simple soldiers' hospital. "You are sorry?" he queried. "Very; he was my good comrade." "Had he much money?" "He gave me all." And I showed the little bag. "How much?" I counted, and replied: "One thousand four hundred and fifty francs, twenty or thirty piastres." "You are rich." "My captain, he will share with me if he lives, and if he dies I am the poorer by a friend." "Pouf! a sergeant does not want friends amongst the simple soldiers." "No, my captain, nor enemies; but I am not a sergeant." "You are; the commandant will announce it to-morrow. He was with me an hour ago." "Thanks, my captain; I did not see a ghost this time." "Ah, you remember! What made you look so pale that day?" I told him, and his only remark was: "It might have frightened a man, and you are only a boy. How old are you?" "Oh, in truth," I said, "not yet seventeen." "But you are over eighteen in the records." "That, my captain, is my official age." "Very well, very well; it has nothing to do with me." After awhile the captain said: "Who was Nicholas? What was he?" I answered truly that I did not know--that nobody knew--that he had often plenty of money, and was a good comrade. "We could not fail to see, my captain," I went on, "that he had been in a high position once; there is, indeed, a story that he commanded a company of Russian guards at Plevna, but no one knows with certainty. He did not tell, and we did not like to inquire." Then I asked the captain for permission to leave the company for half-an-hour in the morning. "Why do you ask that?" "I want to see Nicholas; he will be disappointed if I do not go to see him." "Perhaps he will be dead." "I think not so." "Perhaps he will ask for his money." "I mean to offer it to him." The captain smiled, and said: "You are a strange legionary; you do not care for money." "On the contrary, my captain, I do like money and what it buys; but Nicholas is my friend." "You may go; stay away an hour if you like. Tell the sergeant that I, the captain, have given you permission." "A thousand thanks, my captain." After some further questions and answers the captain ordered me to go. I saluted, and was just turning to leave when he called me back. Pointing to a cigar-box on a rickety table, he told me to give it to him. I did so. He opened it and took out two cigars. "Give that to monsieur the prince, with his captain's compliments, and keep this for yourself. Tell him, sergeant"--he laid stress upon the word--"that I am sorry for his misfortune and proud to have had such a man in my company. Say to him exactly what I have said to you." "Yes, my captain," I answered, saluted again, thanked him for the cigars, and went away. Let me say here, though it does somewhat anticipate events, that the captain was my good friend afterwards, and more than once broke my fall when I got into trouble. The death of Nicholas deprived me of a good comrade. By it I gained a friend in a higher position, but I would any day have surrendered the captain's good will if by so doing I could regain the companion of the barrack-room and the canteen. When I got back to the company, I reported my return at once to the sergeant. He asked me what the captain wanted me for, and I told him that the officer had questioned me about the affair of the banner and about Nicholas. I said nothing of the money or the cigars. "Did he tell you anything?" "Yes; he said that I was to be sergeant to-morrow." "Indeed," said the sergeant. "I suppose, sergeant, I may thank you for a favourable report about to-day's fight." "I only told the truth," said the sergeant, "and I always liked you when I was corporal of the squad." Then I told him about the captain's permission to me to absent myself for an hour in the morning so that I might pay a visit to Nicholas. "You must tell that," he replied, "to the sub-lieutenant in charge; an officer has been sent to us from another company." "Very well," said I. "Where is he?" He brought me to the sub-lieutenant's quarters. I told the officer of my permission; he was satisfied. Before I went he asked about the captain's wounds and a few questions of curiosity about Nicholas. I told him all I knew about the captain and almost nothing about my comrade. As I was leaving, the sergeant drew my attention to the fact that I had omitted speaking about my promotion. "You captured a flag, you say?" "Yes, sir; and there was a hard fight to retain it." "And the commandant will promote you sergeant to-morrow?" "Monsieur le capitaine said so, sir." "Very good, very good; somebody must be sergeant, I suppose, and why not you as well as another? You may withdraw." As we went away I asked the sergeant if there were any place where I could get a drink of wine or brandy. "Certainly, yes--if you have money, my comrade." "Come then," I said, "let us go there together." He brought me to a small hut, where I had to pay a stiff price for his brandy and my wine, and when he saw that I had plenty of money he unbent and congratulated me more than once on my promotion. He ended by borrowing twenty francs, which I willingly lent; of course, he forgot to repay me. The next morning on parade the commandant praised me a little and ordered me to take over the duties of No. 1 section. The sergeant who had borrowed the twenty francs from me the day before was appointed sergeant-major, and the corporal of a squad of No. 2 was made sergeant of that section. When we were dismissed, I reminded the new sergeant-major of my permission to visit Nicholas. He remembered the money I had shown the evening before and promptly brought me up before the sub-lieutenant in temporary command of the company, in order that I might report my intention of taking advantage of the leave given me by the captain. The sub-lieutenant offered no opposition. As I was going away the sergeant-major, no doubt remembering that I was comparatively rich--that is, rich for a sergeant of legionaries--told me that he would take care that my section was all right during my absence. "Many thanks," I said; "perhaps monsieur le sergent-majeur would wet the promotion in the evening." "But yes, but yes, with pleasure. Do not hurry, you will be back in good time; sometimes the sergeant-major is a better friend than a simple sub-lieutenant." He was right, and we both knew it. I went across as quickly as I could to where the field hospital for the wounded of the right attack lay. I had little difficulty in finding Nicholas; he visibly brightened at seeing me, and, when I tried to shake hands, he put his finger on my sleeve, where the single gold chevron was that a sergeant of a section wears. "It pleases me," he whispered; "but don't be too ambitious, other men have lost all through ambition." I said nothing. I was glad that he was pleased, but I cannot tell how sorry to see him weak, worn out, and, as one may say, with the dews of death already gathering on his forehead. He could not speak, even in a low tone, he could only whisper; I had to bend down to catch his words. He asked about a few men of the squad, and I told him who were dead, who dying, who still in the ranks. He was anxious too about Le Grand, and was very glad to hear that the latter had gone through the fight without even a scratch, though he had had one narrow escape. "Le Grand," I said to Nicholas, "had to take a dead man's helmet." "Why, why?" he eagerly whispered. "Because his own was cut in two by a sabre-stroke. Had the cut been downwards, Le Grand would be alongside you to-day." "I am glad he escaped so well; I like him." After a little more conversation I was told that my visit must end. "Who is chiefly with you, Nicholas?" I asked. He nodded towards an attendant. I went to this man and gave him a hundred francs. "Be good to my comrade," I said. "Yes; yes," he replied, astonished at such a gift from a mere sergeant of legionaries; "I will do all I can, but that, alas! is little." "I know," I answered, "there is no hope; but smooth the way for him as well as you can to Eternity." He promised with many oaths that he would do so. I don't know whether or not he kept his word, but I really do think that the unexpected money, and still more the unexpected amount of it, made him a good friend to the last to my poor comrade. So Nicholas the Russian passes out of my story. I never saw him afterwards, for that evening my company left Lang-Son for an outside station about ten miles from the place. Some time afterwards a legionary of No. 2 Company told me that he had been in hospital with Nicholas, and that the Russian had died about four o'clock in the afternoon of the day I visited him, and was buried in the evening of the same day. He is out of the turmoil of the world now, and I wonder, had he in early youth understood life as he learned it in the Foreign Legion, would he have "played the game" in the same way? One never knows. Perhaps he would have lived and died that wretched nonentity, the respectable member of society--the Pharisee who has neither courage to do evil nor heart to do good--but who lives his life out in constant endeavour to equate God and the devil, to balance, for his own benefit of course, his duty to his fellow-man and his so-called duty to himself; perhaps he unknowingly thought at the end as the Dying Stockrider spoke: "I've had my share of trouble, and I've done my share of toil, And life is short, the longest life a span, I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil Or the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. For gifts misspent, and chances lost, and resolutions vain 'Tis somewhat late to trouble: this I know-- I would live the same life over if I had to live again, And the chances are, I go where most men go." Anyway, whatever he was to others, he was good friend and good comrade to me, and if no one else regrets, I regret. _Amice mi, vale, vale, vale!_ CHAPTER XV One evening the sergeants and corporals were ordered to forewarn the men that the battalion would leave the neighbourhood of Lang-Son early the following morning. Where we were going we did not know; indeed, I believe that even the commandant himself was unaware of our destination when he ordered the battalion to hold itself in readiness for a march. When the morning parade had been inspected--we, of course, paraded in full marching order--the commandant ordered us to stand at ease. While thus waiting in the ranks, an officer of the staff came and gave a written paper to the commandant. Shortly afterwards the staff-officer went away, and we were marched off in column of fours for some place or other, where, we--sub-officers and men--knew not, nor did we care. Restlessness is the chief characteristic of the soldier; he stagnates in garrison, or, if he doesn't, he avoids _ennui_ by illegitimate amusements--excitements, I should say, that sooner or later get him into trouble. I am ashamed to confess that I was as happy as the others as we tramped along. Of course, I was sorry for Nicholas, and as I spent the money he had left me with the other sergeant and the sergeant-major of the company, I felt that all the fun and gaiety that money can produce cannot make up for the loss of a good comrade. I took care to do as Nicholas would wish me towards my late associates, the corporals, and my former associates, the simple soldiers--they were not forgotten when the money was spent. Of course, I did not go outside my section, and I took good care that my former squad, the squad I had soldiered in ever since I was sent from the depot to a battalion, first as soldier of the second class in the little trouble with the Arabs in Algeria, in the big trouble at Three Fountains, in the troopship, at Noui-Bop; then as soldier of the first class till the end of the vengeance at a place I have not named--you may be sure it gets scant mention in the official records; then as corporal in the defeat at Lang-Son and the retreat afterwards, and at the second battle, when we recaptured the town:--oh no, I did not forget the men who were what Xenophon would call my table-companions; for their part, they thanked me but little, but we all understood. There is no use in detailing our life for the next few weeks. We were always marching, now to the north, anon to the west, then a sudden turn to east, perhaps, or south or back towards the north again. It was all one; we looked for the enemy; we did not find him. At last a momentous order came for us. We were much reduced in strength, and the general commanding-in-chief determined to send most of the battalion to the sea coast and, if the doctors should recommend, back to Algeria. I don't think that we mustered six hundred of all ranks at the time, possibly we did not exceed five hundred. When I tell you that we were constantly receiving batches of fresh men--almost every troopship brought out a hundred or two hundred soldiers of the Foreign Legion--you will be surprised at this; but then the country is bad for Europeans, and we were always in the fighting line of the battles and on tramp here, there, and everywhere between them. Anyway, the commandant asked for volunteers to form a company to be left behind, and officers as well as men were asked to come forward. "First," said the commandant, "I want a captain." All the captains stepped out He selected mine. I forgot to state that my captain had been sent back to duty, as soon as the surgeons found that the blow on the head had produced only temporary ill-effects. "Now," said the commandant, "a lieutenant." Forward stepped every officer of that rank. The sub-lieutenant--now a lieutenant--who had come out with my company, the _vieux militaire_ who had risen from the ranks, the man who was good at fighting and better at pillage, the man who could overlook much if you were a good looter and handed him over a decent percentage of your gains, the man with the piercing eye, the hooked nose, the spike-like grey moustache was taken on the spot. I believe this selection gave the old soldier immense pleasure. "Ah," I can fancy him saying to himself, "the commandant knows better than to take boys fresh from school." Everybody under forty was to him a boy fresh from school, except, be it noted, Nicholas. He did not understand Nicholas, but he was too old a soldier, too experienced in the Legion, not to know the ruined nobleman, the dangerous man, when he met him. A sub-lieutenant was selected in turn, a mere boy who had been sent to us for some little peccadillo, some little indiscretion, probably in connection with a senior officer's wife. Then a sergeant-major was taken, an Alsatian from No. 3. The sergeants were now called on for volunteers, and, just as we all stepped forward, a French officer of chasseurs approached the commandant to speak with him. "Select your own sergeants and corporals, captain," the commandant cried out to my captain; "the doctor will select the men, for I assume that all will volunteer." The captain promptly selected the two sergeants of his own company. I was delighted. I, a boy of less than seventeen, as the captain knew, though in the records of the battalion I was approaching nineteen, found myself senior sergeant of a company that was evidently to be a separate unit for some time. How I mentally thanked the officer of chasseurs for his timely intervention, for I felt sure that the commandant would not have selected me. The corporals were quickly chosen as the captain took all his own corporals who had not been seriously wounded and who did not show signs of breaking down, the others were taken by him from corporals of other companies after a hasty walk down the line of volunteers. He was a clever man, that captain of mine: all the outside corporals he selected were fair-haired. I have already mentioned that such men can stand hardships better than the black-haired ones. When the commandant had finished his chat with the chasseur, he said: "All men in the front ranks"--we were drawn up in column of companies--"that wish to volunteer, step one pace to the front; all men in the rear ranks that wish to volunteer, step one pace to the rear. March." All stepped forward or backward, as the case might be; the commandant went down the right flank and saw all the companies opened out. "Very well, _mes enfants_, since you all volunteer, the doctor will make a selection." The doctor examined every man. As he marched down the ranks he cast out almost half, one glance told him that these could not be accepted, wounds and disease and semi-starvation and hardship had worn them out; the rest he carefully examined in the afternoon, and, to cut the matter short, next morning the commandant and other officers and other sub-officers and other soldiers said good-bye to a fairly strong company--we were more than two hundred and twenty all told--and started on their march to the coast. We felt sad as our comrades went away. In twenty-four hours we had forgotten them, as, undoubtedly, they had forgotten us. Wrong! you say; well, the soldier who can't forget will die of brooding over his memories. In a day or two a few Annamite tirailleurs and eight or ten French engineers had came into camp. The chief officer of the tirailleurs brought a message for our captain, and in accordance with this we pushed forward about seventy or eighty miles and seized a strong position, right, as one may say, in the heart of the enemy's country. This we proceeded to fortify, the engineers superintending, the legionaries working, and the Annamites out on all sides to give us notice of any movements against our little post on the part of our foes. These, however, allowed us to finish the little fortification in peace; once it was finished, we cared not a jot for them. We had brought along a good deal of supplies; more of every kind that the country produced were collected from all sides; ammunition was plentiful, so why should we care? This was my captain's first separate command, and he had a nice little force to help him to keep the post. First, there were the legionaries, two hundred and twenty seasoned soldiers; then about a hundred and eighty native levies under French officers; last, a really admirable demi-squad of engineers. No artillery, of course; but who wants artillery when he has enough of rifles? My captain did not, and he was really a clever man. Not that guns and gunners have not their uses--oh, they have--but they are wanted with brigades and divisions for big battles; they are useless, they are worse than useless, to small parties on the trail of the enemy or holding some out-of-the-way position which may have to be abandoned at a minute's notice. In a retreat, when you are burdened with guns, one or two things must be done--destroy the artillery, and so produce a bad effect on the men; keep it, and by so doing slow down your march in swampy ground. We were all glad that no guns had been sent to us. We were quite confident that we could maintain our ground with the rifle alone; then, if we really had to withdraw, we felt more confident of cutting our way through with steady bayonet fighting than if we had to depend on the spasmodic assistance of artillery in a retreat. When the little fortification was finished to the satisfaction of the captain and the sergeant in command of the engineers, the little force was divided into four parts. Every part had a special duty every day. If No. 1 were employed guarding the camp for the twenty-four hours, No. 2 would be out in the day gathering stores of all kinds and getting information; No. 3 would be cooking and doing the other work of the camp, except guarding it; and No. 4 would be quietly resting. Thus every part had three days' work for one day of rest, but, be it well understood, every man was on guard-duty only one night in four. Every party, I may mention, had one-fourth of the legionaries and one-fourth of the Annamite tirailleurs. As for the engineers, they examined the fortifications every day, and did nothing then but cook and eat, mend and wash their clothing, and lie about and smoke. The officers commanding the parties were the lieutenant and the sub-lieutenant of the legionaries, the lieutenant and the sub-lieutenant of the native levies, while the captain exercised a general supervision over all, especially the entrenchments, the engineers, and the stores. Things went on well and pleasantly for some time. In fact we were all getting tired of the monotony--that is, all except the Annamites, who were quite satisfied--and we sergeants and corporals especially were desirous of some excitement. This we got, and in full measure. That everything may be understood I must give a brief description of the post--the fortified encampment I may call it. The main post was almost rectangular in shape, but a little way out from one corner stood a block-house, its nearest angle pointing towards an angle of the fort. This block-house was built with the intention of protecting the portion of the camp nearest to it, and also in order to prevent the enemy from taking up a commanding position within less than half musket-shot of our quarters. Furthermore, it dominated a spring from which a stream flowed in close proximity to the main fortification. This was very necessary, for the Black Flags have no compunction about poisoning "foreign devils." The block-house had two storeys, and was generally occupied by about twenty men, detached, of course, from the party on guard for the day. It was rather exposed on the two sides away from the main position, but being well and solidly built no one dreamed that it could ever be in any great danger. Well, it was; but that came afterwards, and will be dwelt on in due course. As for the big position being in danger, everyone scouted the thought. Ah, it's well for men that they are generally fools! Well, the time came at last when the Black Flags came to visit us. The first token of their arrival in force was given by the cutting off of a squad of Annamite tirailleurs; the second, firing at long range on a party of legionaries; the third, the burning of a couple of villages. I suppose they thought that the people in these hamlets were friendly to us; they were, indeed, friendly, but so they would have been to any men who carried arms. The poor people who remain quietly at home and take no part in fighting always suffer most. We took their property and paid them for it, at least our officers did; the Black Flags came, took their money, their women, and often their lives, and then set fire to their wretched habitations. In war both sides live very much, if not altogether, on the country. You can imagine how pleasant that is for the cultivators and others who seek to continue the occupations which can be profitable only in time of peace. Well, cowards sow and brave men reap. After the burning of the villages we scouted much more cautiously. Up to the first appearance of the Black Flags the Annamites were often by themselves, but afterwards we never went in smaller parties than thirty, of whom two-thirds were legionaries. So long as we had the natives, we could not very well be surprised; and so long as they had us with them, they knew that they would not be asked to bear the brunt of the fighting, if the enemy only showed himself in force. One day I was in command of a small party that cautiously felt its way towards the north-east, where a village had been seen burning the night before. I had two weak squads of my section and a dozen natives, in all we were about thirty-five rifles. As we went slowly on, the corporal of the tirailleurs gave me to understand that there was danger ahead. I did not thank him for the information--I knew as much myself--but, as the ground was fairly open, I determined to push on a little farther. At the same time I took the precaution of sending a couple of men to reinforce the little party guarding each flank, and four to the corporal of legionaries who commanded the advance-guard. Scarcely had these soldiers reached their respective destinations, when heavy firing began in front, followed almost at once by scattered shots on the right. The Annamite tirailleurs came back at once, the legionaries did not retreat so quickly; they fired as they retreated, and showed no signs of panic. I steadied the natives by telling them very plainly that the man who moved without orders would be at once shot. When they understood this, they stood up to their fight fairly well. As the outlying squads closed on my command, I asked the corporal who had led and the legionary of the first class who had commanded on the right, what they thought of the attack. The corporal said it seemed serious; the soldier of the first class, that we ought to move off to the base at once, as many men were trying to creep round to our rear. Now both of these might be depended on. The corporal was a man of much service; the other a Prussian who had found life in his own country too exciting, but who was a good soldier in all respects on active service; in garrison, of course, it was different. I fell back, therefore, showing a bold front, keeping the Annamites and six legionaries together--the latter to hold the former--and leaving all the other legionaries to fight in skirmishing order as we went away. A few of ours were wounded, and these the natives had to carry, but we managed to withdraw for more than half-a-mile without any serious casualty. Then a legionary was shot through the heart; an Annamite was sent for his rifle and ammunition, and the retreat went on as before. Once only did the enemy attempt to rush us. I hurried to the right with tirailleurs and legionaries when I saw them nearing for the charge, but our rifle fire was so effective that no man reached our bayonets. Not very long afterwards the lieutenant of my company came up with about forty men, two-thirds of whom were legionaries. He at once took over the chief command, and had little difficulty in getting us all back to camp. I fancy, however, that the Black Flags could have done a great deal of harm to us if they had tried more resolutely to come to close quarters, for they outnumbered us certainly by six to one. They made only faint-hearted attempts to rush us, and every time they tried that game, we concentrated our fire on the men concentrated for the charge. They made a great mistake in massing themselves together, for our bullets could not fail to find a man or men amongst them in the too close formation they assumed. We, on the contrary, kept a very open formation in the firing line, but behind there were always two little squads ready to hurry up to the part where there was any danger of a serious attack. For my part, I was glad to see that the lieutenant practised the same tactics as I; in the first place, it was a sort of compliment to me; and in the second, no one could blame the sergeant for doing what the officer, a most experienced fighter, did. To end this portion of my story, I may say that the little party got back safely to the fortification with the loss of three legionaries and one Annamite tirailleur killed and about seven or eight wounded severely enough to go into hospital. There were other men wounded, but their wounds did not count--they were only bullet-grazings or flesh wounds. When we were safely inside the little post, the captain ordered us to see first to our wounded and then to hold ourselves in readiness to go to any part of the defence where we might be required. The Black Flags, however, did not press the attack; evidently they were only part of the enemy who meant to assault our position, probably a few hundred sent out for raiding purposes. Nothing of any importance occurred for two or three days. We knew that the Black Flags were closing round us; in fact, we could not go five hundred yards from the camp without being fired on, but that gave us no uneasiness. Ammunition and stores were plentiful, the block-house made our water supply safe, our friends were only a hundred miles away, and we guessed that very soon a general or other high officer would come to inspect the post, and, of course, such people are always accompanied by at least a couple of thousand men. A gold-laced cap and an escort are not a sufficient outfit for a general; you must, to satisfy his _amour propre_, give him an army as well. One thing must be noted here. Though the block-house commanded the spring from which arose the rivulet that ran by the outer side of the fortification, yet the captain was not satisfied. He feared that in spite of all vigilance the well might be poisoned or polluted, so that orders were given that no water was to be taken into camp until four hours after sunrise. By that time all poisons that might have been deposited in the spring during the dark hours would be washed away, and a fatigue-party would have examined the stream carefully for dead bodies of men or animals. As I shall not allude to this again, I must tell here that on several occasions we found putrid bodies in the stream. We always took them out on the spot, and the men would take no water from the parts below where they were found for at least twenty-four hours. If the carcasses were got in the spring itself, a couple of engineers and two or three legionaries went out and cleansed it. At last we recognised that regular siege was being laid to our position. The Black Flags, assisted by a fair number of Chinese regulars--we knew these by their uniforms--had possession of every natural vantage-point around the camp. In some places, the nearest enemies were fifteen hundred yards away from the outer face of the entrenchments, in one or two the ground permitted them to come with safety as near as six or seven hundred yards. The average distance between the opposing forces was, I believe, about a thousand yards. They did not carry round a big fortified line--that would be too much trouble and would require a large number of soldiers to man it at all points--but they selected six or eight places of natural strength, erected forts upon them, and crowded these forts with defenders. The intervals between these were held by constantly moving bands, numbering anything from half-a-dozen to a hundred. For some time the fighting was desultory. We did not fire at them unless they came within easy range, for there was no use in throwing away ammunition, and, besides, it would be a good thing if they would only learn to despise us. They knew our strength to a man. If they saw or believed that we were short of cartridges, they would surely reckon us a certain prey. At the same time they would be doubtful of the success of a mere blockade, as our stores were plentiful, and any day might bring a relieving force. As for us, we eagerly desired a grand attack. We had enough of men to provide all parts of the entrenchment with a sustained rifle fire, and even if they did get up to our fortifications we trusted to our bayonet work too much to have any fear of the issue. Moreover, since the second battle of Lang-Son and our selection to remain behind when our comrades went down to the coast, we had conceived, unconsciously, I believe, a very high idea of our prowess both as individual soldiers and as a company. The grand attack which we had been expecting and praying for--I mean that we should have prayed for, if we ever prayed--was delivered at last. For a couple of days and nights the enemy kept up a brisk fire, giving us no rest. To this we made but little reply. The Black Flags became bolder every hour, and on the second day of the fusilade some were so contemptuous of our fire that they crawled up to within less than two hundred yards of the entrenchments to burn their powder. Our arrangements for the second night did credit to the captain. He divided his little force into two parts. The first of these kept watch and ward from sunset until half-past one in the morning; the second, which had been resting with rifles by their sides, took up guard duty in turn until six. Thus, along the entrenchments half the men, clad in greatcoats, were standing up, looking out for any movement of the enemy, while the other half, wrapped up in greatcoats and blankets, lay down only a yard away from their watching comrades. Thus half the rifles in garrison were ready for instant use; the remaining half could be in action in thirty seconds. Our captain was clever--I have always said so, and I will always assert it; other captains are creatures of routine, and will do the same thing in a fortified post in the enemy's country as they were in the habit of doing in a quiet town in the heart of France. Routine, so admirable in time of peace, is a thing rather to be neglected in time of war. The moiety to which I was attached lay down just behind the men on guard from sunset to half-past one. Then we were called to take our turn of duty. I had only dozed off once or twice while lying down, but for all that I was as wakeful as if I had slept for a week, when I turned out of the blanket and stood up in my greatcoat in the chilly air. Very soon I had the men under my charge at their posts. First, the lieutenant came round to ask in an undertone if all were ready within and if all seemed right outside; then the captain visited me and bade me pass the word up and down my command that the attack, if made at all, would be made within an hour, or an hour and a half at most, and that all should be thoroughly on their guard, for on every man's rifle a good deal depended. I, standing at the centre of my section, told the men on my right and left what the captain had said, each of them whispered the message to his next man, and so the words went down the ranks. After this all was quiet; the men seemed like so many bronze statues, but one knew that every eye was peering out intently into the blackness and that every ear was straining to catch the lightest sound. As for me, I looked now to the front, then to the right, and then towards the left; I neither saw nor heard anything which could betoken the approach of an enemy. We were nearly an hour so waiting, watching, and listening, and the constant strain had just begun to tell upon the nerves, when from the eastern side of the camp a report of a rifle came. Almost at once this was followed by a constant fire, not firing by volleys, be it well understood, but a well kept-up fire on both sides, never ceasing, but swaying, as it were, up and down, as now the reports came almost all together, now they came in twos and threes, or in dozens and in scores. The eastern side was not engaged long when the northern and southern ones joined in. A moment afterwards the red spirts came to us out of the darkness of the night. We replied, and a hot fusilade was well maintained without and within. The block-house garrison was also hotly engaged. They had little trouble with two faces, for the fronts of them were swept by the fire from the nearest angle of the fort, but on the other faces their work was far harder than ours. As was obvious afterwards, when the light came and gave us the advantage, the Black Flags had tried to catch the main position unawares, if possible, but at least to give its garrison enough to do. The chief object was to win the block-house; that captured, we others could be poisoned out. I afterwards learned that in the block-house there were two engineers and twenty-one legionaries, the whole being commanded by the sergeant-major I spoke of, the Alsatian who came from No. 3. They were good men; one engineer and seven legionaries, all simple soldiers, were killed; almost all the others were wounded, but even wounded men who could stand remained at their posts, and those others who had to stay out of the fight loaded their rifles and the rifles of the dead, and passed them to the fighting men, so that two shots often went through a loophole when, in the Black Flags' minds, only one should be expected. They were good men; I am proud of having soldiered with such. But one attempt was made to rush the fort. This occurred at the angle where the fire from the two sides swept the ground in front of two faces of the block-house. I don't believe that the enemy dreamt of taking our place by storm, but one thing was certain, the attack in force took away all aid for the block-house from the main position and made the men outside dependent altogether on themselves. That the determined attack on the little garrison outside, weakened as it was by death and wounds, did not succeed was due, first to their determined resistance, and secondly to the fact that, just as the attack became fiercest, the light became good enough for us to see our foes, to reckon their strength, and then to allow our captain to withdraw men from the two sides that were but feebly fired at to the others where the firing was practically point-blank. The sudden reinforcement overpowered the attack. A rapid and unexpected sally by fifty or sixty legionaries with fixed bayonets relieved the pressure round the block-house. The little garrison received from the sortie party a dozen men as reinforcements, the rest returned, and that really finished the engagement. A few shots still continued to be exchanged, but the firing after the sally was of no account--a man killed or wounded on either side "did not count in the tale of the battle." After this we had a little peace. We buried our dead outside the ramparts, but we left no mounds to afford shelter to enemies. All the earth that would in ordinary cases form heaps above the graves was taken to strengthen our defences; the plain outside was left as level as before. Was he not a clever captain? As for the enemy's killed and wounded, the uniformed men amongst them took them away under a flag of truce. We never allowed more than twenty-five to be engaged on the work within a hundred yards of the outer face of the fortifications, because we never trusted the Chinese. One thing else we did, we sent out the Annamites to gather all the weapons and ammunition of those who had fallen near the camp. These were of no use to us, but we deprived the enemy of them. Some of the wounded fell out with the Annamite tirailleurs; well, it was so much the worse for the wounded. When the burials were over and the wounded were going along well, we began to look forward to another attack. The Chinese regulars evidently took the business in hand this time, for there was no attempt to carry the main post or the block-house by assault; now we had to contend with mines. It was very well for us that there were engineers in the garrison; without them we should in all probability have seen most of our defences blown into the air. As it was, the Chinese mined and our engineers countermined. At first the mining was comparatively simple, as far as we were concerned. The Chinese had not the skill of the French sappers, and the result was that we always found out where they were boring, before they even imagined that we could know anything about their operations, but after we had destroyed a few mines, and with them a certain number of men, the underground attack became more skilful and more concealed. On more than one occasion both parties of tunnellers discovered each other at the same time, and the earth was quickly put back by both; we did not want a communication between mine and countermine, for that might give passage to a couple of thousand Chinese and Black Flags into our camp; the enemy did not want to come to close quarters with us, for more than once they had learned that, bayonet to bayonet, the Asiatic stood no chance against the European. I shall not say much about the underground operations, as I am not an engineer; moreover, my duties as sergeant kept me almost always above ground; we allowed the military engineers to direct everything below. Of course, it will be understood that the legionaries, and sometimes the Annamite tirailleurs, furnished the working parties; the regular engineers chiefly concerned themselves with planning the works first and overseeing them afterwards. There is a story of one countermine which, however, I must narrate, as it intimately concerned myself. Our fellows had cautiously dug forward for a considerable distance. No sound of tunnelling on the side of the Chinese had been heard; as the _dénoûment_ proved, they had been as cautious as we. The working party was tearing down the earth with the sharp edge of the pick, not striking with all their strength. Thus very little noise was made, and, besides, it was enjoined on all who were at work in the mine that talking could not be allowed. The men loyally obeyed orders, even if they had not felt inclined to do so through the spirit of discipline, the knowledge that the others were doing their best to tunnel under the fortification and then blow part of it to pieces prior to a grand attack with rifle and bayonet, would have made them obedient enough. I had gone down into the mine, more out of curiosity than because I had business there; my excuse was that I wished to get the names of the men of my section working in the pit. When I went down, I stayed for a moment or two. While I was holding a whispered conversation with a sub-officer of engineers, a cry from a worker drew our attention. In a moment the engineer saw what had happened, and cried out: "Les Chinois, les Chinois!" As a matter of fact, the Chinese miners and we were separated only by a thin wall of loose earth; a blow or two struck by I know not which party tumbled this down, and we were all mixed up together, French and Chinese, in the tunnel. All struck out at random. I drew my bayonet, which, of course, I always wore, and dashed the point in the face of a yellow man from outside. The lamps were extinguished in the struggle that ensued; we were all striking blindly about with pick-axe, shovel, and bayonet; no man knew who might receive his blow. It was a horrible time. In the darkness I heard the cries and oaths and groans; I shoved forward my bayonet, it met something soft; I drew it back and lunged again; again it met the soft, yielding substance, or perhaps the blow was lost on empty air. If I struggled forward, I tripped over a body; if I went back, surely a miner would knock my brains out with his pick. This went on for a short space that seemed an eternity. At last hurrying footsteps and shouts of encouragement and a welcome gleaming of lights told of the arrival of aid. When our comrades came up, we found that all the Chinese able to flee had fled; fourteen of them, however, and eight or nine men of ours, were lying pressed against and on top of one another in a narrow space. All, dead and wounded alike, were carried out; the place was blocked up at once, and the countermine that had taken so much time and work on our part was filled in. When the dead and wounded were examined two legionaries and two engineers were found dead, four legionaries and an Annamite tirailleur wounded, ten Chinese killed outright, four just alive. An ugly list for the small place in which the fight was, but it was the darkness that caused so heavy a casualty list amongst comparatively few combatants. It was a most unpleasant struggle. After that experience I shall never care to fight again in the dark. For some time afterwards the siege went on in a less exciting way. The enemy had evidently resolved to starve us out. We had, as we thought, enough of stores in the beginning to last until relief came, but when the relief did not make its appearance at or after the time expected, the captain began to have serious misgivings for the future. We were utterly shut off from all communication with the outside world; for all we knew, another disaster might have befallen the French troops, and, if that were the case, there could be no hope of relief in time. A full fortnight had now elapsed since the date that we had confidently set for the coming up of reinforcements; we were all asking one another the reason of the delay. Other questions also arose. Would our comrades come soon? If they did not, would our provisions hold out? Should we be able to fight our way through, in case the post had to be abandoned? There was no thought of surrender, for all understood that it was better to die fighting than to give ourselves up to the diabolical tortures inflicted by the Black Flags and their allies on unlucky prisoners of war. One day rations were reduced by one half. In some way to make up for this an allowance of native spirit was served out every afternoon, but the brandy and the wine were carefully kept for the use of the sick and wounded. These were by no means few, and when the dead were added to the ineffectives the total reached almost fifty per cent. of the original force. Indeed, after we had been on half-rations for a time, we legionaries formed a skeleton company of skeletons; we were so few and so reduced in weight. But through all we were resolute and, nearly to the last, cheerful. Certainly when the half-rations were further diminished, our spirits markedly sank, but no one expects starving men to show much gaiety. The soldiers were kept constantly on the alert both by the enemy and by us, their sub-officers. The captain told the sergeants and corporals that the men were to be always engaged in some work or other, as he did not wish to give them time to annoy themselves by thinking. This instruction made me a busy man. I was always on the look-out for little duties for my section, at the same time taking care not to overwork the men, and I tried to be as cheerful as possible with them. My fellows and I got along well together on the whole. I never brought a man before the captain if I could help it, and I let the corporals of the section understand that the squads were not to be sworn at more than was absolutely necessary. At the same time all knew that an order once given had to be at once obeyed. Things had been going on in this fashion for some time when the enemy again plucked up courage to attack. We were very glad of this, because it showed that they feared the arrival of a French force before they could reduce us to extremity by a mere blockade. The second big fight was a replica of the first one, only that on this occasion the assault on the block-house was more determined than before. It lasted longer too, for we were too few in number to risk fifty or sixty men in a sortie, but, in spite of all, the defence was successfully maintained. Two days afterwards some Annamites captured a Chinese. He was in a state of abject terror when brought before the captain, and on the promise that his life would be spared and liberty given him, he soon told us all he knew of the French movements. We learned then that a strong force was approaching and might be expected almost at any moment; we were also told that a third and last attack was in preparation. This attack, however, and the relief of the post will be told in the next chapter, as they deserve a chapter to themselves. CHAPTER XVI It was quite evident that the block-house would have to stand the brunt of the attack this time as before. Now we were rather weak in numbers for the adequate defence of the main position, yet not a single man could be withdrawn from the little garrison of the outside post. Even with the full number of rifles allowed to it the block-house might be taken--taken, that is, in the event of the death or the rendering ineffective of all its men, and that this was by no means an impossibility was proved by the losses in the last fight. Out of twenty-two sub-officers and men only seven were unscathed, and of the others three were slightly, five severely, wounded, and seven killed. With a more desperate and better sustained attack upon more exhausted troops, might not the Chinese fairly hope for complete success? To make up in some degree for the anticipated loss of the outpost the captain gave orders that all vessels in camp should be filled, that, as these were emptied they should be refilled, and that no soldier should drink out of any vessel except his own water-bottle. All the rest, filled as they were, were placed in a central position in the camp, and this place all were forbidden to approach under pain of death. The sentries on guard had strict orders to allow no one to go near the precious stock of water. The captain said: "If you do not shoot or bayonet the trespasser, I will drive you forth unarmed to become the prey of the Black Flags." If their own brothers had dared to approach the water, the sentries would have shot them after hearing that. A strong party was sent to the block-house, for there was a chance that it might hold out, and in any case the captain resolved that the enemy should not have it for nothing. The lieutenant of my company was in command. I was second; there were two corporals, one an Alsatian, the other a Lorrainer, and twenty men. This was as many as could be conveniently accommodated in the small space. We were all well supplied with ammunition; we carried, every man, three days' provisions. When we paraded before going out, the captain told us that we should hold our ground as well and as long as we could; if we managed to repel one assault, only one, our lives would be saved and the honour of the corps maintained. Our small party took up its quarters, relieving the others, who were, you may be sure, not sorry to be relieved, and was at once divided into three parts. I commanded one, a corporal each of the others; as for the lieutenant, he was over all, and seemed to be ever watchful and absolutely incapable of feeling fatigue. While one party watched, the rest lay down and slept or tried to sleep. There was no cooking to be done, as our provisions were of the cast-iron pattern--baked bread and cooked meat; as for drink, we had a small allowance of native spirit and as much water as we should want for three days. For twenty-four hours we were undisturbed, except when once the door was opened and a man looked out. Then a regular fusilade of shots came towards us. We saw that we were fairly cooped up, and that the only chance of our ever leaving the block-house alive lay in the arrival of French troops. We fancied, but this was perhaps imagination, that we could hear firing in the distance; this gave us hope and renewed our courage. Early in the evening of our second day on duty a strong attack was made not only on our post, but on the main position as well. At first this was confined to a hot fire, and four of ours, one the Alsatian corporal, were shot at the loopholes. As night came down, the enemy approached to short range, and even in the dark we were a splendid target for them. All the night they fired, and twice they set the block-house on fire, but volunteers quickly put out the flames, though at a fearful sacrifice of life. As the first beams of the rising sun illuminated the battlefield, the Chinese regulars, followed by a crowd of Black Flags, tried to storm the post. They succeeded in breaking down two upright beams on one side and tried to pour in, but our bayonets soon piled up a heap of bodies in the narrow entrance that they had made. We got a short respite now, and heard with feelings of indescribable joy a steady, well-sustained firing outside the position held by the enemy. Once more, however, the Chinese attacked. With battering rams of wood tipped with iron they broke down a clear half of one wall. Some of the superstructure fell and delayed them for a time, but this they quickly tore away, and the remains of the little garrison, having no longer power to hold the fort or hope of escape, sallied desperately forth, to sell their lives as dearly as possible. The lieutenant leading fell shot between the eyes; the rest of us rushed straight at the Chinese and bore them back. They rallied and again attacked. We fought with the courage of despair. We could make little head against them, but for all that we steadily piled up a rampart of bodies in our front. I heard as I fought the familiar war cry of the legionaries; I shouted out in reply. Just as a Chinese lifted his musket to fell me to the earth, I saw the advancing line of reinforcements. There was a sudden shock, and then came darkness on my eyes, and, when I came to, the block-house, now on fire, was blazing in the sunlight, and I felt a terrible agony in head and limbs and body. But the post had been held and relieved; the enemy were scattered in all directions, with hundreds of pursuers at their heels; there were no more short rations to be dreaded, no more night attacks, nothing now but rest and peace and warm congratulations. Let me tell the fate of the little guard of the block-house. The lieutenant, both corporals, and eighteen soldiers were dead; two soldiers and I, the sergeant and second in command, were wounded. Both the soldiers died that night; I, the sole survivor, was promoted sergeant-major and recommended for the military medal. Had I been a Frenchman, I should have got the cross and a commission; as it was, I was more than satisfied, for did not I get the rewards won by my comrades as well as by me? For a few days I lay in hospital, and the doctors feared that I might suffer from concussion of the brain as a result of the heavy blow dealt me by the Chinese. However, all bad effects passed away quickly, and I returned to duty on the day that my promotion to the rank of sergeant-major was confirmed. The captain visited me in hospital; he would not allow me to talk, and merely said that he was glad I had survived, and then laughingly told me that "the devil's children had their father's luck." He could be sarcastic on occasion, but I did not mind; I can take a joke as well as another. After the post had been relieved the remains of the original garrison were transferred to the sea-coast. The march down was exactly similar to all the other marches, except in one important matter, we did not have to break camp hurriedly and run after rapidly vanishing enemies. No; our daily marches were not too long, our nightly rest was unbroken, and, as we approached the coast, we got better quarters and better supplies. The men too had the proud consciousness of a dangerous and difficult duty well done. The other soldiers whom we met used to cook our soup and prepare the camps for us; that's the soldier's way of offering congratulations, and these were the compliments we liked. When we marched one afternoon into Saigon, I was in very bad health. The reaction after the siege, with its reduced rations, its constant watchfulness, and all the little annoyances that beset a poor devil of a sergeant trying to keep the men of his section content under difficulties, together with the fatigue of the march, made me feel very ill by the time we came to the base. Moreover, I was troubled about the accounts of the company. The sergeant-major who preceded me, and who was killed in the last attack, had left the company's accounts in an unintelligible state; no one could tell whether any man had or had not been paid a piastre since the beginning of the siege, nor could you find out who had drawn occasional rations of wine and extra tobacco. The captain knew nothing; he had been too busy with fighting and looking after stores. I went to him and said that it was not fair to ask me to make up a dead man's accounts. He agreed with me, and asked me what the devil I was going to do about the affair. "Let the clerks at headquarters settle all," I replied; "it ought to be their business and not mine." "Very well," said the captain; "but how will you throw the work on their shoulders?" "Easily enough," I answered; "I need but refuse to accept the books until they are set right." "But suppose you are ordered to take them and to set them in order yourself?" "Very well, sir; I will then claim money for every man, dead or alive. When the clerks point out to me that a certain man is dead, I will withdraw his name: in that way I shall give them more trouble than if they were to make up the accounts themselves." "Do what you like," said the captain; "only pay the survivors--the dead may rest." I took the hint, and made out the accounts in such a way, that it appeared that all the dead had been paid in full up to the day of death, and that none of the survivors had obtained a centime for months. The paymasters grumbled, and I was called on more than once for an explanation. I could only say that I knew nothing about the men's accounts beyond what they told me. "But how do you know," asked a commandant one day, "that the dead men were paid in full?" "I don't know it, sir," I answered; "but I have marked them as paid because I cannot afford time to look for their heirs." Everybody laughed at this--the idea of a legionary leaving legacies to his relations was too ridiculous. In the end, however, we survivors got nearly all the money we claimed, and everybody was satisfied. It was easy to see that most of our company were unfit for further duty at the time. Many were in hospital, and those of us who remained in camp were listless and easily fatigued. The medical officers did not like our looks, and it became a current report that we should all be very soon sent back to Algeria. The transport was in harbour on which we were ordered to embark for transportation home--that is, to the legionaries' home, the wastes and sands of Northern Africa. Yet to us these very places seemed like heaven compared with Tonquin: we were all tired of the harassing warfare, the starvation, the marches, and the constant watchfulness. It was fated that I should not return in this vessel, as, only two days before it sailed, I had to go into the military hospital, a place dreaded above all others by soldiers. There I lay with an attack of fever, but my naturally strong constitution shook this off, and in a few weeks I was ready to embark in a hospital ship, with a few hundred others of all ranks and regiments, for Marseilles. I had a relapse while in the Red Sea, and thought for the first time that there was no longer hope for me. What made it worse was that every day a dead body went overboard, and, though the officials tried to keep this fact from us, sick men are too clever and too suspicious to be easily imposed upon. One morning I saw the cot near me empty--a poor marine fusilier had occupied it the day before. I had known that he was sinking rapidly, but still the fact of his death gave me a great shock. I got up with difficulty from my couch and made my way on hands and knees to the companion-ladder, ascended this in the same posture, and at length gained the deck unperceived. I felt the cool breeze of the Mediterranean on my face, and thanked Heaven that I was out of the horrors of Tonquin and the almost worse horrors of the Red Sea. I remember no more until I woke up to find myself back in my cot, with a couple of doctors and an orderly or two around me. The doctors spoke in a friendly way to me, and asked me why I had gone up to the deck. I said that I was restless, and scarcely knew what I was doing, but that the fresh breeze above had done me much good. They then said that very soon we should be at Marseilles and that I should be better off there. I thanked them, promised not to leave my cot again, and they withdrew. As they went, however, I overheard one say--so sharp are sick men's ears: "He will come up again, probably to-morrow." I wondered vaguely whether he doubted my word or whether he was merely alluding to my probable death, but after a time I thought of other things. I made no further attempt to go up on deck; even had I not promised to stay quietly below, I had not strength enough to climb the companion-way again. A few days after we arrived at Marseilles and were carefully transferred to a large hospital on land. There, I must admit, we received excellent treatment. Not only were the doctors and the orderlies kind and attentive, but the ladies of the town were also extremely good to us. Chaplains also came round the wards frequently, and, of all the places in which I have ever been, the military hospital at Marseilles was one of the best. I could thoroughly appreciate the kindness then, for my health came back quickly from the day I landed from the hospital ship. One day when I was allowed to get up and go to a convalescent ward for a few hours an orderly came into the room, in a great hurry apparently, and called out my name. I said: "Here I am. What do you want?" He replied: "Monsieur le général will be here soon." "Does he come to tell me that I have been appointed his aide-de-camp?" I inquired, laughing at my own little joke. "No, my fine fellow," cried a corporal of some line regiment in a corner; "he has come to ask you to be so kind as to marry his daughter, who has a fortune of only one hundred thousand francs." "Ah," said a cuirassier--I forget his rank, "the request is that our friend the sergeant-major will consent to act as the general's second in a duel with the Tsar of Russia." A chasseur believed that that was not true, as he had learned from a morning paper that I was to be ambassador to His Holiness the Pope, "who knows," he went on to say, "how moral and virtuous are the lives the legionaries lead, they being, in fact, monks in uniform." This settled the matter; nobody could invent a more improbable--let me say impossible--reason for the general's visit. I was asked continually afterwards how the Pope was. Did he still hold the idea of asking France to give him the sanctified legionaries as a new army? If we went to Rome, should we have to soldier with the Swiss and other guards? And a number of other questions were asked, all of which I answered to the best of my ability, trying in every case to give a "Roland for an Oliver," and often succeeding. I told the chasseur one day that the Pope would not take us of the Legion as his guards; he preferred the chasseurs: by converting them to decent practices he would gain greater glory in heaven. The cuirassier learned that His Holiness would soon send him the shield of faith--he already had the breastplate of caution. The cuirassier did not like this. He indignantly protested that he would rather fight in his shirt sleeves. "Very well," I answered. "Do as the Austrians do--take off your cuirass in time of war." He asked me how I knew that. I replied: "Easily enough. I have many Austrian comrades, but I have no French ones. We legionaries are seemingly in the French army, but not, in real truth, soldiers of it." Truth to tell, I was getting a little angry, because all wished to unite against the solitary soldier of the Legion in the room. I let the rest see that I was tired of their jokes, and afterwards they left me alone. Well, the general came in a short time into the room and called out my name and rank. I stepped forward and stood to attention. "You the sergeant-major?" he asked, in a tone of surprise. "Yes, sir." "Why, you are only a boy. How long have you been in the Legion?" I told him. Then he asked me a number of questions about my service, to all of which I answered clearly and respectfully. "You are a young sergeant-major--very young." And he turned to speak to a surgeon. Both looked at me often during this conversation. I maintained always the stiff, erect attitude of the soldier in front of his superior officer. "You have been recommended for the military medal," at last the general said. "Yes, sir; my captain told me that he would recommend me for the decoration." "The recommendation has been confirmed," said the general, "and I have come to give you the medal. I thought," he went on, "that I should meet a veteran, and I find a schoolboy." I said nothing; indeed, I did not know what to say. "It does not matter about your age or the length of your service," the general continued; "you have won rank and distinction, and I wish you a prosperous career." "Thanks, my general." "Is there anything you want?" "Yes, my general." "What is it?" "A Little Corporal to lead a schoolboy sergeant-major, that is all." He drew back and looked at me. A susurrus of approbation went through the room. Very little more was said. The general gave me the medal that I had won, paid me a compliment or two, and went away. But the story went round, and what would be hurtful to a Frenchman, who was at once soldier and citizen, was a cause of no offence in a legionary, who was only a soldier. But what I said was liked, and many a present I received afterwards. The French know that the legionary is a soldier pure and simple--well, not always pure, and very seldom simple--and they know that the soldier of the French army who gives up for life the clothes of the pékin and who dreams of nothing except fighting and promotion looks on Napoleon the Great as a terrestrial Archangel Michael. Him would we follow, him would we serve. God grant us another like him, and then----. And the legionaries understood, and wished as warmly as any Frenchman for the advent of another ideal restless man and restless man's idol. The Little Corporal when he was the great commander was bad, let us admit, to many, but he was never bad to the man who served him well. It was not birth or wealth that brought promotion under him but courage and devotion to duty. True, he made mistakes, and these great ones--the imprisonment of the Pope, the invasion of the white Tsar's frozen land, the too early return from Elba were such--but in his mistakes even he was colossal, unapproachable. It was after this visit and the receipt of the military medal that the jesting conversations began amongst us. However, I have told of them already, and there is no use in going back upon a told story. That does very well in conversation, especially when the glasses are filled and the pipes going merrily, but in writing it is of no account. Very soon after this I was strong enough, the surgeons said, to cross to Algeria. All the men whose acquaintance I had made were good enough to say that, though they were glad I was able to leave hospital, yet they were sorry to lose my companionship. I thanked them all, told them that I had had a pleasant time, and hoped to meet them again. In this I was sincere. I have very pleasant memories of the hospital, but all the same I wanted to get back to my own comrades. Shortly after the surgeons had put my name on the outgoing list I left the hospital for the troopship. I was brought to Oran, and there sent again to hospital, but only for a few days. Here I was treated very well indeed by those in charge, and I made a few casual acquaintances, whose comradeship helped very much to pass the dreary time of waiting until the principal surgeon should order me to be sent back to the regiment. I think they kept me longer than was absolutely necessary, and this for two reasons--my youth and the military medal. The surgeons were quite as curious as my hospital companions to hear my story, to learn all about my country and why I left it to join the Legion, how I liked the French service, and every other thing that they could think of. For the first time in my life I was made much of as a man of good service and tried valour; if I gave somewhat exaggerated accounts of the perils I had passed who can blame me? There was no sneering now at the Foreign Legion; oh no! we were in Algeria, _la patrie des légionnaires_. At last the surgeon-in-chief told me that I should soon leave the hospital. I thanked him for the information, and said that the only cause of regret at leaving was that I should leave so many good comrades behind. "Have you been well treated here, sergeant-major?" he asked. "Very well, sir; so well that I have lost the simple soldier's fear of the hospital." He laughed, and said: "I am glad. Take the advice of a friend, always seek the surgeon when you are ill or wounded. The old prejudice was, in its time, a just one; nowadays things are different." I promised that I would do so. At the same time even to-day I fear the surgeon's knife more than an enemy's bayonet or sword or even lance, and the lance is what the infantry man most dreads--that is, of course, of weapons. However, I have not since the day I left the hospital at Oran ever been the occupant of a bed in one, and I sincerely hope that I may never see, as a patient at least, the whitewashed wall of a hospital again. From Oran I was sent to the depot at Saida, where I remained for some time. I did ordinary duty there as sergeant-major of a company of recruits during the illness of the regular sub-officer, and so learned a good deal more of my new duties than I knew when leaving Tonquin. I was very glad of this, especially as the officers were very decent to me. I was a different man now--a sergeant-major without a moustache but with the military medal--from the young recruit who was sworn at and abused every day by the drill instructors. No swearing or abuse now, only compliments and flirtation and general friendliness. A happy time indeed, too happy to last, as I learned before I was many months older. I must now tell about my love and my sorrows and how I came to leave the Legion for ever. Truly, I cannot say that I am sorry; truly, I cannot say that I am glad. If the service of the legionary was a hard service, yet it had its consolations; if you did wrong nobody minded--that is, so long as you broke only the ten commandments. Of course, military regulations and the rules of our society were very different things; the first had to be kept if one did not wish for punishment, you had to respect the second, or else lose the respect of your associates, and though boycotting is a comparatively new word yet it denotes an old and universal practice. And now to tell of my _grande passion_, its course and its results, the story of which was at one time, and may be even still, a classic tale of the Legion. CHAPTER XVII I left the depot one morning with a large party of recruits for a battalion in the inland parts of Algeria. We were about a hundred and eighty strong, and as a lieutenant was the only officer I ranked as second in command. We had two sergeants and eight or nine corporals to help to maintain discipline, but the men acted in a very good way on the march. I can recall no incident worth relating, but I remember one circumstance that made the march very pleasant. As the lieutenant had no brother officer to speak to and was naturally talkative, he had to associate very much with me. It must not be supposed that this diminished the respect in which I was bound to hold his rank; on the contrary, since he made the time pass agreeably for me, I felt more and more disposed to render him all outward signs of honour; and if I did address him as "my lieutenant" as we marched 20 paces ahead of the party, when others were within earshot I fell back on the more respectful "sir." I am sure he noted this, but he said nothing about it. This officer was a most entertaining talker; he was naturally clever, had received a good education, and was full of stories of Paris which were well worth hearing. He saw that I enjoyed his tales of life there, and thus had the best of all incentives to story-telling--a good listener. On the other hand, I told him more than he, as an officer, could learn of the Legion and the men who were in it. I did not trouble about the Alsatians and Lorrainers, who had enlisted solely to gain the rights of French citizens, but I let him know the life-history of more than one of the Russians, Austrians, Germans and Spaniards who filled our ranks. I did more. I allowed him to see the trend of thought in the corps; I told him of our traditions, our jealousies, our loves and our hates; by the time that we arrived at our goal he understood better than most officers the character of the men whom he would have under his command. So the lieutenant and the sergeant-major were good comrades. When we came to the battalion at the borders of the Great Desert the recruits were distributed amongst the companies, the sergeants and corporals were appointed to sections and squads, the lieutenant took the place of an officer who had died of fever, and so all were settled in the new battalion except myself. The commandant did not know what to do with me; he had enough sub-officers of my rank already, and yet he did not like to put me to any duties except those of the rank I held. This was on account of the military medal. If I had not had that, I should very soon have found myself acting as simple sergeant of a section. However, a way was found out of the difficulty--a way which led me into many sorrows--though these I have never regretted, counterbalanced as they were by so many joys. There was a woman in the place who kept a canteen. She always remained with this battalion, and where others might starve she waxed wealthy--that is, wealthy for a _cantinière_. Her husband had been a sergeant of the third company. He had fallen fighting bravely in an obscure skirmish at some desert village, and when he fell he left a wife and baby daughter to the care of his comrades. The story of the pair was never fully known. They were Italians, and both of evidently gentle birth. When I heard about them first I thought of a Romeo and a Juliet giving up all for love, leaving behind family animosities with family riches, and seeking security from all search in the safest retreat in the world--the "legion of the lost ones." All the men saw and admired the heroic self-sacrifice of the gently-nurtured lady who left all to follow the chosen one in such a career, and I am proud to be able to say that during her husband's life and after his death no man ever said in her hearing anything that would bring a blush to her cheeks; in her presence even the most hardened rascal put on the semblance of a gentleman. People say that even the best man has some fault or imperfection of nature. It may be so. At any rate even the worst man has some good, some respect for virtue and honour, even though he possesses them not himself. After the death of her husband the widow opened a small shop, in which she sold wine, tobacco, and other things that soldiers spend their money on. The officers of the battalion stocked this for her, but in a short time she was able to pay them back, and she insisted on their accepting the money though they did not at all desire repayment. The regimental convoys were allowed to bring her goods as she required them, and the legionaries of her dead husband's battalion loyally spent most of their scanty pay in her canteen. Whenever anyone received money from friends or relations in Europe her stock would be all cleared off at once, and so by the exercise of a little frugality she was able gradually to put by some money for the little daughter whom she idolised. At the time when I came to the battalion this girl was about fifteen years of age, slight, graceful, lively, bright-eyed, the pet of the battalion. Everyone jested freely with her, she jested freely with everybody, but no one ever thought of saying anything which her mother, a model of virtue, would not like to hear. I had been but two or three days in my new quarters when an alarm of fire was raised one night, and we all turned out promptly as the cry went around. There was no danger for us, as the huts were one-storeyed and did not contain more than a squad each, but there might be some for the officers, whose quarters were more elaborate, and who, of course, were more isolated. A dozen or a score of men in a hut will all get clear, because some at least will be aroused, and these can pull out their suffocating comrades; a single officer may be smothered in his bed before even the watchful sentry realises the outbreak. When I came out of my quarters, in shirt and drawers, I glanced around, and saw at once that all the cantonment was safe. Then I heard a cry from the direction of the main guard-house that the village was on fire, but this was afterwards proved to be false. I flung on my clothes hurriedly and ran to the guard-house, for I had no assigned place on the parade that was now rapidly forming on the parade-ground, not being sergeant-major of any company, and asked the sergeant of the guard where the fire was. "Madame's canteen," he replied; "twenty or thirty men have already gone to put it out." "May I go to help?" (Of course, though I was of higher rank, he was the man in charge of the guard, and could prevent me, if he wished, from going out.) "Certainly, my sergeant-major." "Thanks, comrade, thanks." And I ran out and went to the widow's canteen. There I found the whole a mass of flames, and I saw at a glance that there was no hope of saving even the smallest portion of the house or its contents, especially as there was a sad lack of water. I asked a man if the woman and the girl had been saved. He told me that the girl had discovered the fire and awakened her mother, that both had made good their escape, and that then the widow had run back to recover her little store of money, the hiding-place of which no one else knew. "Then," he went on, "the daughter tried to go into the blazing house to bring back her mother, but she was forcibly prevented by some soldiers, and one or two of the legionaries who tried to enter were driven back, severely burned, by the fire and smoke." The flames, indeed, were terrible, all the wine barrels and spirit casks were blazing fiercely; there was no hope of life for anyone in such a hell. The poor widow fell a victim to her desire to regain for her daughter the money she had hoarded with so much anxious care, and nothing remained of her except a few charred bones, which were reverently gathered up and decently interred on the morrow. As for the money, it must have been chiefly in paper, for very little metal could be found in the ashes, and so the poor daughter was left completely alone in the world, without relations, at least as far as she knew, without means, and with only the friendship and the pity of the battalion to look to for aid. The Italian girl was taken charge of by a sergeant's wife--one of those few noble women, few, I mean, comparatively speaking, who will go anywhere with their husbands, and who furnish in the most abandoned communities examples of unselfish heroism and exalted virtue, which make even men whose knowledge of the sex is confined to its most vicious members have some respect for purity and some doubts as to their favourite axiom: A man may be good, but a woman cannot be. The officers proposed that she should continue as _cantinière_ in place of her mother, and generously offered to put her in a position to do so. As for us sub-officers and simple soldiers, our duty was plain: as soon as she was in a new home and shop, to go there, and there only, with the constant copper, the occasional silver, the God-sent gold. She knew this, the officers knew it; we made no resolutions; and said scarcely anything about the matter amongst ourselves, but all understood that it would be bad for the legionary who bought his wine or brandy elsewhere. The commandant sent for the four sergeant-majors of the companies and for me, the supernumerary. He asked us how much it would cost to erect a new house. We said that it would cost nothing; the soldiers would build one in their spare time. "Very well, my friends, very well. How much will it cost to put in a new supply." We did not answer this at once, but after some time we all agreed that 2000 francs would put in a fairly good stock--that is, if carriage cost nothing. "Oh, the carriage will be settled; I will see to that," said the commandant. "Now, sergeant-major," he went on, turning to me, "you have no company whose accounts you must make up, will you undertake to look after this business for Mademoiselle Julie?" "I will do my best, sir, in this matter if you wish it." "That will do," he replied; "you shall be sergeant-major of the canteen company. Is it not so?" Every other sergeant-major laughed at me. They were glad that I had been sent to some duty, for a sergeant-major with the military medal is not long employed as simple sergeant, and each man, so long as I was unemployed in my proper rank, would fear for himself and his own position. Thus I became sergeant-major responsible for a canteen and the curious crowd assembled there. Some time afterwards, when the new quarters had been built by the legionaries and the little stock of _eau-de-vie_, wine, tobacco, and cigars had arrived, there was a grand opening. All the men had been saving up for awhile, and more than half the stock was sold at a good profit on the first evening. The girl was asked to do nothing except to take the money; four men willingly acted as assistants, pouring out the wine and the _eau-de-vie_, and, indeed, now and then tasting them too, for "you must not muzzle the ox treading out the corn," nor ask a man to help others to good things without occasionally helping himself as well. One of them took so much brandy that I had to turn him out, a couple of comrades brought him away to his hut, and nothing was said about it, as the poor little _cantinière_ begged him off with tears in her eyes. Just as things were becoming almost too lively the commandant and the other officers came down and entered the little shop. The first intimation we inside had of their arrival was the silence of the men who were laughing, singing, and carousing outside. The commandant put down a couple of gold pieces and asked for two bottles of wine. He and the others took each a sip of this and wished mademoiselle a prosperous business. Then the commandant gave me a strong hint that enough of business had been done for that day, and I promptly shut up shop after his departure. When all had left Giulia and I counted the money. We had a little gold, a good deal of silver, and a great quantity of copper--altogether over fourteen hundred francs. I congratulated her upon the successful evening's trading, and then we went to reckon up the supply still left. We found that at the same rate of sale the two thousand francs would be changed into at least two thousand six hundred, and that surely was excellent profit in an out-of-the-way camp of legionaries where money was rather scarce. Then Giulia asked me to take a glass of wine and a cigar. I did not refuse. What legionary, what man, indeed, would, when pressed by so lovely a girl? Of late I had seen her constantly, as my management of her affairs and my continual reports about the progress of her new house brought me daily into her society. We always got on well together--fifteen and seventeen don't usually fall out--and my rank and medal brought me favour in her eyes. Moreover, I was very respectful in my words and demeanour. I pitied her misfortune, and my pity was not lessened by the sight of her beauty, and, before I had been three days attending to her affairs, I took more interest in them than I could by any chance take in the accounts of a company. We were very good friends and companions, but there was not a hint, not a suspicion, of love on either side. She was pretty and in trouble, and, therefore, had my sympathy. I was kind and attentive to her, and she was grateful. _Voilà tout!_ Before I drank the wine I made her put her lips to the glass, which she did, prettily and with a blush. "You must never ask me to do that again," she said. "Why, it is the custom of the Legion, ma camarade," I replied. "You are now a legionary; surely you will do as your good comrades do?" "Well, at least not in the presence of others." "Very well," I answered; "but always when we are alone?" "Yes," she whispered; "when we are alone. I trust you." And she put her little hand out to me. I took it, and by a sudden impulse kissed it. "You may always trust me," I said--"always." A question now arose as to the disposal of the money. There was no danger from natives, as the new house was inside the lines; there was not much, indeed, from soldiers, as there were sentries near. At the same time I told Giulia that it would be safer to transfer it to some other place. "Can you not," I suggested, "take it to the woman in whose quarters you live?" "No, no," she replied; "I will take some to give to her--she has been very good to me--but you are in charge, you must keep the greater part." "I?" I said in astonishment. "Yes; if you do not, I will leave it here." "But, Mademoiselle Julie, there are very bad men in every battalion, and someone may break in and steal all." "Let the sentinels keep watch." "Ah! a sentinel may be glad to get half." "I do not care; you are my sergeant-major"--as she said this a rosy flush came up over neck and face and ears--"and it is your duty to keep my money for me. Besides, did I not say that I trust you?" In the end I had to take twelve hundred francs, though with many misgivings. Giulia told me that she would give two hundred to the sergeant's wife, the rest she would keep herself. Then we locked up the place and departed to our separate quarters, after having made an appointment to meet in the morning, to inspect the stores and see if anything had been touched during the night. Giulia wanted me to take the keys as well as the money, but this I refused to do. I could scarcely sleep that night on account of the money. I occupied a small room in a long, low-roofed building, given up to the accommodation of sergeants whose domestic arrangements did not include a woman. I barricaded the door, put a glass on the window, so that anyone trying to enter that way might knock it down on a tin basin placed just below, and put a naked bayonet and the box containing the money under my pillow. For all these precautions I spent a wakeful night, and rose in the morning, restless, anxious, and unrefreshed. After the morning coffee I felt better, and laughed to myself at my fears of the night. Who would take the money? surely not one of the sergeants. I did not, I could not, suspect them, but I certainly should not like to trust every man in the battalion; the Legion contains more than a due percentage of desperate ruffians, and our battalion had its fair share of the bad ones. As I went across the parade-ground to keep my appointment with Giulia at the door of the canteen I met the captain of my company, or at least of the company to which I was attached, though I seldom paraded with it. He noticed the box and asked me what it contained. When I told him he laughed, and said that many a man would be pleased to be so trusted, especially by so beautiful a girl as Mademoiselle la Cantinière. I answered that the trust was pleasant but the responsibility too great; I did not wish to have the safe keeping of twelve hundred francs. "You cannot help it now, my sergeant-major of the canteen, you must undertake all the duties of your position." Then he told me to present his compliments to Mademoiselle Julie, and went away. I met Giulia at the door. She looked annoyed at having to wait, but when I made her acquainted with the delay caused by meeting the captain her face cleared. "I thought, mon ami," she said, "that you had forgotten your duty." "That might be possible; but, Mademoiselle Julie, how could I forget you?" She curtsied at the compliment, and I noticed the grace of her figure, the beauty of its curves, the wonderful arch of the instep; and I must have looked my admiration, for when she lifted her eyes to meet mine, again the rosy flush came up over her neck and cheeks. "Let us see that all is right within," she said, and opened the door. When we were inside we saw at a glance that everything was as we had left it on the previous evening. "Now let us count the money," I said. In a second Giulia flew into a rage, she stamped her foot upon the ground, she cried out that I wished to insult her, that I thought her mean and suspicious, and finally burst into tears. I laid my hand upon her arm and wished to know what had vexed her; she flung it off with an indignant gesture and bade me go away. I was thunderstruck. I could not tell how I had offended, and was beginning to feel aggrieved. Why should I be told that I had insulted her whom I would not pain for all the world? The more I thought of my conduct towards her, the less reason I could see for her anger and tears. I was wise enough, however, to let her have her cry out: when she had done with weeping she would be reasonable. I was not mistaken. When she had dried her tears, I asked how I had offended her. She looked, calmly enough now, at me, and said: "Did I not tell you yesterday that I trusted you?" "Yes," I replied. "And yet to-day you ask that I should count the money. How can I do so and trust?" I took off my kepi, bowed, and said: "Pardon me, I was wrong." "You will never offend me again?" "Never. And you, you will forgive?" "Yes; once, but not a second time." Again she gave me her hand, again I kissed it, then she put her hands upon my shoulders, and said: "My dear friend, if I did not trust you more than you think, I would not be alone with you here." She asked me to take a glass of wine, voluntarily put the glass to her lips, and then handed it to me. I deliberately turned it round, so that my lips should touch where hers had touched, and drained it to the bottom, looking the while over it at Giulia. She smiled and looked pleased, and then turned away to get some cigars. I had more sense than to offer money. I took the cigars, and said: "You are a good comrade, Giulia." It was the first time I had called her by her name. She hesitated a little, and then answered: "And you too, you will be a good comrade, will you not, Jean?" "Oui, ma belle." And I bit off the end of a cigar, while she struck a match to light it for me. Just as I began to smoke there came a knock at the door. I shouted out "Entrez," and the commandant came in. I put down the cigar and stood to attention. "Everything goes well, is it not?" he asked. "Yes, monsieur le commandant," Giulia replied; "I can soon repay some of the money advanced by you and the other officers." "No, my child," the commandant said; "you are the daughter of the regiment now. The battalion must be father and mother to you; we cannot accept repayment." "But my mother paid back the money given to her by the officers." "Yes, my dear child; but your mother was not born in the regiment, and though we lent to her we give to you. We gave it, indeed, and did not expect to be repaid. I was a sub-lieutenant then, and I remember all. She insisted, and we were compelled to accept. With you it is different; we will insist, and you must not refuse. How do you like the sergeant-major of the canteen?" he went on. We all laughed at the queer title; no one had ever heard of such a rank. "Very well, monsieur le commandant." "Yes, yes; I think he will be good; if he is not, tell me." With that he went away. "I must be good, Giulia?" I said, as I lit the cigar again. "Yes; very good, my comrade; you must never offend me again." "Ah! you do not forget--perhaps you will never forget--and then, what is the good of being forgiven?" "I will forget; yes, I will never remember, unless you force me to." I promised that I should never offend her again, and she smiled and said that she believed me. "Nobody will enter here during the day," I told her, "and I will leave the box here; if I do not I must carry it everywhere with me, and that will be inconvenient." Giulia asked me why I should carry it about with me, and I told her that I should have no peace or ease of mind while it was out of my sight unless it was in the canteen, which was near so many sentinels. I also mentioned my fears for its safety the previous night and the precautions that I had taken. She was very sorry that I had been so restless, and advised me to leave it in future in the canteen. To this I demurred. I told her that if the box were there, I should be getting up at all hours of the night to come and look at the place, and perhaps I might be shot by a sentry. "But can we not find a hiding-place--some place that nobody could find even in broad daylight?" The idea struck me as a good one. We searched in all directions, and finally decided on an empty box half-full of straw that had contained bottles. By leaving this, of course, without the money, in full view of everybody during the day, no man who might enter at night would dream of searching it. Then I proposed that we should put only the money there every evening and that I should take away the empty box. "No, my friend, you shall not. Something might happen if the bad ones thought that the box was full; better lose the money than a good friend's life." "As it pleases you, my comrade; I will obey orders, then I cannot offend." That evening the canteen did a good trade, so good, indeed, that we--that is, Giulia and I--determined on sending for more wine and _eau-de-vie_. I went to the commandant in the morning and told him how affairs stood. He was glad to hear my report, and ordered me to make out the order and give it to him to be forwarded. I brought him the written order to a merchant in Oran and handed over eighteen hundred francs in cash. He had the money counted by a clerk, and then told me that he would see that Mademoiselle Julie's order and money were safely transmitted. I saluted and went away. As day after day passed Giulia and I became all the better friends. We openly showed our liking for each other. We were constantly meeting, sometimes by accident it is true, but oftener by unexpressed design, and, whenever we met, we always stopped to speak. I, being unattached to any company for battalion duties, had plenty of time on my hands; Giulia, of course, had nothing to do until evening, as I took good care that her place was swept and cleaned every morning by legionaries, who were only too glad to do this work for a glass of brandy and an ounce of tobacco apiece; thus we, as it were, could not help meeting so frequently. The others noticed and said nothing; it was tacitly understood at the time through the battalion that we were lovers, and yet we had never even spoken of love, and I had kissed her hand only twice. We were happy together, and that, for the moment, was enough for both. CHAPTER XVIII When Giulia and I met next morning at the canteen we found money and goods untouched. She did not ask me to take a glass of wine this time but filled it out, put it to her lips, and gave it to me. I drank the wine, lit a cigar, and asked her if she had any orders. We laughed at this, then she in her pretty way insisted that I was the sub-officer in charge and that her duty was to listen and obey, mine to command. I objected, saying that the lady's wishes had to be considered first. A good deal of harmless chat followed. I smoked the cigar, she deftly rolled a cigarette and lit it from my cigar, our faces were close together, and I told her it was well that cigarette and cigar were between us and also kept our lips engaged. But this was all fun, we had nothing to do; the men of the battalion, at least three companies of them, were out marching with knapsacks and pouches full, the fourth company was up to its eyes in work, some on guard, some cooking, some doing the necessary duties of a camp; I honestly believe that we two were the only idle, careless ones in the cantonment. As she flung away the end of a cigarette she said: "I have resolved to live here after a few days." "What!" I cried, "you to stay here alone, beautiful and with money?" She smiled back, as it were triumphantly, and replied: "Why not?" "But you are beautiful." "Thanks, my comrade." "And there will always be money in the house." "It is true." "And beauty and money, what will they not tempt men to do?" "I shall have a protector." This was a blow to me, and she must have seen it, for she said quickly, putting her hand on my arm, that the sergeant and his wife whom she had been staying with since her mother's death would keep house for her. "Oh," I cried, "I am so glad and I was so sorry." "I trust you, Jean," she answered; "will you not trust me?" I was not allowed to reply; she put a pretty finger on my lips, and said: "Yes, I know you trust me; why say to me what I know?" What pleasant days we had together! What fun and jesting and pretended rebukes! When the sergeant and his wife were installed in one of the rooms over the canteen, I used to stay until the call went for "Out lights," and then I groped my way in the darkness back to my quarters, challenged by every sentry on the road. Soon the battalion got to understand that _le jeune_ was always to be found going to his quarters at a certain hour, and the sentries used to look out especially for me. I, of course, had to answer their challenges and to give my reason for being out at night. I always said: "Visiting Sergeant M----." As I passed the scoundrels used to say: "Sergeant M----, is he married? Has Madame M---- a friend at her house?" And I dared not say anything in reply, because if I did all the battalion would be laughing at me and somebody else next day. You must not think that the men wished to hurt anyone's feelings. No; bad as they were, forgetful as they were of the ten commandments, they had no intention, not even the slightest, of offending Giulia or me. Giulia was the pet. Many envied me, I am sure, but they envied me because they thought things; had they known that Giulia and I were merely good friends, good comrades, and that no word of love had ever been said by either of us they would have laughed, and said: "Oh, boy and girl to-day, lover and mistress to-morrow," but that was because, with a lingering taste for good, they had quite given up expecting it here or hereafter. One thing I must say, the legionaries were very quiet in the canteen. They called for their drinks and went outside at once, and there smoked, drank, and sang as best pleased each. Sometimes a man would have no money and would wish for a drink in the morning or a pipeful of tobacco at night. He came to me, and said: "I want it, my sergeant-major; will you give it me?" "I can't give it," I used to say, "but I'll ask for it for you, and if you don't pay when you have money I shall have to pay instead and I'll never ask for you again." They did not always pay, but that was because a man's money was stopped--he was in hospital, perhaps, or in jail--but Giulia and I never minded that; the men who could pay did. To say the truth, no battalion in the world was so good or so comfortable as ours at that time. The men never drank out of the lines, therefore those who went too far could be easily carried away to bed. There was very little fighting, for no man, indeed, would strike a blow in Mademoiselle Julie's canteen, and if a blow is not struck soon, soldiers forgive and forget easily; moreover, if a man had no money he could get his bit of tobacco and, perhaps, his glass of _eau-de-vie_ without begging for it. Giulia never wrote down the name of a man she gave credit to; she said always: "It is not my honour, but yours, that is at stake." That phrase with us was worth all the ledgers in the world. One evening I was sitting on the edge of the counter talking about something or other to a corporal who had dropped in for a glass of wine and had asked me to join him in the drink. In spite of the difference in rank I consented, for I knew quite well that the social position that the corporal used to hold was very much higher than my own; as a matter of fact, the man had at one time a commission in the British army, and his father draws to this very day a big pension from the British Government But that is by the way. As we chatted Giulia listened and was interested; we spoke of some affairs of the battalion, and Giulia knew as much as we did of such things. We three were the only persons in the canteen. I had just told Giulia to refill the glasses, and she was about doing so when a man entered, a simple soldier. I did not know him at the time; I found out afterwards that he was a Hessian and bore the reputation of being taciturn and unsociable, thereby rendering himself an object of dislike to all. He called for a glass of brandy and drank it, then for another, which he sipped slowly, and tried to enter into conversation with Giulia. The corporal and I resumed the conversation interrupted by the Hessian's entrance, and Giulia evidently preferred to listen to us rather than to the new-comer. As he noted this he became rather angry, and made some remark about his money being as good as another's, and that canteen girls should be obliging to all customers. Giulia, who had a hot temper, told him at once to finish his drink and to take himself and his money elsewhere. The Hessian drank his brandy, and as he was leaving said that she knew the difference between a simple soldier and a sergeant-major, and if someone had no chevrons on his sleeve he would soon be taught that it was unmannerly to sit on a counter in the presence of a lady. My temper had been gradually rising and this was too much for me. I jumped down from the counter, took off my belt and bayonet, which I handed to Giulia, stripped off my tunic, and told the scamp that there were no chevrons on my shirt. He was astonished, and almost before he could put himself on his defence I had given him in quick succession right and left fists in the eyes. I followed up the attack vigorously, and in less than three minutes all the insolence was taken out of him and he begged for mercy. Then I kicked him out of the canteen and told him never again to enter it, put on my tunic and sat down, this time on a chair. "I must apologise," I said to Giulia; "I should not have sat on the counter; in one sense he was right. I will not ask pardon for quarrelling, for he offended you too." "You may sit where you like, my sergeant-major," Giulia replied; "I shall not be offended." "But I should not sit on the counter." "Sit where you wish," she repeated; "I shall be satisfied." "Même sur vos genoux, mademoiselle," said the English corporal, with a smile. Giulia blushed, laughed, and shook her head. I may finish here about the Hessian. The story was told by him that I had committed an unprovoked assault When the commandant heard this, he sent for me. I told the truth, and my version of the affair was corroborated by Giulia and the corporal. The commandant would take no official notice of the affair, but he privately admonished me that it was very wrong to take off my belt and tunic. "You should not have undressed, even partially," he said, "in the presence of a lady and an inferior." But he gave me no blame for the beating I gave the Hessian. Here I must explain the military meaning of being undressed. If a man is on duty and wearing a belt and bayonet, he is undressed if he takes them off. Should he be supposed to wear white trousers and white gaiters, he is undressed if he wears red trousers with black leggings. So one can understand that, when the commandant admonished me for being undressed in the presence of Giulia and the corporal, he referred quite as much to the taking off of my belt and bayonet as he did to the taking off of my coat. Soldiers have to be very particular about their clothing and equipments; this is quite right, as it tends to good discipline and order. When the canteen closed for the evening Giulia and I smoked our cigarettes as usual, while I sipped my glass of wine. We were rather silent, for I was thinking of the quarrel and its probable consequences; what Giulia thought of I cannot tell. At last I finished my cigarette, carefully extinguished the end for fear of fire, and drained my glass. I rose to go. Instead of shaking hands with me across the counter--for she had been sitting inside all the time, whilst I occupied a seat outside--Giulia came round to where I was and for the first time asked me what I thought would happen. "Oh, nothing, nothing," I replied; "what can happen? I had to do as I did; I surely could not allow any man to misconduct himself here?" "Yes, yes; but you took off your belt and tunic." "Oh, that will never be mentioned; why should the scoundrel talk of that?" "Yes; but he will talk of it, and there will be trouble--trouble for you on my account." "Well, if there is to be trouble for me I shall not mind it, since it will be on your account; were it on account of any other I should be vexed." "But you may lose your rank," she insisted. "I shall not mind, so long as they leave me on duty in the canteen." "But they may not leave you here; another may come." "That is true," I answered, "and that is the only thing I am afraid of." "You would like to stay here with me?" said Giulia, blushing as she spoke. "Always, always with you," I replied, and, putting my kepi on the counter, I took her in my arms and kissed her full upon the lips. Then we forgot all about the Hessian and thought only about ourselves. I have no mind to write all about our love story; people who have loved will understand, and those poor wretches who have never known what it is to love passionately and to be as passionately loved could never comprehend, were I to write till Doomsday about Giulia and myself. At last the time came for parting. Giulia told me that she should not sleep for thinking of what might happen as a result of the quarrel, but I succeeded in calming her fears. "Trust me," I told her; "I took the wisest course, though I did not think of that at the time. If I had allowed the rascal to go away unpunished, the commandant would call me a coward and say that I was unworthy to wear the military medal, and all the officers and men would agree with him. Now the worst that can be said is that I lost my temper and forgot my rank. Even that too will be pardoned, since they will easily see that I could not allow myself to be insulted in your presence without taking instant vengeance for the affront." She grew more composed as I spoke, and I felt more at ease; in comforting Giulia I comforted myself. I did not get the message that the commandant wished to see me until about three o'clock in the afternoon of the next day. All the morning I had enough to do to prevent Giulia from breaking down; her eyes showed that she had spent a restless night, a night of tears, but as the morning wore on she almost forgot her anxiety in my cheering words and more than cheering kisses. When a sergeant told me that I was wanted at the officers' quarters Giulia broke down completely. I kissed her once more, bade her be of good courage, and gave her over to the sergeant's wife, whose kindness and tender sympathy were of inestimable value to us both. The sergeant's wife was a good woman and deserved a better fate than that which was her lot afterwards; but then, what will you? It is only the good who suffer in this world; the bad are always to be found at the top of the wheel. Well, the commandant received me as I have already told, and after a kind admonition--how kind these officers that men fear so much can be when they like!--sent me away. I saluted, turned, walked a pace or two, and then set off running at the top of my speed to the canteen. I burst in the door, ran up the stairs, taking three steps at a time, and bounded with a loud cry of joy into the room where Giulia was weeping. I could say nothing, nothing intelligible at all events, but Giulia understood. So did the sergeant's wife, for she discreetly went away and left us to ourselves and our happiness. Things went on badly for the Hessian. He was always an ill-liked comrade, but this last affair was too bad indeed. All sympathised with Giulia and myself, and the sympathy was not merely on account of the chance a man had of getting tobacco and a glass of spirits when his pockets were empty. Oh no; the legionaries were glad that they could get a little credit, but then they always paid--that is, all paid except the poor devils whose money was stopped for some reason or other--and they were pleased with the canteen, pleased with Giulia, who had been born in the battalion, and I think they were not discontented on account of my position, for was not I a legionary like themselves? So the Hessian was not spoken to, or only spoken to to be cursed; if he replied he was beaten; if he complained, there were plenty to prove that he was a bad comrade and that it was impossible to soldier with him, and, unfortunately for himself, he had been known as an unsociable fellow for a long time. The end was that he volunteered for Tonquin, where there were some of ours still, and his captain was by no means sorry to be rid of him, for one can never know what may occur when a man is deservedly unpopular in the Legion and has not grace or tact enough to get back to favour with his comrades. As for Giulia and me, life was idyllic. We did not mind the laughing jests of our comrades; they never went too far. There was a leaven of the gentleman in the battalion, and this leaven leavened all the mass. Then the really bad ones were afraid; the example of the Hessian was too fresh in their minds. But, indeed, all were kind and agreeable. That Giulia and I should be lovers had been obvious to all others long before we ourselves thought of being such to one another, and when the legionaries noticed that she lived for me alone, just as all my thoughts were alone hers, they kept their coarse jokes to themselves and were as polite to us as if we were far higher than they in social position. Some of the songs were not of a moral kind, but as the evening concert always took place outside the canteen Giulia was not supposed to hear, and, indeed, when she did hear she did not always understand. When she did comprehend she said nothing; one cannot be a _cantinière_ in the Legion and a prude. At this time Giulia and I were always together. Certainly while the canteen was open I was outside the counter, often making one of a party of sergeants who came to drink in comrade-like fashion with one another; at other times merely going around to see that there was no disorder--well, no more disorder and abandonment than are reasonable in a canteen where belts are off and tongues wag freely. I very seldom had any trouble, most of the legionaries kept within bounds, and those who felt disposed to give a loose rein to the desire of ardent spirits were prevented from doing so by a constant lack of money. Sometimes, however, when some Russian or Prussian or Austrian had received money from Europe there was a little danger of a free fight, and I, who had been in the encounter at Three Fountains, did not like these things. I had told Giulia about that trouble and she was just as concerned as I, but she was concerned for my safety and my rank, while I was anxious about her shop and herself. Any man can start a row--oh, it is quite easy, I assure you--but it is not every man that can stop one. Besides, I remembered how the huts were torn down at Three Fountains and the Russian's advice to the old soldier sutler: "Take your goods and madame away." The advice about madame seemed especially applicable to Giulia, and yet I knew she would stay by me, and it was my duty to stay by the canteen. One day the English corporal whom I have mentioned came to the canteen and asked Giulia to take care of some money for him. Giulia refused point-blank, but said that he might speak to me. When I learned what he wished me to do I at once saw the reasonableness of the request, inasmuch as no man would like to keep so large a sum of money as the corporal had in his own possession in a hut. The Englishman had just received from home a Bank of England note for £100, and many a simple soldier would kill him for such a sum. But, one may object, how negociate such a billet in such a place? Oh, no one could do that except the owner, or someone like Giulia, who would change it for him in the regular way of business; but many a man was nearing the end of his five years' service, and a Bank of England note could be easily hidden for a time and in the end changed in Paris. One hundred pounds!--twenty-five hundred francs!--why, it was a fortune. I said that I would take the note and give him a receipt for it, and that, as he drew money from Mademoiselle Julie, he could give receipts until the full amount was withdrawn. He thanked me, gave me the note, took a receipt, and immediately applied to Giulia in my presence for a hundred francs. She gave him the money at my request and he gave me an acknowledgment. That evening his squad was merry; he had given them fifty francs to spend, the other fifty he spent with his brother corporals. On the following day he asked me about the stock in the canteen. I told him that there was not at the time enough to justify him in giving a spree to a section, but that in less than a week he could stand treat to the battalion if he liked. "Oh no; not the battalion, only the company." "I understand," said I; "I know that you cannot go outside your own company, but I spoke of the battalion merely to show you Mademoiselle Julie's resources." "I see," the corporal replied; "well, tell me when you are ready, and my comrades shall enjoy an evening's carouse." Let me now tell about the money. Of course, it was Giulia's, not mine, and she kept it in her money box, which was snugly hidden in her own room in a place that no one knew of except ourselves. Even the sergeant's wife did not know it. She never entered Giulia's room except on invitation. Giulia herself kept the place as it ought to be, sweeping it, dusting the furniture, and having everything as neat and clean as it could be in a palace. Once a week she gave me the key. I went there with a couple of privates--of course, she then took the box away--the legionaries with me removed everything to another place and washed out the room and left it with windows and door open for a couple of hours. They then returned, replaced the furniture, got a couple of drinks, a couple of cigars and a franc, and went away satisfied. But this is mere domestic economy. Giulia also kept the receipt for the hundred francs. But, one will say, why not transact the business without troubling me? Well, the amount was so large and the money was so strange that she wished me to settle everything for her, as I was, in her opinion, the one man in the world who knew everything and was always right. Again, she knew how much I prized her trust, and so was glad to pay me a delicate compliment. Moreover, we were so closely united to each other now that it would seem to so gentle and confiding, yet high-spirited a girl as she was a breach of faith for her to engage in such a transaction without my knowledge and consent. Yet when I asked Giulia why she had not taken the money from the corporal at once, she only answered: "I don't know; but I would not." Then she kissed me, and said: "I will never take anything, unless you know about it and are satisfied." What a sum of happiness the events, even the very words, of our lives made at this time! Ah, well! the sum was soon to be added up, and the total not exceeded, for ever. About five days after my last conversation with the English corporal the new stock arrived. It had cost altogether about two thousand francs, and we--that is, Guilia and I--were sure to make at least five or six hundred francs profit. When we ordered the stuff we expected that it would last for some time, but now, knowing the corporal's resources and intention, we settled that it would all be sold within a week. We were not disappointed; in fact, the day after it arrived we had to send an order for a similar quantity to our agent at Oran. "I see that the new goods have arrived," said the Englishman to me as I met him on the parade-ground. "Yes," I replied. "I have been looking for you. If you tell me now how much you want I can get it, and you can write out the receipt." "Thanks, my sergeant-major; but you are a man of experience in these things. You were at Three Fountains; is it not so?" "Yes," I answered, laughing. "Then will you tell me how much I ought to have for the entertainment of my company?" "Oh, five hundred francs will do well, but seven or eight hundred will really be a generous amount to spend." "Let me be very generous then; get me a thousand." "Very well; but remember there will be change left. Let your squad understand that they will have the spending of that, so shall you have sentries guarding your sleep." "You are right, my sergeant-major, you are right; I am obliged to you for the hint. Will not Mademoiselle Julie give us a glass of wine, so that we may clink our glasses together?" "Oh, certainly. Nobody amongst the officers troubles about the canteen. One can generally get a glass of _eau-de-vie_ or _vin ordinaire_ at any reasonable hour. The commandant knows that no man is given more than he can safely bear, and what is the use of being strict in such a place as this?" The corporal knew this. If a man wanted a drink at any hour when the canteen was supposed to be shut, he could speak to me and I could get it for him. He did not, however, enter the canteen; he had to take it, and that quickly, at a window at the back. As a rule, men only wanted a glass of brandy in the morning--about half-a-dozen at most; these were the men who had had too much drink the evening before and who possessed or borrowed the necessary coppers in the morning. As the English corporal and I took our drinks together at the little window, I told him the true story of Three Fountains. Giulia listened with interest, though she had heard all about it before. Once I asked her to refill the glasses. She said: "Do not continue until I return; I wish to hear it all again." Of course, I waited for her return and then proceeded with my tale. When I had finished, I said that I hoped there would not be any such work here. "Oh no," replied the corporal; "not if I can help it." "You must not make them drunk," said Giulia. "No, no, Madame Julie; I give you my word of honour." It was the first time that she had been addressed as madame. She blushed a rosy red, turned her head aside for a moment, and gave me one swift glance of----Oh, I knew well what it meant and how it pleased me, but I will say no more. The corporal was a gentleman and went away at once. He finished his drink, raised his kepi, and said adieu. There was a good deal of boisterous mirth that evening at the canteen and around it. A couple of men did strike each other, but before any serious damage was done, I had both under guard and on the road to the guard-room. The rest took the hint; they saw that fighting meant loss of the drink and fun of the evening, and a night in the guard-room and punishment in the morning. A few men who were evidently overcome, or nearly so, by the effects of the liquor were carried away to bed by their comrades, and, taken all in all, the evening passed away satisfactorily. Next morning, however, nearly a hundred men turned up for _eau-de-vie_, and all had money. The corporal had been judiciously generous; everyone was pleased. The Englishman gave one more spree, three nights after, to his company, but this second one did not cost him more than four hundred francs. Then he spent two hundred francs one evening with his section; what was left was kept for his squad. In acting as he did he followed the custom of the Legion, but I have already said enough about that. As he was drawing the last fifty francs I said to him in Giulia's presence. "Monsieur le caporal, you have spent your money as it should be spent, but it may be a long time until you are rich again. Do not hesitate if you want a litre of wine or some brandy or tobacco and have no money. There has been a great profit in a short time; whenever you feel inclined come and have your share of it." "Yes," said Giulia; "you will be always welcome, whether your pockets are full or empty." "I thank you both," the Englishman replied, "and I like and respect you too much not to take advantage now and then of your generous offer." "Come as often as you like," I said; "you will always find a welcome, and that not merely on account of the profit." "Yes," said Giulia; "that is true." "I will come," the corporal answered, "but not very often; such a welcome is too good to be worn out." He lifted his kepi to Giulia, bowed, and went away. He did not come very often without money, only now and then, as he had said, but, you see, he was very proud. CHAPTER XIX Soon afterwards some important changes took place in the battalion. We were ordered to prepare a draft of four hundred officers and men for the East, and in lieu of these we received a corresponding number of recruits and veterans sent home. The changes in the officers were many, for, in addition to those who went as a matter of course with the draft, others volunteered for foreign service and were accepted. As far as I was concerned, the officer most to be regretted was the adjutant. The man who went was always kind and had ever a pleasant word for Giulia and for me; the one who replaced him was destined to be our greatest enemy. We could not guess this at the time, and naturally thought that all things would go on as usual, but it was not long before we were cruelly undeceived. The new adjutant was a stout, thick-set man of about thirty-five years. He had seen a good deal of service both in Algeria and Tonquin, and was undoubtedly a very smart soldier and a most capable man for performing the duties of his rank. That is all one can say in his favour. He was harsh, even tyrannical; he never spared a man's feelings, and his tongue could cut like a whip-lash. All the legionaries, from sergeant-major down to simple soldier, feared and hated him; before he had been in the battalion a fortnight we, who had been the most joyous and careless fellows on earth, every man pleased with himself and with his comrades, became the most sullen and dogged lot in the world. There was just as much drinking as ever, but the singing, the _camaraderie_, the easy give-and-take feeling that used to prevail, were all gone. Moreover, the men drank more brandy and less wine, and, as I pointed this out to Giulia, I said: "Carissima, there will be bad work soon; somebody's blood will flow, and then there will be an execution." She shuddered as she replied: "How I wish that that bad man were sent away! Before he came we were all happy, now I, even I, am gloomy and troubled; I am oppressed by some foreboding that I cannot understand." I could enter into her feelings, for I too had anxious thoughts, not for Giulia or myself, indeed, but for the other legionaries. I felt that an outbreak of some kind would occur, but the chief trouble was to persuade myself that it would be merely a rash act on the part of one man, who would free all from tyranny and take the punishment by himself, but as the days wore on I, who knew the Legion by heart, could see that there was a far greater chance of a number of men being concerned in the _émeute_. One thing delayed action, the newcomers and the rest had not sufficiently fraternised--four hundred strangers are too many for any battalion to assimilate quickly. One morning half-a-dozen men were having a nip of brandy each at a little window at the back of the canteen; I was standing a little apart, and Giulia was passing out the glasses. Suddenly the new adjutant came round the corner and sternly asked the meaning of giving out drink at such an hour. Nobody could reply. We all knew that the commandant winked at the business, we all knew too that the canteen should not be open at that time, but then no harm had ever come of it, no man ever got more that one _petite verre_, and surely that would rather help a man than hurt him if he wanted it. But how could I, the one chiefly addressed, say all that? Oh no; I had to be silent and take my abuse as best I could, and truly the adjutant was abusive. He was still speaking like a brute when Giulia, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, broke in, and said: "The sergeant-major has nothing to do with it, it is I alone who am to blame." The adjutant saluted her politely and replied that he understood that I was in military charge of the canteen, but, even had I nothing to do with it, I was acting in a most disgraceful fashion when I allowed these pigs to get drunk so early in the morning. "The soldiers are not pigs," answered Giulia, "and they are not drunk; no man ever gets more than a _petite verre_ at this hour." "Then it is usual to supply drink so soon," the scoundrel said; "ah! the commandant must hear of this." Then he took my belt and bayonet and sent me to my own room, to remain there under arrest; as for the others, he merely wrote down their names and ordered them away. When they had gone--it was long afterwards that I learnt this--he tried to begin a conversation with Giulia, but he had scarcely uttered an endearing word when she put down the window and walked away. She was right, and the scoundrel was wrong, but he made her and me suffer for it. Just as I was expecting my morning coffee, I heard a tap at the door, and cried "Come in." Giulia entered carrying a tray with coffee and rolls and butter. I took the tray from her and put it on the floor. There was no table, of course; in a bachelor sergeant's room nothing, indeed, but the camp-bed and a shelf or two for my equipments. Then I kissed her, and said: "You spoke bravely this morning; I am glad of it I should like to say what you said, but they would punish me." "Are you pleased?" she asked. "Yes, carissima mia; and all the battalion will be pleased when they hear about it." "I do not care about the battalion if you are content." "Yes, yes, ma belle; I am very content. Is he not a rascal?" "Oh," said Giulia, "I hate him; all the trouble comes from him; somebody must kill him or we shall never again have peace." "Somebody will kill him," I answered; "you may rest assured of that." "But not you, not you," she cried; "promise me, not you." "Certainly not," I replied; "why should I kill him when there are so many others who have more grievances than I? Moreover, I have no desire to be shot; I am too happy here with you to wish to leave you. Heaven for me is here." She was satisfied with this, and insisted on my tasting the coffee. "Is it nice?" she asked. I smiled, and said that it was very nice. "Does it taste well?" "Oh yes; I never drank any coffee I liked so well." The truth is, Giulia had put a glass of _eau-de-vie_ into the coffee, and I felt that I wanted it after the scene in the morning. How kind, how thoughtful she was! I told her so over and over again before she left, and when she did go, she said with a pretty way of command that she had: "Expect me in an hour, and do not lose your temper with anyone until I come back; there is trouble enough already." I promised and she went away. Giulia, as she had promised, came back in an hour. She brought me a little wine, for she knew that very soon I should be in front of the commandant, and a glass of wine does summon up one's courage. A glass of wine before an interview, a glass of brandy before a battle--that is sound sense. Very soon a couple of soldiers of my own rank came for me. I gave them the remainder of the liquor, and they were very pleased. "I hope you won't get into serious trouble," said the Alsatian. "Not at all," chimed in the Spaniard; "he'll get off, but there must be no more drinking out of hours." "I will take care of that," said Giulia; "will you tell your companies?" They promised to do so, and we three went away, I in the centre without belt or bayonet, and Giulia followed, after locking the door of my room. When we came before the commandant one of the escort took off my kepi. The adjutant was present, looking as stiff and unimpressionable as a block of wood. When the accusation was read out I was asked if I had anything to say. I replied that I had not. The commandant considered and considered and considered. He walked up and down for a few moments, then stood still for a second or two, and resumed his walk. After about five minutes he said: "You are young, you have the military medal; I do not like to punish you." Here the adjutant interposed and asked permission to make a statement. When this was granted, he raked up the whole story of the quarrel at Three Fountains, as if everyone did not know about it. He laid stress upon the fact that I had been one of the ringleaders in that affair, and ended by asking was such an one as I fit to look after a canteen. Then the commandant said: "When you came first to the battalion there was a sergeant-major in every company, and I could not find a place for you. Most commandants would have made you simple sergeant of a section. Will you now consent to give up one chevron and become sergeant? If you do, I will say no more about this affair." I jumped at the offer, the more readily as nothing was said about taking me from the society of Giulia. "Very well," said the commandant; "present yourself here to-morrow morning with only one chevron on your sleeve." My kepi, belt and bayonet were returned to me. Having put them on, I saluted and walked away a free man again. Giulia was waiting for me a short distance off. I told her all about the matter as we walked towards my quarters. When we arrived there I said: "Get your scissors and cut off the chevron." "No, no," she cried; "I will never cut it off." "Then give me your scissors and I will do it." But she would not give her scissors for that purpose. So I had to take off my tunic, and with the point of a little Spanish knife which I used for cutting tobacco--these Spanish knives are very handy little things, for one cannot always wear a bayonet, and one never knows how trouble may arise--I ripped the upper chevron from my sleeve. I laid it on my camp-bed. Giulia took it, kissed it, and put it in her bosom. "I would not cut it off," she said, "but I will sew it on again, when the time comes." That time never came. Giulia went away to see about some things in the canteen. In less than five minutes she was back again, looking as angry as a tigress at bay. When she grew a little composed, she told me that the sergeant who stayed with his wife in the room over the bar had been appointed to the charge of the place and that I was to be assigned to his section in No. 4 Company in the morning. This was most unpleasant news, but I comforted her by saying that it really made no difference, except that I could not now go to see her at the canteen except during the hours when it was open, but that I should do my best to see her as often as possible outside duty hours. "They cannot separate us anyway," I said; "you are all in all to me and I am all in all to you." So she relieved her sorrow by a good cry, and then sat, quite quiet, on my lap. After all, the great thing was that nobody could part us altogether. Next morning things turned out as Giulia had said. I was posted for duty to the first section of No. 4 Company instead of the sergeant whose wife had given shelter and protection to Giulia after her mother's death, and he was assigned to look after the canteen. I very soon fell into the routine duties of a sergeant. The section was handed over to me in first-class order and temperament save for one thing--the soldiers were discontented with the tyranny of the adjutant. This did not affect me much, as they were more or less inclined to look upon me as a martyr, and my reduction in rank was a fresh source of ill-humour, showing, as it did, another proof of the mischievous malevolence of the adjutant. I took, or pretended to take, the matter easily. I did my duty as it should be done during what one may call business hours, but when the work of the day was over I was good comrade to all. It was lucky that I made so many friends at the time; I wanted them--every one--very soon. While I was acting as sergeant, the adjutant made several attempts to get into the good graces of Giulia, but she repulsed him on every occasion. At last he asked her point-blank why she would not even acknowledge his salute, and she told him bluntly that she disliked him and that she wished him in Tonquin or in his grave--anywhere, so long as he was out of the battalion. Now Giulia was passionate even for an Italian, and as she spoke she raised her voice, unthinkingly, indeed, and some soldiers going with a corporal to relieve the sentries heard what she said as they passed by. The adjutant saw that they heard; he knew that he was hated by all, and he felt that in a couple of hours the whole battalion would be secretly enjoying his rebuff. With a curse he turned on his heel. Afterwards he neglected Giulia but paid more than enough of attention to me. He cursed me openly on parade, he found fault with every man in my section, not a buckle was bright, not a strap was clean, the greatcoats were badly folded, the bayonets were dull and the rifles were foul. In short, every fault that a man can find was found by him, but, be it well understood, only in the absence of the captain and other officers of the company. When the adjutant had charge of the parade and the sergeants commanded the companies, then the men of my section knew that a bad quarter of an hour awaited them. The other legionaries noted this too. They were glad, because it was quite obvious now that the majority of the battalion might endure the adjutant's harshness patiently, for were not the men of No. 1 section of No. 4 Company the really aggrieved ones? It was tacitly understood in the battalion that the avenger would come from us. All this time Giulia and I met every afternoon just before the opening of the canteen, and afterwards for ten minutes or so when the canteen was closed for the day. While the place was open I was always to be found there, unless I was on guard or had some duty to perform that kept me away. The other sergeants had easy lives. Every extra piece of work was passed on to me by the adjutant, and let me say here that the adjutant is the worst enemy a sub-officer can have. It's bad to be disliked by the commandant, because he will block promotion; the captain's enmity is hard to bear, because he can snarl three or four times a day; but the adjutant can play the very devil with a man in a thousand ways. Imagine asking a man who has made a slight mistake in making out the orders of the day: "Can you read and write?" "Yes, sir." "Well," comes the reply before more than a hundred soldiers, "take care in future to read and write correctly. Go back to your place, you stupid pig." And as the man departs he is suddenly ordered to halt and face right-about, and then asked: "Who promoted you sergeant?" And before he has time to answer, the remark is made, loudly enough to be over all the parade: "There is not a man in the camp less fitted to wear the gold chevron than you. To your place, rascal!" If Giulia happened to be passing through the parade ground it was worse. The abuse I received--and remember there is no redress in the Legion unless one settles matters for himself with an unexpected bullet or bayonet-thrust, and then there will be an execution--the abuse, I say, that I received made my blood often almost boil with rage. I could not have endured it but for the sweet company of Giulia; with her in the evening I forgot the wrongs and insults of the day. Truly there is no solace for a troubled spirit like the society of the loving and beloved one; her sweet sympathy more than makes up for all. The sergeant of No. 2 section of my Company was a German Pole, a good-humoured fellow, ready for any fun, except when the adjutant's eyes were fixed upon him, but withal a good soldier. His time was nearly up, and he meant to go to Paris, and there make a living somehow, when he should be at last done with the Foreign Legion. He and I were on very friendly terms, and, indeed, I was oftener with him than with any other sergeant of the corps. One evening--it was almost his last evening with us--he drank more than was good for him, and awoke in the morning with a headache and a sick stomach. I saw that he could not drink his morning coffee, and asked him if he would not like a glass of _eau-de-vie_. "Yes," he replied; "but one cannot get that now, this cursed adjutant has spoiled all." "Never mind," I answered, "I will get it for you." "Take care, my comrade, you will get into more trouble, and are not things bad enough with you already?" "So bad," I said, "that they cannot be worse." And I took my kepi and sallied forth. As luck would have it Giulia was sitting at the open window of her bedroom, and when I beckoned to her she came out on the cantonment square to meet me. I told her that a poor devil was ill and wanted some brandy. "All right," she said, "I will get some and give it to you at your own quarters." I returned, told the Pole that he should soon receive some medicine, and waited for Giulia at the door. Now either the adjutant must have observed all this, or some scoundrel must have told him about it, for just as I turned into the bachelor sergeants' quarters with the drink and Giulia went away again towards the canteen, the adjutant came running up at the top of his speed, crying out: "Halt, halt, sergeant; what have you got there?" I was forced to deliver up the little flask. He uncorked it, smelled, and said: "Very well, very well, consider yourself a prisoner. Ah, Mademoiselle Giulia," he went on, "what excuse can your lover make now?" "Go away, Giulia," I said. "Silence; to your room, rascal!" roared the angry adjutant. "Good-bye, my well-beloved," said Giulia. "Out of my way, pig" (this to the adjutant). And she walked across the square with the air and tread of an empress. The adjutant gnashed his teeth and bit his moustache with rage; he hissed rather than said to me: "You, rascal, shall pay for this, and this payment, understand well, is only the first; others are sure to come afterwards." I turned on my heel and entered my apartment. The Pole was very sorry, and would, I believe, have told about his part in the affair, but I pointed out, as others also did, that there was no use in his getting into trouble, as by so doing he could not help me in the least. Everyone saw quite plainly that I should certainly be reduced to the rank of corporal, if not lower, and all were, or professed to be, sorry for my misfortune. To cut the tale short, I may as well say at once that I got my choice of resigning my position as sergeant of a section and becoming a mere corporal of a squad or of going before a court-martial. Of course I resigned, for the offence of obtaining liquor at a wrong hour after the previous warning could not be overlooked, and, as likely as not, a court-martial might send me back to the ranks, a thing I had no desire for. The first time I passed the adjutant with the two red chevrons on my sleeve instead of the single gold one he smiled with an unholy joy, but the smile changed to a scowl as he saw the kiss of welcome that I received from Giulia at the door of the canteen. It was well for all the other squads in the section that I was reduced. They were now treated not worse, certainly, than the rest of the legionaries, but my little squad of sixteen men had to bear the brunt of the adjutant's anger. I was very concerned at this, and told Giulia. She--clever and good girl--at once found out a means of in part compensating them, but she did not tell me, and she strictly warned them not to tell me either. They--poor devils--were only too glad to keep her counsel, and it was by a mere accident that I learned the truth afterwards. Her plan was this: She told the men of my squad that they could come to the canteen with or without money and that they need not be afraid of a refusal on her part to supply them, as far as they could reasonably expect, with drink and tobacco. Now a legionary will stand a good deal of abuse during the day if he knows that brandy and other comforts await him for nothing in the evening; and, moreover, it was evident to all that no one was especially aimed at except me, and that, when No. 7, let us say, of the squad was told that he was a dirty pig, he was merely getting the benefit of remarks that were really meant for me. When the adjutant had done abusing the men one by one he gathered, as it were, all the abuse together and hurled it at my head, and often those rough legionaries, smarting as they were under their own vexations, used to feel for me more than for themselves. I said to them one day after the devil had left the hut, where he had kicked about our equipments, swearing that we did not know the meaning of good order, that I would never report any man for anything: "No matter how bad we may be," I continued, "we are abused and sworn at. We are all punished for the evil we do and the evil that we don't even think of." "I hope," said a simple soldier, a Sicilian, "that the devil will be dead soon." He looked significantly at me, and then at the others, but, as I said nothing, the implied proposal went by the board. But we all began to think seriously from that day forth. Many a stolen interview I had with Giulia when all in the cantonments were asleep. I could rarely see her now, for the adjutant found me plenty of work for my leisure time, and I took care to be in the hut every evening lest there should be a fight amongst the comrades of the squad. One must not imagine that they were bad comrades to one another. On the contrary, they were very good indeed, but when men are angry at being abused and sworn at without cause and without mercy they will easily quarrel among themselves. So I watched the squad carefully, and more than once stopped a dispute that might have suddenly led to a general fight, and very soon the simple soldiers saw that I was taking care of them for their sakes as well as for my own. At first they were inclined to resent this, but common-sense prevailed, and they acknowledged--tacitly only, of course--that I was in the right. One night about twelve o'clock I was speaking to Giulia at the little window at the back of the canteen. We had been talking for half-an-hour of various matters and the time had passed quickly for both. I was about kissing her good-night when I heard a step behind me. In a second I was out of Giulia's arms and had faced about. Instinctively my hand sought my left side, where the bayonet was. "Who is there?" said the well-known voice of the adjutant. "Caporal Le Poer de la quatrième compagnie, monsieur," I replied. "What are you doing here? Why are you not with your squad? Who is in charge at the hut?" I said nothing, for I had nothing to say. I almost felt the chevrons take flight from my arm. I had sense enough, however, to take my hand from the hilt of the bayonet. Things were bad enough as they were. The adjutant marched me to where a sentinel was on duty. He gave me in charge to this man and went to the guard-hut. Very soon a corporal and two men of the guard arrived, and I was taken to the prisoners' quarters, to rest as well as I could on a plank bed until morning. When I was brought before the commandant the charges were read out against me of having been absent without leave or necessity from the hut where my squad lay, of having left no one in charge while I was away, and of going to the canteen in the middle of the night. The commandant looked very serious, and, I daresay, so did I. What I had done was good to do, but bad to be charged with doing. Any other officer coming upon me as the adjutant had come would have passed on and not minded; even the commandant, I am sure, would pretend not to see. But when the charge was made and its truth admitted, then discipline compelled that proper notice should be taken of it. I was not sent before a court-martial. I was permitted to resign both chevrons, and so I went back to my company a simple soldier of the second class. I said to Giulia as we talked that evening at the end of the counter in the canteen--the other legionaries, I must mention, were decent enough to keep out of earshot--that I should be very careful now, as I had no more chevrons to lose, and an ugly punishment was sure to follow the next charge. "But for you, carissima," I went on, "I should volunteer again for Tonquin." Giulia at this began to weep quietly, but I soon reassured her. I told her that I would never go anywhere willingly unless she came with me, and then she quickly dried her tears. "You must take good care, Jean, of everything, and above all things, you must never allow yourself to lose your temper. Yes," she continued, "no matter what is said to you, no matter how hard it may be to bear, control yourself and all will be well. Come every evening, and I will comfort you for all the troubles and insults of the day." I promised faithfully to follow her advice, and though oftentimes it was hard to keep my temper, yet the remembrance of my promise and the thought that every minute that passed brought the time of our next meeting nearer made me feel, if not supremely happy, at least well content to endure with outward equanimity the curses, epithets and abuse that were my daily lot. I had one other consoling thought, some day surely the devil would be struck down by an irritated man, and he would in all probability be taken away in the midst of his sins. That was the constant prayer of the legionaries of the battalion. May he die, and die soon, and may he go safely home to his father, who is in hell. Now that I was as low as I could be in the Legion, the adjutant, sergeants and corporals led me a terrible life. There was no work too hard or too dirty for me; I did twice as much camp-cleaning as any other; my spare time was encroached upon; and I found myself almost every night a prisoner in the guard-house. The adjutant had the right of making me what one may call a prisoner at large for a week, and longer, at a time. All he had to do was to pretend to find fault with me for laziness, though I was an active soldier; for dirt, though I was a clean one; for carelessness, though I, for my own sake as well as for Giulia's, was the most careful soldier in the battalion. Then, when all the day's duties were over I could not go, as others went, to the canteen. I had to report myself at the guard-room and enter the prisoners' quarters, where I might stretch myself on the plank bed in the clothes which I had worn all the day, until the call went next morning to summon me to another dreary round of hard work and hurtful words. No one must wonder that the sergeants and corporals ill-treated me; the adjutant would have ill-treated them, if they had shown me any signs of favour or even of fair-play. Moreover, it's the way of the world to kick the man that's down, and human nature is the same in the Legion as elsewhere. I should have become quite reckless but for the love and kindly sympathy of Giulia. With her I almost forgot my sorrows, and the firm assurance I had that nothing could lower me in her eyes, and that no man in all the world could steal her heart from me, was my great safeguard in the moments, and they were many, of temptation. The rest of the legionaries watched with interest the conduct of the adjutant; they felt that some time or other the crisis would arrive; it was agreed on all sides that I was the predestined avenger. CHAPTER XX Though I did my best to keep out of trouble, still I could not help now and then breaking the regulations. Other soldiers broke them far oftener than I, but I knew quite well that the sergeants and corporals were all watching me in order to bring me up before the commandant on some charge or other, and so curry favour with the dreaded adjutant. Now it would not be fair to blame them for this, every sub-officer naturally preferred that the simple soldier should get into trouble rather than himself; and, moreover, the man who could get me punishment was sure to be left alone by the tyrant of the battalion. I certainly felt a bit sore about it at times, and Giulia, to whom I communicated my suspicions, was very angry indeed. The first serious affair in which I was involved, as a simple soldier, occurred one evening in the hut where my squad lay. I was not a prisoner at large at the time, and so had not to go to the guard-hut, report myself for the night, and then take up my quarters in the cells where the prisoners were kept under guard. As I sat on the edge of my bed-cot, smoking and thinking, an Austrian came in, evidently under the influence of drink. This man was as pleasant a companion as one could wish for when sober, but when drunk--he was not often so, I must confess--his disposition underwent a change; he became violent, abusive and quarrelsome. The first person he laid eyes on when he passed the door was myself, and towards me he accordingly staggered. I cannot recall what he said first, but I know that I was angry and returned a very sharp answer. He then began to curse and revile me, and I am afraid that my language in reply was as "frequent and painful and free" as his. The corporal of the squad came in as we were warming to our work and saw how matters were going. He left the hut at once, and, mean hound that he was, listened just outside the door. Very soon he returned, and, ordering some other soldiers to arrest us, marched us both to the guard hut, and left us there for the night in charge of the sergeant of the guard. In the morning the Austrian, who had slept off the effects of the drink, was very sorry. I told him that it was a pity he had not fallen out with someone else, as I was certain to get a heavy sentence. "You know," I went on, "the corporal will put the affair in as bad a light as possible for me, because by doing so he will have the adjutant as his good friend; and, besides, I have been up before the commandant so often of late and have been reduced in rank so much that he will consider me a soldier of very bad character and will punish me as such. In any case you are a soldier of the first class, and at most he can only take away your chevron." "That is true, my comrade; I am very sorry, that cursed brandy made a fool of me." "Well, it can't be helped now," I said; "I bear no malice." "Thanks, my friend, thanks," the Austrian replied; "but Mademoiselle Julie, she will never forgive me." "So much the better," I told him; "then you will get no more brandy, and so will keep out of prison." He sighed heavily and said no more: I could see that he was really sorry at last. At the usual hour all the prisoners made their appearance before the commandant. The Austrian and I were the last to be tried, and we could see that our judge was in bad humour that morning and unsparing of abuse and punishment alike. When our turn came we presented ourselves before him, bareheaded, without belts, and guarded by an armed escort. When the charge had been read out the corporal and some men gave evidence in support of it, and we were asked, the Austrian first, as he was a soldier of the first class, what we had to say in reply. Neither could say anything, and truly, unless we had a very good defence indeed, it was best to say nothing, for the commandant, a good man in many ways, was very short-tempered, and was evidently in a rage that morning. The Austrian was condemned to lose his chevron, and then the officer turned to deal with me. "You have been here often of late," he said, very mildly to all appearance, but I knew what that sudden mildness meant. I said nothing. "Can you not speak?" he almost roared. "Yes, sir." "You have been here often, very often--too often; is it not so?" "Yes, sir." "Do you think that I have nothing to do except to listen to complaints against you?" Again he spoke very quietly. "No, sir." "Then why are you here almost every day?" "I cannot avoid it, sir." "Well, well, it is necessary that you learn a lesson. Four hours _en crapaudine_. Remember, remember well, not to appear here again soon." Now I have already described this punishment, and have said something about its effects, as I heard about them from others, and as I saw men when they were put in it, but I was now for the first time to feel them for myself. The adjutant did a very mean thing, and many men who would not mind seeing me _en crapaudine_, not through any dislike of me but simply because they were used to the sight of prisoners so placed, severely blamed him for it, and blamed him the more severely as they felt that this new system of punishment might become the custom of the battalion. Everyone feared for himself, one may say. Now it was usual to keep a soldier sentenced to this discipline in the guard-hut until the great heat of the day had passed and then to put him in a certain portion of the parade-ground trussed up like a dead fowl. The adjutant, however, did not allow this to be done with me. He came down to the guard-hut a little before noon, had me taken from the cells to the place of punishment, and there, my ankles being fastened together and my hands manacled behind my back, I was forced upon my knees, my body pressed back until the centres of both pairs of irons were joined as closely together as possible, and so every joint of my body put upon the rack. But this was not all. When I was safely _en crapaudine_ the brute knocked my kepi off with his stick, and so I was left in a posture of agony, exposed with bare head to all the torturing rays of an African sun. Now one can understand why my comrades were indignant; now one can see why they dreaded punishment in the noonday hours, for even if the kepi were left on a man's head, he would in all likelihood cast it off by his own struggles, and be sure, be very sure, that no one would dare to approach to replace it. It was replaced for me, I grant, and replaced more than once, and other things were done that helped me in some sort to bear my punishment, but Giulia was not amenable to military law as we others were, and even the adjutant dared not fall out openly with her, for all Frenchmen, including even the commandant, naturally side with the woman in a quarrel, especially when the woman is _figlia del reggimento_. I was not long _en crapaudine_ before I realised to the full the awful agony that men endure when they are truly and literally on the rack. Pains were quickly felt by me at the knees and at the ankles and at the wrists. My hands, forced backwards into an unnatural position, dragged heavily upon my neck, and the pain, beginning there, travelled down gradually to the shoulder-joints, so that from neck to ankles there was not a joint without its share of torment. Soon afterwards the small of my back became involved in the general dislocation, and then it seemed to me as if a heavy weight had been placed upon my abdomen and was squeezing the lower part of my body out of all proportion. Then a tight band, as it were, was fastened on my chest; I seemed to feel my ribs crushed in upon my heart, my breath came and went quickly, and, to complete the agony, my forehead began to feel constricted, and shooting pains ran from temple to temple, as if some demon from the lower regions were thrusting and thrusting and thrusting again a red-hot knife through my brain. At this time I must have begun to cry out, or at least to groan, for I was suddenly aware of a rough hand grasping me by the head and another pulling down my underjaw, some hard substance was shoved into my mouth, and in spite of all the pain that I was enduring my senses for a moment came back fully to me. I knew that I was gagged and that the first part of my punishment was over, for men generally drift into insensibility when the gag is applied; there will be an occasional lifting of the eyelids, a spasmodic shaking of the head, and that is all. I learned afterwards that Giulia had replaced my kepi more than once, and had even bathed my temples and forehead with cold water, but she was not allowed to remove the gag, though she begged and prayed that it might be taken away. The adjutant had wisdom enough to keep away; it was well known that Giulia, for her own protection in so strange a society, so remote too from civilisation, always carried a knife about her person, and very often a dainty little five-chambered revolver that would certainly kill at near range. But for all that he saw that I was bound and gagged to the last minute of the four hours, and the sergeant of the guard, as well as the sentry who stood near, knew very well the consequences of yielding to Giulia's prayers and entreaties. "Oh no; anything in reason, Mademoiselle Julie; but you know as well as a _vieux soldat_ that we cannot disobey our orders. Disobedience on our part would injure us and not save your lover in the least." Giulia understood, and could only weep and pray that the time might fly with eagle wings. Alas! for her, even more than for me, time, had only leaden feet that afternoon in the little cantonment near the desert, and, worst of all, the sun blazed furiously in a cloudless sky. At long last the fourth hour came to an end. Quickly the gag was withdrawn from my mouth, the irons were taken from my limbs, and I was lifted up to my feet But I could not stand, I staggered and almost fell; Giulia was not strong enough to hold me up, but the sergeant caught me at the other side, and both lowered my body gently to the ground. One could easily see that it was impossible for me to reach without help the hut where my squad lived, and some legionaries who had been looking on with interest at the scene--poor devils, not one of them could tell when his own turn might come--came across from where they were standing and volunteered to carry me to my cot. Giulia gratefully accepted this offer, and I was borne as tenderly as possible to my hut. There some of my own squad took me, undressed me, and put me to bed, and left the hut to Giulia and myself. Giulia managed to get me to drink some brandy and water, and I gradually felt better, but as my senses returned I became more and more conscious of the awful pain in every joint of my body. There was but one thing to set me right again--rest, absolute, complete rest, rest without stir of limb, for every time I ever so slightly moved a terrible stabbing pain ran right from the part I moved through all my body. That evening the canteen was kept open during the usual hours by the wife of the sergeant who had replaced me in military charge of it. Giulia would not leave me, and in some degree to make up for keeping the others out of their hut, she gave money to those of the squad who had not given evidence against me. The corporal got none, neither did the Austrian; as for two or three others who had been summoned as witnesses before the commandant, they got merely angry words, mixed with contemptuous epithets. They did not stand this long. They left the hut as quickly as possible and kept away until nightfall, when an unpleasant surprise awaited them and the other comrades of the squad. It seems that Giulia went away for a short time while I was sleeping and made certain preparations for spending the night in the hut. Consequently, when the corporal and the soldiers assembled outside and called to Giulia that all lights would soon have to be put out, she told them plainly that the lights would not be put out in that place, that she had candles enough to last until morning, and that she meant to allow no man to enter for the night. "I stay here," she told them, "for the sake of my lover. I will keep you out for the sake of my good name. I have three loaded revolvers and plenty of spare cartridges, if any one of you should attempt to enter, I will kill him." They tried to persuade her to go to her own quarters; they promised that they would take turn about to watch me; all was of no use. At last the corporal went and told the adjutant. The latter saw no way of settling the matter, knowing full well that he would receive a bullet rather than a word from Giulia, so he wisely resolved to tell the commandant of the affair. The commandant, in good humour by this time, only laughed and said that he would see about it. So he came across, and, rapping at the door, asked Giulia for the privilege of entering. Giulia opened the door, the commandant saluted her with his customary courtesy, and then inquired for me. I answered for myself, and with deliberate malice I told him that the four hours _en crapaudine_ would have been easily endured if I had undergone the punishment in the evening, as was usual, but that the heat of the sun had hurt me severely, especially as the adjutant had knocked my kepi off with his stick. The commandant was indignant; he was only like all officers, who don't care what men suffer so long as the sufferings are not intruded upon their notice, but who, on hearing a specific case of unfair play, will virtuously condemn somebody and then forget all about the affair. That's the way in every army in the world; Sergeant X speaks harshly to Private Y to-day, the captain overhears, and speaks still more harshly to the sergeant for his abuse of the private; next day Private A, who has been soundly rated by Corporal B, seeks redress, and is told at once that he did not get half enough and that if he can only carry foolish complaints to his captain, as a little girl to her mother, he has no right to wear a uniform--he should rather wear a petticoat. Yes; officers are inconsistent in their conduct to the soldiers, so are rich people in their conduct to the poor: one day in the week kindness; six days in the week ugly names and cutting words and, worst of all, unveiled contempt. Well, the commandant said that he would speak to the adjutant in the morning, and--I may as well finish with this now--he kept his word, and gave the brute as straightforward, pointed, and condensed a reproof as a superior officer ever gave to an inferior. He did it before witnesses of all ranks, and so the story was told through all the battalion, and even those who had no money were happy that day. When the commandant volunteered to escort Giulia to her abode she refused point-blank. "I will stay here," she said, "all the night, and I will fire on any man that tries to enter." The commandant, pretty experienced--as most officers are--in the ways of women, saw that she had quite made up her mind, and, shrugging his shoulders, said: "Very well; but let the men take their greatcoats and blankets away." "Yes; but you, monsieur le commandant, will wait till all have departed." "But yes, but yes." And he went to the door and told the men that they were to come in, take their coats and blankets, and leave the hut at once. Afterwards he would dispose of them for the night. He managed well enough by dividing them amongst the neighbouring huts, where the poor, evicted fellows made each man his bed as best he could upon the ground. Then he told the sergeant of the guard that the lights in my hut were not to be taken notice of by the sentries, and went home to bed, proudly happy in the consciousness of having acted kindly towards people, for all of whom--Giulia, of course, excepted--he felt the most supreme contempt when they were not on active service. You must know that in front of the enemy we legionaries were always addressed as "mes enfants," at all other times any ugly name was good enough for us. Giulia insisted on my staying in bed all next day, and no one said a word about it. In the early forenoon the lieutenant--with whom I got on so well in the march to the cantonment and who was now in charge of the company during the illness of the captain--came and spoke very sympathetically to us both. He said nothing about the lecture read by the commandant to the adjutant, rightly judging that there were many who would be very glad to give us all the news about that. As he was going away he said something to the corporal who was standing near the door. After the officer's departure the sub-officer told me that I might stay in bed another day if I liked. I thanked him, but declined. The fact is, I knew my comrades were anxious to get back to their quarters, as they were sure to be anything but comfortable divided amongst so many squads. Consequently, I told Giulia that evening that I was nearly myself again, and I asked her to bring across a couple of bottles of _eau-de-vie_, so that we might make some amends to the others for their eviction. Giulia brought more than I had asked for. She carried across from the canteen two bottles of brandy, three of wine, and a couple of pounds of tobacco. When the others saw the bottles and the packages they were more than satisfied; they drank her health that night, and swore often, and with vehemence, that they would all willingly die for her. What children soldiers are, and how easily they are pleased! After this I had a fairly easy time for a few weeks. But I had become rather reckless now, and all Giulia's powers of persuasion were needed to prevent me from breaking down into a careless, slovenly soldier. What is the good, I often thought, of cleaning equipments when I shall be abused just as much as if they were really dirty? Where is the use of springing smartly at the word of command when I shall be called a lazy rascal and a stupid fool? What matters it whether I am idle or hardworking when I get the same reward every time? Since I am to be abused and punished let me at least deserve the abuse and the punishment, then I shall be more content. But Giulia would not hear of this. She was determined that I should continue to be a clean, careful, active soldier. She had a wonderful fund of hope, and she had one argument that I could not withstand. "Yes, yes, it is hard," she would say; "but remember, when you begin to deserve trouble, I shall begin to deserve it too." Now, though I could easily be reckless on my own account, I could not find it in my heart to be reckless when Giulia was certain to share the consequences along with me. She was too good, too true, too loving to be drawn by me, who loved her so much, into any rashness which would end bitterly for us both--more bitterly, I fancied, for her, who would survive, than for me, whose troubles would soon be over. Nevertheless, I grew more and more morose every day. True, I was never morose in Giulia's society, but in the hut I was not a pleasant companion, and I am afraid that my comrades left me more and more to myself every day. The corporal did not seem to watch me any longer. I fancy he was getting to be a little afraid. He, as well as the rest, saw that it would take very little to make me lose my temper altogether. And when a desperate legionary, his mind full of real--as mine were--or fancied wrongs, does break out, he is more like the Malay who runs amok than the European who strikes a blow or two and then is carried--kicking, striking, biting, and cursing--to the guard-house. Another reason that the corporal had for not interfering with me was this, the other legionaries were not indignant with me for my moroseness and want of good-fellowship. Now, as a rule, the man who keeps aloof from the rest of his squad has a bad time. Men will not allow themselves and their society to be flouted by another not a bit better, not a bit higher, than themselves. In the Legion all are equal--the ex-prince and the ex-pauper, the man of good character and the man of bad. But when the men of a squad see that a comrade is in bad temper with his superiors and recognise that he has reason, then they will not mind aloofness or sharp answers or ugly words. On the contrary, they will sympathise, never knowing when their own turns may come for ill-treatment. So the corporal, seeing that the men were quite satisfied that I should live my life to myself and felt sympathy and not anger on account of my conduct, wisely left me alone. There were many ugly stories current in the Legion of what had been done by men driven to desperation, and, be it well understood, the sub-officer valued his chevrons a good deal less than he valued his life. I got myself into trouble more than once about this time, but I was never afterwards put _en crapaudine_. Twice I was buried up to the neck in the ground, or rather once to the waist and once to the neck. This was called putting a man _en silo_. It was a hard punishment, but not to be compared with the other. The worst of it was that one felt as if heavy weights were pressing him at all points, but this feeling of pressure was nothing compared to the straining and racking of the joints when one was _en crapaudine_. A good proof of this is that I was never gagged when _en silo_. I could easily enough stand it without a cry. It is of no account now why I was thus punished. I freely admit that the commandant was quite justified in making me suffer for my offences, but it must be remembered to my credit that there would have been no offences if I had been left alone. Ill-treatment made me act foolishly, that is the first point; I paid for my folly, that is the second; the third is, when a punishment is over the offence that entailed it ought to be forgotten. I was now, to all intents and purposes, a man apart from his fellows. The other legionaries watched me curiously. They wondered, I fancy, how long I should stand the strain and how the certain result would actually come about. The adjutant was just as tyrannical as ever to the men of the battalion; he distributed his curses and abuse with perfect impartiality, but no one minded now. The officers were the only ones who did not understand, though they, doubtless, had heard of many tragedies in the Legion, yet they seemed to have forgotten all: officers really care only for their own pleasure and comfort, and every one of them, from commandant down to sub-lieutenant, felt quite satisfied so long as there was an appearance of good order and discipline. If I were an officer, I should remember that a troublesome, riotous battalion seldom furnishes materials for a tragedy; a quiet, well-behaved one, where the men speak in drawing-room tones and seem to be always looking out for something, has more elements of danger in it. In the Indian Mutiny it was the good soldier who gave the most trouble and took the biggest share of the beating; he mutinied because his conscience drove him to it, and his conscience would not allow him to surrender. When a bad soldier mutinies, any hound is good enough to bite him, and once bitten, he hands in his gun. To put the matter in a nutshell: the battalion was too good; it was so quiet and calm that any man of observation might see that there was something ugly underneath. CHAPTER XXI One day as I was crossing the parade-ground I saw the adjutant stop Giulia, who was coming to meet me, and speak, as I thought, earnestly to her. I knew that he admired her and that a good deal of my troubles arose from her avowed preference for me, but my mind was quite easy on that score. Dozens of men in the battalion would be very glad to replace me in her favour, but all were aware that she was true as steel, and though this knowledge probably made many more envious of my good fortune yet it certainly kept them from annoying Giulia with unavailing protestations of love. Indeed, Giulia and I often laughed together when a legionary after a second or third glass of _eau-de-vie_ looked longingly at her for a moment and then sighed with love and liquor. At first she used playfully to resent my allusions to her conquests, but as soon as she understood my absolute faith in her constancy she entered into the spirit of badinage quite as freely as I. I never jested about the adjutant. When we spoke of him we were both angry--I for my disgrace and punishment, Giulia because at the time she understood better than I did the reason of his severity. Many times she told me that he had spoken in a more than friendly manner to her, but she always added that her answers were not the answers he wished for, and I had often heard from my comrades of scenes at or near the canteen when she spoke her mind openly to him and made him feel that worst of all tortures to a man of sensitive mind--words of utter contempt from the woman he adores. What must have made things worse for the adjutant was that he knew, as the others did, that his repulses were deserved, and the officer was especially punished in this--that the whole battalion rejoiced in his discomfiture, and men repeated over and over again in hut and guard-house and canteen the very expressions with which Giulia had cut him to the heart. I had never questioned her closely about his behaviour and attempts at love-making--I thought of him as an enemy, not as a rival--but when I saw him so deliberately stop Giulia as she was approaching me I resolved to ask her, not out of jealousy, be it well understood, but out of curiosity, what he had to say so important that he laid his hand upon her arm to detain her. I could not speak to Giulia that day about this, as very soon after the adjutant had stopped her on the parade-ground I was sent on some duty or other that kept me busy until the canteen was opened, and then there was no chance of private conversation. Next day was Sunday, and I then could be with her for at least a couple of hours, so that I did not mind the delay. While I was in the canteen that Saturday evening, drinking a glass of wine with a couple of Alsatians, I asked Giulia to meet me at the main gate on the following day. She, of course, consented; my asking was only a matter of form, a compliment to the girl. She told me that she would bring a flask of wine and that she would also have a packet of cigarettes and a few cigars. "Why do you tell me that, Giulia?" I asked. "When you bring me any present I accept and thank you, but you know I want nothing but your comradeship and your love." "I know well," she replied; "but I want you to come out of the cantonment with me to-morrow. I want to tell you many things, and we shall be away for a long time. If I am not back in time to open the canteen the sergeant's wife will open it for the soldiers. But you and I, we must talk long and earnestly to-morrow. Confide in me as I confide in you. I am true--I shall always be so--and you, I know, will be true as well." To this I could answer nothing except that I loved her better than my life; that I trusted her more than any man had ever trusted woman; and that I was her own, her very own, for ever. When we met next day at the main-guard Giulia, as she had promised, had a little parcel that made the sergeant of the guard, the sentry on duty, and the other legionaries lounging about, consider me a happy man in spite of all my misfortunes. I could see that, and I own it gave me pleasure. The lowest, as well as the highest, desires to inspire envy in the hearts of others. So long as they think him especially favoured, the sorrows and troubles, which he alone knows of and feels, seem to diminish, even almost to disappear. But I had more than the envy of my comrades to console me; Giulia, happy and smiling, came towards me as I approached, and the sight of her happiness at meeting me was more than enough to make me forget all my disgrace, all my punishment, the hard words which came as regularly as the bugle went for parade, the extra toil that I was condemned to as the tyrant's enemy, and all the incidental annoyances that were sure to come to one whom his fellows had already named "Pas de chance." Yes; that, as I now remember it, was the last of the happy moments. It seemed as if the gods were giving us an overtaste of happiness before the time of anger, strife, and utter wretchedness opened on our lives. We passed out together through the gate, Giulia in her smartest dress, and I in the regulation Sunday attire, with belt and bayonet and gloves. In Europe people put on silk hats and frock coats on Sundays; we of the Legion merely wore gloves and bayonets, but even with these small additions to our usual costume we felt extra dressed. It was a warm day--that is, warm even for Algeria--and we walked rather slowly along. Once we passed through the gate I took the little parcel from Giulia, saying, with a happy smile: "I am robbing you ma belle." "You cannot rob me of anything," she replied, "since all I have is yours." Then I kissed her, forgetting all about the legionaries of the guard who were lounging about the gate. How they must have envied me, my good comrades. We did not go far from the cantonment, merely about a quarter of a mile, to a place where we had spent many a pleasant hour together on former Sundays. It was not an ideal resting-place. It was certainly not a meadow pied with daisies, with a murmuring rivulet at hand, but there really was a little shelter, for a fairly big rock overhung the spot, and in the lee of this one could somewhat escape the fierce heat of the sun. None of the other soldiers came near it on Sundays. They would, of course, have no hesitation in disturbing me, but Giulia the imperious, Giulia who could refuse the blessed liquor even to a rich man if she wished, was not to be offended. A couple of legionaries, a Spaniard and a Greek, had on one occasion posted themselves in a position whence they could watch our love-making, and had carried back a report to their comrades that Giulia and me were not so much in love as people thought, and it was only two days afterwards, when they entered the canteen together and were sternly ordered out of it, that they found out that we had discovered them and would not provide amusement for spies. The other soldiers had no sympathy with either Greek or Spaniard, and so the corps could boast, as I told them one day, of at least two men who did not drink. It is all very well to be a teetotaller from choice, but to be one from necessity is a very different thing, especially to a soldier. And the lesson Giulia taught by refusing even a glass of _vin ordinaire_ to the precious pair made all the rest desirous of leaving us our chosen resting-place to ourselves. When we arrived and sat down Giulia took the little parcel from me and opened it. There were three or four cigars, a couple of dozen cigarettes, and a pint bottle of wine. Some sweets were also there, but I left these for Giulia. "Very well," I said, "this is a real feast. We can live here for at least four hours with such supplies." "Is it not good?" she asked. "Very good," I told her; "you grow kinder every day; but I too have a little surprise for you, carissima." "What! a surprise for me? What is it?" And she laid her pretty little hand upon my arm. I bade her shut her eyes, and when she did so, I clasped a silver bracelet on her wrist--it had cost me more than two months' pay--and was amply rewarded for my gift by the childish joy she showed when she beheld it. How happy we were that Sunday! But this story has little to do with happiness now that it approaches the end. When we had taken a little of the wine and were quietly enjoying our cigarettes I asked Giulia what the adjutant had said to her on the previous day. "I will tell you all now," she said to me. "I can no longer keep it from you, though I do not wish to give you pain. You have always trusted me, as I have trusted you. Is it not so, dearest?" "But yes," I answered; "no one could doubt you; you are too good and too true. Why, even the worst man in the battalion knows and acknowledges that." "I am well content," Giulia said to me; "you have not erred. I have always been faithful, and I will be faithful for ever. But I cannot prevent anyone, not even the man I hate most, from loving me, and things have come to such a pass now that it is only right that you should know all." Thereupon, seeing that the poor girl was in great distress, I flung away my cigarette, and taking hers from between her fingers flung it away too. Then I kissed her, and keeping her very closely in my arms, said: "Tell me everything; but I must tell you one thing first: I am quite sure that, no matter what troubles we may have endured or may have to endure, neither will ever grieve the other by want of love or want of trust." She sobbed for a moment quietly on my breast, and then began: "It is all because of that adjutant--that devil who will not allow anyone to be happy. He has always, since he came to the cantonment, desired to take me for himself, and whenever he came with his unwished-for proposals I insulted him and drove him away. Then he threatened that he would take vengeance on you, and I warned you to be on your guard. In spite of all he injured you and nearly broke my heart, but I constantly hoped that he might leave the battalion with the next draft. The draft has gone and he remains; there will be no new draft for months, and what hope is left now? When he stopped me on the parade yesterday it was to renew his unwelcome proposals, but this time he asked me to be his wife. I was angry, and told him that, were he even President of the Republic, I would neither let him kiss me as lover nor wed me as husband, and that, no matter what rank he might win, he would always remain the same--a tyrant to those beneath him, and a tyrant, I believed, was only slightly better than a slave. Then he swore with vehemence that he would have you shot before a month was over, and that is why I tell you." At this point she wept, and could not be comforted for a long time. When she became somewhat calm, I told her that now we knew the adjutant's intentions we could do at least something to prevent their realisation, and that, in any case, if the affair should come to the worst it would be easy enough to have a little satisfaction before being punished. This did not seem very comforting, but it was the best I could say. My mind was at the time even more full of hate of the adjutant than love of Giulia, and I think she must have noticed this, for she tried to turn my thoughts in a pleasanter direction. Almost in a moment she, who had but a moment before been hopeless and comfortless, dried her tears, smiled bravely into my eyes, and told me I thought more of my anger than of her love. I put aside at once all emotions save those of tenderness and affection, I petted and caressed her, I told her over and over again what women never tire of hearing: _Je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'aime_. If you can say "I love you" to a woman, and she feels that you say it with truth, you have made the most eloquent speech in the world to her ears--that is, be it well understood, if she is inclined to say the same words to you. If she cannot respond, why! say good-bye and forget her. He is only a fool who cannot, even though it hurts, give up a love that meets with no response. But there was no danger of lack of response on Giulia's part. In a pretty mixture of Italian, French, and English that we had taught each other she gave me assurances that were not the less valued because they were repetitions of ones that I had received from her many times before, and that fell upon my ears all the more pleasantly that I well knew them to be absolutely true. There can be no mistaking the love or the hate of an Italian girl; the Southern warmth shows itself in both. As I had experience of one, so the adjutant had sorely felt the other. While we were thus creating happiness for each other, a harsh voice fell upon our ears. It was the adjutant's. I stood up and faced round to meet him, all thoughts of love had now disappeared, only hatred of the tyrant filled my heart. I remembered the many insults, the unfair surprises, the more than devilish ingenuity with which he had hounded me down. I thought of my former rank and contrasted it in my mind with my then lowly condition; I remembered my lost chevrons, my lost pay, my lost position, my lost chance of promotion, my lost friends, for what sergeant could associate with the reduced sub-officer in the ranks! I thought of Giulia's sorrows, her wakeful nights when she knew that I was tossing uneasily on a plank bed, her anxiety as the hour approached for my trial, her fear of some terrible result, the insulting proposals that she was compelled to hear and of which she dared not speak, and as all these thoughts surged through my brain I saw no adjutant, no superior officer of mine, but a man-wolf, a demon incarnate hot from hell. Yet I was outwardly calm; I said no word, nor for some moments did he speak, but I felt that the crisis had come at last. I was glad that we three were quite alone; the thought flashed upon my mind that it was Sunday, and that day I wore my bayonet. At last he spoke: "Will mademoiselle kindly go away and permit me to speak alone to the soldier?" "No," Giulia replied; "I will stay. Why have you come here?" "I came," said the adjutant, speaking very slowly and impressively, all the while looking hard at me, "to make a proposition to this man." "I can guess your proposition," I replied, stopping Giulia with a gesture, "and I give you the same answer as Mademoiselle Julie has already given. She does not give me up; I do not give up her. Did you think," and I spoke with deliberation equal to his, "that I would allow my darling to purchase an easy life and also promotion for me by giving you even one kiss, even one glance of favour! No," I went on, "Giulia's kisses and caresses and words of love are for me and for me alone; get some woman of the camp--she will be good enough for you." The adjutant controlled himself with an effort. After a short delay, in which, I presume, he determined to make one attempt more to gain his object, for his desire was greater than his hate, he said: "I have offered to marry her; you are not in a position to do so. When we are married I will get leave of absence and we will go away, and while away from the battalion I can arrange a transfer; then we shall never meet again. If she comes away with me as my wife, I will take care that she has a happy and comfortable life; if she does not marry me, and I ask her now for the last time, she cannot be happy here, for I will see that you at least will not be long her lover." Then, turning to Giulia, he went on: "If you really love him, save him now." He held out his hands appealingly to her. As he stood so exposed I struck his cheek fair and full with the back of my right hand. "Your answer, dog," I cried. With an angry indrawing of his breath he turned to me, and his right hand felt for his sword. It was half out of the scabbard when I plucked my bayonet from its sheath, and driving it straight forward I pierced his right arm as it lay across his body. He did not let go his hold of the sword hilt in spite of the wound, but drew the sword and raised it to cut me down. As his right arm went up I pushed it back with my left hand and, coming to close quarters, plunged my bayonet into his body. He reeled, and again I drove my weapon home. He staggered away from me, and before I could get close enough to repeat the thrust fell heavily upon his back. He lay quite still. I mechanically wiped my bayonet clean, and then said to Giulia: "I could not help it; he would have killed me if he could." Giulia said nothing, but when I had put up my side-arm she came to me and, putting her dear arms round my neck, wept bitter tears of anticipation upon my breast. There was nothing to be done except to go back to camp and wait for what might happen. Neither of us spoke of the result that each felt was certain. Though we were resolved to say nothing about the affair yet we made no attempt to divert suspicion from ourselves. The half-smoked cigarettes, the half-empty bottle, the paper and twine of the parcel, all were left behind in close proximity to the body of the adjutant. As we walked slowly back Giulia suddenly halted and faced me. "They will kill you," she said. "I think so," I answered. "And I, I will not live when you are gone." I pleaded with her for her own life. I used all the arguments I could think of about the wickedness of self-destruction; nought was of avail. "But, carissima mia, your father was killed in battle, and your mother, who loved him fondly, did not kill herself." "Ah, mon Jean, I was born at the time. Her baby made her live." "And Giulia,"--I took her in my arms and kissed her,--"do you not understand? Is it not so?" She broke down into a flood of tears. "O Jean, Jean, I must live, I must live, even though one half of my life goes out with you." I caressed and comforted her--we were in full view of the gate, but we minded not. She grew calm at last, and looked at me with a new look in her eyes--a look that I had seen but once before, when the English corporal had called her madame, but then it meant rather bashful hope and half-afraid longing, now it showed knowledge and certainty and free confession. "I am very happy now," I told her as we approached the gate where the men relieved from duty as sentinels were standing. "I care not now what may happen to myself, and for you half, and more than half, of my anxiety has left me. There is only, one thing that I must do now, I must look for Père Michel at once. You will go to your quarters; he will come with me there. Tell the sergeant and his wife to expect us. Do not be afraid, they will not be surprised." Giulia said nothing in reply; a closer clinging to my arm, one quick glance, a sudden heaving of the breast, these told me more than any words could tell. We separated just inside the gate, Giulia going at once to her quarters, while I went towards the officers' building to find the chaplain. I saw him at once, and told him the more important facts on the spot; he shook his head, and told me that there was but one way to make reparation. He said that Giulia and I should both confess our sins, but I said: "No; marry us now or marry us never." Anxious to do his best, and knowing full well that many in the battalion were worse than I--he did not know about the adjutant's fate at the time, as I took care to keep that to myself--he yielded to my entreaties and went with me to the canteen. There we were married, the sergeant and his wife acting as witnesses. The good priest, he was a good and brave man, gave us some advice; he told us that he would always remember us in his prayers, and went away. Then the sergeant said: "I suppose there will be great rejoicing in the camp this evening," and looked astonished when Giulia utterly broke down. His wife drew him away, and we were alone together, the most utterly wretched bride and bridegroom that the world has ever seen. Giulia said to me: "You are mine, all mine now; when they seek you they must find you here." I dreaded the effect of my arrest in her presence, but she insisted. "I will show good courage, I will not give way to grief," she answered. "You shall see, and you shall not be ashamed." After that we sat together on the side of the little bed. We said little, but our hearts were bursting; there had never been so perfect, so complete, so unutterable a sympathy between us. We knew then, as we never did, and never could, know before, the intense sweetness of love, which only exquisite anguish can bring forth. After some time--I know not, nor shall ever know, how long--we heard the dull sound of a rifle butt upon the door below. It was quickly opened, and through the raised window we heard the words: "Is Mademoiselle Julie within?" "No; but Madame Julie is," replied the sergeant, with a laugh. "Is she alone?" "No; her husband is with her." "Ah, we want him; we must enter." Giulia pressed more closely to my side. In a moment the rifle butt sounded on our door. "Entrez," I called out. The door was flung open and a sergeant appeared, two soldiers peering curiously over his shoulders. "You are my prisoner." "Very well, my sergeant; pardon me for a moment." Then to Giulia: "My darling, I must obey orders." Giulia said nothing. I kissed her, said: "Be of good courage," and walked to the door. As the soldiers placed themselves one at each side I heard a loud cry. I would have turned back, but I was pushed headlong down the stairs. There was no use in resisting, so I went quietly to the guard-house, with an awful fear at my heart for my poor love in her agony and loneliness. As I entered the prison I heard a legionary of the guard say to his comrades: "I knew how it would be; yes, long ago." That night I slept little. The hard plank was nothing, I was used to that; the death of the adjutant was nothing in itself, for had he not deserved it? Its consequences, as far as they affected me, I could take without flinching, but the thought of Giulia, of her future, in which nought was certain save hopelessness and the sense of utter loss, made me wakeful and anxious through the silent hours. Three legionaries confined for some offence were my companions in the cell. They knew nothing of the affair, and when I was suddenly pushed through the door by the sergeant of the guard, these men eagerly asked what new misfortune was mine. "Can you not guess?" I answered. They looked at one another, the same thought was in the minds of all. The Sicilian said: "You have done it! Yes, I knew you would. I am glad that he is gone, yet I am sorry for you, and still more sorry--" He stopped and shook his head. "Yes," said a Pole; "that is the way, it is the woman always that suffers most." The third, a Frenchman by birth, who found it better to be a Lorrainer in the Legion than to serve in his proper regiment in France, was the last to speak. "It is done now, and we shall all be grieved at the loss of a good comrade, but the battalion will be happy once more. I salute," he continued, taking off his kepi, "the hero who has freed us from slavery." We were silent for a time. Then the Frenchman asked me how it happened. "I struck him, he drew his sword, and then I gave him my bayonet, voilà tout!" "How often?" "Three times." "Very well," said the Sicilian; "then it must be all right. It is all right; the battalion must have a new adjutant now." I refused my soup when it came and the Frenchman offered me his. "If I cannot take my own, why yours?" I asked angrily. "Mine is not soup, it is something better." It was, and I gladly took it. He had wine instead of soup. This was wrong, but a good comrade who has money can do a kindness to a prisoner. But he must be a very good comrade, and he must have more than enough to buy the wine. They saw that I was disinclined for much speaking, and they went away to the other end of the cell. There they spoke and gesticulated freely. Yet very seldom did a word reach me; their voices were low, their heads close together, but I noted, half abstractedly as it were, the quick action of the shoulders, the eager motion of the hands. After some time they stopped the conversation and sat or lay down on the rough planks that served for beds. No other prisoners came in that night; sergeants and corporals were not thinking of making arrests, and the soldiers were too busy talking about the affair to quarrel. Yet there were many besides Giulia and me who were sorry for what would surely happen: the quick court-martial, and then the volley at the open grave. CHAPTER XXII Next morning the preliminary investigation was held by the commandant. He finished with all other work first, and then directed that I should be brought before him. I knew this, because the others were taken away to stand their trial, and I was left behind. When I was in his presence I saluted, and the commandant said with soldierly directness: "The adjutant is dead; you are charged with killing him; have you anything to say?" "Only this, sir," I replied, "he insulted me, then he insulted Mademoiselle Julie, who is now my wife; I struck him, he drew his sword, and I my bayonet. I was the quicker of the two, and wounded him; then he raised his sword to cut me down, and I repeated the blow." "But there were three wounds; is it not so?" he said to the surgeon. "Yes, monsieur le commandant." "How do you explain the third wound?" "Two," I answered, "were in self-defence, the third, sir, in passion." "Ah; and how in self-defence?" "The first, sir, on the arm as he drew his sword; the second on the body as he lifted it to strike; the third, sir, on the body in the anger of the moment." "That will do," said the officer; "as the general is arriving to-day I will lay the matter before him. But I warn you, prepare for a court-martial and its result." I saluted, and was led away. There is no need to go through the preliminaries. The general received the same information from me as the commandant had got, and at once ordered a board of officers to try me for the offence. "They will not have much difficulty in deciding, as the accused confesses his crime, so I will wait here to confirm the finding," he said to the commandant. I heard this as I was facing about with the escort to return to the guard-house, and the last vestige of hope disappeared. I gave no further evidence before the court-martial than I had already given to the commandant. I did not like to speak of the adjutant's animosity towards me, as that and its consequences would supply a motive for my act, and that I did not wish to impress upon their minds. Better let them think it was sudden, as, indeed, it was in one way, than deliberate and led up to by his own fault, as it was in another. One must understand that, but for my resentment and sense of wrong and oft-thought desire of his death, I should not have killed him; and one must also know that, were he passing quietly by, I should not have rushed upon him with my bayonet. My feelings were due to the injuries and insults he had heaped upon me; my sudden action to his threat about my life to Giulia, repeated, as it was, to me. The result of the court-martial was that I was acquitted of the killing, as that was done in self-defence, but found guilty of striking my superior officer, and for that sentenced to be shot. This was duly confirmed, read out on general parade, and the execution was set for the following morning at eight o'clock. As I heard the words read out, standing bareheaded, without a belt, between two soldiers with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets, I felt that my last sun would set that night. Little I guessed of what would be accomplished by the wit and courage of a loving woman, by the unselfish chivalry of two legionaries, who had gone separately to Giulia, neither knowing of the other's design, and offered to help her and her husband, even at the risk of their lives. And yet both these men made light of their action at the time, and, were they in the land of the living to-day, would surely only claim the credit of having stood by a comrade in trouble and a woman in distress. They were the English corporal, whom I have already mentioned, and an Irishman--a simple soldier--let us call him Mac. When Giulia thanked the corporal he told her that, as he had lost his honour long ago, it did not matter if he lost his life now. "Surely not your honour?" she queried. "Well, I think not, indeed, but the world, unfortunately, does not agree with me." Mac said he could not do less than try to rescue me,--"il est mon pays, n'est ce pas?"--and he, because he was an Irishman, could always get what he wished in the canteen. I did not know this. I found out, however, that Giulia often gave Mac, the only other Irishman in the battalion, brandy and wine and tobacco without payment, as he was my countryman, and I do not blame the poor devil for accepting, for he was always in trouble, his pay was constantly stopped, and a soldier can do easily without his dinner, but is ripe for mischief if he is deprived of his glass and of his pipe. Well, she did not lose in the end, as he said--but that must come in its own place. Now the Englishman was corporal of the guard that night. I did not know anything definite about the plan for my escape, for when Giulia visited me at about six o'clock in the evening all she could tell me was to hope, to watch, and to be ready. I needed little advice about the last two matters; as for hoping, that was almost impossible. About eight o'clock the corporal visited me, as a matter of duty, to see that all was right. He ordered me, in a loud, rough voice, to get up from where I lay. As I stood in front of him he whispered: "After midnight," and departed. At about twenty minutes past twelve I heard a low voice calling to me at the window. This I had left open, so that there might be a means of communication if anyone could get to the other side. I had not much expectation of this, as a sentry was posted just there, and no legionary, I thought, would be such a fool as to risk punishment by permitting even Giulia to speak to me. When I went to the window I found Mac outside. "Hurry, hurry," he said; "we must get these bars out quickly. We can lose no time if we are to succeed." Now there were two iron bars fixed vertically in the mud of which the wall was built, and Mac, giving me a bayonet, told me to clear the lower end of one, while he cleared the lower end of the other. We said nothing more. We worked with a will. In a short time the ends were free, and then Mac, a powerful man, pulled the bars out, so that I could just squeeze my body through. I had, however, to take off my tunic to do so, and I passed this out first. When I got out I saw a body on the ground. "You have his bayonet," said Mac, "take his rifle and belt as well." The man lay quite motionless. I took his belt and put it on and then possessed myself of the rifle. I felt happy enough now. Now they could not shoot me like a dog; I could at least die fighting. "Wait a moment," said Mac. In a few minutes we heard the door of the guard-house opening, and then the voice of the corporal telling the sentinel in front that he would return in a quarter of an hour. The corporal came round to where we stood. He had his rifle, bayonet, and ammunition. He said: "Is it all right?" "Yes." "Are you armed?" "Yes, both; he has the sentry's weapons." "Very good; let us go. When we are at a safe distance from the guard-house we shall pretend to be a visiting patrol." In this way we passed the sentries at a distance from the main-guard and marched boldly along till we came to where a native cavalryman was on duty near the horses. He challenged, and received a satisfactory reply. As we passed him the corporal halted us, and ordered me to hold his rifle for a moment. I took it, and before I or the cavalry-guard could understand the Englishman had the latter by the throat. Mac laid down his rifle and seized the unfortunate fellow's arms, and in a few moments he was a corpse. "Now," said the corporal to me, "you get the woman, we will get ready the horses." "Where is she?" I asked. "Some place over there." And he pointed with his hand. I went in the direction pointed out and soon met Giulia. She had been easily able to follow us, for our steady tramp could be heard at some distance. We made no attempt to conceal our movements; we were to all appearance a visiting patrol. As I came to her side I whispered: "It goes very well, carissima. The others are getting out the horses." Giulia flung herself into my arms. I snatched a kiss and led her to where Mac and the Englishman were busy. They had two horses already out, and were saddling them with all despatch. One must understand that the saddles and bridles are always kept near the chargers, especially in a place where at any moment a raid from the desert may have to be repelled. Soon four horses were ready, and then we all mounted and rode slowly towards a gate at the rear of the camp, where a single sentinel was posted. This man, luckily for us, was a Turco. When the corporal replied to his challenge and told him that we were officers he believed the story. Then the Englishman and I dismounted, taking only our bayonets, and approached the gate. The sentry protested against our opening this, but I got behind him and flung my hands about his neck. At the same moment the corporal wrenched away the rifle and bayonet and buried his own steel in the Turco's heart. We opened the gate as quickly and quietly as possible and went out. For ten minutes we walked our horses slowly and almost noiselessly away from the camp. Then we headed due south after a short consultation--the corporal leading, Giulia and I following, Mac bringing up the rear. We were now going straight for the Great Desert, where alone there was hope of safety. Had we gone north towards the Mediterranean, our freedom would not be worth twenty-four hours' purchase. As it was, we had a good chance of getting safely away from French pursuit, for our post lay at the extreme south of French territory in that part. But in the desert what were we to do? We did not know--we did not think about that. All our energies and thoughts were directed to getting clear away from the French and native cavalry. We knew that the escape would be soon discovered, but we fancied that no pursuit would be attempted until dawn, and it was our business to travel as far as we could from the cantonment in the short time that we had at our disposal. Moreover, if we could only put a fair distance between ourselves and our pursuers there was every likelihood that they would never catch up with us, because the native horsemen would not care to go too far into the desert, for they would get little quarter from the Arabs who infest it. Why, they would be killed for the sake of their horses, equipments, and arms, and the wild Arab does not fear the native levies as he does the Frenchmen, for two reasons--in the first place, the Arab is quite as good a fighting man, and he knows it, as the other African; in the second, it is only the white soldiers whose weapons kill from afar. As for us, we had to venture into the desert, as I have already said. We wanted, to use another phrase of mine, to get from the fire to the frying-pan--_du feu à la poêle_. We kept steadily forward until the sun came up in the east with his usual suddenness. Then we halted, and began to consider our position. At best it was a bad one. We were four, with four horses; for ourselves, we had only a haversack of food and a flask of brandy that Giulia had been thoughtful enough to bring, for our horses we had nothing. As far as fighting power went we were better off, as we had three good rifles--_fusils Gras_ we called them--and eighty rounds of ball cartridge per man. We had bayonets as well, and Giulia had a pair of revolvers and a stiletto, so that, given a fair chance, we were good enough for a dozen enemies. One must remember that we were desperate; nothing could be gained by surrendering to Frenchmen, since our lives were now forfeit; with a woman in the party we could not surrender to Arabs. The English corporal, Mac and I, spoke in English. "I want you to promise one thing," I said to them: "if two go down, let the third kill my wife." "Oh, that's understood," said the Englishman. "I hope it may not be my lot," said Mac, "but I'll do it all the same." "Now," said the corporal, "we must go farther south and chance meeting with the Arabs. I don't know," he went on, "whether I am anxious to meet any or not. If we don't meet any we shall probably miss the wells; if we do meet them there will be a fight." "It is better to fight," said Mac, "than to die of thirst in the desert." "I think so too," I said. "Well," asked the corporal, "shall we go straight on at top speed or rest?" "Let us go on," I advised; "let us press on as far as we can, then if we meet any Arabs, or if the spahis ride up to us, we can halt and fight. Remember, without food or water for our horses we cannot run, we cannot make even a running fight; it must be a standing fight to a finish." The Englishman and Mac agreed with me, and before we started again I said to Giulia in their hearing: "N'aie pas peur, ma bien chère, tu ne seras pas prisonnière, plutôt tu seras tuée par le dernier protecteur." "Je suis bien content," she replied, and, bowing prettily to the others, she murmured a word of thanks. We rode on for about two hours, and then halted to rest our horses and to eat a little of Giulia's provisions. We did not drink, as brandy is not a good thing when one has nothing else. If we could only get our usual morning coffee we should have had a nip apiece, but we who had soldiered in Algeria and other hot climates were too sensible to touch fire-water without anything to qualify it and with the certainty of a hot day's march before us. After eating and smoking we got back into our saddles and rode on until the heat of the sun made us again halt for our own sakes as well as on account of our animals. In spite of our discomfort we felt fairly happy; we had made a good morning's march since the sun appeared, and though we had done very little in the darkness, yet we believed ourselves to be safe enough from pursuit. After a couple of hours' rest we resolved, in spite of the heat, to press on again, and, going rather slowly, we and our horses were not too hard pressed. About four o'clock in the afternoon we again halted, this time for about an hour, and then, as our horses did not seem to suffer overmuch from the want of food and water--they were desert horses, one must remember--we again mounted and continued our journey to the south. It was, I should say, a little past five o'clock in the afternoon when Mac, who had halted for a moment to look to the north, shouted to us that the spahis were coming. We turned, and saw, a long distance away, for the atmosphere was very clear, a party of mounted soldiers advancing on our tracks. There was no use in tiring our horses and ourselves by an attempted flight; we understood quite plainly that the native cavalrymen were certain to overtake us, and it was just as well to await them where we stood. We dismounted, hobbled our horses, and came together for consultation. The corporal said: "We must stand at least ten paces apart from one another, unless they charge; in that case we must stand back to back." "Give your orders, corporal," I said, "and we will obey." "Yes," assented Mac; "there must be a commanding officer in every battle." "Very good," said the corporal. "You, Mac, go ten paces to the right; you stay here, mademoiselle; you"--this to me--"go ten paces farther to the left; and I place myself at the extreme left, so we shall offer bad targets, especially for cavalry." When we had ranged ourselves as ordered our enemies were close enough for us to note their numbers; they were a dozen in all. "Why," shouted Mac, "it's only a corporal's squad; we're a corporal's squad ourselves, boys, and we're whites." "As soon as you think you can hit a man or horse fire," commanded the corporal. In a moment or two I heard a report on the right. Mac, one of the best shots in our old battalion, had fired, and the result was of good omen. A horse fell heavily in the advance, pitching his rider forward, a second stumbled over the first, staggered to the left, and brought down a third. We cheered as we saw this, and the rest of the little troop pulled up for a moment. As they did so the corporal and I fired. A man tumbled out of his saddle on their right; in the centre a horse, mad with the sudden shock and the pain of the bullet, suddenly ran away with its rider. They passed not more than fifty yards to our right, and Mac's rifle spoke again: the spahi flung up his hands and fell forward on his horse's neck. "Well done, Mac," I shouted out, "we can easily whip them now." As I spoke I dropped on one knee and levelled my rifle at the little knot of men and horses. The corporal and I fired almost together, and though no man or horse fell, yet we felt certain that some damage was done. We knew quite well, as every soldier knows, that a wounded horse will not always fall and that an Arab will sit in his saddle with more than one bullet in his body. One result our fire had, it caused the spahis to withdraw out of range, and this gave us a respite. One will ask: Why did not the cavalry return our fire? Well, it would do them no good. Our weapons killed at a much longer range than theirs; for two reasons--first, the rifle always carries farther than the carbine; and, second, our weapons were of later pattern and, therefore, better than theirs. We could now reckon up our successes. To Mac's first shot three horses and three men had fallen; of these two horses and one man remained on the ground. My first shot had sent a horse careering madly over the desert, and Mac's second had put his rider out of the fight. The corporal had also brought down a man, but this fellow had been carried away by his comrades. As for the last shots, there was no apparent result, but we believed that some damage had been done by them. Anyway three men and three horses were accounted for, and we who had driven back a dozen spahis had no fear of only nine, though we were not such fools as to imagine that these hot-blooded Arabs were more than temporarily discomfited by our success. Very soon the Arabs again advanced, but in a different fashion. Instead of now coming forward in a bunch they separated widely over the plain, so as to form a great half-circle in our front and our flanks. "Don't throw away a shot," commanded the corporal. And then, hesitating for a moment, he continued: "Let us draw closer together--this is the grand attack--if they don't come home now in their charge, they will never do it." We all closed in on Giulia; we formed a lozenge or diamond in array. I looked straight towards the north, the corporal to the west, Mac to the east, and Giulia was just at my back, but looking past me at the quickly-moving spahis. Our bayonets were fixed. Suddenly one of the spahis, the corporal, I suppose, uttered a loud cry and charged. All the rest followed his example, and in a moment the nine were within long range. We fired and loaded, fired again and loaded again. I cannot say how often this occurred, but I saw a horse fall in my front to my second bullet, and soon afterwards I knew that two men at least were charging home. As they came with levelled lances I heard the corporal say: "Mine are settled; I'm with you; Mac's all right; come out and meet them." We went out together; as we did the corporal commanded: "Go to the right; shoot your man if you can, if not, use your bayonet." I fired and missed. I met the lowered lance with my bayonet, and, like a fool, turned it up; the spahi let it go and swung the heavy butt downwards and to his right rear. I could not avoid the blow; it took me fairly on the breast, sending me to the ground. As he pulled at the reins to get his charger back I heard a sharp report, followed by another: my enemy collapsed and fell. As I rose painfully to my feet, feeling as if a ton weight were laid upon my chest, Giulia caught me in her arms and asked with anxiety if I were hurt. "Not much," I answered: "but where are the others?" I saw Mac a few paces away aiming at a retiring spahi; turning round I saw the English corporal wiping his bayonet; near him lay a dead soldier. On the plain at various distances lay men and horses; farther off than these the remains of the spahis had assembled--one mounted and three dismounted men. "What happened to you, mon camarade?" said the corporal. "Oh," I replied, "like a fool I turned the lance up instead of down; he then struck me with the butt, and Giulia shot him just in time to save me." "It seems to me," said the corporal, speaking in French, "that Madame Julie is always saving your life." "Yes," I replied, smiling; "and I would rather owe it to her than to anyone else." We were now quite satisfied. It was absolutely impossible for the four survivors to attack us with any hope of success owing to our weapons. They were quite aware of this; in fact, they were in difficulties now, for the question arose for them: How were they to get back to the cantonment? Their horses were dead or wounded, for all we knew the men might be wounded as well, and the spahis could not by any chance like the prospect of meeting in the desert any of their co-religionists who had remained unsubdued. One thing we had to do, and do quickly. This was to get away as far as possible from the remnants of the spahis. If we remained in their vicinity until darkness came we should lose all the advantage of our superior weapons, and we were well aware that the native troops are daring and skilful fighters with cold steel. Moreover, it is the Arab nature to lust for vengeance, especially on Christians, though our Christianity was of a rather shadowy nature, more than to love even his life, and these men had sufficient reason to hate us. Accordingly we mounted and turned our weary horses' heads again towards the south, going at an easy pace, and now and again looking back to see if there were new pursuers on our track. When we had gone some distance and had lost sight of the defeated spahis, the corporal said: "Let us turn to the right; if new men have come up to the others, they will go due south." The advice seemed good, so we went westwards for about two hours, and then halted to rest ourselves and our horses. We were very thirsty now, but Mac told us to our great delight that he had taken two water bottles from dead spahis. "Why did you not tell us before?" asked the corporal. "I thought it best to wait, and, besides," he answered, "I was thinking more about pursuit than about even the water." We very soon half emptied one, Giulia getting the first and largest drink, and then we poured into this bottle the contents of the spirit flask that Giulia had brought. "Now, madame," said the corporal, "you shall have the bottle of water for yourself, we will be satisfied with the other." This was a very good arrangement. Giulia did not like _eau-de-vie_ and we did; moreover, Giulia wanted more liquid in the desert than three veteran campaigners. At about two o'clock in the morning we set out again, and travelled very slowly in a south-westerly direction. Our horses were beginning to show signs of failing, and we eagerly scanned the desert all around us after the sun had risen to try to discover signs of an oasis or even of a caravan. Our steeds would soon give up the struggle, that we knew, and we could scarcely hope to keep it up on foot for more than twenty-four hours. Now one must not imagine that we were hopeless. On the contrary, we felt that fortune, having befriended us so long, would not now abandon us. We thought of the difficulties surmounted in the escape and of the good fight which we had made against our pursuers, and with such recent memories our spirits could not be cast down. We had a little food, a little drink, good weapons, and enough of ammunition. We knew that every man could trust his comrades, and so, while our horses lasted, and for at least a day afterwards, we could laugh at Fate. So we jogged along for some time after dawn, rested for an hour, and then pushed on again. About midway between sunrise and noon Mac, whose eyes were as keen as a vulture's, cried out: "At last, boys, at last; look yonder." We looked, and saw a slowly-moving object. There was no doubt about what it was, our path would soon intersect that of a caravan. When the parties met one of two things would be our portion--safety or death--for, if we could not get water and food in hospitable fashion, we had no resource but to fight for them, and desert fights are serious. CHAPTER XXIII I said to the Englishman: "Let us halt, eat, and drink; we shall then be better able to fight, if fighting should be necessary." "That is right," replied the corporal; "we will finish all our provisions and all the water, even madame's." "Yes," I said; "we shall soon have as much as we need, or we shall need nothing." We dismounted, divided the scanty remains of the food into four equal portions, and all ate slowly and enjoyingly. Then we drank all the water left in Giulia's bottle, sharing it as fairly as we could when we had no measure and had to guess at the total amount and then at each one's share. As for the little stock of brandy and water, that, on Mac's suggestion, was to be kept until we were nearer the caravan and, therefore, nearer the fight that might ensue. Giulia would take none, but we others were very glad we had it, not that we wanted brandy to nerve us for the fray, but a little does one no harm just before the beginning of an engagement. After the meal we filled our pipes and lit them with one of the few matches that Mac had in his pockets when we came away from the cantonment, then we mounted again, and rode slowly towards the point where we had resolved to strike the path of the caravan. As we went along we observed that it was not a large company, and this made us naturally glad. We only hoped now that there might be many women and children and slaves; if so, our chances of success either by fair means or by foul would be vastly increased. Very soon we saw a couple of camels with riders coming towards us, and we knew that we had been observed and that our friends of the caravan were curious to find out the meaning of our little party traversing the desert. The camelmen rode up to within easy range, but it was not our business to begin a fight. We did not even call out to them; it was better, as the corporal said, to let them go back and report, and then we should see what the main body would do. When the Arabs, for such they evidently were, had observed us closely for some minutes they turned and rode back upon their comrades. These had halted, and as we were now in full view we halted too. As we dismounted the corporal said: "Now for the last drink." "Not the last, I hope," said Mac. "Oh, who the devil knows and who the devil cares?" answered the Englishman. Then, as if ashamed of showing any emotion, he went on: "I beg your pardon, I could not help speaking so hastily just now; I am irritable, but I promise you I shall be cool enough in the fight." "Oh, it's all right," replied Mac; "I've often been a bit hasty myself." Giulia, scarcely understanding, looked at me with a puzzled air. When I smiled at her she smiled back at me, her confidence restored. When we had drunk the brandy and water I asked the corporal whether or not we should fight the desert Arabs as we had fought the spahis. "Certainly yes," he replied; "we did well in the rehearsal, may we not hope to do even better now?" "I think so," I answered; "you see it is no longer a plan; it is now, as it were, a piece of drill that we have learned." "Yes," said Mac; "we can go through it now as a soldier goes through the bayonet exercise; yes, let us fight as we fought before." "If the battle does not go well," said Giulia, "you must not forget me." "But no," I answered her, "but no; that is the one thing that we others are always thinking about. You must be saved, even though safety lay only in death." "But the work must be done thoroughly," she insisted. "Madame need not fear," said the corporal, speaking in a low voice; "even were I in my death agony, I should have strength enough left to kill." "So should I," said Mac, "but I'd be sorry all the same." I was about to speak, but Giulia put her finger on my lips, and said: "I am well content, I am almost happy." Very soon a number of men, some on camels, others on horses, rode out from the caravan towards us. Our horses were hobbled, as we preferred to fight on foot. We were infantrymen by training, and, even had we been of the cavalry, we could get no good from our chargers after the long journey without food or water. When we ranged ourselves in open order the oncoming Arabs halted, and evidently consulted together. After a few moments of deliberation they divided into two parties, each about half-a-dozen strong, and prepared to attack us on both flanks. When the party on the right came within long range Mac called out: "Am I to fire, corporal?" "Yes; when you think you can hit man or camel or horse," replied the Englishman. Almost immediately afterwards Mac fired, but no result seemed to follow the shot. He fired a second time, and brought down a man who was riding on a camel somewhat in advance of the others, brandishing a lance. A hurried volley came towards us now, but the range was too great for their guns, and we did not even hear the whistle of the bullets. The corporal and I had already begun to fire on the party approaching our left, and very soon a hot fusilade was going on. Luckily for us our opponents did not attempt to charge; they foolishly depended on their fire arms, with the result that we had emptied three saddles before their bullets began to hiss past our ears. When at last their bullets began to be unpleasantly perceptible the nearest Arab was full 300 yards away, and not one of us had been touched. We were now warming to the work, and at such a range in so clear an atmosphere it was easy for our rifles to tell. Not more than a dozen shots had whizzed past our heads when the Arabs were forced to retire, leaving five men on the plain, while two camels sprawling on the ground and two horses standing shivering with hanging heads told us that the animals had suffered as well as the men. As the Arabs galloped away we fired once or twice at their backs, but it is very hard for a soldier to hit a horse or a man going away from him. We came together for a council of war. We at length decided to give them half-an-hour to recommence the attack; if they did not assail us again within that time, or if they should continue their journey, we were then to assault the caravan. The plain fact was that we had to get possession of the caravan; if we did not, our horses would fail, and we, on foot in the desert, should have no chance of saving our lives. Moreover, we felt justified in acting as highway robbers, for the Arabs had deliberately halted, and then sallied forth to take our lives, so as to possess themselves of our horses and arms. For me there was another thought: if the fight had gone against us, as it might easily have done if the Arabs had had sense enough to scatter and then to come straight home in a charge, Giulia would have had to die. There was no other resource. We Europeans could not endure the thought that a woman of our own blood, of our own colour, of our own ideas, should become the slave of a Bedouin of the desert. We did not have to wait long. Ten men, five on camels, five on horseback, rode out from the caravan and started in a headlong charge against us. They began to gallop at a very long distance off, and this was lucky for us, for when the horses arrived at our position they were quite blown. Our rifles spoke quickly and well. There was no aiming at individuals, all we tried to do was to put as many bullets as we could into the moving mass before it could reach our bayonets. We were in close order now, with Giulia in the rear. In spite of all our efforts the Arabs reached the spot where we were, but neither horse nor camel would come upon the steel. All swerved aside, and the Arabs, firing from the backs of their animals, tried to shoot us down. But our rifles were better, far better, and we were steady as rocks upon the ground. Moreover, Giulia's revolvers were emptied, all save one chamber, and that was kept for herself. I cannot tell about my comrades, except that each did his duty, but I can tell what happened to myself. An Arab mounted on a camel tried to reach me with his spear; I lunged at his camel's snout, and got my bayonet well home. The terrified animal drew back, and as it did so I shot its rider dead. A second Arab, who had dismounted, or whose horse had been shot, came at me with a scimitar. But it was of no use; the long rifle and bayonet got in twice--once, as I had been taught long before, on the face, the second time full in the region of the heart. That ended my fighting for the day. The attack was over. One Arab was galloping away, but not so fast that a bullet from Mac's rifle could not reach him; two or three wounded who were trying to go off were soon settled by the English corporal and myself. We had no mercy in our hearts; they would not give us quarter, and we would give none to them. Not a man of the ten who attacked us escaped, and had a hundred others been in our power at the time we should have slain them all. It was now our turn to attack. We mounted our horses, having first freed them from their hobbles, and advanced as quickly as the poor brutes could move towards the place where the caravan lay. When we came within about 500 yards of it three or four Arabs opened fire. Mac and the English corporal dismounted and returned the fire with success. After a few shots two of the Arabs fell, and then the shooting ceased. An old man, evidently a sheik, came forward with his hands raised above his head and spoke to us in Arabic. The corporal knew a few words of the language, and told him that we wanted water and food. When the sheik heard this he offered us all that the caravan had of what we required, and begged us to spare the lives of all who surrendered. This we promised to do, and in a quarter of an hour we were furnished with four fresh saddle-horses and two others for burden, with enough of food to last a fortnight, and a fair supply of water. We left the horses that had hitherto borne us to the beaten party; they were worn out, and, besides, they bore the stamp of the French Government. We took clothing also from four of the dead men, and afterwards found an opportunity of changing our uniform--of course, only kepi, tunic, and trousers--for an attire more befitting the desert and, therefore, less noticeable in it. Even Giulia, the while we turned our backs, put on an Arab dress, and many merry compliments we paid her about it. When we left the caravan we pushed south at full speed for half-an-hour. Then turning to the west we went on at a fairly quick pace for more than two hours. As we might by that time consider that we had reached a place of comparative safety we halted for a rest. We had made a good meal of dates, bread and water after seizing the caravan, and so felt no hunger, but we soldiers--pretended Arabs I suppose we ought to call ourselves now--were glad to fill our pipes and talk over the two excellent fights we had made, for liberty first, and then for life. But we did not halt long; we had still to go farther west, and then to turn our horses' heads north for Morocco. This dangerous way through savage Sahara and almost as savage Morocco was for us the one way of escape, the one way of safety, the one way that would bring us back to civilisation and to happiness. Yet, dangerous as it was, we were filled with high hopes of success. All our undertakings had prospered, somehow or other; each one felt that there was no danger in the world that he and his good comrades could not overcome. And I am the sole survivor--but why should I anticipate? For three days we travelled due west, caring our horses and sparing our supplies. Then we came upon an oasis, at which we refilled our water bottles. Luckily, there was not a soul at it or in sight, for we had no desire, now that we were sufficiently well equipped with all that we wanted, to try conclusions again with the fighting men of the desert. Our only wish at the time was to travel without attracting the observation of any. Then we turned towards the north-west and went slowly and cautiously along. We knew that soon we should be in the land of the Moors, but we were not so foolish as to believe that we should find a settled government there. We were quite well aware that most of the tribes south of the Atlas Mountains yield obedience only to their own chiefs, but we had no fear of the agricultural people. The only ones likely to attack us were the nomadic Arabs, and most of these would be left behind by us along with the desert. One must remember that in the Sahara there is but one law, the law of force, the plunderer of to-day is often the plundered of to-morrow. Where all are robbers, robbery is no reproach. In Morocco, however, even south of the Atlas Mountains, people have settled down in villages, poor and dirty it is true, but still homes. Where men have houses, ploughs, and oxen they begin to be civilised, and one may generally pass along without molestation. One must pay his way, of course, and we had money enough to do that, as Giulia had taken all her savings with her. True, our money might excite their cupidity, but then we need never show much at a time, and we presented all the appearance of a party that could defend its possessions. The English corporal and Mac did look really formidable; their beards had not been shaved since we came away, and I in fun nicknamed Mac the "hirsute tiger" and the corporal the "shaggy lion." They laughed at the names and at one another, and when the jest was explained to Giulia she laughed too, but not, as I noticed, with the same heartiness as of old. Poor girl! she was not at all well. Her strength was reduced, and the troubles, the anxieties, the privations of her life in the desert, following upon her agony before and during my trial, were beginning to tell seriously upon her, and I could do nothing to spare her in the least! As we were riding along together one day the corporal said--in English, so that Giulia might not understand: "It is all very well for you, Jean--you ought to be happy because you have escaped death--but what are Mac and I to do if we ever escape from the desert?" I did not say anything in reply, but Mac spoke. "I am satisfied if I can get home to Ireland once more; once there I will think twice before again becoming an exile." "Very good," answered the corporal; "but I have no home to go to." "Can you not go to the United States," I asked, "and make a new home there?" "Yes, yes, I have thought of that; but----" He said no more, and we all rode silently on for a time. That night, when Mac called me for my turn of guard, he said: "Did you notice how queer the corporal was to-day?" "Oh yes; and so did Giulia. She asked me if there was anything wrong, and I knew not what to tell her." "Ma foi," said Mac, "I see trouble ahead. Believe me, there will be at least one more fight, and 'twill be for the corporal's satisfaction this time." "I can't help it," I replied; "he fought for me, and if he wants me I'll fight for him." "So will I," answered Mac. "Good night." About two days afterwards we came to a little village, and boldly demanded food, water and lodging. We promised to pay for all we got, but we took care to drive a hard bargain, so that they might think us poorer than we were. People will tell you about Arabian and Moorish and Turkish hospitality, but then these have never been with Arabs or Moors or Turks; if they had been, they would know that such hospitality has its price and that the price is limited by two things only--the wealth and the cunning of the purchaser. Of course, we kept the usual watches that night; we thought we were safe, but one can never be safe enough. Next morning we got ready to depart. Giulia, Mac, and I had gone slightly in advance, Mac and I leading the horses that carried our supplies. The corporal was last. Suddenly we heard a woman's cry, then a loud oath and a shriek, and, looking back, we saw the Englishman lifting an Arab, or rather a Berber, woman to his saddle. Just as he succeeded a native rushed at him with a spear and stabbed him twice in the side. The corporal let go his hold of the woman and tried to unsling his rifle, but was unable to do so before the Berber thrust at him again, and brought him heavily to the ground. I had meanwhile dropped the bridle of the horse that I was leading and turned back. My rifle was unslung in a moment, and I fired at almost point-blank range at the Berber, just as he was preparing to drive his weapon home again in the body of my prostrate comrade. He flung up his arms and stumbled forward, tripping over the corporal. I rode back to help the Englishman, but it was too late; he was dead. Meanwhile shots began to fly round us; all the villagers were aroused by the outcry and the report of my rifle. Mac shouted to me to come away; there was no hope save in instant flight. I turned again, and regained Giulia's side, only to find that the pack-horses had stampeded. Mac fired at the crowd of natives, with what success I know not, and then the three of us galloped away at top speed, followed as we went by a dropping fire. When we had got about half-a-mile from the village we looked back, and saw we were pursued. Six or eight Berbers were on our trail, and were evidently determined to take vengeance on us for the corporal's rashness. Our horses were quite fresh, and we pushed on, as it would not do to fight too near their village, for then they might be so reinforced that all hope of success on our part would disappear. If we could only get the half-dozen or so that followed us sufficiently far away we could enter into a fight with confidence. We had the European's usual contempt for savages, and our two previous fights had given us a wonderful amount of faith in ourselves and our weapons. True our fighting power had been much diminished by the death of the Englishman, for the loss of one rifle was serious in so small a band; but, even so, Mac and I were quite sure that we could first stall off the grand attack, and then inflict such damage on our opponents that they, or what was left of them, would be glad enough to retire. We had gone thus about five or six miles when Mac called to Giulia and me to pull up. "No," I shouted; "let us press on a little farther." Mac shook his head. I saw that he was very pale; the fear that another comrade was passing away took instant possession of my heart. When we halted the pursuing Berbers were not more than half-a-mile away; they were six in number, and kept close together. "What is wrong?" I asked. "I was hurt," Mac replied, "in the firing at the village, and I could not go farther at that pace." "Where did you get it?" "In the right side." And he held his hands pressed upon his body just above the right groin. "It is all right," he went on. "I can get through this fight, but after----" He stopped, smiled feebly, and shook his head. In a moment I had taken off his belt, opened his clothes, and looked for the wound. It was a small one, just a little hole in the side, with scarcely any outflow of blood. This made me serious. I had often seen similar ones, and I knew, as all soldiers do, that the wound that does not bleed outwardly bleeds inwardly, and is the most dangerous for the sufferer and the most difficult for the surgeon. "Never mind," said Mac; "you can do nothing--at least you cannot until we have beaten off these rascals. Do not weep, petite," he said to Giulia; "I now repay you for all your kindness to me when my pay was stopped." This only made Giulia weep all the more. Poor girl, it was for her a morning of tribulation. But the work had to be done. We all lay down close together, and as soon as the Berbers came within easy range Mac and I opened fire. The fight was like both the others, except that these Berbers, being village-bred agriculturists, did not try to charge us with so much resolution as either the spahis or the Bedouins. They fired upon us for some time, but Mac and I were too well armed to mind much the popping of their guns, and when we had shot three men and a couple of horses the survivors withdrew. Then Mac insisted that we should mount and go forward again, because, as he truly said, if others came up they might attack us in that place, but the sight of their dead comrades would scarcely impel them to pursue. Giulia and I could not deny this. It was apparent that the best chance of safety lay in leaving the field to the dead and making good our retreat before the Berbers learned that another man of ours had been placed _hors de combat_. Nevertheless, it was with heavy hearts that we remounted. It pained Giulia and myself to see the changed look in our good comrade's eyes; his forced smile made us sad, for the thought crossed our minds that soon we should be alone together in a savage land, without a friend, and almost without hope. CHAPTER XXIV We struggled on together for about half-an-hour. Then Mac said that he could go no farther, and Giulia and I lifted him out of the saddle and placed him tenderly on the ground. I asked him if he were in much pain; he said that he felt very little, but that his lower limbs were becoming numbed. "The end cannot be far off," he went on, "and, when I am gone, take my rifle and cartridges, and put as great a distance as possible between yourselves and the Berbers." "Do not think of us," I replied, "think of yourself; you have but a short time to make your peace with God." He said nothing to me, but I saw his lips moving in quiet prayer. After some time he said: "Good-bye, my good comrades; it is nearly over." Giulia was weeping, and there were tears also in my eyes. I pressed his hand, and Giulia, bending down, kissed him on the forehead. A moment after he ejaculated: "O Lord, have mercy." And at the words his gallant spirit passed away. We were now lonely indeed. In one morning Giulia and I had lost our two companions--the two men who did not hesitate to risk their lives, as they used to put it, for the comrade in trouble and the woman in distress. The outlook that had been so favourable the day before was now dark and gloomy. Two-thirds of our fighting strength had gone; but that was not the worst: we missed even more the ruined Englishman's stern manner and stout heart, the laughing Irishman's constant wit on the march and steady earnestness in the fight. Both were good friends, of totally different natures, yet equally sympathetic; each made up for what the other lacked. One never minded the gloom that too often sat upon the corporal's brow in listening to the ceaseless jesting and careless laughter of the simple soldier; and when the fight came one felt that Mac would care, and care well, for his share of it, but that the Englishman, while working as a fighting man, was planning as our chief. People will say: Oh, but you were once sergeant-major, and why did not you command rather than the corporal? Well, for two good reasons. First, if I had once been sergeant-major, he had once been captain. Second, somebody had to be close to Giulia in every fight, for reasons that may be guessed--and who had a better right to be at her side than I? There was no time for us to bury poor Mac, even had I pick and shovel for the work. Anyway, no soldier thinks much about where his body will lie after death: no grave at all is as good as a place in a trench where hundreds of others are pressing and crowding around. When you have once seen a battlefield grave, where three or four hundred lie like sardines in a tin, you will find little, if indeed any, poetry in the words "God's acre." Not that the burial party should be blamed, be it well understood. Oh no! they must think of the living, especially the wounded, and in a hot climate quick burial is the only thing to prevent a pestilence of the sun. Giulia and I managed to go about twelve kilometres farther on our road that day. I did not want to go so far, but she insisted. She knew, as I did, that she was not in a fit state to travel such a distance; but some fear of the Berbers who had killed our comrades had taken possession of her heart, and she would not, nay, she could not, rest until we were quite safe from further pursuit. But she could not hold out very long; at last even to sit her horse when going at a mere walking pace was too much for her strength, and she was compelled to yield to my entreaties and to dismount and rest. Poor girl! she was very nervous and excited. Even the struggles that ended in complete success had tried her too much, and now she felt with tenfold anxiety and apprehension the death of the two loyal, brave, and generous comrades who had been so suddenly lost. And a woman always feels the loss of a friend more than a man does, because a man can easily get another, but a women must be always suspicious of those who tender her friendship, lest there be poison in the gift. That night we could set no guard. Both of us were weary in spirit and in body. There was no one to relieve me if I watched, and Giulia could not rest unless I was so near that her hand could always touch me. I thought of a plan: it was to picket the horses so that there should be no danger of losing them, and then to withdraw about four hundred yards from the spot where they were placed. The horses might attract enemies in the night, but if we were some distance away, we ought to be in comparative safety. Giulia assented; and when I had settled the horses for the night I helped her to a spot a good distance from them, and after a little interval, during which Giulia wept and I comforted her as best I could, we lay down to rest in the desert side by side. As I was sleeping, as a soldier sleeps who has learned to rest with aching body or even with aching heart, Giulia clasped me by the shoulder, and brought me back to active thought and life. "What! is there an attack?" And I tried for my rifle in the dark. "No, no! oh no! it is not that. I am ill; oh, what shall I do!" But I will not tell the story. The night wore on, and when dawn came it was only to show me that the best of all my comrades, the comrade who made life happy and a thing of joy, the woman who had loved and trusted, ever true, ever unchanging, was about to pass out of my life for ever. The end came shortly after the dawn. It was quiet, for poor Giulia was worn out with all that she had gone through, and, when all was over, Arab or Berber or robber of the road might take my life, and I should not resist. What was the good of life since I had lost my love? All that day I stayed quietly by the dead body of my dear one. I forgot the horses; I forgot the danger of attack; I forgot all things save that I was at last alone, really alone, in the world. I thought of those whom I had loved and lost--Nicholas the Russian, the English corporal, Mac; but every moment my thoughts reverted to the greatest loss of all--the loss of her whose corpse, pale and bloodless, it is true, but with an indefinable beauty of feature and expression, lay quiet and still upon the sand. In the evening I dug a grave with my bayonet, and gently, tenderly, laid there to rest the remains of her who had loved me with so great a love. * * * * * There is little more to be said. I had no difficulty in making my way to Tangier. I was not molested, nor did I molest anyone. The only thought in my mind was to get as far away as possible from Africa--the land for me of so many chances and changes, of exquisite love and still more exquisite sorrow. I was hopeless, heartless, not in the sense that I was heartless to others--I was heartless only for myself. From Tangier I crossed to Spain, and there found a relation at Salamanca--one of those men who, studying for the priesthood, choose the foreign colleges rather than Maynooth. He helped me with money to reach Ireland, but from him, as from all others, I kept the true story, the story, I may now say, of "twenty golden years ago." THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH. 
40479	----	IN THE FOREIGN LEGION BY ERWIN ROSEN LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. HENRIETTA ST. COVENT GARDEN 1910 _All rights reserved_ Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London PROLOGUE Once upon a time there was a young student at a German University who found life too fresh, too joyous, to care very much for professors and college halls. Parental objections he disregarded. Things came to a climax. And the very next "Schnelldampfer" had amongst its passengers a boy in disgrace, bound for the country of unlimited possibilities in search of a fortune.... The boy did not see very much of fortune, but met with a great deal of hard work. His father did not consider New York a suitable place for bad boys, and booked him a through passage to Galveston. There the ex-student contracted hotel-bills, feeling very much out of place, until a man who took a fancy to him gave him a job on a farm in Texas. There the boy learnt a good deal about riding and shooting, but rather less about cotton-raising. This was the beginning. In the course of time he became translator of Associated Press Despatches for a big German paper in St. Louis and started in newspaper life. From vast New York to the Golden Gate his new profession carried him: he was sent as a war correspondent to Cuba, he learned wisdom from the kings of journalism, he paid flying visits to small Central American republics whenever a new little revolution was in sight. Incidentally he acquired a taste for adventure. Then the boy, a man now, was called back to the Fatherland, to be a journalist, editor and novelist. He was fairly successful. And a woman's love came into his life.... But he lost the jewel happiness. The continual fight for existence and battling for daily bread of his American career, so full of ups and downs, was hardly a good preparation for quiet respectability. Wise men called him a fool, a fool unspeakable, who squandered his talents in light-heartedness. And finally a time came when even his wife to be could no more believe in him. The jewel happiness was lost.... The man at any rate recognised his loss; he recognised that life was no longer worth living. A dull feeling of hopelessness came over him. And in his hour of despair he remembered the blood of adventure in his veins. A wild life he would have: he would forget. He enlisted as a soldier in the French Foreign Legion. * * * * * That man was I. I had burned my boats behind me. Not a soul knew where I was. Those who loved me should think that I was dead. I lived the hard life of a légionnaire; I had no hopes, no aspirations, no thought for the future; I worked and marched, slept, ate, and did what I was ordered; suffered the most awful hardships and bore all kinds of shameful treatment. And during sleepless nights I dreamed of love--love lost for ever.... Some five hundred years I wore the uniform of the Legion. So at least it seemed to me. Then--the great change came. One day there was a letter for me. Love had found me out across a continent. I read and read and read again. That was the turning-point of my life. I broke my fetters, and I fought a hard fight for a new career.... Now the jewel happiness is mine. ERWIN ROSEN HAMBURG, 1909 CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I LÉGIONNAIRE! In Belfort : Sunrays and fear : Madame and the waiter : The French lieutenant : The enlistment office of the Foreign Legion : Naked humanity : A surgeon with a lost sense of smell : "Officier Allemand" : My new comrades : The lieutenant-colonel : A night of tears 1 CHAPTER II L'AFRIQUE Transport of recruits on the railway : What our ticket did for us and France : The patriotic conductor : Marseilles : The gate of the French Colonies : The Colonial hotel : A study in blue and yellow : On the Mediterranean : The ship's cook : The story of the Royal Prince of Prussia at Saida : Oran : Wine and légionnaires : How the deserter reached Spain and why he returned 16 CHAPTER III LÉGIONNAIRE NUMBER 17889 French and American bugle-calls : Southward to the city of the Foreign Legion : Sidi-bel-Abbès : The sergeant is not pleased : A final fight with pride : The jokes of the Legion : The wise negro : Bugler Smith : I help a légionnaire to desert : The Eleventh Company : How clothes are sold in the Legion : Number 17889 35 CHAPTER IV THE FOREIGN LEGION'S BARRACKS In the company's storeroom : Mr. Smith--American, légionnaire, philosopher : The Legion's neatness : The favourite substantive of the Foreign Legion : What the commander of the Old Guard said at Waterloo : Old and young légionnaires : The canteen : Madame la Cantinière : The regimental feast : Strange men and strange things : The skull : The prisoners' march : The wealth of Monsieur Rassedin, légionnaire : "Rehabilitation" : The Koran chapter of the Stallions 48 CHAPTER V THE MILITARY VALUE OF THE FOREIGN REGIMENTS A day's work as a recruit : Allez, hurry up! : The Legion's etiquette : A morning's run : The "cercle d'enfer" and the lack of soap : The main object of the Legion's training : Splendid marchers : Independent soldiers : Forty kilometres a day : Uniform, accoutrements, baggage, victualling : The training of the légionnaire in detail : The légionnaire as a practical man : Specialties of the Legion : Programme for a week in the Legion : The légionnaire as a labourer 77 CHAPTER VI "THE LEGION GETS NO PAY" The money troubles of the Legion : Five centimes wages : The cheapest soldiers of the world : Letters from the Legion : The science of "decorating" : The industries of the légionnaires : What the bugler did for a living : The man with the biscuits : A thief in the night : Summary lynch law : Herr von Rader and la Cantinière : "The Legion works--the Legion gets no pay!" 105 CHAPTER VII THE CITY OF THE FOREIGN LEGION The daily exodus to town : Ben Mansur's coffee : The Ghetto : The citizens of Sidi-bel-Abbès and the légionnaires : How the Legion squared accounts with the civilians : A forbidden part of the town : Primitive vice : A dance of a night : The gardens : The last resting-place of the Legion's dead 117 CHAPTER VIII A HUNDRED THOUSAND HEROES--A HUNDRED THOUSAND VICTIMS The hall of honour : A collection of ruined talents : The battle of Camaron : A skeleton outline of the Legion's history : A hundred thousand victims : A psychological puzzle : True heroes : How they are rewarded : The chances of promotion : The pension system of the Foreign Legion 135 CHAPTER IX "MARCH OR DIE!" The Legion's war-cry : A night alarm : On the march : The counting of the milestones : Under canvas : The brutality of the marches : The légionnaire and the staff doctor : My fight for an opiate : The "marching pig" : The psychology of the marches : Excited nerves : The song of imprecations 155 CHAPTER X THE MADNESS OF THE FOREIGN LEGION An unpleasant occurrence : The last three coppers : The Roumanian Jew from Berlin : Monsieur Viaïsse : The Legion's atmosphere : The Cafard demoniacs : Bismarck's double : Krügerle's whim : The madness of Légionnaire Bauer : Brutal humour : A tragedy 176 CHAPTER XI THE DESERTERS The Odyssey of going on pump : Death in the desert : The Legion's deserters : A disastrous flight in a motor-car : The tragic fate of an Austrian engineer : In the Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès : The business part of desertion : Oran and Algiers : The Consulate as a trap : The financial side of desertion : One hundred kilometres of suffering : Hamburg steamers : Self-mutilation : Shamming : In the Suez Canal : Morocco, the wonder-land 197 CHAPTER XII A CHAPTER ON PUNISHMENTS The return of the poumpistes : The scale of punishments in the Legion : Of spiteful non-commissioned officers : The Legion's axiom : Sad history of Little Jean : The punishment machine : Lost years : A légionnaire's earnings in five years--francs, 127.75 : The prisons in the Foreign Legion : Pestilential atmosphere : Human sardines : The general cells : Life in the prison : On sentry duty among the prisoners 226 CHAPTER XIII SOME TYPES OF VICE A variety of human vices : The red wine of Algeria : Shum-Shum : If there were no wine 248 CHAPTER XIV MY ESCAPE In the Arab prison : The letter : Days of suffering : Flight! : The greedy "Crédit Lyonnais" : Haggling in the Ghetto : The palm grove as a dressing-room : On the railway track : Arab policemen : Horrible minutes : Travelling to Oran : Small preparations : On the steamer _St. Augustine_ : Marseilles : Ventimiglia : Free 255 CHAPTER XV J'ACCUSE Two years after : Shadows of the past : My vision : Public opinion and the Foreign Legion : The political aspect of the Foreign Legion : The moralist's point of view : The "Legion question" in a nutshell : A question the civilised world should have answered long ago : Quousque tandem...? 274 CHAPTER I LÉGIONNAIRE! In Belfort : Sunrays and fear : Madame and the waiter : The French lieutenant : The enlistment office of the Foreign Legion : Naked humanity : A surgeon with a lost sense of smell : "Officier Allemand" : My new comrades : The lieutenant-colonel : A night of tears Another man, feeling as I felt, would have preferred a pistol-bullet as a last resource. I went into the Foreign Legion.... It was evening when I arrived in the old fortress of Belfort, with the intention of enlisting for the Legion. Something very like self-derision made me spend the night in the best hotel. Awakening was not pleasant. The sunrays played hide-and-seek upon the lace of the cover, clambered to the ceiling, threw fantastic colours on the white little faces of the stucco angels, climbed down again, crowded together in a shining little heap, and gave the icy elegance of the room a warm tone. Sleepily I stared at their play; sleepily I blinked at the enormous bed with its splendid covering of lace, the curious furniture, the wonderful Persian rug. Then I woke up with a start and tried to think. A thousand thoughts, a thousand memories crowded in upon me. Voices spoke to me; a woman's tears, the whispering of love, a mothers sorrow. And some devil was perpetually drumming in even measure: lost, lost, lost for ever.... For the second time in my life I felt the Great Fear. An indescribable feeling, as if one had a great lump in one's throat, barring the air from the lungs; as if one never could draw breath again. I had once experienced this fear in the valley of Santiago de Cuba, when one of the first Spanish shells from the blockhouse on San Juan Hill burst a few feet from me. This time it was much worse. Ah well, one must try to forget! I dressed with ridiculous care, paid my bill in the "bureau," and earned a lovely smile from madame for my gold piece. Ah, madame, you would hardly flash your pretty eyes if you knew! The head waiter stood expectant at the door, bending himself almost double in French fashion. He reminded me of a cat in bad humour. I gave him a rather large silver piece. "Well, my son, you're the last man in this world who gets a tip from me. Too bad, isn't it?" "Je ne parle pas...." "That's all right," said I. I walked slowly through the quaint narrow streets and alleys of Belfort. Shop after shop, store after store, and before each and every one of them stood flat tables packed with things for sale, taking up most of the pavement. Here was a good chance for a thief, I thought, and laughed, marvelling that in my despair the affairs of the Belfort storekeepers could interest me. Mechanically I looked about and saw a house of wonderful blue; the city fathers of Belfort had built their new market-hall almost wholly of sapphire-blue glass, which scintillated in the rays of the sun, giving an effect such as no painter has as yet been able to reproduce. I felt sorry that a building of such beauty should be condemned to hold prosaic potatoes and greenstuff. Vivacious Frenchmen and Frenchwomen hurried by hustling and jostling each other in the crowded streets.... Don't hurry about so. Life is certainly not worth the trouble! Ironical thoughts could not alter matters, nor could even the most wonderful blue help me to forget. I must get it over. A very young-looking lieutenant came up the street. I spoke to him in my rusty college French: "Would you please to direct me to the recruiting office of the Foreign Legion?" The officer touched his "kepi" politely and seemed rather astonished. "You can come with me, monsieur. I am on the way to the offices of the fortress." We went together. "You seem to be German?" he said. "I may be able to assist you. I am adjutant to the general commanding the fortress." "Yes, I am German, and intend to enlist in the Foreign Legion," I said, very, very softly. How terribly hard this first step was! I thought the few words must choke me. "Oh, la la...." said the officer, quite confounded. He took a good look at me. I seemed to puzzle him. Then he chatted (the boy was a splendid specimen of French courtesy) amiably about this and that. Awfully interesting corps, this Foreign Legion. He hoped to be transferred himself to the "étrangers" for a year or two. Ah, that would be magnificent. "The Cross of the Legion of Honour can be earned very easily in Southern Algeria. Brilliant careers down there! Oh, la la! Eh bien, monsieur--you shall wear the French uniform very soon. Have you anything particular to tell me?" Again that curious glance. I answered in the negative. "Really not?" the lieutenant asked in a very serious tone of voice. "No, monsieur, absolutely nothing. I have been told that for the Foreign Legion physical fitness is the only thing required, and that the recruiting officers cared less than nothing about the past lives of their recruits." "You're quite right," said the lieutenant; "I asked in your own interest only. If you had special military knowledge, for instance, your way in the Legion could be made very easy for you." Some time later I understood what he meant. Now I answered that I had served in the army like all Germans. Meanwhile we had reached a row of small buildings. Into one of them the lieutenant went with me, up a flight of steep, rather dirty stairs, into a dingy little office. At our entrance a corporal jumped up from his seat and saluted, and the officer spoke to him in a low tone. Then my little lieutenant left and the corporal turned to me. "Eh, enter la Légion?" he said. "Mais, monsieur, you are not dressed like a man desiring to gain bread by becoming légionnaire! Votre nom?" I reflected for an instant whether I should give my right name or not. I gave it, however. It did not matter much. "Eh, venez avec moi to the others. The médecin major will be here in a minute." So saying the corporal opened a door and gave me a friendly push. I drew back almost frightened. The atmosphere of the close little room was unspeakable. It was foul with the smell of unwashed humanity, sweat, dirt and old clothes. Long benches stood against the wall and men sat there, candidates for the Foreign Legion, waiting for the medical examination, waiting to know whether their bodies were still worth five centimes daily pay. That is what a légionnaire gets--five centimes a day. One of the men sat there naked, shivering in the chill October air. It needed no doctor's eye to see that he was half starved. His emaciated body told the story clearly enough. Another folded his pants with almost touching care, although they had been patched so often that they were now tired of service and in a state of continuous strike. An enormous tear in an important part had ruined them hopelessly. These pants and that tear had probably settled the question of the wearer's enlisting in the Foreign Legion. A third man, a strong boy, seemed very much ashamed of having to undress. These poor men considered nudity a vile and ugly thing, because, in their life of poverty and hunger, they had forgotten the laws of cleanliness. They were ashamed, and every move of theirs told it. There, in the corner, one of the men was shoving his shoes furtively as far as possible under the bench, that the holes in them might not be seen, and another made a small bundle of his tattered belongings, thus defying inspection. A dozen men were there. Some of them were mere boys, with only a shadow of beard on their faces; youths with deep-set hungry eyes and deep lines round their mouths; men with hard, wrinkled features telling the old story of drink very plainly. Nobody dared to talk aloud. Occasional words were spoken in a hushed undertone. The man beside me said softly, the fear of refusal in his eyes: "I've got varicose veins. D'you think they'll take me...?" My God, the Foreign Legion meant hope for this man--the hope of regular food! The daily five centimes were for him wages well worth having! The atmosphere was loathsome. I stared at this miserable crowd of hopeless men, at their filthy things, at their hungry faces; I felt like a criminal in the dock. My clothes seemed a mockery.... After what seemed an eternity of waiting the officers came in. A fat surgeon, an assistant and my lieutenant. I would have given something to have asked this doctor why in all the world these men could not be given a bath before examination.... First the doctor pointed at me. "Undress!" While I was undressing, the officers kept whispering together, very softly, but I could hear that they were talking about me, and that the lieutenant said something about "Officier Allemand." I smiled as I listened. It was very funny to be taken for a quondam German officer. I suppose they took me for a deserter; it certainly must have been rather an unusual event to find a well-dressed man enlisting in the Legion. The well-dressed man felt annoyed at this curiosity, this openly shown pity. It was absolute torture to me. How very ridiculous it all was--I fumbled at my watch-chain, trying to take off the little gold sovereign-case in order to open my waistcoat--I fumed at the stares of the officers who should have been gentlemen.... The looks of the doctor said plainly: "Humph, the fellow actually wears fine underclothes!" Why should they stare at me? Had I not the same right as these other poor devils to go to perdition in my own way? Why should they make it so hard for me in particular? Then I understood how human their curiosity was, and how ridiculous my irritability. The first step was made. I began slowly to understand what it meant to enlist in the Foreign Legion as a last refuge. I stood there naked before the médecin major, who adjusted his eye-glass as if he had a good deal of time to spare, and who took a long look at me. I stared quietly back at him. You may look as long as you wish, I thought, you fat, funny old fellow with a snub nose. You surely aren't going to complain of my physical condition. "Bon," said the doctor. A clerk wrote something in a book. This finished the ceremony. The doctor did not bother about such trifles as examining the lungs, heart or eyes. He was for simplifying things. Monsieur le major decided with a short look in each case, as the other men took their turn. Three men were refused. An old woman could have diagnosed their condition at a glance--they were cases for a hospital, and their doing military service was absolutely out of the question. The man with the varicose veins, however, was at once accepted. Bon! I could see how happy he was over his good fortune, and I envied him. The man had hope.... * * * * * Before a small window in the wall we new recruits waited, half an hour, an hour. At last the window was opened and the corporal put out his head. "Snedr!" he called. Nobody answered. "Snedr!!" he yelled, getting angry. Still no reply. Finally the lieutenant appeared beside the corporal, and looked over his list. "Oh," he said, "the man does not understand. Schneider!" "Here!" answered one of my new comrades at once. "Your name is Schneider?" the lieutenant asked. "Yes, sir." "Very well, in French your name is pronounced Snedr. Remember that!" "Yes, sir." "Sign your name here." The man signed. One after the other the new recruits were called to the little window, and each signed his name, without bothering to look at what he signed. I came last this time. The lieutenant gave me a sheet of hectographed paper, and I glanced quickly over its contents. It was a formal contract for five years' service in the Foreign Legion between the Republic of France and the man who was foolish enough to sign it. There were a great many paragraphs and great stress was laid on the fact that the "enlisting party" had no right upon indemnification in case of sickness or disability, and no claim upon pension until after fifteen years of service. "Have you any personal papers?" the lieutenant asked me suddenly. I almost laughed in his face--he was such a picture of curiosity. In my German passport, however, I was described as "editor," and I had a notion that this passport was much too good for an occasion like this. While searching my portfolio for "personal papers" I happened to find the application form of a life insurance company, with my name filled out. I gave this to the lieutenant with a very serious countenance. It was good enough for this. The officer looked at the thing and seemed quite puzzled. "Oh, that will do," he finally smiled, and gave me the pen to sign. I signed. And under my name I wrote the date: October 6, 1905. "The date was unnecessary," said the lieutenant. "Pardon me," I answered. "I wrote unthinkingly--it's an important date for me." "By God, you're right," said he. In single file we were marched to the barracks. One of the French soldiers who met us on the way stopped, and threw up his hands in laughing astonishment: "Eh!" And then, making a wry face, he yelled, in a coarse sing-song: "Nous sommes les légionnaires d'Afrique...." * * * * * Half an hour later three new recruits of the Foreign Legion, the recruit Schneider, the recruit Rader and the recruit Rosen, sat in a little room belonging to the quarters of the 31st French Regiment of Line. All three were Germans. Rader opened the conversation. "My name's Rader. Pretty good name, ain't it, though it isn't my name, of course. I might have called myself von Rader--Baron von Rader--while I was at it, but I ain't proud. What's in a fine name, I say, if you've got nothing to fill your stomach with? No, the suckers may call me Rader. My real name is Müller. Can't use it! Must have some regard for the feelings of my people...." "I mustn't hurt their delicate feelings," he repeated with a great roar of laughter. Then a long knife on the table attracted his attention. He took it up, mimicked the pose of a grand tragedian, opened his mouth and swallowed the knife, as if twelve-inch blades were his favourite repast. All at once the knife lay upon the table again, only to vanish in the coat-sleeve of Herr von Rader and appear again rather abruptly out of his left trousers pocket. "I'm an artist," Herr Rader, alias von Rader, alias Müller said with a condescending smile. "A good one, too. Strictly first class. Why, these monkeys of Frenchmen don't know nothing about art! Would they appreciate a true artist? Not a bit of it. Boys, since I hopped over the frontier and made long nose at the German cop I left on the other side with a long face, I haven't had much to eat. Remarkably less than was good for my constitution. So Herr von Rader went to the dogs--to the Foreign Legion, I meant to say. What's the difference--if they don't treat me with proper respect, I'll be compelled to leave them again. On French leave! Scoot, skin out, bunk it--see?" Then Herr von Rader fished a number of mysterious little boxes out of innumerable pockets, inspected them carefully, turned round to mask his artistic preparations, turned to us again--and his wide-opened satyr-mouth emitted a sheet of flame! Little Schneider (he was very young) stared at the phenomenon with startled eyes. "Grand, ain't it?" said Herr von Rader quietly. "I've a notion that this coon isn't going to waste his resources on French Africa. Oh no! Some fine day I'll give the niggers of Central Africa a treat. I'll go partners with some big chief and do the conjuring part of the business. Heap big medicine! There's only one thing worrying me. How about drinking arrangements? Palm-wine, ain't it? Boys, if only they have such a thing as beer and kümmel down there!--Say, old fellow (he turned to me) what do you think about this French absinthe?" I mumbled something. "Awfully weak stuff!" said Herr von Rader sorrowfully. "No d--d good!" If the comical fellow had known that, with his drollery and his fantastic yarns, he was helping me to battle with my despair, I suppose he would have been very much astonished.... There was a good deal of story-telling: about the hunger and the misery of such "artistes" of the road; about the little tricks and "petty larcenies," by means of which the ever-hungry and ever-thirsty Herr von Rader had managed to eat occasionally, at least, on his wanderings over the roads of many countries; about drinking and things unspeakable. Most of the stories, however, told of hunger only, plain and simple hunger. Then Schneider's turn came. His story was very simple. A few weeks ago he was wearing the uniform of a German infantry regiment garrisoned at Cologne. He was then a recruit. One Sunday he had gone drinking with some other recruits and together they made a great deal of noise in the "Wirthshaus." The patrol came up. As the non-commissioned officer in command put Schneider under arrest, the boy shoved his superior aside, knocked some of the soldiers of the patrol down and took to his heels. When he had slept off the effects of his carouse in a corner, he got frightened and decided on flight. A dealer in second-hand clothes gave him an old civilian suit in exchange for his uniform. As a tramp he wandered till he reached the French frontier, and some other tramps showed him how to get across the frontier-line on a dark night. In the strange country hunger came and---- "We always talked about the Legion. All the other Germans on the road wanted to enlist in the Legion. Anyway, I never could have gone home again. My father would have killed me." "No, he wouldn't," said Herr von Rader wisely. "You would have got all sorts of good things. It's all in the Bible. Yes, it is...." The door opened and a sergeant came in. "Is the légionnaire Rosen here?" I stood up. "The lieutenant-colonel wishes to speak to you. Come along to the parade-ground." "... Keep your hat on," said the lieutenant-colonel. He spoke pure German. "No, you need not stand at attention. I have heard of you and would like to say a few words to you. I have served in the Foreign Legion as a common soldier. I consider it an honour to have served in this glorious corps. It all depends on yourself: men of talent and intelligence have better chances of promotion in the Legion than in any other regiment in the world. Educated men are valued in the Legion. What was your profession?" "Journalist ..." I stuttered. I felt miserable. The stern grey eyes looked at me searchingly. "Well, I can understand that you do not care to talk about these things. However, I will give you some advice: Volunteer for the first battalion of the Legion. You have a much better chance there for active service. We are fighting a battle for civilisation in Algeria and many a splendid career has been won in the Legion. I wish you good luck!" He gave me his hand. I believe this officer was a fine soldier and a brave man. * * * * * Herr von Rader of the merry mind and the unquenchable thirst slept the easy sleep of light-hearted men; I heard the German deserter groan in his sleep and call for his mother. All night long I lay awake. The events of my life passed before me in mad flight. I was once more a boy at college; I saw my father standing by the dock at Bremerhaven and heard his last good-bye and my mother's crying.... Back to America my waking dreams carried me; I saw myself a young cub of a reporter, and remembered in pain the enthusiasm of the profession, my enthusiasm--how proud I was, when for the first time the city editor trusted me with a "big thing," how I chased through San Francisco in cabs, how I interviewed big men and wormed details out of secretive politicians ... how I loved this work and how sweet success had tasted. Lost, lost for ever. Forget I must--I tried to think of the time in Texas, the life on the Brazos farm, where hundreds of negroes had learned to respect me--after a little shooting and more kindness shown them in their small troubles; I tried to glory in remembrance of hard riding and straight shooting, of a brutal but gloriously free life. Why should I not live a rough life now? I should be on active service in the Legion. Crouching down behind my rifle in the firing-line, waiting for the enemy. I would have a life of excitement, a life of danger. Hurrah for the wild old life! Grant me adventures, Dame Fortune! But fickle Lady Fortune would not grant even a night's oblivion. During the long night I fought with a wild desire to scream into the darkness the beloved name.... I fought with my tears---- CHAPTER II L'AFRIQUE Transport of recruits on the railway : What our ticket did for us and France : The patriotic conductor : Marseilles : The gate of the French Colonies : The Colonial hotel : A study in blue and yellow : On the Mediterranean : The ship's cook : The story of the Royal Prince of Prussia at Saida : Oran : Wine and légionnaires : How the deserter reached Spain and why he returned Next morning we assembled on the parade-ground. A sergeant distributed silver pieces amongst us, a franc for each man, that being the meagre subsistence allowance given us for the long voyage to the Mediterranean. Besides, each man was given a loaf of bread. Then a corporal marched us to the railway station. The loaf of bread under my arm prompted me to look persistently at the ground. I was afraid of reading in the eyes of the passers-by wonder, surprise, or, worse still, compassion. The corporal took us to the Marseilles train, gave us his blessing, smoked a cigarette, and waited patiently until the train started. We travelled alone. But France ran no danger of losing her recruits on the way. The fact that we were intended for the Foreign Legion was written on our military ticket in howling big red letters. The conductor watched with great care. He was a Frenchman and a patriot and had his suspicions that these new sons of France might have the perfidy to break faith and leave the train at some place other than Marseilles. He therefore kept a sharp look-out--occupying a good strategic position right in front of our car--whenever the train stopped at stations. The thing would have been impossible, anyway; with that ticket one could never have passed the platform barriers. Said Herr von Rader: "They know all about their business. We are just little flies, don't you see, sonny, and this fine invention of a ticket is the thread wound about our little legs. We're prisoners, brother mine!" When we left the train at Marseilles, we saw our patriotic conductor run along the platform, signalling excitedly to a sergeant at the gate. "I've got them! Here they are!" was the meaning of this human semaphore. The conductor was a taxpayer and took good care that France should receive her dues. The sergeant and a corporal received us lovingly. The corporal took charge and marched us through the town, while the sergeant trotted along the sidewalk at a respectful distance. Without doubt he had no desire that any one should connect him with us. He was quite right. We did not look pretty and the night on the train had not enhanced what little beauty we may originally have possessed. Along the immense water-front of the port of Marseilles we marched; in the midst of a swarming throng of men, amongst a cosmopolitan human machine in full working blast. Past Arabs carrying heavy burdens and fat Levantines lazily strolling about, surrounded by Frenchmen of the south, always gesticulating, ever talking. Ship lay by ship. Elegant steam yachts were moored alongside of unkempt tramp-steamers, whose neglected appearance told of the troubles of money-making on the high seas. There were Levantine barques with funny round sails, whose crews were dressed in flannel shirts of two exclusive colours: a screaming red and a howling blue. Sailing-ships of some hundred different rigs lay there in line, enormous elevators discharged their unceasing flow of grain, and a colossal swivel bridge hung high in the air on her single pillar, seeming to defy all laws of gravitation. Casks, barrels, boxes, sacks went flying through the air, past our noses, shoved, pushed, thrown, bundled about, propelled by the heavy fists of men who apparently could not work without a tremendous amount of yelling and screaming. Surely the combined noises of fifteen large cities cannot equal the hellish babel of Marseilles' water-front. We had to walk more than an hour before we reached the little fort, once the nucleus of Marseilles' harbour defence, whose sole purpose now is that of a gate through which to pass recruits for the colonial armies of France. Fort St. Jean it is called. Over the mediæval drawbridge of the fort we marched. An enormous oaken door was opened by a couple of sentries. As we entered, a volley of whistles and yells greeted us--the salute for the new légionnaires of France. On the time-worn pavement of the courtyard were crowded in a dense mass the soldiers of the African corps who were waiting for the next troopship. Spahis and Zouaves and Tirailleurs, who crowded round us like a swarm of bees. "Oh, la la, les bleus pour la Légion!" (Here are the blues for the Legion.) "Why are we called blues?" I asked a Spahi corporal who happened to stand near me. "Blues?" he said. "Oh, well, that means recruits. Officially recruits are called 'les jeunes soldats,' young soldiers, but in the army we say the blues." "Wonder what it means," I said. The corporal lit a new cigarette and explained: "The origin of the name is uncertain. My captain told me once that it represented an old army tradition from Napoleonic times. The soldiers of Napoleon wore very stiff cravats to give shape to the high collars of their uniforms. These cravats are said to have been torture. They held the head like a vice, and it took a long time to get used to them. The recruits actually got blue in the face with these cravats round their necks, to the immense amusement of the old soldiers, who made fun of them: Aha, the blues--look at the blues!" Herr von Rader (in my memory he always figures as "Herr von Rader") gave me a nudge: "Say, old chap, take a look at the fellows with the colossal pants!" The Spahis were at their toilette, arranging their spacious red trousers in picturesque folds. Herr von Rader looked at them with great wonder. "My soul--what waste! Why, it's astonishing. Out of a single pair of these pants I could make pants for a whole family and have a fine skirt left for my grandmother!" Then came the Spahi's sashes. Two men helped each other at this important part of their toilet. One Spahi would fasten the blue sash, seven feet in length, and about half a yard in breadth, to his hip, and turn quickly about while his comrade held the other end, keeping the sash tight and tense until his brother-in-arms was rolled up in it. The Spahis seemed to attach great importance to the sit of their sashes, smoothing and tightening and re-tightening them with amusing coquetry. The great gloomy courtyard was one mass of soldiers. From a gallery a non-commissioned officer read off a string of names from a pay-roll, and in squads the soldiers went up the stairs to receive their travelling allowance. We recruits stood in a corner, not knowing what to do or whom to report ourselves to. Finally a corporal exhorted us to go to the devil. We were in the way. It would not be our turn for a long time. We could wait, we should wait, being nasty recruits, blues, nom de Dieu. Mumbling further things descriptive of how he despised blues he went off. Then came soldiers, carrying on boards long rows of little tin bowls. The Spahis and Zouaves crowded at once round the steaming pots, but Herr von Rader hurled himself in the fray, and captured portions for all of us. It was thus that I made the acquaintance of "la gamelle," the venerable tin eating bowl of the French army, baptized "la gamelle" centuries ago. I was tasting for the first time the soup of the French army, a mixture of bread and greenstuffs and small pieces of meat. The cooking of this soup was an ancient, time-honoured custom. The musketeers of Louis XIV., of Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin prepared their soup in the very same fashion. Lounging about the place we came to the canteen of this curious army hotel, and made our way through a labyrinth of wine-casks, which were massed in front of the little door. There was an awful din inside. We sat down at one of the long tables and were served with the French army wine at fifteen centimes a bottle. Good wine, too, but it was impossible to enjoy it quietly, the Lord of the Canteen, a fat little man with greedy eyes, being eager for business--second-hand clothes business. He pestered us unceasingly with his offers and demands. Herr von Rader sold his boots for half a franc, after a great deal of haggling, since he wanted the half-franc badly, but objected to going barefooted. The owner of the canteen, however (who evidently thought the buying of good boots at half a franc a good thing), solved the difficulty. Out of some corner he conjured a pair of shoes such as the French Zouaves wear. Although they were in a bad state of dilapidation, Herr von Rader figured out that four bottles of wine could be exchanged for fifty centimes, and the boots changed owners.... Of my possessions, the fat man desired my overcoat. He complimented me on my overcoat. An exceedingly beautiful overcoat--such an overcoat as a poor man like he, the fat man, would be very glad to have. When I entered the Legion I would have to sell it and I would be sure not to get more than two francs for it. He would give me four. I never would get as much as that in Algeria, he said. Half an hour he talked to me in the vain endeavour to talk me out of the overcoat. But the "poor man" had a much too prosperous look about him. Moreover, a Zouave whispered in my ear that the cochon of a canteen-keeper was getting rich by his little "business." So I told him to go to a place which we generally consider hot and disagreeable. Then the fat man tried it with the others, and made excellent bargains. For a few copper pieces he bought many things, for the twentieth part of their value, boots and coats and pocket-books. The Swiss recruit even sold his trousers. He got five sous for them. He got a pair of old French infantry trousers into the bargain since he had to have some sort of compensation for these very necessary garments. The fat man's greedy eyes had a happy light in them and he bought whatever he could lay his hands on. There was money to be made even out of the poor devils of recruits for the Legion! I preferred the open air. Leaving the wine and laughter behind me I walked through the fort and climbed up to the bulwarks. The cannon had vanished; where once they had been mounted there grew little tufts of grass on the gravel. I was quiet and lonesome on the old battlements. They commanded a view of the whole of Marseilles. The city and the port were enveloped in a curious yellowish light, the bright yellow of the South. Through a veil of yellow I saw the enormous massive street-blocks of Lower Marseilles, and far away the little villas of the suburbs, their flat roofs reflecting a multitude of colours, with an ever-dominating leitmotiv of yellow. The harbour seemed far away and its noises were dimly audible. The ship masts, the elevators, the bridges looked tiny and delicate as the threads of a giant spider's web. South of my bulwark there was the ocean and peace. Between the walls of St. Jean and the vis-à-vis, an ochre-coloured rocky promontory, there was a stretch of deep blue water, of the most beautiful blue in all the world. Herr von Rader had followed me. He didn't say a word, but sat quietly on the wall swaying to and fro, like a pendulum. From time to time he spat to the whispering waters below. And how pleased he was when he managed to hit a fisherman. But not a word he said. Little I cared for Herr von Rader and his contempt of the world. What a strange thing this ocean-bound fortress was! The mighty walls now enclosed but an inn. The fort had been turned into an inn in its old days. Its artillery had been sold for old iron long ago. It had ceased to be a fighting machine. It was a resting-place, an hotel for the recruits of France's colonial army to pass a day and a night until the troopship carried them to Africa or French Indo-China or Madagascar. Every day of the year the old fort received new guests--for a day and a night. Many thousands of men had lodged in it.... Fort St. Jean was France's gate for her colonial soldiers. For a few the gate to the Legion of Honour, for the majority the gate to suffering and misery and sickness, to a nameless grave in the hot sands of Africa. I wondered whither my road would lead me, in what manner I should perish.... * * * * * The packet boat on which we were transported to Africa had left Marseilles. Holding my hands to my ears, so that I might not hear a French word or a French sound and be reminded that I was a légionnaire, I stood in the bows staring at the wonders of Marseilles. There were a number of little islands wrapped in blue mist, playing hide-and-seek, until the sun appeared. Now the game was over and the veil of mist disappeared. The hills and the houses lay glorious in an ocean of colour. There was a rocky island with an ancient gloomy castle. I knew it to be the prison of Monte Christo, the great adventurer of the elder Dumas, and I felt very much as the imprisoned Count of Monte Christo must have felt. Marseilles disappeared. Ocean and sun arranged a wonderful play for a poor devil of a légionnaire. Far out to sea the sun would try to catch the little waves, throwing floods of brilliant light on pearly cascading water. And then the little waves escaped again, amidst fun and laughter, and ran off to inspect our ship. They struck the ship's sides and seemed very much surprised that they were so solid. They said so plainly enough, making a great deal of noise and fuss about it. But they soon became good-humoured again and told the nicest stories about fairy palaces of the deep and the peace of the ocean. Unthinkingly I had taken my hands down, and heard my new comrades quarrelling amongst themselves. The wine had not been fairly divided. The spell was broken. I recognised now well enough that I was standing on one of the lowest steps of the world's ladder, but I had not expected contempt, disdain and rough treatment to touch me so soon. The ship's cook began it. "Nix comprends," cried the cook. The old packet of the "Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes," on which we made the voyage across the Mediterranean to Oran, had made a miserable bargain when hiring that cook. The thing was called Jacques. It even answered occasionally to its name if it felt like it. It was malicious, wondrously versed in profanity, addicted to lying, and very filthy. The first day there was nothing to eat for us until evening. At three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day we were still waiting, very hungry indeed, for our first meal, and I thought it time to have a talk with Mr. Jacques. I told him that our board was paid for and that we wanted something to eat. Quick, too. The thing answered with a nicely chosen assortment of oaths. He swore like a--well, like a man from Marseilles. He was pleased to inform me that according to his opinion dirty légionnaires were expressly made to do a lot of waiting. If he should happen to have spare time on his hands, he might try and get something to eat for us. But he was not quite sure whether or not he would have time! Now this pleased me. I knew to a nicety how to arrange matters with this thing. "Well, my son," I said lovingly, "won't you please take a look at these eight comrades of mine? They are Germans and cannot talk French. But they are very good at smashing things. They're quite experts at that sort of thing. See how they are looking at you? I rather think they are going to beat you horribly." "Allez donc!" remarked the cook dubiously. He seemed uneasy. "They are Prussians. Very likely they'll kill you. I am going to help them at it." The cook took a look at me and a second look at the "Prussians." He was rather pale and seemed to think that he was up against it. First he cursed volubly, then he dived into his dark hole of a kitchen and fetched out a tin filled with macaroni, a number of loaves of bread, and a bucketful of wine--about a gallon. There were no knives, however, exactly four forks for nine men, and one little drinking-cup. The other day one of these packets foundered somewhere on the Algerian coast. I sincerely hope it was the packet I crossed on, and that Jacques the cook was drowned.... * * * * * On the evening of the second day a visitor came to us from the first-class part of the boat. He was a sergeant in the Foreign Legion and ventured among the third-class passengers to have a look at his new recruits. Being a Belgian, he could not talk German with them, and so I had the honour of conversation with him for a couple of hours. Yes, the Germans made fine soldiers, although they were very thick-headed. Such an obstinate race! It would be best for me if I foregathered with Frenchmen only in the Legion. My French needed cultivating badly, said the sergeant. Then he ordered a bottle of wine and talked about the Legion. Lies, mostly. One of his stories is worth the telling however. In 1880 a young German enlisted in the Legion. He was an excellent soldier, spoke a brilliant French, and was considered a good fellow. A detachment of the Legion, of which he was a member, was suddenly attacked by Arabs near Saida. The commanding officer, a lieutenant, was severely wounded, and all of the non-commissioned officers killed at the first attack. Now the young German took command and led a furious onslaught on the attacking Arabs, managing to hold out until help came. Shot in the breast he was carried into camp, and the colonel of the regiment gave his own Cross of the Legion of Honour to the dying man. The young German asked the surgeon whether he had a chance of life. The doctor said yes, of course. But, finally, the new Chevalier of the Legion of Honour was told the truth and thereupon demanded a short interview with his commanding officer. Telegrams went flying between the little desert station and the capital of Germany.... In the evening the légionnaire died. A week later a veiled lady appeared in Saida to take the body to the Fatherland. Chevaliers of the Legion of Honour escorted their dead comrade, and the French flag covered the coffin. The young German had been a royal prince of Prussia! "Do you actually believe this yarn?" I asked the sergeant. "It's an absolute fact!" said he, very serious and very much offended. The same story was told me, with slight variations, many times in the Legion. The "royal prince of Prussia" is part and parcel of the unwritten history of the Legion, told from légionnaire to légionnaire, and I have often wondered how much truth there may be in the legend. Very likely the man of Saida had been a German aristocrat, the black sheep of some good family, and in the course of time and telling the Legion had made him a royal prince of Prussia. * * * * * Oran came in sight. Nine recruits promptly lined up on deck, staring with wondering eyes at the land to whose shores destiny had sent them to work and wage war for strangers, for a nation whose language even they did not understand. Sandstone cliffs formed a rugged coast-line. From their heights batteries were firing. The target was pontooned in the sea at a distance of about 5000 yards from the shore. But the columns of water thrown up by the bursting shrapnel never reached it. The old sergeant shrugged his shoulders. "I am not interested in any shooting but in ours," he said; "anyway, at shooting with the old Lebel gun the Legion can beat any on earth." He was at least loyal to his Legion, the old grey-haired sergeant, even if he did tell so many lies.... The batteries were at any rate excellently masked. It was quite impossible to detect their positions. Even when the old sergeant showed me where they were mounted, I could see nothing. High up on the crags the heavy cannon had been built in, behind little sandhills, flanked by large rocks, the whole arrangement looking so very much like nature that none could have suspected that it was artificial. The positions of the guns were perfect. We gained the harbour. Suddenly the cliffs opened out East and West, leaving an enormous gap. Out jumped, as from a conjurer's box, the fortress of Oran, a maze of flat-roofed houses on hilly ground. The inner harbour was ridiculously small, just a little square, its room quite taken up by twelve torpedo-boats, two small cruisers and half a dozen merchant ships. We had hardly touched the pier when a corporal jumped on board. The famous corporal of the French army, the maid-of-all-work, the busy French corporal who attends to everything and has more real work to do than all the officers of a company together. He read off our names from a list and marched us off to quarters. It was a novel scene that met our gaze. Negroes, sparingly attired in loin-cloth and red fez, hurried past in a strange shuffling quickstep, carrying enormous loads on their heads; taciturn Arabs stood around, wrapped from head to foot in white burnous-cloth; officers promenaded with their women-folk and occasionally some fine lady would give us a look of curiosity and compassion. A Spahi orderly galloped by on a foaming horse and yelled in high amusement: "Bonjour, les bleus!" We were marched across the city square. The surroundings and houses had nothing typical about them until we began to pass through little alleys and byways, where naked black children were playing and rolling in the dirt and filth. Then the sand came. The fine African sand that plays such a rôle in a légionnaire's life. But the road was an ideal road, hard as stone under its sandy covering. A generation of légionnaires, now long dead, had built this road leading to the barracks high up in the hills. The road swept in mighty curves along the cliffs. After an hour of marching we came to some very antiquated barracks. They were a counterpart of Fort St. Jean in Marseilles, one of the military hostelries for the many men needed to feed France's colonial stomach. In the courtyard a lieutenant called the roll and seemed very much amused when the new French soldiers answered to their names with a stentorian German: "Hier!" We were assigned a nasty little hole of a room. A long wooden bench ran along one side. The bare boards, fifteen feet long and six feet broad, were to form our bed. There was a pitcher of water in one corner and a pile of thin brown blankets lay in another. The earthen floor was covered with half-smoked cigarettes and rubbish. After dark I slipped out, glad indeed to leave the wooden bench. The unventilated little hole was not good enough for a dog! I found a snug, quiet little corner in the courtyard and lay down, wrapped in my overcoat--for about five minutes. Then shadowy figures in the uniform of the Legion paid me a visit. Yes, a fine evening. Brilliant idea of mine, to sleep in the open air. Filthy place, those quarters for recruits! Yes, nom d'un pétard! The shadowy figures were old légionnaires, on special duty to keep the barracks in order. Did I like the Algerian wine? They wanted to know. I did not know anything about it? Impossible! Did I know that the price of a "litre," of a full quart, was but four sous even up here on the hills? Remarkably fine wine! "It's a pity [described with a variety of choice epithets] that we haven't the [here followed a similar ornate flow of oaths] four sous. And the canteen isn't closed yet!" Small wonder that then I made my first purchase in Africa. Several bottles of wine. ... Somebody knocked at a door hard by, attracted by the jingling of bottles presumably. The knocking was quite modest at first. Then it became imperious. "Who is it?" I asked. "Oh, that's Reddy. He's thirsty, I suppose," said one of the légionnaires. "He's in the lock-up." My new friends seemed to regard "being in the lock-up" as the most natural thing that could happen to a légionnaire. We all went to the door of the cell. There was a small air-hole high up in the wall and presently a hand holding a tin cup appeared. "Fill up!" a gruff voice demanded. One of the légionnaires climbed on another's shoulders and emptied the contents of half a bottle into the tin cup. "That's all right!" said the poor prisoner. "What is he locked up for?" I wanted to know. This the story. In the Legion he was nicknamed Reddy, being the happy possessor of a flaming head of red hair. Reddy was a veteran who had ten years of service to his credit and knew well enough that he was no good for anything in all the world except soldiering in the Legion. Ten years is a long time. But, when he was sent to the lonely old barracks on the Oran cliffs to play at housekeeping for recruits, a great desire for liberty came upon him. For hours together he would stare at the ocean. Finally he walked quietly down to the harbour on a fine evening and took his pick amongst the fishermen's boats. He did not waste time in considering whether or not the Arab proprietor of the chosen boat would like his proceedings. Such things as boats' chains did not worry Reddy. A large stone did the business. Reddy gave the boat a shove, hoisted sail, and sailed joyfully away. Spain was not far, and luck was with the deserter. In exactly seventeen hours the légionnaire reached the Spanish coast. He had landed at a very desolate spot, but after hunting about he managed to find fishermen's huts. Presently he was the guest of rough coast Spaniards, who did not quite know what to make of the man in red breeches. He got dried fish and nice clear water to live on. Reddy had forgotten all about civilian life, but in his dreams of freedom dried fish and water had not cut a special figure. He did not like it. He changed his mind, however, when a pretty Spanish girl appeared. The girl happened to be the wife of the man who had fed Reddy. The légionnaire neither knew nor cared. He chatted with the girl for an hour or so in a mixture of French and bits of Spanish and sign-talk, enjoying himself well enough until the husband joined in the conversation with a big knife. A gorgeous fight ensued. The other fishermen assisted their friend and Reddy had a hard run for it. But he reached his boat and got safely away, cursing freedom, Spain, and dried fish. For some time he cruised about and finally decided definitely that freedom was no good. In twenty-five hours he was back in Oran. The Arabian fisherman (who had seen the boat coming and wanted to talk things over) received a series of mighty kicks from Reddy in lieu of payment. Then the disgusted deserter reported to his commanding officer. He explained that he had jumped into the boat just for fun, that a big wind--a horrible storm, sir--had torn the boat from its chain and carried it out to sea. "Yes, sir, I nearly starved...." The captain happened to be a man with a sense of humour and Reddy got off with twenty days' imprisonment. "Damned lucky fellow, that! It's a wonder that he was not sent to the penal battalion. That means dying by inches, you know," said the légionnaires, and uncorked the last bottle. I stared at them. They laughed about Reddy's luck. They thought his adventure very funny, this tragical adventure of a man who knew how to fight for the freedom he desired and then did not know what to do with liberty when he had gained it. My God, ten years in the Foreign Legion!... CHAPTER III LÉGIONNAIRE NUMBER 17889 French and American bugle-calls : Southward to the city of the Foreign Legion : Sidi-bel-Abbès : The sergeant is not pleased : A final fight with pride : The jokes of the Legion : The wise negro : Bugler Smith : I help a légionnaire to desert : The Eleventh Company : How clothes are sold in the Legion : Number 17889 A bugle sounded. I was lying on the bare ground in a corner of the courtyard, dozing in that strange borderland between sleeping and waking. The bugle bothered me. The sounds were familiar, but my sleepy brain could not place them. Again and again the calls sounded and half dreaming I searched my memory. Now I remembered. It was the réveillé, the morning call of the American army. No, there could be no mistake--one never forgets the quick nervous air of the American regular's morning call, nor its impressive text: I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up in the morning! I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up at all! The old familiar sounds very naturally suggested old remembrances. I dreamt of a misty morning and a hammock slung between two mango-trees, somewhere in the valley of Santiago de Cuba, and a very tired war correspondent listening sleepily to the morning call floating over from the tents of the Sixth Cavalry hard by. A hazy recollection of fantastical foreign legions and broken fortunes crept into the dream. But surely there were no such things. Little Smiley, trumpeter of "B" troop of the Sixth, was sounding the morning call in his funny, drawn-out fashion--of course it was Smiley: I can't get 'em up at all.... It was but a dream. Awakening, I sat up and stared about me. Where was I, anyway? No mango-trees here, no tents, no Sixth Cavalry. And very slowly I realised that Cuba and war corresponding were things of the past, that the pebble-stones of the courtyard were part and parcel of a French barrack and the soldiers in flaming red trousers running about in the courtyard had a perfect right to call me their comrade. There had been no mistake however about the morning call. There it sounded for the third time: "I can't get 'em up"--the réveillé of the U.S. regulars! The riddle's solution was rather simple: The "get 'em up" signals of the French and the American army are exactly the same. For three days we stayed at the old barracks high up on the cliffs near Oran. On the third day the packet brought a new batch of recruits for the Foreign Legion, twenty men, most of them Germans. We were all bundled into a rickety little railway train and, at an average speed of about fifteen miles an hour, we raced towards the South, to Sidi-bel-Abbès, the recruiting depot of the Foreign Legion, and headquarters of the Legion's first regiment, the "Premier Etranger." It took us six hours to reach Sidi-bel-Abbès. As the distance was about eighty miles, I considered this a very poor performance and felt personally aggrieved by the train's slowness. I had yet to learn that from now on time would be no object to me. After leaving Oran our train crawled through beautiful gardens and pretty little villas. The gardens were followed by long stretches of fields and farmhouses, and then at last civilisation vanished. The desert sands of Africa claimed their right. The burning sun shone upon wavy lines of endless sandhills, upon naked sand. After six hours' ride we arrived in Sidi-bel-Abbès. The little station was swarming with men in the uniform of the Foreign Legion. At the primitive little platform gate stood a guard of non-commissioned officers, carefully watching for would-be deserters. A corporal took charge of us and we fell in line to march to the Legion's barracks. This first march through the streets and byways of Sidi-bel-Abbès was a strange experience. The city of the Foreign Legion seemed to be composed of peculiar odours and yellow colours in many varieties. I tried to classify the Sidi-bel-Abbès smell, but the attempt was a miserable failure. The strangely sweet scents coming from everywhere and nowhere, which apparently had a very composite composition, defied a white man's nose. They were heavy, dull, oppressive; now reminding one of jasmine blossoms, now of mould and decay. In an atmosphere of yellow floated these scents. The atmosphere was yellow; yellow were the old-fashioned ramparts of Sidi-bel-Abbès, built by soldiers of the Legion many years ago; yellow was the fine sandy dust on the streets; glaring yellow everywhere. The green gardens on the town's outskirts seemed but animated little spots in a great compact mass of yellow. Far away in the background the colossal ridges of the Thessala mountains towered in gigantic shadows of pale yellow. Even the town's buildings flared up in bright yellow. The people of Sidi-bel-Abbès, adapting themselves to nature in mimicry, must needs paint their houses yellow! There were a few other colours, but the universal yellow swallowed them up without mercy. Between long rows of stately palms and through shady olive groves we marched. An omnibus rattled past. All the seats were occupied by Arabs. The white splendour of a mosque shone from afar. On the balcony of its high minaret a Mohammedan priest in flowing white robes slowly walked to and fro, sharply outlined against the sky. The mosque was far away, but I could hear the priest's sonorous voice calling to prayer: "All' il Allah.... God is God." We passed through the ancient gates of the city, which was surrounded with thick, clumsy walls, encircling all Sidi-bel-Abbès. The old walls had seen plenty of fighting. In their time they had been very useful to the small garrison in the continuous struggle with the Beni Amer, who had again and again tried to retake the place. Along the large well-kept road we marched. Suddenly, at a turning, the barrack buildings loomed up on both sides of the road--the Spahis' cavalry barracks and the quarters of the Foreign Legion. * * * * * In single file we marched through a small side entrance alongside of the cumbrous barrack gate. On a long bench near the gate the guard was sitting. They stared at us, grinning stupidly. Their sergeant, with his hands in pockets and a cigarette between the teeth, sized us up, apparently inspecting our physique as if he were taxing a herd of cattle. Then he passed judgment. "Pas bon!" he remarked laconically to the corporal who escorted us. "No good!" An ugly welcome it was. I stared at the immense gravel-covered barrack yard and its scrupulous cleanness, at the immense buildings and their naked fronts, at the bare windows. Why, this must be a madhouse and I--surely I must be a madman, who had to live for five years (five years said the contract) in a place like this. A weird feeling crept over me. I must have lost my way. The moor had caught me. I was lost in the jungle. Shut in by these walls I must spend my life. Must I live among these uniformed human machines, amongst unthinking, unfeeling automatons? My head swam. A feeling of despair came over me.... Everywhere in the barrack buildings windows were thrown open, and légionnaires put their heads out, yelling: "Eh--les bleus! Bonjour, les bleus!" From all sides they came at a run, calling out to each other joyously, "Les bleus." Our arrival appeared to be an amusement that should not be missed. Hundreds of légionnaires gathered around us, while we were waiting for orders in front of the regimental offices. The contrast between the snowy neatness of their white fatigue uniforms and our shabby attire was very much in their favour. We stood a crossfire of questions, answers and jokes. "Hello! Hadn't enough to eat, eh?" somebody yelled in German. "That's as may be," replied Herr von Rader in cutting sarcasm. "You didn't come to the Legion because you had too much money, did you?" Applause and laughter greeted this answer. "Any one from Frankfort amongst you?" another asked. "Merde!" said he, as nobody replied and turned and walked off. Then came a surprise. A negro in the uniform of the Legion stalked up to me, regarding me dubiously, shaking his head as if he was not quite sure what to make of me. "Talk U.S.?" he asked finally. "Guess I do," I said. "Golly," yelled the nigger, "here's another! You'se a h---- of a d---- fool! Doucement, doucement, white man--now, don't get mad. You'se surely is a fool! What in h---- you want to come here for?" The humour of the situation struck me. Besides, I always rather liked darkies. "What did _you_ come here for?" I asked him. "Me?" said the nigger disgusted, "me? This child's been fooled, see? I'se in Paris (this here nigger's been 'bout pretty much) and a great big doggone Paris cop nabbed me, see? Oh, 'bout nuffing particular. I'se been having a swell time in one ob dem little Paris restorangs--sweet times, honey! I'se kissed all the girls and I'se kicked eberyding else. Say--it was a mess. But this here cop got in and he got me all right--no flies on the Paris cops, honey! In the station house they done a lot of talking to this here nigger, 'bout French penitentiaries, mostly. They did done tell me, it was penitentiary or Legion. This child stuck to the American Consul, o' course. Say, he was no good either. Says he, he done got no time to go fooling wid fresh niggers. Take yer medicine, says he. Which I did--taking the Legion. Nix penitentiary for me. That's what this child come here for, sonny! Bet yer a cigarette you'se be as sick of them Legion people in 'bout four weeks as this nigger is, sure. No good. Nix good. D---- bad!" "I knew that before," said I. "Then you'se sure done gone crazy, to come he-ar, sonny. Wait a bit, white man. I'se going to tell Smith. He's an American. He's all right. So long!" And in the shambling gait of his race he walked hurriedly away. One of the recruits hailed from Munich. He was in high debate with another Bavarian légionnaire.... "You're from Munich, you fool? There's no beer here!" the old légionnaire yelled. "Why didn't you stay in Munich and stick to the beer, eh? Isn't it bad enough if one Munich fool drinks their sticky old wine? Why, I've almost forgotten how a 'Masskrug' looks, and what the 'Hofbraühaus' is like. It's a sinful shame, it is. Yes, there's no beer here. You'll be surprised, you will!" I was still laughing at the two légionnaires from the city of beer and "Steins" when an old soldier started talking to me very softly. "Won't you give me your suit of clothes? You must sell it, you know, and you will not get more than a few sous for it." I looked at the man. "Why do you want my clothes?" I asked him. "To get away! I must get out of this! My God, if I had civilian clothes, I might get through. I'd run away at once and I am pretty sure I could manage to sneak out of Algeria. You'll give me your suit, won't you? This is about my only chance. I'll never have enough money to buy a suit. Is it all right? As soon as you are uniformed, I'll come for the suit. I can easily find out in what company they are going to put you." Again the man looked at me with scared, pleading eyes, anxiously waiting. He was evidently in deadly earnest. I was deeply impressed. He meant to desert, of course. I had read enough about the Foreign Legion to know that desertion from that corps was a desperate and perilous undertaking. This poor devil was determined to risk it and--I could help him. It occurred to me that, in a very short time, I might feel very much as he felt now. Certainly he should have my clothes.... "You can have them and welcome." "That's the best piece of luck I've had since I came to this 'verdammte' Legion," said the man. He was a German, a Pomeranian, I should say, judging from the dialect he spoke. Meanwhile Black (John William Black was the negro's very appropriate name) had come back, with a bugler who looked as much like a "Yank" as anybody could look. "So you're American?" the bugler asked. "About half of me is," I said. "Oh, German-American! I see. That's all right. It's pretty tough work here in the Legion; well, you'll see for yourself. I'm mighty glad to talk U.S. to a white man. The nigger's no good--you know you're not, Blacky!--and me and him are the only two Americans in this damfool outfit. Blacky's always kicking up a row about something, and he spends most of his time in prison, and when he's not there he generally manages to get drunk. Beat's me, on what! He's a pretty hard case, ain't you, Blacky?" "Shoore--I--am, you son-of-an-old-trumpet!" grinned the negro. "I wonder what company you'll be assigned to," continued the "son-of-an-old-trumpet." "If the sergeant should ask you whether you had any preference, tell him you would like to be assigned to the eleventh. That's my company. We could play poker. I could show you the ropes, too. Life's no snap in this outfit, you know!" "Aren't there any other Americans in the Legion?" "Oh yes, about twenty. There are seven with the fourth battalion of the first, somewhere in Indo-China. The second regiment of the Legion in Saida has thirteen or fourteen American légionnaires. Two of them are sergeants, and one is colour-sergeant; McAllister is his name. He's a good man. Yes, about twenty boys from the States have a hand in this Legion business!" "Garde à vous!" commanded the sergeant, coming out of the regimental offices. "Attention!" The roll was called and we were divided up amongst two companies, the third and the eleventh. I was assigned to the eleventh--"la onzième." We marched across the drill-ground to one of the barrack buildings. In the storeroom of the eleventh company underwear and white fatigue uniforms, woven from African "Alfa" fibres, were issued to us. Then each man got a nightcap. These rather unsoldierly caps were worn by all of the légionnaires in the cold African nights. Soap and towels the sergeant-major also distributed, remarking that we seemed to be badly in need of soap, which certainly was true. We were then marched off to a small house at the back of the drill-ground. Its one room contained a number of primitive shower-baths. While we were bathing, a sergeant watched at the door, critically inspecting and exhorting us again and again: "Bon Dieu, get a good wash! Be sure you get a thorough wash!" After we had dressed in the fatigue uniforms he commanded: "Take your civilian clothes under your arms," and led us to a little side entrance of the barracks. A sentinel opened the door--and hell broke lose. Arabs, Levantines, Spanish Jews, niggers beleaguered the door, and the sentinel had to use the butt of his rifle--he seemed to like the job though--to keep them from getting in. In many languages they yelled, gesticulating with hands and feet, jumping about, making a horrible noise. At first I had no idea what it all meant. Then I understood. They wanted to buy our clothes ... that was all. They got very excited over the business and seemed to think they could buy our things for a copper piece or two. Finally the sergeant acted himself as our agent and arranged prices. Even then it was a good thing for them. Any second-hand clothes dealer in any of the world's large cities would have looked at the scene with the blackest envy. A good suit of clothes fetched two francs, boots eighty centimes, white shirts and cravats were thrown into the bargain. Every one of the native "men of business" knew well, of course, that the recruits were forced to sell at once. Civilian clothes are not allowed to be kept in the Legion. None of the recruits got more than three or four francs for his things. It was a great piece of swindling. I was saved the trouble of bartering with the native riff-raff. The légionnaire who took an interest in my clothes turned up, while the sergeant was busy at the door, pulled my clothes-bundle softly from under my arm, stuffed it under his jacket and walked away in a hurry. Next day he was missed, Smith told me.... Our next visit was to the eleventh company's office, where our names and professions were entered on the company's lists. It was nothing but a matter of form. Herr von Rader declared that his father was the Chancellor of the German Supreme Court and that he himself was by profession a juggler and lance-corporal of marine reserves. And the colour-sergeant put it all down in the big book without the ghost of a smile. Each of us was given a number, the "matricule" number of the Foreign Legion. Our names mattered nothing. We were called by numbers: My number was 17889. From now on I was merely a number, a strict impersonal number.... They number men in penitentiaries. It was just the same in the Legion. I had got what I wanted. The great Legion's impersonality had swallowed me up. What was my name now?... Number 17889.... CHAPTER IV THE FOREIGN LEGION'S BARRACKS In the company's storeroom : Mr. Smith--American, légionnaire, philosopher : The Legion's neatness : The favourite substantive of the Foreign Legion : What the commander of the Old Guard said at Waterloo : Old and young légionnaires : The canteen : Madame la Cantinière : The regimental feast : Strange men and strange things : The skull : The prisoners' march : The wealth of Monsieur Rassedin, légionnaire : "Rehabilitation" : The Koran chapter of the Stallions The eleventh company's storeroom was in a state of siege. We besieged the place, pushing and being pushed, hunting for standing room, but everywhere standing in somebody's way. The "non-coms" had very soon exhausted their vocabulary of strong language and could only express their feelings in fervent prayers that fifteen thousand devils might fly away with those thrice confounded recruits--ces malheureux bleus. A corporal, two sergeants, a sergeant-major and half a dozen légionnaires detached for storeroom work continually fell over each other in their haste to get done at last with the trying on of uniforms and with the issue of the kit. Countless jackets and pants were tried on; they put numerous "képis" upon our sinful heads, and again and again they anathematised our awkwardness in priceless adjectives. In big heaps the property of our future Legion life was dealt out to us; red pants and fatigue uniforms, blue jackets and overcoats, sashes, knapsacks, field-flasks, leather straps and belts, a soldier's kit in a bewildering jumble. "Ready!" said the sergeant-major at last with a grin of relief. "And that's something to be thankful for. Here, Corporal Wassermann, take them away. Voilà! Off with your mess of recruits. Try and make légionnaires out of the beggars. Yes, you'll find it a big contract. I wish you joy, Corporal Wassermann." "En avant, marche!" commanded the corporal. Once more the non-commissioned officers of the storeroom told us exactly what they thought of us and where they wished us to go. Their remarks were extremely pointed and expressive of their disgust. We mounted three flights of stairs and the passing légionnaires of the company stared at us in curiosity. Through a long corridor we marched, until the corporal kicked a door open and led us into a big room, our future quarters. We looked about our new home. Twenty beds were in the room, ten on one side, ten on the other, perfectly aligned. In the middle of the room stood two big wooden tables and long benches, scoured gleaming white. Everything in the place was scrupulously neat and clean. A rack in the corner held our rifles. Suspended from the ceiling, over the tables, there was a cupboard--the "pantry" of our quarters. It struck me as very practical. Knives and forks, the men's tin plates and tin cups, our bread rations were kept there. Half a dozen légionnaires were sitting on bunks and benches, cleaning their rifles and polishing their leather belts--our comrades. Corporal Wassermann, lying in his bunk puffing a cigarette, took a good long look at us. He was little more than a boy. "Eh bien," he said, "I am your corporal. You will have to learn French as quickly as possible. That's very important. Keep your ears open and listen to everything that's said. That is the right way to go about it. We shall begin drilling to-morrow. To-day you will have to arrange your bunks and things. I shall arrange your bunks in such a fashion that each of you shall be placed between two old légionnaires. You've only got to watch how they fix their things and do the same. It is all very simple. When you have finished arranging your stuff, you can do what you please." Then he assigned a bunk to each of us and went off whistling. To the canteen, of course. * * * * * "Hallo!" said Smith. He had just come in. "That's all right. So you've not only been sent to the eleventh, but to my room as well. And that's all right. That's my bunk over there at the window. Take the one next. It's been given to a recruit already, you say? Oh, kick him out, kick him out. What do you suppose the corporal cares where you bunk. I'll fix it with him. And that's all right. I'm going to call you Dutchy. Now don't object, because I'm going to call you Dutchy anyhow, see?" He was evidently pleased. So was I. From the start I had taken a liking to this man with the sharply cut features and the curious air of infinite knowledge. The pasteboard card on his bed said: "Jonathan Smith, No 10247, soldat 1ère[1] classe." [1] The Foreign Legion and the French army in general make a distinction between first-class privates and second-class privates. The first-class private has the grade of a lance-corporal. He was the company's bugler, and had nine years' service in the Foreign Legion to his credit. Fever and privation and vice had engraved hard lines in his face, and when he rolled his cigarettes in French fashion, his hands trembled just a little. His hair was quite grey. He had fought against Chinese pirates in French Indo-China, he had campaigned in Madagascar and won the French medal for bravery on colonial service. During this campaign he had been shot in the shoulder and had had a severe attack of jungle fever. There was no garrison in Algeria, be it on the Morocco frontier, be it on the Sahara line, where he had not been stationed once at least. He was a perfect encyclopædia of all things connected with the Legion. He could swear fluently in English, German, French, and Arabian, and had even acquired a pretty fair knowledge of Chinese expressions of disgust. He was friend and brother to several Arabs with doubtful characters, he could recite whole chapters of the Koran by heart, and knew a great deal about Morocco. Which will be seen later on. He was in fact a man well worth knowing. From the very beginning there was a perfect understanding between us. He volunteered the information that he was a native of California and had "seen a few things in his life." I answered with the bare statement that I was a German, and had lived in the United States for some years. Both remarks were the basis for a tacit agreement to keep within the limits of strict impersonality. He lay on his bunk, and I tried to get some order in my newly issued belongings. "Your shoulders have been drilled into shape somewhere?" said Smith. "They were." "States?" "No, Germany." "Oh, I see. Thought you might have been in the U.S. army. Wish I had stuck to it." "Have you tried the Legion's tobacco yet?" he continued. We rolled ourselves cigarettes from strong, black Algerian tobacco, and Smith stretched himself comfortably on his bunk with his knees drawn up, his cap pulled down over his eyes. Smoking contentedly, the old soldier preached me the Legion's wisdom: "There's no money here--the pay is not worth speaking of, I mean. There's a lot of work. It's a hard life all round. That's the Foreign Legion. There's no earthly reason why any man should be fool enough to serve in this outfit, unless he's specially fond of being underfed and overworked. When I come to think of it--I don't know what the dickens made me stay nine years! Because there's something doing once in a while, I suppose. Well, I'll stick it out for the pension now. Anyway, you've joined the Legion--more fool you--you're here and you can make up your mind that you are here to stay. And you must look at things in the right way. Legion life can be stood right enough, if you don't let yourself be worried by anything at all, if you're as ice-cold as Chicago in January, and if you're lucky enough to see something doing. Whether we march against the Arabs or Chinese (there's a battalion of us in Indo-China, you know) or to 'Maroc' at last, that's all the same, but it's good to be on the move in the Legion. Then a légionnaire's life ain't half bad. Don't ever forget, though, to have your feelings frozen into an iceblock. Don't let anything bother you. No use getting mad about things here. Just say to yourself: 'C'est la Légion.' When you're dead played out, and you think you can't stand it any longer; when the fever's got you by the neck; when you're sitting and fuming in the 'cellule' (that's the prison, Dutchy), or when some sergeant's giving you hell--grin, sonny, and say to yourself: 'C'est la Légion!' That's the Legion. Do your work and don't worry. If any of the fellows get fresh, hit quick and hit hard--c'est la Légion. And don't forget that the main thing in this Foreign Legion business is neatness and cleanliness. You want to have your things in order, you want to be neat. So!" He rummaged in the bundle of uniform things on my bed, pulling out one by one jackets, pants, shirts, &c., and folding them with astonishing quickness. I watched him in wonder. This old soldier with his big rough hands had fingers as clever as any chambermaid's. Piece after piece he folded rapidly, smoothing every crease with almost ridiculous care. Each of the folded pieces he measured, giving each the same length, from the tips of his fingers to his elbow. Finally he erected with these bundles, upon the shelf at the wall over my bed, an ingenious structure of uniforms, the "paquetage" of the Legion. The légionnaire has no clothes-chest like the American regular. To get over this difficulty he invented his "paquetage," which is a work of art, solving the military problem of how to stow away several uniforms in a compact space without crumpling them. With half-shut eyes the bugler stood in front of my bunk and regarded his handiwork. "And that's all right," he said. "That's a 'paquetage,' how it should be. It's 'fantasie,' pure 'fantasie,' Dutchy dear. Making 'fantasie'[2] it is called in the Legion, if one tries to be always 'très chic' and 'parfaitement propre,' to be a swell. Yes, that's the Legion. We are lazy by preference, but we're always neat. Always!" [2] This curious expression of the Foreign Legion is, of course, an imitation of the Moorish "fantasia." The "paquetage" was not the only miracle. I was very much impressed by the way every bit of available space was put to the utmost use. A légionnaire keeps his linen in his haversack. For his letters, his books, for the few other articles of private property he possesses, he finds room in his knapsack; his brushes and his polishing-rags are carefully stored away in a little sack which hangs on the wall. Even the most trivial of his belongings has its appointed place. A légionnaire keeps his kit in such perfect order that he can find everything in the dark. While I was making my bed, the bugler looked on for a while, grinning all the time. Finally he couldn't stand it any longer. He pulled the blankets and the sheets I had spread out away again and started showing me how to make a bed "à la Légion." Bed-making was another of the Legion's tricks. In a few seconds Smith had arranged the bed-clothes in wonderful accuracy, blankets drawn tight as a drum, pillows placed in mathematical exactness. "Merde!" he said, "that's how we légionnaires fix our bunks. It's easy enough." "Merde?" I asked, "what does 'merde' mean, anyway?" It was a French word unknown to me. Smith used it continually, underlining his remarks with it, so to speak. He seemed to like it. He pronounced it with much care, lovingly. Naturally I thought that it must be some especially forceful invective, the more so as the sergeant-major in the storeroom (who certainly had not been in good humour) had said "merde" about five hundred times in ten minutes. And the other légionnaires in the room liked it apparently no less. The "merdes" were always flying about.... "Well, what is this 'merde'?" Smith nearly had a fit. "Merde?" he yelled, laughing as if he had suddenly gone crazy, "what 'merde' means? Why, you owl, 'merde' is ----." He used a word which certainly does not exist in the vocabulary of polite society, an old Anglo-Saxon substantive, describing a most natural function and expressing huge disgust when used as an invective. This little word is the favourite substantive of the Foreign Legion. It is _the_ substantive of the Legion! The English Tommy rejoices in his time-honoured adjective "bloody," the American revels in his precious "damned," the Mexican cavalryman enjoys his malignant hissing "caracho," and the légionnaire is distinctly unhappy without his well-beloved "merde." It's the most used word in the Foreign Legion. It has suffered curious derivations: Merdant, merdable.... It has a happy home in all French regiments--it is part and parcel of the French army's soldier-talk. The Legion worships it. Out of it the légionnaire has even fabricated a verb. When an officer gives him a "dressing down," the légionnaire says simply and devoutly: "Il m'enmerde!" The French army's primitive substantive of disgust is very ancient. It is time-honoured, it is classical. At Waterloo the commander of Napoleon's Old Guard is said to have replied to the challenge to surrender, pompously: "The Old Guard dies, but it does not surrender!" In the French army, however, it is an old tradition that he simply yelled: "Merde!" * * * * * Invectives of all descriptions were used with much vigour in our quarters just now. The old légionnaires took a delight in kicking the clumsy recruits about. In drastic terms they told them exactly what they thought of them, of their past, of their families, of their future. They felt very sorry (so they said) for the poor old eleventh company having been buncoed into taking such an awful pack of useless recruits. Many were the fools they had seen in the Legion, but never such idiots as we were. Pretty fellows, those recruits! A nice assortment of pigs! Fine times they (the poor old légionnaires) would have, living in the same quarters with these "bleus." "Why--there's one of 'em sitting on my bed. What's this bow-legged monkey doing on my bunk? Get off! Get off quick, son of a jackal! Do you suppose that my bunk's a manoeuvring-ground for dirty recruits?" The old légionnaires knew their business, however. Abuse alone was not good enough. They wanted to see practical results. So they explained to the "bleus" that recruits, and especially such recruits as now present, could never manage to build a "paquetage" without help. That was a foregone conclusion. Said one of them: "Can't you see that? If such a thing as intelligence had a place in your empty heads, you would have seen long ago that you needed help. Who's going to help you? We are. We old légionnaires will help you--we who know everything and can fix anything. But we're thirsty, you see. Tant de soif! Such a thirst. I put it to you: Is it right that recruits, recruits, mind you, who have just sold their clothes and got a lot of money in their pockets, should look on and say nothing, while their betters are dying of thirst. Is it right, eh?" There the others joined in: "Allons donc pour un litre--let's drink a litre in the canteen." The arguments of the old fellows met with enormous success. At frequent intervals old and young légionnaires left the quarters to pay a visit to the canteen and render homage to the immortal "litre" of the Foreign Legion. The whole performance was an old custom. Old légionnaires always rejoice when new recruits arrive--anticipating many pleasant walks to the canteen.... One of the recruits, a Swiss, on returning from the canteen found that the greater part of the kit on his bed had disappeared. Almost everything was gone. A complete uniform, a fatigue suit, an overcoat and several other things were missing. The Swiss, scared to death, asked every man in the room if he had seen his things. But his kit had vanished. The old légionnaires gathered about his bunk. Very likely he had lost part of his outfit while coming up the stairs, they said. They told him that one must look after one's kit in the Legion. If he could not find the missing uniforms, he would be certain to be sent to prison at the very least. He might even be punished with deportation into the penal battalion. Losing part of the uniform was the very worst crime known in the Legion. The Swiss ran up and down the stairs hunting for his lost uniforms, but naturally found nothing. Again the old légionnaires talked to him. They played their part very well. "You're a poor devil," they said. "We're sorry for you. We'll try and help you. It's a very difficult case, but we might be able to do something. The non-commissioned officer of the third company's storeroom is a pretty decent fellow. He'll do something for an old légionnaire. We'll try him. There's just the chance that he will give us the stuff you have lost from his stock of uniforms--for a little money. He's fond of making something on the quiet. Five francs would do, and what are measly five francs anyway, if they are the means of saving you from prison?" The poor devil was glad enough to get off with paying five francs. It was just what he had got for his clothes. ... Very soon the old soldiers came back. That good fellow of a sergeant had given them everything needed! Faultless new uniforms! And the Swiss recruit thanked the old thieves profusely. Personally I was angry at the shabby trick played on the poor devil. I had known from the very outset that it was only a trick. The rascals had stolen the recruit's uniforms, and had then sold him back his own things! It certainly was no business of mine, and I did not interfere. In a way the comic side of the thing appealed to my sense of humour, but it was a nasty trick all the same. While I was wondering whether I should tell that fool of a Swiss how he had been done, one of the old légionnaires happened to sit down on my bunk. "Get off my bed!" I said. Blank astonishment was written on the man's face. "What d----d cheek for a raw recruit. You impertinent ..." "My bed's my bed. Get off. Sit on your own bed. Just now you raised a row because one of us was sitting on yours. Get away from here and be quick about it." The old légionnaire rose slowly. "Viens là bas!" he yelled. "Come down below to the yard with me. I'll teach you that a good-for-nothing recruit should respect an old soldier. Come down!" Together we descended the stairs, a few other légionnaires following. The bugler was amongst them. "Give him hell," he said. "Look out for his feet!" I was very pleased with myself. It was bad enough to be in the Legion, but one could at least play the man.... At the back entrance of the company's quarters, in a small alley-way, we found a quiet spot to settle our little difference. He kicked furiously in French fashion, and I barely managed to escape. Then we closed in and in a second were rolling over and over on the gravel-covered ground. Now one had the upper hand, now the other. My antagonist's strength surpassed mine by far. I could do but very little in his iron grip. I began to wonder how many of my ribs would survive the fray. But all at once I got the upper hand. Again and again he tried to get a grip of my throat, but I caught his hand every time. We rolled over and over. My strength was fast sinking. At the last moment almost, I noticed a big stone on the ground quite near his head. I wrested my hand free. Seizing my antagonist by the hair, I pounded his head against the stone as hard as I could. Once--twice--four times.... His grip relaxed.... "Assez!" he yelled, "enough." "Très bien," the onlooking old légionnaires said, "very good." The bugler was disgusted. (So was I.) "Now that's the Legion all over. I wonder why the people here can't box like Christians instead of rolling about like pigs. You've licked him, though. And that's all right." The man I had "fought" with rose with some difficulty and walked up to me. We shook hands.... "You were in the right when you ordered me off your bed," he said. "Parbleu, that was a good idea with the stone. Eh, you'll be a good légionnaire very soon. We men of the Legion quarrel often, but at heart we're always comrades. C'est la Légion! I propose we return to our quarters again...." And in the room we brushed the dust from each other's uniforms, like old friends.... * * * * * "You're tired, I guess," said the bugler with a grin. "Let's go and have a litre." I had no objection. "I am paying for this," he declared, as we crossed the drill-ground. The regimental canteen was in a small building in a corner of the barrack square. We opened the door and--I at least must have looked very much surprised. There was an awful noise in the little room. A great many soldiers were talking and laughing and singing and yelling in many languages; in German, French, English, Italian and Spanish--there was the jingle of many bottles and glasses. As we entered a German was singing: Trinken wir noch ein Tröpfchen Aus dem kleinen Henkeltöpfchen, Oh, Suss ... a ... na! In sharp marching rhythm a Frenchman sang the refrain of one of the Legion's songs: Le sac, ma foi, toujours au dos ... The canteen was crowded. Hundreds of légionnaires in white fatigue uniforms or in blue jackets sat on the long benches, drinking, laughing. On the wooden tables bottles stood in long rows and deep red wine sparkled in the glasses. "There's no room here," I said. Smith grinned in answer: "Room? Nom d'un pétard, what do we want room for? The litre is the main thing, sonny!" Pushing through the crowd he reached the bar and held up a forefinger with a serious face. This seemed to be a well-known signal to the young woman behind the bar. Without saying a word she took three copper pieces from the bugler, giving him in exchange a full bottle of wine and two glasses. "Madame la Cantinière" could not be over twenty years old. Like a queen seated on her throne she held sway behind her bar and ruled the crowd of noisy, yelling légionnaires in quiet authority, imposing and comical at the same time. Madame la Cantinière was the sutler of the Foreign Legion. Old tradition demands that a woman should keep the Legion's canteen. "Madame la Cantinière de la Légion" usually is married, but she is the official head of the canteen and not her husband. The business belongs to her. On the march and in the field she wears the blue sutler's uniform and follows the regiment with her little sutler's waggon. On a bench in the corner Smith found seats for us, and had two big glasses filled (the Legion does not waste time drinking out of small wineglasses!)--had the glasses filled before we sat down. "Here's luck," he said. "There's no such thing as luck in this place, but one keeps on wishing for it just the same. Here's luck, Dutchy!" He emptied his glass at a gulp, wiping his soft fair moustache in great satisfaction. _And_ he refilled his glass at once. "The wine's good. And that's all right. Sonny, there are miles and miles of vineyards round this here Sidi-bel-Abbès. The hilly ground near the Thessala mountains is a single large vineyard. There are times in Algeria when they let the wine run on the street. It's so plentiful and cheap that it isn't worth the casks. There would be no Legion, I tell you, if it wasn't for the cheap wine!" With wondering eyes I surveyed the men in the canteen and the canteen itself. The smoke of many hundreds of cigarettes filled the place with a heavy bluish vapour. The noise was indescribable. One had to yell to be understood by one's neighbour, a quietly spoken word would have been lost in the turmoil. Everybody was yelling and everybody seemed to be in high glee. The légionnaires were having what they considered a good time. They jumped on the tables, kicking and dancing, jingled their glasses, threw empty bottles about and made fun of everybody and everything. Every minute the uproar increased. These hard-faced, hard-eyed men were like children at some forbidden game, trying to get as much fun as possible while the teacher was away. Suddenly a man with a wonderfully clear and strong voice began singing a love-song. Noise and tumult ceased at once. I listened in amazement. A légionnaire sang for his comrades, in a beautiful tenor voice, in a voice reminding me of great singers I had heard long ago. A poor devil of a légionnaire possessed a voice many a singer would have envied. He sang a French song, every verse closing pitifully: L'amour m'a rendu fou.... The song of a lover who had loved and lost, a song of love and ladies, of love's delights and love's misery, sung in the canteen of the Foreign Legion. With burning eyes I looked at the listening throng of men in red and blue until I saw nothing but their shadowy outlines like a far-away _fata Morgana_--I was lost in a dream of memories. Absolute quiet reigned. The song held these men of rough life and rougher manners spellbound; the glorious mellow voice, now clear as a trumpet, now low and sweet as a woman's caress, must have appealed to every heart. The song was at an end: L'amour m'a rendu fou.... For a moment, for a few seconds, all remained hushed. And then one would think that these men were ashamed of having been so soft-hearted. A légionnaire jumped on a table and yelled: "Silence.... No more fool songs for us! Vive le litre!" "Le litre!" ... a hundred men roared. The shouting and the uproar and the noise commenced anew. Blacky, the negro, had come in and was soon dancing the dance of his race. He was a master of the turnings and twistings of the cake-walk. There were universal yells of appreciation as he bent backwards, high-stepping grotesquely. Blacky was much applauded and seemed to be a very happy nigger. Madame la Cantinière did a roaring trade. The copper pieces were continually jingling on the tin-covered surface of the bar. La Cantinière was a very busy woman this evening, passing many hundreds of wine bottles to her thirsty clientèle of légionnaires. Glasses were broken, pieces of glass lay everywhere on the tables and on the floor, and here and there little red pools of wine had formed. The fun grew fast and furious and the noise almost unbearable. My friend the bugler had emptied glass after glass and was in high good humour. "Why, it is the regiment's holiday!" he laughed. The "fifth day" it was--pay-day. The Legion's humour called pay-day the regimental holiday. This humour was somewhat grim in view of the fact that pay in the Legion meant but five centimes a day, twenty-five centimes for the pay-roll period of five days. Twenty-five centimes are almost exactly five cents in American, or twopence-halfpenny in English money. So the Legion's "holiday" was at the bottom of all the noise and fun in the canteen! These men in the Legion measured the passing of time by their miserable pay-days only. Such a fifth day marked the glorious epoch when two comrades could buy exactly five "litres" of wine for their joint pay. Certainly such frivolity punished itself: there was no money left for the next five days' tobacco. So wise men in the Legion buy the customary package of tobacco for three sous, and drink but one bottle of wine every five days. This is what the soldier of the Foreign Legion works for: One bottle of wine and one package of tobacco every five days! Shrilly a signal sounded through the noise--lights out! Madame la Cantinière held up her hand, made a funny little bow, and said with a smile: "Bonsoir, messieurs.--Good night, gentlemen." The Legion teaches obedience.... In a very few seconds the canteen was empty and everybody was hurrying across the drill-ground to quarters. * * * * * When roll-call had been finished in our quarters and everybody had gone to bed, I quietly left the room. Sleep did not appeal to me that night. The still of night lay over the barrack-yard. The white moonlight shone on the bare walls of the barracks. The stars of far south glittered in their trembling beauty. I stared up into the splendour of the heavens and brooded over happiness far away--passed--dead.... I heard footsteps and saw a shadow moving somewhere on the other side. And over there a trembling awkward voice sang softly: L'amour m'a rendu fou.... Far into the night I crouched in a corner of the Legion's barrack-yard. * * * * * The first days, the first weeks of life in the Legion were quite sufficient to render me immune against strange things and strange sights. Sometimes it seemed to me as if my nerves were quite dulled. Every day brought monstrous sights and hideous impressions. I shuddered at unheard-of things and wondered at these strange specimens of humanity. But the next moment some new horror made me forget what I had just seen. In a few minutes' walk with the bugler round the barrack-yard one could meet with a variety of sights like the following: A légionnaire ran past us, shrieking in extreme pain, splashed with blood. He had cut off the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand so as to be unfit for active service. A poor crippled Arab, bent with age, stopped when he saw us. He was evidently on his way to the kitchen buildings to beg for food. In his hands he carried a Standard oil-can. A Standard oil-tin as receptacle for food in connection with an Arab, Algeria and the Foreign Legion struck me as something distinctly new. But there was more to follow. In very broken German the Arab addressed us: "Gut' Tag, légionnaires. Cigarette! Ick sein deutsch--Magdeburg gewesen--1870." The man had fought in the great Franco-German war and had been in Magdeburg as a prisoner of war! Hardly had I recovered from my surprise when a passing légionnaire made me stare in horror. The man had the grinning image of a skull tattooed on his forehead! He smiled at my frightened face and was evidently very pleased at the impression he had made. I remember saying to the bugler how horrible it was that a man should disfigure his face for life in such a manner, and I remember that Smith only shrugged his shoulders in reply. "Why, that's nothing," he said. "Tattooing of that kind is quite customary in the Battalion of the Disciplined." I could not agree with the bugler, I could not see a mere freak in this horrible tattoo-mark. To me it spoke of hope lost for ever, of a life so dreadful that a man no longer cared whether he was disfigured or not. Pleased with the notice he attracted, the légionnaire with the skull on his forehead walked up to us and spoke to me: "Eh, recruit, do you want to see something that very old légionnaires only have got?" He showed me a tobacco-pouch, apparently made of fine soft leather: "This is made of the breast of an Arab woman," said the man of the skull. "It is a very good tobacco-pouch. Made it myself. There are only seven in the whole regiment now. Chose--n'est-ce pas? That is something worth seeing!" With a grin of vanity he walked away. "Tobacco-pouch--an Arab woman's breast--my God, what is the meaning of this?" I asked of the bugler. Smith told me all about those horrible pouches. The man of the skull had not lied. During the last insurrection of Arabs in Algeria, in grim warfare far in the South, Arabian women had horribly mutilated the bodies of légionnaires and inflicted horrible tortures on the wounded. The soldiers of the Legion, maddened, thirsting for revenge, gave quarter to no Arab woman during those times. They retaliated in kind.... Of the horrible deeds they committed the dreadful tobacco-pouches gave evidence. On the same day I witnessed for the first time the prisoners' march of punishment. I stood aghast. Behind the quarters of the fourth company, in a small square between barrack building and wall, about thirty men were marching in a continuous circle, to the sharp commands of a corporal: "À droit--droit; à droit--droit; right about, march; right about, march." The prisoners marched round their narrow circle in fast quick-step, almost at a run, with backs deeply bent. Their knapsacks were filled with sand and stones, every man carrying a burden of from seventy to eighty pounds. All the prisoners had a hard strained look on their faces. Their fatigue uniforms were torn and soiled. Guards with fixed bayonets stood at the corners of the square, guarding the marching prisoners. The term prisoner must not be misunderstood. These men were not criminals. The légionnaires marching in the "peloton des hommes punis" had been punished with a term of imprisonment for small offences in the matters of discipline. They were not only put into prison, but also had to march on their ridiculous march of punishment for three hours every day, the stones in their knapsacks causing bad sores on their backs. These men, punished for some paltry military offence, were certainly treated as if they were criminals of the worst description. I tried to imagine what I should feel and what I should do if a sandsack were put on my back and I were driven round in this maddening march.... It was dangerous to think of these things. "Allez, let's go," said the bugler. "We all go to prison some time or another and it's not right to stare at the prisoners. They feel bad enough as it is." Stranger than the strange surroundings were many of the men of the Legion themselves. On the bunk opposite mine, the little pasteboard card customary in the Legion described the owner as follows: JEAN RASSEDIN 12429 SOLDAT PREMIERE CLASSE. Rassedin was a Belgian. He worked as clerk in the regimental offices. Shortly before "soup-time" in the afternoon his day's work was finished. Then he would come running into quarters, tearing off his old white barrack uniform as fast as he possibly could, throwing his things pell-mell on the bed. In a very few moments he had put on the uniform prescribed for town. For the "soup" he didn't care. He never had his meals in quarters. He went away at once after he had changed his uniform and never returned before two o'clock in the morning, having a "certificate of permanent permission" to leave the barracks. His manner was haughty. If one of his comrades tried to speak to him about something or other, he usually turned away without answering. Or he said: "M'en fou--I don't care for anything. Leave me alone." Monsieur Rassedin, légionnaire, took his meals in the best hotel of the town and spent more money than any other man in Sidi-bel-Abbès. Rassedin was a rich man. From the standpoint of the Foreign Legion, his wealth was the wealth of Croesus. He had been a non-commissioned officer in a Belgian cavalry regiment, had deserted for reasons unknown and joined the Legion. After being a légionnaire for a time, he got the news of the death of a rich relative, who had left him all his wealth.... So Monsieur Rassedin, légionnaire, had become rich. He always carried a few thousands francs about him. Three men of the company were employed by him to keep his things in order and to do all the cleaning and polishing for him. In the regimental office he paid the other clerks to do his work. He naturally preferred reading novels to copying lengthy reports. As he could afford to pay substitutes, the thing could easily be done. His family had succeeded in getting him a pardon granted for deserting. Monsieur Rassedin could have gone back to Belgium long ago, but he did not care to return to his native country. As soon as he had finished his term of five years' Legion service, he signed on again for another five years. The reason? "Disease," Smith said, when I asked him. There certainly was no question concerning men or things of the Legion that the man from California could not answer. "The poor devil's suffering from syphilis. Got it in Madagascar. I asked him once why in thunder he did not get out of this confounded Legion. "'Bugler,' he said in answer. 'You are an old légionnaire and I don't want to have trouble with you. But remember: You go your own way, and I'll go mine. Don't trouble me with your fool's remarks. There is poison in my body and in a few years I shall be very sick. No, I prefer putting a bullet through my brains in the Legion to returning to my country and then having to peg out. You'll die somewhere in the sand, my friend--I shall die strictly in my own fashion. What is the difference? Now come on, bugler. Want a bottle of champagne?'" Everybody in Sidi-bel-Abbès knew Rassedin, even the little black children in the streets. Many a time he used to throw franc pieces amongst them. In quarters Rassedin hardly spoke to anybody. His comrades were afraid of him. He was a man of enormous strength and had the reputation of fighting on the least provocation. But he could be very good-natured. Hardly a day passed without some old soldiers of the company coming to our quarters in search of Rassedin. They would simply rub their throats in pantomime: "Rassedin, tant d' soif.--Heap big thirst." Then Rassedin grinned and searched his pockets for copper pieces.... Then there was Latour, a Frenchman, serving his second year. Daily he received letters, a very unusual thing in the Foreign Legion; love-letters from a woman who was waiting for him five long years. Latour, who had committed a crime in France, expiated his deed in the Foreign Legion. He served solely for the purpose of "rehabilitation." Sentences of the Civil Court are in France entered in the personal papers of the criminal. Without his papers he cannot get work. Naturally employers are shy of taking men who have been in conflict with the law and such a man very seldom succeeds in finding work. It is a barbarous system. Ten years must elapse before such a man is considered rehabilitated and "clean papers" are issued to him. If a man is willing to serve in the Foreign Legion, however, the term of rehabilitation is shortened to five years, and after five years' service new papers are given to him. He has then a new start in civil life after five years instead of ten. Like many other French légionnaires, Latour was serving for rehabilitation. The strangest man of all, however, seemed to me this man Smith, American, légionnaire, philosopher. I have always believed, and believe yet, that he actually loved the Legion, that he could not part from the strange life there. He could speak Arabic like a native. Many a time when we were lying in our bunks, he would mumble to himself in Arabic for hours. If I, in curiosity, asked him what he was about, he would say: "Oh nothing, Dutchy. I'm a bit off my base. I very often am, you know." But occasionally he would straighten up and sit down beside me, talking of strange things, reciting whole chapters of the Koran. Like this: "Well, sonny, know anything about the Chapter of the Prophet's Stallions?" "You don't? Listen." "When of an evening the stallions, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their fourth foot upon the ground, were brought before the Prophet, he said: 'I have loved the love of things of this earth more than I have loved all thoughts of the things of heaven, and I have wasted the time in feasting my eyes on these horses. Bring them to me.' And when the horses were brought to him, he began cutting off their legs, one by one, saying: 'All' il Allah....'" "Yes, Dutchy, the Koran's something interesting." Many chapters of the Koran I have learned from Smith. Such things happened every day. But soon the enormities lost their power of fascination. A host of new impressions were forced upon me, until the senses were dulled and one soon got wonderfully indifferent--absolutely indifferent.... CHAPTER V THE MILITARY VALUE OF THE FOREIGN REGIMENTS A day's work as a recruit : Allez, hurry up : The Legion's etiquette : A morning's run : The "cercle d'enfer" and the lack of soap : The main object of the Legion's training : Splendid marchers : Independent soldiers : Forty kilometres a day : Uniform, accoutrements, baggage, victualling : The training of the légionnaire in detail : The légionnaire as a practical man : Specialties of the Legion : Programme for a week in the Legion : The légionnaire as a labourer When in the twilight of awakening day the first red-hot rays of African dawn penetrated through the windows of our quarters, the "garde-chambre," the man on duty there, arose noiselessly. He took good care not to make a noise, not from any delicacy of feeling on his part, but from the knowledge of the dire punishment which awaited him if he inconsiderately disturbed the sleep of his comrades. For the hours of sleep are a "Holy of Holies" to the légionnaire. When Herr von Rader was on duty for the first time, and in getting up made a slight noise, boots (heavy military boots!) were thrown at his head from all parts of the room, as a somewhat urgent reminder to be quiet. In a few minutes the orderly returned from the kitchen dragging with him a large earthenware jug, lighted the petroleum lamp which hung in the middle of the room, and his voice then sounded loudly through the room: "Au jus." (Sauce.) The sauce was coffee, strong, black, excellent coffee. Mechanically each légionnaire sat up in bed, and leaning on his arm mechanically felt behind him for the "quart," the tin mug, which hung on a hook at the head of the bed, handing it to the orderly, who went from bed to bed with his large jug and poured out coffee. The strong mixture soon dispelled all sleepiness, and when the shrill trumpet-blasts of the "réveillé" sounded from the barrack-yard, they all jumped out of bed. Now began a "Tohuwabohu" (pandemonium) of noise and hurrying to and fro. In half an hour the recruits had to muster in the yard. Corporal Wassermann, who liked to remain in bed until the last moment, called out continually: "Le--e--vez-vous donc.--Get up." Then he thundered out the famous "Allez, schieb' los!" of the Legion. The curious term has been introduced by German légionnaires and has passed into the vocabulary of Algerian French. Not only the soldiers continually used this funny mixture of German and French, but Arabs and negro children in the street, when they wanted to hurry each other up, shrieked out: "Allez, schieb' los!" "Allez, schieb' los! Pas du temps. No more time!" roared the corporal. The day began with hurry and scurry. The primitive lavatory was on the ground floor of the barracks and one was obliged to run up and down four flights of stairs in order to wash oneself. There was not a minute to spare. The boots had to be brushed; the blankets and mattresses of the bed had to be folded neatly and piled up at the foot of the bunk. Whilst this was being done the orderly shouted excitedly: "Quoi! Nom de Dieu--balayez au-dessous vos lits!" (Thunder and lightning! Sweep up under your beds.) The etiquette of the Legion in these things holds very strictly to old tradition; every légionnaire had to sweep under his bed, while the cleaning of the room was the work of the orderly on duty, who could of course not begin this work until the floor beneath the beds had been swept. That was the reason of all the "Quois" and "Nom de Dieus!" The man had every cause to be excited and angry. He had to drill like the others, and it was no trifle to have to sweep a large room, to dust and to fetch water; everything within ten minutes. And it had all to be in tip-top order, for a few minutes before commencing drill the colour-sergeant inspected quarters and if anything was not in order in the room the corporal was punished. And when the corporal was punished, he of course took care that his men were run in as well. Punctually at 6 A.M. we recruits mustered in the barrack-yard in drill uniform: white linen suit, blue sash, knapsack, cartridge-belt and rifle--uniforms and leather trappings of shining brightness. The almost pedantic cleanliness of the Legion, the coquetry of each individual légionnaire to put a certain amount of "chic" into his uniform, was the first thing Corporal Wassermann's vanity had taught us. In the quick easy marching pace of the Legion we went out to the "Plateau," a large open space near the negro quarter, surrounded by olive-trees and red African oaks. The yellow clayey ground was stamped hard by the marching of many thousands of légionnaires. On the one side of the "Plateau" was the "village nègre," the negro town. Close to the drill-ground the mosque, in proud white splendour, towered above the miserable, half-ruined huts of the negro quarter, and hour by hour sounded loudly from its minaret the priest's call to prayer: "All'il Allah. God is great...." "Arré, arré--go on, go on," yelled the Arabs, who drove their heavily laden donkeys across the place with much scolding and beating. By the side of the donkeys, like the beasts, heavily burdened, walked Arab women, the legs bare to above the knee, but the face modestly covered as prescribed by the teachings of the Prophet. Only a small portion of the forehead was left free by the veil, and this was painted with a bright red round spot of henna, the sign of the married woman. The Arabs glanced at us with timid side looks and hastened to pass on. Half-naked Arab and negro children raced about trying with comical "grandezza" to imitate the martial steps, and shouted Arab words at us which very likely were gross insults, until Corporal Wassermann picked up stones and drove them away. "Formez les faisceaux. Sac à terre." (Pile arms. Lay down your knapsacks.) "Pas gymnastique!" (At the double!) "En avant. Marche!" With this the daily routine began. It was the famous "Legion's breakfast," the lung-training of "double time." In the form of a wide square we went round the drill-ground, five minutes, ten minutes--un, deux, un, deux--always in sharp time. The corporal, a splendid runner, ran at the head, teaching us the trick on which everything depended here, to overcome the critical moment of lung exhaustion, to get the "second wind." Even if the breath came and went in short pumping gasps, if the eyes pained, and one commenced to stumble from exhaustion, one ran on until the lungs had got used to the extra exertion, until one had the feeling of being a machine, and could go on running for ever. Then came the command "A volonté"--(as you please)--and a race finished thirty minutes' exercise. This is the Legion's breakfast. It has cost many a man his lungs. Pause. The tormented lungs worked in short hard gasps. It was impossible to stand still. One was obliged to walk up and down quickly in order to gradually quieten the pumping lungs. The body had to expend all the strength it could in this morning drill. Swedish gymnastics, "le boxe," formed the alternative to this doubling. The training progressed very quickly. All the recruits had served in some of the world's armies, and the first rudiments of military wisdom had been drilled into them long ago. Three-quarters of my fellow-recruits were Germans, who did not understand any French, and to whom the French commands were Greek. Continual repetition was here necessary. "A gauche--gauche means left about," explained the corporal, and repeated it ten times, until "gauche" had been mastered. The most necessary French expressions were very quickly learnt by this most natural of all methods. A hot sun burned down on us. Ten times during a single forenoon every stitch of clothes on one's body was soaked with perspiration, and ten times it dried again. In the pauses one stood about, smoking hand-twisted cigarettes, the inevitable cigarette of the Legion smoked in every free moment, and by which the pause is measured according to the old custom of the Legion? The pause was the duration of a cigarette. When the corporal had finished smoking his cigarette he slowly walked to a distance of about one or two hundred metres and lifted his hand: "A moi." That meant we were to run up to him and recommence work. "I've never run so d----d fast in all my life," was Herr von Rader's continual lament. "I've an idea the suckers here are mistaking me for an express train!" At 11 A.M. we marched back to barracks. Knapsack and cartridge-belt were thrown into the "paquetage," and dead tired we threw ourselves upon our beds. But after a few short minutes, the soup signal rang out from the barrack-yard. "A la soupe, légionnaires, à la soupe, soupe, soupe." "Soupe ..." every one yelled. Woe if the orderly of the room did not rush to the kitchen, and woe if he did not reappear with the soup-kettle in the twinkling of an eye! In everything connected with food a genuine légionnaire stands no nonsense--he has too often suffered starvation on marches and campaigns not to appreciate "la gamelle." The morning soup, the first of the two daily meals, was the same every day: Bread soup, boiled together, with potatoes and vegetables, and a piece of meat. With it the grey-white French military bread was served, and every other day a quarter of a litre of heavy red wine. The food was eaten off tin plates at the two long tables in our quarters. There was, however, not room enough for all at the tables. The question of seats the Legion's etiquette decided; the privilege of sitting down at table belonged to the old légionnaires. After the soup the kitchen corporal rushed from room to room: "Aux patates--aux pommes de terre!" (To the potatoes!) The whole company marched down to the kitchen, and standing in a large circle peeled the day's supply of potatoes. Every one had to peel--he who had no pocket-knife had to make shift with a sharpened spoon-handle! The purchase of a pocket-knife was an exorbitant luxury on a wage of five centimes a day.... In the afternoon the old légionnaires went off on long marches or to field practice, or were ordered to "corvée," to work with spade and pick, whilst the recruits had instruction. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, after a second "soupe," which was exactly like the first, the official free time of the légionnaire began. But in reality the most tiresome work of all now began--cleaning and washing! Rifle cleaning, cleaning of uniforms, polishing the leather parts of the uniform. Leather! Even now I still think with a gentle shudder of the leather of the Legion, of the cartridge-belt and pouch! There is such a lot of trouble and work connected with these leather belts! The vainest "neuvaine" does not spend so much time over the whole of her toilette as does the légionnaire over the polishing of his cartridge-belt! The procedure was unutterably ridiculous, in the highest degree pedantic and unpractical, being irksome beyond all measure. You melted black wax over a match and put it on the leather. Then this wax had to be properly rubbed in with a flat piece of wood, till it was evenly distributed. Then began the real polishing with an arsenal of different rags. It took two hours to make cartridge-belt and pouch shine properly, till the légionnaire's vanity was satisfied.... Unpractical and old-fashioned as the "astiquage" is, it belongs to the etiquette of the Legion and is sacred. I had a special hatred of it and considered myself infinitely smart when I bought a bottle of leather dressing and simply painted my belts with it instead of working at them for two hours. It looked very well and was at all events more durable. But Corporal Wassermann almost fainted when he saw it. He tore the belt out of my hand, and in a fit of rage ran round to all the men's rooms, to show the other corporals what horrible things happen in this sinful world. A painted cartridge-belt! The old soldiers of the companies came running up and with many "merdes" and "noms d'un chien" surveyed in petrified astonishment the greenhorn who had been so audacious as to attempt to supplant the sacred "astiquage" of the Legion by painting! "But it is more practical," I said at length to the fuming corporal in the vain attempt to appease him. "Mais, ça ne marche pas!" he shrieked. "That will never do. If you were an old soldier and not a recruit, you would be locked up for ten days!" The greatest plague, however, was the washing. The white uniform had of course to be washed every day. In the back barrack-yard was the "lavabo," a large reservoir built of concrete, with cold running water, called in légionnaire's wit "cercle d'enfer" (Hell's circle). Every free hour the légionnaires stood shoulder to shoulder around the reservoir, in a large circle, shirt-sleeves turned up, with flushed and perspiring heads. Behind those washing other légionnaires waited patiently until a place at the reservoir became vacant. There they washed, rubbed, beat and rinsed until darkness set in. The white linen uniforms, the underclothing, and the linings of the uniforms had to be washed in cold water and with little soap. The small piece of soap which each man received once a month was not nearly enough, and few things were railed at as much as the lack of soap. Scarcely had one turned round, when lo and behold! the soap was gone. Nothing represented the poverty of the Legion so much as this "lavabo." The man who possessed a brush, an ordinary "washing-brush," and with this could simplify the work of washing, was as much envied as if he had been a millionaire--to lend such a brush was looked upon as an act of the greatest friendship! For drying purposes lines were hung up near by, and when one had hung up the wet clothes, one waited patiently until they were dry. A man who was careless or impatient, and who did not do so but went away, might afterwards survey the place on the line where his washing had been hanging--the wash itself was gone, had disappeared, been spirited away. With the half-dry wash one returned to the room, laid one's blanket on the table and "ironed" trousers and tunics by smoothing them with the sharp edge of the drinking-mug until they were free of creases. The poor devil of a légionnaire thus needed an hour for a piece of work which could have been done in a few minutes with the help of a flat-iron. But the foreign légionnaire is far too poor to possess such a treasure as a flat-iron.... * * * * * The object of our training was twofold: the training for prodigious marching performances, and the education of the individual to complete military independence. The working programme of the Foreign Legion, the whole of its military value, is embodied in these two ideas: Brilliant marchers--independent soldiers. In addition to these two advantages we have the financial consideration, on which the Foreign Legion's existence depends--the advantage of cheap, splendidly trained mercenaries, with whom the most daring military operations can be undertaken without consideration of the sacrifice of life involved. No nation, no parliament asks for an account of the dead. The Legion marches and acts independently, dies without attracting attention. The légionnaire can march. Forty kilometres a day is the fixed minimum performance. He must be able to do that, day by day, without interruption, without a day of rest, for weeks on end. That is the object of his training from the very beginning--the daily "pas gymnastique," the "double timing" in the long springy running stride of the Legion, the initiatory practice for marching. Several times every week the men must make practice marches over a distance of at least twenty-four kilometres, with full equipment, at the Legion's pace of five kilometres per hour, which has always remained the same. The only object of the practice marches is to teach the recruits steady quick marching. They neither end with a small manoeuvre, nor have they exercises such as scouting, or exploring the country by means of patrols. It is nothing but simple marching at a prescribed pace, a tramping onwards to fulfil a given task. The "marches militaires," as the practice marches are called, usually commence at midday, when the sun is at its hottest, after a hard morning's drill, so as to represent a practical exercise. On one of the military roads which branch off from Sidi-bel-Abbès in all directions, the march goes on until the twelfth kilometre is reached, and then the men are marched back again. On the march a légionnaire may carry his rifle as he pleases, either shouldered or by the strap, just as is most comfortable to him; he may take off his knapsack if it hurts him, and carry it in his hand; he is not ordered when to open his coat or when to shut it. The officers do not worry the marching légionnaires with paltry orders, and they are allowed to sing or to smoke as they please. When there is a large puddle on the road, or when one side of the road is stony, the column turns off of its own accord and marches where the road is best. In the course of many a whole-day march I have not heard a single word from the officers, no orders except the short whistle signals, which mean: "Column, halt!" and "Column, forward march!" As soon as the signal sounds for a halt, the front rows form front without orders, and every man sits or lies down during the halt as suits him best. The marches are regulated by the one principle: March as you like, with crooked back or toes turned in, if you think that nice or better, but--march! It is always being drummed into the légionnaire that he is intended for nothing else in this world except for marching. If the pangs of hunger are gnawing at his stomach or thirst parches his tongue, that is so much the worse for him, but is no sort of a reason for his not marching on! He may be tired, dead tired, completely exhausted--but he must not stop marching. If his feet are bleeding and the soles burn like fire, that is very sad--but the marching pace must not be slackened. The sun may burn till his senses are all awhirl, he must go on. His task in life is to march. The greatest crime that he can commit is to fail on the march. There is no such thing as an impossible marching performance for the regiment of foreigners. Each individual is inoculated with the one idea, it is hammered into him, that he has to march as long as he can control his legs. And when he can no longer control them, then he must at least try to crawl. It is a merciless system, which, however, produces wonderful soldiers. Inseparable from the march of the Legion is the baggage of the légionnaire. The French foreign soldier marches with an equipment called the "tenue de campagne d'Afrique." He wears splendidly made laced boots, white duck trousers held together at the ankles by means of leather gaiters, and the "capote," the heavy blue military cloak. The cloak is put on over the shirt, without any coat underneath, and its tails are buttoned back behind, so that thighs and knees are left free, and an untrammelled gait rendered possible, just as with the French soldiers. The only difference is that the légionnaire wears the "ceinture" round the body, the blue sash, about four metres long, of fine woollen cloth, which not only gives the body a firm support, but also does service as a tropical belt, indispensable in the sudden changes of temperature in Africa, where the glowing hot day is followed by an icy cold night. The red "képi" has a white cover, and, as further protection against the sun, a thin linen cloth-the "couvre-nuque," neck-cloth--is buttoned on to the "képi," covering the neck, ears and cheeks. There are consequently in the Legion comparatively few cases of sunstroke, which may sound rather surprising. He carries a rifle and a bayonet, two hundred to four hundred cartridges, cartridge pouch and knapsack, and the "sac." This knapsack is made of black varnished canvas with a unique system of straps, and has hardly any weight of its own. On the march it contains two complete uniforms, the légionnaire's linen and polishing cloths, partly in the inside and partly in "ballots," in carefully prescribed bundles. Tent canvas and blanket encircle the knapsack in a long roll. The collapsible tent-sticks are stuck in at the side. On the top is fastened the "gamelle" and fuel for the bivouac fire. In addition each man also carries one of the saucepans of the company or pioneer's implements. Knapsack, rifle and equipment altogether weigh almost fifty kilogrammes; no soldier of any other army carries such a load. With this kit he marches over sand under a burning sun, on very scanty rations. In barracks he gets a cup of black coffee on rising in the morning. At ten o'clock he gets his forenoon soup, at about 5 P.M. his afternoon soup. Two meals a day, both consisting of soup, in which are boiled all sorts of vegetables, a small piece of meat, and now and then a special vegetable as an extra, spinach, carrots or such-like. With this he eats the French military bread, a grey kind of bread which is very easily digested, undoubtedly nutritious, sufficient and palatable. When marching, however, the meat rations are dropped, and food consists almost exclusively of rice and macaroni. As a substitute for the bread he is served with a kind of hard ship's biscuit. Marching always commences in the early hours after midnight. It then goes on uninterruptedly, with the hourly halts for rest of five minutes, until the task has been completed. This is a peculiarity of the Legion from which there is no deviation, even when in the field. Be the distance ever so great, it is covered in _one_ march. The Légionnaire marches.... * * * * * The Foreign Legion, as an old troop of mercenaries, works like a machine. The newly recruited human material is quickly adapted to the old, faultlessly working parts. In barrack life and on the drill-ground the officers stand in the background. For these stages they are superfluous, and their work is confined to paper reports or to an occasional visit to the drill-ground. While I was serving in the Foreign Legion I only came into close touch with the officers of my company on the march. We scarcely knew them; the captain came into the company's office in the forenoon, and was not seen again for the rest of the day. The education of the men and their whole training is left to the non-commissioned officers, above all to the corporals. They were themselves once trained in the same service and possess, with rare exceptions, great talent in training their men to be independent. The system of the marches is brutal; the légionnaire must expend what there is in him of vital energy and human strength, but in the military service he is treated as a soldier, as a valuable soldier, whom one does not worry with pedantic demands and paltry red-tape affairs, but treats him in a sensible, I might say loving, manner, in order to draw from him the utmost he is capable of. From the military point of view he is really well treated. During my training I did not once hear a word of bad language, and if a strong expression was used, it was done in fun. Every morning and every afternoon nine recruits of the eleventh were taken to a secluded spot, a shady avenue near the Plateau, and were taken in hand by a corporal and a légionnaire, première classe. Every movement was explained to us, the purpose of every manoeuvre illustrated precisely, so that we knew why we had to make this or that exercise. The smallest details were all explained. It was not considered a crime if in lining-up one man was a trifle farther forward than the other; but if any man was awkward at boxing, that was considered a very serious thing, and he was drilled by himself until he grasped the fact that boxing was a most important matter, which sharpened wits and nerves. In the pauses the instructors spoke to us and explained a hundred little things. The gun had to be carried across the shoulder in a certain place, because that was the easiest way of carrying and balancing it. We were obliged to work hard, but never had the feeling of being bothered with anything unnecessary. It was practical work, the reason for which every one understood. This was repeated on a larger scale when drilling in companies. Everything was directed towards the practical and useful; one was not drilled mechanically, but by practical methods. The company drill was hardly ever conducted by the officers, but by the colour-sergeant of the company. Here the training of the individual to independence stepped in. In the course of the day every man was given a problem which he had to solve: the estimating of distances, the search for cover or ambush.... For instance, ten men were told off as a scout-patrol, and had to reach a certain spot without being seen. At the goal the whole company assembled, and every légionnaire could watch for himself how the scout-patrol carried out their task. Their movements were criticised by the watching légionnaires; in great excitement they debated if another way did not offer better cover, or if the patrol should not have remained longer at one point to get a wider range of view for their observations. This military criticism was looked upon with favour, and sergeants and corporals regularly took part in the discussion. This introduced into the hard service a suggestion of sport and individual interest, stirring the ambition and giving interest to the work. For all that the general work of the troop was not neglected and drill was not despised when necessary. To my mind the firing discipline, for instance, was perfect. "Being practical" was the leading principle of the whole training. Each man knew the length of his steps and knew that he required 117 or 120 or 125 steps to walk 100 metres. In interesting instructive lessons in the field the légionnaire learnt not only the rudiments of map-reading, but was taught to illustrate a report by a sketch, if it was only a rough one. The corporals took special pains with the talented and educated légionnaires, stirring their pride and ambition to achieve something out of the common. One had the feeling of working for a sporting competition. On clear, starry nights the company was often alarmed and marched into the surrounding country of Sidi-bel-Abbès. Far out in the open field we stopped. These exercises were conducted by our first lieutenant. He gathered the légionnaires round him in a circle and explained to them the constellations, their movements and their relation to each other. This was repeated so often till even the greatest dunce could find his bearings by means of the Pole-star and the Great Bear. Personal interest was brought into the soldier's work. One became independent, one knew the Why and the Wherefore. Again and again rifle-pits were dug, and sporting ambition urged us to work quicker than the next section. There was equal competition at the frequent drills in throwing up earthworks, and with wonderful rapidity entrenchments were built up of haversacks filled with sand. It was like watching a match to see the "escouades," the different sections of the company, endeavouring to be the first to have their tent up. With one pull they had the tent-cloth out of the knapsack, and fitted the sticks together; every one had his own piece of work--the one buttoned the tent canvas together, the other stretched the sides down tight, and the next one drove in the pegs. And like a miracle the little tent grew out of the ground. My squad held the record in tent-building with seventy seconds. It was looked upon as a matter of honour to turn out with the greatest speed and exactness, one was proud of being able to form square on the march in a few seconds. One ran like mad at the command "A genoux!"--an interesting manoeuvre, the purpose of which was to save oneself from bursting shells and volley fire. When the command "A genoux!" (Down on the knees!) sounded the whole line in long strides moved closely together, every single man fell on his knees and put his head as far under the knapsack of the man in front of him as possible, each one crowding close to his neighbour. No head, no back was visible, nothing but a compact mass of knapsacks. The head of each man was protected by the knapsack of the man in front, this and his own knapsack protecting him from shells and shrapnel. The "sac," with its contents of soft uniforms and underlinen, was proof even against a rifle-bullet. Everything was practical. All the bother with the "paquetage," the paltry and exact folding up of equipment according to a prescribed plan, meant in reality prompt readiness at shortest notice. The légionnaire has no wardrobe and is obliged to put a host of things into a ridiculously small space with methodical neatness. But the result of all this is that he can find every piece in the dark and stands with his kit packed according to marching regulations ten minutes after the alarm. The Legion understands its soldiering business. One must admit that. It shoots brilliantly. The general regulations for the computation of the shooting range are absolutely ignored by the Legion. But every man tests his gun over every range until he knows exactly, when given a distance, how his own gun shoots over it: at four hundred yards, a hand's-breadth up, and a hand's-breadth to the left ... and so on. The shooting-range at Sidi-bel-Abbès is never unoccupied, cartridges are not stinted, and a company would feel very unhappy if at least half of its men were not first-class shots. Money prizes are even given. I once got a prize of ten francs.... On the other hand, it is on the rifle-ground that one can see how the légionnaire is treated as a man. He is supposed to be a badly treated man, a desperate man, one not to be trusted. As a soldier the légionnaire must shoot, shoot much. As a desperate man he ought not to have arms in his possession. But the Legion has found a compromise. A corporal stands behind every légionnaire who shoots on the range, watching the shooter's every movement. From the same reason even the sentinels do not get any cartridges. The non-commissioned officer in command of the guard receives a small box with ammunition, locked and sealed and only to be opened in case of necessity. Is a sentinel attacked, then he must defend himself with his bayonet until he can alarm the guard and bring the officer on duty to the rescue with cartridges. Such things are significant. But they do not prevent the légionnaire from being a splendid soldier. Individual training--Boer tactics--practical instruction ... that is the Legion. And it marches. Now and then its marching powers are increased artificially. The "compagnies montées" one with each regiment, companies mounted on mules, have even done seventy kilometres a day. Every two men have a mule. The one rides and takes the baggage of his comrade marching alongside with him on the mule. Then they change about. The mounted companies lie far in the south and follow up the hostile Arabs with colossal forced marches. But on the whole "la Légion" depends on its legs. These brilliant professional soldiers march.... * * * * * I will give you, naturally translated, my company's weekly programme as it was hung up on the blackboard every Saturday: Monday 6-7 Boxing. 7.30-10 Company drill. 12 Military march. Tuesday 6-7 Gymnastics. 7.30-10 Skirmishing. 11-12 Instruction in hygienic rules in the field. 1 Work under the quartermaster's direction. Wednesday 5.30-6.30 Boxing. 7 Company musters for bathing. 8-11 Mending uniforms, preparation for inspection by the colonel. Thursday 5.30 March to the shooting-range. 12-1 Instruction in first-aid to wounded. 1.15 Work under the quartermaster's orders. Friday 5 Military march. 1-2 Instruction in taking cover in flat ground. 2.30 Work under the quartermaster's orders. Saturday 5.30 Run over six kilometres. 8-11 Company drill. 12 Cleaning of barracks and quarters. 4 Inspection of the barracks by the colonel. The men stand beside their beds in duck suit. N.B.--At the 11 o'clock muster each morning a part of the uniform, to be named each day by the adjutant, has to be presented for inspection. * * * * * Inseparable from the Legion's military value is the Legion's work. Not so very long ago Sidi-bel-Abbès was a sand-heap, on which only a "marabout" stood, the tomb of a pious saint, to which the Arab hordes of the Beni Amer made pilgrimages. At that time strange men came, gathered round the brand new flag of the Legion and convinced the sons of Amer in bloody battles that it would be good for their health to move farther south. These strange men built roads and burned bricks. They built solid fortification walls, drained that horrid little rivulet Mekerra, which flowed so sluggishly through the sand, and which smelt so badly; they laid out gardens and planted olive-trees. The barracks, the public buildings, most of the dwelling-houses arose under the hands of these industrious mercenaries. The légionnaire was always and is always still a workman. The heaviest work of the Foreign Legion is done on the smallest military stations in Algeria, down in the south, on the borders of the Sahara, where every day's bodily work means loss of health to a European. There the working column turns out day by day with pick and spade to build roads, whilst perhaps in an Arab village a few hours distant the civil authorities are distributing "relief" in the form of natural products to loafing Arabs. Eighty per cent. of Algeria's brilliant roads have been built by the Legion. The trowel is thrust into the légionnaire's hand. There, now you are a mason. He builds barracks for the troops and offices for the civil administration. He breaks the stones with which the roads are repaired. He performs the pioneer work of Northern Africa at a wage which a coolie would scoff at. His strength is made full use of. A grotesque example of this is the custom prevailing in the 2nd Regiment, stationed in Saida, to allow légionnaires to work for private people in the town. They, of course, get less wage for this than a common workman would ask for, but that in itself would not be so bad, because even the few francs a day mean wealth to a légionnaire. The peculiarity, however, the typical side of the whole affair, is that these workers have to hand over a part of their day's earnings to the funds of their company. The company enriches itself through their work. In the garrison life of Sidi-bel-Abbès the work of the Legion took grotesque forms. In my life I have spent several weeks on end in the saddle; while still very young I struggled for existence in the United States; I have suffered from hunger and cold, and for months I have had shivering fits of malaria--but I never experienced to such a degree the feeling that my physical strength was being pumped out of me to the last drop as during the time I spent in Sidi-bel-Abbès. I was always tired and every free moment found me stretched out at full length on my camp bed. During work I had the ambition (which to-day appears to me ridiculous) to be second to none in strength and endurance. Scarcely, however, was the work ended, when the bodily and mental depression set in. My captain was quite right when one day at inspection he stood still in front of me and said disapprovingly to the sergeant: "Il a maigri beaucoup!" (He has got very thin!) "Mais il fait son service," replied the sergeant. (He does his work.) That was of course the principal thing. The getting thin and feeling tired had their own good reasons. Like all légionnaires I was a working animal. Early in the morning the hard military service began. The afternoon brought the "corvée" work, and the evening the ridiculous small jobs of the barrack routine. The word "corvée," which literally means drudgery and in the military sense "work," I will not forget as long as I live, and will never read it again without shuddering. "Corvée" was a component part of almost every day in the Legion. The work was often so hard that every bone and every muscle in my body ached, often it was simply ridiculous and depressing. The greater part of the company mustered generally at 1 P.M. in the barrack-yard, and the sergeant "du jour" chose working parties, each of which was in charge of a corporal. That was something quite different to the military service. Indifferent as I must have been at that time, I nevertheless always noticed the sulky and disgusted faces the men made when they went to this work. In small groups we marched out of the barracks, armed with broom, pick and shovel. The Legion was there to work, and from the légionnaire one could ask things impossible in other French troops. If one saw a soldier working in Sidi-bel-Abbès, then he was sure to be a légionnaire. Arab Spahis or French soldiers of the line, who were also stationed in Sidi-bel-Abbès, had never such work to do as we did, and which should have been done by scavengers and navvies. That was the privilege of the Foreign Legion. From the Arab Spahis, that is to say from the natives, such work was not demanded. On the other hand, the Legion had often to supply men to put the forage of the "Spahis" under cover. That may sound paltry, but it is just these small things that characterise the way the légionnaire is taken advantage of. He is just good enough for any kind of work. We swept the public park of the town for the citizens of Sidi-bel-Abbès, whilst the gardeners stood idly by, watching us and ordering us about; we rooted out the undergrowth, and cleansed the brook which ran through the botanical gardens from mud and refuse. We emptied the drains in the officers' houses; we did scavengers' work in the filthy slums of the town. Once I was a member of a detachment that had to clean the sewers in the Arab prison. The work was loathsome beyond measure. We had taken with us a large barrow with casks, and had to haul from underneath the floors of the cells and prison rooms the large tin pans, and carry them to the barrow. We performed this disgusting work, whilst in the prison yard the loafing Arab rabble prowled around and made jokes at our expense. Sunday only was free from work, free from all kinds of service. We were not even mustered. And the légionnaire lies the whole blessed Sunday in bed. Towards evening he goes to the Jardin Public to listen to the concert given by the regimental band. He goes there because it is the Legion's custom--but he would much rather sleep on.... CHAPTER VI "THE LEGION GETS NO PAY" The money troubles of the Legion : Five centimes wages : The cheapest soldiers of the world : Letters from the Legion : The science of "decorating" : The industries of the légionnaires : What the bugler did for a living : The man with the biscuits : A thief in the night : Summary lynch law : Herr von Rader and La Cantinière : "The Legion works--the Legion gets no pay!" The poor fellows who enlisted because they had no money to buy a crust of bread made the biggest mistake of their lives when they thought to finish with their troubles by entering the Legion. Without exception every man in the Legion had his money troubles. Money was a thing of immense value in the Foreign Legion. The possession of a few francs made an enormous difference and created in the midst of the Legion's red-trousered equality the finest social grades and distinctions. Not only the value but also the power of money was enhanced in the Legion. Copper pieces meant a great deal here. Copper pieces purchased a few "litres" of wine, or a nocturnal carouse, or a substitute to help in doing hard work. The légionnaire with a little money was on quite a different footing to the man who had none. Rassedin, the wealthy Rassedin, was a prince in a surrounding of poor devils. A wide gap parted him from the other men. They flattered him to get into his good graces and accepted gladly his insolence, if there were but a few sous or a few good cigarettes to be had. Of our quarters he was the king. He reigned supreme. He was obeyed in all matters. It was too funny to see how his comrades hurried themselves when this man, the incarnation of the God of Mammon in the Legion, happened to express a wish, and how they then went off with beaming faces to the canteen to change the couple of sous they had earned into wine. The self-confidence with which the Belgian bore the dignity of his wealth (and what enormous wealth are a few thousand francs to a légionnaire!) was, considered by itself, only funny. But many a time I suspected that Rassedin, who knew so well what a frightful death was waiting for him, despised the petty greed of them all from the bottom of his heart. Money rules even in the Foreign Legion! The pay is five centimes daily, which is about one cent or one halfpenny. Exactly the fiftieth part of the daily pay of an American regular. The twenty-fourth part of a British soldier's daily pay. The comparison is grotesque. When one considers, however, that the man who enlists in the Foreign Legion sells his skin and is a "paid" mercenary, the comparison becomes astounding. The average légionnaire finds out in a remarkably short time that he has been a fool to enlist, that he is the victim of a system very near akin to slavery, that he is a working man without wages, a labourer without pay. An old French proverb says: Business is getting the other man's money! And very substantial values is La France getting out of the légionnaire. With this poorly paid Legion, the French Republic protects the boundaries of her territory in Algeria and conquers the southern deserts step by step--in the everlasting wars in French Tonquin the Legion's troops are always ready for service. Fighting is not the only work of the Foreign Legion, however. Only one-half of the légionnaire is a real soldier. The other half of him is workman, carpenter, builder, road-maker. He works hard and he is so cheap a workman that no Chinese coolie can compete with him. He receives board and clothes and a cent a day--the cheap soldier of the Legion, this funny soldier of "fortune." He can be made use of in the most terrible climates, for the most risky operations, simply because nobody troubles his head about him and because his officers have no account to render for his life or death. The sum of money which his work with pick and shovel, with mason's trowel and carpenter's axe has saved the French Government in all these years must be enormous. And if a bullet, or sunstroke, or typhoid fever, or dysentery carries away a légionnaire, the only expense he is the cause of is the making of a hole in the sand. So cheap! Truly, France's Foreign Legion is a well-paying enterprise! Glorious soldiers and successful workmen are remarkably cheap at five centimes a day.... Every five days the légionnaire gets his wages paid. He holds five copper sous in his hand and must decide whether to buy cigarette tobacco, or cleaning materials, or a bottle of wine. It is only enough for one of these three. The purchase of a box of matches, which are monopolised in Algeria and cost five centimes, is a very grave financial problem. Therefore matches are scarce. Nowhere in the world is one so often asked for a match as in the streets of Sidi-bel-Abbès and in the Legion's barracks. No wonder that the possession of a few silver pieces is something truly great for a légionnaire; no wonder that men like Rassedin rule as kings. Nowhere can the lesson of the value of money be so thoroughly learned as in the Foreign Legion. The money troubles of the Legion are, of course, ridiculously petty troubles. The luckiest man (considered from the Legion's point of view) is he who has kept up some sort of communication with home. The most appalling letters are then written to parents and relations and friends. Usually the poor devil of a letter-writer exaggerates a little, and his descriptions of famine and hardships are most moving. They must be very hard-hearted people indeed who do not acknowledge the receipt of such a letter with a small postal order. Then there is joy in the land of Sidi-bel-Abbès. For a day, or a few days, or even a week, the prodigal son with the postal order lives like a king. He has his boots cleaned for him, and would not dream of making his own bed as long as his money lasts. A comrade does that for him, and in reward is graciously permitted to share a drink. C'est la Légion! To play the "grand seigneur," if it is but for a day, is the average légionnaire's dream of happiness. He thinks it the finest thing in all the world to play at having a servant, if it's but for a day.... And this is the surest sign of the légionnaire's abject poverty. These lucky ones who receive a postal order occasionally represent the crème de la crème, the élite of society in the Foreign Legion. The others have to help themselves. They must "decorate themselves!" This "decorating" is a fine art in the Foreign Legion. It is a mixture of work, cunning, brains, and theft. "Decorate yourself!" That is the sum total of an old légionnaire's wisdom, and these two words are the only advice that he gives, or indeed can give, to the newcomer. Make your life in the Legion as easy as possible is the meaning of this advice; take care that your tobacco-pouch stays full, that your uniform is in order and your kit complete, that you have as often as possible the three sous necessary for your litre of wine. The way in which this "decorating" is carried out is a purely personal affair.... My friend the bugler used to make gaudy "ceintures" from coloured pieces of cloth and old leather-work, belts with crests and buttons of the Legion. He found good customers for his belts amongst the Arabs and occasionally amongst Spanish workmen in the little wine-shops of Sidi-bel-Abbès. In his special methods of decorating the old légionnaire developed an extraordinary business instinct. His transactions were not at all simple. An Arab never parts with hard cash--after the time-honoured manner of his kind. So the bugler had to "trade." He would exchange his gaudy rags for a pair of pretty golden-bossed Arabian shoes, or a grotesquely carved Arabian stick, or a morocco purse of fine leather-work. Then Smith would constitute one of the légionnaires on orderly duty in the officers' mess his agent. Paying customers could easily be found amongst the young officers. The final result was always the same: many litres of the sweet heavy wine of Algeria into which all the copper coins of the Legion invariably change. A légionnaire of the fourth company was generally known as "l'homme des biscuits!" His speciality was to gather in all the companies the biscuits given out twice weekly to complete the bread ration. They were like ship's biscuit and extremely hard. Most of the men would not touch them. So the biscuit man had a capital gathering ground, and in some cunning way, which he carefully kept secret, he took sack upon sack of these biscuits out of the barracks. In the market-place of Sidi-bel-Abbès he found plenty of customers. Others, less inventive, confined themselves to cleaning and washing for comrades better off than they. In some way every one tried to "decorate himself."... The main object in a légionnaire's life is the getting together of a few coppers. Decorating meant also occasional theft.... In matters of stealing the Legion draws the line very sharply. The theft of equipment, to replace lost or stolen parts, was considered absolutely respectable and gentleman-like. There was no other remedy, as the man who loses something is punished severely. Thieving "decorating" is a very simple thing and quickly learned. "I've lost a pair of trousers!" cries the recruit in despair. "That's nothing," says the old légionnaire. "Curse it, what shall I do then?" wails the new-comer. "Decorate yourself, you fool," says the old hand. Whereupon the recruit (after receiving detailed instructions from the wise old soldier) walks into the back yard, where the washing is hanging out to dry, and waits in a dark corner with great patience for an auspicious moment. A lightning snatch and a pair of somebody's trousers hanging innocently on the line are his. He has decorated himself. It's immoral, of course. It's theft right enough. It's deplorable ... but it is most convenient. The Legion does not worry about small matters of right or wrong. The Legion says: Each for himself; why didn't you keep an eye on your washing, you fool! Now such a single theft of a single pair of trousers naturally is but the first link in a long chain of trouser-stealing. The man who has been robbed has no other remedy than doing likewise. And so on.... In a very few days hundreds of pairs of trousers change owners, until somewhere in the long chain some one is struck who buys himself a new pair. Somehow or other it all comes right! The Legion considers this sort of theft sportsman-like and gentlemanly, a thing permitted, and it is a "point d'honneur" to be smart enough not to get caught by the rightful owner. But woe to the légionnaire who should ever extend his decorating operations to tobacco or money or even bread. The whole company would form a self-constituted detective corps and find the culprit out very soon. The rest would be--silence and hospital! * * * * * During one of the very first nights an ugly scene took place which showed only too well how a thief is treated in the Legion. In the middle of the night furious shouting made me jump out of bed. Sleepily I looked about me. Around Rassedin's bed stood a group of cursing and gesticulating soldiers. I went up to them. Smith and three others were holding in grips of iron a fourth man who could hardly speak for terror. His face was white as chalk. Rassedin stood there in his shirt, staring hard at the man caught. "You're from the tenth company?" "Yes," stammered the man. "What in hell are you doing in the eleventh then?" "Been drinking--got into the wrong quarters--let me go----" In the meantime all the men in the room had gathered and were standing around the group. "Nom de Dieu--what a dirty fellow!" said Rassedin. "Listen, you chaps. I had my money in my trousers and my trousers were under my pillow. Just now I felt something moving near me, jumped up and caught hold. Do you know what I caught? This chap's hand. What do you think of that?" "Voleur!" cried the bugler. "Thief!" The word acted like a signal. All at once fists were clenched, a bayonet gleamed, a struggle arose, and a dozen men rolled on the ground. The scene lasted for perhaps a minute. Then all was still--the man from the tenth company lay there gasping and covered with blood. His face was black, so terribly was it bruised. A blow from the bayonet had split his cheek and a stream of blood flowed over his blue jacket. The guard came up and the fellow was carried into hospital. "He wanted to steal my money! He wanted to decorate himself!" said Rassedin grimly. "For the present we've decorated him!" The man lay in hospital for weeks. That was the end of it. That night's lynch-law in our quarters was not inquired into. The punishment of the thief rests in the hands of his comrades. So decrees the custom of the Legion.... * * * * * When it came to "decorating," Herr von Rader was in his element. The Legion's little ways had nothing mysterious for him. In a week the whole Legion knew him and respected him as a man of brains and resource. Every evening he went across to the canteen. Money he had not. But he juggled untiringly with empty wine-bottles, performed the most difficult conjuring tricks with absinthe glasses, and used to tell Madame la Cantinière (who understood a little German) the funniest stories. Very soon he succeeded in making a deep impression on that worthy lady, the queen over so many desirable wine-casks. She found the clever Herr von Rader amusing, and she did something that she had never done before in her life. She gave the man of many tricks a gratis bottle of wine every evening, and into the bargain the change out of an imaginary ten-sous piece. Madame's Portuguese husband had no idea of this little secret of his wife's kind heart. Anyway, he need not have troubled himself: Herr von Rader had not the slightest intention of endangering Madame la Cantinière's conjugal fidelity--he only loved her wine.... Thus did Herr von Rader decorate himself with his glib tongue and his clever fingers. The soldiering part of his work was easy enough for him. Herr von Rader got on better under the flag of the Legion than all the other recruits. Sometimes, however (when Madame la Cantinière was in a bad temper or her Portuguese husband kept too sharp an eye on her), even Herr von Rader would fall into a thoughtful mood. Then he would rub away angrily at his leather equipment and propound practical philosophy. Something like this: "Nom de Dieu!" (Herr von Rader was already quite at home with the curses of the French language.) "Nom de bon Dieu! This Legion is no good. Nix good. Now, for an intelligent man like me there is a bottle of wine and a cigarette easily to be had anywhere in the world. You'll admit that! Is it easy here? It is not! I've got to waste a lot of thinking and fine art just to keep in cigarettes.... This Legion's rotten. I've been had. They've swindled me! I'll tell you what, mein Freund: I'm going to skin out. This boy is going to run away...." He did "skin out," some time afterwards. For it the cheerful Herr von Rader was to suffer the whole immeasurably hard punishment system of the Legion. Even this cheerful fellow, who knew so well how to help himself, and in consequence was far better off than the other men in the Legion, was troubled by the simple problem of the Foreign Legion! A problem which so many of the Legion's soldiers have tried to reason out with so many head-shakings. A problem which once an Arabian Spahi put very plainly in a few scornful words: "The Legion works--the Legion gets no pay!" CHAPTER VII THE CITY OF THE FOREIGN LEGION The daily exodus to town : Ben Mansur's coffee : The Ghetto : The citizens of Sidi-bel-Abbès and the légionnaires : How the Legion squared accounts with the civilians : A forbidden part of the town : Primitive vice : A dance of a night : The gardens : The last resting-place of the Legion's dead En ville! Off to Sidi-bel-Abbès! Every afternoon shortly before six o'clock there began a very exodus from the Legion's barracks to the town. A légionnaire would rather clean and polish for an hour after lights out in the semi-darkness of the night-lamp than miss his stroll to town. The daily walk in Sidi-bel-Abbès was part of the Legion's sacred tradition. At five o'clock the gigantic gates of the barracks were closed and only a little side door remained open. Here the sergeant of the guard posted himself and carefully inspected everybody who wanted to go out, so that the Legion's reputation for chic should not suffer. The uniform to be worn in town was prescribed every day by a special regimental order; each légionnaire had to wear the same uniform, red trousers and blue jacket or white trousers and blue overcoat, and everybody took an especial pride in looking as trim and smart as possible. Three thousand soldiers of the Legion used to stroll about the streets of Sidi-bel-Abbès every evening. For me this daily walk was a wondrous change from the Legion's routine. Above the gleam of the electric arc lamps shone the starry glory of a southern sky. Little black boys in white breeches, whose countless folds might have told endless stories of stolen trifles they had concealed, lounged at the street corners and cried the evening paper, the _Echo d'Oran_; Arabs in white burnouses, carrying in their hands the dangerous Arabian sticks, in which they find a never-failing missile, stood motionless, silently watching with looks of suspicion the "Rumis," the white foreigners who will always remain foreigners to them and whose customs they will never be able to understand. All Sidi-bel-Abbès was promenading; citizens of the town, officers and civilians of the "Bureau Arabe" with their womenfolk. In between came the Legion's heavy soldier-steps and the sound of gently rattling bayonets. Four streets, which run exactly north, south, east, and west, to Oran, Daya, Maskara, and Tlemcen, divide the town at right angles. They are the main streets in which the European shops and fashionable cafés lie. For private financial reasons the légionnaire does not buy in these shops and in the fashionable cafés he is badly treated. The légionnaire has no business in the main streets--from the honest citizen's point of view. Between the blocks of the main streets, however, a labyrinth of small courts and alleys is hidden. There the Spanish Jews and Arabs live, there trading and bargaining goes on incessantly. In this maze of dark alleys the men of the Legion were at home, in the treacherous wineshops which depended on the custom of the soldiers. "Bar de la Légion," or "Bar du Légionnaire," or "Bar de Madagascar" these hovels called themselves. Good wine is ridiculously cheap in Algeria. But out of the légionnaires extra money must needs be made. They were given a brew in the wineshops made from grapes which had been pressed already two or three times and to which a little alcohol lent flavour and "aroma." Beside the wineshops were Mohammedan restaurants in which one could eat "kuskus" and "galettes," tough pancakes with honey; restaurants in which knives and forks were looked upon as accursed instruments, which doubtless the devil of the Rumis must have invented for devilish purposes unintelligible to a true believer. Poverty and filth reigned in these places, but they were good enough for the poor despised légionnaire. One café in this quarter had an individuality of its own, depending exclusively on the custom of the Legion. In a corner by the theatre a pretty little Spanish girl had put up a wooden hut and filled it with rickety old chairs, to be treated and used with great care, given her in charity probably somewhere or other merely to get rid of them. There she sold coffee to the soldiers of the Legion. This little woman had a good eye for business. Her coffee was, 'tis true, merely coloured hot water and not especially good water at that, but the soldier of the Legion willingly drank it, for Manuelita's coffee was very cheap indeed, and a pretty smile and a coquette glance went with each cup. When business was slack the hostess would even chat a little. These tactics secured for the sly little Spaniard the faithful custom of the légionnaires. La Légion made love to Manuelita unceasingly.... The old légionnaires stole flowers for her, and if somewhere in Tonquin or on the Morocco border plundering had been going on, Manuelita would some months later be sure to receive the finest presents, stolen for her by her old friends of the Legion and carried about all the time in knapsacks. The Legion was grateful to Manuelita. She was the great exception. Besides her and Madame la Cantinière there was no woman in the town of the Foreign Legion who would even in her wildest dreams have deigned a légionnaire worthy of a glance. Smith would never have patronised this Café de la Légion. He knew something much better. To him I owed my acquaintance with Ben Mansur's coffee. His was a Moorish coffee-house. Finely coloured mosaics formed Arabian proverbs on the floor and against the walls there were long marble benches. Arabs crouched on these benches and smoked comfortably gurgling narghiles--the incarnation of quietude and silence. For hours they sat over a single cup of coffee, whose purchase gave them also, according to Arabian custom, the right of spending the night on the marble benches. In stolid silence they played "esch schronsch"--chess. One seldom saw a soldier of the Legion here, for Ben Mansur only spoke Arabic. Smith, however, was his bosom friend, and these two always greeted one another solemnly with deep bows, with their arms folded on the breast in Arab fashion. Ben Mansur's coffee was a dream of fairyland. All day and all night charcoal glowed in the ancient Moorish stove in the corner, and in a wonderful octagonal copper kettle, which must have done service for generations of Arabs, there simmered boiling water. A silver can contained a thick coffee brew, a kind of extract. From this Ben Mansur filled the little clay cups half full and poured in boiling water. Then he conjured dreamland into the tiny little cups, adding a drop here and a drop there from mysterious bottles, a drop of essence of oranges, a drop of hashish oil and a drop of opium. Ben Mansur's coffee, with its wonderful aroma and the restful oblivion which that little cup gave, was a wonder never to be forgotten. Smith and I used to sit on the marble benches by the hour, legs crossed in honour of the customs of our host's race. Before us stood the water-pipe of the Orient, a "narghile," filled with wonderful tobacco very different from the products of the Algerian tobacco monopoly. Ben Mansur would never take more than two sous, which is two cents, for both of us, no matter how many pipes we smoked or how many cups of coffee we drank. This was his idea of hospitality. Then again I used to wander with Smith through the dirty streets of the Jewish quarter, where the rubbish-heaps lay in the open streets and the atmosphere was tainted with every variety of smell. At the corners thin Spanish Jews, with the sharp features common to their race, haggled over a bargain; Algerian Jews walked stately through the alleys, in long flowing robes of blue and brown silk, men of importance who held the wealth of the country in their hands as the go-betweens of the world's trade and the riches of Algeria. Wealth and power dwelt in this miserable quarter of Sidi-bel-Abbès under the shell of poverty with which Israel is so fond of surrounding itself. In the Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès no trifle is so small that it is not worth haggling about, and no proposition paltry enough to come amiss to the man of the Ghetto, whose love of money is so great that he does not despise even the Legion's small copper pieces. The Ghetto and the Foreign Legion have quite lively business connections, consisting principally in the change of small currency notes. Many banknotes which originally formed the kernel of a légionnaire's letter from home have wandered into the mysterious channels of Jewish trade. The Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès has earned a small fortune in these small transactions. A légionnaire is seldom much of a man of business and he certainly is always in a big hurry to get his dollar or his five marks or his five pesetas changed into francs and centimes--so he submits with more or less grace to fantastic rates of exchange, getting little more than three francs for a dollar and about four francs for a "fünf Mark Schein." All other business of the Ghetto with the soldiers of the Legion is equally profitable--for the other man, be it understood, not, of course, for the légionnaire. Very often men of the Legion steal, under cover of darkness, silently through the little streets of the Jewish quarter carrying big bundles of brown woollen blankets and blue sashes, stamped in the middle and at the corners with the Legion's stamp in white paint, which marks them clearly as regimental property. But what's in a stamp! It can be got rid of easily enough with good will and a little turpentine.... Anything that a légionnaire may want to sell the second-hand merchants of Sidi-bel-Abbès buy; at prices below contempt, it is true, but all the same they buy it. The small silver coins of the Ghetto have been the ruin of more than one soldier of the Legion who in a fit of rage sold his uniform to the obliging trader and paid the penalty with a long term of imprisonment. Thus the interests of the Ghetto and the interests of the Legion are identical in a small way, and as a result the Ghetto man and the soldier are quite friendly with each other. The honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès, however, a half-caste of Spanish or Levantine or French extraction, is anything but fond of the red-trousered foreigner. He despises the Legion and its men from the bottom of his heart and has quite forgotten that the very same Legion built his town for him in the beginning; that there would be no Sidi-bel-Abbès if there had been no Legion.... His woman-kind draw their skirts close about them when they meet a légionnaire in the streets, as if he were plague-stricken. He himself--why, he has managed to bring it about that the officers' mess is now merely used as an evening club, while the officers have to dine in hotels, in order that the honest citizen may make a little money out of them. The sub-lieutenants dine in one hotel, the first lieutenants in another, the unmarried captains and higher officers patronise a third. Every hotel had to have a share in the spoils, of course! The honest citizen is very indignant when the regimental band does not give a concert three times weekly for him; he has his public parks swept by the Legion and takes good care that all the provisions for the three thousand soldiers are bought in the town itself and nowhere else. For the trifling purchases which even a poor devil of a légionnaire sometimes makes he keeps a specially rubbishy class of article and charges double prices for it. The regiment of foreigners is a very good thing for the honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès, but nevertheless he despises the Legion and the légionnaire--this citizen of the Foreign Legion's town. He takes good care, however, not to express his feelings of dislike too openly to Monsieur le Légionnaire, for he has more than once learnt that the men in red trousers are not to be trifled with. That they are much better left alone, in fact. The much-tried patience of the Legion has its strongly defined bounds and sometimes it gives way. When the Legion is not occupied in Tonquin or Madagascar or some such lovely neighbourhood, the regimental band gives a concert several times a week in the Place Sadi Carnot. The good man of Sidi-bel-Abbès always found this concert very fine, but what he did not like about it was that besides himself thousands of légionnaires promenaded in the Carnot square, enjoying the band's music as much as the civilians. One day the honest citizen drew a cordon of police around the Place Sadi Carnot, with orders to let no soldiers pass, and thought he would now have the music all for himself.... The légionnaires were struck dumb with astonishment at this unheard-of impudence and the Arabian policemen felt very uncomfortable. News of the "outrage" was sent to barracks and in a very few minutes the men of the Legion were assembled in full force, discussing in fifteen different languages the evident impossibility of living in peace with the honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès. All at once an old soldier gave the word of command: "En avant par colonne du régiment--marche!" The Arabian policemen tumbled to right and to left, the citizens of Sidi-bel-Abbès vanished as if by a conjuring trick into the side streets, and in five minutes there was not a single soul in civilian clothes to be seen on the Place Sadi Carnot. The men in red trousers held the field in triumph. Since they were in fine humour and out for a real good time they promptly smashed up all the chairs on which the ladies and gentlemen of Sidi-bel-Abbès had been sitting, made a pile of them and lit up a grand bonfire while the regimental band played its gayest marches. In the meantime a deputation of citizens had rushed to the colonel of the regiment and made a great noise about these horrible légionnaires. The colonel merely laughed. "My good sirs," said he, "it is now eleven o'clock. My men have leave till midnight. In another hour all will be over." "But they have burnt the chairs," wailed the deputation. "I'm very glad they have not burned anything else," laughed the colonel. "You leave my men in peace and they'll let you alone." Since that time the honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès has been rather more careful in his treatment of the Legion. It is true that an order of the town council says that a légionnaire can only get a ticket for the gallery in the town's theatre, but if a légionnaire with superfluous money wants a seat in the stalls, he can nevertheless get it. The honest citizen has learnt to respect the Legion's feelings. But, under the surface, the citizen's contempt of the Legion naturally remained. The soldier of the foreign regiment puts out the fires which break out in Sidi-bel-Abbès, he saves the citizens and their goods when the stream of the Mekerra becomes a roaring torrent in the rainy season, and he protects the helpless townspeople when the descendants of the Beni Amer try to institute the Jewish persecutions they are so fond of.... He does all that. But the poor devil of a mercenary has no money, and this is the Mortal Sin. * * * * * One quarter of the town was taboo to us légionnaires, strictly forbidden under a penalty of a month's imprisonment: the "village nègre," the negro town, the home of every sort of disease and crime. The beasts in human forms which house there had more than once killed a légionnaire to rob him of his sash or some such trifle. Forbidden things always have a mysterious power of attraction, and I was burning with curiosity. Slowly, keeping a sharp look-out for patrols, I crossed the big drill-ground one night and turned, close behind the mosque, into the maze of huts. It was a pitch-dark night, and I kept falling over the dirt-heaps and tripping in the holes in the hard trodden ground. At last I saw lights. The main street of the village nègre lay before me, a narrow little alley. I could have touched the walls on either side with outstretched arms. The miserable low houses were half in ruins, and irregular holes took the place of doors and windows. The alley, but a few paces long, was brightly illuminated by the light of half a dozen torches stuck in holes in the walls. In this narrow space the vice of Sidi-bel-Abbès was hidden. Songs and cries and shrieks filled the air. Before the huts women were sitting, poor prostitutes, who sold themselves for a few coppers and a drink of absinthe. Here was vice in its most primitive form. The night was cold. Braziers with glowing coals stood before every hut, and women crouched over them that they might better warm their bodies at the warmth of the fire. Modesty seemed to be a thing unknown. A negress with a figure full of strength lay there stretched at full length almost naked, with the warmth-giving firepan beside her. She was too worn out or too lazy to speak, she merely invited the passers-by with a gesture to come into her hut. Near her a Frenchwoman, in whose face her awful life had cut deep furrows, sat in a torn silk dress on the bare ground. Beside them Arabian girls crouched, children almost, the copper bangles on their arms and legs showing that they were from the far South. Italian women, with the characteristic gold earrings of their race, and Spaniards, with oily shining hair, quarrelled in high-pitched voices. The blazing light of the torches gave their faces an uncanny look. In the midst of these miserable women moved the scum of the population of Sidi-bel-Abbès. There were negroes in ragged linen coats who in daytime carried heavy burdens on their backs and spent their evenings regularly in the village nègre. Spanish labourers chattered and gesticulated with the Spanish girls. It was the meeting-place of the poor and the wretched, a corso of humanity at its worst. My bayonet rattling gently against the steel sheath startled the men and women. When they saw that they only had to deal with a single légionnaire and not with one of the much-feared patrols, they cried out to me from all sides--in a curious patois of low French mixed with Arabic. The little I understood of it was quite enough. The language of the légionnaire leaves nothing wanting in the way of force and clearness--the language of the village nègre was filth condensed. Two negresses began to quarrel as to whether a common légionnaire could be in possession of even one sou, a weighty question which was answered in the negative amid much laughter. The Frenchwoman, who was anything but sober, poked me in the ribs and begged me, hiccoughing, for a "petite absinthe." Obscene gestures and drunken cries everywhere. And in the corner there leaned in dignified repose an Arab policeman. It smelled of moschus and heavy sweet Arabian cigarettes. In Arabic the alley was called the Street of the Seven Delights. Smith had told me that. One could but shudder at the contemplation of the seven delights.... Then the comedy became clear to me. The honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès despised the soldier of the Legion--but he tolerated the horrors of the village nègre. Short commands sounded from afar and the steady steps of a patrol drew near. If I was discovered, it meant prison for me, so I dived into the protecting darkness of a small by-street. Stumbling and falling continually I felt my way forward in the pitchy darkness, till I heard low voices. The alley took a sudden turn. I found myself in the court of a Moorish house. Arabs in white robes crouched and squatted on the ground smoking their narghiles. Most of them hardly looked up as I came in, and an old man with a long white beard nodded and smiled to me. On the glowing fire stood a copper kettle with bubbling hot water, and an old negro was making tea for the Arabs. On the wall on one side of the court a cloth was hung up, of fine brocade, with golden embroidery, on a ground of red and yellow, in fantastical arabesques. Many cushions were spread on the white sand. The Arabs themselves sat on finely woven yellow mats. At respectful distance from the men girls stood and lounged about, wondrous youthful forms with veil-like robes and countless copper ornaments on arms and legs, which tinkled at their slightest movement. All were sipping tea out of tiny little cups. All at once I heard English words, an old nursery rhyme: Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, And all the king's horses and all the king's men Could not put Humpty-Dumpty together again. Startled, I turned round and saw in the folds of an Arabian burnous the face of a white woman with fair hair and features who must once have been beautiful. Smoking an Arabian cigarette, she nodded dreamily with a happy smile and ever anew she would sing the nursery rhyme.... Suddenly a girl sprang up, bracelets jingling, a child almost, of the pure Arabian type. Fascinated, the Arabs and the other women stared at her; so still it was that one could hear the sound of one's own breathing. The girl let the thin veil of a garment she was wearing fall down to her hips and stood immobile as a statue for a minute or two, her arms stretched out, the head proudly thrown back, her eyes shining in triumph--courting admiration. She reminded me forcibly of a bronze statuette I had possessed in days gone by.... Very slowly the child of the South began to dance. The delicate veil swayed and waved in ever-changing folds around her body of pure copper colour. Her dancing was wondrously graceful--it was beautiful beyond dispute. A strange scene it was, enhanced by the very bright colours and the heavy sweet smells of mysterious perfumes. I stared in wonder at the dancing of this child of Nature and the wonderful rhythm of her movements. Faster grew the dance, the swinging and circling and posing. Suddenly the girl seized one of the torches and swung it in broad circles around her head. The firelight fell with its ruddy glow on her shining hair of black-blue. The hissing torch seemed to be enveloped in the swaying veil; ever faster grew that mad whirling. After a final lightning circle of the torch the girl fell down exhausted.... A low murmur of applause arose from among the Arabs and many silver coins were thrown to her on the mat. The woman who had sung the English nursery rhyme sat there as one stunned; she had forgotten herself and forgotten her surroundings. "My God," she kept on murmuring, "my God...." I stole away and went slowly home to barracks, worn out. * * * * * A flowery belt of gardens surrounds the town. In broad alleys, which had been trenches in days gone by, stood groups of palm-trees and olive groves, planted by the soldiers of the Legion many years ago in the short intervals of peace. The botanical garden of Sidi-bel-Abbès had also been founded by the foreign mercenaries, and, to this day, the Legion has the right to gather flowers from the beds of the Jardin Public for its dead, and sends three soldiers daily to keep the paths in order and work for the gardener. In return for this the regiment considers the Jardin Public its own private property, and on Sundays that wonderful garden, with its wealth of foliage and flowers, is the scene of a red-trousered invasion. Not very far from the Jardin Public lies the regimental garden, where the Legion raises its vegetables and plants its potatoes. I found it very funny when I was for the first time commandeered to carry dung in the Legion's garden--it seemed to me a most peaceful occupation for a modern mercenary.... Far out stretches the long line of flower gardens, with their narrow foot-paths shaded by olive-trees. Right at the end of the town, where the gardens come to an end and the sand begins, there lies the cemetery of Sidi-bel-Abbès. Its showy monuments, its well-kept flower-beds, and its silent groups of trees do not give it any particular claim to individuality. If you pass through the churchyard, however, you will come to a large open space. Many hundreds of grave mounds lie there. The black wooden crosses are one like the other. This is the last resting-place of the Foreign Legion's dead. The Legion's churchyard. I was once commandeered to work there. An aged corporal, who lived in a cottage in a corner of the cemetery, and in the days of his old age filled the post of grave-digger to the Legion, gave me gardening tools and a watering-can. I walked along the long rows of graves, pulling out weeds and watering the grass. An indescribable feeling of loneliness overcame me. So impersonal, so poor, so barren are those graves! They lie quite close together as if even in death the légionnaires must be drawn up in line for parade. The crosses are so small, so roughly painted, that one cannot get over the feeling that sordid economy is practised even on the last resting-place of the légionnaire. The crosses are hung with wreaths made of glass beads and with an artificial flower here and there. The name of the dead man is written on a small piece of board and underneath the name stands his number. To this comes the laconic addition: "Légion étrangère." I felt sorry for these poor fellows who even in the last sleep of death had to bear a number which reminded one of a convict prison. I went from cross to cross and read the various names. Almost every nation in the world has contributed to the graves in the cemetery of the Foreign Legion, though the German names on the little crosses have a large majority. A regiment of dead soldiers lies buried here. But it is only a small fraction of the Legion's dead. The others sleep somewhere in the sands of Africa--where they fell. Thirteen hundred légionnaires lie buried in Mexico. Hundreds and thousands rot in the swamps of Madagascar. Indo-China has been the death of hundreds of others. The wind swept the dead leaves which fluttered across from the cemetery of respectability over the graves of the légionnaires. I looked at the endless line of grave mounds and at the meaningless numbers. And I thought of an old German song: Verdorben--gestorben.... Ruined--dead! CHAPTER VIII A HUNDRED THOUSAND HEROES--A HUNDRED THOUSAND VICTIMS The hall of honour : A collection of ruined talents : The battle of Camaron : A skeleton outline of the Legion's history : A hundred thousand victims : A psychological puzzle : True heroes : How they are rewarded : The chances of promotion : The pension system of the Foreign Legion Close by the prison, parted from the little square of sand and gravel, which formed the prisoners' exercise-ground, by a low brick wall, there stands the Legion's hall of honour. A tiny little door is built into the wall and bears the inscription "Salle d'honneur." Day and night there stands a sentry with fixed bayonet before the regiment's holy of holies. For the soldiers of the Legion it is forbidden ground, and the officers only gather there on festive occasions. Late one evening I stole through the little gate. The sentry on duty was a man of my own company, whom I bribed with a packet of cigarettes to let me through. I found myself in a tiny garden. Fantastic figures in mosaic work covered the ground; everywhere were dense groups of palms and laurels, and a broad flight of steps led up to the vestibule in Moorish style. As I entered the hall a flood of colour met my gaze. The walls of the enormous room were covered with pictures. Flanking the entrance were the life-size portraits of two légionnaires, the one in modern African campaigning kit, and the other in the uniform of 1815, of the "Légion d'Hohenlohe." On the walls were the portraits of all the regiment's commanders and of the officers killed in battle. The names of the dead were inscribed on a marble slab in golden letters. I noticed with astonishment that the Foreign Legion's list of commanding officers contained many names unmistakably German. There were the Colonels Stoffel, de Mollenbeck, Conrad, de Hülsen, and Meyer. And in very good company were these German soldiers of fortune: the list showed the names of some of France's most famous soldiers and generals. Each of them had at some time or other commanded the Foreign Legion, each had won his first military laurels leading the regiment of strangers: men famous indeed, the Legion's pride: MacMahon, Canrobert, Bazain, de Négrier, Saussier.... Numerous pictures of battles represented episodes in the fights in which the Legion had taken part, and now and again among these paintings were real works of art. A number of these pictures come from the brush of Captain Cousin, while the allegorical frescoes on the ceiling are the work of an artist who wore the red breeches and blue coat of a common soldier. The légionnaire Hablutzel--the artist who decorated the Salle d'honneur--was a humble ranker. In the French Army the Legion's varied talents are famous, and there are several stories besides that of this humble artist. The history of the Legion can tell of many such as he. Five years ago the officers determined to build a new mess. There was only one objection to the fulfilment of this wish: the regimental coffers were wellnigh empty. It was the colonel's idea to seek help in the regiment itself. In spite of the fact that the garrison at that time consisted of only one battalion, it was found on inquiry to contain no less than seven architects. These seven soldiers became once more seven artists, and executed the plans for the new officers' mess. They agreed on the style of a Tonquin pagoda. Among the Norwegians of the regiment were several carpenters who were experts in artistic woodwork; there were more than enough builders and masons to be found, and the bankrupt owner of a brickfield was glad enough to return for a time to his old profession and assume the direction of a section told off to make bricks. In a few weeks the mess was ready--its cost was solely that of the raw material. The seven architects then once more shouldered their rifles. There is another famous instance. In one of the countless fights in Southern Algeria, a company got cut off from the main column and suffered heavy losses in a scrap with the Arabs. The number of wounded was very great, and nothing could be done for them, as the doctors and bearers were with the main column. At last the captain in the thick of the firing called out to his men: "Are there any doctors among you?" Three légionnaires at once stepped forward. One was a graduate of the Sorbonne, another had gained the diploma of the University of Zurich, and the third had attained to the rank of M.D. at a German University. Less strange, perhaps, but just as interesting, is the fact that for the building of a fort in the Legion three fortification experts reported themselves from a single company: two quondam Austrian pioneer officers, and a lieutenant from the British Royal Engineers. General de Négrier, who loved the Legion, used to say that les étrangers had three inestimable advantages: they were brilliant fighters, they marched till they dropped, and--there was nothing that they could not do. He would undertake to build an engine with his légionnaires; from their ranks he could assemble the faculties of a university; there were men among them who could not only fight through a war, but they could also write its history. The fact that the Foreign Legion's band is the best in the French army, and that it came back covered with glory every time it went to Paris to give concerts, is another proof of the many-sidedness of the Legion's talents. Many an artist who once played in the orchestra of one of the world's famous theatres afterwards carried the Legion's trumpets on his heavy-laden haversack. I hardly need to emphasise the fact that these légionnaires, who, by virtue of their professions and social standing, belonged to a different class of society, always represented the exceptions, and that the majority of the men in the Legion were very simple fellows, whose past had nothing at all interesting about it. It is always the exceptions that one notices. An editor of the _Temps_, who visited Sidi-bel-Abbès and struck up a chance conversation with me, said in astonishment: "I was speaking just now to a professor of Greek, and now you're a journalist. Is the Legion then a collection of ruined talents?" In between the paintings in the Salle d'honneur there stand the Legion's memorial tablets, with the names of the battles in which the Legion took part written on them: forty-eight great battles, fought in all corners of the earth, from Indo-China in the East to Mexico in the Far West. The most disastrous fight in the annals of the regiment was that of Camaron, in Mexico, on April 30, 1863. A creepy souvenir of this fight lies on a little table in the Salle d'honneur--an embalmed human hand. It is the hand of Captain Danjou, who was in command of a detachment of sixty men from the third company of the Legion who were killed to a man at Camaron. Over two thousand Mexican irregulars set upon the detachment in the neighbourhood of the village of Camaron. The detachment fought its way through the hostile cavalry to a farmhouse, entrenched itself there, and held out for a whole day against the overwhelming odds. Five times were they called upon to surrender, and five times was the answer--"Merde!" When the Mexicans at last took the house by storm, they found heaped up before the door a pile of dead. The few survivors were badly wounded. A few hours later relief came. But the French troops only found a heap of dead. Beside the captain's body lay his severed hand. Weapons from all countries adorned the walls of the Salle d'honneur. Straight Mexican swords and curved Arabian scimitars of pliant steel hung side by side; beside poisoned arrows from Madagascar there were old-fashioned bayonets which had done all sorts of bloody work in the Legion's service. In the Salle d'honneur there are souvenirs of almost a century of battles. The Foreign Legion was founded in the year 1831 under the name of "The African Auxiliaries." The continual fighting in Algeria used to decimate the French troops posted there. In the reign of King Louis Philippe the idea was started of reviving the mediæval institution of mercenaries, and of raising troops for service in Africa composed entirely of foreign adventurers. A Belgian adventurer who called himself Baron de Boëgard, with no particular authority, but still without active opposition on the part of the King's generals, collected around him a band composed of the doubtful characters of all nations. He assumed the title of lieutenant-general, and finally succeeded in persuading the military authorities that his fellows would make capital stuff for service in Algeria. About 4000 men took the oath of allegiance on the French colours in Marseilles and embarked for Africa. The French troops there turned up their noses at these tattered soldiers, and the hostile Arabs called them mockingly "the Bedouins from France,"[3] because they were so poor and ragged. The new-comers, however, plundered with such voracity as to astonish even the French troops, who were anything but scrupulous, and they were capital fighters into the bargain. A royal edict, dated March 10, 1831, sanctioned their incorporation in a Foreign Legion of their own under the name of the Legion Etrangère, on the pattern of the Légion d'Hohenlohe, which fought at the time of the Restoration. The regiment consisted of seven battalions, divided according to the different nationalities of the men: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd battalions Swiss and Germans. 4th battalion Spaniards. 5th battalion Italians. 6th battalion Belgians and Dutchmen. 7th battalion Poles. [3] The Arabs who had established themselves in the towns used to despise the vagabond Bedouins. After a short time the authorities left off separating the various nationalities from each other and contented themselves with teaching the foreigners the French words of command as quickly as possible. A period of fighting now began for the Legion such as no regiment in the world has ever experienced. Even in its first fights in Algeria the regiment suffered heavy losses. Then the King of France lent the Foreign Legion to the Queen Regent Christina of Spain to fight against the Carlists. For their services in Spain the Legion was to have been given 800,000 francs, but this sum was never paid. On the other hand, 3500 of the 4000 légionnaires fell in action. A bare 500 returned to Africa half starved and in rags. New recruits joined--there has never been a lack of men ready to serve in the Foreign Legion. Algeria was conquered after ceaseless fighting, in which the battles of Condiat-Ati, M'Shomesh, Constantine, and Zaatcha were only the more important fights in an endless campaign. Even at this period of its existence the Legion grasped the fact that its mission was not only to furnish soldiers, but also pioneers, labourers, and city-builders. They worked hard, building town after town, and there is to-day no city in French Northern Africa in which the first European building was not built by légionnaires. In the Crimean War the Legion was ordered to Russia, where, in the Battle of the Alma, it was the first regiment to come under fire and fought with great bravery. In General Canrobert's despatches 29 officers and men of the Legion were mentioned for bravery in the Battles of the Alma and Inkerman. In the siege of Sebastopol the Foreign Legion was very much to the fore and was cordially hated by the Russians. The besieged called them "the leather-bellies," from the great African cartridge-pouches which they wore in front. In the Crimea their losses were enormous, and Napoleon III. rewarded their services by naturalising a number of the Legion's officers and men. At that time the Legion never experienced years of peace, only months of peace at the most, and even these were few and far between. Les étrangers were hardly home from the Crimea when a rebellion among the Algerian Arabs broke out, which led to the famous Arab expedition. The mighty battle of Ischeriden brought the tribes of Beni Jenni, Beni Raten, and the Beni Amer into subjection. The regiment had a few hundred more to add to its list of dead and had won new honours, only, as a real regiment of mercenaries, to be transferred to a new field of battle. Real wandering Ahasvers were these African mercenaries. This time it was to Italy, to Magenta, that they were ordered. Again they came back, their numbers diminished by a thousand or more, and had to start once more from Sidi-bel-Abbès on an expedition against the natives in Morocco. Thus passed the year 1860. During the next two years the Legion was engaged in desultory fighting against the Arabs and Bedouins without, to their great disgust, bringing off any grande affaire. In February the Legion embarked for Mexico and witnessed the disastrous events of the short imperial period. They made roads, working hard, and occasionally brought off some mad exploit with the greatest bravery, adding that day at Camaron to the Legion's roll of honours. The result of the Mexican campaign, as far as the Legion is concerned, is best shown by their losses: 1918 men dead and missing; 328 died of their wounds; and 1859 met their deaths from various illnesses. On coming back to Algeria the Legion filled up its ranks once more and was scattered in little detachments over the province of Oran to play, for the sake of variety, the part of settlers, digging wells, building villages, and laying roads--till the year 1870. In the Franco-German War the Legion first came into action at Orleans. All the German légionnaires had, however, been left in Africa. After the conclusion of peace the Legion helped in the putting down of the Commune, where so much blood was shed, and made itself thoroughly hated in Paris. As had been the case since the foundation of the Legion, fights in Algeria began once more. The rebellion of the Kaid Si Hamze, in the year 1871 and the years following, brought them fresh campaigns. While de Négrier was colonel of the regiment he mounted a part of the Legion on mules, to be able to cover greater stretches of country, a system which has been kept up to this day, and which formed one of the first examples of mounted infantry. Till the year 1883 the légionnaires remained in Africa, and enjoyed a period of comparative quietude, which only brought a few Arab rebellions and a few dozen skirmishes. Then, however, they started off once more on their travels. The Far East, Tonquin, was the scene of a colonial war against a brave enemy and a murderous climate. The victories of Bac-Ninh, Hong-Hoa, Soc-Nam, and Chu are so many days of fame for these foreign mercenaries, whose regimental history during these fifty years will never meet its equal. In the year 1892 we find the Legion in Dahomey fighting against King Behanzin, in the year 1895 in Madagascar. At the present date we hear of the regiment chiefly in Morocco. This is merely a short sketch, a skeleton outline of the Legion's history--one of the most notable histories that any soldiers' chronicler can point to, the story of a band of homeless adventurers. Their pay was always ridiculously small, their punishments barbarous, and the discipline that they were subject to more than hard. And yet there were always thousands of recruits willing to shed their life's blood, who did not serve under the Legion's flag merely to earn their living, but formed one of the best bodies of troops in the world. What misery and misfortune must there be in Europe to bring thousands and thousands of poor and desperate men flocking to the Legion's standard, whose total in the eighty years of the regiment's existence must add up to an overwhelming figure. I have been through all the French books on the Legion to try and find the exact figure, but without success. The exact strength of the Legion has always been kept well to the background. The two regiments have now and then reached an enormous strength. Beauvoir, for instance, mentions that in the year 1895 a single company in Sidi-bel-Abbès was 4864 men strong. He gives the nationalities of the Legion in that year as follows: Alsatians 45 per cent. Germans 12 " Swiss 8 " Belgians 7 " Frenchmen 5 " Spaniards 5 " Italians 5 " Austrians 4 " Dutchmen 4 " From various countries 5 " The average strength of the two battalions varies between 8000 and 12,000 men. The percentage of deaths from illness, above all fever, is extraordinarily high, and when to this we add the many thousands killed in battle, and consider that desertions are very frequent, we come to the astounding conclusion that in eighty years a good deal over a hundred thousand men have served under the Legion's flag. In giving this figure I make no claim to accuracy. It may be far below the mark or again it may be a few thousands too high. Be that as it may, a mighty army of men of all nations has served in the Foreign Legion, working hard and suffering the most awful hardships under an iron discipline that punishes even the most trivial offences with the hardest of punishments. The pay has never been higher than it is now; not enough to purchase even the trifles which a soldier needs to clean his uniform and equipment, to say nothing about his personal needs, be they ever so small. The assertion that these hundred thousand men have made the French Government a present of their work and strength during all these years, and all too often of their lives, is no exaggeration. Even though the history of the Foreign Legion, the history of that ever-fighting band of men, reads like a romance of mediæval times, one is easily led to look at the matter from the French standpoint and to make the pharisaical assertion so commonly believed in France, that the Foreign Legion is the scum of humanity, useless human rubbish which has been turned into useful dung for colonisation, if one may use the expression, in the service of improvement. The modern thinker is much more inclined to ask himself in wonderment how it came that year after year so many men were willing to sell their lives for a country that was not their own. These thousands have not even had the inducement of high wages. Here we stand before a riddle, before some mysterious force which convinced these thousands of desperate men that the African Foreign Legion was their last refuge. The mighty deeds of the Legion are still more of a riddle. All these men have been clever enough to discover sooner or later what a very poor sort of bargain they made when they enlisted, and the Legion has always been a hotbed of seething discontent. As it is to-day, so has it always been; the only subject of conversation in the Legion is an endless discussion of that all-important question: how and when to desert. The légionnaire has enriched the French language with a variety of strange curses to give expression to his rage at the tyranny and infamous treatment of which he is the victim. It is really a marvel that these discontented fellows, soldiers who were always on the eve of deserting, always forgot their grievances when they came under fire. One or two were perhaps men of the type which frequently occurs in the Legion of to-day, who only enlist to meet death in a form which appeals to their fancy, and who volunteer for one dangerous expedition after another till they meet the bullet for which they are so eager. But these have always been the exceptions. To the others fighting has always been a delight. ... A detachment of men are stationed in an isolated fort. The heat of the sun is merciless, the hard work unbearable and the monotony of duty gets on their nerves: the whole garrison becomes restless and can only be kept in order with the greatest difficulty. Then comes the command to turn out: there is a prospect of soldiering in earnest: the men are beside themselves with joy--when they have to fight they are relieved from slavery. This enthusiasm and passion to get at the enemy is the redeeming feature of many a ruined life. It acts as a safety-valve: otherwise the men could never stand the deadly monotony of their lives. The soldiers of the Legion have never yet fought just because they had to fight, or because their officers urged them on to it or because they had to defend their own wretched lives. The history of the regiment can only tell of glorious attacks, of furious charges made with a bravery that absolutely disregards danger and death. These poor adventurers have their own individual ideas of honour for which they are proud to give their lives and which the only French general who ever understood the Legion expressed in a few enthusiastic words. It was General de Négrier who said: Some soldiers can fight--the légionnaire can die. That is the légionnaire's idea of honour: his own individual idea. He will never hear the signal for retreat. I have so often heard the murmur of discontent which runs through the ranks when the hated call is heard at a manoeuvre. Eleven times in its history has the Legion refused to obey when the signal for retreat was blown. In France the performances of the Foreign Legion have always been recognised. It is true that the recognition has taken no substantial form. Its officers have always reaped the reward of quick promotion, but the légionnaire himself has always remained a poor devil without pay and without the slightest hope for the future. * * * * * Five centimes daily wages! On paper the légionnaire is paid seven centimes a day. That's what stands in the French army list. Two centimes daily are, however, deducted for messing, so that the real wages are five centimes per diem. After the "second congé," when he has five years' service behind him, his wages are raised to ten centimes daily; a corporal gets twenty centimes--a scale of pay which has perhaps a parallel in the Chinese army, certainly nowhere else in the world. As a set-off against this miserable payment the French books on the subject draw attention to the chance of quick advancement. This, however, is a trifle contradictory to the actual facts of the case. In the Foreign Legion at present among a round three hundred officers there is only one who is not a Frenchman, a quondam officer in the Austrian army, who worked his way up from the ranks. Even among the non-commissioned officers the percentage of foreigners is very small. It can easily be understood that the colonel lays some stress on the fact that the non-coms shall be Frenchmen: this, however, renders the prospect of promotion for a foreigner proportionately small. It is only now and again that a foreigner rises further than the rank of corporal. When he is specially talented he may become a sergeant but hardly ever reaches the rank of colour-sergeant. An exception to this rule is made in the case of officers who have been turned out of other armies. For these, the Foreign Legion has special regulations. They are not asked to show any papers nor are inquiries made into the reasons why they were originally dismissed: all that is required is a photograph showing him in uniform. They are then let off all recruits' work and are sent to the "peloton des élèves caporaux," the non-commissioned officers' school, are in eight weeks corporal, and in four months sergeant. It is, however, a great rarity when one of these men rises any further. Often enough one hears that the Legion's pension is a liberal one. The Legion has a right to a pension after fifteen years of service, and then he gets 500 francs a year. That sounds very fine. The fact, however, remains that a man who spends fifteen years in all sorts of climates, and who works for fifteen years with the energy required of a légionnaire, can easily amass a small fortune. Another interesting fact is that very few légionnaires are capable of serving fifteen years. They die long before the time is up: either from fever, overwork, or an enemy's bullet.... No, the Legion's pension system is a mockery. The only sort of compensation that remains is the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Médaille militaire, with both of which goes a sum of money; in the case of the Cross of the Legion of Honour a very considerable one. These distinctions, however, are so seldom conferred that they can hardly be taken into the question as representing a complement to the miserable pay, or as a possibility of earning anything other than coppers in the Legion. The only tangible reward that those heroes, to whose deeds of honour the Hall of Honour bears witness, have earned has been: Five centimes a day--those glorious days included. And what is the end of it all? The légionnaire's life in the Legion begins with the motto, "Work without pay," and at the end of it he stands in the street like a beggar, and does not know what in the world to do for a living. Even in the rare cases in which the climate and the hardships he has undergone have not ruined his constitution, and his health is still good, he is quite helpless. I have spoken with hundreds and thousands of these légionnaires who have served their time as they lounged about the courtyard of the barracks in Sidi-bel-Abbès, rejoicing that they had done with the Foreign Legion for ever. They were dressed in a dark blue suit, which is served out from the quartermaster's office to those who have served their time, being made of an ugly blue stuff, which looks like blue sacking. Of course their clothes did not fit them in the least, the trousers being either too long or too short, and the coat looked like a sack, for how could one expect them to take any trouble about a good fit in the quartermaster's office. As head-gear they wore an enormous flat cap, such as the sailors in the ports on the Mediterranean wear. This suit, together with boots, a single pair of socks and a shirt, was all that they possessed after five years of service. They had also the right of travelling free of charge to any town in France, and were given a franc a day as long as their journey lasted. No légionnaire, however, is transported to his real home, which is generally outside France. The majority, with grim humour, chose some town in the far north, generally Dunkirk, in order that the journey might be as long as possible. As a result of this the Mayor of Dunkirk wrote and begged the French Minister of War not to send any more légionnaires there. The authorities had not the faintest idea what to do with them; in Dunkirk there was not even enough work for the townsmen themselves. A légionnaire who has served his time is thus absolutely helpless, being stranded penniless in a totally strange town. His clothes are such as to prevent him applying for any work but that of a labourer, and the only papers he has to show are his certificates of dismissal from the Foreign Legion, which are worth very little in France. There are plenty of fine speeches made about the glorious Foreign Legion in the French Republic, but there is a prejudice against having anything to do with a légionnaire in the flesh there. Everywhere he is shown the door, and the poor devil begins a terrible course of starvation. How often have I seen these men come back again with a batch of recruits to Sidi-bel-Abbès, and their old comrades mockingly asking them why they were in Africa once more. It was always the same old story: for days and weeks and even months starving and half perished with cold they had struggled against their fate, and gone from house to house seeking work until their clothes were mere rags and their boots were worn out. Finally, they had despaired of ever finding work, and had begun to coquet with the thought that in the Legion they had at least had enough to eat, with the result that in a few days they had sought out the nearest recruiting-office, and had bound themselves for a further five years of slavery. This after five long years of work--the gratitude of France. CHAPTER IX "MARCH OR DIE!" The Legion's war-cry : A night alarm : On the march : The counting of the milestones : Under canvas : The brutality of the marches : The légionnaire and the staff doctor : My fight for an opiate : The "marching pig" : The psychology of the marches : Excited nerves : "Cafard" : The song of imprecations Weeks passed. Recruit time was over, and I was serving with the troops. From the very beginning I was anxious to do my duty as well as I could. The real soldier's duties were a pleasure to me, and like the other légionnaires who daily debated the chances of receiving marching orders, I longed with fantastical impatience for active service. The Legion always seemed to me to be in a state of feverish impatience, always on the jump, always expecting marching orders. The regiment's traditional fiery military spirit infected even the youngest recruits. When vague rumours of a new rising of the Arabs on the Morocco frontier penetrated to the barracks, or when the _Echo d'Oran_ with the laconic brevity of official telegrams announced new skirmishes in Indo-China, the news spread like wildfire through the Legion's quarters. Everywhere you could see groups of légionnaires, speaking of their hopes of at last receiving marching orders. When an especially exciting report had been spread, they sometimes stood in crowds before the regimental offices, waiting for one of the clerks to rush down the stairs with the news: "Faites le sac." Pack your knapsacks! This is the old ominous war-cry that sounds from room to room when the Legion mobilises, the dry business-like password calling the Legion to its military business. The thirst for adventure, which is an element of the Legion, as inseparable from it as poverty and hard work, always lay in the air. For the first time I heard the alarm sounded in the middle of night. I jumped up out of my sleep in a fright. "Aux armes!" the bugle sounded from the barrack-yard. The sergeants and corporals rushed through the barracks crying the alarm, "Aux armes!"--To arms! All at once the stillness of the night was turned into a perfect pandemonium--shouting and yelling and roaring sounded from room to room, the barracks were in an uproar. "Faites le sac. En tenue de campagne d'Afrique," the corporals shouted, and renewed rejoicing answered them. The "African field equipment" was not such a simple thing, and in spite of all the yelling and shouting we worked with feverish excitement, for in ten minutes we had to stand in the barrack-yard ready for marching. There was singing and whistling everywhere while the knapsacks were packed and everybody wondered whether we were going "au Maroc" at last or whether the Arab tribes of the South were in rebellion again. The cartridge-cases were brought from the magazine and their covers burst open with hatchets. The packets of cartridges were thrown from man to man. We tore off the cardboard covering and ... saw that they were blank cartridges. "Merde!" roared Corporal Wassermann. Roaring and singing stopped as if by magic. As blank cartridges only were served out, it could but be a question of a short manoeuvre and the Legion would not dream of working up enthusiasm for an ordinary "marche militaire." In this case the short manoeuvre march really extended over three hundred kilometres--three hundred kilometres to the South, three hundred kilometres back again; a total distance of six hundred kilometres, which is about four hundred miles.... By the light of a lantern the companies formed up in the barrack-yard. In a moment the baggage and ammunition carts were packed, because the Legion always carries sharp ammunition on the march to be prepared for any emergency. Then we went out into the night to the tune of the Legion's march. Any one who has once heard the march of the Legion will never forget it, its peculiar sharp rhythm broken by the bugles' storm signal. The Legion's band is forbidden to play it in the garrison or on the parade--the regimental march is played before the enemy or on long marches. Sidi-bel-Abbès woke up as soon as the band commenced to play in the quiet streets; windows were thrown open and out of the corners all the riff-raff of the sleeping town came into view: miserable-looking white men and dirty negroes looked at the marching company with sleepy eyes in high astonishment. In a few minutes we were out of town and marched along the yellow sandy road in dim moonlight. The marching order was in column of four as is customary in the Legion. I marched in the first row of fours of my company. In the front the four drummers plodded along close behind our captain's white horse. Abreast of the captain walked Lieutenant Garde-Jörgensen, a Dane, a soldier of fortune.... The silent march into the night was trying for my burning curiosity, and I did a most unmilitary thing: "Where are we going to, Lieutenant?" I asked. The officer nearly burst with laughter. "I don't know myself where we are going to," he said. "If you were an old légionnaire you would not ask, my boy. We are marching. We are probably marching for a long time. We are always marching. We never know if we are only going to manoeuvre or to meet the enemy. That's how it is. Tiens! will you have a cigarette?" The first rows were laughing and Smith was shouting in his deep voice: "Le sac, ma foi, toujours au dos." Renewed laughter. Every one was talking and wondering where we were marching to and how long the march would last. Some of them thought it was nothing but a night march; others discussed the probability of "real work" being in sight. "What do you think you know about it?" said Smith to me with a grin. "Nothing. We march, sonny, and that's all there is to do. God and the colonel know what's going to come of it." We heard the clatter of a galloping horse and turning our heads curiously we saw a bright spot on the uniform of the rider, sparkling like a star. The rider was the Commander-General of Algeria, and the shining spot on his breast was the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. "Oh, la la," said Smith, shaking his head. "Tell you what, Dutchy, if the old man himself has got up in the middle of the night you may send your little legs a message to get ready for a lot of work. Now we shall march, sonny. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. The old man there means manoeuvring, heaps of it, or--Arabs." Milestone after milestone passed by and the jokes ceased very soon, as the marching regiment settled down to business. Silently the regiment tramped onwards. The knapsack pressed heavily; heads went down and shoulders bent low to spread the heavy weight on the back; the gun-straps cut into the shoulders until one's right arm was almost lame and the painful prickly feeling caused by the non-circulating blood had grown permanent. After the first ten kilometres a shrill signal-whistle sounded and the whole company wheeled off to the roadside to rest in long line for five minutes. I pulled off my knapsack and threw it upon the ground with a feeling of relief, joyful at getting rid of the heavy weight for a few minutes. To my great astonishment, the other men kept their knapsacks on their backs and at once threw themselves at full length on the ground. Later on I did the same. The halt was so short that one lost priceless seconds in taking off and strapping on the knapsack, seconds only, but even seconds are precious for the marching légionnaire. Five minutes is but a short span of time. But never in my life has a time of rest seemed so delicious, so beneficial, so reviving as when I lay stretched out on the hot African sand for those pitifully short five minutes.... The company wheeled into column again and trudged forwards on the endless road, whose straight sameness was only interrupted by the mile-stones. With each mile it became quieter in the marching rows. The legs and back were strained to the utmost, and a word spoken appeared a waste of energy. One seemed to be a machine, marching on mechanically behind the man in front when once put in motion; each man was sufficiently occupied with himself. If any one in utter weariness took a step to the right or a step to the left out of marching line, he got an oath hurled at him--you were so tired that even the slight touch of your comrade swaying out of line was an extra burden to the tormented body. When the morning mists and the bitter cold of the dawn were followed by the hot burning sun, we had accomplished a march of forty kilometres, and the time came when our legs refused to do any more. When the signal sounded for rest, we fell down helpless, and when we started marching again, it looked as if a crowd of invalids and old men were slowly wandering down the road. The worn-out legs revenged themselves for the hard usage they had received. During the halt the flow of blood was hemmed in the limbs. Standing on one's feet again, one felt a sharp stinging pain in the soles. Every step was torture. For five minutes afterwards one crawled along as best one could, till one became once more an unfeeling automaton. Again the slow progress past the milestones. At eleven o'clock in the morning we reached a little village. The marks on the last milestone said that we were fifty kilometres from Sidi-bel-Abbès. We passed by the old rickety houses of the village, and at a given signal the regiment halted, the companies forming up on the dry, sandy piece of ground to the left of the street. Then followed the command: "Halt!" and immediately afterwards the order: "Campez!" In a moment we had piled our arms. The knapsacks were thrown to the ground and the folding tent-supports and the tent-covers pulled out. Then the corporal of each section stepped out of the line, holding the tent-poles high above his head to mark the tent line for the whole company. Again a short command, and in a few seconds the waste surface of sand was covered with little white tents. It was a miracle. We were so well drilled and each individual knew his part so well that it only took a few seconds to pitch a tent. With surprising quickness the long rows of soldiers were turned into a tent encampment and five minutes afterwards the officers' tents were pitched in a final row. In the meantime Madame la Cantinière had hauled out of her sutler's cart folding tables and benches, ready to do a roaring trade with the tired-out légionnaires. The heavy Algerian wine was indeed a blessing after such a march and the poor devil who in these marching days did not possess a few coppers felt poor indeed. In ten minutes the narrow trenches for cooking were dug out and in twenty places camp fires flared up simultaneously. The patrol marched round and round the white "soldiers' city." The food, consisting of macaroni and tinned meat, was greedily devoured. After this the quiet of utter exhaustion reigned in the camp. The légionnaires lay huddled together in the tiny tents, on blankets spread out on the ground, covered with their cloaks, while the knapsacks served for a pillow. The rifles were brought into the tents and tied firmly together with a long chain by the corporal of each squad, who fastened the end of the chain to his wrist as a further precaution, for the Arabs had a habit of creeping through the lines on a dark night and stealing the much-coveted weapons from the tents. The patrols of the Legion have standing orders to challenge an Arab only once at night and then to fire. Even in this first night the watch caught a thief. The Arab was badly treated and he was delivered up to the civil authorities in the village the next morning in a horrible condition. By seven o'clock in the evening the whole camp was fast asleep, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. An hour after midnight, in the flittering light of a magnificent starry sky, the companies formed up and continued the route to the South. This march lasted eight days. On one day the troops covered forty kilometres, making up the average again the next day with fifty kilometres. The monotony of this march and the physical strength and endurance it claimed of each of us cannot be described. At last, at the beginning of the real desert, we depended on the oasis-wells with their poor supply of water to quench our thirst, and the want of water was added to our sufferings. At night, when starting on the march, the field-flasks were filled. The distribution of water was conducted under sharp supervision. Every man got two litres of dirty, muddy water. Company orders warned us to save up half a litre for the morrow's "soupe." On camping next day every légionnaire had to give up half a litre of water to the mess of his company for cooking purposes. Whoever had emptied his field-flask during the heat and weariness of the march and was unable to deliver any water only got a handful of raw rice given him; he had to get it cooked as best he could. This is one of the many brutal rules in force on these marches and there is method in it. Contrary to most of the légionnaires, I have always seen the necessity for the hard marching discipline. Troops that have to march in such droughty country must be able to economise their water rations. This is simply a law of necessity. There is another brutal feature of the Legion's marches: cruel at first sight but it is really kindness to the men. A légionnaire who faints on the march is tied to the baggage-cart. A pole is pushed through the sides of the cart at about the height of a man's arms and the légionnaire roped to it by the shoulders. The pole keeps him in a standing position--the cart rolls on. He either has to march or he is dragged along the uneven ground. Seeing the thing done for the first time, I was filled with indignation at the apparent brutality of this torture. But afterwards I understood. In the wars in the South the fighting value of the Foreign Legion depends solely on its marching capability. Very often the ambulance is not able to follow. If the légionnaire remains behind the company in the desert, if only a kilometre, he is irretrievably lost. Hundreds and hundreds of men incapable of marching have found a terrible end in this way. The Arab women, who are far more cruel than the men, soon surround the helpless man, who suffers a painful death, after being horribly mutilated and disfigured. Separation from the troops means death. This was not only the case at the time of the great Arab mutiny, which affected the whole of Algeria, but is the same to-day. Peace between the French and the Arabs down in the far south of Algeria is a myth. At the small military stations on the borders of the Sahara little skirmishes are a daily occurrence. When the station is alarmed and the thirty or forty men garrisoned there set out to pursue the pillaging Bedouin tribes, every légionnaire knows well that now he must march, or if he cannot march any more, he must die. March or die! Death at the hands of Arab women! The légionnaire does not count the Bedouin or the Arab as a personal enemy; he is rather grateful to the robber of the desert for being the cause of a little change and excitement in the terribly monotonous life on the border stations. But upon the Arab woman the old légionnaire looks as upon a devil. He thinks of the hellish tortures that wounded men have suffered at the hands of Arab women, he remembers the mutilated bodies of légionnaires who had died an awful death after being tortured for many hours. In the fourth year of his service, Rassedin had been ordered to one of the little Sahara stations, where he had seen much of the cruelty of the Arab women. Once a scouting party of his detachment found a skeleton in the sand of the desert. Shreds of a uniform showed that the skeleton had once been a soldier of the Legion. The skeleton's head was lying between the legs.... Another time the corporal of Rassedin's squad was missed at the morning call. In the evening he had taken a walk just in the neighbourhood of the station and had not returned. After a short search they found him. "He was dead. But even in death I could see the frightful agony in his wide-open eyes," Rassedin declared. "Both legs were broken and bent backwards. The lower part of his body was slashed to pieces, but none of his wounds was deadly. They must have tormented him for hours. From that time we made no difference between men and women in fighting, but shot down every one. How did we know that it had really been women who had tortured the corporal? The dead man clutched a piece of a glass bracelet in his hand, which he must have torn off the arm of his tormentor in the struggle. Such bangles are only worn by the Bedouin women." That is the reason why the légionnaire has come to look upon the Arab woman as the incarnation of the Devil. I have already recorded the story of the soldier with the skull tattooed on his forehead, who showed me a tobacco-pouch made out of a woman's breast.... * * * * * As an example of unnecessary, quite unjustifiable brutality I will tell you what I had to suffer personally during the manoeuvre march. Whether freezing under the thin blanket in the cold icy nights in that climate of quickly changing temperatures was the cause, or the bad water, or the physical over-exertion of the marches, at any rate I suffered from tormenting pains in the stomach. Every few minutes during the march I got cramps and could only painfully drag myself along, doubled up like a worm. When we got to camp my strength was done. I went to the doctor's tent accompanied by the "caporal du jour" with the sick list. The doctor, an army surgeon, whose name I unfortunately have forgotten, pulled the book angrily out of the corporal's hand, and roared at him: "On the march there are no sick men. Your company ought to know that." The corporal shrugged his shoulders. "By order of the captain!" he said laconically. Now the doctor turned to me. "What's wrong?" I briefly described the cramps in my stomach, and emphasised that I only wished to ask for something to relieve the pain, an opiate, perhaps, and that I intended to continue my duties. He looked at me for a moment, and then said contemptuously: "What do you know about opiates? To judge from your accent you are an Englishman." "No, monsieur le docteur, a German." "Well, I will tell you something. We know these little tricks. All the same if you're English, German or Hottentot, I take you to be quite a common simulator. I shall give you a certificate of being 'non-malade'--not sick. Non-malade, corporal." I was crushed. Astonishment fought with anger. At the very moment when the doctor was speaking to me I was almost doubled up with pain. "Not sick!" That meant not only the loss of an opiate, but also heavy punishment. Any one who is declared by the doctor as "not sick" is at once held guilty of simulation, and punished with the usual four days' imprisonment. I saluted and said: "Non-malade, monsieur le docteur? Without any examination?" "Va-t-en!" roared the surgeon. "Get out of this." The corporal shook his head as we went through the camp, and advised me to be patient. He believed that I was in pain, and he knew that that "pig of a doctor" had already sent many a man to his doom. But a complaint would only make matters worse, he said. I did not answer and thought of the coming night. I should be tied to a peg in front of the watch-tent, and would be obliged to lie on the bare ground in the icy cold without any covering because I had been imprudent enough to ask for a little medicine. Maddening anger arose within me. When the corporal had made his report, my captain sent for me: "You have not been punished so far?" "No." "What is the reason of your simulating?" Then I lost control over myself, and in a fit of excitement hurled reproaches and accusations at the officer. The doctor was a fool and a disgrace to his profession. His diagnosis was an infamous and deliberate lie, and it was a disgrace that such people held authority. I do not remember everything I yelled out then, but it was a nice collection of the choicest epithets--rank insubordination! At length my attack of mad fury ended with my demanding to be taken before the commander of the regiment, and I threatened (this must have been very ridiculous) to complain to the French Minister of War. The captain listened to me quietly and said: "I believe that you have been badly treated. I will write a letter for you to the assistant surgeon, who will give you medicine. I should not advise you to send in a complaint to the regiment." Then after a pause: "What do you really expect? What do you want? We are in the Legion. You are a légionnaire--don't forget that again, légionnaire!" If I had not in my complete loss of self-control ventured to air my opinions in language unheard of in the Legion, I should very likely have left the ominous peg in front of the guard-tent as a dead man. Thanks to the opium pills of the assistant surgeon I was able, however, to march the next day with the others, but not without exerting every spark of my will-power. The time from one milestone to the other seemed endless. The expectation of the five minutes' rest at the fifth milestone was the power that drove me forward. I counted my steps in order to make me forget the pain in the mechanical occupation of counting. One hundred and twenty steps represented one hundred metres; when I had counted ten times one hundred and twenty, we had covered a kilometre, the fifth part of the road to rest.... At last we reached our paradise, the few minutes of exhausted rest. And then the torment began afresh.... The manoeuvres in a desert covered with peculiarly sharp stones, three hundred kilometres south of Sidi-bel-Abbès, occupied exactly eight hours, and from the standpoint of the Legion they were superfluous and consequently useless. The development of the firing-line, the skilled search for cover, the rush of the bayonet attack, the understanding of all the orders, the complete discipline under fire, are things which, in the never-ending practical military training of this fighting regiment, become part and parcel of the légionnaire's flesh and blood. The closing manoeuvre was (I heard our captain discussing these matters with Lieutenant Garde) nothing more than a small private entertainment on the part of our colonel, who wished to show off with his regiment; a military amateur dramatic performance. On the other hand, the commander-general had said to his adjutant that it was a great pleasure to him to give his légionnaires an "airing." The regiment had already idled about barracks for six months, and might in the end forget that its real home was amongst the sand of the desert, and that it had no other object in life than to march, march a lot, to go on marching. The légionnaires knew this fad of the general's well enough, and never called him anything else but the "marching pig." The fat sergeant of our first "peloton" used to say, with great lack of respect: "As soon as I see the fellow I feel tired...." When the general was still colonel and in command of the first regiment, he once met a drunken légionnaire in one of the side streets of Sidi-bel-Abbès. The man, only just capable of saluting, got the mad idea to address his colonel. "Eh, mon colonel," he stammered, "I am still very thirsty. Ten sous, mon colonel." The colonel treated him to a stony stare. This look out of the hard eyes turned the légionnaire sober in a moment, and a brilliant idea struck him. "You know I am the best marcher in my company, mon colonel." At this the colonel smiled and gave him a five-franc piece. It is these little anecdotes and the rough jokes in the jargon of the Legion that are typical of the great weight laid on the marching performances in the Foreign Legion, without regard to the wear and tear of the human machine, without consideration of the many lives that are lost. Even General de Négrier, the only commander that the Legion loved because he loved the Legion and knew how to come into personal touch with each légionnaire, knew no mercy in the matter of marching. When he was commander of the Foreign Legion he did everything in his power for his troops. Each légionnaire was allowed to come to him with his personal affairs, every wounded man was a hero in his eyes, a brave man, for whom he could not do enough. But when he saw an exhausted légionnaire stumble out of the ranks and collapse during the terrible marches in Madagascar, the expression in his face became hard and pitiless. That was a grievous crime in his eyes. Then he would cry out the three words that have since become a proverb of the Legion: "March or die!" Marches which no European commander would attempt are nothing out of the common; they are the basis on which the Foreign Legion has won its laurels. But they are also the foundation for illness, decline, and death. In each of these marches is embodied the principle of absolute disregard for human life. The possibility of such disregard is one of the chief advantages of the Foreign Legion in the eyes of the authorities. From a military point of view the marches of the Legion are splendid, a triumph of training and discipline; from a humane standpoint they are the height of unprincipled exploitation. No New York Jewish clothes-dealer, who keeps hundreds of people at starvation wages at the sewing-machines, does such a splendid piece of business as "la Légion," which for a mere nothing saps the life from thousands of human creatures. It is not the cruelties of the penal battalion, not the brutality of punishments, not the poor devils who for some mere trifle are shot under martial law, that illustrate best the horrors of the Legion system. It is the marches that do this; the marches of the Foreign Legion condemn the system of the Foreign Legion! Our manoeuvre march of 600 kilometres occupied sixteen days. On the stages in the far south the rations consisted almost entirely of rice, and to the hardships of the daily 40 kilometres the pangs of hunger were added. In spite of that the distance daily covered remained the same. I still suffered from pains in my stomach. To-day it is a puzzle to me how I managed to march 300 kilometres in this condition in the burning sun and to stand the cold during the nights. But others were no better off. They marched with open wounds in their feet; with blisters between neck and shoulder-blades, where the straps of the heavy knapsack pressed; with eyes inflamed by the sun; with severe bronchial troubles; with bleeding and festering sores on their thighs. Many limped, and most marched bent wellnigh double, sunk together--a miserable, pitiful sight. Surly, silent, raging bitterness pictured in the hard lines of the face and in the tired eyes, we stamped onwards. The only words heard were curses. Our nerves were strained to bursting-point. Over the whole troop lay the strain of over-exertion, bodily and mental nerve-sickness. The Foreign Legion has manufactured a special expression of its own for this mental state--"Cafard." The "cafard" reigned. The "cafard" of the Foreign Legion, a near relative to tropical madness, is a collective name for all the inconceivable stupidities, excesses and crimes which tormented nerves can commit. The English language has no word for this condition. In "cafard" murder hides, and suicide and mutiny; it means self-mutilation and planless flight out into the desert; it is the height of madness and the depth of despair. Many nights we were roused from sleep by a pandemonium of noise. Légionnaires--légionnaires in "cafard"--jumped round the tents in the dim light of the watch-fires, roaring the old Legion song out into the night. The "song" commenced with abusing the corporal and went on through the whole scale of charges up to the commander-general--in a horrible Legion French, of which the chief advantage was its extraordinary power of detailed expression. No officer was passed over in this song and each one was carefully mentioned by name, so that there might be no mistake.... The song was painted with insults in rainbow colours. The insinuation that Captain So-and-So kept up his private harem with the funds of the company was one of the most harmless, and with the assertion that he was an old monkey, the register of the regiment commander's sins only began. At the top of their voices the "cafard" madmen shrieked this song of insubordination out into the still night, until the camp became lively. With many oaths the sentries tussled with the mad singers, and from out of the darkness bawling voices roared applause. Such things were not taken seriously. The "singers" were bound to pegs in front of the guard-tent over the night, to give them a chance to cool down, and they had to join their companies at day-break--to march on. When we got back to Sidi-bel-Abbès, our uniforms and our spirits were in sad condition.... CHAPTER X THE MADNESS OF THE FOREIGN LEGION An unpleasant occurrence : The last three coppers : The Roumanian Jew from Berlin : Monsieur Viaïsse : The Legion's atmosphere : The Cafard demoniacs : Bismarck's double : Krügerle's whim : The madness of Légionnaire Bauer : Brutal humour : A tragedy In the interval between the terrible exertions of the great manoeuvre march and a period of hard work in the sewers of the Arab prison of Sidi-bel-Abbès, something I had long been dreading occurred. Even by changing my few gold pieces into the smallest of coppers, I could not spin them out eternally. One fine day the sum of my riches consisted of three thick, round copper pieces. Although big and heavy, they were not worth more than a few cents. I lay stretched out on my bed, tired and vexed. Smith, who, being a bugler, was not obliged to waste his strength in cleaning Arab sewers, was chaffing me. He thought it a great joke to inquire with friendly solicitude about the unpleasant details of my work. I did not like his raillery. Wishing for revenge, I remembered with grim humour that the state of my finances would be of a certain interest to my friend Smith. "Hallo, bugler," said I. Smith, lounging on his bed, muttered something about privileged sons of the Prophet--and inquired if the Arab convicts had been satisfied with my work? "Bugler, I've no more money!" I said. He jumped up from his bed, looking at me aghast. "What d'you say?" "My money is finished." Smith's face grew long. He was evidently thinking of the countless casks of wine lying stored in Sidi-bel-Abbès.... All at once his face cleared. He had found a way out of the difficulty. "Send for some more!" he advised. I shook my head. "Nonsense," said the bugler, with the happy confidence of the Legion. "They'll send you some, a légionnaire always gets something sent him. Shall I help you to write a real, nice, touching letter, Dutchy?" Again I shook my head. But the bugler would not let me off so easily. Going through the different grades of relationship, he inquired as to my connections. When I declared with intentional spitefulness that they were all as poor as church mice, he swore a little in Arabic and thoughtfully repeated a chapter of the Koran, treating of the duties of friendship. A little inspired by this, he asked for a whole hour about my former friends. I told him that they were either dead or on the point of starvation. The bugler thought this ridiculous, but with much tact did not continue the subject, coming, no doubt, to the conclusion that I had either killed somebody or robbed a bank in good old Germany. Nothing but that could keep a légionnaire from writing begging letters! I let the philosopher keep his opinion. After thinking deeply for a time, he muttered nothing but a resigned, "C'est la Légion." After a while he asked: "And is there really nothing left?" Without saying a word, I pulled out my three copper pieces. Then a slight smile spread over his face. "Do you know, we'll buy drink with that," he said softly. As we went down the stairs to the canteen, he wisely proposed buying two half-bottles instead of a whole one, for the half-bottles were always filled three-quarters full by Madame la Cantinière. In this way we got the fullest measure possible for the three coppers. My friend the bugler emptied the bottle with great respect, till not a drop was left. Then he became sad again, but said in a comforting way: "Inschallah--and if we haven't any money, sonny, then we've got none. But if I were you, I should after all write to somebody for a little brass----" Only now, in my utter destitution, did I really recognise my position. The few pieces of silver I had still had in my possession, which in former times would just have been sufficient for a few theatre tickets or a few hundred cigarettes, had, in the land of Sidi-bel-Abbès, been a fortune, and had saved me from much wearisome, petty work. Thanks to them, I had been able, after long marches or heavy fatigue duty, to go straight into town without having to bother about polishing and washing. The smallest coin could purchase release from these burdens--now all this was at an end. For hours after I came off duty, I, like the others, stood at the wash-tub, or tediously polished my leather-work. My horizon had narrowed; now it only encircled the drill-ground, barrack-yard, and my bunk in the Legion's quarters. I spent hours lying on my bed and staring at the whitewashed wall opposite, with the long shelf on which the knapsacks were packed. My interests were now quite taken up by all the petty, trifling considerations of the Legion. I quarrelled with the others whether it were really my turn to fetch fresh water in the big earthenware jug; I disputed the highly important matter of sweeping underneath my bed, and it was a question of vital interest to me whether I was ordered to scrub the bench or the large table at the great Saturday cleaning.... The bench was so much easier to do. The days all passed in the same monotonous manner. The grey sameness tired the brain and made one indifferent to the little considerations and small services that people should render to each other when living such a hard life, crowded into so small a space. Everywhere the worst side of human nature showed itself, and even the greatest fool was soon clever enough to find out the bad points of the man who worked beside him by day and slept next to him at night. Petty malice, ill-natured gossip, ridiculous intrigues formed the atmosphere of the Legion. I learnt to know a great deal about human nature, and what I learnt was not inspiriting. With the exception of jolly Herr von Rader, Abramovici was the only man I knew who had a spark of humour left in him. He was the queerest character in the room. He declared he was a Roumanian, but only spoke German, and that with a terrible Berlin accent, which was, to say the least, very strange in a Roumanian. When questioned as to his religion, he told the corporal that he was a "pork-eating" Jew. I suppose he meant that he had no delicate convictions. The man was tall and very thin and appeared to be made of india-rubber. His long neck was surmounted by a head like that of a bird of prey, continually turning from side to side so as not to miss an opportunity of stealing something from his comrades. He had a vile mouth under his enormous nose. In a whining tone he swore all day long at providence in general and the Legion in particular. Nobody could resist his volubility and he was the first, the last, and the only légionnaire who ever succeeded in never doing any work. The explanation of his French nickname, "Viaïsse," was that the india-rubber man repeated the Yiddish phrase of lament, "Wie haisst!" about ten times in one sentence. Once when he made a complaint about something or other to the captain, the latter had thrown up his hands in despair and called out, "Viaïsse, viaïsse, sacré nom de Dieu! toujours viaïsse--what does the fellow want?" The whole regiment laughed at "Monsieur Viaïsse"; he was never called by his real name, Abramovici, but officers and corporals called to him: "Eh, Viaïsse, come here!" He never worked. He was only saved from punishment by his inherent gift of humour. He was very tall, his arms nearly reaching to the ground. If one of his superiors ever ventured to give him any work to do, the scraggy "india-rubber man" appeared to personify a whole Ghetto. His eyes grew large and staring, the nose purple, and the head moved backwards and forwards like a pendulum. Then Viaïsse took a deep breath, and a mad flow of words poured from his vile mouth, while the long arms, with the outspread claw-like fingers, waved frantically in the air. "... Wie haisst! nom de Dieu, de bon Dieu de la Légion--damn me, why should I work myself to death? I've had to drill the whole forenoon and have got nix to eat but a poor soup. I'm a stricken man and will have to get some extra food if I am not to fall down dead like a dog, you jewel of a sergeant. Wie haisst! I am a ruined man if I don't get some food at once. Well?" It is impossible to repeat it all. Words fail me when I try to reproduce my friend Abramovici's grand flow of language. In one respect he was indeed a friend to me; no one ever made me laugh as much as he did. On the day of his arrival with the depot-train from Oran, I happened to hear when the sergeant of the company for the first time ordered him to do some work. Abramovici nearly got a fit at this unheard-of demand. His arms waved frantically in the air like a windmill, and wild words flowed from his mouth. The poor sergeant wished to put in a word sideways. He wished to give a quiet command, he wanted to get furious. But he could not. He could only see with numb astonishment the lurid red nose, he turned away to get out of the reach of the "windmill arms," and at last fell down on the nearest bed with a horrible Arab oath, and laughed as he had never laughed before in his life. When he at last recovered his breath again, he said in broken German: "Oh, Gott in Himmel, cet homme là, zu viel sprechen.--Talks too much." But Abramovici went on jabbering, until at last his harangue ended in laments to the God of his Fathers. This was the way he always got off--one so seldom hears a laugh down there that Monsieur Viaïsse was highly appreciated by officers and men. He called me his friend. He began our friendship with the conventional question: "Wie haisst! will you give me a cigarette?" Many a cigarette the Roumanian Jew from Berlin got from me, as long as there was silver in my pocket. In return he assured me of his high esteem, and when longing for a smoke called me "Herr Baron." When with the silver pieces the cigarettes came to an end, our friendship suffered a little in consequence. I myself lived in a state of continual irritation. The least trifle put me into such a rage that I can hardly credit it to-day. Often enough I would tear down my "paquetage" from the shelf, destroying what had been wearisome work, just because some trousers or jacket did not seem to be folded correctly. It had been nothing else but "cafard" when I had roared at the captain because the doctor refused to give me an opiate on the march--it was exactly the same "cafard" in a milder form when I roared at this or that comrade just because he was in my way when I was busy polishing. My vexation, my irritability, my brooding was the madness of the Foreign Legion. No légionnaire escapes from it. The rest of my comrades in the room all had at different times the "cafard" more or less seriously.... Crowded together like horses in a bad stable the men became dangerous. They fought over the quarter of a litre of the Legion wine that was apportioned to us every second day, and watched with ridiculous suspicion that the next man did not get more than he did; one quarrelled over a piece of bread; one took one's neighbour for a thief who wanted to steal a bit of black wax for leather polishing. If one man got more work to do than his neighbour, he cried murder and roared out about protection, and favouritism, and vicious preference. This was the atmosphere in which the Legion whims were developed. It was really strange how many of the légionnaires had a screw loose, often only harmless peculiarities, but which could increase to madness. All idiocy in the Legion is called "cafard." A légionnaire is gloomy, sitting sullenly on his bed for hours, speaking to no one. If you ask him what is the matter, he will answer with a gross insult. He sits thinking all the time and does the queerest things. He has the "cafard."... His madness may turn into a senseless explosion or fit of fury; men suffering from "cafard" will run a bayonet through their comrade's body, without any reason, without any outward cause. Sometimes they rush out into the desert, sometimes they tear every piece of their outfit into rags, just to vex themselves and others thoroughly. The "cafard" is at its worst in the hot season when the sun burns down relentlessly from the cloudless, deep blue sky, with the strange greenish colouring of the horizon peculiar to Algeria. Then the barrack-yard of the Foreign Legion lies deserted. It is so hot that the stones on the yellow clayey ground seem to move in the glimmering overheated air. The légionnaire sentries wear the flowing white neck-protector, and have stuffed wet cloths into their képis. In the soldiers' quarters the légionnaires lie on their mattresses and take their siesta, the strictly prescribed rest from 11 A.M. until 3 P.M. The white man is a useless object in the sun-blaze of the hot season. In the infernal heat of the soldiers' rooms the "cafard" has often been the cause of great disaster. It has often happened that during the siesta légionnaires have suddenly jumped out of the window, three stories high, without any outward cause whatever. Once (very likely when affected with "cafard") I wrote down during the siesta a description of what our men's room looked like. These few lines are the only thing I ever wrote in the Legion: "I lay on my bed half naked. The room was as hot as a stove, filled with the stench of perspiration. A brilliant strip of sunlight played through the long room from window to window. Oh, the heat, the heat. Even the walls felt hot. In the bare, whitewashed room the men lay groaning on their beds in all kinds of possible and impossible positions. Some were swearing, others quarrelling--nothing brings on the "cafard" so quickly as physical suffering. Two Spaniards were quarrelling in the loud gesticulating manner of their race; a German in the next bed had fallen asleep, and was muttering words of German in his dream. He was dreaming of his mother. In the other corner of the room a Frenchman was shouting frantically to some one to give him a brush--his own brush was lost. His bed neighbour hummed a marching song, half in Arabic, half in French, always with the same refrain: "'Si le caporal savait ça, il dirait: Nom de Dieu.' "Another man slowly and automatically rubbed his leather straps, a third one informed everybody that the sergeant was a rogue and was working him to death. Here the German awoke. Disturbed in his sleep he yelled out: 'Shut up you beggars.' And the Frenchmen and Spaniards began to curse on hearing German words. "'Monsieur le Caporal'[4] sat up slowly and tiredly and, leaning on his elbow, said in a low tone of voice: [4] "Monsieur le Caporal" was Corporal Wassermann's nickname, because in the eyes of the légionnaires he was far too particular in his manners and language when giving orders. "'A little silence, please.' "The Spaniards laughed and a Frenchman said under his breath, the damned 'casque à pique,' meaning the Prussian helmet, might leave honest légionnaires in peace during siesta. "The corporal did not move. In his quiet even tone he went on speaking: 'Silence. You all know that during siesta all noise is forbidden. Legrand, for using the epithet "casque à pique," I punish you with two days' barrack arrest. You are not serving in a French line regiment, but in the Foreign Legion. You understand, do you not, that in the Foreign Legion no man is taxed with his nationality. And in every respect it is very unwise to vex your corporal. Ça y est.' "At that the légionnaire laughed and quiet reigned once more. "My God, the heat was terrible. Then all at once a slashing, metallic sound. One of the Spaniards had pulled down the long bayonet that always hangs over a légionnaire's bed, and was in the act of assaulting his countryman and comrade. The corporal sprang between the two and sent one flying to the right, the other to the left. In a second the whole place was in an uproar. The two Spaniards threw themselves upon each other, anxious to kill each other. The other légionnaires laughed and howled out through it all.... "At last the signal, 'Debout, légionnaires, debout!' 'Up, up!' sounded down in the yard. The siesta was at an end." This is what I wrote while lying half naked in my bed, groaning at the heat. The description has the advantage of the impressions of the moment. This was what happened when the "cafard" was at its "best." Then again whole numbers of soldiers are affected by it in the same way. The légionnaires of half a company would put their heads together, planning some act of desperation. One time it would be mutiny en masse, at another time desertion in a body. This madness is well known wherever a company of légionnaires is stationed. In some kind of form it is always present. It is the cause of the horrible tattooing, of drinking and brawling; it is the reason for that peculiar longing for continual change, that restlessness typical of the Foreign Legion. The légionnaires are themselves not aware what influence the "cafard" has on them. When an old légionnaire says grumpily, "J'ai le cafard," he is just telling his neighbours to keep clear of him, that he has a bad fit of the blues, that it is advisable for his comrades to leave him alone. He has no idea that a hidden power, like unto madness, is making him act in such a manner, he only believes himself to be in a bad humour. But the bad humour rises and increases, often driving him to murder, more often to suicide. The légionnaire cannot foresee the effects of the "cafard." The typical "cafard demoniacs," the old grumpy fellows who do their duty like machines and at other times hardly speak at all, are instinctively feared, as if their comrades knew that at any moment the least trifle could lead to an outbreak of the dormant madness. I have witnessed such an explosion (that is the proper term for it). We had a man in our company who had served for many years in the Legion. He was a Frenchman and had worn the Legion's uniform for more than ten years. He got out of our way whenever he could, and when his duties were over, slunk away into lonely corners of the barrack-yard. Every fifth day he left the barracks, on pay-day, to return reeling, evidently drunk, just before evening muster. He never was rowdy, but silent as usual, he threw himself upon his bed. Where he went to, where he bought his wine, with whom he drank it, nobody knew. One pay-day, when the half of our company was on guard-duty, he for once came back too late. The barrack-gates had long been closed; Smith and I were still sitting on the bench in front of the guard-room, the sergeant and the other légionnaires were lying inside on their bunks. All at once the sentry at the gate called the officer on duty with the laconic report: "Sergeant--la porte!" The gate! Swearing, the man came with his keys. Outside stood the grumpy old légionnaire, swaying from side to side and his képi at the back of his head. "Bertillon?" the sergeant said, unlocking the gate. "You ---- old pig, you ought to know by this time when to come home." Bertillon staggered in and remained standing in front of the sergeant. "Be off with you and get into your quarters!" he commanded. "You can be jolly glad that your own company is on guard duty, else you would have been locked up at once. Allez--schieb' los!" The old légionnaire stared at the sergeant. Suddenly, without saying a word, he hit him right in the face with his fist. "Aux armes!" the reeling sergeant yelled. Bertillon had pulled out his bayonet and was slashing and hitting at every one, roaring like a wild beast. A terrible tussle ensued. We were twelve to one, but it took us more than a quarter of an hour to get the upper hand of the "cafard" madman, and every one had been more or less wounded by his bayonet. At length we contrived to throw blankets over his head, and strapping him up like a parcel, we threw him into the prison. On opening the cell the next morning he was found dead. At the post-mortem examination the army surgeon stated that the bursting of an artery in the brain had been the cause of death. These are the worst cases of "cafard." Generally the peculiar malady of the Foreign Legion shows itself in all kinds of peculiar whims. Smith's comical reciting of the Koran chapters was such a whim. Many developed some kind of fixed idea. The cook of my company was an old légionnaire who had served in the Legion for fifteen years and was soon to be pensioned off; his fixed idea was that he was Bismarck's double. His name was Schlesinger. Like the German Prime Minister, he had the stature of a giant, and in his heavy face with the bald head, in the sharp eyes, there certainly was a slight resemblance to the features of the "man of iron." The Legion, being good-natured and having a great sense of humour, did old Schlesinger the favour of never calling him anything else but "Bismarck." Herr von Rader was the first one to draw my attention to him. He had heard of the cook's peculiarity and ... forthwith rushed to the kitchen. He lounged about the door till the cook, getting suspicious, came to see if the intruder intended stealing. Hardly had von Rader seen him, when he called out in astonishment: "Good gracious! that surely must be Bismarck!" The cook drew himself up majestically and smiled condescendingly. "Such a likeness!" in a surprised voice from von Rader. "Very like--n'est-ce pas?" said Schlesinger, highly flattered. "Really wonderful! You surely must be a relation of the Bismarck family?" "That may be," nodded the cook, very much pleased. This was quite a new idea. It had never entered his head that he might be related to Bismarck. "You're certainly a relation," said von Rader in a tone of conviction, "an illegitimate." "Très possible--très possible," the cook murmured, proud and happy. "Are you a young soldier?" he asked the man who had put the wonderful idea into his poor old légionnaire's head. "That's so," groaned von Rader. "I am like you, and have once been something better. My father" (von Rader lowered his voice to a whisper as if he were disclosing the greatest secret), "my father was a count!" Bismarck was much impressed by his announcement. "And now I must starve in the Legion," added von Rader sadly. "Pas ça," said Schlesinger, and, disappearing into the kitchen, he returned with a large piece of roast pork. "Tiens, camarade. To-morrow we will talk again about--about our ancestors. Mais--say nothing." "Nothing," assured von Rader, putting his finger to his lips. From that day the pseudo-Bismarck and the pseudo-count were seen together almost daily, and von Rader always had a piece of meat in his knapsack, when we had to eat dry bread in the drill pause. If any one called the cook "Schlesinger" he was deeply offended and did not answer; even the officers called him Bismarck. There was another légionnaire I cannot forget--Little Krügerle. His whim was--to steal grapes. A very funny idea, for Krügerle never ate grapes himself; he did not like them. With great trouble he got them into the barracks and then gave them away. His one idea was to steal the grapes. This was his cafard, his special rage against the possessors of vineyards. But his cafard had its own tale.... Grapes were worth very little in Algeria, but when every year at the grape harvest three thousand légionnaires strolled in the evenings along the paths beside the vineyards, when each légionnaire ate about five pounds of grapes, taking another ten pounds under his cloak--then the Spanish grape-farmers grew angry. They sent a deputation to the colonel, declaring that his légionnaires were worse than a locust-plague. The colonel abused them all and sent out a command that all who transgressed again would be punished. The légionnaires laughed--were a little more careful, but stole quite as many grapes as formerly. Seeing that it would not do like this, the Spaniards engaged Arabs, gave them small-shot guns and told them not to spare the offenders. The following morning the army surgeon was much astonished, on going his daily round, to find sixty-five légionnaires wounded by small shot. The extraction of all the small shot took so much time that he got furious and went to the colonel and complained. The latter, having an idea what was the matter, examined the "invalids," who promptly told a great story of having been suddenly attacked by Arabs. The colonel laughed and ordered them all to be locked up for four weeks on bread and water. Now the Spaniards were left in peace, because the grapes were not worth while being shot and locked up for, the légionnaires said sadly. But from this time dated little Krügerle's cafard. Every day he went out to steal grapes. With the greatest patience and cunning he crawled about in the vineyards and stole grapes. Once he was shot and ran right back to the barracks and into the soldiers' room. Five minutes later, all the fifteen men there were busily occupied in digging the countless shot out of their comrade's back--with pocket-knives! Krügerle underwent the operation with more or less tranquillity--but it was worth suffering a little; if he had gone to the surgeon, four weeks of cellule arrest would have been his lot. He swore great oaths--but went stealing grapes again the following day. * * * * * The germ of madness, of tragedy, always lies hidden in the cafard. I was a witness of the following tragedy. In our room in the corner by the window an Austrian had his bed. His name was Bauer. He had joined the company with a new batch of recruits, shortly after I did, in good health, fresh and curious like all the other recruits: an average man, who did not easily learn the French words of command, but did his work conscientiously. Week by week he got quieter. Stupidly he did his work and spoke to nobody. In his free time he sat on his bed moodily staring in front of him. Now and then he would be punished for neglecting his uniform, but this did not seem to make any impression on him at all. He returned from prison as moody as before. Nobody took any notice of him. All at once the poor quiet creature became the centre of attraction, an object of ridicule and enmity, and for weeks the gossip of the Legion's quarters. Suddenly Bauer was attacked by a most ravenous appetite. If possible he was quieter than formerly; but when the midday soup appeared, he fell over it like a wild animal, devouring it greedily, and greedily he watched us while we were eating. When we had finished, he crept up to the table, examining the empty dishes in the hope of finding a few drops left. After this he would rush down to the kitchen to the old cook to beg some leavings from him. The other men in the room were so brutalised by their own misfortunes in life that they only looked upon this poor devil as a clown to serve for their amusement. They threw pieces of bread into corners, and yelled with pleasure when Bauer crawled about on all-fours under the beds to look for the coveted morsel. They poured petroleum into his soup, and were wild with delight when the poor fellow nevertheless emptied the dish greedily. Day by day Bauer grew worse. From the other soldiers' quarters, even from the other companies, the légionnaires came at soup-time to our room to inspect the prodigy. All the time he sat crouching on his bed, smiling vacantly and gobbling down whatever he could get. He would gnaw at the dry bone held out to him by a légionnaire with the same grin as he would chew a piece of hard leather given to him by another man. It was the beginning of insanity.... Soon the whole regiment was talking about the man with the unappeasable appetite. If any one wished to have a joke, they brought the glutton a dry crust or a piece of hard Legion biscuit, just to watch him devour it. For weeks these scenes occurred, without the authorities thinking it necessary to interfere. The end came suddenly. One day we only found half-chewed crusts on our table instead of the usual daily portion of bread. Bauer had stolen away from his work and eaten our rations! The légionnaires threw themselves upon him--where their own comforts were concerned it was no joking matter. One of them struck the poor devil, who, biting and scratching and hitting at every one, shrieked like a madman. The watch was roused, and the poor fellow, chained hand and foot, was carried across to the infirmary. Three days after, the eleventh company conducted a small black cart to the grave-yard of Sidi-bel-Abbès. In the rudely made coffin on the cart lay the remains of Légionnaire Bauer. In the infirmary he had smashed his head against the wall.... At the grave the captain said briefly, in a cold voice: "Recevez les derniers adieux de votre chef et de vos camarades." This was his funeral sermon. CHAPTER XI THE DESERTERS The Odyssey of going on pump : Death in the desert : The Legion's deserters : A disastrous flight in a motor-car : The tragic fate of an Austrian engineer : In the Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès : The business part of desertion : Oran and Algiers : The Consulate as a trap : The financial side of desertion : One hundred kilometres of suffering : Hamburg steamers : Self-mutilation : Shamming : In the Suez Canal : Morocco, the wonderland Even Herr von Rader had the cafard--the fever to desert--and his good humour diminished perceptibly under its influence. In low cunning the equal of the oldest and craftiest légionnaire, he had quite got the trick of decorating himself, and certainly got along much better than most of the other recruits. But, as a veteran on the high road of life, he had a very highly developed sense of the practical side of human affairs. To take and not to give had always been his most sacred rule of life; living without working was for him the acme of human cleverness. Now, however, Herr von Rader began to reckon out for himself, with a face that got longer and longer, the Legion's pet arithmetic example: that he had to do an immense amount of work and got little or no pay for it. He found this very trying. "My friend," he said to me once, "I'm off. I just guess I won't bother you with details, but I'm sorry to have to tell you that this honourable regiment will have to get on as best it can without me. I'm going to clear out." I warned him and kept telling him that it was utter folly to desert in this happy-go-lucky way without civilian's clothes and without any money. Herr von Rader merely shook his head: "It's true enough that I've a large balance of poverty! On the other hand, I've a thundering lot of impudence--an absolutely immense and overwhelming quantity of impudence--and I guess, in spite of everything, I'll take that little pleasure trip and have a look at the neighbourhood. Somewhere round here there must be a nigger tribe who would consider it an honour when a chap like me with a real white skin does some swell conjuring for them. Why, they'll jump at the chance of making me their medicine man. Anyway, I'm off! If you're a wise man, you'll come too. It'll be fine enough even if it does not last for long. And I'll tell you a secret: in the sergeants' room the big service revolver is hanging comfortably on the wall. I've a sort of an idea that that piece of property will be off about the same time as me--on French leave! That's a great consolation for me, quite apart from the fact that I shall be damned glad to annoy that fool of a sergeant! Won't you come?" I declined with thanks. Herr von Rader now sought other followers. In every spare moment he gathered a following from among the young men around his bed. They lounged about and smoked cigarettes forging their plans for flight. More than once I went and listened to them and more than once I gave them a warning, but they were so wrapped up in their idea that all good advice was quite wasted. They wanted to make a bee-line for the south, marching only at night and avoiding all houses and villages. Then they thought of going west and working through into Morocco. One of them had found an old map of Northern Africa, and on this they had marked out their route. Their bayonets and the revolver they were going to steal were to be their weapons. They were not in the least afraid of Arabs or Moroccans, and about provisions they didn't worry themselves very much, as Herr von Rader cold-bloodedly pointed out that they were six strong men and could easily procure the necessaries of life by force. In reality they were very indifferent as to all these details. The only idea that they had in their heads was that they would soon have done with their wretched lives as légionnaires, and roam at large, free men once more. They were thoroughly infected with the fever for desertion, which was ever to be found in the Legion. Plans for flight and their feasibility were ever being discussed in whispers, and this formed a part of the Legion's atmosphere--desertion was always the favourite topic of conversation in quarters and in the canteen. This was only natural. There is not a single man in the Legion who does not sooner or later repent his folly, recognising that it was the maddest thing he ever did in his life when he signed that ominous contract in the enlistment bureau. He has to work as he never worked in his life before, and he has less money in his pocket than in the most needy times of his civil life. Even if he had been a miserable beggar, a wretched copper had not such an enormous value in his eyes nor had it been so hard to earn as in these days of poverty in the Foreign Legion. He is wretchedly poor, living under the strictest military discipline, working hard and getting less than nothing out of his life. At first the strangeness of his surroundings has a certain charm: but the harder he has to work and the oftener he becomes acquainted with the heavy penalties which no légionnaire escapes for long, the quicker comes the lust for freedom. The idea of flight gradually ripens in him. He talks about it with his friends; in every spare moment he washes and cleans for the non-commissioned officers to earn a few coppers, and every evening he sits with the veterans, with the old grey-haired fellows who have breathed the air of the Legion so long that they are no use for any other sort of work, and who, as if under a spell, no matter how often they have sworn never to don the red trousers again, always come back again to the Legion. They know Algeria like the palm of their own hand and gladly sell their priceless wisdom for a litre of canteen wine. But in this case good advice is not worth much. Money is the main necessity for flight. If good intentions counted for anything in the matter, the percentage of deserters would reach a fabulous figure; but the poor fellows who go out on foot, without a penny in their pockets, very seldom get away and are generally brought back in a few days by the gendarmes. Hunger and thirst almost always drive them into the Arab villages or to the Spanish peasant settlements on the main roads, which are so often patrolled that detection is unavoidable. Then is the wisdom of the old légionnaire a vain thing indeed--against enemies like hunger and thirst the truant can do nothing. In addition to the lust for freedom the légionnaire has generally got the cafard: a feeling of hatred for anything connected with the Legion, the extraordinary impulse which leads him to undertake the maddest and most hopeless things rather than stay a day longer in the Legion. When they are as ill as this the poor fellows run off no matter where, without the slightest consideration or preparation. The Legion has coined a special expression for this kind of desertion: "Going on pump"--in French, "Aller au poump." An extraordinary word of unknown origin. You "go on pump." One evening as we sat in quarters cleaning our leather equipment, an old légionnaire, an Austrian, suddenly got up. "You damned set of fools," he cried, "I'm going out. I'm going on pump." As he spoke he buckled on his bayonet. "I hope I'll never see the blasted lot of you again." He went out and never returned. Several weeks afterwards there was shown to us at roll-call the photograph of a body that had been horribly maimed. It was the Austrian. A patrol had found him by the Morocco frontier. The officer in command, to whose equipment according to regulation a camera belonged, had taken the photograph. Each company in the Legion got a copy of this awful picture, in order to identify the corpse. The regiment has quite a series of these pictures, all showing a man's naked body, hacked about in the most appalling fashion. This is the work of the Moroccan brigands, to whom the légionnaire, staggering hither and thither under the influence of the cafard, is a real source of joy. His uniform and bayonet are priceless possessions, easily won with a few sword-strokes. Besides, there is the consideration that Allah and his prophet reward a pious deed like torturing a dog of a Christian. Hundreds of légionnaires who have started out in cafard have met with this awful death in the desert, martyred, maimed and tortured. In general, however, the légionnaire finds going on pump, this flight into the desert, this mad rush for freedom without any real goal and without any sort of preparation, something quite natural that everybody tries once at any rate in the course of his career. In cafard.... As a rule the men desert in little groups, without any equipment but the uniform they wear and the bayonet that clanks at their side. They go forth at night, before nine o'clock, while the barrack gates are still open, and run, under cover of the darkness, madly through the sandy vineyards. They are miserably cold in the chilly African night, and the pangs of hunger soon assail them. But they keep going on: they are accustomed to accomplish miracles of marching even when loaded with the Legion's heavy baggage; without it they cover enormous distances. Five minutes at the double with that long cat-like stride of the Legion which never tires those who have once got the knack of it--and then five minutes' marching. They go on like this without stopping all through the night, and in the morning the truants are a good sixty kilometres from the garrison. Arriving at some lonely farm or other in the grey of the morning, they obtain a crust of bread and a sip of wine. It is very seldom the sympathetic heart of the Spaniard that takes pity on them: no, it is more often the bayonets which advise him to be obliging and conciliatory. In the daytime the poumpistes hide among the rocks or bury themselves in a deep hole in the sand. When night comes on they start on their way once more, ever southwards, keeping their bearings by the stars as they have learnt to do in the Legion--for a very different purpose it is true. When they hear the sound of horses' hoofs they take cover in deadly terror and lie for hours, still as mice, until the patrol has long passed out of sight below the horizon. Thus the days pass by. Bands of energetic and enterprising runaways often terrorise the Arabs in the lonely settlements for weeks on end, until the oppressed ones send for help and a fight results in which the deserters are of course sadly worsted. Desperate fellows "on pump," who are determined to reach Morocco at any price, sometimes succeed in getting hold of a rifle. They have then a weapon to defend themselves against the brigands. They cannot take their own rifles with them, for with rifles they would never be allowed to pass the barrack gates. A tough old veteran, who knows the frontier, marches with the utmost care. He knows that there is a triple row of tents, a quarter of a kilometre apart. One dark night he creeps through. This operation takes a long time to carry out. The tents, it is true, are a long way apart from each other, and it seems easy enough to get through. But this is only at first sight. For every 200 yards there stands a sentry guarding the line till the next tent is reached. The line of tents is almost endless. Were the deserter to attempt to creep through direct or even in a slanting direction, he could not possibly avoid being noticed by one of the sentries who are stationed in a triangular arrangement. But he knows the trick. He creeps through 100 yards from a sentry and then strikes off at an angle of 45 degrees until he reaches the next row. Then straight on once more and then off again at an angle.... Now he works himself, crawling on his stomach and burying himself in the sand for hours at a time, up to a tent in the outside line. He steps silently into the tent, feels about with care--and he is the possessor of a rifle and a cartridge-belt. Thus armed he has now a chance of life and of getting safely across Morocco. * * * * * In most cases, however, after a few days of golden freedom, a freedom consisting of perpetual marching and ceaseless hunger, the man on pump meets his fate in the shape of a band of mounted "Goums,"[5] and finds himself, after a very short space of time, looking down the muzzles of their revolvers. He then has to go back the same way he came, fastened by a long chain to one of the Goums' horses, panting and coughing with the exertion of keeping up with the horse, which he must do if he doesn't want to be dragged over the sand and stones. Thus he is taken from station to station till the garrison is reached. If he is lucky enough not to have lost any part of his equipment and has not been absent more than a week, he is tried by the regiment, and gets off with sixty days' cellule--solitary confinement in the dark. If, however, any part of his uniform is missing, he is tried for theft and desertion by the court-martial in Oran, which is noted for its Draconic sentences. [5] "Goums" is the Legion's name for the Arab gendarmes. "Traveaux forcés," penal servitude for years, is then his fate--a penalty which usually means death, for there are very few constitutions that can stand the terrible life in the penal settlements. Rader and his friends were poumpistes of this type. One evening the man of strong language and never-failing wit was missing when the roll was called. Several others were reported missing from various rooms, and the next morning the whole company knew that six Germans had deserted _en bloc_. The sergeant of our section made a list of the uniform and equipment Herr von Rader had left behind. He cursed, as only a lazy sergeant in the Legion can curse, his own personal bad luck because the six deserters, being in his company, now gave him a lot of work and worry. At the evening roll-call the colour-sergeant appeared in person in our room and ordered Corporal Wassermann to take good care that no more of the men under his charge deserted: otherwise he'd make it d----d hot for him. The captain, however, sent for all the Germans in his company. He made us a long speech in the company's bureau: We had all served our time in Germany and we ought really to be content with the life in his company. There was no flogging in the Legion! When anybody thought he had a ground for complaint he should report himself at once to the captain. The Legion was a regiment of foreigners, and one nation was treated in exactly the same way as another: a German soldier in it had naturally exactly the same rights as every one else. He would be very sorry if his men took to deserting. It was quite hopeless to try! A description of the deserters had been telegraphed long ago to all the stations in Algeria, the police all along the coast were on the look-out, and in a few days we should see the truants brought back to the regiment. "You only get into trouble when you desert, as it is very heavily punished!" "The whole thing is this," said Smith when we came back into our room. "The cap'n is champion fencer of France, and thinks he must be always practising in the fencing saloon! He hasn't the least idea what things really look like in the company!" Even a raw recruit knew much more of what went on in the company than its leader. The non-commissioned officers took very good care that the captain did not learn too much.... In reality the colour-sergeant and the non-commissioned officers were all-powerful. The captain was merely what one might call the owner of the business, who signed the punishment sheets and reports which his managers laid before him, without bothering his head about details. The non-coms had the mess-allowance in their hands, put down whatever men they pleased on the punishment sheet for absolutely nothing at all, and would very quickly have done to death any one who made a complaint, even if at first he got his rights by complaining. "By the beard of the Prophet," laughed Smith, "I'd like to see what happened to the chap who made a complaint. Why, the whole bally lot of non-coms would be down on him in less than no time, and in a couple of weeks he'd be a Zephyr in the penal battalion. That's what happens when you complain, Signor Capitano. But he's quite right about deserting is our champion captain. We do see most of 'em again." Then he went over to Rassedin and asked him if he thought that Rader and the other five poumpistes would get away. Rassedin shook his head and laughed, making with his thumb and forefinger that counting gesture which means paying all the world over. "No money," he said dryly. The other veterans too thought that Rader and the other five were not the sort of men who would succeed in surmounting the difficulties of a flight unprovided with money. The flight of the six comrades was an inexhaustible topic of conversation in the company. Smith used to spin one yarn after another of mad bids for freedom. Two of these histories I shall never forget. While Smith was in the second battalion at Saida, there were two brothers in his company, two Englishmen of good birth. The final and maddest freak of their mad lives landed them in the Legion. When their family learnt that they were wearing the Legion's uniform, they did all they could to procure their freedom. In vain! Petitions to the French Secretary of War were of no avail, and the English Consul in Algiers naturally refused to intervene. Finally the two brothers were sent a large sum of money and they tried their luck at deserting. They were no farther than Saida station when they were arrested and marched back to prison. As soon as they were free again they made a second attempt at flight and got as far as Oran. But their descriptions had been telegraphed there and they were arrested as they were going on board the steamer. This time they were sent for six months to the penal battalion. The poor devils must have written despairing letters home. Their relations were determined to get them free at any price. With an English merchant as go-between, they bribed a Levantine, who hired an automobile and waited days and days by Saida, in the neighbourhood where the convicts had to work. After long delay the brothers succeeded in escaping at night from their tent. They reached the appointed rendezvous in safety, found the Levantine with his motor waiting for them, and started off as quickly as the sand would allow. The automobile, however, had attracted notice in Saida, and the military authorities came at once on the idea that these dauntless deserters had hit on the unusual method of flight by motor-car. Telegrams flew from station to station, and the Arab police barricaded a narrow part of the road a little north of Sidi-bel-Abbès, which passes at this point through a rocky part of the country, absolutely impassable for vehicles. A short time afterwards the motor came up. The runaways took no notice of the warnings of the gendarmes who rode to meet them, and crashed at full speed into the pile of stones. The motor was overturned, the two deserters being killed immediately. The Levantine was seriously injured and brought into the hospital at Sidi-bel-Abbès, where he died a few days later. The other story is a really sad one. An Austrian engineer had, as a young man, for some reason or other enlisted in the Foreign Legion. After a while he managed to escape and worked his way home to Austria again. He must have been a clever fellow, for he soon gained a distinguished position in his profession. Fortune smiled upon him. He made a notable invention, which made him a wealthy man. Ambition led him to send the machine he had invented to the World's Exhibition in Paris. In the distinguished engineer nobody would recognise the deserter from the Foreign Legion--at least so he thought. But cruel fate willed otherwise. Standing by his machine at the exhibition he was recognised by an officer from his company who was just then on leave in Paris. The officer did his duty as a soldier and had the deserter arrested. At one blow the man who had worked his way from the depths of poverty to the top of his profession, who looked upon the days in the Legion as merely a dark shadow on his life, became once more a légionnaire. A few days in a Parisian military prison, a few hours' journey by rail in a prisoners' compartment, the short sea-voyage to Oran, the cruel minutes before the court-martial--and then perpetual, blunting work in an Algerian mine, truly a living death. And thus this man had to live for many a long month, till the horrible climate carried him off.... * * * * * Flight from the Legion is always a risky and difficult undertaking, risky since there is always the severest punishment waiting for the deserter who gets caught. Even the possession of really plentiful means is no guarantee for a successful flight. There are so many hindrances to surmount, such a mountain of difficulties to be climbed. To begin at the beginning. The Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès supplies the clothes. Buying civilian clothes is the first chapter of a légionnaire's flight, the first part of his preparations for which the would-be deserter needs not only money but also a finely developed talent for haggling and bargaining. To open negotiations is very easy: the légionnaire simply addresses a passer-by in one of the little alleys and whispers to him that he knows of some one who would perhaps buy civilian clothes. In one case in a hundred the passer-by shakes his head and goes his way. In the ninety-nine other cases he looks pleased, and in just such a whisper tells the légionnaire to follow him into his house without attracting attention. Once there, the bargaining begins. Heaps of old clothes are fetched, until something is found somewhere about the customer's size. Boots, shirt, collar, hat, and tie are all found. To an honest man of business the transaction would seem somewhat strange. These Ghetto transactions have an underlying principle of their own: furnish as poor goods as possible at as high a price as you can get! The buyer is already nervous at the prospect of his flight, so, in spite of all, he pays an absolutely fabulous price. Fifty francs is usually the price of an old suit, of which the trousers come, perhaps, from Germany, the waistcoat from France, and the coat from Italy, and which would be very dear at ten francs. The "business friend" next claims a gold piece for allowing the légionnaire to change his clothes in his house; a further gold piece arranges for the care of his uniform, which a légionnaire who is at all careful will not be persuaded so easily to leave in the lurch. For the deserter captured without his uniform is tried for theft by court-martial, and the military tribunal in Oran always passes sentence of a long term of penal servitude. But the man of Israel is willing enough--provided he gets a gold piece for it--to take care that the uniform and entire equipment of his customer is safely preserved for the poor regiment. Neatly bound together the uniform lies idle for a few days. Then, one dark night, a youth from the Ghetto throws the parcel over the wall of the barracks. A ticket has been pinned on beforehand, on which the name and number of the owner has been written so that the gentlemen in the quarter-master's office needn't cudgel their brains wondering how to register this parcel from heaven. All so considerate! The runaway, however, wanders through the alleys of the Jewish quarter and the streets of Sidi-bel-Abbès, taking great care to avoid instinctively saluting the officers and non-coms he meets. His money, with which he bought his civilian clothes, and of which there is still enough for his railway journey and passage, is a mighty help to him. He must not attract notice anywhere; he must bridle his tongue, lest the curious French which is individual to the Legion betray him, and he must act the rôle of the harmless traveller to a nicety. He naturally cannot begin his journey from the station of Sidi-bel-Abbès, which is watched by a commando of the Legion's non-commissioned officers day and night. No, he must go on foot to one of the stations on the way to his destination; the farther from Sidi-bel-Abbès he is, the less likely he is to attract attention. So he makes a long night march, keeping a sharp look-out for the patrols of Arab police. Then comes the railway journey to a coast town. The only two towns that come in question are Oran and the town of Algiers, since regular lines of steamers only run from these two ports. Oran is mostly avoided, because it is so near to Sidi-bel-Abbès, and because there are so many of the Legion's officers to be met with there. The journey to Algiers, on the other hand, is very expensive, and it often happens that the truant's money is exhausted, and he lands there penniless. In this case German légionnaires usually go to the German Consulate, but only receive the stereotyped reply that there is no money at the Consul's disposal "for purposes like this." The Consulate is not only powerless to help them, but, into the bargain, is one of the best and most efficient mouse-traps a French gendarme could want. Old légionnaires always give you the same warning: "For the Lord's sake don't go to the Consul in Algiers." If, in spite of this, a deserter does go to the Consul, he is merely told that he cannot possibly gain assistance there. And now the trap begins to do its work. The police in Algiers know well enough that there are a great many escaped légionnaires among the men who come to the Consulate. When any one comes out looking in the least bit suspicious, they receive him tenderly and inquire lovingly about his papers. The deserter is then done for.... I should like to know whether the German Consul in Algiers has the slightest idea that, in all innocence, he has been the ruin of so many German légionnaires. The runaway whose money has been swallowed up by the railway journey and who cannot pay his passage over sea, must in most cases give himself up for lost. It is generally only a question of a few days till he is arrested. A careless word in a wine-shop, a lame excuse when he seeks work and can show no papers--in short, the whole system of denunciation which is so flourishing in Algiers very soon hands him over to the police. And even when he has money enough to pay his passage on one of the Mediterranean lines, and has his ticket safe in his pocket, he is not yet in safety. Most of the runaways who have succeeded in reaching Algiers make the mistake of taking a passage on one of the German or English lines of steamers, and is arrested at the eleventh hour as he goes on board. It is on the foreign ships that they keep a specially sharp eye. On the French boats, on the other hand, which ply between Algiers and Oran, you don't need any papers or even a passport, because the authorities look upon these boats as an internal French means of communication. The route from Algiers to Tunis is absolutely safe for the deserter. There, nobody notices him in the enormous rush of the Levantine traffic, and he needs no passport to cross to an Italian port. But the expense is enormous. Among the légionnaires who desert, the number of those who can escape in civilian clothes by the comparatively safe way of the railway and the Mediterranean boats is very small. Travelling costs money.... A flight over the town of Algiers needs really quite a little capital--150 francs at least. This is a very low estimate, for the purchase of clothes alone takes about seventy francs. How few of the men in the Legion can raise such a sum like this! In most cases they are poor devils who have no one in the wide world who could or would send them a sum of this sort; most of them never had a franc to their name while they were in the Legion, to say nothing of a gold coin. Men like this are seldom successful in their flight, even when they spend months and months in preparation and discuss their route a hundred times over with the veterans of the Legion. They don't run blindly into the desert like the poumpistes, who don't really want more than a few days of runaway freedom. Their way is also to the coast. In uniform! On foot! In these two expressions there is expressed the deserter's whole difficulty. Although the distance from Sidi-bel-Abbès to the coast is only about one hundred kilometres, not a very great stretch for a légionnaire who is accustomed to long marches, it is beset with danger for every yard of the way. The runaway can be recognised a long way off by his uniform. True, he only marches by night. But the starlit nights of Algeria are very bright, and he has to creep from rock to rock and from hollow to hollow, to avoid being seen by the patrols. By day he lies motionless in the sand. He suffers hunger and thirst for days on end, and lives on fruits, which he steals when hunger drives him to risk discovery. When he has reached the coast in safety, the game of hide-and-seek begins anew. He often lies for days in some little coast town, where the Mediterranean tramp-steamers touch, concealed in a shed or in some old boat on the shore, till a ship carrying the German or English flag comes into port. He swims out to this ship in the middle of the night, climbs on board, and hides in one of the ship's boats, or in the coal-bunker. He first makes his appearance when the ship is on the high seas as a more or less pleasant surprise for the captain. He is now safe--they can hardly throw him overboard. There are, moreover, a great many captains who shut their eyes when a runaway of this sort is discovered, and even if the ship is still lying in port do not give him up. There are some even who carry their humanity so far as to stand a certain amount of unpleasantness with the authorities for his sake. These are mostly German ships, and above all, ships from Hamburg. Deserters from the Legion land over and over again in the old Hansa town, and again and again you may read in the Hamburg daily papers that deserters have arrived with such and such a ship, and have been taken charge of by the police authorities. Now and then they go just as they stand, in their uniform, with bayonet and all the rest of it, to the paper's offices and tell the worried editor about their life and sorrows in the Legion.... These are those who have had luck; the tiny proportion of penniless deserters who are successful in their flight. Not freedom but prison awaits the large majority at the finish of their attempt. The Arab gendarmes are paid a bonus on the deserters they arrest, which amounts to many thousand francs a year! The regiment is acquainted with many other means of desertion, if by "desertion" you understand every means by which the deserter can free himself from work in the Legion. In the terrible heat of summer, when the difference in temperature between day and night is simply enormous, sickness, in many a grim form, stalks through Algeria. The drinking water becomes infected, and typhoid sets in: the légionnaire who is tired of active service can be pretty sure of a long spell of illness. But to make quite certain he helps matters artificially--with an extraordinary measure in vogue in the Legion: he drinks a mixture of absinthe and milk. Every veteran in the Legion swears this hellish drink never fails to bring on an attack of fever! The object of this suicidal method of desertion is naturally to avoid work in the Legion by a long spell of sickness--its object is always attained; mostly so effectively that the man never takes his place on parade again, but rests for ever in the Legion's cemetery! In the same way self-mutilation may be met with: the chopping off of a finger which renders the légionnaire unfit for active service. Others simulate illness or madness. This the suspiciousness and brutality of the doctors in the Legion renders very difficult. Now and then a légionnaire with a will of iron manages to play the comedy of madness successfully. The means employed are sometimes rather drastic. Some years before I entered the Legion, a Belgian served in my company who shammed for a whole year. He dirtied the men's quarters in such a fashion that his comrades fell upon him and ill-treated him in every possible way, but he merely answered their curses and reprisals with an inane laugh. Neither curses nor blows seemed to make the least difference to him. This fellow had grit. He played his part as a lunatic, as unpleasant for himself as well as for others, without ever wavering. They shut him up, they compelled him to do the hardest work, they brought him into hospital and wellnigh starved him or tortured him with drugs; he was confined for weeks in the dark, he was sent to the hospital at Daya and treated with cold water--all in vain! His method and his smile remained unchanged! After thirteen months the doctors felt themselves checkmated, gave up the job as hopeless and certified him mad. The colonel, purely out of curiosity, sent for the lunatic, who must needs have an attack of his particular malady in the regimental bureau itself. As soon, however, as he was home again in Belgium, he wrote postcards to the officers and to several members of his company.... He had foiled them all and they were the idiots! The most unmitigated ass of them in his humble opinion was the regimental doctor! If possible the surgeon-major in the Algerian corps was a bigger fool still! Tremendous energy is, however, necessary to bring a sham of this sort to a successful issue, and cases like this constitute a tiny minority. The doctors in the Foreign Legion are both clever and suspicious and the result is that there is always a good dose of Legion's brutality included in their treatment. All those who reported themselves sick, and hadn't some outward and visible sign of their ailment to show, were treated from beginning to end as shams. Our médecin-major was an especial terror to the légionnaires. I only came into personal contact with him twice; the first time was on a manoeuvre march when he refused me the medicine I wanted, and the other time was when I was vaccinated. There was an epidemic of small-pox in Sidi-bel-Abbès, and the whole of the Legion had to be vaccinated as quickly as possible. We were marched by companies into the great drill-hall where Monsieur le Major and his assistants were at work. Such a method of vaccination as this man employed I have never seen in my life and I have been vaccinated at least a dozen times. I am acquainted with every method of vaccination, from the gentle lancet-prick employed in Germany to the method in use in America, where they pare away the skin with a piece of ivory. As our company marched past the assembled doctors in Indian file I saw to my astonishment that the men were bleeding severely. When my turn came I flinched involuntarily--the doctor drove the lancet three times so forcibly into my upper arm that a regular fountain of blood spurted out. It was pure brutality. Nothing more or less. This was typical of the man. It was his custom, the first time a man reported himself ill, to send him back to his company and give him three days' arrest for shamming. If the fellow appeared again he tried the effect of emetics followed by a long period of starvation. The only time he was supposed to be reasonable was when he saw symptoms of typhoid, which was his special hobby. The Legion was thoroughly afraid of the hospital! They were desperate fellows indeed who tried shamming! * * * * * The topic of desertion from the Foreign Legion is wellnigh inexhaustible. When the transports sail from Oran or Marseilles to Indo-China with relief companies of the Legion on board, the Suez Canal is a favourite means of deserting. According to the Canal regulations the steamers must slacken speed in the narrow straits of Suez, and the légionnaire takes the opportunity to jump overboard. He swims the short stretch to land and is then safe. The sentries on the transports may not use firearms in the international waters of the Suez Canal, and therefore cannot fire on the deserter as he swims. Neither is extradition from the English or Egyptian authorities to be feared. Several of these transports from the Foreign Legion pass through the Suez Canal every year, and these desertions are so frequent that the Ghetto of Port Said pays a fixed price of ten shillings for the capital service boots of the Legion! Desertions _en masse_ occur now and then, but these may be classed as mutinies rather than as desertions. In Southern Algeria, in the loneliness of the desert, the garrison of some small fort occasionally breaks out, marching for the Morocco frontier. The next bevy of troops soon brings the runaways back again, and even if it comes to a shot or two the superiority of the numbers against them soon brings the mutineers to reason. A mutiny like this generally ends in the mutineers being shot. An act of this sort is nothing else than an outbreak of madness caused by the dreadful monotony of service on the lonely stations in the desert. It is an outbreak of the cafard! The poor devils should be treated by a doctor instead of being sentenced by a court-martial. The Foreign Legion is a fruitful field for hypnotic suggestion. In my time a number of légionnaires deserted from Sidi-bel-Abbès, with the intention of fighting their way through to Morocco. Morocco was just then talked about till the idea became surrounded with a sort of halo. The attempt itself was pretty hopeless--the men were driven to it by the suggestive power of the words, "le Maroc." Morocco was the Legion's fairyland, the land the soldier longed for. Not a single day went by without a rumour of fighting in Morocco raising excitement in the Foreign Legion to fever pitch. Dark war-clouds were gathering on the horizon. From the frontier there came continual reports of the intrigues of the pretender, and in the inland of Morocco mighty battles were fought at short intervals. Among the watchful officers of French Africa every one was certain that the internal troubles in Morocco were not merely the petty splutterings of the usual native fireworks, but the first sparks of a mighty bonfire. The Foreign Legion knew of this; then all that was discussed in the officers' mess filtered through to the regiment through its own various private channels. Orderlies came rushing into the barracks in a fever of excitement as soon as they came off duty in the mess and told their friends in the Legion all about the heated debates that had taken place and which all revolved around Morocco. The servants of the staff officers brought news of Moroccan visitors closeted with their masters; Spahis who had served their time in the Morocco frontier garrisons and who were quartered on the regiment on their way through to Oran, told how sharp duty on the frontier now was, and how the garrisons were perpetually being strengthened. The veterans put their heads together and discussed the prospects of a bloody war! They had wonderful stories to tell of the golden treasures of Morocco, of the jewels that the better classes wore, and in their fancy they pictured an Eldorado of plundered wealth and booty. These mysterious rumours grew from day to day. More than half of the regiment's officers were ordered to the little frontier towns, and it was not unnatural when the Legion found in this a sure sign of fighting to come. With a broad smirk, an orderly brought the news that the colonel had engaged two masters to teach him Arabic, and it was easy to see how proud he was of the enormous supply of ammunition which was sent out from France. Recruiting began with zeal in the Spahi barracks opposite. Arab recruits with their splendid horses joined daily. Sections for telegraph duty went off to the frontier to see to the old wires and to lay new ones; volunteers were called for to form a corps for the heliographs, and veterans whose time was up got the tip from one or other of the officers that it would be very much to their advantage to stay on and not to take their dismissal just then.... In this roundabout way, through non-coms, orderlies, and soldier servants, everything was perhaps very much distorted, but it all sounded very probable and typical. The Legion is like a mighty ear-trumpet--through its countless channels it gathers up the officers' gossip and intrigues for its own uses, and really knows a good deal about the state of affairs in Northern Africa; it knows that the military circles at the head of affairs in Algeria have their own axe to grind, and that the clever catch-phrase "pénétration pacifique" was formed in an officers' club, and that greedy squinting at Morocco is as old as the occupation of Algeria! It was as if every one stood under the ban of a mesmerist. The longing for "le Maroc" spread to the légionnaires, who gave practical evidence of their longing for change and excitement, deserting in crowds. Most of them met their deaths. The border tribes cut their throats. Others had more luck. In the army of the pretender, the present Sultan, Mulai Hafid, there used to be several officers who were once soldiers of the Foreign Legion! CHAPTER XII A CHAPTER ON PUNISHMENTS The return of the poumpistes : The scale of punishments in the Legion : Of spiteful non-commissioned officers : The Legion's axiom : Sad history of Little Jean : The punishment machine : Lost years : A légionnaire's earnings in five years--francs 127.75 : The prisons in the Foreign Legion : Pestilential atmosphere : Human sardines : The general cells : Life in the prison : On sentry duty among the prisoners "Nom de Dieu!--voilà les poumpistes!" cried the sergeant of the guard at the barrack gates. Every one sprang up. We of the guard (my company was on guard that day) crowded round the gate; the adjutant vaguemestre, the regimental postmaster, ran out of his little office opposite the guard-room; a couple of officers came up, and légionnaires streamed out from everywhere in a wild rush for the entrance to the barracks. "The poumpistes have come back!" they cried to each other. It was in fact the truants from our company, poor Rader and his five friends. They were indeed a pitiful sight. Two gendarmes brought them in. They were all six bound together by a thin steel chain. Their dirty uniforms hung around them in rags; they were faint and emaciated and looked dead tired. Their faces were scarred. Rader had a blood-stained bandage round his right arm. In their eyes you could read the deadly fear of the punishment that awaited them. They had, of course, been treated pretty badly by the gendarmes. They looked round them shyly, ashamed of their helplessness and of their fetters. Herr von Rader alone had not lost his sense of humour. "How are you? Glad to see you!" he said to the sergeant! "I am back again all right." In the little bureau of the officer of the day the two gendarmes had their depositions taken and received the usual receipt from the regiment for the safe delivery of the deserters. They withdrew looking very pleased with themselves, for this receipt was worth 25 francs, entitling them to their reward. The poumpistes were kept waiting in front of the guard-room, still joined together by the chain. When Herr von Rader noticed me, he greeted me with many head-shakings: "Damned rotten business!" he said quite loud. "Mein Freund, they didn't make me a medicine man after all. The conjuring didn't work! All at once five damned Arab gendarmes rode up to us, holding their revolvers under our noses. I couldn't conjure them away.... Positively couldn't! Well, and then we had to walk back. Say, I don't care much about promenading when I am tied to a horse's tail. And the beggar of a horse did run, I can tell you--and I behind it--because I was tied to its tail, see?" "Silence!" commanded the sergeant. "No talking here." When the formalities of the surrender were over, the six deserters (I was one of the guard who escorted them with fixed bayonets) were marched off to prison. The keys rattled. The sergeant of the guard considered it necessary to give vent to his bad humour in many superfluous remarks about "the dirty, ragged, good-for-nothing lot of poumpistes, whom the penal battalion would soon cure of skinning out," and gave Rader, who was the last to cross the cell's threshold, a mighty kick. Rader fell at full length. Then the heavy door swung to behind them.... A few years ago Herr von Rader and his companions would have been sentenced to quite a curious kind of punishment which was at that time considered in the Foreign Legion to be a radical cure for deserters--a kind of mediæval torture which, by the way, was not kept for deserters solely, but came into use very often. This was the "silo" and the "crapaudine." The silo consisted of a funnel-shaped hole in the ground, broad at the top and pointed towards the bottom. A regular funnel. Into this hole, used as a cell for solitary confinement, the misdoers would be thrown, clad only in a thin suit of fatigue clothes, without a blanket or any protection at all against the rain or against the sun, at the mercy of the heat by day and the cold by night. The poor devils would be left for several days in this "prison." They could not lie down, for the bottom part of the hole was only one or two feet square. They spent day and night alternately standing and crouching, now in pouring rain, now in the burning sun. They very soon became ill from the foul vapours. When at length they were taken out of the silo, they could neither walk nor stand and had to be carried into hospital. Now and then a silo prisoner died in his hole. They say in the Foreign Legion that it was General de Négrier who abolished the silo. When he was inspecting Saida, he found a row of fifteen silos, one beside the other, and every single one occupied. He had the unfortunates taken out and they fell down in a dead faint on coming into the fresh air. Thereupon the general had every one of the silos filled up before his own eyes and forbade the silo penalty ever being used again. A more primitive but perhaps a still more brutal torture was the crapaudine. The man to be punished was simply tied up into a bundle and thrown into a corner, his hands and feet being tied together on his back, till they formed a sort of semicircle. Such a crapaudinaire lay there helpless day and night, totally unable to move. The most he could do when he tried very hard was to roll from one side to the other. For a quarter of an hour a day he would be set free and got bread to eat and water to drink. A day and a night in the crapaudine was enough to deprive a man of the use of his limbs--several days gave him his quietus. This penalty has also been abolished. It exists still in a milder form. In the field and on the march an offender is often punished by being bound to two posts driven into the ground. To-day the punishments in the Legion are not quite as cruel as they once were. At any rate their cruelty is not quite so apparent. Rader's friends got off with fourteen days' prison, while he himself, after waiting in prison an age for his trial, was sentenced by court-martial. The poor fellow had lost his cap and belt and got a year's penal servitude for "theft of equipment." What happened to him there I have never heard. There is no fixed penalty for desertion. In general the poumpistes are treated pretty mildly and sentenced, when they happen to be recruits, to 40 to 120 days' prison. Only when they are recruits. The veterans are always brought before the court-martial. But this is merely the general rule; if, for instance, a deserter has managed to get for some reason or another into the sergeant's or some other non-commissioned officer's "black books," the charge against him will be certain to include the loss of some part of his uniform, even when this is not in the least the case. The Foreign Legion has its own ideas of the subjects of pains and penalties. Viewed from the surface of things, there actually is a sort of scale of punishment. At the beginning comes extra corvée, which is quite bad enough. For little omissions in the daily routine, for a paquetage not quite accurately put together, or for a button not polished well enough, the offender can be sentenced by the sergeant of his section to perform the heavy duties of the corvée, while his comrades are making their repairs or having instructions. As long as I served in the Legion I was never punished for a fault of my own, not even with extra corvée--I took good care not to give the slightest excuse for punishment. More than once, however, I made the acquaintance of general corvée. This was our sergeant's speciality. When he inspected our quarters in the morning and found some petty excuse for finding fault, he did not bother with details, but just said: "Eh, corporal! A dirty, nasty room! Disgusting! The whole lot of you extra corvée this afternoon, under your supervision, corporal!" Whereupon the corporal cursed and every fellow in the room anathematised the sergeant as a "sale cochon"--a filthy swine. As the "swine," however, was clothed with the bristles of authority, the extra corvée had to be performed in spite of all curses and anathemas. Pretty nearly as frequent as this was confinement to barracks. This comes next in the scale of punishments and is always connected with "salle de police." Salle de police is only another name for the general cells in the prisons. Above all the offenders are not allowed to leave the barracks in their spare time. In other respects they do their duty as usual. When their day's work is finished, however, at five o'clock, they are called out every half-hour and sometimes every quarter of an hour to the drill-ground, where their names are called over by the sergeant of the guard. Any one who happens to miss one of these roll-calls finds himself in prison for a week. In their fear of not hearing the signal the men have not a single minute's quiet, and can hardly find time to clean their kit for the morrow. At nine o'clock, at the evening roll-call, they must report themselves in the guard-room, and are shut up in the salle de police for the night--in the general cells, which are filled to overflowing. Sleep among the crush of men and in that nauseating atmosphere is only possible for a few hours, when the tired body demands its right in spite of the disgusting surroundings. Next morning at five they are dismissed and have to perform the usual routine work with the rest of the company. Eight days' "salle de police" are looked upon as a very light punishment--a sure sign that the average légionnaire's susceptibilities are not all too fine. Salle de police was something quite in the ordinary run of affairs for us: confinement to barracks was a part of life in the Legion. In our quarters I was the only man who had not made its acquaintance, and that was the merest chance, luck plain and simple. No one excited himself about extra corvée and confinement to barracks. Every single man in the Legion had, however, a mighty respect for the prison. Prison, arrest in the regimental lock-up, is the Legion's real punishment. Imprisonment in the Legion is made up of the hardest work possible, and living under the most awful sanitary conditions; one can only form an idea of what this punishment is like when one has had a look at the Legion's prisons.[6] [6] See close of chapter. Next comes "cellule," solitary confinement on starvation diet. Then come the "Zephyrs," those condemned to the penal battalion. Every two or three weeks a transport of Zephyrs left the barracks in old ragged uniforms. In the battalion itself they have to wear the coffee-brown clothes of the convict. "The sections for the reformation of incorrigibles" is the official name for this battalion, and deportation to the Zephyrs is the severest punishment which can be put into execution without the authority of a court-martial. The official grasp of the meaning of the word incorrigible is, however, a trifle strange sometimes. Under the strictest surveillance these unfortunates carry on pioneer work in the far south. They make roads, they dig wells, they build new stations in the most unhealthy parts of Algeria, far removed from all civilisation. They have to work as even a légionnaire, to whom the hardest work is so familiar, would only work under the sternest compulsion. And if extra pioneer work is needed in the south, if, for instance, a new road is to be built, the battalion's numbers increase with amazing rapidity. It is really astonishing how the number of incorrigibles in the Legion increases just when the military administration needs men--for work! "Much work--many Zephyrs!" says the Legion's proverb. The scale finishes with the heavy military punishments, from penal servitude to the death sentence, and here the decision of the Algerian court-martial in Oran is final. Its sentences are renowned for their pitiless severity. To be brought before this court-martial the légionnaire need not have committed any very grave offence. It is enough if he has lost some part of his uniform. In a well-known French historical work on the subject of the Foreign Legion, Roger de Beauvoir writes: "Each of the two discipline sections is 150 men strong: of these 300, 200 at least are in the penal section for selling part of their kit. It used to be the custom to 'let the stomach pay' for this offence, _i.e._, the offender was put on bread and water till he had replaced the lost equipment from the mess allowance that was saved. This punishment was finally considered too barbarously old-fashioned, and the court-martial took its place, which passes sentence of six months' imprisonment. The légionnaires long for the old régime!" And thereby hangs a tale. A very sad story, too.... No sensible man will attempt to dispute the fact that iron discipline is essential for the lurid mixture of human material in the Legion. If the justice of the Foreign Legion was in practice what it is in theory--stern but just--one could not say a word against it. It is, however, only just in theory, in the intention of the military law-makers. In reality it is the justice of unlimited tyranny; made so by the individual tyranny of officers and non-commissioned officers in individual cases, and in general by an obstinate tenacity to the letter of the law. Every French officer and every French court-martial acts under the time-honoured assumption that the légionnaire makes a brave soldier, but is in all other respects a thoroughbred rogue and knave, and that one cannot go far wrong in assuming the worst about him. The word of a superior is always accepted as proof of guilt. There is no better illustration of this than the everlasting heavy penalties which are meted out for "theft of equipment." This sort of theft exists, of course. Theft is not a thing to be very much wondered at when the men's wages are five centimes a day. But many hundreds of innocents are punished for this offence in the course of a year. The favourite trick of non-commissioned officers, when they have a spite against a man, is to inspect his kit suddenly. Some trifle or other, a tie or a couple of straps, are quite sure to be missing and then there is the _casus belli_! "Lost is stolen--sold!" Thus the axiom of the Legion's authorities, against which the most positive assertions are of no avail. Now and then an offender of this sort is leniently treated, and let off by the regiment with sixty days' imprisonment; in the majority of cases, however, he is tried by the court-martial. A typical case: "Jean the Unlucky" was the nickname of a young Frenchman in my company who had been sentenced in his second year of service to six months in the penal section for stealing a sash. He swore he was innocent, and as far as I can tell he spoke the truth, as his mother sent him twenty francs every month. Thus he was quite well off according to Foreign Legion ideas, and certainly need not have risked a heavy penalty by selling his ceinture for a few sous. The probabilities were in favour of his innocence, but that did not help him. He was sentenced. He survived his six months in the hell of the penal battalion and was then sent back to his company. And now his troubles really began. At the time of his trial he had, in his rage at the false accusation, made more than one biting remark about our adjutant and his little ways. This the colour-sergeant never forgot. In spite of the fact that Little Jean was a quiet fellow, who did his duty to the best of his ability, a good soldier and a capital shot, he kept wandering backwards and forwards between the prison and the company, the company and the prison. Nothing he could do was right. Sometimes his boots were not properly cleaned, sometimes his bed was a centimetre out of the dead straight line in which beds must stand, and at another time he had not stood properly at attention at roll-call. Such were Little Jean's grave offences against the holy spirit of the Legion's discipline--ridiculous accusations, which bore the stamp of spite so plainly that even our careless captain should have noticed it. These human machines punished automatically, without feeling, without thinking for an instant. The sergeant's reports demanding punishment for Little Jean's awful sins were signed automatically. When the sergeant put him down for eight days' confinement to barracks, the captain mechanically increased the penalty to eight days' imprisonment, because Jean le malheureux, coming from the penal section, had naturally a very bad reputation. Then came the commander of the battalion, who, not caring to be outdone in matters of discipline, doubled the dose. The sergeant's modest eight days' confinement to barracks had now grown to sixteen days' imprisonment. But now came the embodiment of authority in the regiment in the person of the colonel. This colonel had his own ideas as to how one should treat the pernicious elements in the regiment: "Second-class soldier Jean Dubois, No. 14892, 11th company, is sentenced by the colonel to 40 days' imprisonment for continued slackness and insubordination." That was read to us the next time the regimental orders came out. You see, the machine worked admirably. Its mechanism runs with wonderful accuracy. Any one who took an interest in the matter could work the whole thing out in advance. Dubois did this. He knew well enough what was waiting for him--from day to day he became quieter, from day to day sadder, so that at length he hardly spoke at all to his comrades. He could do nothing to protect himself; he hadn't even enough energy left for flight. Good Lord, he had long lost that little bit of energy he had, lost it--somewhere down south in the sunburnt wastes, where the penal battalion works and suffers. The machinery ground on.... Eighty days' imprisonment was Little Jean's next dose. After that he got sixty days' cellule--just for a change. If you consider only the number of days, you might think he had got off pretty cheaply this time. Not a bit of it. These sixty days were days of starvation. For cellule means hunger and emaciation--awful hunger and awful emaciation. After his sixty days of diet cure Dubois came back to the company for just a week, if I remember rightly. Then the machine began to work again. This time it was a month he got.... Thirty days' imprisonment--for this incorrigible and insubordinate subject! No, one really cannot be surprised that the colonel lost all patience. So he refused to confirm the punishment and sent the black sheep of the company to trial by court-martial. And once more the machine began to do its work. Two years' imprisonment, two years' penal servitude in a fortress, for Jean le malheureux! With the next batch of convicts they carried him off to Oran. I have heard nothing of him since--I do not know how he fared as a convict. In my unconquerable optimism I am ready to assume that this two years' interregnum did not do particular harm to Little Jean's health and that he returned home, having done his duty by the Foreign Legion, dapper and cheerful as he used to be. Even this supposition gives us a very pretty bit of arithmetic. Jean Dubois' original period of service 5 years Extra service for time spent in the penal battalion 6 months Ditto for regimental punishments 7 months Ditto for imprisonment in fortress 2 years --------------- Total time Jean Dubois had to serve in place of his original five years 8 years 1 month In this optimistic piece of arithmetic my optimism even goes so far as to assume that Jean the Unlucky, during his two years of imprisonment and during the rest of his period of service, did not incur any additional penalties. If I, however, compel myself to consider his career from a pessimistic point of view, the sum works out much more prettily. Dubois had not a very strong constitution and it is quite possible that the penal battalion, plus imprisonment, plus starvation, plus despair, quite finished him off. In that case the loss of a blue scarf, a spiteful sergeant and the crass stupidity of a series of officers have been the death of him. But if Jean Dubois really got over his years of prison--when he returns home (he is a Frenchman!) his strength will not be worth much in the workaday world. While I think of it. There is yet another very pretty piece of arithmetic. Little Jean was a thoughtful man. When he comes back home after his long years of Legion he will perhaps sit down and work out how much he has earned in these eight, long, hard years. The example would look like this: Francs First year of service, 5 centimes a day 18.25 Second year of service, 5 centimes a day 18.25 Third year of service, 5 centimes a day 18.25 Fourth year of service, 10 centimes a day 36.50 Fifth year of service, 10 centimes a day 36.50 ------ Grand Total 127.75 The other three years? In these Little Jean worked free, gratis, for nothing. These three years were "rabiau," as they say in the Legion, of no use, superfluous. In his three "rabiau" years Little Jean naturally got no pay. Why should a convict get paid? So you see Little Jean's earnings amounted to the grand total of 127 francs 75 centimes--earned in eight years. Besides all this, this worthless fellow had been fed all this time! And clothed into the bargain. Yes--c'est la Légion! * * * * * The prison in the barracks at Sidi-bel-Abbès used always to loom before me like a threatening spectre. On both sides of the entrance to the barracks, close to the road, but separated from it by a high wall, lay the two little houses with their flat tin roofs which caught the sun's rays so pitilessly. Inside there were rows and rows of cell doors in the long narrow corridors. The single cells were a little more than three yards long and one yard broad; the general cells were perhaps five yards square. There was no light, and a little hole in the wall and an opening over the door were the sole means of ventilation. The floor was flagged or of clay. There was a wooden bench in each cell, a water-jug, and an old tin pail. The single cells and the general cells were exactly alike in their "fittings"--whether five men or fifty were shut up in these cells made no difference! They got, according to the regulations, one water-jug and one pail! I was never (and even to-day that is a satisfaction to me) shut up in the Legion's prison. But I have seen enough, when I was on guard there, to have had quite enough of the prison without any nearer experience of it. I repeat: five yards square, thirty, forty, or more occupants: an air-hole nine inches in diameter high up in the walls and a tiny crack over the door. Any of these cells would at once be condemned by a veterinary as unfit even for a pigsty! Before réveillé at five o'clock in the morning all the sentries on guard were marched up to the prison, and the sergeant opened the cells, whereupon an awful stench streamed out. He read out the names from the prison register, and the prisoners came out of the cells into the passage as their names were called. Then they began to clean up. The pails were carried by two men, accompanied by a sentry, to the sewer openings in the barrack-yard. When the bigger cells were over-filled (and this was almost always the case) they looked awful. The room was like a sewer, flooded, pestilential.... To clean the cells there were only a couple of old brooms in the prison. A few pails of water were flooded over the floor, carelessly and hurriedly, for the sergeants did not care about wasting too much time on the "prisonniers." A little water and a few strokes with the broom! What is not washed away trickles through the cracks and crannies in the stone floor and forms a new basis for pestilence. The bowl of black coffee which forms the légionnaire's breakfast is not given to the prisoners. They get no breakfast. They are allowed to wash themselves at the basin in the corridor. Then they are led out to work, on an empty stomach, frozen through by the chilly African night spent uncovered on a hard wooden bench, and faint from breathing in that pestilential atmosphere. All those who were sentenced to short terms of imprisonment were commandeered to clean up the barrack-yard, to split wood, and to break stones. The prisoners with longer sentences, and those in cellule, had to go out to the "march of punishment," marching round in a small circle for two hours on end, carrying heavy bags of sand, now and then doubling for the sake of variety. When the corporal in command was in bad temper he made them go through a course of Swedish gymnastics into the bargain. This was tremendous work when burdened with the heavy sack, and it strained the muscles and nerves in a way that nothing else could. At ten o'clock the prisoners were given soup. They never got full rations, since as long as they were in prison their mess allowance ceased as well as their pay. The soup is thin, and the piece of meat which swims in it is as small as may be.... Their bread rations consist of half of what they get in the company. The prisoners in solitary confinement are placed on starvation diet. Their soup consists of hot water with little bits of potatoes and bread-crusts, and they only get this every other day. In the interval they have to live on bread--on a quarter of the Legion's bread rations. One must have seen how terribly emaciated these poor fellows become in a few days to be able to do justice to the barbarity of a system which has three main ideas: undernourishment, overwork, frightful sanitary conditions. After they have finished "dinner," their work begins again. The drill suits had got dirty, and bore signs of the nights they had gone through. The operation, too, of emptying the tin pails cannot be performed without the suits being considerably the worse for it. But the drill suits were only changed when an inspection by the colonel was imminent, and clean underclothes were a luxury absolutely unknown in prison. The sergeants on guard always considered it an important part of their duties to treat the prisoners as badly as possible. In the prison it simply rained curses. Many sergeants took an especial delight in inspecting the prisoners every three hours throughout the night. They had to come out into the yard, and the sergeant read their names and numbers by the light of the lantern, taking as long about it as he could, while the poor wretches had to stand there motionless in their thin clothes for half an hour in the cold night air. This would be repeated three or four times a night. In this way the sergeant manages to while away his dreary night on guard, and had in addition the pleasing sense of having played his little part in the regiment's system of justice. Under discipline in the Foreign Legion they understand a series of variations, improvements or otherwise, on the mediæval systems of torture. It is merely the petty offences against discipline that are punished in these hovels. I was on the watch in the narrow corridor of one of these prisons, pacing to and fro on the cold flags with fixed bayonet. Eight hours before the poumpistes, Rader and the rest of them, had been brought in. Through the narrow opening between the wall and the prison, a little strip of starlit sky could be seen, and down the narrow passage the cold night wind howled. But it could not drive away the pestilential stench which hung heavy over the prison and which was perpetually being increased by the vapours from the ventilation holes and the tiny openings in the cellules. This awful smell tortured my nerves and rendered sentry-go in the prison anything but pleasant. Besides Rader and his fellow-deserters, there were forty others in the general cell. When at ten o'clock at night the sergeant inspected the prison and the cells were opened, I saw how the men lay huddled together on the wooden benches, man to man, like sardines packed in a tin. But in spite of this scarcely twenty out of the forty prisoners could find room on the bench. The others crouched in the corners, sleeping with their knees drawn up to their chins; several lay on the bare floor, filthy though it was. It was freezing cold for them in their thin drill clothes. The prison blankets they had been given were hardly worth calling blankets, ancient rags, so thin that one could see through them like a veil and so small that the men had the choice of covering their feet or their bodies; the blankets were not big enough to do both. They were stiff with dirt and most of them were alive with vermin. In the daytime they were just thrown into a corner of the cell. It was no wonder that the men who had just been shut up in this cell could not sleep. Once I heard Rader ask gently who was doing sentry. He must have stood on the shoulders of one of his comrades to be able to reach the ventilation hole, which was high up in the wall. When I answered it was I, he said he could not stand it any more in there--hadn't I a cigarette? I spitted a packet of cigarettes on my bayonet and handed it up to him. "Keep up your pecker, old man," I whispered. "Good Lord, good Lord ..." was the reply, in a pitiful tone which hadn't even a touch of Rader's droll humour left in it. The sound of groans and curses reached me continually from the cell; all spoke very gently for they knew that they would be severely punished if a noise was heard. It is a prison custom for the sentry in the corridor to let the butt of his rifle fall loudly on the floor when he hears the sergeant coming. This is a warning signal. When in their excitement they spoke a little louder I could now and then hear through the opening what they were saying. In eloquent French, one of the prisoners, whose accent proclaimed him to be a man of education, was complaining of life in the Legion, and all was still in the cell while the ringing voice spoke in passionate excitement. Snatches of what I heard are still fixed in my memory: "My God, if I could only die!--My friends, I've always done my duty here.--I've marched and marched and marched for four long years.--For four years I've borne burdens, exposed to wind and weather, and have tired my strength.--Four long years! Yes, I've lost my tie, oh, la la, a thin blue rag worth a couple of centimes--and was marched off to prison! I'd stolen the tie, I'd sold it--who believes the word of a légionnaire! _Mea culpa_, my friends!" "_Mea maxima culpa!_" repeated the speaker quietly. "'Tis true one has never been much use and has made a monstrous thing of one's life--you and I and all of us! And why not? That's all past and done with now. All the same--I'm ashamed of the country in which the Foreign Legion can exist. I'm a Frenchman. But I say: Damn the Legion, damn the land of the Legion...." And over all there hung the pestilential vapours in the tiny room with the crowded humanity within. When I was relieved at midnight the sergeant asked: "Anything unusual?" "No, nothing special," I answered. CHAPTER XIII SOME TYPES OF VICE A variety of human vices : The red wine of Algeria : Shum-Shum : If there were no wine It was always a marvel to me that neither cards nor dice played the slightest part in the life of the Legion, in sharp contrast with the important part they take in the life of the English Tommy, and especially of the American soldier, who is an incorrigible gambler. On a little station in Texas a detachment of sly old regulars in the course of the single night that they were quartered there cleaned out all the cowboys of the neighbourhood. I was one of the victims. But that's another story.... Anyhow, the Legion is free from the vice of gambling. This is perhaps hardly to be wondered at; five centimes wages. The possibility of winning or losing five centimes is hardly worth a throw of the dice. In its place all the vices of almost every nation in the world can be found in the Foreign Legion. This is not saying too much; I've looked on. Vicious influences are, however, much stronger in Indo-China and in French Tonquin, where the garrisons of the various stations are all drawn from the Legion. Veterans like Smith used to tell me things about the life in Tonquin that almost made my hair stand on end. In the inland districts the stations are quite small, and a few légionnaires have to look after a large number of natives. The entire system of justice on such a station, including the power of life and death, lies in the hands of a couple of young officers and a few sergeants and corporals. Surrounded by all possible human vices in their very worst forms, to whose influence the deadly monotony inevitable on one of these stations is added, the men live exposed to constant danger occasioned both by the intrigues among the natives and the murderous climate. The one seeks relief in spirits, the other swears by opium. The fact that opium-smoking plays an important part in the life of the French Navy and among the French Army officers in the Colonies has been made public often enough already: every veteran in the Legion knows well enough that in Toulon and Marseilles there are countless opium dens which depend solely on the custom of French officers. These opium dens were thoroughly discussed in the French press during the trial of the midshipman Ullmo. The habit of opium-smoking has, in nearly all cases, been acquired in Indo-China. Spirits, opium, and loneliness form the fruitful soil in which the Legion's vice takes root. In solitary cases even the officers come under its influence. When this happens the results are sometimes very terrible.... Among the garrisons of Indo-China the most notorious used to be those of Sui-can and Bac-le. A certain Lieutenant Duchesne, who was later killed in battle, many say by his own men, and the fact that the bullet hit him in the back goes to prove the truth of this statement, has made his name immortal in the Legion in this connection. Though he has been dead several years, one still hears of his cruelty. His légionnaires were all forced to submit themselves to his vicious freaks, resistance being punished with the penal section, which is ten times worse in Tonquin than those in Algeria. The obedient, however, were promoted. Even to-day the same sort of thing can be found here and there in Indo-China. There are always stories like this to be heard in the Legion, adjutants and sous-officiers being freely named who are said to owe their promotion to the vicious preference of some officer or other. A good deal is perhaps spiteful gossip, but the stories are so frequent, and the details given are so minute, that there must be a certain amount of truth in them. In addition to these outside influences, a further cause of depravity is the involuntary celibacy to which the légionnaire is subjected. And this celibacy has its origin in a financial consideration: the five centimes per day. ... One always comes back again to the same point from which one started. Whoever really knows the Foreign Legion, whoever takes the trouble to probe the depths of its misery and sin, of its brutality and vice, always comes back, like a man walking in a circle, to the same source of all its ills: the pitiful wage that's not worth calling a wage which this business enterprise pays: this infamous business enterprise that a chivalrous nation has so long tolerated and tolerates still. * * * * * All human vices are to be found in the Legion. And first among the minor ones comes drunkenness. This takes the first place, occurring most frequently and being the most characteristic and easily indulged, in a country where the price of a litre of heavy wine varies between ten and twenty centimes. Das ist ja eben das Malheur: Wer Sorgen hat, trinkt auch Likör. "The man who has troubles, drinks"--Algerian wine, or in Indo-China a horrible spirit, which is distilled, I believe, from rice and which rejoices in the name of "Shum-Shum," and has the advantage of an uncommonly high percentage of alcohol. It has only one drawback, and that is its infernal smell, which delicate European noses cannot stand. The légionnaire, however, drinks it: while drinking he holds his nose, since he hardly values its aroma as he does its alcohol. I have often heard old légionnaires singing the praises of Shum-Shum. One could get accustomed to its smell, they said, and it made one very, very drunk. The droll verses of the old German humourist, Wilhelm Busch, with their subtle point, might have been written for the Legion. How they drank in the canteen of the Foreign Legion in Sidi-bel-Abbès. The litre--a litre of wine--took the place of the current coinage. Thus it was nothing unusual for a légionnaire, when asked to wash for a comrade well endowed with this world's goods, to raise one finger: that meant, of course, a litre. "If we hadn't wine...." I shall never forget Smith's pet expression. There are no statistics on this point. I am, however, quite certain that a good half of the miserable wages paid to the Foreign Legion are spent in purchasing the red wine of Algiers. In addition to this, nine-tenths, nay ninety-nine-hundredths of the notes and postal orders which the légionnaires are continuously sent by anxious parents and relations in Europe go to swell the coffers of Madame la Cantinière. This is in no sense an accusation. When one considers the life of the soldier of the Legion with understanding, one recognises that no one in the world has more cares than he, no one a better right to his few hours of oblivion. Yes, the African légionnaire has a hard life, and drunkenness in his case is really almost excusable. I only want to show what a prominent rôle the red wine of Algeria does play in the life of the Legion. It is, it is true, the most general vice, but it is the only means of obtaining a few moments of bliss, and the sole source of pleasure. Wine is the cause of a great many punishments. Drunkenness is a "sale offense," to use the soldier's expression, a dishonourable offence that is severely punished, and which continually furnishes the penal section with new material. As an instance of this I will give you the story of a man in my company, a Belgian named Lascelles. At regular intervals he got a postal order for a small sum sent him from some relative in Europe. On receiving his money, he vanished as soon as he came off duty and did not come back to the barracks again for at least twenty-four hours. As long as his coppers lasted, he used to go from wine-shop to wine-shop and empty bottle after bottle. On his return he would be immediately locked up for overstaying his leave of absence; generally, however, to celebrate the event he had made a great disturbance, and committed a series of more or less grave offences, for each of which he was punished singly. Every month the time he spent in prison grew longer and longer, beginning with a trifling eight days and increasing to a month's solitary confinement. In between whiles, Lascelles was a capital soldier, who did his work willingly enough. When, however, his name was read out at roll-call--a postal order for Lascelles--one could be sure that a day later would find him in prison once more. In a few months he had worked his way up the regimental scale of punishments, and then came the inevitable end and he was sent off to the penal section. Lascelles' misfortunes were at any rate his own fault. It often happens, however, that spiteful sergeants in the Legion take advantage of a man's love of drink to work his ruin. A sergeant has a spite against a man and waits patiently for the day when he comes into the barracks in a state of intoxication. He then follows him to his quarters and gives him some order or other. The man feels how needless and spiteful this is, and, being hardly in a condition to think of danger, answers with a curse. This is just what is wanted. Even when the man is sober enough to do what he has been ordered, he is severely punished for his curse. Should he continue to be "insubordinate" he comes before the court-martial. This is a very old trick in the Legion, and only recruits or very old légionnaires under the influence of drink and suffering at the same time from the cafard are caught by it. The average légionnaire is careful, and, drunk or sober, obeys every order no matter how furious he may be. "Nix Zephyrs pour moi," he says. "Ah yes, there is another side to the proverb, 'If there were no wine....'" * * * * * Every vice was represented there. The most brutal egotism and boundless avarice ruled that hard life. One grudged one's comrade a crust of bread, a sip of wine, or a piece of meat. The man who had a few shillings sent him was an object of hate and envy. Intrigue--slander--lying--theft--the Legion brings all the bad points in a man's character to full development. Whose fault is it? CHAPTER XIV MY ESCAPE In the Arab prison : The letter : Days of suffering : Flight! : The greedy "Crédit Lyonnais" : Haggling in the Ghetto : The palm grove as a dressing-room : On the railway track : Arab policemen : Horrible minutes : Travelling to Oran : Small preparations : On the steamer _St. Augustine_ : Marseilles-Ventimiglia : Free The days came and the days went, and with every day I understood more what it meant to be a légionnaire in Africa. The knowledge so gained was not pleasant. One day I was on guard in the Arab prison of Sidi-bel-Abbès, an ugly, gloomy building in the middle of the town. An old retired sergeant of the Legion was overseer of the Arab prison, and with the help of two gendarmes kept the Arab prisoners in strictest order. The prison was always crowded with native sinners, for the petty thefts in the market-place and the constant fights in the negro quarter kept the cells of that grey building near the Place Sadi Carnot always full. The native prisoners had often made trouble, and mutinies had been quite frequent. The last outbreak had been very serious, so since that time the Legion had sent a guard every day to the Arab prison consisting of a corporal and six men. My rifle with fixed bayonet over my shoulder, I kept pacing slowly on the top of the broad wall surrounding the prison in an enormous square. The sun burned down pitilessly. In the tiny courtyard small groups of Arab prisoners cowered in the sulky silence of inactivity. All talking was forbidden in the prison. The overseer's sharp words of command now and then, and the ring of my steps on the stones of the wall, sounded into the silence. Mechanically I followed the path prescribed for "sentry-go," marching round and round the prison square. From the high wall I had a view of all Sidi-bel-Abbès. The town was like a city of the dead in this frightful heat. The blinds in all the houses were pulled down and there was not a soul to be seen in the streets. In the hot, trembling air the faint outlines of the mountains of Thessala glittered in the far distance. There was not a breath of wind. Two légionnaires in white fatigue uniforms turned into the street leading to the prison. They were men from our company, bringing us our evening soup. They called out something to me that I could not understand and I acknowledged it with an indifferent nod. Then they knocked at the gate of the prison and had to wait an age till the overseer opened it with his jingling bunch of keys and they could carry their soup-pail into the guard-room. Some minutes later one of them came into the yard by the guard-room and beckoned to me to come nearer to him. As I approached, I saw that he held a white something in his hand. "Eh, une lettre pour toi!" he cried. "Here's a letter for you." Very much annoyed I called down to him to hurry up and get out of this. It was too hot for practical jokes. I never got letters.... "But here is one," said the man. "Your name, your company, your number--everything all right! La la--I'm off--I'll give your letter to the corporal. May Allah better your bad temper! Sapristi, how hot it is!" I had to wait half an hour until I was relieved. Those were terrible minutes. A letter--a letter for me? It seemed almost impossible. There was nobody in the world who could or should know where I was or what I was doing. The blood rose in hot waves to my head--and all at once I recognised that there was only one human being who could have written to me--that her love was not dead. Slowly the seconds, the minutes went by. I waited in indescribable suspense. The sun was sinking. The houses of Sidi-bel-Abbès were bathed in its ruddy glow. Below me in the prison yard I heard a noisy chattering in guttural Arabic. The prisoners were being given their food and were then allowed to speak. The poor devils' chatter seemed to pierce my brain; that buzzing noise down below hurt me, until I could not stand it any longer. "Be quiet there!" I cried. There was immediate silence. A gendarme called out to me that I had made a mistake and that talking was allowed. "Pas defendu de parler," he said to the prisoners, and the Arabs looked up at me with angry eyes. And I had to go on waiting, waiting.... This awful suspense seemed to have lasted for hours when the corporal at last came to relieve me. The conventionality of passing orders and sentry instructions was being gone through; we were on service and it was contrary to all discipline--but I could not wait any longer. "You've a letter for me, corporal?" I asked. "Yes, there is a letter for you," he answered. "You can have it as soon as I have done relieving the sentries. En avant--marche!" A new period of anxious waiting and torturing expectation.... At last the corporal of the guard came back and put his hand in his pocket: "Voilà!" On the white envelope I saw the characters of the handwriting I knew so well. I went out into the square which was now empty, as the prisoners had been locked up in their cells again. I read and read--again and again.... Love stretched out its hand to the lost soldier of the Legion and spoke to him of happiness to come. Long years hence when the légionnaire would be no longer a légionnaire. The letter's many pages bore traces of tears. I wanted to tear off my uniform, that brand of slavery condemning me to inactivity. Within me all was in a whirl. In the darkness of the ugly court I dreamed dreams of the past and hopes of the future so hopelessly far off. During the four hours from watch to watch I sat motionless in the prison-yard. In these few hours there came to me that energy which meant the beginning of a new life. Then it was my turn for sentry duty again. And then I sat down at the small table in the guard-room while the corporal and the other men slept, and wrote an endless letter with the corporal's pencil on the back of report forms. Page upon page.... The next day a letter from my mother came; a letter that neither asked questions nor held reproaches. It only spoke of love and anxiety for me. This letter solved the riddle of how my whereabouts had been discovered. After long months of waiting and wondering the people who loved me got the idea that I might be in the Foreign Legion, since the last letter they received from me had been dated from the French fortress, Belfort. My mother wrote to the general in command of the fortress and to the French Secretary of War. The answer was long delayed, but at last the news came that I had joined the Foreign Legion at Sidi-bel-Abbès--that I was the légionnaire number 17889! With that hour in the Arab prison which brought me the first letter, the days of suffering began. I performed my duty and did my work like a machine, thinking of nothing but the letters which the next post would bring me. I hardly spoke a word to anybody in those times. When I was off duty I went for long walks in the still paths by the fortifications in order to be alone. Finally only one idea governed my thoughts: Flight! Week after week I received letters every day, begging and beseeching me to have patience. I was to remember that all hopes for the future would be shattered if I was caught deserting. Better to wait for years than to risk everything. But I could not wait. And one day there came a registered letter from my mother. When I opened it, I held banknotes for a large sum of money in my hand.... This meant freedom! I crossed the court of the barracks as one in a dream. This money in my pocket meant new life for me--my mother had for the second time given me life. I knew what a sacrifice this money meant; how hard it must have been for my mother with her tiny widow's pension to scrape together such a sum of money for me. And all at once a wave of happiness overcame me--I should be free! I should be able to thank those loving ones who were helping me.... * * * * * I got that letter at five o'clock in the afternoon. I was just off duty and had come back to the barracks, having been pulling out weeds in the Legion's cemetery. That should be my last bit of work as légionnaire. Not a single hour I intended to wait. There was no more rest for me in the land of Sidi-bel-Abbès. In our quarters my comrades were sitting at supper as I came back from the regimental post-bureau, and Smith was much surprised at my eating nothing, and at my putting on at once my extra uniform. He looked suspiciously at me, as if he had an idea that I had something out of the way on my mind. I would have been only too glad to say a last good-bye to the old bugler who had been a true friend to me in his rough way, but he was sitting at table with the rest of the men. When I had finished dressing and had quietly taken my letters and the few trifles I wanted to take with me out of my knapsack, Smith came up and lay down on his bed as usual after supper. "Good-bye, old man," I whispered. "You've been a good fellow." Smith did not move. Only his eyes lighted up.... "Got money?" he asked gently. "Yes." "Then it's all right. Good-bye, sonny--good-bye!" As I went out the other men were sitting on the benches doing the various odd jobs which were part of life in the Legion. They rubbed and polished--polished and rubbed. At that time they were hardly more to me than a passer-by in the street. Now, I confess, the face of every one of them is indelibly burnt into my brain. I was to be subjected to a final annoyance. The sergeant of the guard stopped me at the gate of the barracks, because in my excitement I had buttoned up my overcoat on the wrong side. He said he had a good mind to turn me back for my carelessness. "Nom de Dieu! you pig, don't you know that this month the overcoats are buttoned on the right side?" But he let me go. Through the crowd of légionnaires I hurried down the promenade. The first place I had to go to was the "Crédit Lyonnais," the famous French bank which had a branch in Sidi-bel-Abbès near the Place Sadi Carnot. The greater part of my money consisted of Belgian banknotes, which naturally were not in circulation in Algeria, and I thought I should be able to have them changed at the bank more quickly and cheaply than anywhere else. There I made a mistake. The clerk at the counter explained in a roundabout way that Belgian banknotes were of no use to them, and that it would cost a lot of money to send them to Paris. He was only greedy, of course (everybody in Sidi-bel-Abbès is), and trying to get an especially high commission out of me. Perhaps he thought that a légionnaire should be too pleased at having so much money to bother about a few francs more or less. There he was in error. I replied I should complain to the colonel of my regiment that the only bank in Sidi-bel-Abbès tried to overcharge a simple soldier. Whereupon this greedy clerk of a world-famous bank grumblingly took my notes and gave me French money for them. Through the brightly illuminated main streets, saluting officers right and left, I hurried to the Ghetto. In the very first alley of the Ghetto I met an old fellow who looked promising. I tapped him on the shoulder. "Eh! Civilian clothes?" The Jew raised his forefinger warningly. "Can't sell to légionnaires." I turned on my heels and went slowly on. But he was after me already. "How much?" "Twenty francs." "Fifty!" "Thirty." "Forty-five!" "Look here," I said. (The conversation was held in bad Algerian French, of course.) "I'll give you forty francs, and that settles it. But I've got to have those clothes quick." The Jew looked at me dubiously, and held out the palms of his hands. One could not be mistaken about the gesture: he had his doubts about my solvency. So I reassured the old man by showing him a few gold pieces. Now the son of Israel was quite satisfied, and led me a few steps farther on into a house. A tiny little lamp was smoking in a foul-smelling room. "Sarah!" called out my companion. An old woman came hobbling out of a neighbouring room, and when she heard what was wanted went off and fetched a heap of clothes. Amongst them there was a suit which looked fairly respectable. It fitted me pretty well, and in the natural order of things we began haggling again. Fifty francs changed hands. Then I gave the Ghetto man another gold piece. "Now hurry up and get me a hat somewhere, a pair of boots, a collar and a tie." But here the fat old woman with her shrill voice began to make difficulties. I was bringing misfortune on them. It was after business hours anyway. I must not stay in the house any longer--it was far too dangerous. "Allez vous en--allez vous en!" The old lady began to get on my nerves, and I went willingly enough. At the corner I waited for the old Jew. In ten minutes he came back, and said that he could for twenty francs get me a really good outfit, boots, an extra collar, a good hat and a pair of gloves; for an extra twenty he could procure an excellent revolver. He got the money, and after a short time came back with two bundles. At the end of the next street there was the high wall of the fortifications. From the inside I could climb over easily enough. The drop to the ground on the other side was a pretty big one, but I landed unhurt in the sand, in the middle of a palm grove. From the open windows of a villa close to the grove a flood of light streamed, and I could hear the merry sounds of a waltz. I could see the couples dancing. Many officers were amongst them. But there was no danger of being seen; it was pitch dark among the palms. In feverish haste I tore off my uniform and put on the civilian clothes. They fitted me well. It was quite a strange feeling fastening a collar and tie once more.... And when I had changed I nailed uniform and overcoat, and boots and belt, and everything to a palm with the bayonet, wondering who would find them in the morning! I drew on my gloves and my toilet was complete. In the villa the band (it was the Legion's band too) was playing a German waltz: "Das ist das süsse Mädel...." With a feeling very much akin to fright I walked to the nearest gate in the fortification walls. The soldiers on guard there, however, did not take the slightest notice of me. This gave me more confidence. Slowly and unostentatiously I crossed the promenade as though I were merely a respectable citizen out for a stroll. Légionnaires were promenading everywhere. More than once I had to turn and make a detour to avoid meeting non-commissioned officers of my own company. It was an exciting walk. At last I had passed through the main streets and came to a suburban road leading straight to the railway station. The little station was quite deserted. I looked carefully about me to see whether anybody was watching me, and then climbed down the steep embankment to the railroad tracks, leading straight to the north to Oran. In the meantime it had become quite dark. From afar the lights of the station and of the switch-signals were shining; the lines themselves lay hidden in pitch-darkness. I began to run. At first I kept stumbling over the sharp stones between the rails and once I fell at full length. Soon, however, I got the hang of the thing, springing from sleeper to sleeper. I ran as hard as I could. A quarter of an hour, half an hour. Then I had to stop, coughing and out of breath. It was beginning to drizzle. The landscape was cloaked in inky darkness and there was only a faint gleam of light on the horizon far behind me to show where Sidi-bel-Abbès lay.... As far as I could tell I must have covered about five kilometres. My feet were paining me. I drew off one of my boots and found that there were long rows of nails sticking up inside and that the soles were damp with blood. I tore up my handkerchief and made a pad from the rags to cover the nails. But the horrible little monsters bored through even this. Anyhow, it was far better than before. I examined the revolver in my pocket and it was a pleasant surprise to find that it was a capital weapon, a Browning pistol. The old Jew, who certainly knew nothing about weapons, had, with the revolver, atoned for his sins in the matter of boots! Once more I started forward. My feet had to get accustomed to the nails whether they liked it or not. From now on I kept up an alternate double and walk, husbanding my strength as I had learnt to do in the Legion, running five minutes at the double and then walking five minutes, always following the railway's bee-line for the north. Once I heard the roar of a train behind me and lay down flat in the sand by the rails. Thus hour after hour went by. I had already passed three stations, which merely consisted of a few houses which lay there deserted in the darkness. As I passed a lonely signal-house a dog began to bark and I started off in deadly terror, running like a madman till I had left the beast tearing at his chain far behind me. How thankful I was for the silence and darkness.... I breathed with difficulty, I had been running so hard. My clothes were soaked with sweat, and when I stopped for a moment to rest, an icy shiver passed over my whole body. But I pulled myself together, for I wanted to reach a medium-sized station, where it would not be so noticeable when I took a ticket for Oran. The rain soon stopped again. And now the moon began to shine fitfully through the gaps in the clouds, even this faint light being much more than I cared about. A terrible fear of being seen by a police patrol came over me. All at once the country became hilly. On either side of the rails there lay mighty rocks, great jagged boulders of sandstone, and I rejoiced in the shelter they gave me. I had been running for some minutes between the rocks when I heard a strange noise. At first I thought it was another train. But as the sound grew nearer and grew clearer I knew what it was: galloping horses! Through a gap in the rocks I could see the fine white line which marked the road. It was scarcely a hundred yards away from the railway. On this road a patrol was coming along at a gallop.... Had the police already seen me? Just before, where the country was flat, my silhouette must have stood out sharply defined against the sky in the moonlight. In a paroxysm of fear I crawled in between two rocks and held my breath to listen. The horses drew nearer and nearer, the beat of their hoofs on the roadway ringing out loud and clear. Peeping out of my hiding-place I could see the dark forms of horses and their riders. Now they were up with me. I heard a sharp exclamation in Arabic. The three men pulled up their horses and came to a halt. I pulled out my pistol. The barrel shone in the moonlight. I hastily covered up the weapon with my coat, for fear it should betray my hiding-place. Then I carefully cocked the pistol and felt whether the cartridge-frame was in order. A feeling of icy calmness came upon me. I made up my mind not to stir from my hiding-place and not to fire until the gendarmes were quite close to me in their search. I considered the matter carefully. Two full cartridge-frames I took in my left hand, ready to refill the chamber. My idea was to empty the magazine in quick shooting in order to get in as many shots as possible before they recovered from their surprise. Down below some one lit a match. It burned for a moment only. I heard one of the gendarmes laugh. Then the three men galloped forward again. One of them must have asked his comrades for a match.... The noise of the galloping horses was soon lost in the distance, but for a long time I sat trembling from head to foot between the two rocks. The tears of over-excitement were running down my face as I put up the pistol. I could have yelled for joy that this awful danger was over. When I stood up again, I fell back against the rocks. My trembling knees could not support my body.... * * * * * Les Imberts was the name of the station. It was forty-two kilometres distant from Sidi-bel-Abbès; in seven hours I had covered a distance of about thirty English miles. When at four o'clock in the morning I reached the station and deciphered its name and its distance from Sidi-bel-Abbès in the darkness, there was not a human being to be seen. The stillness of night still lay upon everything. A few hundred yards from the station a number of freight cars stood. I jumped into one of them and studied, lighting one match after another, the Algerian time-table which my careful mother had sent me. The first train to Oran went at a few minutes past five. The first thing to be done was to care for my outer man a little. I climbed out of the car again and found, after a long search, a barrel half full of water standing under a shed. Day was just breaking. After a very hurried wash I hid again in one of the cars, brushing my clothes and cleaning my boots with my handkerchief. I was very glad of the extra collar which my friend of the Ghetto had purchased. Finally I had a look at myself in my tiny looking-glass. It would do! Indeed, the effect was not half bad. It would do very well; decently dressed people were scarce in Algeria.... At five o'clock I started on a roundabout route for the station. A dozen people stood waiting on the platform, amongst them an Arab policeman leaning lazily against the wall. I went straight up to the ticket office. "Oran--première classe!" "Sept-soixante," said the official. "Seven francs and sixty centimes." I jumped into the nearest first-class compartment, and found to my joy that it was empty. The train started off. During the two hours' journey from Les Imberts to Oran I brought my dress into decent order and smoked innumerable cigarettes to drive away my sleepiness. At the barrier in Oran a sergeant of Zouaves and a corporal of the Legion were watching for deserters, but they didn't take the slightest notice of me. Until ten o'clock I wandered about the town. Then I went to the office of the French Mediterranean line and took a second-class ticket for Marseilles. The passenger boat _St. Augustine_ was due to start at five in the afternoon. All at once I became very sleepy. I could hardly keep my eyes open, but I had not the courage to go to an hotel and rest there for a few hours. So I went into a restaurant and enjoyed a long-drawn-out French dinner and a bottle of heavy Burgundy. Suddenly I remembered that it would look suspicious if I started on a sea voyage without any luggage. For a few francs I procured a big valise whose paste-board sides looked really "the same as leather," and bought newspapers at every corner to stuff my "luggage" with. At a few minutes to five I went on board the steamer. With a cigarette between my lips and a bundle of newspapers under my arm I walked up and down the deck, read _Le Rire_, and did all I could to assume a careless mien. In reality I was in a very serious situation. The question was: Had a telegram from the regiment with my description reached Oran already or not? The half-hour struck, but the _St. Augustine_ was still in dock. Police came and went. All at once I felt myself go pale as death; a patrol of four Zouave sergeants was coming up the gangway. They went over the whole ship, looking carefully about them. Then they interchanged a few words with the captain and went on again.... I was just beginning to breathe again, when a gendarme came up to me and asked, saluting courteously: "Monsieur is a Frenchman?" "Non, monsieur, an Englishman," I answered quietly, and smiled at the gendarme in spite of the icy fear gripping at my heart. If he should chance on the idea of asking for my papers I was lost! "Your name, please?" "Eugene Sanders." "Profession?" "Engineer--from Tlemcen--on the way to Nice." "Thank you." ... After a few minutes the ship's bell rang out, the gangways were pulled in, and the screw began to revolve. I went into my cabin and went to sleep. During the whole of the sea voyage I had not a single thought, not a single hope, not a single fear--I merely slept. As the _St. Augustine_ ran into harbour in Marseilles, a new difficulty presented itself. What would the custom-house say to my valise filled with paper? Luggage of this sort would have made anybody suspicious. Chance came to my aid. A number of boats crowded around the ship, and several boatmen climbed on board to offer their services as porters, and so on. I went up to one of them and told him that I wanted to be put on shore as quickly as possible. Could he do it? "For five francs," the fellow said. "All right. Row me over." My satchel I left on board to avoid the customs inspection. A gangway had already been let down from the side of the steamer, and I stepped down into the boat with my boatman. Ten minutes later I stood on the "quai" in Marseilles. In another five minutes I had found a cab and was on my way to the station. Half an hour later I was seated in a compartment of an express train for the Riviera. A Riviera journey in the darkness.... Toulon flew past--Cannes. In Nice I could hear even in the railway-train the noise of the carnival which was nearing its end--the platform was covered with confetti. We reached Monaco--Monte Carlo, with its brilliantly illuminated casino. At last we reached Ventimiglia: the first Italian station! It was one o'clock in the morning. I stormed into the telegraph-office and despatched two telegrams to my two dearest.... Free--free again! CHAPTER XV J'ACCUSE Two years after : Shadows of the past : My vision : Public opinion and the Foreign Legion : The political aspect of the Foreign Legion : The moralist's point of view : The "Legion question" in a nutshell : A question the civilised world should have answered long ago : Quousque tandem...? Two years have passed. They were years of fighting and years of toil. Years in which I burnt much midnight oil, and in which every tiny success meant worlds to me. My personal attitude towards the Foreign Legion was a rather peculiar one at first. For several months I forced myself never even to think of the time when I was in the Legion. Those times should merely be to me a dim shadow of the past. I looked upon them as an ugly page that I should only too gladly have torn out of the book of my life: since, however, I could not rid myself of them in this way I avoided ever opening the book at this page.... But the past which we should like to forget has an unpleasant way of forcing itself upon us, unbidden and against our will. Often as I lay back in my arm-chair in an idle quarter of an hour, scenes from my life in the Legion mingled dimly with the blue smoke of my cigarette. An endless procession of légionnaires would pass before me, a procession of men loaded like beasts of burden, their backs bent almost double, panting and gasping as they struggled forward in the sand: I could see their staring eyes, their rounded backs. I felt the tortures they were undergoing, how they struggled forward till their last ounce of strength was spent: even their groans were audible to me. Every one of these men seemed to look at me with hatred. You sit there in your arm-chair? In an atmosphere of culture? Amongst beautiful things of art? You belong to us! Off to your place, légionnaire, on the wing of the first row of fours in the eleventh company. Quick march, légionnaire, or die! When I spent a golden coin on some amusement I seemed to see the hands of the légionnaires, trembling claw-like hands, grasping for my money and trying to rend it from me. Gold! Wealth unheard of after the miserable coppers of the Legion! Give it to us, said those fingers, give it to us! Have you forgotten our five centimes, légionnaire? My imagination worried me. I gave a part of the story of my life price, and after much hesitation wrote this book. I have only described the ordinary routine of life in the regiment of foreigners as I myself experienced it. It is merely a tiny part of what every légionnaire undergoes. I wanted to show the légionnaire--how he lives, and how he must work. I did not dream of being able to warn foolish young fellows about the Legion. It is impossible to warn a fool. But I thought, and think still, that a true and exact description of the French Foreign Legion would perhaps help to put an end to an institution which is a disgrace to civilised humanity, and which should be to the civilised nations of to-day as unintelligible as the slave trade.... And above all I wanted to get rid of those visions which troubled me. In considering the Foreign Legion one must above all be careful not to go to work with common-places, nor to start from general axioms. The idea is so prevalent that the soldiers of the Foreign Legion are lost and ruined men, even criminals--morally and practically useless at best. A good-for-nothing lot of fellows who are no loss to anybody. One is apt to dispose of the légionnaire in a few trite remarks. Men of learning write from their arm-chairs to the papers about "the hirelings who have sold themselves into slavery, thus helping to revive the feudal system of the Middle Ages." If, however, the question were more closely inquired into, I am sure that it would be found that these rogues and vagabonds are not, in reality, quite so bad. True, I can bring forward no positive proof of this. There are no statistics about the Foreign Legion, and I am in no better position than any other human being to bring forward authentic material. There are not even official figures about the strength of the two regiments. I admit, willingly enough, that a large percentage of the men in the Foreign Legion really deserve the callous summing up that one is wont to apply to the whole regiment. All that I have seen and heard in Africa, however, has convinced me that the other and greater part of the men in the Foreign Legion are anything but the lost souls one imagines them to be. They come into the Legion as poor workmen. Their story is the sad one of the vagabond workman who had to starve on the French high road, because he could not speak the language. It is these men who have always formed the heart of the Foreign Legion. It is the pangs of hunger that drives men into the Foreign Legion--French and English, Germans and Italians, Spaniards and Austrians, men of all countries, men of all races. Yes, hunger is a most efficient recruiting sergeant for the Foreign Legion. The hungry man who seeks a refuge in the Foreign Legion gets, it is true, his daily bread; he is, all the same, disgracefully swindled. It cannot be repeated often enough how hard the légionnaire has to work, how miserable his existence is, how he gives his whole strength for a wage that is not worth mentioning. We are so practical in our modern ideas of life; every workman knows well enough the exact value of his work in the current coin of the realm, and takes advantage of every opportunity of getting a higher wage. And, in an age which is ever improving the standard of living, and which has so absolutely changed the ideas of the poorer classes, how is it possible that a business concern like the Foreign Legion--it is really nothing but a business concern, a commercial undertaking--can always get hundreds and thousands of labourer-soldiers, for a wage compared with which the wages of the tiniest village are riches? The results are startling when one compares the Foreign Legion with the world's two other mercenary armies, those of America and England, both of which countries, by-the-by, take great care to keep up a certain moral standard among their soldiers. These two armies, in sharp contrast to the Foreign Legion, pay their soldiers exceptionally well. The least that an American regular receives is thirteen dollars a month; the English Tommy gets a shilling a day. And these are soldiers and not workmen. They are mercenaries, like the légionnaire, but at any rate they are well-paid mercenaries. The miserable wages, together with the existing conditions of life in the Legion, are enough to convince even a Frenchman that the existence of the Foreign Legion is a sin against the very first principles of humanity--and has been for eighty years. In the sand of Algeria, in the swamps of Madagascar, in the fever-pested plains of Tonquin, in the valleys of Mexico, there lie these men of every nation, these men who have died in the Foreign Legion, who have sold their lives for their rations and five centimes a day. If one leaves the dead in peace and only considers the living, one reaches the same conclusion: robbery, and robbery of the destitute at that! A sin against every principle of humanity! Oh, thrice accursed Legion: forcing inexperienced young fellows into its ranks, who would never join did they know what lies before them; absolutely callous as to the value of human life, forcing its soldiers to conditions of life which must ruin their health for ever! It is not for this alone that the Legion is answerable. It is also answerable for the vices of the Legion, for it is the life in the Legion that has brought the tiny seeds of these vices to full bloom. * * * * * About the political aspect of the Foreign Legion there can be no two opinions. The Foreign Legion is an antiquated, ridiculously out-of-date survival of the feudal system of the Middle Ages, with all the disadvantages of the mercenary system, but without the romantic halo which in days gone by hung around the soldiers of fortune. According to modern ideas, it is absolutely monstrous that one of the most cultured nations of the world should have in its pay a corps composed of men of all nationalities, and who are, as is generally acknowledged, very often foreign deserters, who enlist to save themselves from starvation. Their colours bear the unsatisfying motto, "Valeur et Discipline." The inscription on the national flag, "Honneur et Patrie"--"For Honour and our Country"--could hardly be given to these "mixed pickles." But these two words, "Valeur" and "Discipline," are pregnant with meaning. Comparisons with the English and American armies are not only of interest as far as the pay is concerned; there is in all respects a vast difference between these two armies and the Foreign Legion. Only men of British birth can join the British army. The American army takes foreigners into its ranks, but only those who possess the so-called first papers, _i.e._, have sworn before a magistrate that they intend to become American citizens after the prescribed five years. The American mercenary is looked upon as an American citizen and has to take the oath of allegiance. The Foreign Legion, on the other hand, knows no oath at all. The printed bit of paper that the recruit for the Foreign Legion signs is merely a contract, a statement of the conditions of service. This contract is the only chain which fetters the légionnaire to the Legion--a contract which, according to every one of our modern ideas of international law, is null and void. To-day, in international law, contracts opposed to public morality are much talked about, and what could be more immoral in every sense of the word than this contract that the French Republic makes with its recruits, this contract in which what is got out of a man and what he is paid stand in such an unsatisfying relation to each other. As I have said before, there can be no two opinions about the Foreign Legion. Every one with sound ideas of political economy must agree that it is an unheard-of condition of affairs when a nation is allowed to receive the deserters and criminals--I speak now of that other half of the Foreign Legion--of the States surrounding it, indeed from all the States in the world, with open arms, and to make use of them on principle for a special military organisation. One cannot speak too strongly about this transaction, which is a piece of military blackguardism with something more than despicable about it. And not only the feudalism of the Middle Ages survives in the Foreign Legion but also the morals of those times, when a poor devil enlisted because he did not know of anything better to do with his life: of those times when a deserter was valued because he made a pair of arms and legs the less in the opposing force. In the Foreign Legion's enlistment bureaux a recruit gets a special welcome when he announces that he is a deserter, and is then looked upon as a really valuable addition to the corps. It is also a fact that France offers sanctuary to all criminals who fly from justice. The Foreign Legion will only give up murderers--every other kind of criminal is safe there. And France's selfish reason for this is that she can thereby fill the ranks of a regiment that is always fighting for France and which is always ready to do the hardest work for her in the most unhealthy climates. The average Frenchman has, during the Legion's eighty years of existence, contented himself with attributing the successes of the Foreign Legion to the French flag, and has always looked upon the Foreign Legion as a profitable and patriotic institution. It is only quite of late that the Foreign Legion has come to be looked upon in France as a problem. To-day the Foreign Legion is not an institution that every Frenchman considers quite in the natural order of things. Even the French Ministry of War has busied itself with the "Legion problem." It could not, however, quite make up its mind to give up the Legion. The possibility of employing a soldier who receives five centimes a day, and who can be made use of for all sorts of dangerous undertakings in the worst of climates, is too great a temptation. Perhaps the real reason for this tenacity is that France, who is so proud of her military traditions, finds it hard to bring herself to dissolve a corps which has been in existence for more than eighty years and which has been led by many a famous general and marshal of France. It has been suggested that it would be a good idea to change the method of recruiting. Passports should be demanded to make sure that the recruit had not got into trouble with the authorities of his own country. Deserters from the armies of other countries should on no condition be accepted. There is a diversity of opinion about these suggestions in French military circles. One party asserts that with the deserters the Foreign Legion would lose the flower of its strength, the soldiers who have been trained in other armies. The other side urges that if the pay were raised and the time the men must serve in order to qualify for a pension shortened, the adventurous life in the Foreign Legion and the hope of promotion would always bring more than enough good stuff from all nations for service under the Legion's flag. In these debates the military point of view is the only one of importance and since, considered from this point of view, the Legion has always borne itself splendidly, things have been left as they were. All suggestions for a change in the organisation of the Legion have naturally been made very quietly. All the same the Legion has, of late, come very much before the public in France. There is no doubt that they are beginning to look at the Foreign Legion a little critically in France. The number of those who doubt that the country is right in keeping up this barbarous institution is growing daily. Referring to the great mutiny of the soldiers of the Legion at Saida, Jaurès wrote in the _Humanité_: "The Foreign Legion will doubtless be a source of everlasting difficulty to us; the idea of forming a body of troops for the French army from foreign deserters is at any rate an unusual one." This is a step in the right direction. They are beginning to talk about the problem of the Foreign Legion. Its existence is no longer considered absolutely natural. The question has been raised. If the Foreign Legion did not exist, and some member of the French parliament were to suggest the formation of a corps of foreign mercenaries, preferably foreign deserters, the suggestion would doubtless be received with indignation. The tactless politician would be sure to be confronted with the somewhat obvious remark that it would be unworthy of the dignity of France to gather a band of foreigners under the tricolour to defend French soil. One would hear some very pretty speeches on the subject. That sort of thing can be tolerated in the Balkan States or in Venezuela or Honduras, but not in our proud France. Some deputy or other would be certain to warn the nation--the warning is a very obvious one--that other States could institute Foreign Legions, filling their ranks with French deserters. Think of the shudder that would pass through the land at the idea of English ships manned by, or German colonies conquered by, French deserters. ... The Foreign Legion lives upon its past. The Frenchman is accustomed to it and hardly notices what an anachronism it is. The problem of the Legion is so easy. It can be divided into two questions: Is it fair to pay a man who works really hard a daily wage of five centimes? Is it fair to make use of a poor devil's misfortunes, or the fact that he has got into trouble with the authorities of his native land, in this way for national purposes? The answer to these questions is not difficult. In later years especially, the French Government has made a clean sweep of many French institutions that seemed to be incompatible with the fair fame of France. One can be quite sure that it will in course of time be recognised that the Foreign Legion must be done away with. One is only tempted to ask: How long will it last? _Quousque tandem...?_ Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London 
46705	----	In the Land of Mosques and Minarets _WORKS OF_ _FRANCIS MILTOUN_ [Illustration] _Rambles on the Riviera_ $2.50 _Rambles in Normandy_ 2.50 _Rambles in Brittany_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals of Northern France_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals of Southern France_ 2.50 _In the Land of Mosques and Minarets_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces_ 3.00 _Castles and Palaces of Italy_ 3.00 _The Automobilist Abroad_ _net_ 3.00 _Postage Extra_ [Illustration] _L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_ _New England Building_, _Boston, Mass._ [Illustration: The Caïd of the Msaaba Blanche McManus 1907] In the Land of Mosques & Minarets BY FRANCIS MILTOUN _Officier du Nicham Iftikhar_ Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Rambles in Normandy," "Rambles in Brittany," "Rambles on the Riviera," "Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces," etc. _With Illustrations from drawings and paintings done_ BY BLANCHE MCMANUS [Illustration: colophon] BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 1908 _Copyright, 1908_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ First Impression, April, 1908 _COLONIAL PRESS_ _Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co._ _Boston, U. S. A._ CHAPTER PAGE I. GOING AND COMING 1 II. THE REAL NORTH AFRICA 16 III. ALGERIA OF TO-DAY 42 IV. THE RÉGENCE OF TUNISIA AND THE TUNISIANS 57 V. THE RELIGION OF THE MUSSULMAN 74 VI. ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOSQUES 97 VII. POETRY, MUSIC, AND DANCING 113 VIII. ARABS, TURKS, AND JEWS 129 IX. SOME THINGS THAT MATTER--TO THE ARAB 146 X. "THE ARAB SHOD WITH FIRE" 169 XI. THE SHIP OF THE DESERT AND HIS OCEAN OF SAND 178 XII. SOLDIERS SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED--LÉGIONNAIRES AND SPAHIS 197 XIII. FROM ORAN TO THE MOROCCO FRONTIER 209 XIV. THE MITIDJA AND THE SAHEL 227 XV. THE GREAT WHITE CITY--ALGIERS 245 XVI. ALGIERS AND BEYOND 259 XVII. KABYLIE AND THE KABYLES 273 XVIII. CONSTANTINE AND THE GORGE DU RUMMEL 291 XIX. BETWEEN THE DESERT AND THE SOWN 309 XX. BISKRA AND THE DESERT BEYOND 320 XXI. IN THE WAKE OF THE ROMAN 336 XXII. TUNIS AND THE SOUKS 356 XXIII. IN SHADOW OF THE MOSQUE 371 XXIV. THE GLORY THAT ONCE WAS CARTHAGE 389 XXV. THE BARBARY COAST 402 XXVI. THE OASIS OF TOZEUR 414 INDEX 431 List of Illustrations PAGE THE CAÏD OF THE MSAÂBA _Frontispiece_ THE APPROACH BY SEA (Map) 8 THE EDGE OF THE DESERT _facing_ 12 "CIREUR" 27 THE FLIGHT OF THE MOORS (Map) 29 ALGERIA AND ITS PROVINCES (Map) _facing_ 42 TOUGGOURT _facing_ 44 FARMING, OLD STYLE 50 BATNA _facing_ 52 TUNISIA (Map) _facing_ 56 AN OLD SEAL OF THE BEY OF TUNIS 58 THE OLIVES WE EAT 68 THE WORLD OF ISLAM _facing_ 74 THE EIGHT POSITIONS OF THE PRAYING MUSSULMAN 81 THE MUEZZIN'S CALL TO PRAYER _facing_ 84 A MARABOUT _facing_ 90 IN AN ARAB CEMETERY _facing_ 96 GROUND PLAN OF A MOSQUE 100 A WINDOW IN AN ARAB HOUSE 105 KOUBA OF SIDI-BRAHIM _facing_ 106 AN ARABIAN MUSICIAN _facing_ 120 A FLUTE SELLER _facing_ 122 "SOUVENIR D'ALGÉRIE" (Music) 123 TYPES OF ARABS 131 JEWISH WOMEN OF TUNIS _facing_ 142 A DAUGHTER OF THE "GREAT TENTS" _facing_ 152 THE LIFE OF THE "GREAT TENTS" _facing_ 156 AN ARAB AND HIS HORSE IN GALA ATTIRE _facing_ 172 THE _MEHARI_ OF THE DESERT _facing_ 180 A DESERT CARAVAN _facing_ 186 THE ILLIMITABLE DESERT 191 THE SAND DUNES OF THE DESERT _facing_ 192 A CAPTAIN OF SPAHIS _facing_ 202 SOME NATIVE SOLDIERY 204 A GOUM _facing_ 206 ARAB MOSQUE AT BENI-OUNIF _facing_ 220 A _KIF_ SHOP _facing_ 222 LAGHOUAT _facing_ 224 HOTEL AT FIGUIG 225 MARKET, BOUFARIK 228 TOMB OF SIDI-YACOUB _facing_ 232 A MAURESQUE OF BLIDA _facing_ 234 FRIEZE AT THE RUISSEAU DES SINGES 243 ALGIERS AND ITS ENVIRONS (Map) _facing_ 244 A CEMETERY GATE _facing_ 256 A BOU-SAADA TYPE _facing_ 268 THINGS SEEN IN KABYLIE 285 A MINARET AT CONSTANTINE 294 A CONSTANTINE MOSQUE _facing_ 294 THE GORGE DU RUMMEL _facing_ 298 A MUSSULMAN FUNERAL 302 THE VILLAGE AND THE GORGE OF EL KANTARA _facing_ 316 BISKRA AND ITS ARAB VILLAGES (Map) 321 THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL DES ZIBAN, BISKRA _facing_ 322 SIDI-OKBA _facing_ 330 THE _KASBA_, BONA _facing_ 338 SO-CALLED TOMB OF CONSTANTINE (Diagram) 342 TOMB OF MÉDRACEN 343 LAMBESSA AND ITS RUINS _facing_ 346 LAMBESSA (Map) 347 TIMGAD (Map) 349 TEBESSA (Diagram) 353 MORSOTT (Diagram) 355 IN THE BAZAARS, TUNIS _facing_ 360 A STREET OF MOSQUES, TUNIS _facing_ 366 DANCING GIRLS OF TUNIS 369 HABIB'S VISITING CARD 380 THE PORTS OF CARTHAGE _facing_ 390 CARTHAGE (Map) 395 ANCIENT UTICA (Diagram) 398 THE _SUD-TUNISIEN_ (Map) 404 IN A KAIROUAN MOSQUE _facing_ 410 AMPHITHEATRE AT EL DJEM 413 EL OUED _facing_ 416 A STREET IN TOZEUR _facing_ 420 In the Land of Mosques and Minarets CHAPTER I GOING AND COMING "Say, dear friend, wouldst thou go to the land where pass the caravans beneath the shadow of the palm trees of the Oasis; where even in mid-winter all is in flower as in spring-time elsewhere."--VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. The taste for travel is an acquired accomplishment. Not every one likes to rough it. Some demand home comforts; others luxurious appointments; but you don't get either of these in North Africa, save in the palace hotels of Algiers, Biskra and Tunis, and even there these things are less complete than many would wish. We knew all this when we started out. We had become habituated as it were, for we had been there before. The railways of North Africa are poor, uncomfortable things, and excruciatingly slow; the steamships between Marseilles or Genoa and the African littoral are either uncomfortably crowded, or wobbly, slow-going tubs; and there are many discomforts of travel--not forgetting fleas--which considerably mitigate the joys of the conventional traveller who affects floating hotels and Pullman car luxuries. The wonderful African-Mediterranean setting is a patent attraction and is very lovely. Every one thinks that; but it is best always to take ways and means into consideration when journeying, and if the game is not worth the candle, let it alone. This book is not written in commendation only of the good things of life which one meets with in North Africa, but is a personal record of things seen and heard by the artist and the author. As such it may be accepted as a faithful transcript of sights and scenes--and many correlative things that matter--which will prove to be the portion of others who follow after. These things have been seen by many who have gone before who, however, have not had the courage to paint or describe them as they found them. Victor Hugo discovered the Rhine, Théophile Gautier Italy, De Nerval the Orient, and Merimée Spain; but they did not blush over the dark side and include only the more charming. For this reason the French descriptive writer has often given a more faithful picture of strange lands than that limned by Anglo-Saxon writers who have mostly praised them in an ignorant, sentimental fashion, or reviled them because they had left their own damp sheets and stogy food behind, and really did not enjoy travel--or even life--without them. There is a happy mean for the travellers' mood which must be cultivated, if one is not born with it, else all hope of pleasurable travel is lost for ever. The comparison holds good with regard to North Africa and its Arab population. Sir Richard Burton certainly wrote a masterful work in his "Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina," and set forth the Arab character as no one else has done; but he said some things, and did some things, too, that his fellow countrymen did not like, and so they were loth to accept his great work at its face value. The African Mediterranean littoral, the mountains and the desert beyond, and all that lies between, have found their only true exponents in Mme. Myriam Harry, MM. Louis Bertrand, Arnaud and Maryval, André Gide and Isabelle Eberhardt, and Victor Barrucaud. These and some others mentioned further on are the latter-day authorities on the Arab life of Africa, though the makers of English books on Algeria and Tunisia seem never to have heard of them, much less profited by their next-to-the-soil knowledge. Instead they have preferred to weave their romances and novels on "home-country" lines, using a Mediterranean or Saharan setting for characters which are not of Africa and which have no place therein. This book is a record of various journeyings in that domain of North Africa where French influence is paramount; and is confidently offered as the result of much absorption of first-hand experiences and observations, coupled with authenticated facts of history and romance. All the elements have been found _sur place_ and have been woven into the pages which follow in order that nothing desirable of local colour should be lost by allowing too great an expanse of sea and land to intervene. The story of Algeria and Tunisia has so often been told by the French, and its moods have so often been painted by _les "gens d'esprit et de talent,"_ that a foreigner has a considerable task laid out for him in his effort to do the subject justice. Think of trying to catch the fire and spirit of Fromentin, of Loti, of the Maupassants or Masqueray, or the local colour of the canvases of Dinet, Armand Point, Potter, Besnard, Constant, Cabannes, Guillaumet, or Ziem! Then go and try to paint the picture as it looks to you. Yet why not? We live to learn; and, as all the phases of this subtropical land have not been exploited, why should we--the author and artist--not have a hand in it? So we started out. The mistral had begun to blow at Martigues (la Venise Provençal known by artist folk of all nationalities, but unknown--as yet--to the world of tourists), where we had made our Mediterranean headquarters for some years, but the sirocco was still blowing contrariwise from the south on the African coast, and it was for that reason that the author, the artist and another--the agreeable travelling companion, a rara avis by the way--made a hurried start. We were tired of the grime and grind of cities of convention; and were minded, after another round of travel, to repose a bit in some half-dormant, half-progressive little town of the Barbary coast, or some desert oasis where one might, if he would, still dream the dreams of the Arabian nights and days, regardless of a certain reflected glamour of vulgar modernity which filters through to the utmost Saharan outposts from the great ports of the coast. By a fortunate chance weather and circumstances favoured this last journey, and thus the making of this book became a most enjoyable labour. We left Marseilles for the land of the sun at six of an early autumn evening, the "_heure verte_" of the Marseillais, when the whole Cannebière smells of absinthe, alcohol, and anise, and all the world is at ease after a bustling, rustling day of busy affairs. These men of the Midi, though they seemingly take things easy are a very industrious race. There is no such virile movement in Paris, even on the boulevards, as one may witness on Marseilles' famous Cannebière at the seducing hour of the Frenchman's _apéritif_. Marseilles is a ceaseless turmoil of busy workaday affairs as well. From the ever-present gaiety of the Cannebière cafés it is but a step to the great _quais_ and their creaking capstans and shouting longshoremen. From the _quais_ of La Joliette all the world and his wife come and go in an interminable and constant tide of travel, to Africa, to Corsica and Sardinia; to Jaffa and Constantinople; to Port Said and the East, India, Australia, China and Japan; and westward, through Gibraltar's Strait to the Mexican Gulf and the Argentine. The like of Marseilles exists nowhere on earth; it is the most brilliant and lively of all the ports of the world. It is the principal seaport of the Mediterranean and the third city of France. Our small, tubby steamer slipped slowly and silently out between the Joliette _quais_ and past the towering Notre Dame de la Garde and the great Byzantine Cathedral of Sainte Marie Majeur, leaving the twinkling lights of the Vieux Port and the Pharo soon far behind. Past Château d'If, the Point des Catalans, Ratonneau and Pomègue we steamed, all reminiscent of Dumas and that masterpiece of his gallant portrait gallery,--"The Count of Monte Cristo." The great Planier light flashed its rays in our way for thirty odd miles seaward, keeping us company long after we had eaten a good dinner, a very good dinner indeed, with _café-cognac_--or _chartreuse_, real _chartreuse_, not the base imitation, mark you, _tout compris_, to top off with. The boat was a poor, wallowing thing of eight hundred tons or so, but the dinner was much better than many an Atlantic liner gives. It had character, and was served [Illustration: _The_ APPROACH _By_ SEA] in a tiny saloon on deck, with doors and ports all open, and a gentle, sighing Mediterranean _brise_ wafting about our heads. We were six passengers all told, and we were very, very comfortably installed on the _Isly_ of the Compagnie Touache, in spite of the fact that the craft owned to twenty-seven years and made only ten knots. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique has boats of the comparatively youthful age of twelve and seventeen, but they are so crowded that one is infinitely less comfortable, though they make the voyage at a gait of fifteen or sixteen knots. Then again the food is by no means so good or well served as that we had on the _Isly_. We have tried them both, and, as we asked no favours of price or accommodation in either case, the opinion may be set down as frank, truthful and personal. What others may think all depends on themselves and circumstance. In Algeria, at any rate, one doesn't find trippers, and there are surprisingly few of what the French call "_Anglaises sans-gêne_" and "_Allemands grotesques_." The traveller in Algeria should by all means eliminate his countrymen and study the native races and the French _colons_, if he wishes to know something of the country. Otherwise he will know nothing, and might as well have gone to a magic-lantern show at home. It is a delightfully soft, exotic land which the geographers know as Mediterranean Africa, and which is fast becoming known to the world of modern travellers as the newest winter playground. The tide of pleasure-seeking travel has turned towards Algeria and Tunisia, but the plea is herein made to those who follow after for the better knowing of the places off the beaten track, Bou-Saada, Kairouan, the Oasis of Gabès, Oued-Souf or Tlemcen, for instance, something besides Mustapha, Biskra and Tunis. Darkest Africa is no more darkest Africa. That idea was exploded when Stanley uttered his famous words: "Doctor Livingstone, I presume." And since that day the late Cecil Rhodes launched his Cape to Cairo scheme, and Africa has been given over to diamond-mine exploiters, rubber collectors and semi-invalids, who, hearing wonderful tales of the climatic conditions of Assouan and Biskra, have foregathered in these places, to the joy of the native and the profit of the hotel director--usually a Swiss. Occasionally one has heard of an adventurous tourist who has hunted the wild gazelle in the Atlas or the mountains of Kabylie, the gentlest man-fearing creature God ever made, or who has "camped-out" in a tent furnished by Cook, and has come home and told of his exploits which in truth were more Tartarinesque than daring. The trail of the traveller is over all to-day; but he follows as a rule only the well-worn _pistes_. In addition to those strangers who live in Algiers or Tunis and have made of those cities weak imitations of European capitals and their suburbs as characterless as those of Paris, London or Chicago, they have also imported such conventions as "bars" and "tea-rooms" to Biskra and Hammam-R'hira. Tlemcen and its mosques, however; Figuig and its fortress-looking Grand Hôtel du Sahara at Beni-Ounif; Touggourt and its market and its military posts; and Bou-Saada and Tozeur with their oases are as yet comparatively unknown ground to all except artists who have the passion of going everywhere and anywhere in search of the unspoiled. When it comes to Oued-Souf with its one "_Maison française_," which, by the way, is inhabited by the Frenchified Sheik of the Msaâba to whom a chapter is devoted in this book later on; or Ghardaïa, the Holy City of the Sud-Constantinois, the case were still more different. This is still virgin ground for the stranger, and can only be reached by diligence or caravan. The railway with a fairly good equipment runs all the length of Algeria and Tunisia, from the Moroccan frontier at Tlemcen to Gabès and beyond, almost to the boundary of Tripoli in Barbary. An automobile would be much quicker, and in some parts even a donkey, but the railway serves as well as it ever does in a new-old country where it has recently been installed. If one enters by Algiers or Oran and leaves by Tunis or even Sfax or Gabès he has done the round; but if opportunity offers, he should go south from Tlemcen into the real desert at Figuig; from Biskra to Touggourt; or from Gabès to Tozeur. Otherwise he will have so kept "in touch" with things that he can, for the asking, have oatmeal for breakfast and marmalade for tea, which is not what one comes, or should come, to Africa for. One takes his departure from French Mediterranean Africa from Tunis or Bizerte. Leaving Tunis and its domes and minarets behind, his ship makes its way gingerly out through the straight-cut canal, a matter of six [Illustration: _The Edge of the Desert_] or eight miles to La Goulette, a veritable Italian fishing village in Africa which the Italian population themselves call La Goletta. Here the pilot is sent ashore,--he was a useless personage anyway, but he touches a hundred and fifty francs for standing on the bridge and doing nothing,--the ship turns a sharp right angle and sets its course northward for Marseilles, leaving Korbus and the great double-horned mountain far in the distance to starboard. Carthage and its cathedral, and Sidi-bou-Saïd and its minarets are to port, the red soil forming a rich frame for the scintillating white walls scattered here and there over the landscape. La Marsa and the Bey's summer palace loom next in view, Cap Carthage and Cap Bon, and then the open sea. Midway between Tunis and Marseilles, one sees the red porphyry rocks of Sardinia. Offshore are the little isles which terminate the greater island, the "Taureau," the "Vache" and the "Veau." They are only interesting as landmarks, and look like the outcroppings of other Mediterranean islands. In bad weather the mariners give them a wide berth. The sight of Sardinia makes no impression on the French passengers. They stare at it, and remark it not. The profound contempt of the Frenchman of the Midi for all things Italian is to be remarked. Corsica is left to starboard, still farther away, in fact not visible, but the Frenchman apparently does not regret this either, even though it has become a French Département. "_Peuh: la Corse_," he says, "_un vilain pays_," where men pass their existence killing each other off. Such is the outcome of traditional, racial rancour, and yet the most patriotic Frenchman the writer has ever known was a Corsican. "_Voilà! le Cap Sicié!_" said the commandant the second morning at ten o'clock, as he stood on the bridge straining his eyes for a sight of land. We didn't see it, but we took his word for it. A quarter of an hour later it came into view, the great landmark promontory, which juts out into the Mediterranean just west of Toulon. Just then with a swish and a swirl, and with as icy a breath as ever blew south from the snow-clad Alps, down came the mistral upon us, and we all went below and passed the most uncomfortable five hours imaginable, anchored off the Estaque, in full view of Marseilles, and yet not able to enter harbour. The Gulf of Lyons and the mistral form an irresistible combination of forces once they get together. At last in port; the _douanier_ keeps a sharp lookout for cigars and cigarettes (which in Algeria and Tunisia sell for about a quarter of what they do in France), and in a quarter of an hour we are installed in that remarkably equipped "Touring Hotel" of Marseilles' Cours Belzunce. _Art nouveau_ furniture, no heavy rugs or draperies, metallic bedsteads, and hot and cold running water in every room. This is a good deal to find on this side of the Atlantic. The house should be made note of by all coming this way. Not in the palace hotels of Algiers, Biskra or Tunis can you find such a combination. CHAPTER II THE REAL NORTH AFRICA "_Africque apporte tousjours quelque chose de nouveau._" --RABELAIS Algeria and Tunisia are already the vogue, and Biskra, Hammam-R'hira and Mustapha are already names as familiar as Cairo, Amalfi or Teneriffe, even though the throng of "_colis vivants expédiés par Cook_," as the French call them, have not as yet overrun the land. For the most part the travellers in these delightful lands, be they Americans, English or Germans (and the Germans are almost as numerous as the others), are strictly unlabelled, and each goes about his own affairs, one to Tlemcen to paint the Moorish architecture of its mosques, another to Biskra for his health, and another to Tunis merely to while away his time amid exotic surroundings. This describes well enough the majority of travellers here, but the other categories are increasing every day, and occasionally a "tourist-steamship" drops down three or four hundred at one fell swoop on the _quais_ of Algiers or Tunis, and then those cities become as the Place de l'Opéra, or Piccadilly Circus. These tourists only skirt the fringe of this interesting land, and after thirty-six hours or so go their ways. One does not become acquainted with the real North Africa in any such fashion. The picturesque is everywhere in Algeria and Tunisia, and the incoming manners and customs of _outre-mer_ only make the contrast more remarkable. It is not the extraordinary thing that astonishes us to-day, for there is no more virgin land to exploit as a touring-ground. It is the rubbing of shoulders with the dwellers in foreign lands who, after all, are human, and have relatively the same desires as ourselves, which they often satisfy in a different manner, that makes travel enjoyable. What Nubian and Arab Africa will become later, when European races have still further blended the centuries-old tropical and subtropical blood in a gentle assimilated adaptation of men and things, no one can predict. The Arab has become a very good engineer, the Berber can be trained to become a respectable herder of cattle, as the Egyptian _fellah_ has been made into a good farmer, or a motorman on the electric railway from Cairo to the Pyramids. What the French call the "Empire Européen" is bound to envelop Africa some day, and France will be in for the chief part in the division without question. The French seem to understand the situation thoroughly; and, with the storehouse of food products (Algeria and Tunisia, and perhaps by the time these lines are printed, Morocco) at her very door, she is more than fortunately placed with regard to the development of this part of Africa. The individual German may come and do a little trading on his own account, but it is France as a nation that is going to prosper out of Africa. This is the one paramount aspect of the real North Africa of to-day as it has been for some generations past, a fact which the Foreign Offices of many powers have overlooked. It is a pity that the whole gamut of the current affairs of North Africa is summed up in many minds by the memory of the palpably false sentiment of the school of fictionists which began with Ouida. Let us hope it has ended, for the picturing of the local colour of Mediterranean and Saharan Africa is really beyond the romancer who writes love-stories for the young ladies of the boarding-schools, and the new women of the _art nouveau_ boudoirs. The lithe, dreamy young Arab of fiction, who falls in love with lonesome young women _en voyage_ alone to some tourist centre, is purely a myth. There is not a real thing about him, not even his clothes, much less his sentiments; and he and his picturesque natural surroundings jar horribly against each other at best. The Cigarette of "Under Two Flags" was not even a classically conventional figure, but simply a passionate, tumultuous creature, lovable only for her inconsistencies, which in reality were nothing African in act or sentiment, though that was her environment. The English lord who became a "Chasseur d'Afrique" was even more unreal--he wasn't a "Chasseur d'Afrique," anyway, he was simply a member of the "Légion Étrangère;" but doubtless Ouida cared less for minutely precise detail than she did to exploit her unconventional convictions. The best novels of to-day are something our parents never dreamed of! Exclamations and exhortations of the characters of "Under Two Flags," "Mon Amour," "Ma Patrie," "Les Enfants," are not African. They belong to the parasite faubourgs of Paris' fortifications. Let no one make the mistake, then, of taking this crop of North African novels for their guide and mentor. Much better go with Cook and be done with it, if one lacks the initiative to launch out for himself, and make the itinerary by railway, _diligence_ and caravan. If he will, one can travel by _diligence_ all over Mediterranean Africa, and by such a means of locomotion he will best see and know the country. The _diligence_ of the plain and mountain roads of Algeria and Tunisia is as remarkable a structure as still rolls on wheels. Its counterpart does not exist to-day in France, Switzerland or Italy. It is generally driven by a portly Arab, with three wheelers and four leaders, seven horses in all. It is made up of many compartments and stories. There is a _rez-de-chaussée_, a _mezzanine_ floor and a roof garden, with prices varying accordingly as comfort increases or decreases. A fifty or a hundred kilometre journey therein, or thereon, is an experience one does not readily forget. To begin with, one usually starts at an hour varying from four to seven in the morning, an hour which, even in Algeria, in winter, is dark and chill. The stage-driver of the "Far West" is a fearsome, capable individual, but the Arab conductor of a "_voiture publique_," with a rope-wound turban on his head, a flowing, entangling burnous, and a five-yard whip, can take more chances in getting around corners or down a sharp incline than any other coach-driver that ever handled the ribbons. Sometimes he has an assistant who handles a shorter whip, and belabours it over the backs of the wheelers, when additional risks accrue. Sometimes, even, this is not enough and the man-at-the-wheel jumps down and runs alongside, slashing viciously at the flying heels of the seven horse power, after which he crawls up aloft and dozes awhile. Under the hood of the _impériale_ is stowed away as miscellaneous a lot of baggage as one can imagine, including perhaps a dozen fowls, a sheep or two, or even a calf. Amidst all this, three or four cross-legged natives wobble and lurch as the equipage makes its perilsome way. Down below everything is full, too; so that, with its human freight of fifteen or sixteen persons, and the unweighed kilos of merchandise on the roof, the journey may well be described as being fraught with possibilities of disaster. There is treasure aboard, too,--a strong-box bolted to the floor beneath the drivers' feet; and at the rear a weather-proof cast-iron letter-box, padlocked tight and only opened at wayside post-offices. The sequestered colonist, living far from the rail or post, has his only communication with the outside world through the medium of this mobile _bureau de poste_. The roads of Algeria and Tunisia are marvellously good--where they exist. The Arab roads and routes of old were simple trails, trod down in the herb-grown, sandy soil by the bare feet of men, or camels, or the hoofs of horses and mules. So narrow were these trails that two caravans could not pass each other, so there were two trails, like the steamship "lanes" of the Atlantic. Tradition still prompts the Kabyles to march in single file on the sixteen meter wide high-roads, which now cross and recross their country, the results of a beneficent French administration. Morocco some day will come in line. In Tunisia, the roads are as good as they are in Algeria, and they are many and being added to yearly. There are still to be seen, in the interior, little pyramids of stones, perhaps made up of tens of thousands, or a hundred thousand even, of desert pebbles, each unit placed by some devoted traveller who has recalled that on that spot occurred the death, or perhaps murder, of some pioneer. The Arabs call these monuments Nza, and would not think for a moment of passing one by without making their offering. It is a delicate, natural expression of sentiment, and one that might well be imitated. There is no more danger to the tourist travelling through Algeria and Tunisia by road than there would be in France or Italy--and considerably less than might be met with in Spain. There are some brigands and robbers left hiding in the mountains, perhaps, but their raids are on flocks and herds, and not for the mere dross of the gold of tourists, or the gasolene of automobilists. The desert lion is a myth of Tartarinesque poets and artists, and one is not likely to meet anything more savage than a rabbit or a hedgehog all the fifteen hundred or two thousand kilometres from Tlemcen to Gabès. The African lion is a dweller only in the forest-grown mountains; and the popular belief that it can track for weeks across the desert, drinking only air, and eating only sand, is pure folly of the romantic brand perpetuated by the painter Gérome. During the last ten years, in all Algeria there were killed only:-- Lions and lionesses and cubs 181 Panthers 988 Hyenas 1,485 Jackals 22,619 It may be taken for granted, then, that there are no great dangers to be experienced on the well-worn roads and _pistes_ of Tunisia and Algeria. The hyenas and lions are hidden away in the great mountain fastnesses, and the jackals themselves are harmless enough so far as human beings are concerned. The _sanglier_, or wild boar, is savage enough if attacked when met with, otherwise it is he who flees, whilst the jack-rabbits and the gazelles make up the majority of the "savage life" seen contiguous to the main travelled roads away from the railways. Scorpions and horned vipers are everywhere--if one looks for them, otherwise one scarcely ever sees one or the other. The greatest enemy of mankind hereabouts is the flea; and, as the remedy is an obvious and personal one, no more need be said. Another plague is the cricket, grasshopper or _sauterelle_. The _sauterelle_, says the Arab, is the wonder among nature's living things. It has the face of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns of a deer, the breast of a lion, the stomach of a scorpion, the legs of an ostrich, the tail of a snake, and is more to be feared than any of the before enumerated menagerie. It all but devastated the chief wheat-growing lands of the plateaux of the provinces of Alger and Constantine a generation or more ago, and brought great misery in its wake. The scorpion and the gazelle are the two chief novelties among living things (after the camel) with which the stranger makes acquaintance here. The former is unlovely but not dangerous. "_Il pique, mais ne mord pas_," say the French; but no one likes to find them in his shoes in the morning all the same. The gazelle is more likable, a gentle, endearing creature, with great liquid eyes, such as poets attribute to their most lovely feminine creations. The gazelle is an attribute of all fountain courtyards. It lives and thrives in captivity, can be tamed to follow you like a dog, and is as affectionate as a caressing kitten. It will eat condensed milk, dates, cabbage and cigarettes; but it balks at Pear's soap. In the open country the nomad Arab or even the house-dweller that one meets by the roadside is an agreeable, willing person, and when he understands French (as he frequently does), he is quite as "useful" as would be his European prototype under similar conditions. The country Arab is courteous, for courtesy's sake, moreover, and not for profit. This is not apt to be the case in the cities and towns. The Arab speech of the ports and railway cities and towns is of the solicitous kind. One can't learn anything here of phraseology that will be useful to him in the least and it's bad French. "_Sidi mousi! Moi porter! Moi forsa besef!_" is nothing at all, though it is eloquent, and probably means that the gamin, old or young, wants to carry your baggage or call a cab. And for this you pay in Algiers and Tunis as you pay in London or Paris, but you are not blackmailed as you are in Alexandria or Cairo. One may not rest two minutes on the terrace of any café in a large Algerian town without having an Arab, a Kabyle, or a Jewish ragamuffin come up and bawl at one incessantly, "_Ciri, ciri, ciri!_" If you have just left your hotel, your boots brilliant as jet from the best Algerian substitute for "Day & Martin's Best," it doesn't matter in the least; they still cry, "_Ciri, ciri, ciri, m'siou!_" Sometimes it is, "_Ciri bien, m'siou!_" and sometimes "_Ciri, kif, kif la glace de Paris!_" But the object of their plaint is always the same. Finally, if you won't let them dull the polish of your _shine_, they will cire their faces and demand "_quat' sous_" from you because you witnessed the operation. Very businesslike are the shoeblacks of Algiers; they don't mind what they _cire_ as long as they _cire_ something. [Illustration: "Cireur"] The Café d'Apollon in Algiers is the rendezvous of the "high-life Arab." Here Sheiks from the deserts' great tents, Caïds from the settlements, and others of the vast army of great and small Arab officialdom assemble to take an afternoon _bock_ or _apéritif_; for in spite of his religion the Mussulman will sometimes drink beer and white wine. Some, too, are "decorated," and some wear even the _ruban_ or _bouton_ of the Legion of Honour on their chests where that otherwise useless buttonhole of the coat of civilization would be. Grim, taciturn figures are these, whose only exclamation is a mechanical clacking of the lips or a cynical, gurgling chuckle coming from deep down, expressive of much or little, according as much or little is meant. The foreign population in Algeria and Tunisia is very mixed; and though all nationalities mingle in trade the foreigners will not become naturalized to any great extent. Out of forty-one naturalized foreigners in Tunis in 1891, 27 were Italians, 2 Alsatians, 2 Luxembourgeois, 2 Maltese, 1 German, 1 Belgian, 1 Moroccan, and 5 individuals of undetermined nationality. Civilization and progress has marked North Africa for exploitation, but it will never overturn Mohammedanism. The trail of Islam is a long one and plainly marked. From the Moghreb to the Levant and beyond extends the [Illustration: THE FLIGHT _of the_ MOORS] memory and tradition of Moorish civilization of days long gone by. The field is unlimited, and ranges from the Giralda of Andalusia to the Ottoman mosques of the Dardanelles, though we may regret, with all the Arab poets and historians, the decadence of Granada more than all else. The Arab-Moorish overrunning of North Africa defined an epoch full of the incident of romance, whatever may have been the cruelties of the barbarians. This period endured until finally the sombre cities of the corsairs became the commercial capitals of to-day, just as glorious Carthage became a residential suburb of Tunis. The hand of time has left its mark plainly imprinted on all Mediterranean Africa, and not even the desire for up-to-dateness on the part of its exploiters will ever efface these memories, nor further desecrate the monuments which still remain. The French African possessions include more than a third of the continent, an area considerably more extensive than the United States, Alaska, Porto Rico, and the Philippines combined. One hears a lot about the development of the British sphere of influence in Africa; but not much concerning that of the French which, since the unhappy affair of Fashoda, has been more active than ever. The French are not the garrulous nation one sometimes thinks them. They have a way of doing things, and saying nothing, which is often fraught with surprises for the outside world. Perhaps Morocco and Tripoli de Barbarie may come into the fold some day; and, then, with the French holding the railways of Egypt and the Suez Canal, as at present, they will certainly be the dominant Mediterranean and African power, if they may not be reckoned so already. The Saharan desert is French down to its last grain of sand and the last oasis palm-tree, and it alone has an area half the size of the United States. Of Mediterranean French Africa, Tunisia is a protectorate, but almost as absolutely governed by the French as if it were a part of the Ile de France. Algérie is a part of France, a Department across the seas like Corse. It holds its own elections and has three senators and six deputies at Paris. Its governor-general is a Frenchman (usually promoted from the Préfecture of some mainland Département) and most of the officialdom and bureaucracy are French. Trade between Algeria and France, mostly in wines and food stuffs on one side, and manufactured products on the other, approximates three hundred millions of francs in each direction. Algeria, "la belle Algérie" as the French fondly call it, is not a mere strip of mountain land and desert. It is one of the richest agricultural lands on earth, running eastward from the Moroccan frontier well over into Tunisia; and, for ages, it has been known as the granary of Europe. The Carthaginians and the Phoenicians built colonies and empires here, and Rome was nourished from its wheat-fields and olive-groves. The wheat of Africa was revered by the Romans of the capital above all others. One of the pro-consuls sent Augustus a little packet of four hundred grains, all grown from one sole seed, whereupon great national granaries were built and the commerce in the wheat of Africa took on forthwith almost the complexion of a monopoly. The sowing and the harvest were most primitive. "I have seen," wrote Pliny (H. N. XVIII, 21), "the sowing and the reaping accomplished here by the aid of a primitive plough, an old woman and a tiny donkey." The visitor may see the same to-day! At the moment of the first autumn rains the Arab or Berber cultivator works over his soil, or sets his wives on the job, and sows his winter wheat. The planting finished, the small Arab farmer seeks the sunny side of a wall and basks there, watching things grow, smoking much tobacco and drinking much coffee, each of these narcotics very black and strong. Four months later his ample, or meagre, crop comes by chance. Then he flays it, not by means of a flail swung by hand, but by borrowing a little donkey from some neighbour,--if he hasn't one of his own,--and letting the donkey's hoofs trample it out. Now he takes it--or most likely sends it--to market, and his year's work is done. He rolls over to the shady side of his _gourbi_ (the sunny side is getting too warm) and loafs along until another autumn. He might grow maize in the interval, but he doesn't. The Barbary fig, or prickly-pear cactus, is everywhere in Algeria and Tunisia. It grows wild by the roadside, in great fields, and as a barrier transplanted to the top of the universal mud walls. Frost is its only enemy. Everything and everybody else flees before it except the native who eats its spiny, juicy bulbs and finds them good. The rest of us only find the spines, and throw the fruit away in disgust when we attempt to taste it. The Barbary fig is the Arab's sole food supply when crops fail, the only thing which stands between him and starvation--unless he steals dates or figs from some richer man's plantation. The Arab's wants are not great, and with fifty francs and some ingenuity he can live a year. The palm-trees of Africa number scores of varieties, but those of the Mediterranean states and provinces, the date-bearing palm, come within three well-defined classes: the _Phoenix-dactylifera_, the _chamaerops-humilis_ and the _cucifera-thebaica_. Even the smallest Arab proprietor of land or sheep or goats pays taxes. The French leave its collection to the local Caïds or Sheiks, but it gets into the official coffers ultimately,--or most of it does. In Algeria there are four principal taxes, or _impôts_: The _Achour_ on cereals; the _Zekai_, on sheep and cattle to-day, but originally a tax collected for the general good, as prescribed by the Koran; the _Hokar_ (in Constantine), a tax on land; the _Lezma_, the generic term for various contributions, such as the right to carry firearms (the only tax levied in Kabylie), and the tax on date-palms in the Sud-Algérie and Sud-Oranais. The Arab carries a gun only after he gets a permit, which he must show every time he buys powder or shot. In Tunisia the taxes are much the same; but there is a specific tax on olive-trees as well as date-palms, and on the markets and the products sold there. The wines of Algeria and Tunisia are the product of foreign vines whose roots were transplanted here but little more than half a century ago. These vines came from all parts, from France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Malta and America; and now the "_vin d'Algérie_" goes out to the ends of the earth,--usually under the name of a _cru_ more famous. It is very good wine nevertheless, this rich, hybrid juice of the grape; and, though the Provençal of Chateauneuf, the sons of the Aude, the Garde and the Hérault, or the men of Roussillon do not recognize Algerian wine as a worthy competitor of their own vintages, it is such all the same. And the Peroximen, supposed to be a product only of Andalusia, and the Muscatel of Alexandria, are very nearly as good grown on Algerian soil as when gathered in the place of their birth. The "_vin rosé_" of Kolea, the really superb wines of Médea, and the "_vin blanc de Carthage_," should carry the fame of these North African vintages to all who are, or think they are, judges of good wine. With such a rich larder at their very doors, the mediæval Mediterranean nations were in a constant quarrel over its possession. Vandals and Greeks fought for the right to populate it after the Romans, but the Moorish wave was too strong; the Arab crowded the Berber to the wall and made him a Mussulman instead of a Christian, a religious faith which the French have held inviolate so far as proselytizing goes. It is this one fundamental principle which has done much to make the French rule in Algeria the success that it is. Britain should leave religion out of her colonizing schemes if she would avoid the unrest which is continually cropping up in various parts of the empire; and the United States should leave the friars of the Philippines alone, and let them grow fat if they will, and develop the country on business lines. We are apt to think that the French are slow in business matters, but they get results sometimes in an astonishingly successful manner, and by methods which they copy from no one. The ports of Algeria and Tunisia are of great antiquity. The Romans, not content with the natural advantages offered as harbours, frequently cut them out of the soft rock itself, or built out jetties or _quais_, as have all dock engineers since when occasion demanded. There are vestiges of these old Roman _quais_ at Bougie, at Collo, at Cherchell, at Stora and at Bona. These Roman works, destroyed or abandoned at the Vandal invasion, were never rebuilt; and the great oversea traders of the Italian Republics, of France and of Spain, merely hung around offshore and transacted their business, as do the tourist steamers at Jaffa to-day, while their personally conducted hordes descend upon Jerusalem and the Jordan. The Barbary pirates had little inlets and outlets which they alone knew, and flitted in and out of on their nefarious projects; but only at Algiers, until in comparatively recent times, were there any ports or harbours, legitimately so called, in either Algeria or Tunisia, though the Spaniards, when in occupation of Oran in the eighteenth century, made some inefficient attempts towards waterside improvements of a permanent character. In thinking of North Africa it is well to recall that it is not a tropical belt, nor even a subtropical one. It is very like the climate of the latitude of Washington, though perhaps with less rain in winter. It is not for a moment to be compared with California or Bermuda. The temperature on the Algerian coast is normally as follows:-- Winter, 11°-12° centigrade Summer, 25° centigrade Spring, 15°-16° centigrade Autumn, 19°-20° centigrade Average yearly, 17°-18° centigrade As compared with the temperature of the French Riviera, taking Nice as an example, the balance swings in favour of Algeria in winter, and a trifle against it for summer, as the following figures show:-- Winter, 9° centigrade Summer, 23° centigrade Spring, 17° centigrade Autumn, 18° centigrade Yearly average, 16° centigrade One pertinent observation on North Africa is that regarding the influx of outside civilizing influences. The American invasion of manufactured products is here something considerable; but as yet it has achieved nothing like its possibilities, save perhaps in electrical tramway installation, sewing machines and five-gallon tins of kerosene. The French have _got_ North Africa, mostly; the Germans the trade in cutlery; the English (or the Scotch) that in whiskey and marmalade; but the American shipments of "Singers" and "Standards" must in total figures swamp any of the other single "foreign imports" in value. One does not speak of course of imports from France. As the argument of the dealers, who push the sewing-machine into the desert _gourbis_ of the nomads and the mountain dwellings of the Kabyles, has it, the civilizing influences of Algeria have been railways, public schools and "Singers." What progressive Arab could be expected to resist such an argument for progress, with easy-payment terms of a franc a week as the chief inducement? The only objection seems to be that his delicately fashioned, creamy, woollen burnous of old is fast becoming a ready-made "lock-stitch" affair, which lacks the loving marks of the real hand-made article. Other things from America are agricultural machinery, ice-cream freezers, oil-stoves, corn meal, corned beef, salmon from Seattle, and pickles from Bunker Hill. As yet the trade in these "staples" is infinitesimal when compared with what it might be if "pushed," which it is not because all these things come mostly through London warehouse men, who "push" something else when they can. A few things America will not be able to sell in North Africa are boots and shoes, the Arab wears his neatly folded down at the heel, and ours are not that kind; nor socks, nor stockings, the Arab buys a gaudy "near-silk," made in the Vosges, when he buys any, and the women don't wear them; nor hats, though a Stetson, No. 7, would please them mightily, all but the price. There is no demand for folding-beds or elastic bookcases. The Arab sleeps on the floor, and the only book he possesses, if he can read, is a copy of the Koran, which he tucks away inside his burnous and carries about with him everywhere. Chairs he has no need for; when the Arab doesn't lie or huddle on the ground, he sits dangle-legged or cross-legged on a bench, which is a home-made affair. The women mostly squat on their heels, which looks uncomfortable, but which they seem to enjoy. Besides the American invasion, there is the German occupation to reckon with--in a trade sense. "Those terrible Germans," is a newspaper phrase of recent coinage which is applicable to almost any reference to the German trade invasion of every country under the sun, save perhaps the United States and Canada. In South America, in Russia, and in the African Mediterranean States and Provinces, the Teuton has pushed his trading instincts to the utmost. He may be no sort of a colonizer himself, but he knows how to sell goods. In North Africa, in the coast towns, over a thousand German firms have established themselves within the last ten years, all the way from Tangier to Port Saïd. This may mean little or nothing to the offhand thinker; but when one recalls that the blackamoor and the Arab have learned to use matches and folding pocket-knives, and have even been known to invest in talking machines, it is also well to recall that the German can produce these things, "machine-made," and market them cheaper than any other nation. For this reason he floods the market, where the taste is not too critical, and the cry is here for cheapness above all things. This is the Arab's point of view, hence the increasing hordes of German traders. To show the German is indefatigable, and that he knows North Africa to its depths, the case of the late German consul at Cairo, Paul Gerhard, who wrote a monumental work on the butterflies of North Africa, is worth recalling. CHAPTER III ALGERIA OF TO-DAY "Le coq Gaulois est le coq de la gloire. Il chante bien fort quand il gagne une victoire Et encore plus fort quand il est battu." Algeria is by no means savage Africa, even though its population is mostly _indigène_. It forms a "_circonscription académique_" of France. It has a national observatory, a branch of that at Paris, founded in 1858; a school of medicine and pharmacy; a school of law; a faculty of letters and sciences, and three endowed chairs of Arabic, at Algiers (founded in 1836); Oran (1850) and Constantine (1858). Algeria has a great future in store, although it has cost France 8,593,000,000 francs since its occupation seventy years ago, and has only produced a revenue of 2,330,000,000 francs, which represents the loss of a sum greater than the war indemnity of 1870. The Algerian budget balanced for the first time in 1901 without subsidies from home. The entire population of Algeria is 4,124,732, of which 3,524,000 are Arabs, Kabyles or [Illustration: Algeria and its Provinces] [Illustration: Algeria and its Provinces] Berbers, and the subdivided races hereafter mentioned, leaving in the neighbourhood of 600,000 Europeans, whose numbers are largely increasing each year. The rate of increase of the European population, from 1836, when the French first occupied the country, has been notable. In 1836 there were 14,561 Europeans in the colony; in 1881, 423,881, of which 233,937 were French, 112,047 Spanish, and 31,865 Italians, and to-day the figure is over 600,000. The Arab and Berber population, too, are notably increasing; they are not disappearing like the red man. From 2,320,000, in 1851, they have increased, in 1891, to 3,524,000. In addition to the Arab and Berber population of Algeria, and the "foreigners" and Europeans, there are the following: Moors--(90,500), the mixed issue of the Berbers and all the races inhabiting Algeria. Koulouglis--(20,000), born of Turks and Moorish women. Jews--(47,667), who by the decree of 1870 were made French. (This does not include unnaturalized Jews.) Negroes--(5,000), the former slaves who were freed in 1848. The French colonist in Algeria, the man on the spot, understands the Arab question better than the minister and officials of the Colonial Office of the Pavilion Sully, though the French have succeeded in making of Algeria what they have never accomplished with their other colonies--a paying proposition at last. Still France governs Algeria under a sort of "up-the-state," "Raines-law" rule, and treats the _indigène_ of Laghouat or Touggourt as they would a boatman of Pontoise or a farm labourer of Étampes. The French colonial howls against all the mistakes and indiscretions of a "Boulevard Government" for the Sahara, and even revile the Governor General, whom he calls a civilian dressed up in military garb and no governor at all. _Que diable!_ This savours of partisanship and politics, but it is an echo of what one hears as "café talk" any time he opens his ears in Algiers. All is peace and concord within, however, in spite of the small talk of the cafés; and the Arab and European live side by side, each enjoying practically the same rights and protection that they would if they lived in suburban Paris. The Caïd or Sheik or head man of a tribe is the go-between in all that concerns the affairs of the native with the French government. [Illustration: _Touggourt_] The name Caïd was formerly given to the governors of the provinces of the Barbary States, but to-day that individual has absolutely disappeared, though he still remains as an administrator of French law, under the surveillance of the military government. In reality the Caïd still remains the official head of his tribe, and in this position is sustained by the French authorities. The Arab has adopted the new order of things very graciously, but he can't get over his ancient desire to hoard gold; and, for that reason, no Algerian gold coin exists, and there is no gold in circulation to speak of. The Arab, when he gets it, buries it, forgets where, or dies and forgets to tell any one where, which is the same thing, and thus a certain very considerable amount is lost to circulation. Paper money, in values of twenty and fifty francs, takes the place of gold; the Arab thinks that it is something that is perishable, and accordingly spends it and keeps the country prosperous. The French understand the Arab and his foibles; there is no doubt about that. They solved the question of a circulating currency in Algeria. New York and Washington representatives of _haute finance_ might take a few lessons here. With regard to the money question, the stranger in Algeria must beware of false and non-current coin. Anything that's a coin looks good to an Arab, and for that reason a large amount of spurious stuff is in circulation. It was originally made by counterfeiters to gull the native, but to-day the stranger gets his share, or more than his share. To replace the gold "_louis_" of France, the Banque d'Algérie issues "shin-plasters" of twenty francs. They are convenient, but one must get rid of them before leaving the country or else sell them to a money changer at a discount. These Algerian bank-notes now pass current in Tunisia, a branch of the parent bank having recently been opened there. The commercial possibilities of Algeria have hardly, as yet, begun to be exploited, though the wine and wheat-growing lands are highly developed; and, since their opening, have suffered no lack of prosperity, save for a plague of _phylloxera_ which set back the vines on one occasion, and a plague of locusts which one day devastated almost the entire region of the wheat-growing plateaux. It was then the Arabs became locust-eaters, though indeed they are not become a cult as in Japan. With the Arab it was a case of eating locusts or nothing, for there was no grain. This plague of locusts fell upon the province of Constantine in 1885, and from Laghouat to Bou-Saada, and from Kenchela to Aumale they were brought in myriads by the sirocco of the desert from no one knows where. For two years these great cereal-growing areas were cleared of their crops as though a wild-fire had passed over them, until finally the government by strenuous efforts, and the employment of many thousands of labourers, was able to control and arrest the march of the plague. During this period many of the new colonists saw their utmost resources disappear; but gallantly they took up their task anew, and for the past dozen years only occasional slight recurrences of the pest have been noted, and they, fortunately, have been suppressed as they appeared. Besides wheat and wine, tobacco is an almost equal source of profit to Algeria. In France no one may grow a tobacco plant, even as an embellishment to his garden-plot, without first informing the excise authorities, who, afterwards, will come around periodically and count the leaves. In Africa the tobacco crop is something that brings peace and plenty to any who will cultivate it judiciously, for the consumption of the weed is great. Manufactured tobacco is cheap in Algeria. Neither cigars, cigarettes nor pipe mixtures, nor snuff either, pay any excise duties; and even foreign tobaccos, which mostly come from Hungary and the Turkish provinces, pay very little. Two-thirds of the Algerian manufactured product is made from home-grown tobacco, and a very large quantity of the same is sent to France to be sold as "Maryland;" though, indeed, if the original plants ever came from the other side of the water, it was by a very roundabout route. Certainly the broom-corn tobacco of France does not resemble that of Maryland in the least. The hope of France and her colonies is to grow all the tobacco consumed within her frontiers, whether it is labelled "Maryland," "Turkish" or "Scaferlati." The French government puts out some awful stuff it calls tobacco and sells under fancy names. The tobacco tax in Algeria is _nil_, and that on wine is nearly so. Four sous a _hectolitre_ (100 _litres_) is not a heavy tax to pay, though when it was first applied (in 1907) it was the excuse for the retail wine dealer (who in Algeria is but human, when he seeks to make what profit he can) to add two sous to the price of his wine _per litre_. There is a law in France against unfair trading, and the same applies to Algeria. It has been a dead law in many places for many years, but when a tax of four sous a _hectolitre_, originally paid to the state, by the dealer, finally came out of the consumer's pocket as ten francs, an increase of 5,000 per cent., popular clamour and threats of the law caused the dealer to drop back to his original price. This is the way Algeria protects its growing wine industry. Publicists and economists elsewhere should study the system. The African landscape is very simple and very expressive, severe but not sad, lively but not gay. The great level horizon bars the way south towards the wastes of the Sahara, and the mountains of the Atlas are ever present nearer at hand. The desert of romance, _le vrai désert_, is still a long way off; and, though there is now a macadamized road to Bou-Saada and Biskra, and a railway to Figuig and beyond, civilization is still only at the vestibule of the Sahara. The real development and exploitation of North Africa and its peoples and riches is yet to come. [Illustration: FARMING _OLD STYLE_] As for the climate, that of California is undoubtedly superior to that of Algeria, but the topographical and agricultural characteristics are much the same. The greatest difference which will be remarked by an American crossing Algeria from Oran to Souk-Ahras will be the distinct "foreign note" of the installation of its farming communities. Haystacks are plastered over with mud; carts are drawn by mules or horses hitched tandemwise, three, four or five on end, and the carts are mostly two-wheeled at that. There are no fences and no great barns for stocking fodder or sheltering cattle; the farmhouses are all of stone, bare or stucco-covered, and range in colour from sky-blue to pale pink and vivid yellow. There is some American farming machinery in use, but the Arab son of the soil still largely works with the implements of Biblical times. The winter of Algeria is the winter of Syria, of Japan, and reminiscent to some extent of California; perhaps not so mild on the whole, but still something of an approach thereto. Another contrast favourable to California is that in Algeria there is a lack of certain refinements of modern travel which are to be had in the "land of sunshine." Winter, properly speaking, does not come to Algeria except on the high plateaux of the provinces of Oran, Alger and Constantine, and on the mountain peaks of the Atlas, and in Kabylie. South of Algiers stretches the great plain of the Mitidja, which is like no other part of the earth's surface so much as it is like Normandy with respect to its prairies, "la Beauce" for its wheat-fields and its grazing-grounds, and the Bordelais for its vineyards. At the western extremity of the Mitidja commence the orange-groves of Blida, the forests of olive-trees, and the eucalyptus of La Trappe. The scene is immensely varied and suggestive of untold wealth and prosperity at every kilometre. Suburban Algiers is thickly built with villas, more or less after the Moorish style, but owned by Europeans. Recently the wealthy Arab has taken to building his "country house" on similar gracious lines; and, when he does, he keeps pretty near to accepted Moorish elements and details, whereas the European, the _colon_, or the _commerçant_ grown rich, carries out his idea on the Meudon or St. Cloud plan. The Moorish part is all there, but the thing often doesn't hang together. To the eastward back of the mountains of Kabylie lies the great plateau region of the Tell. The Tell is a region vastly different in manners and customs from either the desert or the Algerian littoral. The manners of the nomad of the Sahara here blend into those of the farming peasant; but, by the time Batna is reached, they become tainted with the commercialism of the outside world. At Constantine there is much European influence at work, and at the seacoast towns of Bona or Philippeville the Oriental perfume of the date-palm is lost in that of the smells and cosmopolitanism usually [Illustration] associated with great seaports. These four distinct characteristics mark four distinct regions of the Numidia of the ancients, to-day the wheat-growing region of the Tell. The principal mountain peaks in Algeria rise to no great heights. Touabet, near Tlemcen, is 1,620 metres in height; the highest peak of the Grand Kabylie Range, in the province of Alger, is 2,308 metres; and Chelia, in Constantine, 2,328 metres. They are not bold, rugged mountains, but rolling, rounded crests, often destitute of verdure to the point of desolation. The development of the regions forming the _hinterland_--practically one may so call the Sahara--is of constant and assiduous care to the authorities. They have done much and are doing much more as statistics indicate. In the valley of the Oued-Righ and the Ziban, one of the most favoured of these borderlands, the government statistics of springs and oases are as follows (1880-90):-- Oases, 38 Springs, 434 Palms, 518,000 Other fruit-trees, 90,000 Value of crops, 5,500,500 fcs. Inhabitants, 12,827 And as the population increases and fruit-growing areas are further developed, the military engineers come along and dig more wells. The following average temperatures and rainfall show the contrast between various regions:-- January August Rainfall (Centigrade) (Centigrade) (Millimetres) {Tlemcen 9.2 26 524 Mountains {Fort Nationale 10.1 27 982 {Constantine 8.5 26 408 {Géryville 7.2 25.3 126 Plateaux {Djeefa 7.2 27.6 176 {Tebessa 8.1 27.7 251 It will be noted that, normally, there is very little difference in temperature, and a very considerable difference in rainfall. The extreme recorded winter temperatures are as follows:-- 1906 Aumale 8° centigrade Laghouat 45° " 1905 Laghouat 7° " Biskra 47° " 1904 Aumale 3° " Tunis 14° " Algeria has something like 3,100 kilometres of standard gauge railway, and various light railways, or narrow gauge roads, of from ten to fifty kilometres in length, aggregating perhaps five hundred kilometres more. Railway building and development is going on constantly, but they don't yet know what an express train is, and the sleeping and dining car services are almost as bad as they are in England. The real up-to-date sleeping-car has electric lights and hot and cold water as well as steam heat. They have dreamed of none of these things yet in England or Africa. The railway is the chief civilizing developer of a country. The railway receipts in Algeria in 1870 were 2,500,000 francs. In 1900 they were 26,000,000 francs. That's an increase of a thousand per cent., and it all came out of the country. The "Routes Nationales" of Algeria (not counting by-roads, etc.), the real arteries of the life-blood of the country, at the same periods numbered almost an equal extent, and they are still being built. Give a new country good roads and good railways and it is bound to prosper. Four millions of the total population of Algeria (including something over two hundred thousand Europeans) are dependent upon agriculture for their livelihood. Wheat, wine and tobacco rank in importance in the order named. The growth of the wine industry has been most remarkable. In 1872 4,994,000 gallons were produced " 1880 9,504,000 " " " " 1888 60,742,000 " " " " 1898 100,194,600 " " " None of it is sold as Bordeaux or Burgundy, at least not by the Algerian grower or dealer. It is quite good enough to sell on its own merits. Let Australia, then, fabricate so-called "Burgundy" and Germany "Champagne"--Algeria has no need for any of these wiles. Grapes, figs and plums are seemingly better in Algeria than elsewhere. Not better, perhaps, but they are so abundant that one eats only of the best. The rest are exported to England and Germany. The little _mandarin_ oranges from Blida and about there, are one of the stand-bys of Algerian trade. So are olives and dates. [Illustration: _Tunisia_] CHAPTER IV THE RÉGENCE OF TUNISIA AND THE TUNISIANS For twenty years France has been putting forth her best efforts and energies into the development of Tunisia, to make it a worthy and helpful sister to Algeria. From a French population of seven hundred at the time of the occupation in 1882, the number has risen to fifty thousand. Tunisia of to-day was the Lybia of the ancients; but whether it was peopled originally from Spain, from Egypt or from peoples from the south, history is silent, or at least is not convincingly loud-voiced. Lybian, Punic, Roman, Vandal and Byzantine, the country became in turn, then Mussulman; for the native Tunisian has not yet become French. The Bey still reigns, though with a shorn fragment of his former powers. The Bey is still the titular head of his Régence, but the French Résident Général is really the _premier fonctionnaire_, as also he is the Bey's Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. The ancient governmental organization of the Bey has been retained with respect to interior affairs. The Caïds are the local governors or administrators of the territorial divisions and are appointed by the Bey himself. They are charged with the policing of their districts, the collecting of taxes, and are vested with a certain military authority with which to impress their tribes. Associated with the Caïds, as seconds in command, are a class called Khalifas, and as tax collectors, mere civil authorities, there are finally the Sheiks. [Illustration: _An Old Seal of the Bey of Tunis_] It was a bitter pill for Italy when France took the ascendancy in Tunis. The population of the city of Tunis to-day still figures 30,000 Italians and Maltese as against 10,000 French,--and ever have the French anti-expansionists called it a "_chinoiserie_." Call it what you will, Tunis, in spite of its preponderant Italian influence, is fast becoming French. It is also becoming prosperous, which is the chief end of man's existence. This proves France's intervention to have been a good thing, in spite of the fact that it accounts for seventy-five per cent. of the Italian's animosity towards his Gallic sister. The death of S. A. Saddok-Bey in 1882, by which the Tunisian sovereign became subservient to the French Resident, was an event which caused some apprehension in France. The new ruler, Si-Ali-Bey, embraced gladly the French suzerainty in his land that his sons might see the institutions of the Régence prosper under the benign guidance of a world power. Ali-Bey resisted nothing French,--even as a Prince,--and when he came to the Beylicale throne in 1882 he gave no thought whatever to the ultimate political independence of his country. He was ever, until his death, the faithful, liberal coöperator with the succession of Résidents Généreaux who superseded him in the control of the real destinies of Tunisia. As a sovereign he formerly stood as the absolute ruler of a million souls, not only their political ruler, but their religious head as well. The latter title still belongs to the Bey. (The present ruler, Mohammed-en-Nacer-Bey, came into power upon the death of his predecessor, Mohammed-el-Hadi-Bey in 1906.) French political administration has robbed the power of the Bey of many of its picturesque and romantic accessories; but the usages of Islam are tolerated not only in the entourage of the Bey, but in all his subjects as well. This toleration even grants them the sanctity of their mosques, and does not allow the hordes of Christian tourists, who now make a playground of Mediterranean Africa from Cairo to Fez, to desecrate them by writing their names in Mohammedan sacred places. In other words, Europeans are forbidden to enter any of the Tunisian mosques save those at Kairouan. It was Ali-Bey who achieved the task of making the masses understand that their duty was to obey the new régime; that it was a law common to them all that would assure the prosperity of the nation; and that it was he, the Bey, who was still the titular head of their religion, which, after all, is the Mussulman's chief concern in life. Might makes right, often enough in a maladroit fashion, but sometimes it comes as a real blessing. This was the case with the coming of the French to Tunisia. A highly organized army was a necessity for Tunisia, and within the last quarter of a century she has got it. The French were far-seeing enough to anticipate the probable eventuality which might grow out of England's side-long glances towards Bizerte, and the Italian sphere of influence in Tripoli. Now those fears, not by any means imaginary ones at the time, are dead. England must be content with Gibraltar, and Italy with Sardinia. There are no more Mediterranean worlds to conquer, or there will not be after France absorbs Tripoli in Barbary, and Morocco, and the mortgages are maturing fast. To-day the Tunisians are taxed less than they ever were before, and are better policed, protected and cared for in every way. Their millennium seems to have arrived. France, with the coöperation of the Bey, dispenses the law and the prophets after the patriarchal manner which Saint Louis inaugurated at Carthage in the thirteenth century. The justice of Ali-Bey and Mohammed-el-Hadi-Bey was an improvement over that of their predecessors, which was tyrannical to an extreme. The Spartan or Druidical under-the-oak justice, and worse, gave way to a formal recognized code of laws which the French authorities evolved from the heritage of the Koran, and very well indeed it has worked. The Bey had become a veritable father of his people, and was accessible to all who had business with him, meriting and receiving the true veneration of all the Tunisian population of Turks, Jews and Arabs. He interpreted the laws of Mahomet with liberality to all, and from his palace of La Marsa dispensed an incalculable charity. The present Bey is not an old and tried law-maker or soldier like his predecessors, and beyond a few simple phrases is not even conversant with the French language. He is a Mussulman _in toto_, but his régime seems to run smoothly, and day by day the country of his forefathers prospers and its people grow fat. Some day an even greater prosperity is due to come to Tunisia, and then the Beylicale incumbent will be covered with further glories, if not further powers. This will come when the great trade-route from the Mediterranean to the heart of Africa, to Lake Tchad, is opened through the Sud-Tunisien and Tripoli, which will be long before the African interior railway dreamed of by the late Cecil Rhodes comes into being. French influence in Africa will then receive a commercial expansion that is its due, and another Islamic land will come unconsciously under the sway of Christian civilization. The obsequies of the late Bey of Tunis were an impressive and unusual ceremony. The eve before, the prince who was to reign henceforth received the proclamation of his powers at the Bardo, when he was invested with the Beylicale honours by the authorities of France and Tunisia. The funeral of the dead Bey was more pompous than any other of his predecessors. He died at his palace at La Marsa and lay in state for a time in his own particular "Holy City," Kassar-Saïd, on the route to Bizerte, where were present all his immediate family. Prince Mohammed-en-Nacer, the Bey to be, was so overcome with a crisis of nerves that he fell swooning at the ceremony, with difficulty pulling himself together sufficiently to proceed. The progress of the cortége towards Tunis, the capital, was through the lined-up ranks of fifty thousand Mussulmans lying prostrate on the ground. Entrance to the city was by the Sidi-Abdallah Gate, and thence to the Kasba. The Mussulman population crowded the roof-tops and towers of the entire city. The military guard of the Zouaves, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the Beylicale cavalry formed a contrasting lively note to the solemnity of the religious proceedings, though nothing could drown the fervent wails and shouts of "_La illah allah, Mohammed Rassone Allah! Sidi Ali-Bey!_" the Arabic substitute for "The King is dead! Long live the King!" Before the Grande Mosquée the Unans-Muftis and the Bach-Muftis recited their special prayers, and all the dignitaries of the new court came to kiss the hand of the reigning prince, who, at the Gate of Dar-el-Bey, was saluted by the Résident Général of France. The Tomb of the Beys, the Tourbet et Bey, is the sepulchre of all the princes of the house, each being buried in a separate marble sarcophagus, but practically in a common grave. A fanatical expression which was not countenanced, but which frequently came to pass nevertheless, was the crawling beneath the litter on which reposed the remains of the defunct Bey by numerous Mussulman devotees. The necromancy of it all is to the effect that he who should pass beneath the body of a dead Mussulman ruler would attain pardon for any faults ever afterwards committed. Seemingly it occurred to the authorities that it was putting a premium on crime, and so it was suppressed, and rightly enough. The political status of the native of Tunisia to-day is similar to that of his brother of Algeria. It is incontestable that the Tunisian's status under Beylicale rule was not wholly comfortable, for the _indigènes_ were ruled in a manner little short of tyrannical; but the Arab lived always in expectation of bettering his position, in spite of being either a serf or a ground-down menial. To-day he has only the state of the ordinary French citizen to look forward to, and has no hope of becoming a tyrant himself. This is his chief grievance as seen by an outsider, though indeed when you discuss the matter with him he has a long line of complaints to enumerate. Things have greatly improved in Tunisia since the French came into control. Formerly the native, or the outlander, had no appeal from the Beylicale rule short of being hanged if he didn't like his original sentence. To-day, with a mixed tribunal of Tunisian and French officials, he has a far easier time of it even though he be a delinquent. He gets his deserts, but no vituperative punishments. One thing the Tunisian Arab may not do under French rule. He may not leave the Régence, even though he objects to living there. The French forbid this. They keep the _indigènes_ at home for their country's good, instead of sending them away. It keeps a good balance of things anyway, and the law of the Koran as interpreted by the powers of Tunis is as good for the control of a subject people as that of the Code Napoleon. The Tunisians, the common people of Tunis, are protégés of France, and France is doing her best to protect them and lead them to prosperity, assisted of course by the good-will and influence of the ruling Bey, whom she keeps in luxury and quasi-power. Formerly when the native ruler did not care to be bothered with any particular class of subjects, whether they were Turks or Jews, he banished them, but the French officials consider this a superfluous prodigality, and keep all ranks at home and as contented as possible in their work of developing their country. The one thing that the French will not have is a wholesale immigration of the Arab population of either Algeria or Tunisia. To benefit by a change of air, the _indigène_ of whatever rank must have a special permission from the government before he will be allowed to embark on board ship, or he will have to become a stowaway. Very many get this special permission, for one reason or another, but to many it is refused, and for good and sufficient reasons. To the merchant who would develop a commerce in the wheat of the plateau-lands, the barley of the Sahel, or the dates of the oasis, permission is granted readily enough; and to the young student who would study law or medicine at Aix, Montpellier or Paris; but not to the able-bodied cultivator of the fields. He is wanted at home to grow up with the country. Tunis _la ville_ and Tunisia _le pays_ are more mediæval and more Oriental than Algiers or Algeria. In Tunis, as in every Arab town, as in Constantinople or Cairo, you may yet walk the streets feeling all the oppression of that silence which "follows you still," and of a patient, lack-lustre stare, still regarding you as "an unaccountable, uncomfortable work of God, that may have been sent for some good purpose--to be revealed hereafter." The morality and the methods of the traders of the bazars and _souks_ remain as Kinglake and Burton described them in their day, something not yet understood by the ordinary Occidental. This sort of thing is at its best at Tunis. Wine, olives, dates and phosphates are each contributing to the prosperity of Tunis to a remarkable degree, and the development of each industry is increasing as nowhere else, not even in Algeria. In 1900 the vineyards of Tunisia increased over two thousand hectares, and in all numbered nearly twelve thousand hectares, of which one-quarter at least were native owned. [Illustration: THE OLIVES WE EAT OLIVE de LUCQUES OLIVE PECHELINE OLIVE VERDALE OLIVE ROUGET OLIVE OLIVER ] The wine crop in 1900 was 225,000 hectolitres, an increase of nearly thirty per cent, over the season before, and it is still increasing. The olive brings an enormous profit to its exploiters, and the Tunisian olive and Tunisian olive oil rank high in the markets of the world. Originally ancient Lybia was one of the first countries known to produce olive oil on a commercial scale. All varieties of olive are grown on Tunisian soil. The illustration herewith marks the species. The art of making olive oil goes back to the god Mercury. In the time of Moses and of Job the culture of the olive was greatly in repute. The exotics of the East and of Greece took the olive-leaf for a symbol, but the fighting, quarrelsome Romans would have none of it; the bay leaf and the palm of victory were all-sufficient for them. They soon came to know its value, however, when they overran North Africa, and they exploited the olive-groves as they did the plateau wheat belt. Cæsar even nourished his armies on such other local products as figs and dates and found them strength-giving and sinew-making. North Africa has ever been a _garde-manger_ of nations. What Tunisia needs is capital, and everybody knows it. The date-palm and the olive give the greatest return of all the agricultural exploitations of the country, and after them the vine, and finally the orange-tree, the lemon-tree, the fig and the almond. Each and every one of these fruits requires a different condition of soil and climate. Fortunately all are here, and that is why Tunisia is going some day to be a gold mine for all who invest their capital in the exploitation of its soil. The date requires a warmth and dryness of atmosphere which is found nowhere so suitable as in the Djerid and the Nefzaoua in the south. Here the soil is of just the right sandy composition, and rain is comparatively unknown. For this reason the date here flourishes better than the olive, which accommodates itself readily to the Sahel and the mountains of the north. Of the vast production of dates in this region, by far the greater part is consumed at home, the exportation of a million francs' worth per annum being but a small proportion of the whole. Almost every newly exploited tourist ground has an individual brand of pottery which collectors rave over, though it may be the ordinary variety of cooking utensils which are common to the region. This is true of Tunis and the potteries of Nabeul. Besides mere utilitarian articles for domestic use, the shapes and forms which these Arab pottery-workers give to their vases and jugs make them really characteristic and beautiful _objets d'art_; and they are not expensive. The loving marks of the potter's thumb are over all, and his crude ideas of form and colour are something which more highly trained craftsmen often miss when they come to manufacturing "art-pottery," as the name is known to collectors. A _cruchon_ decorated with a band of angular camels and queer zigzag rows of green or red has more of that quality called "character" than the finest _lustre_ of the Golfe de Jouan or the faïence of Rouen. For five francs one may buy three very imposing examples of jugs, vases or water-bottles, and make his friends at home as happy as if he brought them a string of coral (made of celluloid, which is mostly what one gets in Italy to-day), or a carved ivory elephant of the Indies (made in Belgium of zylonite). The real art sense often expresses itself in the common, ordinary products of a country, though not every tourist seems to know this. Let the collector who wants a new fad collect "peasant pottery," and never pay over half a dollar for any one piece. Closely allied with the pottery of Nabeul is a more commercially grand enterprise which has recently been undertaken in the Sahel south of Tunis. Not all the wealth of the vastly productive though undeveloped countryside lies in cereals, phosphates or olive-trees. There is a species of clay which is suitable, apparently, to all forms of ceramic fabrication. In one of the most picturesque corners of the littoral, just south of Monastir, is a factory which turns out the most beautiful glazed brick and tiles that one ever cast his eye upon. The red-tiled roof of convention may now be expected to give way to one of iridescent, dazzling green, if the industry goes on prospering; and no more will the brick-yards of Marseilles sell their dull, conventional product throughout Tunisia; and no more will the steamship companies grow wealthy off this dead-weight freight. The Italian or Maltese _balancelle_ will deliver these magnificent coloured bricks and tiles of Monastir all over the Mediterranean shores; and a variety of colour will come into the landscape of the fishermen's huts and the farmhouses which the artists of a former generation knew not of. Tunis is undergoing a great commercial development, and if the gold of Ophir is not some day found beneath its soil, many who have predicted its undeveloped riches will be surprised and disappointed. The railways of Tunisia are not at all adequate to the needs of the country, but they are growing rapidly. When the line is finally built linking Sousse and Sfax (the service is now performed by automobile by travellers, or on camel-back; or by Italian or Arab _barques_ by water, for merchandise), there will be approximately 1,700 kilometres of single-track road. Algeria with an area four times as great has but 3,100 kilometres of railway. The railway exploitation of Tunisia has not as yet brought any great profit to its founders. The net profit after the cost of exploitation, in 1904, was but half a million francs; but it has a bright future. Great efforts are being made by the government authorities, and the railway officials as well, towards colonizing the Régence with _French citizens_. A million and a half of francs have already been spent by the government, in addition to free grants of land, towards this colonization, and in 1904 alone land to the value of a million and a half was sold to _French_ immigrants. If one wants to travel into the interior of Tunisia, off the beaten track, say to Médenine, beyond Gabès; or to Tozeur, he should find some way of fitting himself out with an authorization and recommendation from the French "civil control." This recommendation will be written in Arabic, and one will not be able to read it, nor will half the officials to whom it is shown _en route_; but one and all will be impressed by the official seal, the parchment, the heading "Praise to Allah the only God," and the date at the bottom,--which will read something as follows: 22 Djoumada 2d, 1307,--this being the date of the Hegira. Any document as mysterious and formal as this will accomplish much anywhere, so far as its powers as an open sesame are concerned. CHAPTER V THE RELIGION OF THE MUSSULMAN No one unless he be a Mohammedan can hope to experience the sentiments and emotions born of the Mussulman religion, or explain the fundamental principles of the Koran. It is a thing apart from all other religions, and though we may recognize many of its principles as being good and worthy, only one of the faithful can really absorb them as a part of his daily life. The one underlying tenet which we all recognize as being something understood of all people, be they fanatics or not, is that of the purification by water. No Mussulman commences his devotions without first washing himself; he may take a conventional bath; he may wash his feet, face and hands; or he may go through a mere perfunctory sprinkling; but the form or ceremony has been complied with, and then, and then only, may he invoke Allah and his Prophet. From the Atlantic to the Malay seas, from Turkestan to the Congo, more than two [Illustration: The World of Islam] hundred millions of men proclaim that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his Prophet. Besides these well-defined geographical limits, the Mohammedans are everywhere. You find them in China, in Japan, in India, in the Philippines, and scattered throughout Continental Europe. The strength of Islam is everywhere in evidence. And whether it is mere tribal warfare that brings it to our notice, or a "Holy War" against the infidels of Christians, as is really the case in Morocco at the present time, it is to be reckoned with as a power, as much so as the "yellow plague" of the Chinese and Japanese. In all Islamic lands religion stands first. The Sultans--those of Constantinople and Fez--are religious heads even before they are accounted as chiefs of the state. And through its sub-heads and brotherhoods and secret societies, Islamism is spreading with a rapidity which most of the supposedly worldly-wise have hitherto ignored entirely. In the African possessions of France alone there are in the neighbourhood of a hundred head-centres of Islamism which, until a very recent time, preached obstruction to the foreigner--and perhaps still does so in secret. France came to know and realize this very soon, and when she took over the civil and military charge of Algeria and Tunisia, she recognized the only successful policy as being one of coöperation and not of coercion. Three hundred organizations, then,--more religious sects or communities than political divisions of a people--were kept intact in most instances, and the Sheiks who formerly got obedience from their people as the sub-religious heads of this vast organization became practically mayors, councillors and justices of the peace. It was the only thing to do, and how well it has worked is best shown by the fact that Algeria has become the most flourishing and loyal of all French colonies. These Sheiks of Algeria and Tunisia, to whom France has granted so much complimentary power, contributed in cash, in 1890, the sum of sixteen millions of francs which they had collected of their fellow Mussulmans. A gigantic sum when it is realized that it may originally have been paid to the Sheik in kind, a quintal of wheat, a half dozen sheep, or a few hundred kilos of dates. The Sheik doubtless makes something for himself as all this commodity passes through his hands, but what would you, official sinning is not confined to Mohammedans. In return for his services the Arab Sheik, the emissary of the French civil control, gets a more modest salary than would his Gallic substitute, and he does his work more efficiently. His powers, with the backing of France, have been largely increased, even with his own people, and he is a part of a great political machine. He may even be a very learned person, an expert linguist in French, and the bearer of many decorations, even the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. Is it any wonder that his country is peaceful and everybody satisfied! He breaks out once and again with some childish, petulant protest and compromises the whole thing; but then some French official at headquarters makes him a present of a gross of wax candles, a bird-cage or a phonograph, and again everything runs smoothly for a space. Before the time of Mohammed the Arabs professed diverse religions; some were Christians; some were Jews; some were fire-worshippers; and some mere idol-worshippers. Among this latter were a sect who made great idols of dough which in time became baked or very nearly petrified, and thus served the tribe of the Beni Hafa as food in time of famine. A very practical religion this! [Illustration: [Arabic] "There is no God but Allah And Mohammed is his prophet." ] The faith of Islam is an obscure thing. It is supposedly a compound of the Christian and Hebrew religions--with variations. The sects of Islam are many, the two chief being the Shiites and the Sunnites. The former recognized Ali, the cousin of Mohammed, as the true successor of the Prophet, and collectively they form the major part of the Mussulman faith of India and Persia. The orthodox followers of the Prophet, the faithful of Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, have added to the precepts of the Koran the books of traditional sayings and maxims of the Prophet (a sort of Apocrypha, it would seem), and recognize as his successors the first four Kalifs--those of Bagdad, Cairo, Constantinople and Fez--as the legitimate successors of Mohammed. This chief orthodox sect is further subdivided into Hanefites, Malikites, Shafiites and Hanabites,--foundations of various relations of the Prophet. They vary somewhat in their interpretations of the Koran and certain conclusions with regard to the "law" of the Prophet, but they are as one with regard to the precepts of purification, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and charity towards their fellow men, and against the outside world of infidels. The Arabs and _Berbères Arabisés_ of North Africa are mostly Hanefites and Malikites. Five times a day the Mussulman prays: (i) at _fedjeur_ (daybreak--before sunrise); (ii) at _eulam_ (after meridian); (iii) at _dohar_ (midway between noon and nightfall); (iv) at _aseur_ (just after sunset, when his day of labour is finished); and (v) at _mogreb_ (when night actually falls). There is sometimes a sixth prayer at _eucha_ (supper-time). Not all professing Mussulmans pray five times a day. There are backsliders in the Mussulman religion as in other religions; but both in the cities and the countryside the truly devout, singly, or even in groups of a score or a hundred at a time, make their "sunset devotions" with regularity and impressiveness. The devout Arab will dismount from his horse, mule or camel, will come out of his tent or house, and will even alight from a railway train or diligence if opportunity offers, and say his sunset prayer in the open air. The Mussulman does not invariably need the stimulus of a temple to express himself towards his God. In that respect he is certainly far ahead of some of the other sects found throughout the world. The spectacle of the Mussulman's sunset prayer in the desert--standing barefooted on his little rug or carpet and facing the east and Mecca--is impressive beyond words; and not even the most skeptical would deny to the simple faith of Islam the virtues granted to many religions more ceremoniously complicated. The ceremonies in the mosques are less impressive than those in the open air. The following résumé of the symbolism of the eight positions of the Mussulmans' prayer explains the attitudes and postures that one remarks everywhere in the world of Islam. I. Standing. "I offer my God, with sincere heart and with my face towards Mecca, two _rakôh_ (prayers). II. Still standing, but with open palms raised to each side of the face, the thumbs touching the ears--"God is Great!" III. Still standing; with the right hand crossing the left over the chest, he repeats, "Holiness to Thee, oh, God! Praise be to [Illustration: _The Eight Positions of the Praying Mussulman_] Thee! Great is Thy name!"--and other prayers from the Koran. IV. Still standing; the body inclined forward and the hands, with fingers separated, placed upon the knees. "I extol the Sanctity of the Great God!" V. Falling upon the knees--"God is Great!" VI. Still on the knees he makes a bow (three times repeated), the forehead and nose touching the ground, "I extol the Sanctity of my God, the Most High!" This practically finishes one _rakôh_, but there are usually added certain recitations from the first chapter of the Koran, with perhaps a repetition of the postures. VII. Before finally leaving the place of prayer the act of witness, _Tashabhud_, is given. He raises the forefinger of his right hand and repeats: "I affirm that there is no God but God and that Mohammed is the Apostle of God." VIII. The last position is the _Munjat_, or supplication, when are repeated certain suitable verses of the Koran. Christ enters into the Mussulman religion as one of the Prophets of God. They believe that Christ was, before the coming of Mohammed, the greatest of all Prophets. All good Mussulmans recite the prayers of their beads, just as all good Catholics say their chaplets. The Mussulman has a string of ninety-nine beads, each standing for one of the ninety-nine perfections of Allah. This rosary is often elaborate and costly, interspersed here and there with jewels; but more often than not, even with wealthy Mussulmans, it is a string of crude wooden beads. The faith of Islam is a simple one, not a showy one. The Friday prayer at the mosques is one of the events to see in a Mussulman country. Public prayer is a social event with Mohammedans, as it is with many Christians. Soon after the sun has marked high noon, and while the siesta is still the chief blessing with many, the throng follows the first _zoual_ or call of the _muezzin_. Everything is burning and brilliant under an ardent southern sun, and a scintillating, dazzling reflection comes from each whitewashed wall until one is almost blinded. After this the cool shadows of the mosque are most refreshing. Barefooted the Mussulman throng threads its way among the myriad pillars of the court and enters the sanctuary where daylight filters dimly through a sieve of iron-latticed windows. Praying men are everywhere,--men of the town, and nomad Arabs from the desert whose business has brought them thither. The women are all at the cemetery talking scandal, for except on special occasions, the Mussulman women are not admitted to the Holy Day (Friday) prayers in the mosques. This is in accordance to the law of the Prophet. Under a great dome a ruddier, more brilliant light showers down on the students and professors who psalm the verses of the Koran in a monotonous wail; while still farther to the rear is the infants' school, whose pupils repeat their lessons in crackling singsong voices all day long to a pair of bearded, turbaned elders. Here and there, backed up against a pillar, a _taleb_ recites his litany to the Prophet. All these voices blend in a murmur undistinguishable from any other conglomerate sound, except that it is manifestly human. Suddenly, from high above, on the gallery of the minaret, rings out the _muezzin's_ second call to prayer, and like the reverberant light, it seems to filter down from the unknown. With face towards Mecca the _imam_ reads [Illustration: _The Muezzin's Call to Prayer_] the Khotba, a long, dreary prayer of exhortation, but no more monotonous than the cut and dried sermon which one mostly gets in Christian churches. The _imam_ is not a priest as is known of Christendom; the religion of Islam has no regular clergy; he is simply the wisest elder among the personnel of the mosque. All through the service, as indeed at all times, a great calm reigns throughout every Mohammedan mosque. At the end of the last exhorting couplet issuing from between the lips of the _imam_ a naïve joy, as of a relief from a great oppression, spreads over the assembled faithful and all rush for the open, as do congregations of other faiths. One religion is not so very different from another after all. It is only a matter of belief, not of the mode of expressing one's adherence to that belief. "_May peace be thine, O Mohammed, Prophet of God. Ruler of Mecca and Medina and Lord of all Mussulmans now and always._" This finishes the service of the mosque. From the opaque obscurity of the maze of the mosque's interior one comes suddenly again into the light of day. To a burning African landscape from the humidity of a cloister. Woman's position in Islam is peculiar. It is not according to our notions of what is right and proper, and there is no looked-for or hoped-for emancipation to be thought of. The question is both a social and a religious one. Those few Europeans who have really studied the harem as an institution have found, however, that its establishment and continuance is a plan that works well, and that the majority of these supposedly unhappy wives really love their husbands, and their destiny. If this is so, what business is it of ours to criticize the conduct of the _ménage_ of the Arab or the Turk. The Prophet himself said that woman was the jewel and the perfume of this world. Theoretically the Mussulman idea is that man is the superior creature physically, and that it is his business alone to mingle and rub shoulders with the world, leaving his wives, members of the fragile sex, to raise his family, embellish his life and console him in time of grief. All other things apart, surely these are good enough principles for anybody to found domestic bliss upon. And these are the principal tenets of the domestic creed of the Moslem. He is often not the villain he is painted. To continue the words of the Prophet--Mohammed said one day to his companions: "Would you know the most valuable possession of man? It is, then, an honest woman. She charms the eye, and is obedient, and guards his reputation intact during his absence from home." Really the Islamic faith goes a bit farther, for it counsels man to "cloister his wife as a prevention of jealousy and doubt, the mortal poisons, the terrible unpitying destroyers of conjugal quietude." This, too, seems good advice, like many other of the precepts of the Koran. Many of these Arab women were born within the harem's walls, and know not any other modes of life as preferable to their own. They regard the daily round of liberty of the European woman as an unreal, undesirable state. The harem has been the theatre of their joys since infancy, and they have become so habituated to it that their life of seclusion becomes a second nature. They would not flee the sill of the great doorway into the outer world if they could, and their only change of _locale_ is to pass from the harem of the husband of their mother to that of their spouse. In the harem the Arab woman is cared for with an unthought-of luxury. All the goods and chattels that their husband values most go to enrich the harem walls and floors. The harem is a sumptuous, glorious apartment compared to the simplicity with which the master of the house surrounds himself in his own quarters. It is the opinion of that indefatigable traveller and student of exotic things, Edmond de Amicis, that the Arab concedes nothing to the European in his chivalrous treatment of woman. "No Arab dares lift an offending hand against a woman in public." "No Arab soldier, even in the tumult of attack, would think of maltreating even the most insolent of womenkind." And yet Europeans of most nationalities have been known to do both these things. In her cloister, or to be more exact, in her boudoir, the Arab woman, and particularly the mother, receives the most respectful homage and solicitude from all the household. According to the Koran the children are admonished to respect the persons of those who bore them, and a verbal declaration of the Prophet is set down as: "A child may gain Paradise only by following in the footsteps of its mother." The educated and advanced Arabs of the towns have done much to disabuse the public of any false preconceived ideas concerning Arab womenfolk. Contrary to common belief the Arab woman is often the intellectual and social equal of her spouse. It was only the absurd jealousy of the old-school Mussulmans that annihilated for ever the faculties of their wives. The portrait gallery of celebrated Mussulman women is not large, but one does not forget Zobeïdah, who inspired and aided the illustrious Haroun-Al-Rachid. Islam is not in its decadence, but its sponsors are awakening to the fact that they must keep abreast of the times. The Friday promenade of the Mussulman woman of the towns to the cemetery is her only outing, the only day off allowed her. She makes as much of it as possible, but it is a sad proceeding at best. The Arab tomb is, generally speaking, a thing of simplicity, a simple slab bearing the Arab words for the sentiment "_Hic jacet_." The exception is in the _marabout_ tombs or _koubas_, which are often monumental, though of comparatively small dimensions, well built, symmetrical, and surmounted by a dome or cupola. The word _marabout_ signifies first of all a holy man of the Mohammedan sect, a _réligieux_ in fact, one whose vows, life and service is devoted to his God. Furthermore the same word is applied to the tiny mosque-like tombs distributed throughout the Arab peopled lands, which are served by a _marabout_. The two entities have become somehow indistinguishable as to name. The _mosque-marabout_ is practically a tiny house of worship, its four box-like walls surmounted by one great dome or others smaller, with never, never a minaret, the invariable adjunct of a full-grown mosque. The quaint, kindly welcome of the marabout of Algeria and Tunisia will long remain in the memory of those who have come under its influence, as did the author in the course of some months' sojourn in a little desert oasis, peopled only by _indigènes_ and the small garrison of a French military post. An excursion to visit the marabout in his humble dwelling, some kilometres away under another little clump of palm-trees, was an almost weekly occurrence. Conversation was difficult, but we all sat and looked at each other and made signs, and nodded, and clasped hands, and again nodded a farewell, the white-clad marabout's kindly, bearded face lighting up meanwhile as if in appreciation of the glimmer of light from the outside world which had filtered through to his tranquil abode. Nothing ever more belied the words [Illustration: _A Marabout_] of a proverb than a marabout. The French have a remark in which he is made out an ugly, uncouth man: "_Affreux comme un marabout_." The illustration herewith belies these words. If you are a clergyman of the Christian church, and there are many "conducted tourists" of that order in Algeria to-day, you need have no hesitancy in making your profession of faith known to the marabout. Say simply that you are a "_marabout d'Aïssa_." He will recognize and respect your religion, which is more than the Confucian or Buddhist will, who simply rolls his tongue in his cheek and smiles blandly. The Mohammedan's religion is a very plausible and a very well-working one. He has no false gods or idols. That's a good thing of itself. And superstition plays a very small part therein. That's another good thing. The marabout is not a Mussulman priest, but a member, merely, of a religious order,--a monk virtually, and, as there are communities of monkish orders elsewhere, there are also whole tribes in Africa composed entirely of marabouts. They are looked up to by the Mussulman faithful as shepherds of the flock in the absence of a specially credentialled priest or father. The marabouts are most numerous in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, though their vocation properly belongs to the entire Mussulman religion. A whole tribe of the sect of marabouts, under the pretext of wishing to be free to practise their rites away from worldly contaminating influences, voluntarily exiled themselves centuries ago in the Atlas range bordering the northern limits of the Sahara. This was in 1050. From this procedure these religionists grew to such power and influence that they became virtually political rulers as well. They conquered the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco, and even sought to conquer Spain, emigrating to the southern peninsula in vast numbers, only to be chased from there to seek a refuge in Majorca, which they were able to do because of the bounty of the Mussulman King of Cordova, to whom the suzerainty belonged. Here they were known under the name of _Almoravides_, and to them was due the invention of the Spanish money known as _maravédis_. The marabout is caricatured a little, too, in the name given to a fat-bellied copper coffee-pot frequently met with in the Mediterranean countries. Balzac describes the _batterie de cuisine_ of one of his characters as consisting of _un chaudron, un gril, une casserole et trois marabouts_. One of the greatest Mussulman saints, and the one who is the most frequently invoked, was Sidi-el-Hadji-Abd-el-Kader-el-Djilali. His tomb is at Bagdad, but all Algeria is strewn with _koubas_ in his honour. He is particularly the patron saint of the blind, but the lame and the halt invoke his aid as well, for he has the reputation of being the most potent and efficacious of all Mussulman saints. A marabout is generally in charge of these _koubas_, as he is with the proper tombs of other holy men. The marabout tombs, the _koubas_ and the mosques are all Mussulman shrines of the same rank so far as their being holy, sanctified places is concerned. The pilgrimage to Mecca from all Mohammedan lands is the event of their lives for the faithful who participate therein. The pilgrims going from Algeria and Tunisia are yearly becoming greater in numbers. It is as queer a composite caravan as one has ever seen which lines up at the wharves of Bona or Sfax, there to take ship for the East. By this time it has ceased to be a caravan, and has become a personally conducted excursion. The return is quite as impressive as the departure. It is then that a sort of cantata is sung or chanted, running something like the following:-- First the waiting folk on shore shout out,-- "O pilgrims from the house of God Hast thou seen the Prophet of God." Then the pilgrims reply:-- "We have seen! We have seen! And we have left him in the House of God: There he makes his devotions, There he reads his holy books." The marabouts then endorse it all,-- "Our Seigneur Abraham is the beloved of God, Our Seigneur Moses is the mouthpiece of God, Our Seigneur Aïssa[1] is the spirit of God, But our Seigneur Mohammed is the Prophet of God." [1] The name the Arabs give Jesus Christ. The memory of a Mussulman who has departed this life is not put lightly aside with the rising of the next day's sun, but a real devotion, if a silent one, goes out towards the departed for many months, and perhaps years, after his corpse is first laid out on its mat of straw in the courtyard of his domicile or before his tent. At this moment the vague, rigid form compels the devotion of all who were near and dear to him in life. In soft cadence they bewail his death, and prayers of the utmost fervour are sent upward on his behalf. All is calm, solemn, and well-ordered, there is no hysterical excitement, no wailing clamour, and no jealous quarrellings among the heirs. Above all others one voice cries out a sad voluminous chant. It is the "_Borda_," the funeral elegy of a departed soul. An Arab funeral is a solemn affair, though not necessarily imposing. A little group of indeterminate numbers lead off, then four others carrying a litter, covered with a flowing white cloth, on their shoulders. All this is usually in the first hour after sunrise. On a little plateau of desert sand, just above the deep-dug grave, the corpse is finally placed, the company ranged about in a semicircle for one last, long, lingering prayer. The face of the corpse is turned always towards the holy city, Mecca, and when the body has been lowered into its eternal sandy cradle, and covered with a layer of sun-baked clay, and then more sand, three tiny palms are planted above. They soon wither and die, or they live, accordingly as chance favours or not, but the thing is that they be planted. This is the end; nothing remains but for the women to come along after a decent interval and weep, never by any chance missing a Friday. [Illustration: _In an Arab Cemetery_] CHAPTER VI ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOSQUES Gothic architecture is expressive of much that a mixed or transitory style lacks, but again the Roman, or Lombard, or the later architecture of the Renaissance, have their own particular cachet quite as recognizable and quite as well defined. Mohammedan architecture, so different in motif and treatment, is quite as expressive and, in many ways, quite as civilized as the architectural forms of Europe, and possesses in addition a certain feeling which baked clay and plaster suggests better than all other materials. A feeling which is often entirely wanting in cut stone when used to reproduce animal and plant forms. Saracenic, Assyrian, Persian and Byzantine architectural details are all of them beautiful, if bizarre, but the Mohammedan architecture of the Moors outranks them all for sheer appeal, fantastic and less consistent though it be. Fantastic it is, but often in a simple, suggestive way, depending upon design and proportion rather than profuse decoration. This is why the mosques of Kairouan in Tunisia, or those of Tlemcen in Algeria are even more interesting than the great Mosque of Saint Sophia, or the palace corridors of the Alhambra itself, which are, in fact, but a mixture of several styles. Terra-cotta and baked clay are all right in their way, but their way is the Mohammedan builders' way, not that of the modern school architects who simulate cut stone in the same plastic products, and build up Turkish baths in palatial twenty-story Broadway hotels with the pagan decorations of ancient Rome, when what they had in mind all the time was the fountained courtyard of a Mohammedan mosque--not by any means a symbolism of paganism. Our new-school architects of the Western world sadly muddle things at times. Moorish arabesques do not mingle well with the palmer's shells of the Italian Renaissance and the English fan-lights of the brothers Adam. The word mosque comes properly from the word _mesgid_, signifying place of adoration. The Italians make of the word, _moscheta_; the Spaniards, _meschita_; and the French, _mosquée_. All these variations are met with in North Africa. It is well to recognize them, for both Algeria and Tunisia are more "mixed" in their language and institutions than any other lands yet become affected of twentieth-century tourists. The mixture is perhaps the more likable because of its catholicity. It is certainly more interesting; but school-board and self-taught linguists will need all their wits about them to make the most of the soft, sweet tongue of a desert Arab who lisps first in French, then in Spanish and then in Italian, with perhaps an "_Oh, yes!_" or an "_All right!_" here and there. He modestly reserves his own Arabic for an exclusive harangue among his intimates. The conventional type of mosque is undoubtedly reminiscent of the Greek basilica, but in every way more amply disposed. The plan herewith is the accepted conventional type of great mosque before it got crowded up in the cities. To-day in most large towns and cities the mosque has been shorn of many of its attributes, leaving only the inner sanctuaries remaining. The plainness of the exterior of the mosques of North Africa is no indication of the gorgeousness of their interiors. An imposing sobriety of exterior, of all the mosques of Islam [Illustration: _Ground Plan of a Mosque_ A Outer Court. B Inner Court or Sahn. C Pulpits on which the Koran is placed. D Fountain. E Tribune from which the Muezzin calls to prayer. F Three praying-niches. G Horses and camels. H Strangers. I Bath. J Drinking-fountain. K Well.] in the Moghreb, from Tlemcen to Kairouan, invariably clothes dentelled sculpture and mouldings, fine rugs and hangings, and a labyrinth of architectural fantasies possessed by no other class of civil or religious edifices extant. The architecture of the mosques of Algeria and Tunisia, as of those of Constantinople and Cairo, is the apotheosis of a mysterious symbolism, at which the infidel can but wonder and speculate. He will never understand it, at least he will never feel it as does the Mussulman himself. It is unfortunate that we outsiders are thought of as unbelievers, but so it is. One does not forget that even twentieth-century Arab gamins at Suez and Port Saïd revile the Christian with their guttural: "_Ya Nasrani Kalb awani!_" This venerable abuse means nothing more or less than: "O Nazarene O dog obscene!" This comes down from tradition, for the same thing is recounted in Percy's "Reliques." There, in a certain anecdote, a knight calls his Mussulman opponent "_unchristian hound_," to which the retort courteous was given as, "christen dogge." Of all the dainty features of a Moorish mosque none appeals to the artist as does the minaret. Minaret is the Arab name for a chandelier, lantern, signal fire, and finally the slim, graceful tower of purely Arab origin. Properly speaking it is in the application to the Mussulman place of worship, the mosque, that we know the minaret in its most poetic form. In its architectural sense, however, it is that slim, graceful, arrow-like tower which is so frequently a component part of a Moorish or Byzantine structure. The Hebrews had a similar word for a tower which performed similar functions--_menorah_; and the Chaldeans the word _menora_; while, finally, the Syrians adopted _menortho_. Of the exotic origin of the word there is no doubt, but a minaret is first of all something more than a mere tower. It must be of special proportions, and it must be an adjunct to a more pretentious structure. Never is a minaret a thing apart. For a comparison between the Byzantine minaret and that born of the ingenuity of the Moorish builder, the words of Théophile Gautier must be accepted as final: "The minarets of Saint Sophia (Constantinople) have not the elegance nor _sveltesse_ of those of the Moor." The minaret of the mosque of the Sultan Kalaûn at Cairo is perhaps the most splendid of all contemporary works. Its height approximates two hundred feet, and though the mosque itself is ruined, its firm, square minaret, brilliant with all the fantasy of the best of Mussulman art, is to-day quite the most splendid example of its class above ground. The minaret of El Bardenei, also at Cairo, runs the former a close second. The square, dazzling white and more severe, though none less beautiful, minarets of Tunis and Algiers seem almost as if they were another species from the Cairene type. In reality they are not. They are one and the same thing, differing in no essential constructive element, but only in detail of decoration. The Arabs, seemingly, have a horror of symmetry. No two structures in one street are on the same building line or at the same angle, and the sky-lines of even the Frenchified cities of Algiers and Tunis are as bizarre as that of lower New York, though not as elevated. The Arab's idea of a street building line is most rudimentary, but French engineers are helping him out, and boulevards, avenues and streets are being laid out, and roads and alleys straightened as opportunity offers. The Arab looks on stolidly and doesn't in the least seem to object, though it answered him well enough previously that the doorway of his favourite mosque should be half-hidden and almost obstructed by the jutting veranda of a Moorish café, a sheep butcher's, a silversmith's, or a red and yellow awninged bath-house, and these, be it noted, were all set at varying angles and inclinations. A _moucharabia_ is a component of every Arab, Moorish or Turkish structure of any pretence. Its name sounds as though it might have some relation to a fly-screen, and in a certain sense it is that, though not an impenetrable one. It is more like the choir-screen of a Renaissance church. In reality the _moucharabia_ is a lattice or _grille_ of wood or even iron, sometimes ornate and finely carved, and sometimes merely a barred gate or door. When these fine latticed _grilles_ are taken away by the housebreaker, and offered the dealer in curios, they take on an exalted value that the original owners never knew. It is difficult to buy old-time woodwork anywhere, whether one is searching out Chippendale chairs in Yorkshire, _panétiers_ in Provence, or _moucharabias_ in the Mitidja; but the Arab curio dealer can give the Christian or Hebrew antique dealer of other lands a good fair start and then beat him as to the profits he can draw from the inexperienced tourist collector. One thing you may be sure of, Arab or Moorish antiques are seldom imitations, and though the "asking price" of a _moucharabia_ may (at first) be excessive, and the "talking points" of dubious value, the article in question is probably authentic, and actually could not be duplicated by the workmen of to-day for a similar price. [Illustration] The native dealer of Tunis or Algiers will ask two or three hundred francs for a fine example of a _moucharabia_, all green and red and gold, but he will probably take seventy-five if you will spend the day with him arguing it out. The little temples or shrines called _koubas_ scattered all over Algeria are not unlike the pagan temples of the Greeks in their general proportions. Literally the word in Arabic means a square house, though indeed it was the patriarch Abraham who supposedly set the conventional design upon which all others have since been built. Two workmen, one a Greek and another a Copt, built the first _kouba_ at Mecca, and it was out of this that the typical Arab mosque grew, as distinct from the frequently more splendid mosques of the Byzants. The Arabs had no religious art previous to their adoption of the faith of Mahomet. The true Mussulman thinks that the form and style of the mosque and all its dependencies was preconceived in the heavens, before even the creation of man, and that that poor mortal was only formed in the image of God when everything was ready and in place. With what success man has made use of his opportunities each must judge for himself. The _mosque-marabout_ is often a monument which marks a holy place, the tomb, for instance, of a celebrated marabout or holy man. That erected at Algiers, above the remains of the Marabout Sidi-Brahim, famous because of [Illustration] his defence of a French captain and his soldiers in the Algerian warfare of 1845, is as admirable and worthy a sepulchral monument as one will find in any land. The religious architecture of Islam, as far as its symbolism is concerned, is a thing that will never be understood by the Christian. A mosque to most people is simply a public monument, a thing of domes and minarets and many columns. The winter bird of passage at Cairo thinks it a great inconvenience that he should be made to put on a pair of _babouches_ over his shoes in order to enter, forgetting that it is a Holy Place and that one of the tenets of the Mussulman religion forbids walking rough-shod over the rugs and carpets of a place of worship. In Algeria the practice is similar, except that the "infidel" simply removes his shoes and enters stocking-footed. In Tunisia, with the exception of the mosques at Kairouan, none but the Mussulman may pass their thresholds. The fine Moorish architecture which radiated from Granada in the golden days of its best epoch has in our day sadly degenerated. The primitive Arab of Africa intermingled with the Moors and absorbed to a certain degree the pure fundamental principles of Moorish architecture. The town-dwelling Arab built his mosques and his houses, during the last two centuries, less luxuriously perhaps than his predecessors (and often with the aid of Italian workmen), but he did not debase the Moorish formulæ. What he kept of constructive elements was pure, the debasement has only come in later years with the additions and reconstructions incident to keeping pace with the times. This is where the Arab architect beats the European at the same game. The religious edifices of Islam, whether the simple _kouba_ of a saint, or the elaborate mosque of the city, possess always a certain infallible form. The fundamental principles are the same, whether one takes an example from the Holy Land, or from one within sight of Gibraltar. In Arabia, in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria this Arab expression of the architecture of the Moors predominates, but in Persia, Turkestan and in the Ottoman Empire there is a certain specious Byzantine cachet, which, if not actually a debasement, is a qualifying note which differentiates the two varieties. The Arab variety has always been, however, the pattern-mould from which has sprung forth the Islamic religious architecture of to-day. Before the birth of Islamism, Arabia, properly called, had no great artistic monuments. The first mosque of magnificent proportions was erected in the year 20 of the Hegira (642 A.D.) under the Khalifat of Omar--this was the mosque of Hmrou at Cairo. On this model many others were afterwards constructed, with variations of little importance. These comprise for the most part the mosques of the Arabian peninsula, of Egypt, of Africa, and of Andalusia. The most famous of this class are those at Mecca and Medina; that of Iba Touloum at Cairo; that of Djama Ez-Zitouna at Tunis; those at Mahdia and Gafsa; of Okba Ibm Maffî at Kairouan; and El Mansourah at Tlemcen. Besides these most of the mosques of Morocco are in the same style, as is also the grand mosque of Cordova in Spain. Omar's great mosque at Jerusalem was built at the inspiration of that Kalif. He said to the Patriarch of Jerusalem after one of the periodical religious quarrels of the time: "Show me a place, then, where I may build a mosque, where Mussulmans may henceforth assemble for their prayers without coming into contact with those of the Christian cult." Then finally grew up the mosque of Omar, the Khalif himself working with the common labourers. Thus came into being the mosque commonly reputed to be the most beautiful in existence to-day. We know that the minarets of the mosques were primarily instituted that the _muezzins_ might make their call to prayer in full view and hearing of the faithful. It is to the honour of the Khalif el-Walid that the first of these svelt, sky-piercing towers was raised, and its name derived from the Arab _menora_. The minaret plays a preponderant role in all Arab art, and is the distinguishing characteristic between Arab and Moorish architecture. In the Moghreb (that is the Barbary States and Spain, bordering on the western Mediterranean) the form of the minaret is nearly always quadrangular, and the tiny terrace or platform high above supports, invariably, a smaller pavilion whose roof is usually composed of four sloping sides which, in turn, is surmounted by the conventional three balls and crescent of copper, silver or even gold. The four sides forming the base of this square tower are sometimes of carved stone, or faïence, or of rough-hewn stone covered with plaster, which is afterwards carved or gilded. Amongst the most beautiful of these minarets of the Moghreb there is an exquisite delicacy of design, a remarkable warmth of colour and an elegant, piquant suggestion of daintiness as they rise up into the unalterable azure of the African skies. Of this class are those of Ez-Zitouna and the Kasba at Tunis; of Sidi-bou-Medine and Mansourah at Tlemcen; those at Tangier and Fez; and of course that of the Giralda at Seville. The Giralda is assuredly one of the most beautiful types of Arabic-Andalusian architecture, and was built in the twelfth century during the reign of the Sultan Yacoub-el-Nansourd. In Egypt, quaint and mysterious as the roof-tops and minarets are to the untrained eye, they possess no systematic regularity of form or feature. They are of all dimensions and proportions. The gamut runs from the square to the hexagon, to the octagon, and to the circle even, with always numerous openings too small to be called windows, and above all a plethora of finely chiselled stone. This résumé outlines the brilliant art of the builder of the Arab mosque, beginning with the twelfth century in Spain, the thirteenth in the Moghreb, and finally the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth in Egypt and Syria. Beyond the pale of these perfect types are the Perso-Byzantine varieties of the Ottoman Empire; and still farther east, types which are quite beyond the scope of these pages. CHAPTER VII POETRY, MUSIC, AND DANCING The Arab is not wholly a silent, morose individual. He has his joys and sorrows, and his own proper means of expressing them like the rest of us. Here in Mediterranean Africa he has kept his traditions alight, and the darkness of the historic past is only relative, even though the Arab does belong to the unprogressive school. The Arab countries, as the French, the only real masters the Arab has ever had, know them, are a broad belt bordering upon the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, from the Dardanelles to the Straits of Gibraltar; and comprise Arabia proper, the Holy Land, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Throughout this region the influence is wholly French, whatever may be the destinies of the various political divisions. Turkey holds the custom-house arrangements, but the language spoken with the outsider is French. Egypt is garrisoned by the English, and its prosperity of to-day was, it is true, born of Lord Cromer's English administration, but for all that the whole complexion is French, the great Suez Canal, the railways and the hotels. Tripoli in Barbary is Turkish, but the trading steamships, the hotels and most of the merchants, are French. Tunisia and Algeria are French through and through, and Morocco may yet become French. All these Arab lands are peopled with natives of the same tongue, speech and sentiments, though they belong to widely differing tribes. First of all, be it understood that the Arab of North Africa is no wild, savage, untamed manner of man, but virtually a highly civilized one, so far as tradition goes, whether he be Berber, Kabyle or Nomad. The Arabs' popular literature, their tales, their legends, their proverbs and their songs, are known to be many and great by all who have studied the folk-lore of the ancients. Furthermore they occupy a field which has been but slightly explored save in the "Thousand and One Nights" and certain other works more speculative than popular. It was Solomon who said that speech was a passing wind, and that to harness it one must know how to write. The Arab writes from right to left, and uses no capitals nor punctuation. The Arab knows two forms of writing: _neskhi_, that belonging to the common people; and the _diouani_, of officialdom. The Arabs and Moors of Spain of other days wrote with a beauty and elegance which to-day has sadly degenerated among all the tribes. A good handwriting is greatly in honour among the Arabs. "Fine writing augments one's reputation for truth," says Qalqachandi. The Arab writes with a sort of bamboo or rose-tree switch, which he cuts into a point, and he has never yet heard of a steel or gold pen, nor suspected that a goose-quill would answer. For ink he burns sheep's wool, adds gum-water to the cinders, and makes a concoction which, for his purpose, answers well enough. We who are rather particular about such things will not care for its colour or quality. The Arab, as a matter of fact, writes but little, and composes his letters after traditional types and forms. Formalities have a prominent place. He "begs to intimate" and "has the honour to be" all through the list, until one doubts if he ever can get the kernel out of the nut, and the subject-matter is treated in cyclopædic form. If the Arab who writes is "classy," and if he occupies a sufficiently high social position, he seals his letter with a cachet, as did our own forefathers, and he also imprints a mark or cipher for a signature; otherwise he signs himself "Ali-Ben something or other, the poor-devil-of-a-sheep-herder-in-the-mountains-of-the far-away-never-never-land." According to the briefness of the signature you are thus enabled to judge of the importance of a letter without reading it through. This doesn't matter to the Arab, for he has a very poor idea of the value of time or even of the passing of time. His notions with regard to many things may only be described as vague. If he is ill, he goes to a doctor, perhaps even a French one, if he lives near the towns, but immediately the practitioner begins interrogating him he asks: "Why is it, you, who are a savant, do not know what is the matter with me without asking all these questions?" Many of us have thought the same about our own doctors! The Arabs have a sort of "Jo Miller Joke Book," or "Old Farmer's Almanac," containing many antiquated sayings. Here is an example: A man asked confidingly of another, "Will you lend me fifty piastres?" "But I don't know you," was the reply. "It is for that reason that I ask," said the seeker after unearned wealth. Pretty bad, even in the translation; but our own comic almanacs and Sunday supplements do considerably worse sometimes. The Arab's proverbs, or sayings, have become classic, and he has perverted or perhaps simplified many of the sayings of other tongues: "All is not water that flows down-hill." "Not every roof is a heaven." "Not every house is a House of God." The sentiments expressed by the above are not possible of being misunderstood, and our own similar sayings are not improvements. Chief among Arab tales and proverbs are those concerning horses and mules. "The fortresses of the Arabs are their horses and guns." The folk-lore and tales, current mostly by word of mouth, of the Arab of the Sahara is apparently very abundant. Each tribe, nay, each encampment, one meets on the march has its Tusitala or teller of tales, as do the South Sea Island communities. Tales, legends, traditions, fables and even accounts of travel make up the repertory of the Arab story-teller; besides which there are songs and chants, religious and profane, many of them perhaps dating back before the days of Mohammed. The mule has ever been the butt of Arab proverb and legend. There is a story of a wood-cutter of the forests of Kabylie who, having left his mule tied to a tree in a half-hidden spot, found it gone when he went to look for it after finishing his day's work. Two robbers--just plain horse-thieves--had come up previously, and one had made away with the mule, leaving its bridle and saddle harnessed on the other fellow who remained behind. "Who are you?" asked the wood-chopper, "and where is my mule?" as he came up. "I was your mule, good master; years ago I insulted my parents and God turned me into a mule." The wood-chopper, astonished, knew not what to say or do. "But I will stay with you always," said the thieving rascal, merely to gain time. "Well, I don't want you; you are free," the woodman replied generously. Three days later, in the public market-place, he saw and recognized his mule in the hands of a trader. He did not dare claim him, or rather he could not make his claim good, so he tweaked the mule's ears and shouted at him: "So you've been insulting your parents again, have you? Well, to serve you right, may you find a harsher master than I." Another favourite subject of Arab story and proverb makers is that of the farmer and his crops. The following is a fair sample:-- Satan appeared one day before an Arab sowing his fields, introduced himself and said that half the world belonged to him, and that he claimed half the coming crop. "Very well," said the labourer, "which half? That which is above ground or that which is below?" The Devil was no agriculturist, he could not tell pumpkin seeds from turnip seeds, so he said simply that he wouldn't be put off with the roots. That what he wanted was that which grew above ground. On the day of the harvest the Devil came around for his share--and got it, turnip tops, good for greens, if boiled, but otherwise food for cattle. The next sowing time he came again. This time he claimed that which was below ground--and got it. The Arab had sown buckwheat, of which all Arabs are very fond. Furious and speechless with anger, the Devil took flight and vowed he would have no more to do with the race. This tale bears some resemblance to the European legend of St. Crepin and the Devil, which the peasant of Mid-France tells regularly to his family twice each year, once at the sowing and once at the reaping. It is a classic. Query: Did the Arab steal his tale from the Auvergnat, or did the latter appropriate it from the former? The native music of all African tribes is of slight importance. It never reaches a great height. It is simply a piercing, dismal wail, and since it is invariably produced by instruments which look as if they could produce nothing else, this is not to be wondered at. There is method in the native musician's effort, however, whether he hails from Kabylie, the Soudan or the Congo. Chiefly their instruments are of the appearance and value of penny whistles, toy drums and home-made fiddles. It may be true that the soul of a people manifests itself in musical expression, but if so the African's soul is a very minor thing in his make-up. The vibrating chant of the Bedouin Arab, accompanied by the music of his crude [Illustration: _An Arabian Musician_] instruments, reminds one of Théophile Gautier's phrase: "The making of music was a troublesome, noisy amusement." Coming out from beneath one of the "Great Tents" of an encampment, or from behind a sand-dune of the desert, it is suggestive of an exotic mystery. But when one comes actually to face "La musique Arabe," one calls it simply idiotic, and nothing else. This even though the stolid Berber affirms that it _is_ an expression of his very soul. Musical intuition is one thing and musical education quite another. The real king of an Arab orchestra is the _bendir_ player. His is the most violent exercises of all the players. The _bendir_ is a drum, a sort of a cross between a tambourine and a flour-sieve. There may be a whole battery of accompanying musical instruments, or there may be only a supporting pipe or flute. The pipe may be played alone, but the _bendir_ never. These two instruments are the invariable accompaniment of the serpent charmer and the man who eats scorpions for the delectation of tourists, at a franc a time. He doesn't really eat them--but that is another story. Seriously, those who have delved into the subject pretend to have discovered method in the music of the Arab; but the "Hymne Khédivial," which charms Mediterranean tourists on the terrace of Shepheard's Hotel at Cairo is nothing Arab at all. On the other hand, the "Marche Hamidiè," which one hears at Tangier, is banal enough to be pure Arab, and "La Musique Beylicale" at Tunis sounds more like the blows of a pick-axe on a water-pipe than anything else. When it comes to the street music of the big towns, that of the dancers, and of the followers of marriage and funeral processions, there is a repetition of the same dreary wail; a mild imitation of the Scotch pibroch or the _binou_ one hears in Brittany. Arab music possesses, however, we learn, a certain formal notation which is seemingly too complicated to admit of setting forth here. The composition of an Arab orchestra is not always the same; there are divers combinations. There is always a _bendir_, and there are _tabellas_ and _chekacheks_ or pipes; and again more pipes or flutes, smaller in size; and a _gambri_ and perhaps a _mejoued_, the latter practically imitations of European mandolines and violas. With these crazily mixed elements are given the concerts that one hears so often in the open air or in the Moorish cafés. The music, if music it is, rises and falls in erratic [Illustration: _A Flute Seller_] [Illustration: SOUVENIR D'ALGÉRIE] cadences, sometimes brutal and sometimes soft; but never melodious and always shrill and brassy. Whether or no Arab music is great music is no part of the writer of this book to attempt to explain. The following anecdote of the late Bey of Tunis, who died in 1906, has some bearing on the question of native taste in that line. About fifty years ago, before the legions of France invaded the country, the Mussulman sovereigns of the period regularly bought European slaves, brought to them by pirate ships cruising in the Mediterranean. One of these unfortunate captives, brought before the Bey of Tunis and questioned as to his capabilities, admitted in a rash moment that he was the leader of an orchestra. "Just what I want," said the Bey. "I always wished to have a band." The prisoner began to feel uncomfortable. He saw the grave danger which menaced him. There were no instruments, and to his Majesty he explained that he must have a big drum, several little ones, large and small flutes, violins and violoncellos, trombones and cymbals. "I have more than enough to pay for all you want," was the answer of the Bey. And he gave an order to buy the instruments. "But the musicians?" queried the prisoner in alarm. "Musicians! I will give you fifty negroes." "But," asked the orchestra leader, in despair, "do the negroes know music?" "That," answered the Bey, "is your affair, and if in a month they cannot play an air before me, you will be impaled, that's all." The captive turned away, feeling that he had only one more month to live. But he thought he would see what the negroes could do. So he began to teach them, and for fourteen hours a day he made them practise on their instruments, giving them--as he was a Frenchman--a simple air, "_Maman, les p'tits bateaux--qui vont sur l'eau--ont-ils des jambes?_" But his efforts only plunged him in a deeper despair. One of the flute-players managed to repeat more or less accurately four or five measures, but the violinists could never get more than one note from their instruments. The trombones produced a series of most melancholy sounds. Only the big drum rose to the height of the occasion. When the fatal date arrived, the Bey summoned the leader of the orchestra before him. "Are you ready?" he asked. "Your Majesty--" began the trembling musician. "Then play!" was the imperative command. The fifty negroes commenced to tune up their instruments. But no two of them ever got the same key, and the discord they made was indescribable. However, when they seemed to have reached some semblance of unison, the leader gave the signal to commence, and the dusky orchestra attacked "_Les p'tits bateaux_." The result was heartrending, and as the ear-splitting torture proceeded the leader said to himself: "In another ten minutes I shall be impaled." The concert finally came to an end unexpectedly with a solo on the big drum. The Bey kept silence for a minute, while the leader's knees quaked against each other. "It is not bad," said his Majesty, slowly, "but I liked the first air best." The first air was the discordant attempt made by the negroes to tune their instruments. The leader of the orchestra began to breathe again. And from that time he gave concerts every day, and grew old and wealthy in the service of the court of the Bey of Tunis. If one had only ears with which to hear, and no eyes with which to see, this music could readily be likened to that which accompanied the dancers of the King of Cambodia. This, at any rate, is the impression given the writer; he has heard both kinds, and there is no choice between them. Dancing among the Arabs is a profession abandoned to the lower classes of women, and to slaves. There are two schools, as one might say: those who go around to the houses of the rich and dance for the edification of their employers and their guests, like the entertainers, the "lady-whistlers" and unsuccessful opera stars of other lands; and a less recherché class who are to all intents and purposes mere street dancers of a morality several shades removed from Esmeralda. These latter, the "_anâlem publiques_," as they are designated in the Frenchified towns of the littoral, are known otherwise as _ghaouâzy_, and by supposedly blasé travellers as _almas_, which indeed they are not, any more than are they houris. A musician of questionable talent usually accompanies these street dancers, and picks out a monotonous minor twang to which the "dancers" jerk and twist and shrug, and then come around for a collection if they don't "dance" themselves into a state of coma--in which case they take up the collection first. The _danseuses_ of Biskra, Tunis and Constantine are daring, dusky beauties whose lives at any rate are more wholesome than those lived by the same class in the dance halls of Europe. There is a savagery about them and their dress that makes for a suggestion of another world; and if they are immoral it is because the strangers who have come among them have made them so. "It wasn't so before the white man came," is the plaint of many an exotic race. The Gringo complains of the American and his innovations, the Hindu wails loudly against the Englishman, and the Arab protests against the Latin and the Turk. CHAPTER VIII ARABS, TURKS, AND JEWS Throughout North Africa, from Oran to Tunis, one encounters everywhere, in the town as in the country, the distinct traits which mark the seven races which make up the native population: the Moors, the Berbers, the Arabs, the Negroes, the Jews, the Turks and the Koulouglis. One may see all these types, living their own distinct and characteristic lives, all within a radius of a half a dozen leagues of Algiers' port and _quais_. The Moors and the Berbers are the oldest inhabitants of the region, descended, Sallust says, "from a mingling of the soldiers of the army of Hercules, campaigning in Spain and Africa, with the Lybians and Gétules of the region." The _indigène_ Mussulman population of Algeria and Tunisia is divided into many groups, the chief of which are the following:-- Moors, called by the Arabs the Hadars; not a race apart, but the result of a crossing to infinity of all the diverse races of North Africa. Koulouglis, descendants of Turks and Arab women. Kabyles, the pure Berber race, speaking still their primitive language uncorrupted. Arabs, descendants of the pure Arab of east of the Red Sea, but in reality "Berber-Arabs," as the French know them, who still preserve in all its purity the Arab tongue, manners, and retain its ancient dress. The Moors and the Koulouglis tend more and more to lose their individuality; the Kabyle is practically stationary; whilst the Berber-Arab is increasing in numbers at his traditional rate,--and here and there becoming so highly civilized that he wears store clothes and carries a revolver instead of a gun. He has also learned to drink absinthe and beer, in the towns, at least those of him who have become less orthodox. There are two distinct classes of Arabs, those of the cities and those of the "Great Tents." The former, by rubbing up with civilization, have become contaminated, whilst the real nomads of the interior still retain all their pristine force of character. The Arab hides with jealousy all particulars of his domestic life, and is a very taciturn individual, as taciturn almost as that classic type that one meets in south-eastern railway trains in England, fortified behind a copy of "The Thunderer." [Illustration: ARAB _of the_ TELL ARAB _of_ ORAN BERBER-ARAB] The docile, contemplative nature of the Arab permits him to pass long hours in a state of mental abstraction that would drive a man of affairs of the western world crazy. The Arab, however, is not hostile to activity, or even amusement, and will gamble for hours at some silly little game. The Arab of the town apparently spends a good part of his time in a café. He drinks the subtle infusion, grounds and all, in innumerable potions, and plays at chess, cards or checkers. For further amusement the Arab is quite content to gaze drowsily at the singing and dancing girls, the _er rnaïa_ and _ech chtahat_, who make music, of a kind, and gyrate with considerably more fervour than grace. All the time his ear is soothed by as howling a discord as one will hear out of the practice hall of a village band in America or of "La Musique des Sapeurs-Pompiers" of the small town in France. Two guitars of sorts, and of most bizarre shape, a two-stringed fiddle (called a _rbab_) and a half a dozen Arab flutes (_jouaks_), each being played independently, cannot be expected to make harmony. The Arab has his story-teller, too, a species of ballad singer or reciter who, for a price, tells stories, fables, and legends. Among this class of professional story-tellers are the _gouals_, the improvisers, and the _médahs_, who are more like revivalists than mountebanks, and about as fanatical as the shrieking sisters of a "down-south" camp-meeting. The Arab himself regards all stolidly, smokes and drink away, and doesn't leave the café sometimes for days. It's an orgie, if you like, but less reprehensible than the bridge-playing, drinking bouts of civilization, which last too often from Saturday until Monday morning. The Arab of the desert, or the Bedouin, shows to advantage when compared with the town-dwelling Arab of the coast settlements, and whether he be Sheik of a tribe or Cadi of a community, is a hospitable, kindly person with even--at times--a sense of humour, and a guile which is rare in these days of artfulness. The town Arab, the "dweller within the walls," is not primarily wicked or unreliable, but he has mixed with the sordid ways of commercialism, and his favours--extended always with a smile--are apt to bear a distinct relation to what he hopes to get out of you. If he is simply an ordinary individual, or a gamin who points out your road, his _quid pro quo_ is not likely to be more than a cigarette, but the merchant of a bazaar who offers you coffee--and makes you take it, too--charges for it in the bill, if even your purchase of a "_fatmah_" charm, or a pair of "_babouches_" amounts to no more than two francs in value,--bargained down, of course, from his original demand of a hundred sous. Like the Chinaman, the Arab can smile blandly when he wants to put you off the track. A smile that begins at the corners of the mouth and extends so that it makes a wrinkle at the nape of the neck is disconcerting to all but the smiler. That's the Arab kind of a smile. With all his faults and virtues the Arab of to-day is not a great offender; he is only an obstructionist. Indolent, insouciant and apathetic, the Arab lives to-day as in the past, indifferent to all progress. If you show him your typewriter, your fountain-pen or your kodak, he shrugs his shoulders and says simply, "_Maboule! Maboule! You are fools! You are fools! Why try to kill time!_" At Msaken, a frontier post in Tunisia, which was established only fifteen or a score of years ago, and has already attained a population of ten thousand souls, a protest was actually presented to the government by the Arab population, asking that the great trading-route into the desert be not laid down through their city, but that they, the _indigènes_, be left to peace and tranquillity. To sum the Arab up in a few words is difficult. He is a frequenter of that path which lies between the straight way of virtue and the quagmire of deceit. He is not alone in his profession, but it is well to define his position exactly. Like the Indian and the Chinaman, the Arab is deceitful, but scrupulously honest as far as appropriating anything that may rightly belong to you is concerned, when it comes to actual business transactions. A bargain once made with an Arab is inviolate. "_Ils ne sont pas mauvais ces gens, mais ils sont voleurs quand même_," says every Frenchman of the Arab, unjustly in many cases, no doubt, but true enough in the general run. You must make your bargain first. The real Arab--meaning literally a tent-dweller, for, in a certain sense, the town-dweller is no Arab--loves first and above all his horse. Next he loves his firearm, which poetically ought to be a six-foot, gold-inlaid, muzzle-loading matchlock, which would kick any man but an Arab flat on his back at every shot; actually in Algeria or Tunis the Arab is the possessor of a modern breech-loader. Next to his gun he loves his eldest son. Last comes his wife--or wives. Daughters don't even count; he doesn't even know how many he has. Until some neighbour comes along and proposes to marry one of them, a daughter is only a chattel, a soulless thing, though often a pretty, amiable, helpful being. The Arab of the settlements may be a lover of horse-flesh, too, but he only professes it; any old hack is good enough for him to ride. He will descant to you all the livelong day on the beauties and qualities of some rare specimen of the equine race which he has at the home of his father, back in the "Great Tents;" but meanwhile he drives, or rides, a sorry spavined nag fit only for the bone-yard. North Africa is not only the Land of Sunshine; it is also the land of the burnous. This soft, floating drapery which clothes the Arab so majestically, whatever may be his social rank,--miserable _meskine_ or opulent Caïd,--is a thing fearfully and wonderfully made. There are burnouses and burnouses, as there are cheeses and cheeses. This ideal garment of the Mussulman Arab differs at times in form and colour and quality, but it is always a simple burnous. The Sheik of a tribe or the Caïd of a village wraps himself in a rich red robe, and the poor vagabond Arab of the hills and desert makes the best showing he can with his sordid pieced-up rag of a mantle. The classic burnous is woven of a creamy white lamb's wool, or that of a baby camel, though often its immaculateness is of but a brief duration. The Caïd and the Sheik rise above this, and the nomad often descends to a gunny-sack, from which exhales an odour _sui generis_; but one and all carry it off with grace and éclat, as does the Arlésienne the fichu, and the Madrillienne the mantilla. It is the garment that is worn by the Arab of the towns, by the lone sheep-herder of the plains, and by the nomad of the desert. An Arab shepherd is a happy mortal if he can gain twenty francs a month, a little _pap_ for breakfast, a dish of couscous for dinner, and a new burnous once a year. He will spend all his income (for he, apparently, as all his tribe, has acquired a taste for strong drink, though even he will not partake of it when it is red) on absinthe, of a kind, and tobacco, of a considerably better kind, every time he comes to town. How he clothes himself had best not be inquired into too closely, for excepting the burnous, he is mostly clothed in rags. The burnous is as effectual a covering as charity. The Arab officials, the Sheik of a tribe, the Caïd, and the Cadi even, are all "decorated" as a sort of supernumerary reward for their services on behalf of the established government. One day _en voyage_--in a _compartiment_ of that slow-going express train which runs daily from Algiers to El Guerrah, and takes fourteen hours to do what it ought to, and will accomplish, in six, when they get some American locomotives to take the place of the old crocks now in service,--we met a young Caïd of a tribe of the Tell who had been summoned to Algiers to get the collaret of the Legion bestowed upon his manly breast. He was decorated already, for he was the son of the "Great Tents" and a powerful man in his community, but he was ready enough to make a place for another _étoile_. He said in his queer jargon French: "_Li gouvernement y vian di me donni l'Itoile di Ligien. Ji suis content d'avoir._" We sympathized with him, were glad for him, and we parted, each on our respective ways, and by this time he is home waiting and hoping for the next. What won't a man do for a _bout de ruban_ or a silver star? The Arab's French is much like our own--queer at times, but it is expressive. The following beauties of judicial eloquence, from the bench of an Arab justice of the peace will explain the situation better than any further comment. With the Arab the Irish "_bull_" becomes a French "_goat_." "_On peut entrer dans un cabaret sans être l'amant de quelqu'n._" This is good enough French, though the sentiment is of doubtful morality. "_Le plaignant a lancé, alors, un coup de sifflet de désespoir._" A "_sifflet de désespoir_" is presumably something akin to a wail. "_Le plaignant s'est adressé à la police parce qu'il désirait rentrer dans ses bouteilles._" "_Dans ses bouteilles_," may be Arab-French for "in his cups"--or it may not. "_Il portera de deuil aussi longtemps que sa femme sera morte._" She will be dead a long time, no doubt, once having taken the fatal step. "_Je dirai encore deux mots, mais je serai très brief._" Two words! That is very brief. "_Il n'a laissé que des descendants en ligne collatérale._" What is a collateral descendant? The Arabs' struggles with French should give the rest of the world, who are not French, courage. They seem to care little for tenses or numbers, but they make their way nevertheless. A Zou Zou, in calling your attention to something, says simply, "_Regarde_," but you understand, and so does he when you say "_Regardez_," so what matter! The Arab nourishes himself well, as well as circumstances will allow, though it must be remembered that the tenets of his religion call for abstemiousness. He differs from the Greek of old in that he believes in a good dinner and a light supper. "_Eh bien!_" said the traveller Montmaur, "_I will dine with the Arab and sup with the Greeks_." The Arab is a connoisseur in tea and coffee, and an adept at cigarette smoking. Couscous is the _plat du jour_ with the Arab. It is his national dish. Mutton or lamb (_kebeh_ or _kherouf_) is almost the only meat, and most frequently the Arab roasts the carcass whole, spitted on a branch. He roasts it before, or over, an open fire, and accordingly it is all the better for that. In America we bake our meats, which is barbaric; and in England they boil them, which is worse. The Arab knows better. The Arab eats his meat _à la main,_ gnaws it with his teeth, and pulls it apart with his fingers; the delicate morsel, the titbit, is the kidney, and he is a lucky Arab who grabs it first, though if you are a guest in his tent he reserves it for you. Beef is seldom, if ever, eaten, but camel is in high esteem, the hump (_hadba_) being the best "_cut_." Pork (_el hallouf_) is abhorred by the true Mussulman. He has reason! Dried meat or smoked meat, like the jerked beef of the Far West, is often carried on long desert journeys, when fresh meat is as scarce a commodity as it was on an Indiaman a hundred days out from Bombay a century ago. The Arab eats soup, when he takes the trouble to make it, and he knows well its concocting. For pastry, too, the Arab has a sweet tooth, and it also frequently comes into the menu, with honey and dates predominating in its make-up. The Arab smokes _kif_ also, a concoction whose iniquitous effects are only equalled by those of the state-protected opium of Bengal. These voluptuous epicurean Arabs smoke _kif,_ not surreptitiously, but guiltily. Carefully they wipe their pipes and cook the little ball of drug, and offer it to you first with all the grace and seductiveness of a houri. You don't accept, and they smoke it themselves, and in a short space drop off into a semi-intoxicated condition, forgetful of the world in the stupefying smoke which haloes about their heads. Like opium with the Chinaman, _kif_ is the curse of the Arab. After the Arabs and the Berbers, the Jews are the most striking race one meets on the African coast, or even in the interior, where they herd to themselves in some dingy quarter of an Arab village and ply their trades of jewellers, leather workers, embroiderers and, of course, as money changers. They talk Hebrew among themselves and Arabic with natives, and they are as clannish as Scotchmen. The Berber and the Jew and the Arab are necessary to each other, whether they are town dwellers, village inhabitants or nomads. They make business, each of them, and they don't live by taking in each other's washing--as does the indigenous population of the Scilly Islands, or by exploiting tourists--as do the Swiss. Altogether the social system as worked out by the mixed races of North Africa seems to be a success. One curses the Jews in Algeria and Tunisia, but then one curses them everywhere for the same attributes. The Hebrew of Algeria is in no way different from those of his brethren in other Mediterranean countries, and here he has a craftsman's mission to fill and he fills it very well. Catch a Jew and make him into a tailor, a jeweller or a banker, and he is more adept at these professions than men of any other race on earth. Are the Jews and Mussulmans men like other sons of Adam? This is a question which has been asked and reasked since the earliest times [Illustration: _Jewish Women of Tunis_] of history, and no one yet seems to have decided the question. When the Papal See was transferred to Avignon in the Comtat Venaissin (it was for seventy years rooted in France), the position of the Jews seems to have been defined, and they were put on a par with orthodox religionists. But before and since, their status has been less readily defined. Froissart put it in non-contradictory words when he said that except in the lands of the church (in the Comtat), these aliens were everywhere chased and persecuted. This reference to the church and the Jews recalls the fact that many Arab slaves of Barbary were owned by the Papal powers in the days when the traffic was a profitable one for Turkish _pachas_. The slaves of Barbary were known all through the Mediterranean. Civita Vecchia in the eighteenth century, directly under Papal patronage, held a number of them of which the following is a description from an old record:-- Arab Names Names in the Galleys Nationality Age Health Papass Papass Tunis 45 Good Acmet Buffalotto Tripoli 40 " Mamchet Marzocco Alger 45 " Mesaud Piantaceci " 35 " Machmet Mezza Luna " 30 " Aamor Bella Camiscia Alger 30 Good Machmet Il Gabbiano " 30 " Ali Nettuno Tunis 40 Mediocre Aamor Carbone Tripoli 30 Good These men in fact were for service in the Pontifical galley. They were a fine race of servants, evidently! The Jews are much less numerous in Algeria than in Morocco and Tunisia, but they take on a very considerable commercial importance in the picturesque conglomerate ensemble of peoples in the cities like Algiers, Oran or Tunis; they gather the small savings of the nomad races in a way that is the marvel of all who know their trade. Furthermore, as French citizens, they play no small part in political affairs. What they lack in numbers they make up in power, and the money-lending trade, while seemingly in disrepute, is quite a necessary one in commercial communities. The Jews lend money to Christians the world over, men and nations alike, and in Africa they do the same to the improvident Arab. Clearly the Jew has a mission in life; he has found it out, and he sticks to it, and has ever since that historic hour in the Temple. Of all the mixed races with which one rubs shoulders in Northern Africa, it is the Arab who interests us most. It is his country that we are in. It is the Arab who must be our guide, philosopher and friend. "Ask an Arab anything you like," say the French, "but ask nothing of a Maltese or an Italian." Why, they do not tell you, but simply shrug their shoulders in the expressive Frenchman's way. CHAPTER IX SOME THINGS THAT MATTER--TO THE ARAB There are three kinds of _noblesse_ among the Arabs: there is the aristocrat class, the _noblesse de race_, descended, so they think, from Fatma, the daughter of the Prophet; the _noblesse militaire_, descendants of the Arab conquerors, of which Mohammed and his family are also descended; and finally the _noblesse réligieuse_, a hereditary _noblesse_ like the preceding, but a distinction that can only be acquired by meritorious performance of a religious duty. The tribes each have a head known as a _Caïd_, and each tribe is divided into smaller tribes and factions who obey implicitly the sub-head or _Cheikh_ (sheik). The head of a _douar_,--a group of tents,--if the collection is not great enough to have a presiding Sheik, is a sort of committee, like the bodies of selectmen of a New England village. Over and above all _indigène_ control, the French administration is the real head of the Arabs in Algeria, and the Tunisian French _fonctionnaires_ hold the same powers in Tunisia. The Arab or Kabyle chiefs in Algeria are merely the agents for the execution of the government's laws, civil or military, and in Tunisia the laws for each province (_outhan_) are made known to the _Caïd_ by the authorities, and it is he who is held responsible for their observance. As for punishment for a crime committed,--for they are not all plaster saints,--the Arabs would much prefer the old Turkish _bastinado_ to a sentence behind prison walls or a fine in money, sheep or goats. Does civilization civilize? The Arabs are full of wise saws mostly adopted from the Koran, or from the Apocryphal books of the Prophet. They have a saying which might well be put into a motto suitable for the creed of any man:-- "_El-Khams_, _El-Miter_, _El-Ansab_ and _El-Aglane_ are the inventions of the devil." _El-Khams_ is worry; _El-Miter_ is gambling; _El-Ansab_ are the stones or thorns in one's road; and _El-Aglane_ is the argument by sword instead of by reason. The following might well be printed in Gothic script and hung in our own "dens" and boudoirs along with Stevenson's "Prayer." "_When a woman says to her husband, I have never received a single benefit from you, all the good acts she may have done lose their value._" "_God detests those who show pride before their companions._" "_Go a mile to visit a sick man, two miles to reconcile a pair of quarrellers and three miles to see a holy man._" "_When you think of the faults of your neighbours, think also of your own._" "_He who salutes thee first is free from pride._" "_God hates dirtiness and disorder._" With respect to this last, the Arab performs his ablutions with great regularity and devotion, but by contrast, curiously enough, enshrouds himself frequently in dirty, verminous rags. The most detested sequence of events that can happen to an Arab are ranked as follows:-- I. The drunkenness which makes a fool of a man. II. The sleep which dissipates the drunkenness. III. And the chagrin which destroys the sleep. The emotion has been felt by others, who cannot slip on and off the _peau de chagrin_ as did Balzac's hero. The Arabs explain their abstention from wine by an act of the Prophet forbidding its use. One day the Prophet saw, in passing, a group of young men who were making free and drinking of wine. He blessed them, saying, "Drink at your ease, you have the benediction of God." At the end of a brief interval the Prophet, passing that way again, saw them disputing among themselves, and learned that one had been killed. Thereupon he vowed upon their heads that "wine was a curse upon them, and that not one who was given to it should hope to enter Heaven." Among the Arab _indigènes_ to-day, one remarks an almost total abstention from the "wine when it is red." Contrariwise they may frequently be seen drinking white wine, and indeed they have a great fondness for champagne,--but they are not particular about the brand, the label on the bottle means nothing to them, so long as it is a gaudy one, and so, like many Americans, they drink something which they think is champagne, and is just as "heady." Arab hospitality is famous, their very manner of life, even to-day, as in olden times, makes it a sort of compulsory tenet of their creed. "Ida andek ktir, ati men mulek. Ida andek glil, ati men galbeck." "If you have much, give of your best. `If you have little, give from the heart." Never ask an Arab his age; you will be disappointed if you do. The Arabs have no civil register and generally ignore their exact age, frequently reckoning only by some great event which may have happened within their memories, like the "Uncle Toms" and "Old Mammies" of "way down Souf." With such a rule-of-thumb reckoning, you are likely to remain as much in the dark as before. It is a belief among the Arabs that they can carry on a conversation with animals. Not all amongst them are thus accomplished, but the speech of animals, they say, can be learned, and many of their head men know it. They share this belief with other Orientals; but there is no proof that they have learned their lessons as well as did Garner in his attempts to acquire "monkey talk." The Arabs, too, are superstitious. They believe in the evil eye, and they object most decidedly and vociferously if you point your finger at them; also, they wear charms and amulets against disease and disaster. They used to object to the camera man and the artist, but to-day, since they have come to learn that you carry away with you no actual part of themselves, only an impression, their attitude has changed. The Arab warrior must have ten qualities, or he is _déclassé_ in the favour of all other Arabs. I. The courage of a cock. II. The painstaking of a chicken. III. The heart of a lion. IV. The brusqueness of a wild boar. V. The tricks of a fox. VI. The prudence of a hedgehog. VII. The swiftness of a wolf. VIII. The resignation of a dog. IX. The hand always open. X. The sword always drawn, and one sole speech for friend or foe. The Arab warrior, save as he now serves France, has disappeared, but his precepts were good ones for a soldier. The Arabs' regard for womankind has often been misunderstood and misstated. Not all Mussulmans have the same noble regard for womankind. The Turk and the Persian is notably a tyrant in his home; and, among the Arabs, the Bedouin is frequently a brute towards his wives and daughters; but the conventional _Arab-Berberisé_ is quite compassionate and liberal in his views and treatment of the female members of his family. "_Auprès de Dieu, le maître du monde, une fille vaut un garçon._" Thus say the Arabs, but in practice it's all the other way. The boy stays with the family and adds his strength and talents to his father's tribe; but the daughter, arriving at the marrying age, which comes early with the Arabs, leaves not only her family, but the ancestral _douar_ or community, perhaps even the tribe, and goes where her new master pleases. In a word, the boy is another sword or brain for his family's interests, whilst the daughter goes to augment those who may, perhaps, at some future time, be enemies of her parents. From this one judges that with the Arabs, as with many other exotic nations, the birth of a son brings real joy to the parental roof-tree; but that of a girl merely a lukewarm expression of gratification, or perhaps nothing [Illustration] more than a disappointed resignation. If it is a boy that is new-born, the parents are congratulated with: "God has made you a good gift!" If it is a girl: "May you be as happy as possible!" is considered as all that is needful, a sort of commiserating congratulation this, and the father perforce responds ordinarily: "_Zaddat di nââla!_" ("It is my sorrow.") Once the child is born, the sex determined, the "rejoicings," properly called, do not differ in one case from the other, for the Arab believes profoundly in Mohammed's diction--"These are the innocents and the _Fête des Anges_ must be the same in each case." Seven days after the birth, the baby daughter's _Fête de Naîssance_ takes place in presence of the Caïd, the marabout, parents and friends. The women cry and sob joyfully, and dance with the abandon of a dervish, and the screech and roll of the _guellal_ and the flute make things hideous for one who has no special responsibility bound up in the event. The men, too, give themselves over to the dance quite as vigorously and quite as gracefully as do the women, and a feast--all birth and wedding celebrations end with a feast--terminates the great event so far as a general participation goes. The eternal _couscous_ is the _pièce de résistance_, with dates, raisins, figs, honey, butter and milk in addition. For a choice of names for their little daughter, the Arab parents, almost without exception, choose one of the following:-- Aicha (the life) Aatika Badia Djohar (the pearl) Fathma Fatima (diminutive) Halima (the gentle) Kheddouma Khedidja Kreira (the best) Kheroufa Kadra (the blossom) Kneltoum Meryem (Marie) Nedjma (the star) Sofia (the pure) Yamina (the prosperous) Yetan Zina (the belle) Zinent Zohra (the flower) Sometimes the child is given the name of some female friend of the family, who agrees to act as godmother through the early years of its life, and is obliged to spend a relatively large sum of money in supplying a baptismal present, as do godmothers the world over. The boy under the same circumstances would probably have been named Mohammed or Achmed and have done with it. After the actual naming ceremony the great bracelet talismans are put on the girl-child's arms, and a little later a similar decoration will be given her for her neck. If the parents are rich their children are often rudely sent away to be nourished and given strength beneath the shade of some Saharan oasis, not too far away but that they can be visited once a year. The nurse who guards the children in their desert home is called the second mother, but she is a nurse pure and simple and bears no relation to the godmother. The child is carried pick-a-back by day, by one or another of its mothers, clumsily swathed in a none too clean-looking woollen cloth during the first few months, and at night is securely stowed away in a fig-leaf basket which is hung from the tent poles, a cradle which is soft, flexible and cheap. In time light foods, such as the milk of goats, cows, or camels is given the child, and as early as possible it is told or shown how to take a bath--and made to take it whenever the idea enters the parents' heads. For dress, the girl is clothed as becomes the station and wealth of her parents; her ears are pierced in two or three places, but as no jewelry is worn by infants the holes are kept open by silk cords. The home life of these early years is very much _en famille_ among the Arabs of the countryside, with horses, oxen, and cows as dwellers under the same roof. As soon as possible the child is taught to pray according to the religion of its parents. Each prayer is preceded by an ablution. Truly the Mohammedan religion is a cleanly and purifying one! The practical education of an Arab girl commences when she is shown how to cut and fit a burnous (nothing of the tailor-made or Paris mode about this to make it difficult; any one who can handle a pair of scissors can do the thing), to sew a tent-covering together, and the thousand and one domestic accomplishments of women everywhere, not forgetting spinning and weaving. In the poorer families, those who live in mean, ragged tents, not the "Great Tents," the child is most likely first set to doing the cooking. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, she begins to "take notice" of the youth of the other sex, meanwhile partaking of the fare of the family board only when there are no strangers present. During visits to friends and neighbours, or to the marabouts, or at fêtes given in her honour, the young Arab girl of whatever social rank is closely chaperoned, always accompanied by her mother. The [Illustration: _The Life of the "Great Tents"_] daughters of the "Great Tents" are veiled from their tenth year onwards, only the poor remain with their visage uncovered. Music is a part of the early education of the Arab girl. She learns to dance, _yatagan_ in hand; and to play the _bendir_, a sort of Spanish _tambourin_, and the _touiba_, a similar instrument, somewhat smaller and less sonorous. At an early age, too, she learns the rudiments of the arts of coquetry. She puts rouge (_zerkoun_) on her face, and blacks her eyelids with _koheul_; and, finally, colours the tips of her toes and fingers a coppery red with henna. She has her wrists and ankles tattooed in bands or bracelets; and paints beauty spots, a star or a crude imitation of a fly, on her cheeks or forehead. By this time she is thought to be a ravishing beauty. Even the poorest of Arab families guard their daughter's honour with the greatest circumspection, never a doubtful word or phrase is uttered in her presence. She is brought up in the greatest purity of atmosphere. Should there be any doubts as to this, her spouse, even on the marriage day, will send her back to her parents dressed in a white burnous--with no thanks. Dishonour can be punished by death. The Cadi is the referee in all matters of dispute or doubt of this nature, and his word is final. Among the wealthiest tribes the daughters are often promised in marriage at the age of four or five, and frequently they marry between ten and fifteen. Indeed they must marry at an early age or people say unkind things about them. In the Sahara the rich marry three or four wives, the poor one, rarely two. One may not marry but one wife in any one year. The Arab proverbs concerning women are many and mostly complimentary. "_The quarrelsome wife is for her spouse a heavy burden, but a happy wife is as a crown of gold._" The Arab poet says of his chosen type of female beauty:-- _Hair black as the feathers of the ostrich._ _Forehead wide and eyebrows thick and arched._ _Eyes black like a gazelle's._ _Nose straight and finely modelled._ _Cheeks like bouquets of roses._ _Mouth small and round._ _Teeth like pearls set in coral._ _Lips small and coloured like vermilion._ _Neck white and long._ _Shoulders broad._ _Hands and feet small._ _Manners agreeable._ _Laughter delicate._ "She must laugh soberly, must not gad about nor dispute with her husband or neighbours, have a well-governed tongue, may rouge slightly, guard well the house, and ever give good counsel." The formula might well be any man's ideal; though the Arabs say when you meet this paragon of a woman, you become crazy, and if she leaves you, you will die. All of which may be true also! The ideal is one made up of an appalling array of virtues. An Arab tale tells of a warrior horseman, El Faad-ben-Mohammed, rich in this world's goods and lands, who met a certain Oumya-bent-Abdallah, and would marry her, so beautiful was she. He sent his emissary to her to plead his cause, for he was timid in love, if brave in war. The young girl asked what might be her wooer's position in life, whereupon his friend replied: "He is a warrior; when the fight is at its thickest, it is he who cleaves a passage through the ranks of the foe. He is taciturn and sober and knows well how to take adversity." This seems a good enough send-off for a proxy to give, but the maid would have none of it. She said simply: "Go back to your friend. It is a lion that you tell me of. He wants a lioness, not a woman. I would not suit." The suitor for a young girl's hand among the Arabs often does make his demand of her parents by proxy; and much bargaining and giving and taking of concessions goes on, all without embarrassment to the swain. It's not a bad plan! A contract follows, and finally legal sanction. Every Mussulman marriage must have the consideration of the _dot_ as a part of the legal agreement. The _dot_ may vary with the fortunes of the girl's family, or with the condition of the suitor; and, in case of divorce, this _dot_ must be returned to the unfortunate lady's parents, not to her, whatever may be the cause. The wedding trousseau of the young wife, that which she brings in the way of clothes and jewelry, must comport with her former station in life; but her _dot_, which may be in kind, not necessarily in money, may be as great as the prospective husband can worm out of the girl's parents. A rich Arab of the "Great Tents" whom we heard of at Jouggourt gave up the following: Three camels, fifty sheep, eighteen skins, three bolts of cotton cloth (made in Manchester--the "Manchester goods" of commerce as it is known in the near and far East); a gun (a Remington so-called, most likely made in Belgium), with brass and silver inlaid in the stock; two pairs of silver rings for ankles and wrists; two buckles for the _haïk_, a silken burnous, a silk sash, a string of coral beads (made of celluloid at Birmingham), earrings, a mirror (of course) and a red _haïk_, and a _melhafa_ or _haïk_ of cotton. Among the desert tribes the women of all classes of society frequently have their faces unveiled; but, as they approach the great trade-routes and the cities, they closely enwrap the face so that only a pair of glittering black eyes peep out. Without regard to class distinctions or age all Arab women are passionately fond of jewelry of all kinds, finger-rings, anklets, bracelets, chains, and brooches. Repudiation, or divorce, is legal among the Arabs if accomplished in a legal way, and is simply and expeditiously brought about. The following is an account reported recently in an Algerian journal:-- El Batah had presented himself before the Cadi for the purpose of "repudiating" his wife, "_une femme grande et forte, d'une éclatante beauté_." "Well, what is it?" said the Cadi, scenting in the affair a big fee, at least big for him. The Cadi was very much smitten by the lady, it appears, though he did not know it, or at any rate admit it, at the time. "I come to complain of my wife, who has beaten me and nearly broken in my head," said the poor man. "It is true," echoed the woman, "but I did not mean to do it, I am sorry; I ought not to be punished." (This doesn't seem logical, does it?) "Well, I shall '_repudiate_' her" said the man; "I will have none of her." "Return her _dot_, then, to her family," said the Cadi. "Great Allah! It is impossible, it is four thousand _dirhems_, how can I pay it?" By this time the Cadi saw his fat fee vanishing, and his ardour for the lady of the _striking_ beauty rising. He had just lost his fourth wife, the Cadi, and there was a place in the ranks for another. "If I will give you the sum," said he, "will you '_repudiate_' this woman?" "Yes, willingly," said the fellow. "Well, here's your money," said the accommodating official. No consideration of the women of North Africa ought to terminate without a reference to the Mauresque, that gracious type found all through Northwestern Africa, a product of the mixture of the races, an outcome of civilization and the growth of the great cities of the seaboard. They are usually named Fathma, Zohra, Aicha, Houria, Mami, Mimi, Roza, Ourida, Kheira, etc.; and they leave the bed and board of their parents usually between the ages of twelve and fourteen to be married, or for other reasons. Practically all the world looks upon the Mauresques as social outcasts. The class had become so numerous about the middle of the nineteenth century that the hand of philanthropy was held out to them to enable them to better their condition in life. They were given a rudimentary book education, and were taught the art of Oriental embroidery with all its extravagance of capricious arabesques and threads of gold. As for the other class of Mauresques, the _rikats_, those who have become contaminated,--for not all are saved, nor ever will be,--one recognizes them plainly as of the world worldly whenever they take their walks abroad. The sad amusement of visiting mosques and cemeteries is not _their_ sole pleasure, as it is that of the legitimate Arab wife, or Mauresque, even though her spouse be wealthy. The Mauresque _partner de convenance_ of a wealthy _indigène_ or European may have her own horses and carriages, perhaps by this time even her own automobile; and rolls off the kilometres in her daily promenades on the fine suburban roads of Algiers, in company with the _haute société_ of the city, and the thronging American, English and German tourists from Mustapha. She even dines at the _cabarets_ of Saint Eugène, Pointe Pescade or the Jardin d'Essai, and no one does more than look askance at her. Algiers is very _mondaine_, and its morals as varied as its population. Even though the _rikat_ dresses after the European mode, there is no mistaking her origin. Her great, snappy black eyes, livened and set off by dashes of _koheul_, are fine to look upon; and her figure, as she sits in her cabriolet or opera-box, is so well hidden that one does not realize its cumbersomeness. At home she wears the seraglio "pantalon" of the Arabian Nights, ankles bare and feet stuffed into _babouches_--which an Indian or a plainsman would call moccasins. Over all is the _r'lila_, a sort of cloak of gold-embroidered, silken stuff, very light and wavy. It's not so graceful as the _kimona_ of the Japanese, but it's far more picturesque and useful than the most ravishing tea-gown ever donned in Fifth Avenue or Mayfair. The Mussulman calendar is simple, and, except in the nomenclature of its divisions, is not greatly different from our own. The Arab year has twelve lunar months, making in all three hundred and fifty-four or three hundred and fifty-five days. Moharem 30 days Safer 29 " Rbia el ouel 30 " Rbia el tani 29 " Djoumad el ouela 30 " Djoumad et tania 29 " Rdjab 30 " Châban 29 " Ramdan 30 " Choual 29 " Dzou el Kada 30 " Dzou el Hadja 29 or 30 ---------- 354 or 355 Seasons Spring El rbia Summer Es Saïf Autumn El Kherif Winter Ech Chta The principal fêtes of the Arab are those of the Mussulman religion, the same one observes in Bombay, Constantinople and Cairo. Ras el âm 1 Moharem (first day of year) El âchoura 10 Moharem (anniversary of the death of the son of Sidi Ali bou Thâleb) El Mouloud 12 Rbia el ouel (anniversary of the birth of the Prophet) Çiam 1 Ramdan Aïd es srir (or little Beïram) 1 Choual Aïd el kbir (or great Beïram) 10 Dzou el haja (in commemoration of sacrifice of Abraham) The following glossary of commonly met with Arab words is curious and useful:-- Allah Dieu--God Bab Porte or passage, gateway (as Bab Souika at Tunis) Burnous A woollen cloak Cadi A judge or notary Caïd Sheik, chief Calif or Khalif Chief, commander Cheikh (Sheik) Chief of a community or douar Coran (Koran) The Book of Islam Couscous or Couscoussu (Kouskouss) Derviche (Dervish) A member of a certain sect of religious dancers Divan The council-chamber of a Sultan or Bey Djebel Mountain Djinn Evil spirits, demon Dof A square drum Douar Group of tents, a community Effendi Title of quality Fakir A mendicant monk Fellah Egyptian peasant Ganoun (or Kanoun) Harp of 75 strings (seen at Alexandria and Tunis) Goule Vampire Goum Native soldiery from the South Gourbi Hut or cabin Hadji Pilgrim who has been to Mecca Hammam Moorish or Turkish baths Harem The place reserved for Mussulman women Henne Henna for staining hair or body Houri Celestial Virgin of Paradise Imam The prayer leader Islam The religion of the Prophet Kabyles Berber mountaineers between Algiers and Tunis Khalifa Chief of a religious community Kheloua Cave, grotto Kouba Chapel above the tomb of a saint Lella Madame Marabout A holy person or his tomb (mark the distinction; one word for two entities) Mehari A "high speed" dromedary Moghreb Occident Moghrabin Man of the Occident Mosque Mussulman place of worship (in French Mosquée) Narghileh Arab or Turkish pipe Ouali Marabout Oukil Guardian Raïa Flag Raïs Captain Roumi Christians Scheriff (or Cheriff) Descendants of the Prophet Sidi Monsieur, sir Simoun (Sirocco) The South wind of the Sahara Spahi Native warrior horseman Sultan Virtually King or Emperor Sultani Gold money Tarr or Tar Tabor drum Teboul Tambourine Zaouia Hermitage, chapel, school Zerma Clarionet CHAPTER X "THE ARAB SHOD WITH FIRE" (_Horses, Donkeys, and Mules_) As a Kentucky colonel once said, the pure-bred Arabian horse is a fine thing in his native land; but there is more good horse-flesh, per head of population, in the United States than the first home of the ancestor of the blooded horse ever possessed. Everything points to the fact that the gentleman knew what he was talking about, as fine specimens of Arabian horse-flesh are rare to-day, even in Arabia and North Africa. They exist, of course, but the majority of horses one sees in Algeria and Tunisia are sorry-looking hacks. In the desert the case is somewhat different. There the beautiful Arabian horses of which romance and history tell are more numerous than the diminutive bronchos of the coast plains and mountains. The descendants of the Anazeh mares, the parent branch of royal Arabian blood, are not many; but an Arab of good lineage may still be had by one who knows how to pick him out, or gets some friendly Sheik to give him his. No one seems to know where the original Arabian horse was bred, though it was known in the Mauritania of the Romans, in the environs of Carthage, long before that little affair of Romulus and Remus startled an astonished world. In all probability he was a descendant of the same horses which made up the Numidian cavalry which overran Rome during the Punic wars, and that's a pretty ancient pedigree. To-day all through North Africa, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Egypt, and in Arabia across the Red Sea, the type is recognizable in all variations of purity and debasement. The "Arab shod with fire" of the Bedouin love-song may not be all that sentiment has pictured, but he is an exceedingly high-bred animal nevertheless. Here are his fine points:-- Four { The forehead "Wide" { The portrail (chest) Points { Loins { Membres (shoulders) Four { Encolure (neck) "Long" { Rayons supérieurs (upper fore and hind leg) Points { Body { Hind quarter Four "Short" Points {Reins (flank) {Paturons (pasterns) {Ears {Tail Coat brilliant and dark coloured This is the formulæ upon which the French remount officers choose their Arabian horses, and for hard work they take always a "_traineur avec sa queue_," a horse of seven years or more. Each chief of an Arab family possesses one or more of the blooded Arabians of classic renown. It is his friend in joy and sorrow, and his constant companion when he is away from his family. If the Arab chief has many horses he always keeps one, the favourite, as a war-charger. If there are no wars or rumours of war in sight, he only rides this favourite on gala or parade occasions; but at all times he gives it more care and attention than many heads of families, in more conventionally civilized lands, give their wives. The Arab knows the ancestors of his horse as well as he knows his own; and he has its pedigree writ on parchment, which is more trouble than he has taken to perpetuate the memory of his own remote parents. The Algerian Arab horse has been called a "mixed-_pur sang_," whatever that may mean, but certainly it will take somebody more expert than a mere "horsey" person (the kind that go around talking about their "mounts" and how "fit and saucy" was the one they rode that morning) to mark the distinction between the best of the Algerian variety and those of Egypt, Syria or Arabia. The Arab trains his horses for his own personal use, to pace, canter, or gallop, never to trot, a gait which is only fit for the European who is afraid to sit on, or behind, a horse with a quick-moving pace. This is the Arab version of it, and an Arab horse owner will hobble his beast with a rope if he shows the least inclination to trot or single foot. If this won't break him, why he sells him to some one who will stand for it--at the best price he can get. The Arab horse owner thinks with the late A. T. Stewart: "If you have got a loss to meet, meet it at once and get your capital working on something else." The writer recently met an Italian trying to bargain with an Arab for a saddle-horse. The Arab was with difficulty convinced that the gentleman was not an Englishman who would buy only a "trotting saddle-horse." _Quel horreur!_ "Allah be praised!" said Ali-something-or-other, the trader, all Europeans [Illustration: _An Arab and His Horse in Gala Attire_] are not imitators of the English taste in saddle-horses. Once in awhile an Italian or a Spaniard or a Frenchman wants a horse for a _carrousel_ and not for an amble in the Bois, which is his idea of doing as they do in London. The reputation of the blooded Arabian horse, whether it is found in Arabia, Algeria or Morocco, is classic, and the mule, too, seems here to take on qualities not its birthright elsewhere. With the donkey, the _petit âne_ with a cross down its back and a silver _museau_, the same thing holds good. North Africa is the donkey's paradise. Here, if he finds herbage scant once and again, he thrives as nowhere else, and attains often an age of thirty-five years. The donkey in Africa is worked hard, but is neither unduly maltreated nor misunderstood. Perhaps that is why he lives long, though if the present race of donkey boys, who have been trained at the Paris and Chicago exhibitions, go on their unruly ways now they have got back to their homes at Cairo, Tunis or Algiers, even the patient, sad little donkeys may take on moods that hitherto they have never known. The horses and donkeys of the big towns may well become spoiled by vanity, for they are often the subjects of an assiduous and inexplicable care on the parts of their owners, who comb their locks, and braid them, and _cosmétique_ them and put rouge on their foreheads, and even stain them with henna until they are a regular "Zaza" tint. Darkest Africa is not so backward as one might think! All classes of native riders, whether on the camel, _mehari_, horse, mule, or donkey, beat the ribs of the creature with a heel-tap tattoo in what must be an annoying manner for the beast. From the way the native, rich or poor, sits on his horse, spurs would be of no use to him, and only the Spahi, or native cavalry, has adopted them. Donkey riding is the same dubious rocheting proceeding in all Mediterranean countries. It is no worse here than in Greece or on the Riviera. "The donkey's a disgrace," says the Arab; and he runs along behind, beating his onery little beast and calling it a _fille de chacal_, a _graine de calamité_ or a _chienne_. This need awaken no sentiments of pity whatever--for the donkey. They are as much terms of endearment as the occasion calls for. The most common four-footed beast of burden in Algeria is undoubtedly the despised donkey of tradition. Every one does seem to despise the donkey, except the Mexican "greaser," who asks as affectionately after his neighbour's _burro_ as he does his wife or children. Here the _bourriquet_ or _h'mar_ is quite a secondary consideration in the Arab's domestic _entourage_. The _bourriquet_ is an economical little beast, costing only from ten francs upward. He usually feeds himself, browsing as he goes, and trots twenty or thirty kilometres a day, encouraged by the whacks and expletives of his driver who may often be found perched on top of the donkey's load of a hundred and fifty pounds or more. To us it all savours of cruelty, and perhaps some real cruelty does take place; but much of the "coaxing" of a donkey into his gait is necessary, unless one is disposed to let him stand still for hours at a time, too lazy to do anything but swish and kick the flies away. Æsop's ass prayed to Jove for a less cruel master, but that deity replied that he could not change human nature nor that of donkeys, so things were left to stand as before. The Arabs often slit the nostrils of their donkeys, on the supposition that the Maker did not fashion them amply enough to allow them to breathe readily. The more readily the donkey breathes, the more capable he is to carry heavy burdens long distances. Logical, this! And the procedure, too, improves the tonal quality of the donkey's bray. Well, perhaps, though most of us are not devotees of that sort of music. Compared to Italy or Spain, there are considerably fewer suffering sore-backed donkeys in Algeria or Tunisia. There is no question but that for economical service the donkey will kill any horse or mule; and it is clear that, weight for weight and load for load, he daily outdoes the camel. The latter, weighing fifteen hundred pounds, carries perhaps a weight of three to five hundred. The ass weighs two hundred and fifty to four hundred pounds, and, carrying one hundred and fifty to two hundred, outpaces the camel by a mile an hour. The donkey is guided by the voice, a stick, or a rope halter, which lies on the left side, and is pulled to turn him to the left, or borne across his neck to turn him to the right. The stick serves the double purpose of striking and guiding, and the stick must needs come into play only too often. The donkey here in the Mediterranean countries is often very small, not thirty-two inches in many cases, no bigger than a St. Bernard. When one hires a donkey to carry him over an _étape_ on some mountain road, it is often a beast from whose back one's toes touch the ground, though one is seated on a pad, not a saddle, and measures only five feet seven. CHAPTER XI THE SHIP OF THE DESERT AND HIS OCEAN OF SAND A camel may be a cumbersome, ungainly and unlovely creature, and may be destined to be succeeded by the automobile, to which he seems to have taken a violent dislike; but there is no underrating the great and valuable part which he has played in the development of the African provinces and protectorates of France. He has borne most of their burdens, literally; has ploughed their fields, pumped their water, and even exploited the tourists, to say nothing of having been the companion of the Mussulman faithful on their pilgrimages. The camel caravans which set out across the desert from Tlemcen, Tunis, and Constantine (there are no camels nearer Algiers than Arba) are in charge of a very exalted personage,--or he thinks he is. His official title is _gellâby_. Each and every beast of burden is loaded to the limit, and pads his way with his great nubbly hoofs across untold leagues of sand or brush-covered soil without complaint. At every stop, however, and every time a start is made, he always gives vent to shrieks and groans; but as this procedure takes place at each end of a day's journey as well, it is probably pure bluff, as the camel-sheik claims. To one unused to it the noise seems like the wails which are supposed to come up out of the inferno. The camel of Africa, so-called, is really not a camel, _he is a dromedary_; the camel has two humps, the dromedary but one, _but camel is the word commonly used_. The two-humped quadruped, then, is a camel,--the direct descendant of the camel of Asia, whilst that of the single hump is the dromedary of Africa. The distinction must be remembered by all who talk or write on the subject, with the same precision that one differentiates between African and Indian elephants. The camel has by no means the rude health and strength which has so often been attributed to him, indeed he is a very delicate beast and demands a climate dry and hot. Cold and snow and persistent rains are death to a camel. A camel must be well nourished, and with a certain regularity, or he soon becomes ill and dies. He is easily frightened and can spread a panic among his fellows with the rapidity of wild-fire. For the most part the camel is kindly and temperate, but he can get in a rage and can be very dangerous to all who approach him on foot. The camel of the south cannot live in the north and vice versa. They are not acclimated to the varying conditions. One judges a good camel (dromedary) by his hump; firm and hard, it is a sure sign of a good-natured, hard-working, friendly sort of a camel; if flabby and mangy, then beware. A camel eats normally thirty or forty kilos of fodder a day, and must be allowed four hours to do it in. As to drink, once in two or three days in summer is enough, but in winter he can go perhaps ten days, and his food bill is increased nothing thereby. He can carry 150-160 kilos, a parcel hung over each side in saddle-bag fashion. The _mehari_, or long-distance, fast-gaited camel of the Sahara, is to the ordinary dromedary what a blooded Arabian is to a Percheron. He can better stand hunger and thirst, and on an average needs drink only once in five days; furthermore is not as liable to fright as is the _djemel_, as the Arab calls the camel, and is more [Illustration: _The Mehari of the Desert_] patient and more courageous. Less rapid than a race-horse for short distances, the _mehari_, well-trained and well-driven, can make his hundred kilometres a day, day in and day out. The saddle is called a _rahala_ and has a concave seat, a large, high back, and an elevated pommel. The rider sits in the bowl-like saddle, his legs crossed on the beast's neck. The _mehari_ is driven through a ring in its nose, to which is attached a rope of camel's hair. The beast is somewhat difficult to drive, more so than the _djemel_, and only its master can get good results. To mount, the beast kneels as do ordinary camels. _En route_ the _mehari_ does not graze, but waits for a decent interval and takes its meal comfortably. A _mehari_, not accustomed to the sight of a horse, is often put into a terrible fright thereby. The education of a _mehari_ is very difficult; it takes a year to break one. The policing of the great Saharan tracts would not be possible without troops mounted on _mehara_,--the plural of the word _mehari_,--and France owes much of the development of her African provinces to the _mehari_ and the slower-going camel. The dromedary, or camel, as it is referred to in common speech, was an importation into Algeria away back in some unrecalled epoch, at any rate anterior to the Arab invasion of the eleventh century. The _mehari_ was a warlike beast as far back into antiquity as the days of Herodotus, Tacitus, and Pliny. Herodotus, recounting the battle of Sardes, said, according to Pliny: "_Camelos inter jumeuta pascit Oriens, quorum duo genera Bactriani et Arabici...._" If an Arab is owner of a thousand camels, he wards off any evil that may befall them by leading out the oldest and blinding it with a rod of white hot iron. A camel that has fallen ill may be cured, many superstitious Arabs believe, by allowing it to witness the operation of searing the hoofs of another, tied and thrown upon the ground. This is auto-suggestion surely, though where the curative powers come in it is hard to see. When a _bayra_, a female camel, has given birth to five camels, the last being a male, her ears are bored and she is sent out to pasture, never more to be put to the rough work of caravaning. Like putting an old horse to pasture in perpetuity, it seems a humane act, and it solves the race question in the camel world, or would if the camels only knew the why and the wherefore. The camel's feet are admirably made for the sands of the desert; they form by nature a sort of adapted _ski_ or snow-shoe. The hoof (though really it is no hoof) is bifurcated and has no horny substance, merely a short, crooked claw, or nail, at the rear of each bifurcation, a sort of elastic sole--the predecessor of rubber heels, no doubt--covering the base. The camel travels well in sand, but with difficulty over stony ground, where frequently the Arabs envelop his feet with cloths or leather wrappings. The camel possesses further four other callosities, one on each knee, and he uses them all four every time he gets up or lies down. These callous places are something the beast is born with; they get ragged and mangy-looking with time, but they are there from birth. The boss, or hump, of the camel-dromedary is mere gristle; it contains no bone, and is more or less abundant according to the health of the animal. A well-fed and happy camel, starting out on a long march, regards his well-rounded hump with pride. Excessive travel and forced marches diminish its shape and size and the beast seemingly becomes ashamed and literally feels sore about it. But, like the conquered general on a battle-field who loses his sword, he ultimately gets it all back again, and a little rest, a change of diet, and a good, long drink--"a camel's neck," you might call it--makes a difference with the camel and his hump in the course of a very few days. A camel gets unruly and cries out at times, and often becomes unmanageable, but an application of a sticky gob of tar or pitch on his forehead usually quiets him down. The baby camels usually come into the world one at a time; and can stand up on their four legs the first day, and run around like their elders at the end of a week. At the age of four years the young camel is put to work, and carries a rider, two barrels of wine or two gunny-sacks filled with crockery or ironware indiscriminately. His average life is twenty years, and, as with the horse, one reckons his age by his teeth. The Arab gets an astonishing amount of work out of an apparently unwilling camel. He encourages him with punches, and beatings and oaths and songs. Yes, the Arab camel-driver even sings to his camel to induce him to get along faster, and plays a screechy air on the _galoubet_; and the curious thing is that the flagging energies of a camel will revive immediately his driver begins to drone. It is a custom which has come down from antiquity, and soon one may expect every caravan to carry its own phonograph and megaphone. The chief of these airs, rendered into French for us by a lisping, blue-eyed Arab, was, as near as may be:-- "Battez pour nous, Battez pour nous, O Chameaux! Battez pour nous, Battez pour nous, Chameaux, pour vos maîtres!" No very great rhyme or rhythm there, but it suits the camel's taste in poesy. To "vagabond" with a camel caravan would be the very ideal of a simple life. The life of a caravan to-day is as it was in Bible times, except that one carries a "Smith and Wesson" or a "Colt" instead of a spear. The following essential facts apply to all the camel caravans making their respective ways from the coast towns of the northern provinces down into the Soudan and the Sahara. The caravan usually makes its day's journey between wells, or at least plans to stop at a source of water at night rather than push on; this in case one has not been previously passed by, and every one become refreshed a short time before. A dozen to thirty kilometres or so a day is the average commercial caravan journey,--for a part of the outfit walks, it must be remembered,--and an eight or ten weeks' itinerary is the duration of the average journey. Such food as is carried is generally of pounded dates and figs in the form of a paste, which the dry climate more or less petrifies. The Arab trader, the chief of the trading caravan, and the city merchant _en voyage_, be he Arab. Turk, or Jew, is a man of position, the others are mere helpers, employés or perhaps slaves. At each important halting-place of a caravan the Sheik's great tent is unstrapped from its camel bearer and set up on a _pied de terre_ in as likely a spot as may be found. The Arab tent is no haphazard shack or shelter; it is a thing of convention, and has its shape and size laid down by tradition. The great central post or pillar has a height of two and a half metres, and the _perches_, or entrance posts, have a height of two metres, and a considerable inclination, whereas the central one is perpendicular. The tent proper, the covering, is invariably of [Illustration: _A Desert Caravan_] alternate black and brown or brown and white woollen bands, sewn together with a stout thread of camel's-hair. These bands are called _felidj_ and have a width usually of seventy-five centimetres. Within there is no furniture properly called, simply the provision for a nomad life, sacks of grain, dates, figs or olives, a few pots and pans, harness, etc., and a few smaller sacks or bags, _cachettes_, where the womenfolk hide their earrings, corals, and brooches. These last are usually used as pillows at night. It is a law of somebody--perhaps the Prophet--that none of the Arabs' tent accessories must be of wood or iron, save the tent poles, which are of both, being made of wood and shod with iron; thus all utensils and other furnishings are of skins or mats, and dishes of woven grass, and all cords are of spun camel's-hair. A few copper pots and pans there are of necessity, and a few rude crockery bowls. The desert caravans form to-day the same classic pictures as of yore as they thread the trails and paths, obscure and involved enough to the stranger, but plain sailing to the chief or guide of a caravan who precedes the following "squadrons" as a Malay pilot precedes his ship. "At the head of his dusty caravan, Laden with treasures from realms afar * * * * * Through the clouds of dust by the caravan raised Came the flash of harness and jewelled sheath." The chief of a tribe, or even a caravan, is a very grand personage among his fellows, and when he is _en route_ rides apart and sleeps in a palanquin or _attouch_, an _attouch_ being no other thing than a cabin on a ship; here a cabin on the ship of the desert. The _attouch_, to be _à la mode_, must have a tall, chimney-like ventilator rising in the middle and tipped with ostrich plumes. Generally this retreat is large enough to shelter two persons,--always persons of importance in an ostrich-feather-tipped _attouch_, a sheik and his favourite wife, for example. The caravans of to-day vary in size from a dozen to fifty camels to a train of four, five, or seven hundred (in Tripoli). Under certain conditions, after a long journey, the camel carriers--the freighters--are usually allowed to rest a matter of days, weeks, or even months, according to the lack of necessitous conditions for pushing on and for recuperation. One of the chief trading towns of the Tripoli caravans to-day in Africa is Kano, a place ruled by a native chief and inhabited by a black population. The chief, for a consideration, affords shelter and protection, and the Arabs of the caravan open up shop and do business in the real county-fair style that they knew before county fairs were even thought of. Native products are bought or traded for in return, and such currency as passes is a sort of wampum made of shells and a few Maria Theresa dollars. Barter, or mere swapping, with a bonus on one side or the other, is the usual caravan Arabs' idea of merchandizing, and the European can as often get a native-made woollen burnous or a camel's-hair blanket by the exchange of a "dollar watch" or a "Seth Thomas clock," as he can by giving up two or three gold _louis_. The proper benediction to cast down on the head of any Sheik who may have shown you a courtesy _en route_ is to say in simple French:--"_Merci, noble Sheik, de ta générosité. Que la bénédiction d'Allah descende sur toi, sur tes femmes, tes enfants, tes troupeaux et ta tribu._" If you can give him a slab of milk chocolate or a piece of "pepsin" chewing gum, he will appreciate that, too. The negroes and negresses accompanying the caravans walk, but the Arab either rides camel-back or horseback, like the veritable king of his own little kingdom, which, virtually, every Arab is when he is on the open plain. The Touaregs, south of Touggourt, one of the real, genuine, Simon-pure tribes of desert Arabs, are not given to the trafficking and merchandizing of those who live down on the coast. Their chief, and in many cases, sole occupation consists in catering for the migratory caravan outfits, selling them dates and mutton and water, for if a Touareg can discover anywhere an unworked oasis with a spring, he has got something which to him is very nearly as good as a gold mine. Among the Touaregs there are blacks and whites; the whites dress like the conventional Arabs, but the blacks after a fashion more like that of the savage blacks further south. The three superimposed blouses are never too great a weight or thickness for the genuine Arab, even in the blazing furnace of the Sahara. They ward off heat and cold alike. One of Napoleon's famous sayings, forgotten almost in favour of others still more famous, was: "Of all obstacles which oppose an army on the march, the greatest, the most difficult to remove, is the desert." One imagines the desert as a great, flat, [Illustration: THE ILLIMITABLE DESERT] sandy plain with illimitable horizons, like the flat bed of a dried-out ocean. This is a misconception of our youth, brought about by too diligent an application to the precepts of the copy-book and the school geography. All things are possible in the _vrai désert_. The oasis is not the only interpolation in the monotonous landscape. There are great _chotts_ or marsh tracts, even depressions where a murky alkaline water, unfit for man or beast, is always to be found, vast stretches of rocky plateau, great dunes of sand and even jutting peaks of bare and wind-swept rock, with surfaces as smooth as if washed by the waves of the ocean. These are the common desert characteristics throughout the Sahara, from the Gulf of Gabès to the Moroccan frontier and beyond. Occasionally there are the palpable evidences of new-made volcanic soil, and even granite and sandstone eminences half buried in some engulfing wave of sand swept up by the last sirocco that passed that way. Over all, however, is an evident and almost impenetrable haze. At a certain moment of one's progress in the desert, he sees nothing of distinction before or behind or right or left, and at the next finds himself close to a pyramid of rock fifty feet high. Really the desert is very bewildering and enigmatic, and the Arab who navigates it with his caravan is like the sailor on the deep sea. He has to take his bearings every once and again or he is lost and perhaps engulfed. It is the fashion to write and speak of the mystery of the desert, but in truth there is no mystery about it, albeit its moods are varied and inexplicable at times. To the solitary traveller there is an interest in the desert unknown to seas, or mountains, or even to rolling [Illustration: _The Sand Dunes of the Desert_] prairies. Above is a sky of stainless beauty, and the splendour of a pitiless, blinding glare; the sirocco caresses you like a lion with flaming breath; all round lie drifted sand-heaps, where the wind leaves its trace in solid waves. Flayed rocks are here, skeletons of mountains, and hard, unbroken, sun-dried plains, over which he who rides is spurred by the idea that the bursting of a water-skin, or the pricking of a camel's hoof, would be a certain lingering death of torture. The springs seem to cry the warning words, "Drink and away!" There is nothing mysterious or dull about such a land, indeed it is very real and exciting, and man has as much opportunity here as anywhere of measuring his forces with Nature's, and of emerging, if possible, triumphant from the trial. This explains the Arab's proverb: "Voyaging is victory." In the desert, even more than upon the ocean, there is present death; hardship is there, and piracy, and ship-wreck. Newcomers to Algeria and Tunisia talk of the monotonous calm of the sand dunes of the desert; but those who know its silences best find nothing monotonous about them. It is as the automobilist expresses it with regard to the great tree-lined "Routes Nationales" of France--"there is sameness, but not monotony." One does not become ennuied in the desert. He may be alone within a circle of many miles radius, but each glint and glimmer of sunlight, each leaping gazelle and Saharan hare--really a jack-rabbit--keeps him company, and when a camel caravan or a patrol of Spahis rises on the horizon, he feels as "crowded" as he would in a "bridge crush" in New York, or on the Boulevard des Italiens on a fête-day. Here at one side is a shepherd's striped tent, surrounded by bleating sheep and goats and tended by a lean, lonesome Arab who is apparently bored stiff with lonesomeness. His is a lonesome life indeed, like that of a shepherd anywhere, and when night comes--often drear and chill even in the Sahara--he slips under his tent flap, pulls his burnous up around his ears and trusts to luck that no jackal will make away with a kid or lamb while he sleeps. He is not paid to sleep by the owner of the flock (a franc and a quarter a day, out of which he feeds himself), but still, sleep he must. Fatigue comes even to a lazy Arab sheep-herder, and he'd rather fall sound asleep beside a brazier inside his tent than doze intermittently before a fire of brushwood in the open. Who would not, at a franc and a quarter a day; particularly as the day includes the night! There is no eight-hour day in the desert. Before he sleeps, he munches a "_pain Arab_" and pulls his _matoui_ from his belt, from which he fills his pipe with _kif_ and soon smokes himself into insensibility. Poor sheep and goats, what may not happen to them whilst their guardian is in his paradise of burnt hemp! In the little oasis settlements where there are natural springs, and not at the _Bordjs_ or government posts of relays, one's sight is gladdened with flowering fig and almond blooms or fruits and bizarre spiny cacti with pink laurel and palms in all the subtropical profusion of a happy sunlight land. The chief characteristics of an oasis are the superb giant palm-trees, their _aigrettes_ reaching skywards almost to infinity, the azure blue cut into fantastic, fairy shapes, which no artist can paint and no kodakist snap in all their fleeting grace. Here dwell a few score of sheep, goat, horse, or camel owning Arabs, who mysteriously live off of nothing at all, except when they sell a kid or a baby camel to a passing caravan. It is the simple life with a vengeance! And the children play about in the shadow of the tents naked as worms, and, as they grow up, marry, and adopt by instinct the same idle life. They know no ideas of progress, and perhaps are the happier for it. The colour effects in the desert are things to make an artist rave. The dunes change colour with each hour of the day, and the silver light of the sunrise and the streaky blood-red and orange of the sunsets are marvels to be seen nowhere else on earth. The temperature in the desert frequently changes with a suddenness that would be remarked in Paris, the place par excellence in Europe where the changes in temperature are most trying; or in Marseilles, where, from a subtropical summer sun, one can be transplanted on the breath of the _mistral_ into the midst of an Alpine winter in the twinkling of an eye. Fifty degrees centigrade at high noon in the desert may be followed by ten degrees at midnight. That's a change of seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit, and that's something. CHAPTER XII SOLDIERS SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED--LÉGIONNAIRES AND SPAHIS Algeria is guarded by an army of 60,000 men. But they keep the peace only, for there is no warfare in Algeria or Tunisia to-day. In the days of the Roman legions less than half that number of men fought for and held all North Africa. France recognizes that the development of a new country depends more upon the military than all else. The Spahis, the _Chasseurs d'Afrique_, and the _Légionnaires_ have won most of France's battles in Algeria; and for this reason these great colonial corps are given a high place in the military establishment. When they have fought they have fought well, and when they have died they have died gloriously. The last "little affair" was in 1903, when a hundred Spahis and horsemen of the Legion were attacked at El-Moungar, near the Moroccan frontier. They fought like lions until reinforcements arrived, and but thirty odd remained alive. Among the _Légionnaires_ who died were a Spanish captain and a German lieutenant, for the _Légion Étrangère_ demands nothing of any who would enlist in its ranks but his name and an affirmative to the question--"Will you fight?" The survivors of this engagement all received the _Médaille Coloniale_ and the Saharan Clasp. Now a more important move in the military game is being played across the frontier in Morocco itself, and 12,000 of Algeria's native soldiery is cast for the chief rôle. The soldiers of the Foreign Legion are of all nationalities under the sun. Some of them are scoundrels, no doubt, or were until military discipline made them brace up, but others are as refined as the gentleman and officer of convention. We met many Italians, Swiss, Germans, and Irishmen, and the Germans were not Alsatians, either, but real _Platt-deutsch_, from Bremen. In more than one instance they had been drummed out of their own regiment for some disgrace and enlisted anew in France's _Légion Étrangère_ that they might begin life over again. The real soldier of fortune exists nowhere in so large a proportion as in this corps. Certain of the French troops in Africa are not usually the flower of the army, often they are _disciplinaires_ sent out from home. At any rate when you see one of them robbing a poor peanut merchant who solicited him to buy _dis nois poeur uné sous_, you are quite ready to believe he needs disciplining. The Arab under such circumstances gives the _tou-tou_ a tongue-lashing, which for invective could hardly be equalled: "_Infamous belly of a snake_," "_Canaille_," "_Sale yondi, where is your politeness_," "_Ouf, I'll ram another handful down your camel throat and charge you nothing, either--salop de cochon!_" The Arab is fast becoming Frenchified, as the above will indicate. The next minute the seller of _cacaoettes_--which is a prettier name for peanuts than we have--turns to you calmly and says humbly: "_Pardon, Sidi, will you buy some nuts?_" And you buy them, ten sous worth, which is enough money in hand to keep him for twenty-four hours, just because he is so good an actor. The sixty odd thousand regular soldiery in Algeria are virtually military police and civil engineers. The Arab-Berber population are no more likely to revolt, though they did it successfully enough in 1871, when France thought she had them subdued; and so, as a sort of police precaution, France keeps a very active army on the spot. If a nation possesses a vast territory, it must be policed somehow, and this is the French idea of doing it, for in the above number are counted the _gendarmerie_ or national police. One romantic character stands out plainly in the history of Algeria in these later years, and that is Yusuf, the name of the ideal native soldier who was a prodigious figure of the early nineteenth century. His personality was most strange. Bearer of an Arab name, he was the personification of a chivalrous military heroism consecrated to a country not his own; and France, contrary to her usual procedure, has seemingly neglected his fame and that of his descendants. It was to Yusuf, in effect, that was due the security of the environs of Algiers from the conquest of 1833 to the extinction of the revolt of 1871. From the first landing of General Bourmont, the deliverer of Algeria, Yusuf was employed in every possible capacity; and the ancient slave of the Turkish ruler and the favourite of the Bey of Tunis became the symbol of law and progress. His _sabre_ was henceforth to be used for Christianity, and not on behalf of paganism and rapine. Yusuf at the head of his Spahis is a noble and imposing figure of the African portrait gallery. He is almost invariably young, splendid of form and fastidious and luxurious in his dress; a superb romantic dream of the Orient, but adaptable and capable of absorbing European ideas. Authors, artists, and princes have attempted to idealize Yusuf, but the task was futile. Louis-Philippe, Louis Bonaparte, Alexandre Dumas, Gautier, Horace Vernet, Delacroix, and Bugeaud have sung his praises afar; but he remains to-day the unspoiled, faithful servant of a government and faith as foreign to his own as the red Indian is to the Parisian. Homage! Frenchmen and Algerians, and all others who know and love the land which smiles so bravely under the African sun, to Yusuf the warrior, the diplomat, and _chien fidèle_! The Spahis, or native soldiery, made up from the Yusufs of all Algeria, are in great repute with their European officers, whatever the bureaucrats of the Boulevard Saint Germain may think. To the former he has: "La main toujours ouverte, Le sabre toujours tiré, Une seule parole," and he is obedient to his superiors. This is a good formula upon which to mould a soldier. The Spahis and Turcos of Algeria fought for France, too, on the mainland, in that unhappy and unnecessary "woman's war" with Germany in 1871. The Germans protested against the employment of these "savages;" but the precept was England's when she enlisted the red man against the North American colonist in 1776, and then, too, she hired Hessians for the job (who were Germans) and according to the traditionary tales concerning those mercenaries, they came about as near being "savages" as anything which ever walked on two feet. The "Chanson du Spahi" is a classic in the land. It recounts in dulcet French phrase the whole life of one of these noble native soldiery enlisted in the ranks of the French army organization. It is a veritable Odyssey, commencing with:-- "J'e'tais jeune, le cadet dans la tente de mon père. Le cadet de ses fils beaux comme des lions," and ending with:-- "Qui pleurera sur la tombe du soldat orphelin." The Spahi's costume is fearfully and wonderfully made. It is gorgeous beyond that of [Illustration: A Capitan of Spahi] any other soldiery; and yet it is most suitable for campaigning after the Spahi fashion. The waving burnous, the _haïk_, the broidered vest, the turban wound with camel's-hair, red boots, and much gold braid make the Spahi dazzling to behold. When it comes to the accoutrements of his horse the same thing is true. His saddle is a veritable seat, not a mere pad, and weighs ten times as much as a European saddle, his stirrups alone weighing as much. Instead of a single blanket, the Spahi trooper has a half a dozen variegated saddle-cloths, very spectacular, if not useful. The barracks of the native soldiers in Algeria are bare, but with European fitments of iron bedsteads, etc. The religion of the Mussulman does not demand, nor indeed permit pictures or images of his God; and so, any substitute for the _ikons_ of the Russian, and the crucifixes of the French soldier are absent. In Algeria, besides the Spahis and the _tirailleurs_, each so picturesque whenever grouped with the North African landscape, there is a special field force of men from the south, pure Arab types, men of the desert, and scouts of the very first rank. All these military types are what is defined as native voluntary soldiery, the _indigène_ not being subject to military conscription. Perhaps they are the better soldiers for this, since they adopt it voluntarily as a profession, but a discussion of the subject is not one of sufficient moment to take space here. [Illustration: SOME NATIVE SOLDIERY] Each tribe of the south--whose civil administration, be it recalled, is in the hands of the native Sheik and the Cadi--is bound to furnish, at the need of the French government, whether for service within the limits of Algeria or out of it, a group of a certain proportionate size of able-bodied fighting men. These voluntary fighters of the open country, known as _goums_, are versed in many of the wiles of warfare of which the garrison-trained soldier is ignorant; and, upon a simple requisition, the chief of a tribe is bound to furnish his quota of these plainsmen. It is a duty owed to the French government for the protection and lawful status which it gives each individual tribe and its members; and this soldiery is not only voluntary, but serves, without salary, drawing only munitions of war and nourishment from the public war-chest, and furnishing even its own horses and guns. The _goum_ is a picturesque and original type of soldier. He rides a stocky Arabian horse, gaily caparisoned with a gaudy parti-coloured harness and saddle-cloth, and sits in a high-backed saddle, as if on a throne. His costume is fascinating, if crude, in the flowing lines of his burnous, his boots of bright red or yellow leather, and his great high-crowned straw hat, like no other form of head-gear on earth except the Mexican's _sombrero_. He is proud of his occupation, and would rather fight than eat, at least one judges that this is the case in that he fights for France without pay. The _goums_ are a sort of savage soldiery, if you like to think of them as such, but they are not _guerillas_. Their efficacy in various little wars has been tried and tried again; and, recently, in Morocco, the first successful raids into the open country of the fanatical Moroccans were only made possible by the lances of a column of _goums_ which only the day before had landed at Casablanca from the steamer from Oran. Regular soldiery has to get acclimated when fighting in a new and untried country, but the _goum_ of the Sud-Algerien got down to business immediately in Morocco and gave the French a firm grasp on things, whilst the regular troops, also imported from the plains of Algeria, were getting used to the mountains, and the garrison troops of Tizi-Ouzou were trying to adapt themselves to the mode of life necessary for good health in a seaport town. The ways of most War Departments in moving troops about from one strategic point to another have ever been erratic, and that of the French is no exception. The _goum_ of Algeria saved the day for France in Algeria, and perhaps by the time these lines are printed will [Illustration: A Goum] have added another gem to the colonial diadem of France. If not so soon, why later on. There is a current story in military circles in Algeria concerning the gift of an Arab chief to a French general commanding a division. It was not gold or jewels or goods of any kind, but a simple, secret admonition: "_Never trust an Arab--not even me._" With variations this may be true enough, but the average traveller among these now loyal French citizens will have no cause to regret any little confidences he may commit to a friendly Arab or Berber; though, of the two, the latter being certainly the more faithful. The railway, the telegraph, and the military have developed Algeria to what it is to-day. The Arab originally did not love the French, indeed he had no cause to, for they came and overran his country and put down abuses which he did not wish to have put down; but he has become philosophical, and has recognized that the iron horse forms a better means of transport than his mules and camels for the stuffs and goods of his trade and barter. He is commercial enough to want to do more business and make more money, so he tolerates the French; and, since his first experiences with the new order of things, he has prospered beyond his wildest dreams. That has civilized and subdued the Arab in French Africa. It would subdue any savage. The _fantasia_ is the classic diversion and showing-off pace of Algeria's Spahi cavalry. No great function, local or otherwise, is complete without a _fantasia_, and here the Spahi is at his uncontrolled best. He rides dashingly around the field of the manoeuvres, slashing with his sword at a leathern dummy of a man or a wooden ball on the top of a post, or with his stocky carbine shoots from the saddle, leaps hurdles, or throws his firearm high in the air and catches it again on its fall. All the time his charger is rushing about wildly and without method. The whole is a veritable military orgie of target-shooting, steeplechasing, marching and countermarching, and all with as picturesque a personnel and costuming as a circus. It is mimic savage warfare uncontrolled, and far more real and warlike than the goose-step evolutions of European armies. The fantasia is a spontaneous, every-man-on-his-own sort of an affair. The smell of gunpowder is in the air, and no Wild West or Cossack horseman ever gave half so vivid an example of agility as does a Spahi or a _goum_ on his African _jour de fête_. CHAPTER XIII FROM ORAN TO THE MOROCCO FRONTIER The western gateway to French Africa is through Oran, which, with its 88,000 inhabitants, is the second city of Algeria. Its chief attraction for the tourist who has seen, or is about to see, the rest of the country is its magnificent site and the recollection of the momentous history of its past. The most striking characteristic of its life and manners is the manifest Spanish influence which is over all, a relic of days gone by. Even the chief city gate, the Porte d'Espagne, still bears the ornamental escutcheons of the old Madrillenian governors; and, three kilometres distant from the centre of the town, are the celebrated "_Bains de la Reine_," a remembrance of the epoch when Jeanne, "La Folle," daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, the mother of Charles V, took the baths there in state, "in company with a brilliant cortège of knights and ladies." Bathing was more of a public ceremony then than now, evidently. One aspect of the life at Oran which one does not remark elsewhere is the numbers of Moroccans who slowly amble up and down, doing nothing, and living apparently in some mysterious fashion. The Moroccan of to-day is the typical Berber of our imagination, swarthy, lithe, and scraggy-bearded. He is not lovely to look upon, but he is picturesque. One of the chief sights to be noted in the markets of Oran is the fruit market; and the principal article of commerce is the grenadine, a historic and classic fruit, and the one the most in favour with the Arab or Berber of simple tastes. It is not without reason that he chooses this delicious fruit; for it is food and drink in one. D'Annunzio called the grenadine an "_écrin en cuir vermeil, surmonté de la couronne d'un roi donateur_," and the description is faithful and poetic enough for any man. The Arab _toubibs_, or doctors, believe it to be an efficacious remedy for all ills, and that its seed originally descended from the skies, a gift from Heaven to struggling humanity. It is certainly very beneficent as a remedy for tropical fevers. One will strain his eyes trying to hunt out more than a few of the vestiges of the old Oran of the Spaniards. The French have very nearly wiped them out. It was a great port in the days of the Romans, and between that time and the Spanish occupation it had a long history. The Mohammedans founded a town here a thousand years ago; and, about the time Columbus was sailing around the West Indian island trying to find a new way to the Orient, a Spanish author wrote that Oran had six thousand houses, a hundred and forty mosques, and schools and colleges equal to those of Cordova, Granada and Seville. It was sometime after this that Oran became Spanish, and in turn it reverted to the banished Moors, to become French in 1831. Oran's evolution from Spanish to French is interesting. It was once a penal colony of Spain, where from seven to ten thousand wicked unfortunates sweltered under an African sun, laying the foundations of the present fortifications. The memory of this Spanish occupation is everywhere, but it is a memory only and is continually growing more vague. The soldiers of Islam captured Costechica from the Spaniards, and the French came in turn and took it and called it Oran. Oran, like the rest of the North African coast cities and towns, is polyglot in its people and its architecture. The Orient rubs shoulders with the Far West, and the mingling is more astonishing and picturesque than delightful. A red fez, an alpaca coat, and white duck trousers is a bizarre effect, so is a bowler hat and a burnous. Joseph's coat of many colours was not more gaudy than that of many a Berber or Arab one sees to-day in Oran. The Sultans of other days have given way to an army Commandant, who, if he is a more practical person, is usually a less artistic one, and his influence is reflected in all his surroundings. The two religious monuments of Oran are celebrated throughout all Algeria. The cathedral of St. Louis is a stronghold of the Christian church and an imposing, if not a very elegant, structure; whilst the Grande Mosquée, with the most remarkable and quaint octagonal minaret in all Algeria, was built by a former _pacha_ of Algiers with the money coming from the sale of Christian slaves. These two edifices well illustrate two opposing points of view, but they are both religious monuments. If you can stand a mountain climb from Oran, go up the slope of Mount Mourdjadja, and have what a German authority has discovered to be the most impressive view in the world. The distance is but a few kilometres and the means of communication is shanks' mare. Majorca and Almeria on the coast of Spain may, it is said, be seen on a fine day. We have our doubts! The climb is the classic, conventional thing to do, however, if time permits. Oran, like Algiers, Bona, and Philippeville, has become Europeanized, Frenchified. Four-fifths of its population is native, but ask a Frenchman and he will tell you: "_Il n'y a rien d'exotique, c'est Paris._" This shows that the Frenchman frequents the French part of the town, and knows little of the hidden charm which exists on the fringe. He knows the Arab as an inferior menial, or a possible customer for his goods, but he knows nothing of his life, and cares less. The chief reason for coming to Oran at all is that it is the most convenient starting-point for Tlemcen. Tlemcen, lying well over to the Moroccan frontier, but linked with Oran by railway, is, in its plan and manner of life, the most original city in North Africa, the most captivating, and the least spoiled by modern innovations. It was the Pomaria of the Romans and enjoys to-day the same admirable belt of wooded shade that it did in those far-off days. Tlemcen under Arab rule was sovereign of all the Moghreb, one of the great capitals of the Khalifs, the rival of Granada, Kairouan, Damascus, Cairo, and Bagdad. Above its rocky-red substructure the walls and minarets of Tlemcen still pierce the azure sky, but no longer do the Sultans rule its people. A wild, untamed, savage soldiery has given place to French civil and military rule, and everybody is the more happy therefore. The Méchouar, the ancient palace of the Sultans, is an abandoned ruin, and the _caserne_ of the Spahis and the _Chasseurs d'Afrique_ now stand for a superior variety of law and order. The architecture of the Moors is at its very best at Tlemcen, even the fragmentary dilapidated remains in hidden-away corners are often the rival of the gems of the Alhambra itself. Tlemcen is the most splendid and gracious artists' paradise in Algeria. A roving Frenchman whom we met at Algiers, and who painted better than he versified, wrote the following for us on the back of his card which he gave us as an introduction to the patron of the Hotel de France at Tlemcen. "Il n'est pas une cité Qui dispute, sans folie, A Tlemcen la jolie La pomme de la beauté Et qui gracieuse étale Plus de pompe orientale Sous un ciel plus enchanté." To-day at Tlemcen, more than in any other place in Algeria, one sees vestiges of the Moorish art and civilization of the days before the conquest, sculpturings in wall and gate, and tiny cupolas and minarets of a period greatly anterior to most others of their class. The fragmentary remains of Tlemcen's sixty mosques existing in the sixteenth century spring into view here and there, at each turning, in bewildering fashion. Tlemcen is in its decadence however, for from a city of 125,000 souls it has dried up to one of 30,000, of which perhaps a tenth part are European. Tlemcen has many mosques, of which three must be noted as having been "viewed and remarked," as the antiquarians put it. The Grande Mosquée is the least grand, but it has a fine tower; the smallest mosque, that of Djama l'Hassen, is the most beautiful, and the best example of genuine Moorish architecture and decoration; the Mosque of El Haloui is the most daintily ornamented and most charming. The others dwindle down to ruined nothingness. Out of fifty-seven other minor mosques, most have been converted into cafés, shops, dwellings and sheep-folds, some are in ruins and some have disappeared entirely, but it is these unexpected fragments of a one-time splendour that makes the charm and value of Tlemcen for the artist. The native life of Tlemcen is another great feature for the stranger, and a caravan of savage-looking creatures from Morocco is no unusual sight on a market day. How the late "disturbances" in Morocco are going to affect the interstate traffic remains to be seen. Probably the interstate part of it will be wiped out, and France will absorb it all, as she ought to do, whatever England and Germany may think. France has made a success in governing Mohammedans; the others have not. Jews, Ethiopians, and Arabs all people Tlemcen. That is what makes it so interesting to-day, and the types seem to be purer than elsewhere. In the third century Tlemcen underwent a formidable siege at the hand of a Soudanese and his followers. The assailants were as tenacious as the defenders, and many times were obliged to retreat. It was one of the remarkable sieges of history. The would-be invaders built houses to replace their tents which were no protection against the rude climate they were forced to undergo for a protracted period, as did the Spaniards of Santa Fé under the walls of Granada. Less fortunate than Ferdinand and Isabella, the enemies of the Khalifas of Tlemcen were obliged to retreat, abandoning their fortifications on the height, which the besieged, however, disdained to occupy. It is thus that the fortifications of Mansourah have remained unoccupied for six hundred years, an ignoble monument to a campaign that failed. The countryside roundabout is fresh and thickly grown with a subtropical African flora, but the snows of a rigorous winter--which occasionally rest on the hillsides for weeks at a time--give a weird, contrasting effect hard to reconcile with the topographical and architectural features of the landscape. The sight of Mansourah under a snowy blanket is one of the surprises which one, who twenty-four hours before left the vine-clad hillsides of Médea and the plains of orange groves neighbouring upon Blida, will never forget. The legend of the Mosque of Mansourah is a classic among the Arabs who inhabit the mountain city of Tlemcen. A negro king of the Soudan, who himself as well as his followers were Mussulmans, invaded the region beyond the Atlas and laid siege to Tlemcen. So long and well-sustained was the siege that the invading army sought to build a mosque in their midst. A sort of competition was held, and the winners were a Jew and an Arab. The Soudanese king was at first embarrassed, and then enlightened by a happy idea which church-building committees might well adopt. He commissioned the Arab to proceed with the construction of the interior of the mosque, the Jew to be responsible for the exterior. A wonderful struggle took place, in which all the arts and ingenuities of the two races were brought to play, and which resulted in one of the most splendid of all Arab mosques. The warrior king was highly pleased, and, calling the builders before him, said, frankly, that he had no words to express his satisfaction, nor ideas as to how they might be recompensed. The thing dragged for a time, as payment of architects' bills has ever done; and partisanship so got the influence of the better instincts of the king that, while he gave the faithful Mussulman builder many purses filled with gold, he condemned the "dog of an infidel Jew" to be imprisoned in the upper gallery of the minaret, for having dared to even penetrate the holy edifice. It never occurred to the dusky monarch that the procedure was defiling the shrine still more. "Escape if you can," the Jew was told, as he was conducted to his prison. He did escape, after a fashion, so says the legend; for he made himself a pair of wings out of reeds and silks and cords; and, just as the blood-red sun plumped down behind the mountains of the Atlas, he launched himself in air. Like most flying-machine experimenters before and since, however, the daring innovator came forthwith to grief, falling precipitately at the base of the structure and smashing his skull. He died almost instantly, but before he expired he uttered a final imprecation; the earth trembled, the thunder rolled, and the lightning blasted the minaret, which fell, as it may be seen to-day, lying almost _en bloc_, at full length, on the ground. The same legend has its counterpart, with variations, in other lands, but it is as likely to be true of the Mosque of Mansourah as of the Cathedral of Orgis in Roumania, or at Cologne, in Crete or in Scandinavia. Legend was spread broadcast, even in the dark ages, by a system of "wireless" which has not yet been improved upon. Beyond Tlemcen the nearest Algerian settlement of size to the Moroccan frontier is Lalla-Marnia, twenty-four kilometres only from the centre of the late insurrection at Oudjda, now occupied by the French. The name of this advanced post comes from that of a sainted woman buried in a tiny _kouba_ near the military camp. The place was always a strategic point, and formed the military frontier post of a band of Syrian invaders, who gave it originally the name of _Numerus Syrorum_. Lalla-Marnia and Oudjda, one on Algerian soil and the other in Moroccan territory, separated by twenty-five kilometres of sandy roadway, bear each other a sisterly resemblance. The fêtes of Lalla-Marnia, with _fantasias_ and horse-races and a savage feasting of the natives, are followed by their counterpart at Oudjda a week later. Needless to say the fêtes are as yet unspoiled by non-contemporary interpolations. North from Lalla-Marnia is the little townlet of Nédroma, whose clannish inhabitants are one and all descended from the Moors of Andalusia. The type here is the purest in North [Illustration: _Arab Mosque of Beni-Ounif_] Africa, and the custom which binds them together, presumably as a _totem_ or prevention against marrying with outsiders, is most curious. Each head of a family guards preciously the key of the paternal house in Spain, the same with which his ancestors locked their doors when they fled at the time of the expulsion of their race from the peninsula. Every one of the Moors of Nédroma expects some day, when the great bell sounds the tocsin of revenge, to return and take up life anew in Andalusia. Away to the south of Tlemcen, or from Perrégaux, if one follows the railway, runs the road to far Sahara of the Sud-Oranais. Ain-Séfra, Beni-Ounif and Figuig are not even names known to the average outsider, albeit they have already achieved a certain prominence among geographers. Here the _habitants_, their manner of living, and their architecture take on a complexion quite different from anything known among the tribes of the north. All is blended with a savage crudeness which is alike exotic and picturesque. The Moorish mosques of the north give way to a severe Arab manner of building which is formidable and massive in outline and grim throughout. Mud, baked mud of a dingy red, packed together with straw and propped and bolstered here and there with the trunks of the palm-tree, are the chief characteristics of the Saharan Arab's place of worship and of his dwelling as well. The contrasting descent from the beauties of the Mauresque variety is astonishing. Throughout the Sud-Oranais civilization of the European brand is fast spreading; the railway and the telegraph have reached Figuig and beyond, and absinthe--of a particularly forceful brew--can be had in the cafés, also Swedish matches (made in Belgium) and clay pipes (from Holland). Not long since all was a desert waste, but the "_Légionnaires_," that mixed crew of nation-builders propagated by the French military authorities, went down into the interior and traced roads and built fortifications until this anonymous work came to be succeeded by that of merchants and traders of all creeds. One finds the "_kif_" shops at every little village _en route_, often where he will not even find a "_café maure_." Frequently in the towns these dens are relegated to a site without the walls, but they huddle as closely to the centre of affairs as the authorities will allow. Architecturally and artistically they are but vile, unlovely holes, lighted usually by a single [Illustration: _A Kif Shop_] _oeil_ hanging from the middle rafters. Most likely this _oeil_ is a fifty-cent barn lantern, made after the real Connecticut pattern, probably in Belgium or Germany. The oil that it burns is not even American; the "_Standard_" here in the Mediterranean is often Russian--put up in American tins. However, now that King Leopold of Belgium has gone into partnership with "_Standard_" representatives in the rubber business of the Congo, it's only fair to suppose there may be a Rockefeller interest in the Russian oil trade. These _fumeries de kif_ are to all intents and purposes low-class cafés, peopled with all the nomad riffraff of the Mediterranean from Mogador to Crete. Seemingly no one is proprietor, but each shuffles around for himself regardless of any apparent reckoning to come. It is a picturesque setting indeed for a theatre of crime. For furnishings, a straw mat covers a part of the floor, and a few cushions of grimy embroidered, or embossed, leather are backed up against the wall here and there. A great carven coffer, presumably a strong box containing the stock, ends the catalogue, if one excepts the now smoke-dimmed arabesques and horseshoe arched decorations of the walls themselves. In one we saw tied a bald-headed vulture, a dirty fowl, and an itinerant blind musician with a tanned skin, twanging out minor chords on a _gambri_, or Arab guitar with two strings, and those not even catgut, but a poor Arab substitute therefor. Figuig is the end of the railway line into the Sud-Oranais, and, though it and its Grand Hotel du Sahara are of little interest to the tourist, the surrounding environment is as far removed from civilization as one could hope to get and yet find himself fairly comfortable between the four walls of a hotel of imposing proportions. Figuig is the virtual end of encroaching civilization; eight hundred odd kilometres from the coast straight south into the desert. The railway is not intended to stop at Figuig; and, by this time, it may have reached Colomb-Béchar, a hundred kilometres further on, to which point it was projected when these lines were written. Fifteen miles an hour is the ordinary speed of this toy railway, and the journey takes from twenty-four to thirty hours of uncomfortable and dusty travelling, which costs, however, only a matter of a hundred francs or so, coming and going. Going east from Figuig, four hundred [Illustration: _Laghouat_] kilometres, the only communication being by the caravan trail, is Laghouat, another outpost of civilization on the desert's edge. Laghouat, like most desert towns, like Touggourt, like Tozeur, like Biskra even, is an oasis. In its markets one may see the traffickings of all the desert types of the Sahara, from the M'zab--the Auvergnats of Algeria--to the wandering nomads of the south,--the tramps of the desert, not omitting the picturesque _Ouled-Naïls_ and the terrible Touaregs, with their still more terrible-looking guns and their heads swathed in black veils. [Illustration: _Hotel at Figuig_] At Laghouat and Figuig one gets the truest perspective of the life of the desert that one can have short of Oued-Souf in the Sud-Constantinois. Biskra is in the class of "exploited tourist points," whilst these desert towns are practically inaccessible to all but the hardiest of travellers,--the real genuine travel-lover, not those who are averse to riding in creaky diligences with dusky Arabs for companions, or on mule, donkey, or camel back, for all these means of locomotion come into the desert itinerary. CHAPTER XIV THE MITIDJA AND THE SAHEL The whole region just west of Algiers is very properly accounted the garden of North Africa. Wheat, the vine, the orange, and all the range of _primeurs_ which go to grace the _tables d'hôte_ at Paris are grown here to the profit of all and sundry, native and colonist alike, who possess a garden plot of virgin soil. Boufarik, in the midst of the great plain of the Mitidja, is a garden city if there ever was one. It is beautifully and geometrically laid out, like Philadelphia, though it doesn't resemble the Quaker City in the least; it is more lively. The great day at Boufarik is the market day, when a great cattle and sheep market is held (every Monday week). To-day this great market is a survival of one which has been held for ages. The coming of the French made for the increased prosperity of Boufarik, and its former reputation of being a pest-hole has been entirely overridden by a series of civic improvements which not only resulted in cleaning up the town but made it really beautiful as well. [Illustration: _Market, Boufarik_] The Monday market at Boufarik is one of the things to come out from Algiers to see. For once put carriage or automobile behind and travel out by train or diligence, and mingle with the people and see what the real native life of Algeria is like, so far as it can be seen, uncontaminated by foreign influence. Better yet, go out the night before and sleep at the Hotel Benoit. It is unlovely enough as an inn, but the dishes served at dinner and breakfast are very good; reminiscent of North Africa, but bountiful and excellent. There is nothing offensive or unclean about the hotel, if it is crude; but the colour one gathers on the palette of his memory is very local. From the afternoon of Sunday, on all the roads leading into Boufarik, from Cherchell and the Sahel, from Miliana, from Blida and Algiers, throng the thousands that will make up the personnel of to-morrow's market. They come on camel-back, on horses, mules, and donkeys, on foot, by diligence, and by rail, herded in flat unroofed cars like cattle. Some are the pure Arab type of the sandy dunes and plains of the waste Sahara, others Berber-Kabyles, and others Jews, Maltese, Spaniards, French, Italians and--tell it not in Gath--Germans. The contrast of the types is as great as the contrast between their modes of conveyance, the contrast between the plodding little donkeys and the great, tall, lumpy camels. The comings and goings of the great native market of Boufarik are a perpetual migration, and there is nothing the Arab likes more than to participate in such an affair. It is his great passion and diversion, and the fact that he stands to gain a little money is not so much an object with him as to kill a little time. From daybreak, the vast quadrangle on the Route de Blida, outside Boufarik's rectangular fortifications, is given over to tents, shops, and booths. Here and there is a corral of donkeys or mules, or a pen full of sheep. Braying donkeys and bleating sheep are everywhere. The great avenues of plane-trees form a grove, and wherever they cross some more powerful or wily trader has squatted on the ground, to the discomfort of his less fortunate competitor, who, perforce, has to content himself with the shady side of a camel. Leading up to this unique market-place is a splendid avenue of orange-trees. A superb disorder of trumpery brummagem cutlery, stuffs, firearms and pots and pans clutter the ground in every direction. Water-sellers and milk-sellers are threading everywhere, each loaded down with his _peau de bouc_, and fruit and bread sellers with their wicker baskets. Saddlery, horseshoes, ropes of hemp, jute, and camel hair all mingle in a picturesque chaos. There are even hand sewing-machines, of the little doll-house variety that the native populations of India, Japan, Patagonia affect as their sole intercourse with modernity. A few women mingle among the groups, but mostly the crowd is made up of men. Rarely are these market women beautiful except in a savage way. They possess most of the male characteristics of manner, and but few of the wiles and little of the coquettishness of woman. Their visages are tanned to copper colour and sowed with ridges and folds. Many indeed are out and out negresses. Here beside a stall sits a Soudan negress of fat, flabby visage and large round eyes, as amiable as some greasy animal in captivity--and about as intelligent. She is only a watcher or caretaker; the real owner of the stall, with its melons, its skins, and its baskets, is over yonder in a Moorish café playing dominoes. From her head and shoulders hang great chains of silver, and in the lobes of her ears are pendants which may be gold or not. She is a barbaric savage, splendid in her savagery and indifferent, apparently, to everything and everybody. But she is part of the setting nevertheless, and she is good to see. The coast plain west of Algiers, the Sahel properly called, is in strong contrast with the cultivated plain of the Mitidja. The whole journey from Algiers out to Cherchell and back, via Miliana, Blida, and Boufarik, gives one as good an idea of the ancient and modern civilization of North Africa as one could possibly have. Blida sits calmly in its fertile plain at the foot of the imposing hills which, grouped together, form the mountains of the Beni-Salah. All round about are orange groves and olive-trees of the very first splendour and production. The _Bois Sacré_, Blida's chief sight, is as picturesque and romantic a woodland as the sentiment of a poet or an artist ever conjured up. Blida dates from the sixteenth century, when a number of Andalusian families settled here because of the suitability of the region for the cultivation of the orange,--and the commerce has been growing ever since. In the olden times Blida was known as Ouarda, _the little rose_; but afterwards when the Turks and Corsairs held their orgy there, it came to be called Khaaba, _the prostitute_. Since that day it has got back its good name and is one of the liveliest, daintiest, and altogether attractive small cities of Algeria. The native and the French alike know it is _la voluptueuse_ or _la parfumée_. Within Blida's _Bois Sacré_ is the venerated marabout of Sidi-Yacoub-ech-Chérif, one of the [Illustration: _Tomb of Sidi-Yacoub_] celebrated _kouba_ shrines of Islam. No reproduction of it can do its cool, leafy surroundings justice. It is the very ideal of a holy man's retreat and one of the most appealing of shrines to those possessed of the artist's eye. Fragonard or Corot might have spent a lifetime painting the forest interiors of the unspoiled wild-wood of Blida's _Bois Sacré_. The writer is not sure that the author of "Mignon" ever saw or heard of Blida, but his verses were most apropos: "Connais-tu le pays où fleurit l'oranger, Le pays des fruits d'or et des roses vermeilles? * * * * * Où rayonne et sourit comme un bienfait de Dieu, Un éternel printemps sous un ciel toujours bleu. * * * * * C'est là que je voudrais vivre, Aimer et mourir.... C'est là!..." In connection with Blida it is worthy of record that the celebrated and venerable _bach-agha_ Sid Ben Gannah, of Biskra, Grand-Chef of the Sud-Constantinois, recently underwent a "cure" at the military hospital at Blida. His malady had become a chronic one, and his complete restoration to health through the aid of the capable doctors of the hospital and the mild soft air of Blida has done more than anything else to allay the fanatical superstition of the native against the efficacy of the proper professional treatment of the sick. The "cure" experienced by their favourite _bach-agha_, the friend of the King of England and bearer of a hundred personal decorations, the "grand old man" of the country, has been heralded wide amongst the natives, from Constantine to Beni-Souf, and Ouardja to El Oued, and has struck the death-knell of the voodooism of the _indigène_ "_toubibs_" and quacks. For many years yet, it is to be hoped, the native may continue to demand the benedictions of Mohammed for their respected chief: "_Ou sela Allah ala on moulano on ala hebel daro ou ala sahabou ou Salem!_" A peculiarity of the Mauresques of Blida is that they veil themselves in a most strange manner. Instead of covering their faces, leaving only two glittering black eyes peeping out, they cover all but one eye. A woman who veils after that manner looks suspicious. Beware! At the Mediterranean extremity of the great plain in which lies Blida--a veritable Garden of Eden, with oranges, figs, grapes, pomegranates and even the apples of Eve--is the little hill-town of Kolea. Kolea is extraordinary from every point of [Illustration: _A Mauresque of Blida_] view. Kolea is a military town; the Zouaves are everywhere, and in their train have come a following of Greeks, Turks, and Maltese. But the little garden-town with its _Jardin des Zouaves_, its two mosques, its turreted fountain and its modern Renaissance Mairie is attractive throughout, albeit it is not the least Oriental. The Hôtel de France, partly Moorish (the good part), and partly French (the ugly part), is one of those French inns that are indescribably excellent. There is a sure-to-be Gabrielle who presides at the cook stove and another who serves at table and orders up the _vin rosé_ from the cellar when the red or the white wine is too strong (16 degrees) for one's taste. They are wonderfully good, those wines of the Sahel. It is a remarkably brilliant strip of coast-line extending west from Algiers, and it should be covered in its entirety as far as Cherchell if one would realize the varied beauties and attractions of the Algerian littoral. From Saint-Eugène and Point Pescade, suburbs of Algiers, a fine road extends all the way to Cherchell, a matter of nearly a hundred kilometres, the turquoise Mediterranean always to the right. At Sidi-Ferruch the French troops first landed when on their conquest of Algeria. At Staouëli-la-Trappe is an abbey where there are a hundred and fifty lay brothers who grow oranges and fine fruits, and while their dull lives away comfortably under the brilliant skies of Africa. Going still further along the coast, we come to Castiglione, sheltering itself behind a sand-dune, from whence it is but a few kilometres to the "Tombeau de la Chrétienne," as imposing and extraordinary a monument as any of the pyramids of Ghizeh. Architecturally, if not beautiful, it is imposing, and mysterious, in that it is constructed on a most original plan. It is a great mound of superimposed cut stone, entered by a pillared portico, now somewhat ruined. This funeral monument has an appeal for the archæologist and the merely curious alike far beyond many a more conventional monument of its class. The gigantic monument is still supposed to contain many and wonderful treasures, unless they were removed and lost in the forgotten past, for as yet none have been brought to light. Tradition has the following tale to tell of this monumental sepulchre. One day a Christian woman, fleeing from a rabble of unholy men and women, took refuge in this commemorative shrine, built by some holy person whose name is forgotten. Her pursuers, coming upon her in her retreat, would have fallen upon her and done her injury, even as she was at her prayers, when suddenly a myriad of flies, mosquitoes, and wasps put the invaders to flight. The frightened woman lived a hermit's life here in her stronghold, and at the end of her span came to die within the impenetrable walls. Ever afterward the cone-like mound was known as the Tombeau de la Chrétienne. The Arabs call this bizarre tomb Kaber-Roumia. In 1866 it was explored by a band of archæologists, who decided that it was the tomb of the Kings of Mauretania, built by Jubal II in the reign of the great Augustus. The reader may take his choice of the reasons for the existence of this remarkable monument. One is about as well authenticated as the other. It existed already in 1555, for the records tell that a _Pacha_ of Algiers, Salah Raïs, tried, but without success, to destroy the edifice by firing stone cannon-balls at the mass. Nothing happened; the monument was not despoiled of its outlines even. This fact speaks badly either for the old Turkish ammunition or for the skill of the gunners who fired it. Tipaza, the _chef lieu_ of a _commune_ with a population of between two or three thousand, is a little coast town and comes next on the itinerary from Algiers to Cherchell. At Tipaza are still more Roman ruins, covering an area over two thousand metres square. Tipaza was one of the cities of Mauretania where the Christian religion was practised with the utmost fervour. The patron saint of the place was one Salsa, a young girl, who, according to tradition, was put to death at the beginning of the fourth century for having destroyed a pagan idol. Such was religious partisanship of the time. A century later the Vandal king Hunéric, in order to subdue Christianity, caused all those professing it to have their right hands cut off and their tongues cut out. This was the extreme of cruelty and its effect on Christendom is historic. The Roman monuments still existing at Tipaza include a theatre, which is in a poor state of preservation. This has been restored in recent years to the extent that commemorative dramatic performances have been held here in the open air, as at Carthage, and at Orange in Provence. The outlines of a great basilica of nine naves, where Sainte Salsa was buried, are still well preserved, and there are also something more than fragments of the baths and water-works, which supplied the drinking water for the surrounding country. From Tipaza to Cherchell is thirty kilometres by road, which is the only means of reaching the latter place unless one goes from Algiers by steamer along the coast, a voyage not to be recommended for various reasons. Cherchell possesses the best-preserved outlines of an historic occupation of the past of any of the old Roman settlements of the "Département d'Alger." First as the Phoenician colony of Iol, and later, under Jubal II, as Cesarea, the capital of Mauretania. Cherchell came under the sway of the Roman Empire in the year 40 of the Christian era. The province of Mauretania extended from the Moulouia to the Setif of the present day. In the middle ages Cesarea lay dormant for three centuries; but before this, and again afterwards, its activities were such that the part it played in the history and development of the country was most momentous. As late as the early years of the past century, the city and port was the refuge of a band of pirates which pillaged throughout all the western waters of the Mediterranean. The ancient port of Cherchell was the scene of the comings and goings of a vast commerce in Phoenician and Roman times; and the present state of the preservation of the moles and jetties of this old harbour of refuge stamps Cherchell as worthy of comparison with Carthage. The Roman ruins at Cherchell are stupendous, though fragmentary, and not overnumerous. In the inefficiently installed "Musée" are many of the finest gems of antique sculptures and statuary yet found in Africa. There is a catalogue of these numerous discoveries, compiled by M. Wierzejski, which can be had at the book-shops of Algiers, and which will prove invaluable to those interested in the subject in detail. The chief Roman monuments remaining in place above ground are the Western Baths and the Central Baths: the Cisterns, the Amphitheatre,--where was martyred Sainte Marciane,--the Circus, and the extensive ramparts sweeping around to the south of the town from one part of the coast-line to another. Cherchell has a population of nine thousand souls to-day, of which perhaps a third are Europeans. In Roman times it must have had a vast population judging from the area within the ramparts. The ancient Grande Mosquée of the Arab occupation is now a military hospital. This has had added to it numerous beautifully proportioned columns, with elaborately carved capitals, taken from the ruins of the Central Baths. South from Cherchell, back from the coast towards the mountains of the "Petit Atlas," fifty kilometres or more by a not very direct road, and connected by a service of public diligences, is Miliana. One will not repent a "stop-over" at this unspoiled little African city. The country reminds one of what the French would call a "_petite Suisse Africaine_." The valleys and plains have a remarkable freshness of atmosphere that one does not associate with a semi-tropical sun. Miliana itself sits high on the flank of the Zaccar-Gharbi, and is the lineal descendant of the Zucchabar of the Romans. Actually, it was founded in the tenth century. At the time of the French occupation of Algeria Abd-el-Kader here installed Ali-ben-Embarek (who afterwards became the Agha of the Mitidja under the French). But with the occupation of Médea, in 1840, the stronghold fell and the Arab power was broken for ever in these parts. Miliana is a walled town to-day, as it was in the days of the Romans and Berbers. On the north is the Porte du Zaccar, and on the south the Porte du Chélif. This snug little hill-town, with only a quarter part of its population European, not counting half as many more Israelites, has a character which places it at once in a class by itself. It has an attractive little commercial hotel, where one eats and drinks the best of the countryside and pays comparatively little for it. A wide terrace, or esplanade, runs around one side of the town overlooking the walls, and a wide-spread panorama stretches away on the east and west and north and south into infinity, with the imposing mass of the Ouarsenis, called "_l'oeil du monde_," as the dominant landscape feature. The terrace is called locally the "_coin des blagueurs_." Why, no one pretends to answer, except that all the world foregathers here to stroll and gossip as they do on the "_cours_" of a Provençal town. Miliana's mosque is a simple but elegant structure, graceful but not ornate, imposing but not majestic. It is dedicated to Sidi-Ahmed-ben-Youssef, a venerated marabout who lived all his life hereabouts. He had as bitter and satirical a tongue as Dean Swift when speaking of the men and manners of those about him. Turning eastward again from Miliana towards Algiers, one passes the entrance to the Gorges de Chiffa, the road to Médea, and finally Blida, the centre of the little yellow, thin-skinned orange traffic. From Blida a classic excursion is to be made to the Gorges de Chiffa, where, at the Ruisseau des Singes, formerly lived a colony of hundreds, perhaps thousands of monkeys in their wild native state. Nowadays the only monkeys one sees are on the frieze in the _salle-à-manger_ of a most excellently appointed little wayside hotel. [Illustration: At the Ruisseau des Singes B. Mcm '01] Hamman-R'hira, on the road between Miliana and Blida, is an incipient watering-place, where one can get tea and American drinks, and play croquet. Its mineral springs--much like those of Contrexeville in France--have been famous for centuries, and the old Moorish baths are still used by the Moors and Arabs round about. For the Europeans who, throughout the spring and winter season, throng to the great hotel, now managed by a limited company, there are other baths more luxuriously installed. Hamman-R'hira is an attractive enough place of itself, and would be more so were it not filled with rheumatics and anæmics. The frequenters of the Moorish baths are more interesting than the European clientèle for the investigator of men and manners. [Illustration: Algiers & its Environs] CHAPTER XV THE GREAT WHITE CITY--ALGIERS The first view of Algiers from the ship, as one enters the port, is a dream of fairyland, "_Alger la Blanche!_" "_El Djesair la molle!_" If it is in the morning, all is white and dazzling; if in the evening, a rosy violet haze is over all, with the background of the "Petit Atlas" and the Djurjura shutting off the littoral from the wide Sahara to the south. At twilight a thousand twinkling lights break out, from the Kasba on the height, from Mustapha, from the terrace boulevard which flanks the port and from the ships in the harbour. A stronger ray flashes from the headland lighthouse at Cap Matifou, and still others from war-ships in the great open gulf. Algiers is truly fairy-like from any point of view. The Algiers of to-day is a great and populous city. It is the Icosium of the Romans doubled, tripled, and quadrupled. Three towns in juxtaposition stretch from Saint-Eugène on the west to Mustapha on the east, while Algiers proper has for its heart the "Place du Gouvernement" and the "Grande Mosquée." The Place du Gouvernement is a vast square, a sort of modern forum, flanked on one side by the Mosque of Djema-el-Djedid, the Grande Mosquée, and on the others by shops, cafés, and hotels. From it stretch the four great thoroughfares of the city, Bab-el-Oued, La Marine, La Kasba, and Bab-Azoum. All the animation and the tumult of the city centres here, and the passing throng of Arabs, soldiers, Jews, Mauresques, and the French and foreign elements, forms an ethnological exhibit as varied as it is unusual. Algiers has a special atmosphere all its own. It lacks those little graces which we identify as thoroughly French, in spite of the fact that the city itself has become so largely Frenchified; and it lacks to a very great extent--from almost every view-point--that Oriental flavour which one finds at Cairo and Tunis. But for all that, Algiers is the most wonderful exotic and conventional blend of things Arab and European on top of earth. The environs of Algiers are rugged and full of character, opening out here and there into charming distant vistas, and wide panoramas of land and sea and sky. All is large, immense, and yet as finely focussed as a miniature. One must not, however, attempt to take in too great an angle at a single glance, else the effect will be blurred, or perhaps lost entirely. The impulsive ones, who like the romance of Touraine and the daintiness of valley of the Indre and the Cher, will find little to their liking around Algiers. All is of a ruggedness, if not a savageness, that the more highly developed civilization of the "Midi" has quite wiped out. Here the ragged eucalyptus takes the place of the poplar, and the _platane_ is more common than the aspen or the birch. The palm-trees are everywhere, but just here they are of the cultivated or transplanted variety and generally of the feather-duster species, decorative and pleasing to look upon, but givers neither of dates nor of shade. Algiers and its life, and that of its immediate environs, whether the imported gaieties of Mustapha or the native fêtes of Bouzarea, and the periodical functions for ever taking place in the city itself, give about as lively an exposition of cosmopolitanism as one may observe anywhere. The historical monuments of Algiers are not as many as might at first be supposed, for most of its memories of historic times deals with places rather than things; and, indeed, this is true of the whole surrounding country, from Tizi-Ouzou in Kabylie to Cherchell and Tipaza in the Sahel, to the west. The chief of Algiers' architectural charms--aside from that varied collection of crazy walls and crooked streets which make up the Arab town--are the Archbishop's Palace,--a fine old Arab house of a former Dey of Algiers; the Peñon and the Amirauté, or what is left of it, on the mole below the Palais Consulaire; its three principal mosques; the cathedral,--the mosque of other days transformed; the Palais d'Eté of the Governor-General, in part dating from the seventeenth century, and the Kasba fortress, high up above the new and old town. These are all guide-books sights, and the only comments herewith are a few hazarded personal opinions. High above, up through the streets of stairs, scarce the width of two people side by side, and still up by whitewashed walls, great iron-studded doors and grilled windows, sits the Kasba, the great fortress defence of Algiers since the days when Turkish rule gave it the most unenviable reputation in all the world. There is a continual passing and repassing of all Algiers' population, apparently, from the lower town to the height above, Europeans, Arabs, Moors and Jews. The scene is ever changing and kaleidoscopic. A white wraith toddles along before one, and, as you draw near, resolves into a swaddled Mauresque who, half afraid, giggles at you through the opening of her veil and suddenly disappears through some dim-lighted doorway, her place only to be taken by another form as shapeless and mysterious. This is the Arab town day or night; and but for the steep slope one might readily lose himself in the maze of streets and alleys. As it is all one has to do is to keep moving, not minding the gigglings and gibings of the natives. One enters the _ville Arabe_ by any one of a hundred streets or alleys. At its outmost height you are at the Kasba; when you reach the bottom you are in the European town. To the right or left you reach a sort of encircling boulevard which in turn brings you to the same objectives. It is not so difficult as it looks, and one need fear nothing, night or day, until he reaches the European town and civilization, where thievery and murderings are nightly occurrences. Here in the old Arab town one is in another world; here are the _maisons à terrasse_, the mosques, the narrow _ruelles_ with their overhung porches and only occasional glimpses of the starry sky overhead. Verily it is as if one had left the electric-lighted "Place," the _cafés chantants_, the tramway, and the shipping behind in another world, though in reality a hundred steps, practically, in any direction will bring them all within sight and sound and smell again. After all, the quaint streets of the hillside town are Algiers' chief sights, after the magnificent panorama of the bay and that wonderful first view as seen from the ship as one enters the port. Algiers' native quarter has been somewhat spoiled by the cutting through of new streets, and the demolishing and refurbishing of old buildings; but, nevertheless, there are little corners and stretches here and there where the daily life of the native men and women goes on to-day as it did when they lived under Turkish rule. Here are the shopkeepers of all ranks: a butcher dozing behind his _moucharabia_, looking like the portraits of Abd-el-Kader; a date-seller, the image of the Khedive of Egypt; a baker with a Jewish cast of figure; and next door a _café-maure_ with all the leisure population of the neighbourhood stretched out on the _nattes_ and benches, [Illustration: _A Cemetery Gate_] smoking and talking and drinking. It is not fairyland, nor anything like it; it is not even Oriental; but it is strange to Anglo-Saxon, or even European, eyes that such things should be when we ourselves are wallowing in an over-abundance of labour-saving, comfort-giving luxuries which the Arab has never dreamed of. We chase our flies away with an electric fan, whilst he idly waves a _chasse-mouches_ of antique pattern, and does the thing quite as effectively, and with very little more effort. They are very grave, magnificently tranquil, these turbaned Turks and Jews and Arabs, sitting majestic and silent before some café door, clad in all the rainbow colours of civilization and savagery. Their peace of mind is something we might all acquire with advantage, instead of strenuously "going the pace" and trying to keep up with, or a little ahead of, the next. In spite of its strangeness, Algiers is not at all Oriental. The Arabs of Algiers themselves lack almost totally the aspect of Orientalism. The Turk and Jew have made the North African Arab what he is, and his Orientalism is simply the Orientalism of the East blended and browned with the subtropical rays of the African sun. It is undeniably picturesque and exotic, but it is not the pure Eastern or Byzantine variety which we at first think it. To realize this to the full, one has only to make the comparison between Algiers and Cairo and Tunis. It is the cosmopolitan blend of the new and the old, of the savage with the civilized, that makes cosmopolitan Algiers what it is. This mixture of many foreign elements of men and manners is greatly to be remarked, and nowhere more than in Algiers' cafés, where French, English, Americans, and Arabs meet in equality over their _café-cognac_, though the Arab omits the cognac. The cosmopolitanism of Marseilles is lively and varied, that of Port Saïd ragged and picturesque, but that of Algiers is brilliantly complicated. Algiers is the best kept, most highly improved, and, by far, the most progressive city on the shores of the great Mediterranean Lake, and this in spite of its contrast of the old and new civilizations. San Francisco could take a lesson from Algiers in many things civic, and the street-cleaners of London and Paris are notably behind their brothers of this African metropolis. The _marchand de cacaoettes_ is the king of Algiers' Place du Gouvernement; or, if he isn't, the bootblack with his "_Cire, m'ssieu!_" holds the title. Anyway, the peanut-seller is the aristocrat. He sits in the sun with a white or green umbrella over his head, and is content if he sells fifty centimes worth of peanuts a day. His possible purchasers are many, but his clients are few, and at a sou for a fair-sized bag full, he doesn't gather a fortune very quickly. Still he is content, and that's the main thing. The bootblack is more difficult to satisfy. He will want to give your shoes a "_glace de Paris_," even if another of his compatriots has just given them a first coating of the same thing. The bootblacks of Algiers are obstinate, importunate, and exasperating. From a document of 1621 one learns that Algiers had a population of 100,000 in 1553, a half a century later 150,000, and in 1621 200,000. Then came the decadence; and, at the coming of the French in 1832, Algiers was but a city of 34,000, Moors, Turks, Jews, Negroes, and Arabs all counted. They were divided as follows: Mussulmans 17,858 Negroes 1,380 Jews 5,758 Floating population 9,888 ------ 34,884 By 1847 a European population had crowded in which brought the figures up to 103,610 and gave Algiers a rank of fifth among French cities. Algiers' busy port is picturesque and lively in every aspect, with the hourly comings and goings of great steamships from all the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, and from the seven seas as well. Over all is the great boundless blue of a subtropical, cloudless sky; beneath the restless lapping of the waves of the still bluer Mediterranean; and everywhere the indescribable odour of _bitume_, of sea salt, and of oranges. The background is the dazzling walls of the arcaded terraces of the town, and the still higher turrets and towers of a modern and ancient civilization. Still farther away are the rolling, olive-clad hills and mountains of the Sahel. Sunrise or sunset on Algiers' port are alike beautiful; one should miss neither. The best-remembered historical and romantic figures of Algiers are Pedro Navarro, who built the Peñon; the brothers Barberousse, Corsairs from the Dardanelles, whom the Algerians called in to help them fight their battles against Christianity; and Cervantes, the author of "Don Quixote," who was imprisoned here, and who left an imperishable account of the city of his captivity, ever useful to later historians. Charles V and Louis XIV both had a go at Algiers, but it fell not to their attack; and it was only with later times, incident upon an insult offered the French ambassador by Hussein Dey, the Turkish ruler of the El-Djezair of the ancients, that Algiers first capitulated to outside attack. Old Algiers was not impregnable, perhaps, but such weapons of warfare as were used against the Turks were inefficient against its thick walls, its outposts, and its fortified gates. The historic Peñon underwent many a mediæval siege, but was finally captured from its Spanish defender, De Vegas, and his little band of twenty-five survivors, who were summarily put to death. Khair Ed Din pulled down, in part, the fortifications and joined the remainder by a jetty to the mainland, the same break-water which to-day shelters the port on the north. A fragment of one of the original signal towers was built up into the present lighthouse, and a system of defences, the most formidable on the North African coast, was begun. The fortifications of Algiers were barriers which separated the growing civilization of Europe from the barbarian nether world, and they fell only with the coming of the French in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Such is the story of the entering wedge of progressive civilization in Algeria. Algiers' veiled women are one of the city's chief and most curious sights for the stranger within her walls. On Friday, the _jour des morts_ of the Arab women, they go to the cemetery to weep or to make gay, according as the mood is on. For the recluse Arab women it is more apt to be a fête-day than a day of sorrow. They dress in their finest, their newest, and their cleanest, and load themselves down with jangling jewelry to the limit of their possessions. By twos and threes, seldom alone, they go to make their devotions at the _Kouba_ of Didi-Mohammed Abd-er-Rahman Bou Kobrin. Poor prisoner women; six days a week they do not put foot outside their doors; and on the seventh they take a day's outing _in the cemetery_. "_Pas gai!_" says the Frenchwoman, and no wonder. When the sun commences to lower, they quit the cemetery of Bou-Kobrin and file in couples and trios and quartettes back to their homes in the narrow shut-in streets which huddle about the grim walls of the hilltop Kasba. They toddle and crawl and almost creep, as if they feared entering their homes again; they have none of that proud, elastic, jaunty step of the Kabyle women or of the Bedouins of the "Great Tents;" they are only poor unfortunate "Arab women of the walls." One after another these white-veiled pyramids of femininity disappear, burrowing down through some low-hung doorway, until finally their weekly outing is at an end and they are all encloistered until another seventh day rolls around. That these Mauresque women of Algiers are beautiful there is no doubt, but their beauty is of the qualified kind. The chief attribute to the beauty of the Mauresque woman is _kohl_ or _kohol_ or _koheul_, a marvellous preparation of sulphur, of antimony of copper and of alum--and perhaps other things too numerous to mention, all of which is made into a paste and dotted about all over the face as beauty-spots. Sometimes, too, they kalsomine the face with an enamel, like that on a mediæval vase. Those of the social whirl elsewhere use a similar concoction under another name which is sold by high-class chemists and perfumers, but they don't let you know what it is made of, or at any rate, don't take you into their confidence--neither the chemists nor the women. When a Mauresque dyes herself to the eyes with _kohl_, and dips her finger-tips in henna until they are juicy red, then she thinks she is about as ravishing as she can be in the eyes of God, her lover, and herself. She has to do this, she thinks, to keep her favour with him, because others might perchance put it on a little thicker and so displace her charms, and his affection. It is a belief among Mussulman women that Mahomet prescribed the usage of _kohl_, but this idea is probably born of the desire. Certainly no inspiration of God, nor the words of his prophet, ever suggested such a thing. CHAPTER XVI ALGIERS AND BEYOND To get into the interior back of Algiers, you make your start from Maison Carrée. Here one gets his first glimpse of the real countryside of Algeria. These visions of the Arab life of olden times are quite the most interesting features of the country. Civilization has crept in and rubbed shoulders very hard here and there; but still the Arab trader, workman, and shopkeeper conducts his affairs much as he did before he carried a dollar watch and lighted his cigarettes with safety matches. The kaleidoscopic life of the market at Maison Carrée is one of the sights of suburban Algiers. Here on a vast, dusty down, packed everywhere with donkeys, mules and blooded Arabians, and there in a great enclosure containing three or five thousand sheep, is carried on as lively a bit of trading as one will observe anywhere outside a Norman horse-fair or a land sale on some newly opened reservation in the Far West. Horses, donkeys, mules, and sheep cry out in all the varied accents of their groans and bleatings, the sheep and their lambs, lying with their four feet tied together, complaining the loudest. Hundreds of Arabs, Kabyles, Turks, Jews, and Europeans bustle and rustle about in picturesque disorder, doing nothing apparently, but vociferating and grimacing. All sorts of footwear and head-gear are here, turbans, fezes, _haiks_, sandals, sabots, and _espadrilles_. Gay broidered vestments and dirty rent burnouses jostle each other at every step. Mutton is up or down to-day, a sheep may sell for eight francs or it may sell for twenty, and the buyer or seller is glad or sorry, he laughs, or he weeps,--but he smokes and drinks coffee at all times nevertheless. In a snug corner are corralled some Arab steers and cows, a rare sight even in the markets of Algiers. One eats mutton all the time and everywhere, but seldom beef. The butchers of Algiers corner it for the _milords_ and millionaires of the Mustapha hotel, who demand "underdone" beefsteaks and "blood-running" roasts of beef for breakfast, dinner, and supper. An Arabian horse, so-called, but not a blooded beast, sells here for from eighty to two hundred francs. High-priced stock is rare here, hence there is little horse-trading of the swindling variety, and no horse thieving. The Arab _maquignons_, dressed in half European and half desert fashion, bowler hats and a burnous, sandals and bright blue socks with red clocks on them, are, however, more insistent, if possible, than their brothers of Brittany. "You want to buy a horse, _un chiv'l_?" says a greasy-looking blackamoor. "_Moi, z'en connaiz-un, 130 francs, mais z'i peux ti l'avoir pour 95._" You don't want to buy a horse, of course, but you ask its age. "_Moi, s'i te sure, neuf ou dix ans peut-être--douze ans, mais ze, ze le connais, il trotte comme la gazelle._" It's all very vague, including the French, and you get away as soon as you can, glad at any rate that you have lost neither time nor money. All the trading of the Arab market is, as the French say, pushed to the limit. Merchandizing describes the process, and describes it well. A hundred sous, a _pièce_ only, refused or offered, will make or break a bargain almost on the eve of being concluded. An Arab trader in--well, everything--has just sold half a ton of coal to a farmer living a dozen kilometres out in the country. The farmer bought it "delivered," and the Arab coal merchant of the moment bargains with a Camel Sheik for fifty sous to deliver the sooty charge by means of three camels. Three camels, twenty-four kilometres (a day's journey out and back), and a driver costs fifty sous, two francs and a half, a half a dollar. It's a better bargain than you could make, and you marvel at it. A troop of little donkeys comes trotting up the hillside to the market, loaded with grain, dates, peanuts, and some skinny fowls and ducks. They have "dog-trotted" in from Rovigo, thirty kilometres distant, and they will trot back again as lively after breakfast, their owner beating them over the flanks all the way. Poor, patient, clever little beasts, docile, but not willing! Yes, not willing; a donkey is never willing, whatever land he may live in. Booths and tents line the sides of the great square, filled with the gimcrack novelties of England, France, Germany, and America,--and the more exotic folderols of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Jews sell calico, and Turks and Greeks sell fraudulent gold and silver jewelry and coral beads made of glass melted in a crucible. Merchandise of all sorts and of all values is spread on the bare ground. A pair of boxing gloves, an automobile horn, a sword with a broken blade, and all kinds of trumpery rubbish cast off from another world are here; and before night somebody will be found to buy even the boxing-gloves. Europeans, too, are stall-holders in this great rag-fair. Spaniards and Maltese are in the greatest proportions, and the only Frenchmen one sees are the strolling gendarmes poking about everywhere. Noon comes, and everybody with a soul above trade repairs to a restaurant of the middle class near by, a great marble hall fitted with marble top tables. Here every one lunches with a great deal of gesticulation and clamour. It is very primitive, this Algerian quick-lunch, but it is cleanly and the food is good. For twenty-five sous you may have a _bouillabaisse_, a dish of _petits pois_, two _oeufs à la coque_, goat's-milk cheese, some biscuits and fruit for dessert, a half-bottle of wine and _café et kirsch_. Not so bad, is it? "The better one knows Algeria," says the brigadier of gendarmes, or the lieutenant in some army bivouac, "the less one knows the Arab." The point of view is traditional. The serenity and taciturn manner of the Arab is only to be likened to that of the Celestial Wong Hop or Ah Sin. What the Arab thinks about, and what he is likely to do next no one knows, or can even conjecture with any degree of certainty. All one can do is to jump at conclusions and see what happens--to himself or the Arab. When the Duc d'Aumale conquered Biskra, the Arabs promptly retook it, practically, if not officially, and gave themselves up to such abandoned orgies that not even the military authorities could make them tractable. The authorities at Paris were at their wits' ends how to win the hearts of the Arabs, and conquer them morally as well as physically. Louis-Philippe made a shrewd guess and sent Robert Houdin, the prestidigitateur, down into the desert. From that time on the Arab of Algeria has been the tractable servant of the French. Straight south from Maison Carrée, across the Mitidja, eighteen kilometres more or less, lies Arba, the beginning of the real open country. A steam-tram goes on ten kilometres farther, to Rovigo. At Arba, however, the "Route Nationale" to the desert's edge branches off via Aumale to Bou-Saada and beyond, where the real desert opens out into the infinite mirage. The nearest the camel caravans of the desert ever get to Algiers is at this little market town of Arba. Here on a market day (Wednesday) may be seen a few stray, mangy specimens of the type loaded with grapes, figs, or dates, though usually the _bourriquet_, or donkey, is the beast of burden. The Arab never carries his burdens himself, as do other peasants. It is beneath his dignity; for no matter how ragged or rusty he is, his burnous is sacred from all wear and tear possible to be avoided. Except for its great market back of its modern ugly mosque, there is not much to see in Arba. Here is even a more heterogeneous native riffraff than one sees at Maison Carrée, Blida, or Boufarik. And indeed it is all "native," for the Turks and Jews of the coast towns are absent. The trading is all done in produce. And if the native merchant, in his little shop or stall where he sells foreign-made clothes and gimcracks, cannot sell for cash, he is willing to barter for a sack of grain or a few sheep or some goat skins. The Jew trader will not bother with this kind of traffic. He wants to deal for cash, either as buyer or seller, he doesn't care which. Here a native shoemaker, or rather maker of _babouches_, sits beneath a rude shelter and fashions fat, tubby slippers out of dingy skins and sole leather with the fur left on. On another side is a sweetmeat seller, a baker of honey cakes, and a vegetable dealer, and even a butcher, who tries to lead his Mussulman brother astray and get him to become a carnivorous animal like us Christians. He doesn't succeed very well, because the Arab eats very little meat. In a tent, beneath a great palm, sits the physician and dentist of the tribe, with all his paraphernalia of philters and potions and tooth-pulling appliances. Like the rest of us, the Arab suffers from toothache sometimes; and he wastes no time but goes and "has it out" at the first opportunity. The procedure of the Arab tooth-puller is no more barbaric than our own, and the possessor of the refractory molar has an equally hard time. All these things and more one sees at Arba's weekly market. It is all very strange and amusing. Aumale is nearly a hundred kilometres beyond Arba, with nothing between except occasional settlements of a few score of Europeans and a few hundreds of Arabs. Communication with Algiers from Aumale is by a crazy, rocking seven-horse diligence which covers the ground, by night as often as by day, in nine or ten hours, at a gait of six or seven miles an hour, and at a cost of as many francs. Aumale is nothing but the administrative centre of a _commune_ blessed with two good enough inns and a long, straight main street running from end to end. As the Auzia of the Romans, it was formerly occupied by a strong garrison. The Turks in turn built a fortress on the same site, and the French occupied it as a military post in 1846, giving it a second baptism in the name of the Duc d'Aumale, the son of Louis-Philippe. From Aumale on to Bou-Saada is another hundred and twenty-four kilometres over a new-made "Route Nationale." It is a good enough road for a diligence, which makes the journey in sixteen or eighteen hours, including stops. There is no accommodation _en route_ save that furnished by the government _bordjs_, the _caravanserai_ and the _café-maures_. Here, at last, one is launched into the desert itself. The journey is one of strange, impressive novelty, though nothing very venturesome. In case of a prolonged breakdown, there is nothing to do but to drink the water of the _redir_ (a sort of a natural pool reservoir hollowed out of the rock), and be thankful indeed if your curled-up Arab travelling companion will share his crust with you. To him white bread, if only soaked in water, is a great luxury; to you it will seem pretty slim; but then we are overfed as a rule and an Arab dietary for a time will probably prove beneficial. The life of the nomad Arab is a very full one, but it is not a very active nor luxurious one. Through wonderful ocean-like mirages and clouds of dust whirled up by the sirocco, a veritable "_tourbillon de poussière_," as Madame de Sévigné would have called it, we rolled off the last kilometres of our tiresome journey, just as the last rays of the blood-red sun were paling before the coming night. We arrived at Bou-Saada's Hotel Bailly just as the last remnants of the _table d'hôte_ were being cleared away, which, in this little border town, half civilized and half savage, means thrown into the streets to furnish food for chickens. How the inhabitant of the Algerian small town ever separates his own fowls from those of his neighbours is a great question, since they all run loose in the common feeding-ground of the open street. Bou-Saada is even of less importance than Aumale to the average person. But for the artist it is a paradise. It is not Tlemcen, it has no grand mosques; it is not Tunis, it has no great _souks_ and bazaars; but it is quaintly native in every crooked street huddled around the military post and the hotels. The life of [Illustration] the leather and silver workers, and of the butcher, the baker and the seller of blankets and foodstuffs is, as yet, unspoiled and uncontaminated with anything more worldly than oil-lamps. The conducted tourist has not yet reached Bou-Saada, and consequently the native life of the place is all the more real. Here is an account of a café acquaintance made at Bou-Saada. Zorah-ben-Mohammed was a pretty girl, according to the standards of her people, with a laugh like an _houri_. She confessed to eighteen years, and it is probable that she owned no more. The rice powder and the _maquillage_ were thick on her cheek, whilst the rest of her face was frankly ochre. For all that she was a pretty girl and came perilously near convincing us of it, though hers was a beauty far removed from our own preconceived standards. Great black eyes and a massive _coiffe_ of raven-black hair topped off her charms. Below she was clad in a corsage of gold-embroidered velvet and an ample silk _pantalon_ that might indeed have been a skirt, so large and thick were its folds. Bijoux she had galore. They may have been of gold and silver and precious stones, or they may not; but they were precious to her and added not a little to her graces. Bracelets bound her wrists and her ankles, and her finger-tips were dyed red with henna. Zora or Zorah Fatma, or in Arab, Fetouma, are the girlish names which most please their bearer, and our friend Zorah was a queen in her class. Zorah served the coffee in the little Moorish café in Bou-Saada's market-place, into which we had tumbled to escape a sudden sandstorm blown in from the desert. Her powers of conversation were not great; she did not know many French words and we still fewer Arab ones, so our respective vocabularies were soon exhausted. We admired her and made remarks upon her,--which was what she wanted, and, though the charge for the coffee was only two sous a cup, she was artful enough to worm a _pourboire_ of fifty centimes apiece out of us for the privilege of being served by her. As we left, Zorah, with her professional little laugh on her lips, cried out, "_redoua, redoua!_" (to-morrow, to-morrow!) "Well--perhaps!" we answered. "_Peut-être que oui! Peut-être que non!_" A visit to the marabout at El Hamel, fifteen kilometres from Bou-Saada, is one of the things to do. We descended upon him in his hermit shrine, and found him seated on a great carpet of brilliant colouring and reclining on an enormous cushion of embroidered silk,--not the kind the Tunisian workers try to sell steamship-cruising tourists during their day on shore, but the real gold-embroidered, silky stuff, such, as dressed the characters of the Arabian nights. Hung about the marabout's neck was his chaplet of little ebony beads, and behind his head hung an embroidered silken square, its gold olive branches and fruit glittering with sun's rays like an aureole. Grouped about the marabout in a squatting semicircle and listening to his holy words were a half-dozen or more faithful Mussulmans. One of them was very old, with a visage ridged like a melon rind, and a fringe of beard that once was probably black, but was now a scant gray collaret. His face was the colour of brown earth, but he was manifestly a pure blooded Arab; there was not even the telltale pearly-blue tint in the eyes which always marks the half-bred Berber-Arab type. Another, rolled snug in an old burnous, was by his side, his eyes quite closed and his head and body rocking as though he was asleep. He probably was. A third was younger, of perhaps three and thirty, but he was quite as devout as his elders, though he was more wide-awake, and looked curiously and interestedly upon us as we stood in the doorway of the little white temple of a sanctuary awaiting the time when the marabout should be free of his religious duties. Our visit was appreciated. We had brought the holy man a few simple gifts of chocolate, matches, and a couple of candles, and donated twenty copper sous to his future support. After the adieux of convention were exchanged, we jogged our little donkeys back to the town by a short cut through the bed of the Oued Bou-Saada. CHAPTER XVII KABYLIE AND THE KABYLES Kabylie is a wild, strange land known to few and peopled by many, though indeed the population is mostly native. Colonization has not made great inroads into the mountains of Grande and Petite Kabylie. And though the tract is contiguous to Algiers itself, few stranger tourists know it as anything more than a name. Still less do they know its savage and undeveloped beauties. The Algerian government has pushed a great "Route Nationale" through the heart of the mountains, and Tizi-Ouzou and Fort National have grown up into more or less important centres of European civilization; but in the main the aspect is as much Kabyle to-day as it was when this pure Berber race--the purest left in North Africa--first began to make its influence felt among the many tribes of the Mediterranean coast and the Sahara. The mountain villages of Kabylie are not mere nests of huddled shacks, nor groups of tents, nor "lean-tos," nor mud huts. They are of well-built houses, with sloping or flat stone roofs, and look like the little hamlets of the Pyrenees or the Cevennes in France, where the rude winters have taught men to build after a certain fashion in order to live comfortably. The Kabyles early learned the same way of doing things; for, in spite of the fact that the brilliant African sun sometimes burns, even in midwinter, with a fervour unknown elsewhere, the mountain-tops are snow-covered for three or four months of the year; and the roads over which the daily antediluvian mail-coach and diligence pass--with occasionally an intrepid automobilist--are often impassable for a week. The railway does not penetrate this mountain fastness beyond Tizi-Ouzou, and though it skirts the sunny southern side of the woods, the snows of winter blocked it last year for forty-eight hours. And this in Africa! If the exterior of the Kabyle mountain villages do resemble those of other lands, their interiors have a style of furnishing and decoration all their own. Purely Kabyle, it is wonderfully decorative, simple, and effective. It is the artist's ideal interior, as the illustration herewith shows. The decorative scheme is its all in all. There is little furniture, almost no _bibelots_, if one omits goat-skin rugs, blankets, and the homely pottery and copper domestic utensils. From Fort National the route leads down to meet the trunk line at Beni-Mançour, and _en route_ takes on even a wilder aspect than that by which one ascended from the seaboard plain around Algiers. The journey can be made readily in a day by hired carriage, or, better yet, in a few hours by automobile. From either side extend mountain valleys and ravines, each of them giving place to a road of sorts, practicable to the mountain mule, but to nothing else, save a human being on foot. If one would do some real exploring, let him spend ten days in Kabylie. He will think he is in the "Forbidden Land" of Tibet so far as intercourse with the outside world is concerned. Footprints of the naked feet of men and women, and of the cloven hoofs of animals, will be the only signs of life visible for hours at a time. Yet in spite of the fact that the land is so wild and dreary, it is the most thickly populated region of Northern Africa. The braying of donkeys, the voices of women, the cries of children, and the gutturals of the men give, if not a melody, at least a quaint and charming sound as one draws up on some hilltop Kabyle village. A flock of sheep bars the way, but an old woman with a stick pounds them hither and thither with head-cracking blows, and at last you arrive before the open door of a native café and bargain with a soft-faced brown Kabyle youth for a _bourriquet_ to take you twenty kilometres farther on, where you may find a lodging for the night. You must bargain, wherever you are, and for whatever you want, in Africa; even with the Kabyle. Once your bargain made,--three francs for a little donkey for a day, or five, including his owner for a guide,--you need have no fear. The Kabyle will hold to it like grim death. The Kabyle is a savage if you like, but his virtues are many. The Kabyle villages abound in dogs. They may not be vicious dogs, but you don't know whether they are or not, and accordingly are wary. The Kabyle dogs have all shades of pitch and gamut in their voices. There are tenors, baritones, and even sopranos, and an occasional bass. If a solitary example is met with on a by-road he is readily made to retreat with a shower of stones; but as he is liable to catch up with you later, accompanied by reinforcements, as you draw up on the village, you must ever be on the _qui vive_. No one ever heard of anybody but a sheep-stealer having been bitten by a Kabyle dog (which, by the way, looks like any other mongrel cur): but discretion here, as in many other tight corners, is the chief part of valour. "_De l'audace, encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace!_" is a stimulating French slogan, but one is in doubt about putting it into practice with a grinning, long-fanged mongrel before him on a lone mountain road. The Kabyles are one division of that great race of Berbers, the most ancient dwellers on African soil. They have kept the type comparatively pure by inhabiting this restricted area closely bordering upon the Atlas Mountains a dozen or twenty leagues from the sea. "They are," says M. Jules Duval, "the principal types of the Berber race, and those who have best conserved their ancestral characteristics, and are perhaps the Numidians of old." That is a pedigree worth owning up to. Brave and industrious, the Kabyles can fight as well as bargain, and they value patriotism and ancestral tradition above everything else. Of all the Mussulman races, the Kabyles treat their women with the greatest deference, and even allow them to frequent public fêtes, faces uncovered, and to dance with the men, _yatagan_ or gun in hand. The Kabyle is successful in whatever occupation he follows, more so than any of his Mussulman brothers. As herders, farmers, armourers, blacksmiths, and masons,--at everything in fact that requires an aptitude and deftness of hand,--they excel. When in straits the Kabyle will sell all his worldly goods, save his gun, without the slightest trace of emotion. Perhaps this is because his gun is the only thing on which he pays taxes and accordingly he knows its value. It is said of the Kabyles that they eat their daughters. "_Le père mange sa fille._" This comes from the custom which some of the Kabyle tribes have of bartering off the hand of their daughter to the most willing suitor at a price ranging from two hundred to a thousand francs. There's nothing very wrong about this, seemingly, not according to African standards. The Kabyle and his relatives in their little square house live the life of a truly happy family. He and his relatives and his live stock--except his camels, the odour from which is a little too strong for even Kabyle nostrils--all living together under the same roof. There is no more squalor about it, however, than one may see in the human and pig-inhabited huts of Connemara. The Kabyle comes of a comparatively wealthy class, but his house furnishings are very meagre. Besides the animals before mentioned, he possesses only his _batterie de cuisine_, some great oil jars and earthenware pots for the storing away of olives, butter and honey. He also has a storehouse for grain, where he keeps his wheat or maize flour, which he or the members of his family have themselves ground between the traditional upper and nether millstones, which in this case are portable ones. Such is a brief inventory of the dwellings and the round of life of the Kabyles of the mountain villages, founded by their ancestors hundreds and perhaps thousands of years ago. Some of their race have got the wandering foot, and live in the pastoral black and brown striped tent like the real nomads; but these are comparatively few in number. The real, Simon-pure Kabyle is a house-dweller. The Kabyle mountain settlements are often mere hamlets called _dehera_, and in these the village schoolmaster, besides having his own duties, also performs the functions of priest of the temple. He is literally the _imam_ of the mosque, and carries out according to his faith the monotonous repetition of the words of the Koran when not otherwise engaged. Every Kabyle village has its temples of knowledge and of religion, just as sure as it has a headsman or Sheik. The mosque is naturally the most notable edifice of the settlement; but is seldom splendid or pretentious, and often it serves as a hostelry as well as a place of worship. But only for the faithful--not for dogs of infidels. Though the Kabyles in general are not tent-dwellers, but live in houses of stone or brick construction, these edifices exhibit no particular architectural characteristics; but are as much like the dwellings of the Pueblos as they are like those of the Thibetans. To all intents and purposes the towns and settlements and, in a measure, all Kabyle houses, are fortresses. This is an effect which is heightened by the almost universal employment of substitutes for the crenelated battlement and _meurtrières_ or loopholes, cut in the walls in place of windows, so distinctive of European feudal architecture. Just by way of contrast to the virtues of the Kabyles, it is bound to be recorded that they are the dirtiest lot that one finds in Africa; and inasmuch as this is contrary to the tenets of the Mussulman religion it is the more to be remarked. Up to within a few years, according to the head of a French mission which surveyed the Kabyle country, there was but one public bath establishment to be found in all their native towns and villages. The result is that hereditary affections are transmitted from generation to generation, and were it not for the efficacy of the open-air cure the Kabyles would be a considerably less long-lived race than they are. The Kabyles live well at all events, and their couscous is renowned throughout all Algeria. Their preserved figs and ripe and unripe olives are of the first quality and bring the highest prices in the markets of Algiers, Bougie or Beni-Mançour. The Kabyle is no longer a savage, though he does stick closely to many traditions, and eats his couscous out of a great dish of beechwood fashioned by hand from a cross-section cut from a tree-trunk. The mere fact that he eats it from a plate at all, instead of from a pot, indicates, however, an approaching degree of civilization. The Kabyle is primarily a tiller of the soil and a herder of goats and sheep. And when education was thrust upon him, or rather upon his children, by a progressive French government, he resented it. He had cut out an illiterate career for his progeny; he didn't care if they weren't educated, nor did they. He explained it all to the writer in a Moorish café one afternoon, in a _patois_ something like the following,--it's a queer thing, Arab-French, but it's as good as that of most foreigners nevertheless. "_Si li Beylick fasir, fic toutes lis enfants dis mitres d'icole, qu'ist-ce qui travaljar la tirre ... qu'ist-ce qui gardi lis chèvres, lis motons, lis vaches?_" Who indeed will guard his goats and sheep if the children all go to school! The old man probably will have to work himself. The new generation is changing, but the old-school Kabyle is as conservative as a "down-east farmer," a "Yorkshireman," or a "_bon Provençeau_." The Kabyles are the Piedmontese or Auvergnats of Algeria. An indigenous race which has resisted better than any other the march of progress. They have, too, certain other foreign characteristics. One wonders how they got them. They practise the vendetta, like the Corsican; they have the _landesgemeinde_, as in certain of the Swiss cantons; and they have cock-fights like the Spaniards. They are a very curious race of people, but they are becoming enlightened, and rank among the most loyal towards the new French government of all the tribes of Algeria. The Kabyle has fought for France, and fought well. The first zouaves were Kabyles,--the name comes from Zouaoua, a Kabyle tribe. General Clauzel enrolled a company of them in 1831, and taught them what, he was pleased at the time to think, was civilized warfare. Doubtless it was, as civilized as any warfare, which is not saying much for it. This new type of soldier, the zouave, has endured to this day in France and elsewhere, and a very practical, businesslike soldier he has proved. The Kabyle women jingle with bijoux and scintillate with yards of ribbons and flying draperies, and a strong scented perfume emanates from them with an odour of sanctity, almost, so strange and exotic is it. They know the difficult art of elegance--these mountain women of Kabylie--better than their more fashionable sisters. Not all the science of the _couturière_ or the _modiste_ can give a tithe of the grace borne naturally by these half-savage Kabyle beauties. The Jewesses of Algiers and Tunis have a certain, if crude, voluptuous elegance, which is an adulteration of civilization and savagery; but the Kabyle woman, beneath her draperies and her bijoux, expresses something quite different. Cleopatra might well have been one of them. Their natural graces and their bijoux are the details which set off their charms so splendidly. The cross-breeding of the Berber with the Arab has no doubt debased the race somewhat. This is mostly among the men and the women who dwell in the towns. Apparently these Kabyle women are not coquettes, though they smile, always, with their pearly teeth, rouge-red lips, and flashing eyes, bespeaking the sensuality of a land and its customs entirely foreign to European civilization. Of beauty they have little according to other standards, although their features are not crude or unlovely. Rather is theirs the beauty of a high-bred animal, or the sculptured bronze ideal replica of a race. They are types of a species and are delightful to look upon, alike in face and figure. The Kabyle jewelry is something to be coveted by every woman. It can be bought--even in the bazaars and _souks_ of Algiers and Tunis--at its weight for old silver. But the buying of it is an art, and one must beware of not getting dross or something made in Birmingham or Solingen. The genuine old stone or [Illustration: _Things Seen in Kabylie_] coral-set enamelled Kabyle bracelets and necklaces are becoming rarer, and the imitation ones more and more common. Still, in any aspect, the designs are beautiful, and far and away ahead of the aberrations of mind which produce the _art-nouveau_ jewelery of Bond Street or of the Rue de la Paix. Sometimes instead of silver a substitute of dull, unburnished white metal,--pewter most probably,--is used in the settings of these bizarre ornaments, and even then the effect is charming. The Kabyles have ever been fond of coral, which, from the earliest times, they gathered from the sea, cutting and polishing the fragments as if they were precious stones. Coral is fast disappearing from the African coast, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean, wherever the Italians have exploited the commerce, and the rosy, translucent branches of old are now more often replaced with the inferior dead coral of a yellowish white or even reddish brown colour. Unless indeed celluloid imitations are not used instead. Sea shells, too, enter into the make-up of the adornments of the Kabyle woman. The metal work, be it gold, silver, or pewter and antimony, is invariably hand-forged, with the loving marks of the hammer still visible. This rough crudity is its charm, for the intrinsic value as a rule is not great. It looks high at fifty francs (a collaret of three or four bands strung together on a silver wire, with a clasp the size of a half-dollar), but when, by the classic process of Arab or Berber bargaining, you get the same thing for ten francs, it is really _très bon marché_. Grande and Petite Kabylie, the Kabylie du Djurjura and the Kabylie des Babors, is not thickly strewn with Frenchified towns and cities. On the coast there are Dellys, an incipient seaport. Bougie, the ancient Saldae, where a colony of veterans was established by the great Augustus, but now a growing seaport with half of its fifteen thousand population French. Djidjelli, a hundred kilometres east of Bougie by a wonderful coast road, was the ancient colony of Igilgili of Augustus. Collo is an Italianized fishing village; Beni-Mançour, a flourishing small town to-day, but formerly a simple _bordj_ or halting-place on the main caravan route from east to west; and Setif, the _chef lieu_, contains a mixed population of 15,000, of which a quarter part are Europeans and 1,600 Jews. These commercial centres, and a half a dozen smaller places, are the only points where the traveller by road or rail will find any approach to European comforts in all Kabylie, excepting at Tizi-Ouzou and Fort National on the branch road from Beni-Mançour to Bougie. Tizi-Ouzou is the centre of a Kabyle population which figures out a hundred and ten souls to the square kilometre. Its name signifies "Col des Genets," and it occupies the site of an old _bordj_ or rest-house of former days. Four hours of diligence--which costs four francs--carries one from Tizi-Ouzou to Fort National, at any time of the year between April and December; at other times the pass of Tirourda may be snow-covered, and you may become stalled for hours or even days. Fort National, in the heart of Grande Kabylie, is a grim, modern fortress, perched on the highest peak of the Algerian mountain range paralleling the coast. It is only interesting from a grim picturesque point of view. The citadel crowns a height a thousand metres above sea-level, and from its terrace unfolds a remarkable panorama of mountain-tops and valleys: "Incipient mountain chains stretching out in all directions like the arms of an octopus," a Frenchman described these topographical features, and if you know what an octopus looks like you will be struck by the simile. Fort National is the best centre from which to make excursions into Kabylie, but you must come here in the spring or autumn for the purpose, not in winter or summer. Bougie is off the beaten track. To get there one must break his journey going from Algiers to Biskra, Constantine or Tunis at Beni-Mançour. Bougie is a coast town, and one of the terminals of the steamship lines from Marseilles. Because tourists go and come via Algiers, or via Algiers and Tunis or vice versa, Bougie is not known of all travellers in North Africa. This is where they make a mistake. Bougie is the most splendidly situated of all the African Mediterranean ports. Its points of view and panoramas are ready-made for the artists to jot them down in crude paint on dull canvas--if they can. The most one can do is to try. And Bougie, its glistening white-walled houses, its shore-line, its sky-line, and its background of cliff are motifs which will fascinate all who view it, whether for the first or last time. All the same Bougie has little enough of interest for the conventional tourist. The native quarter is not remarkable, the mosque is a modern affair, though on good old lines, and the native market, if curious, does not equal those of Blida, Boufarik, or Constantine. It is the site of Bougie, and its environs, that make its charms. If its hotels were not poor patterns of those of the pompous prefectures in France it would really be a delightful seaside resort. There are some Roman ruins of the days of Augustus still remaining, some fragmentary fortifications, and some great cistern vaults. Bougie's past was historic, for it was one day the capital of an independent state. The Spaniards came and destroyed its independence through the wiles of Pedro Navarro, who built Algiers' Peñon. Charles V sojourned here for a time, basking under African skies, in 1541. That is all of Bougie's romance. CHAPTER XVIII CONSTANTINE AND THE GORGE DU RUMMEL Constantine is one of the natural citadels of the world. Hitherto we had only known it by name, and that chiefly by the contemplation of Vernet's "Siége de Constantine," in that artistic graveyard, the Musée de Versailles. The bizarre splendour of the site now occupied by the bustling Algerian metropolis of Constantine struck us very forcibly as we rolled over its great gorge just at sundown on a ruddy autumn evening. It is all grandly theatrical, but it is very real nevertheless. A great deal more real than one would believe as he viewed that hodge-podge painting of Vernet's. The town sits high on a ravine-surrounded peak of bare rock, and were it to undergo a siege to-day, not even modern war-engines could reduce it till the dwellers had been starved out. The original settlement was very ancient long before the Romans of the time of Scipio, who gave it its present name. Romans, Arabs, Vandals, and Turks all held it in turn until General Valée came in 1836 and drove the latter out by strategy. Not by siege, as the painter has tried to make us believe. The great rock of Constantine is only attached to the surrounding country by a slim neck of land. Below lies the Rummel, still cutting its bed deeper and deeper each year, until now a very cañon is gouged out of the city's rock foundation. The only communication between the city and the surrounding plateau is by the Bridge of El Kantara, spectacularly picturesque, though not artistically beautiful, the successor of an old Roman bridge on the same site. Any who have marvelled at the Bridge of Ronda in Spain, and at the natural rock-bound fortress to which it leads, will observe its similarity to Constantine. Its rocky walls are impregnable, though not untakable. Nothing but a continuous dynamite performance could blow up Constantine; to accomplish it would be to blow up a mountain. Nevertheless, the French captured the Mohammedan fortress at the time of the occupation--albeit at a great expenditure of time and loss of men. Centuries earlier than this, in Roman days, Sallust, governor of the province under Cæsar, was a property owner here, and fortified the city that it might best protect his interests. With what success is seen by the fact that, though the fortress was besieged and taken eighty times, its garrison was always starved out; it was never blown up or battered down. The first glimpse of Constantine is confusing. It is difficult to separate its component parts; its historic picturesqueness from its matter-of-fact hurly-burly of commercial affairs. The houses seen from the railway appear commonplace and uninteresting, only saved from sheer ugliness by their remarkable situation. The great gorge of the Rummel flows beneath the ugly iron bridge,--the successor of that more splendid work of the Romans,--and ugly trams, omnibuses, and carts rumble along where one pictures troops of camels and parti-coloured Arabs. Arabs there are at Constantine, of all shades, and Turks and Jews, of all sects, and when one is actually settled down in his hotel and starts out on a wandering, with the intention of focussing all these things into some definite impression, they begin to grow upon him, and Constantine begins to take rank with the liveliest of his imaginings and memories. Constantine is a wonder, there is no doubt about that; but one must become acquainted with it intimately in order to love it. Constantine's streets are running rivers of as mixed a crew of humanity as one may see out of Cairo, Constantinople, or Port Saïd. Tunis is its nearest approach in the Moghreb. [Illustration: A Minaret at Constantine] The main artery of the Arab town is the Rue Perrégaux. Here are the Moorish cafés, the mosques, the shops of the sweetmeat sellers, the vegetable dealers, the embroiderers, and the jewellers. The Cirta of Jugurtha has become the Constantine of to-day, but its mediævalism still lives in spite of the contrast of a gaudy opera house, a bank, and an "hôtel-de-ville." The native quarter keeps well to itself, however; and modern improvements do not [Illustration: _A Constantine Mosque_] encroach upon its picturesque primitiveness as they do at Algiers. Beside its site and its bridge, Constantine's monuments are not many or great. The chief one is the Mosque of Salah Bey, with its marble decorations chiselled out by the hand of the slave of an olden time. The cathedral of to-day is built up out of a transformed mosque, but shows, undefiled, its ancient Mauresque arcades and faïences. On the broidered _mihrab_, with inscriptions from the Koran woven in the woof, some well-meaning Christian has added a bleeding heart. Is this treating the original Mussulman owner right? It seems enough to make a Christian church out of a Mohammedan mosque, without trying to incorporate two opposing religious symbols in a mural decoration. The ancient palace of the Bey,--the last Bey of Constantine, Hadj-Ahmed,--though comparatively modern, is a very interesting building. This terrible Turk, the Bey, was a very terrible potentate indeed. He massacred and pillaged his own subjects. He would nail the hands and feet of a fancied offender to a tree, leaving him to die, and would sew up the mouths and manacle the hands of those who spoke ill of him. He held a big club always uplifted, and many other murderous implements besides were ever in the air ready to fall. This palace of the Bey's was in course of construction at the time the Turkish domination fell. It had been built of porphyry and marble columns, and fine old tiles and sculptured balustrades, brought by rich merchants as presents to the Bey, under pain of imprisonment should they default. It is a miniature Alhambra of courts within courts, and is really extraordinarily beautiful. It covers an area of over five thousand square metres. Under the guidance of a zouave with baggy red trousers and a fez dangling on the back of his head, we walked and circumnavigated all of the paved and orange-planted quadrangles, and quite believed we were living in the days gone by, in spite of the fact that tram-cars were passing by the door, and inconsiderate, _un-churchly_ chimes were ringing out ribald airs from the neighbouring cathedral tower. On the whole the old Beylical palace of Constantine is far more elaborate and interesting than the Dar-el-Bey at Tunis--or the Bardo, usually reckoned the chief tourist sights of their class. It all depends on the mood, of course, but then we had the mood. Some of the frescoes of this palace of Turkish dominion are most curious. One of them, painted in the most crude and infantile manner, is inexplicable except for the following legend. A "dog of a Christian slave"--as his Turkish master called him--was set at the task. He knew nothing of art, but that did not matter to the domineering Turk, who said that "all Frenchmen were born artists." The frieze was completed, as it may be seen to-day, and the artist (?) stood before his workmanship in fear and trembling, dreading his master's wrath. The wrath was not forthcoming. His Beyship liked the frieze of birds as big as houses, of ships and frogs all of a size, of cows the size of mosques, and all the other fantasies of an untrained hand and brain. "I told you," said the Bey, "all these dogs of Frenchmen know how to paint;" and with that he set him free. All potentates have their vagaries. Hadj-Ahmed's were no greater and no worse than the present German Emperor's, which have permitted, if not commanded, political portraits to be sculptured on the portals of a Christian church. Constantine is unique. It is a city as live and bustling as any of its size on earth. It is undergoing a great development. Everybody is prosperous and contented. And, above all, it is historic, and its native quarter unspoiled in spite of the city's great attempts to become a commercial metropolis. Constantine is the gateway to a vast and wealthy grain-growing region, and it sits high and proud on the great central plateau of Algeria between the desert and the sea. Practically it is the sole gateway or means of communication through which passes a great proportion of all the life and movement of the great province of which it is the capital. Contrastingly Constantine's magnificently theatrical site gives entirely another view-point for the stranger within its gates. The great gorge of the Rummel cuts the city entirely off from the surrounding plateau by a thousand foot chasm, where the gathered waters of the plain roll and thunder with such regularity and force that the steep sides are cut sheer as if by the quarryman's drill. Constantine's Arab town, too, is entirely a unique thing. It is complete, unspoiled, and genuine. It sits off at one side of the European town, sloping down towards the steep brink of the gorge, and is entirely uncontaminated with the contemporary life of the French. Its colouring is marvellous; and the comings and goings, and the daily affairs, of its Arab merchants and traders lend a charm [Illustration] of antiquity which not even the realization of the fact that we are living in the twentieth century can wholly spoil. The Kabyle with his skins of oil, the Berber with his wool and leathers, and the town-bred Arab--half Turk, half Jew--occupying himself with all sorts of trading, give a local colour rich and unmixed, such as one finds nowhere else in the East,--either at Algiers, Tunis, Cairo, or Constantinople. What is lacking is mere size and grandeur,--the rest is all there. And the Moorish cafés and the sweetmeat and pastry sellers' shops of Constantine's Arab town, visited on the eve of Ramadan, give such a variety of surprises that no one who has once seen them can ever forget them. To return to the great scenic charm of Constantine; it must be seen and familiarized. As a mere gorge it is no more wonderful than dozens of others,--in the Rockies in America; in the Tarn, or the Gorges du Loup, in the Maures. What the Gorge du Rummel stands for is that it is, and has been for ages, the chief defence of the great city of Constantine, and for that reason it appeals more strongly than any other of its kind. Before entering the narrow chasm which renders the position of Constantine, "_la ville aérienne_," well-nigh impregnable, the Rummel, or Rivière des Sables, has joined forces with the Boumezou, the river which fertilizes. The change is sudden from the sunny valley to the dark Passage des Roches. The torrent, suddenly narrowed, passes close to a hot spring spurting forth from a cleft in the rock, then flowing through the arch of the Devil's Bridge and tumbling in cascades through the winding chasm or ravine. From the edge of the abyss one cannot see the stream which is hidden by the curves of the ravine; the projecting strata of rock furrowed at frequent intervals by vertical water-worn clefts even prevent one from seeing the bottom. Just below the rock bridge of El Kantara (that of to-day being a reconstruction of the Roman work), the Rummel disappears beneath a vault of rock. The ravine here is only a narrow trench, torn and pierced by underground passages, from the bottom of which rises the sound of rushing waters. Three hundred metres beyond, the torrent emerges from these dark galleries and on both sides the cliffs rise vertically. A single isolated arch, naturally ogival and singularly regular in form, still uniting the two walls of rock. Here the irregularities and rents in the earth's surface are the most imposing; the walls of variously coloured rock here and there overhang and rise to a height of over 200 metres, giving a perilous foothold to the buildings of the town above. At this apex of the island city above is the Kef Cnecora or Rocher du Lac, from which an old-time _pacha_ threw down his recalcitrant wives sewn up in sacks, quite after the conventional manner of the day, one thinks. Yes, but here they had an awful drop, and fell not always on the soft watery bed of the river, but on the pointed, jagged rocks of the rapids. Theirs must have been an awful death! Years ago access to the ravine was entirely impracticable; but since an intrepid engineer with a ninety-nine year concession has built rock ladders and bridges along its whole length--and charges two francs to cross them--the experience of making this semisubterranean tour of Constantine is within reach of everybody. One day at Constantine a discordant rumbling of voices in the street below attracted us to the windows of our hotel. A strange, conglomerate procession of Mussulman faithful was marching by. Hundreds of brown Arab folk, Kabyles, Moors, and nomads from the south, were marching hand in hand, each with a flower behind his right ear, and all shouting at the top of their voices. A funeral procession had passed but a few moments before, and we thought it a part of the same ceremony, though indeed, as we learned later, it was something quite different. [Illustration] The few straggling hundreds of the head of the procession soon grew into thousands, all chanting verses of the Koran. Following close came the gaily coloured green, white, and red flag of the Prophet. We followed in the wake of the procession and at the end of the town came to the Mussulman cemetery. There is no remarkable sadness or sentiment about the Arab cemetery at Constantine, at least not such as one associates with a Christian burial-place. It sits on the sunny slope of a hill, with a silhouette of mountains for a background, and a foreground strewn, helter-skelter, with little tombs and _koubas_ in crazy building-block fashion. There is no symmetry about anything, and tiny headstones crop up here and there through a tangle of weeds and wild flowers. Frequently there is a more imposing slab, and occasionally a tomb or _kouba_ tinted blue or pink, with perhaps its dome gilded. The whole impression, however, is of an indiscriminate mixture of things that just "happened in place," and were not set out on any preconceived plan. One imposing domed _kouba_ has a bit of shade from an overgrowing tree and is surrounded by a little level grass-plot which gives it a certain distinction of dignity such as a religious shrine should have. Beyond the cemetery was a great open plot upon which was to be held the Mussulman fête, which was the real objective of the fast-growing procession, and which by this time had gathered into its fold all of Constantine's available Mussulman population,--some twenty-five thousand souls who habitually say their prayers to Allah. Here at the fête the thousands of Arabs, their yellow, red, or green burnouses flowing in the breeze like flags and pennants, grouped themselves first of all around the _khaouadji_, or open-air cafés, the drinking of coffee being the preliminary to every social function with the Arab. At the further end of the open ground were set up the tents of the great chiefs,--the Caïds and Cadis of the surrounding tribes, and along one side were grouped cook-shops and fruit-sellers. There were no "hurdy-gurdies," "Aunt Sallies," or "shooting galleries." The Arab takes his pleasures and makes his rejoicings less violently, preferring to squat on his heels, or lie on a straw mat, and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, or munch a handful of dates or a honey-cake boiled in oil. One general cook-shop occupied a prominent place. Here were great copper cauldrons where the couscous was being prepared. This indigenous Algerian dish is about the only one containing meat which the temperate Arab eats. Even then he eats mostly of the _semoule_ and bread and gravy, leaving the fragments of mutton or lamb, or chicken (if by chance one wandered aimlessly into the pot) to be boiled down again for another brew. The Arab eats his couscous out of a great wooden platter, and disdains knife or fork or spoon. A dozen Arabs sit around this shallow bowl of wood and dip their fingers into it, each in his proper turn. It is a sort of game of grab. One may get a choice morsel, or he may not. If not as cleanly a method of eating as that of the Chinaman's chopsticks, at any rate one's appetite is sooner satisfied. The Arab has the true spirit of _camaraderie_ in his eating and drinking. The most cultivated and fastidious will mingle with the hoi-polloi, and eat from the same dish and drink from the same _merdjil_ as the most miserable one among the crowd. The fête, for such it was, seemed to have little religious significance, beyond the marching in procession and chanting, and the fact that it was being held in proximity to holy ground. After the feast there was something like a demonstration, when two score or more Arabs did a sort of a fanatical dance or swirl, which reminded one of the combination of an Indian war-dance and the gyrations of the dervishes of Cairo. Shrill cries and dislocating leaps and bounds brought some of the participants, in time, to a state of inanimation and convulsions; but still the others kept on. One by one a dancer would drop out, this evidently being the way the game was played. When we finally came away, half of them were still bounding about in a frenzy of delirium. We learned later they were a sect of Islam, called the Aïssaouas, whose principal tenet of faith is the mortification of the flesh. There are various ways of doing this: the hair shirt, flagellation, and crawling about on the hands and knees; but the way of the Aïssaouas is certainly the most violent. Some of them even go so far as to pierce the cheeks and nose with great pins and needles; but if one can swirl and gyrate himself into an epileptic state, his chances of grace and entrance into that Paradise of Houris promised by Mahomet are just as good. The fête finally came to an end sometime during the night. Then the cook-shops and _khaouadjis_ piled up their belongings in a donkey cart, or on camel-back, and the Arabs folded their tents and silently stole away after the manner set forth in the fable. The marabout in whose honour all this came about was then left in peace to sleep his long sleep undisturbed until the same orgie should be repeated the following year. The environs of Constantine are marvellously beautiful. Northward towards Philippeville by road or rail one rises to the Col des Oliviers by zigzags and sharp turns, to descend eventually--a matter of a couple of thousand feet or more--to the brilliant blue Mediterranean. Nearer at hand, rising high above Constantine itself, are the hills of Mansourah and Sidi-M'cid, and to the west the fertile valley of the Hamma. Philippeville is interesting only because of its site, which lies on the beautiful Gulf of Stora, an ancient port of the Romans. The monuments of Philippeville are nearly nil. There are some few fragments of the arcades of an old amphitheatre, and the modern mosque, though in no way an ambitious monument, is picturesquely perched above the town. The great square, or _place_, opposite the port is a modern improvement which is commendable enough, but not in the least in keeping with Africa. It is more like a cheap imitation of Monte Carlo's terrace. The Italian influence is strong in all these parts. The village of Stora, about four kilometres from Philippeville, is practically peopled by Italians. And one hears as much Italian as he does French in the streets of Philippeville. The little house-corner shrines to be found all over the older part of the town are also frankly reminiscent of Italy. In the bay, too, the little lateen-rigged, clipper-prowed fishing-boats are Italian in design, and are manned by Italians. Right here one recalls that the "sunny Italian" in a foreign land is almost invariably a "digger of dirt," a worker on a railway or canal cutting, or a fisherman. Philippeville has a decided colour of its own, but it is not Arab, and the French is so blended with the Italian that its colouring is decidedly mixed. CHAPTER XIX BETWEEN THE DESERT AND THE SOWN South from Constantine to Biskra at the desert's edge is two hundred kilometres as the crow flies. As the humble apology of an _express_-train goes, the distance is covered in eight hours, and that's almost fifteen miles an hour. Delightful, isn't it? At the same time this snail's-pace gives one a chance to observe things as he goes along, and there is much to observe. The high plateau on which sits Constantine, surrounded by its grain fields and its grazing-grounds, is a vastly productive region, and prosperity for the European and the _indigène_ comes easily enough. The conditions of life here are more comfortable than elsewhere in the Algerian countryside, save perhaps in the Mitidja around Blida. This great plateau of the Tell, the granary of Africa and one of the finest wheat-growing belts of the old world, knows well the rigours of winter; but the summer is long and hot, and crops push out from the ground with an abundance known nowhere else in these parts. The mountains of "Grande Kabylie" bound it on the west and north, and the Aures on the east and south. Beyond is the desert and its oases. The contrast of topography and climate between the desert and the "sown" is remarkable. All changes in the twinkling of an eye as one passes through the rocky gorge of El Kantara,--one of those mythological marvels accomplished by the hand or heel of Hercules. At any rate, the cleft in the rock wall is there, and in a hundred yards one leaves the winds and chilly atmosphere of a late autumn or early winter's day behind, and plunges into the still, burning atmosphere of the desert, with palm-tree oases scattered here and there. The same phenomenon may be observed elsewhere, but not in so forcible a fashion. At Batna in winter you may see an occasional bear-skin coat, with the "fur side out," and at Biskra, sixty odd miles away, you will find a temperature of say 30 degrees centigrade--86 degrees Fahrenheit. _En route_ from Constantine by railway no towns or cities of note are passed until the great military post of Batna is reached. Here one may break his journey and get an aspect of the mingling life of the desert and the town Arab, which is astonishing in its complexity. The town Arab lives much as we do ourselves,--at least some of his species do,--wears, sometimes, a Norfolk jacket and shoes, which he calls "_forme Américaine_," and travels first-class on the railway when he takes his promenades abroad. The other still clings to his burnous and takes off his shoes at every opportunity, travelling by camel caravan, as did his ancestors of a thousand years ago. Batna itself possesses no monuments of note. It is, however, the starting-point for Lambessa and Timgad, the finest ancient Roman ruined cities left standing above ground to-day,--not excepting Pompeii. A résumé of the delights of these fascinating Roman relics is given in another chapter of this book. Batna possesses a remarkably well-kept commercial hotel, the "Hôtel des Étrangers et Continentals." It is not a tourist hotel, which is all the better for it. Moreover it has electric lights in the bedrooms, and a very distinctive and excellent menu on the table. What more could one want--in what people are wont to think of as savage Africa? We took a likely looking Arab for a guide at Batna, though indeed there was nothing special in the immediate neighbourhood for him to guide us to. He wore a "Touring Club de France" badge in his turban, and read religiously each month the T. C. F. "_Revue_," and accordingly he appropriated every stranger as his right, whether one would or no. He was useful, however, in keeping off other importunate Arabs in the great market as we strolled between the stalls. Batna's negro village is curiously interesting, though squalid and in ill repute among the authorities. "_Ici le village nègre_;" says your Arab guide after you have trudged a couple of kilometres over a real desert trail. There are only a few of these "black blocks" in North Africa, the negroes usually mingling with the Arabs. At night, in Batna's _village nègre_, one might think he was in some head-centre of voodooism, so quaint and discordant are the sights and sounds. Negroes are much the same the world over, whenever they herd together, whether they come from the Soudan, Guinea, or Alabama. Here in Algeria the negro café is a coffee-shop only a shade more murky than the other coffee-shops. And the faces of those squatting round about, though they glisten in the smoky atmosphere,--ineffectually penetrated by a dim light radiating from a swinging lamp in the centre,--are more dusky. A tumultuous, raucous chant breaks out above a murmur now and then, though most of the time the sound is a mysterious crooning wail, the genuine negro wail, which is not at all like the banshee's, but quite as penetrating. It might be a prison cell or the hold of a slave-ship, this negro café, for all one can distinguish of its appointments. There is nothing luxurious here; it is not classy or exclusive in the least. A _sou_ a cup is the price the negro pays for his coffee. And since he hasn't the Arabs' prejudices against strong drink, he can get beet-root and turnip-top _cognac_ and chemically made absinthe at cut-rate prices, which appeal largely to his pocket, if not his taste. This symphony in dusk, and in thin, shrill so-called music, is impressive. There are negro musicians, negro dancing-women, and a negro proprietor. It's the real, unadulterated "coontown" drama, where the players are the real thing, and not the coffee-coloured "In-Dahomey" kind. One touch of white only was to be seen in Batna's negro café. This was an Arab of the Hauts-Plateaux, with a long, aquiline profile and a flowing burnous and _haïk_, most probably the lover of one of the trio of dancing-women. His emotions were passive. He might have been at home under his own vine and fig-tree. Still he was out of place, and looked it. The most he would do was to give a sickly smile at some rude pleasantry of his black companions,--and we did that ourselves. What of this negro company were not drinking thick, muddy coffee or "caravan" tea were smoking _kif_. The odour of opium, mint, and kerosene was abominable. A negro of the Soudan might stand it, but not a white man; at least none whiter than the lone Arab. So we passed on our way, the dancing-women shrieking, the shrill trumpet or _chalumeau_ squealing, the tambourine jangling, and the oil-lamp smoking. It was not heavenly. Batna has a very excellent French school for Arab children, and it is there that the young idea learns how to "_parler Français_." The French schools are doing good work, no doubt, but they are spoiling the simplicity of the native. At Batna we saw a school "prize-giving," which was conducted as follows: "Premier prix d'application," called out a black-coated preceptor, "Abdurhaman-ben-Mohammed, Arachin-el-Oumach." "Boum! Boum!" shouted the rest of the class. Second prize, third prize, and so on; and all the little rag-tag brown and black population came up in a long file,--they all got prizes apparently,--and the whole thing wound up, as all French functions do, even if they are in the heart of Africa, with the singing of the "Marseillaise." The next objective point, going south from Batna, is El Kantara and its gorge. If ever Longfellow's poetic lines were applicable, they are here. "Suddenly the pathway ends, Sheer the precipice descends, Loud the torrent roars unseen; Thirty feet from side to side, Yawns the chasm; on air must ride He who crosses this ravine." El Kantara is easily the most remarkable "sight" of all Algeria. Its Hotel Bertrand is a most excellently verandaed establishment,--almost the only house in the place,--and one may sit on its gallery and watch a continual stream of camels, horses, mules, and donkeys going by its dooryard all the livelong day. The trail of other days has now become a "Route Nationale," and is the only means of highway communication, for a hundred miles east or west, between the plateau lands of the north and the desert of the south. Here all roads and tracks coming from a wide area in the north converge to a narrow thread of a road which squeezes itself between the uprights of the rocky walls of the Gorge of El Kantara. The Romans knew this cleft in the rocky wall, and built a fine old Roman bridge to clear the rushing torrent below. The bridge is still there, an enduring monument to the Roman builder, but a new road and a railway bridge now overhang it; so it remains simply as a milestone in the march of progress. The red curtain-rocks of the mountain chain at El Kantara form the dividing-line between the north and the south. Suddenly, as one clears the threshold, he comes upon a smiling oasis of a hundred thousand date-palms, where a kilometre back was a sterile, pebbly plateau-plain. Three little baked-mud villages, the "_Village Rouge_," the "_Village Blanc_," and the "_Village Noir_," huddle about the banks of the Oued Kantara with waving palms overhead and a rushing, gurgling torrent at their feet. [Illustration: _The Village and the Gorge of El Kantara_] There are mouflons and gazelles in the mountains on either side, and "the chase" is one of the inducements held out by the hotel and Messaoud-ben-Ghebana to prolong your stay. They don't guarantee you either a mouflon (which is the "Barbary sheep" the novelists write about) or a gazelle; but Messaoud-ben-Ghebana will find them if any one can, and charge you only five francs a day for his services,--including a donkey to carry the traps. There are three classic excursions to be made at El Kantara,--always, of course, with Messaoud as guide. To the Gorges de Tilatou, to the Gorges de Maafa, and to Beni-Ferah. You may get a gazelle on the way, or you may not, but you will experience mountain exploration in all its primitiveness. If you like it, you can keep it up for a week or a month, for El Kantara is a much finer centre for making excursions from, or indeed for spending the winter in, than Biskra and its overrated attractions of great hotels, afternoon tea, Quaker Oats, Huntley & Palmer's, and "Dundee,"--what the French call orange marmalade,--with which the grocers fill their shop-windows to catch visitors from across the seas. El Kantara is an artist's paradise; the mountains, the desert, the palms of the oasis, and the native villages are all close at hand, and there, a short stroll away, is the ocean of sand itself. The Artist set up shop _en plein désert_ one day, and turned her back for a moment only, when the outfit, white umbrella, paint-box, and camp-stool all disappeared as if buried in the dunes of sand. Not a trace of them was to be seen, nor of any living thing or person either, only a dim, shadowy low-spread tent, which had mysteriously sprung up beneath a neighbouring date-palm while her attention had been called away. From its cavernous door slowly emerged a real desert Arab and a train of followers, consisting of two or three women and a numerous progeny. Perhaps they knew something of a white umbrella, etc. No, they didn't. At least the father of the family didn't; but suddenly he spied under a corner of the tent flap something strange and hitherto unrecognized. The umbrella was all right, also the stool, but the paint-box had been turned out, and the tubes looked, half of them, thin and twisted, as though they had been emptied; as indeed they had,--sucked dry by some of that numerous progeny like enough, though no ill effects were apparent. All was taken in at a glance, and the afore-mentioned father of the family turned on his offspring and called them "_putains de juif du Mellah_," "_rénégads_," "_voleurs_," "_racines amères_" and much more vituperation of the same kind. Apologies were profuse, but after all was said and done, we felt quite grateful for the exhibition of righteous wrath. The desert Arab is a stern father if a good one. The Arab makes you angry sometimes, but in this case it was the children who had caused the trouble, and ragamuffins the world over lack responsibility, so that can't be laid to the Arab. CHAPTER XX BISKRA AND THE DESERT BEYOND _Biskra, tout le monde descend! ouf!_ It might be Jersey City or Chicago; one experiences at last that sense of having reached a journey's end. At least it will seem so to most who come to the desert's edge by train from Constantine or Algiers, after two days of as rocky, uncomfortable railway travelling as one can imagine in these progressive days. Biskra is commonly reputed the ideal of a desert oasis, but indeed as an oasis it is no more delightful than that at El Kantara. Not every one will find his "Garden of Allah" at Biskra. Biskra is by no means all things to all men. Leaving out the silly sentiment, which has been propagated by a school of writers who take themselves too seriously, there is nothing at Biskra which is not better elsewhere. It is truly, though, a typical desert oasis, and the town which has grown up around it is but the natural outcome of trade following the flag, for Biskra is the commercial and military gateway to the Sud-Constantinois. [Illustration: BISKRA _Its Arab Villages_] Biskra is not without its distinctive character. Its native life, its market, and its Moorish coffee-house, are all typical; but in a way they have become contaminated with the influx from the outside world and much of their colour has paled. One of the curses Biskra bestows upon the stranger within her gates is that of an innumerable and importunate crew of guides,--of all colours and shades, of all grades of intelligence, and of all degrees of proficiency in French. The guides of Biskra wear turbans, coifs, and fezes. They look as though they belonged to every Mohammedan tribe of the universe. Those who wear bowler hats are harder to place; one rather suspects that they are Jews. "Get a guide to keep off the other guides," is the best advice one can give the stranger to Biskra. What makes this state of affairs? Too much exploitation, and too many lavish and foolish English and Americans. In this respect Biskra is not as bad as Cairo, but it is getting that way. Biskra's attractions for the visitor are many of them artificial. There are the great hotels, with their "halls," "smoking-rooms," "reading-rooms," and "bars," and the incipient [Illustration: _The Courtyard of the Hôtel des Ziban, Biskra_] Casino with its music and "distractions;" and there is the Café Glacier with its cool drinks at Paris prices. Everything at Biskra is good in quality, but lacking character. One hotel stands out above all others for excellence and distinctive features. It is the Hôtel des Ziban. It has a distinctive clientèle, made up largely of personages such as the officers of the garrison, a great Sheik or Caïd of a southern tribe, a grim, taciturn individual with a dozen decorations on his breast, a government official, a minister, perhaps, and so on. And of course tourists as well, for tourists are everywhere at Biskra, even in the Rue Sainte, where they ought not to be,--at least not after dark. Biskra's chief tourist "sights," after the palm-tree oases of old Biskra and the Jardin Landon, are the Moorish cafés, and the _naylettes_, or Ouled-Naïl dancers, of the Rue Sainte. One need not affect this sort of thing if he doesn't want to; but, aside from playing bridge in the hotel parlours, or drinking beer in the Café Glacier and listing to "la musique" of "les artistes Parisiennes," there is not much else to do at night except doze in the hotel smoking-room or _salon_, with scores of other fat old ladies and gentlemen. The _café maure_ or Moorish coffee-shop of North Africa has no distinct form of architecture. It may be a transformed shop in the European quarter; the vestibule of a Moorish habitation, or of a mosque; a stone or mud hut by the roadside overhung by a great waving banana plant or palm; or it may be a striped lean-to tent. The interior fittings vary also. In the towns the oven is built up of blue and yellow tiles, and the pots and cups are kept on a great slab of marble or tile. By the roadside there are the cups and a tin or copper pot; but the supplies are invariably kept in an unsoldered five-gallon kerosene can. These come out from Philadelphia by the hundreds of thousands, and find their way to all the corners of the earth. The Japanese and the Chinese use them to roof their huts with; the Singapore boatmen to carry their water-supply; and the Arab as cooking utensils, and very useful they are. They are a by-product and cost nothing, except to the Standard Oil Company, the original shippers. The Moorish cafés of Biskra are as typical of their class as any seen in the towns, even though they are tourist "sights." The whole establishment is gaudy and crude, with its plastered walls, its rough, unpainted furnishings, its seats and benches all smoke-coloured, as if they were centuries old,--though probably they are not. In the rear, always in plain view, is the _oudjak_, the vaulted oven or heater, where the thick, syrupy coffee is brewed and kept hot. The chief notes of colour are the little wine-glasses, the cups, the water-bottles, the tiled backgrounds, and the head-gear of the habitués, and the parrot--always a parrot, in his crudely built cage. The establishments of Biskra are typical _cafés maures_, and might well be on the edge or middle of the desert itself, instead of in a very Frenchified Algerian city of eight thousand inhabitants. Here are congregated all that queer _mélange_ of North African peoples: nomads and Arabs of the desert; half-bred, blue-eyed men of the coast; the delicately featured Kabyles; Moroccans; some Spahis; a negro or two, black as night; and even Makhazni from the interior, who are at home wherever their horse and saddle may be. All these and more--the whole gamut of the cosmopolitan population of the Mediterranean--are here. In the Moorish cafés and the "Black Tents" alike, Makhazni and Spahis play the Spanish "ronda" or dominoes with all the devotion of lovers of sedentary amusements elsewhere. The Spahi and the negro will play together all day and half the night, shuffling the cards and juggling the dominoes, and only a savage grunt, or cry, periodically breaks their silence. Their emotions are mostly expressed by indeterminable, leery grins. Night falls, and one street alone in Biskra retains the activities and life of the daytime. It is the street of cafés, where, behind closed doors, dance the Ouleds-Naïls for the delectation of the Arab, the profit of the patron, and for the curious from overseas to speculate upon. The performance of the Moorish cafés of Biskra, Constantine, and Tunis are amusing and instructive, if not edifying, no doubt. But those who expect the conventional "musical evening" will be disappointed. Painted sequin-bedecked women depend more upon their physical charms to appeal to the Arab _bourgeoisie_ and the Zouaves, Spahis and Turcos, who mostly make up their audiences, than to the rhythm of the accompanying orchestra, which many a time is drowned out by the free and easy uproar. The music of the _indigènes_ may be soothing, but one must be an _indigène_ to feel that way about it. There is nothing very soothing to the Anglo-Saxon about the incessant beating of a tambourine, or the prolonged shrill squeak of a reed pipe, the combination made hideous by the persistent whining of the renegade desert Arab who "bosses the job," the only occupation at which he can work while sitting down and drinking coffee for twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four. His profits must all go for coffee. A hundred cups a day and as many more in a night does not seem to jaundice his eye or dull his energies, such as they are. Coffee and tobacco--of any old kind--will keep an Arab musician going, whereas a Spaniard with a guitar, an Italian with a mandolin, or a German with a trombone, would want some solid food and alcoholic refreshment as well. From this one gathers that the Arab is temperate; and he is in most things, except coffee, cigarettes, and music. If one is a serious, thorough, vagabond traveller, and would study the Ouled-Naïls and their histories, all well and good; there's something in it. But if one goes to prowling around Biskra's Rue Sainte merely for adventure, he is liable to get it, and of a costly kind, and he will learn nothing about the Ouled-Naïls from an ethnological point of view. The sentimental writers have drawn altogether too sentimental a picture of this plague-spot. In truth the Ouled-Naïls are a race of girls and women quite apart from those other Algerian tribes. They come to Biskra, to Constantine, and to Algiers, and live the lives of other free-and-easy women of the world. They dance in the Moorish cafés for the delectation of Arabs, Turks, and strangers, and they carry on a considerably less moral traffic as well, gaining _sous_, _francs_, and _louis_ meanwhile. When she has enough golden sequins to link together in a kind of a _cuirasse_, which hangs from her velvet brown neck down over her chest in an amulet half a yard square, the Ouled-Naïl _danseuse_ retires from business. She goes back to her tribe in the southwest, becomes virtuous, makes some Arab sheep-herder or camel-trader happy, and raises a family, the girls of which in time go through the same proceedings. The game is an hereditary one, and it is played desperately and, apparently, with less ill effects than one would suppose. For the women are accredited as living moral lives ever after,--once they get back to their homes. It is the contact with civilization, or semicivilization, which does them harm. The Casino at Biskra offers as one of its attractions the sight of these dancing women of the Ouled-Naïls without the necessity of contaminating oneself by going down into their quarter and seeing the real thing. The contamination is just as great in the gilded halls of the Casino as in some dingy, smoky _café maure_, but the local colour is wanting. The excursions to be made from Biskra are not as many, nor so enjoyable, as those from El Kantara. The round of Old Biskra and its villages is readily made on foot or by carriages; and one may even continue farther afield to the sandy, wavy dunes of the desert, and to the "Fontaine Chaude," or to the Shrine of Sidi-Okba, twenty kilometres out over the camel trail of the open desert. This excursion to Sidi-Okba is classic. Sidi-Okba sits in the midst of a fine oasis of some seventy thousand date-growing palms. It is a miserable, unlovely enough little village, but the memory of the Arab conqueror, Okba-ben-Nofi, has made it famous. "You will find nothing to eat at Sidi-Okba," say the guide-books. "You must carry your provisions." It all depends on what you want to eat. If it is simple refreshment only, you will find it here at Sidi-Okba--the tomb of the founder of Kairouan--in a veritable _guinguette_ such as one sees in suburban Paris, with arbours, trellised vines, and glittering coloured balls of glass suspended from the trees. It is a little bit of transplanted France, dull, tawdry, and uninteresting enough. But still, there it is,--a café-restaurant sitting tight in a little Arab village, before the tomb of the great Sidi-Okba, which attracts pilgrims all through the year from among the Mussulman population of all North Africa. The mosque, where repose the sainted man's remains, is the most ancient monument of Islam in Algeria. The tomb, the mosque, the Medersa, or Arab school, and the afore-mentioned _guinguette_, are all there are at Sidi-Okba; but it should be omitted from no man's, or woman's, itinerary in these parts. Back again over the same route one gains Biskra after a hard day's round _en voiture_, or on the back of a donkey, or a mulet, as he chooses. The only things you see _en route_ are an occasional solitary _gourbi_; a mud hut or two; or perhaps a simple tomb or _kouba_ rising away in the distance,--a white silhouette against a background of yellow sand and blue sky. These little punctuating notes dot the landscape all through Tunisia and Algeria. Frequently you will find scattered about the _kouba_ numerous detached tombs, still distinguishable, though half buried in the sand. These detached shrines and cemeteries, often half submerged in great waves of sand, are met with on the outskirts of nearly all Algerian towns and cities; and one is no more surprised at coming upon one beside the road than he is at the sight of a kilometre stone. Southwest from Biskra is the region of the Ziban, a zone of steppes, planted here and there with verdant oases. Topographically the features of the Ziban are mountainous, though ranges of the Zab slope and taper off imperceptibly into the dunes of the desert. The inhabitants of the Ziban are of a race differing considerably from the Kabyle and the Arab, favouring the former more than the latter. The plaited hair of the women, their general barbaric love of jewelry and personal adornment, their complexion, their chains, bracelets, and collarettes all point to the fact that they are an immigrant race, the development of a stock originally brought from afar, and not descended from the desert nomad. Throughout Algeria the nomad Arab is he who comes from the Sahara and its closer confines during the summer, returning with his herds in the winter to the desert, or to the great tents of his father's tribe. The Arab peasant, or labourer, is a native of the Tell region, and is manifestly not of the same purity of type as the desert Arab who speaks the pure idiom of the Koran. The Kabyle is another race apart. The distinctive characteristics of the three peoples are easily recognized when you are once familiar with them. Bordering upon the Monts du Zab (the Ziban) are the Monts des Ouled-Naïls, the home of the curiously distinct tribe before mentioned, who are more like degenerate Kabyles than they are like the desert Arab tribes. Still farther in the southwest is a sad, gloomy land, half desert and half mountain, not wholly Saharan, and yet not wholly Algerian, either in topographical characteristics or in the characteristics of its people. It is the region of the M'zabs, wild savage children of an uncivilized land, fanatically religious and veritable _débauchés_,--which the Berber tribes are not. Their houses are poor, but their purses are well lined, and, since France has taken over Algeria, they are also French, though they might be Martians for all they resemble the French. "It takes five Arabs to get the best of an Algerian Jew," says a proverb of the Sud, "and five Jews to master a M'zabite." In origin the people are supposed to be a mixture of the ancient Phoenicians and Numidians. Members of the tribe swarm all over Algeria, and are found even in Marseilles, as ambulant merchants, but they invariably return to their native land, for, it seems, it is a tenet of their religion not to remain away more than two years. Among them are four orthodox sects of Mussulmans, and still another peculiar to themselves, whose chief characteristic seems to consist of interminable praying; whereas the conventional Mohammedan is contented with exhorting his God five times a day. Their towns rank as veritable holy cities in their creed, with Ghardaïa as the capital. The satellite _villes saintes_ are Melika, Ben-Izguen, Bou Noura, El Ateuf, Beryan, and Guerrara. In all their population numbers between thirty and forty thousand. The general aspect of the land is one of melancholy, because of the numbers of their burial-grounds, three or four surrounding each town. The cemeteries are "places of prayer" with the M'zabites, and their population of weeping, wailing, praying faithful is always numerically greater than the dead. When the M'zabite is not selling something he is praying. Quite the most varied ethnographic and topographic changes to be observed in North Africa are those south of Biskra, within the limits of El Kantara on the north and Oued-Souf in the south. The religious tribes and sects are numerous, each having its own supplementary creeds and customs; the Ziban differing from those of the Ramaya, the Zogga, the Sidi-Okba, and the Oued B'hir. Still other oases passed _en route_ have their _zaouyas_ or brotherhoods of professing coreligionists, not differing greatly from each other in general principles, but still possessed of variants as wide apart as the Methodists and Universalists of the Christian world. Throughout all this region the marabouts, or holy men, are most hospitable, and are as appreciative of little attentions--gifts of chocolate, of candles, or even matches--as could possibly be imagined. In many cases they are veritable hermits, whose only intercourse with the outside world is with passing strangers,--who are few. CHAPTER XXI IN THE WAKE OF THE ROMAN The path of the Roman through North Africa was widely strewn with civic and military monuments as grand as any of the same class elsewhere in the Western Empire. One comes to associate the ancient Roman with Gaul, and is no longer surprised when he contemplates the wonderful arenas of Arles and Nîmes or the arch and the theatre at Orange. Pompeii and Herculaneum are classic memories of our school-time days, and we think it nothing strange that their ruins exist to-day. When, however, we view the vast expanse of vertical marbles at Timgad in Algeria's plateau of the Tell, the Prætorium at Lambessa, the great Roman Arch at Tebessa, the amphitheatre at Djemel, or the ruined portal of Dougga, it all comes so suddenly upon us that we wonder what nature of a hodge-podge dream we are living in. The effect is further heightened when one sees a caravan of camels, horses, and donkeys, and its accompanying men and women of the desert, camped beside some noble Roman arch or tomb standing alone above the desert plain. It is not alone, of course. There are other neighbouring remains buried round about, or there are still fragments that serve some neighbouring settlement as a quarry from which to draw blocks of stone to build anew, as did the builders of certain Italian cathedrals draw some of their finest marbles from the ruins of old Carthage. All North Africa is very rich in Roman ruins, and the Arabs are as interested in these antique remains as are the whitest, longest-bearded archæologists that ever lived. It is not their love of antiquity that accounts for this, but the possibility of getting information which will lead to treasure. Most of these North African Roman ruins were despoiled of all articles of value by the ancestors of the present Arabs long before the antiquarians took it into their heads to exploit them; but the traditional game still goes on. The Arab of Algeria to-day still looks forward to the time when he may yet discover a vast buried treasure. Perhaps he may! Who knows? Tradition and legend all but definitely locate many buried hoards which have not yet been touched, and any grotto or cavern miraculously or accidentally discovered may prove a veritable gold mine. The Arab thinks that this is as sure to happen to him as for the clock to strike twelve on the eve of the Jour des Rameaux. And that he will tumble on all fours into the midst of a cavern paved and walled with gold, pearls, and precious stones. From Tlemcen on the west (the ancient Pomaria of the Romans, and an important Roman camp) to Tozeur in the Sud-Tunisien (the site of the still more ancient Thusuros) is one long, though more or less loosely connected, chain of relics of the Roman occupation. At Cherchell are vestiges of an antique Roman port; at Tipaza various civic monuments; and not far distant the enigmatic "Tombeau de la Chrétienne." On the coast, to the east of Algiers, is Stora, a port of antiquity, and Bona (the ancient Hippo-Regius), where the tourist to-day divides his attentions between the commonplace basilica erected to Saint Augustin, who was bishop of Hippo-Regius in the fourth century, and the tomb of the Marabout Sidi-Brahmin, with the balance of appeal in favour of the latter simple shrine. Modern Christian architecture often descends to base, unfeeling garishness, whereas the savage [Illustration: _The Kasba, Bona_] simplicity of the exotic races often produces something on similar lines, but in a great deal better taste. Here is where the onyx and marble basilica at Bona, albeit one of Christendom's great shrines, loses by comparison with the simple _kouba_ of the Mohammedan holy man. On the route from Bona to Hippo-Regius (to-day Hippone) is a restored Roman bridge, so restored indeed that it has lost all semblance of antiquity, but still it is there to marvel at. "_Bône la belle!_" the French fondly call the antique city. Bona of to-day is beautiful as modern cities go, but it is so modern with its _quais_, its promenades, its esplanade, and its pompous Hôtel de l'Orient, that one loves it for nothing but its past. The _Kasba_, the military headquarters on the edge of the town by the shore, piles up skyward in imposing fortress-fashion and is the chief architecturally interesting monument of the town itself. Eastward from Bona, eighty kilometres or so along the coast, is La Calle, another port of antiquity, the Tunizia of the Romans, and one of the old French trading-posts on the Barbary coast. There are few ancient remains at La Calle to-day, but it is one of the most interesting of all the Algerian coast towns all the same. La Calle would be worthy of exploitation as a tourist resort if one could only get to it comfortably as it lies half hidden just to the westward of the Bastion de France and hemmed in on the south by the Khoumir region. The road from Bona to La Calle is the worst in Algeria, and the light railway is very poor. La Calle has become the centre of the world's coral fishery since the Italians have worked out their own beds. Out of about 5,000 Europeans, La Calle has quite half of its population made up of sunny Neapolitans and Sicilians, whose chief delight is to dive into deep water and bring up coral, or dig a cutting for a canal or railway. Wherever there is a job of this kind on hand, the Italian is the man to do it. The town is very ancient, and its name is derived from the word meaning dock, or _cale_, hence it is not difficult to trace its origin back to a great seaport of history. Its commerce has been exploited since 1560 by Marseillais merchants; but in spite of this it is to-day more Italian than French. The coral industry is still great, but here, too, the supply is on the wane. It has been fashionable for too long a time, in spite of the traffic in pink celluloid and porcelain, which furnishes most of the "coral" to kitchen maids and _midinettes_. With the falling off of the coral industry, the sardine fishery has developed, and now the little fishes boiled in oil, the universally popular _hors d'oeuvre_, are as likely to have come from the harbour of La Calle as the Bay of Douarnenez. They are not so good as the latter variety (though as a fact the sardine is a Mediterranean fish, only caught in northern waters because it migrates there in summer), but they are a good deal better than the Nova Scotia or Norway sardines of commerce, which are not sardines at all. From the coast down into the interior Constantine, the Cirta of the ancients, looms large in the roll-call of antiquity. After the Numidian kings came Sittius with the backing of Cæsar, and the whole neighbouring region blossomed forth with prosperous and growing cities, Mileum (Mila), Chellu (Collo), and Rusicade (Philippeville). Among Cirta's famous men was Fronton, the preceptor of Marcus Aurelius. In the latter days of the Empire and under Byzantine domination, Cirta became the capital of a province, as is the Constantine of to-day. Constantine's Roman remains are not many to-day. Those of the great bridge across the Gorge of the Rummel are the principal ones. Various antique constructive elements are readily traced, but the present bridge swings out boldly away from the old stone piers, leaving the Roman bridge an actual ruin and nothing more. Its keystone did not fall until 1858, though probably the actual arch of that time only dated from the century before, as great works of restoration, perhaps indeed of entire reconstruction, were then undertaken by Salah-Bey. [Illustration: SO-CALLED TOMB OF CONSTANTINE] Near Constantine, on the road to Kroubs, is the absurdly named Tomb of Constantine, absurdly named because this Græco-Punic monument could never have been the tomb of Constantine from its very constructive details, which so plainly mark its epoch. It is nevertheless a very beautiful structure,--what there is left of it. Moreover it is a mausoleum of some sort, though the natives call it simply _souma_ or tower. [Illustration] Its ground-plan and its silhouette are alike passing strange, though plain and simple to a degree. Another tomb in this province which is one of the relics of antiquity (over which archæologists have raved and disputed since they got into competition by expressing their views and printing books about them) is the tomb of Médracen or Madghasen, on the road from Constantine to Batna. It is a great cone of wooden-looking blocks of stone, a sort of pyramidal cone, with a broad, flat base. At a distance it looks like a combination of Fingal's Cave and the Pyramid of Cheops. Supposedly this was a royal mausoleum, the burial-place of Médracen. The entrance to this really remarkable monument was discovered in 1850, but only recently has its ground-plan been made public by those secretive antiquarians who sometimes do not choose to give their information broadcast. El Bekri, the Arab writer of the eleventh century, wrote something about this monument which, being rediscovered in later centuries, led to investigations which unearthed a monument according to the above plan. In the interior of the Constantinois, between Constantine and Biskra, in the midst of that wonderfully fertile plateau of the Tell, are three magnificently interesting Roman cities, Lambessa, Timgad, and Tebessa. They are only to be reached from Batna by diligence, by hired carriage, or by automobile,--if one has one, and cares to take chances on getting through, for of course there are no supplies to be had _en route_. The distance from Batna to Tebessa--where one is again in touch with the railway, a branch leading to the Bona-Guelma line at Souk-Ahras--is about a hundred and eighty kilometres. A placid contemplation of one or all of the cities making up this magnificent collection of Roman ruins in the heart of Africa will give one emotions that hitherto he knew naught of. Batna itself is not a tourist point, though an interesting enough place to observe the native as he mingles with the military and the European civilization. "Batna-la-bivouac" the city is called, because of the great military post here. It is not a dead city, but a sleeping one. At its very gates rises the conical tomb of the Numidian king, Massinissa. Just before Batna is reached by the railway, coming from El Guerrah, is Seriana, so known to the Arabs, though the French have recently renamed it Pasteur, after the illustrious chemist. The site is that of the ancient Lamiggiga. A dozen kilometres or more out into the plateau lands to the northwest is Zana, the ancient city of Diana. Here still exist two great triumphal arches, one of a single bay and the other of three, the latter constructed by the Emperor Macrin in 217 A.D. A temple to Diana formerly here has disappeared, but before its emplacement is a great monumental gateway still in a very good state of preservation. There are also vestiges of a Byzantine fortress. From Batna to Lambessa, on the road to Timgad, is a dozen kilometres. The ruins of the Lambæsis of the Romans are of enormous extent, even those so far uncovered to view, and much more remains to be excavated. The Third Legion of Augustus, charged with the defence of North Africa, here made their camp in the beginning of the second century of our era, and the outlines of this camp are to-day well defined. Of the monumental remains, the Prætorium is a vast quadrangular structure in rosy-red stone most imposingly beautiful. The forum is plainly marked, and near by are the baths, with their heating-furnaces yet visible; and the ruined arcades of an amphitheatre crop up through the thin soil in a surprising manner. The eastern and western gateways of this vast military camp are still more than fragmentary in silhouette and outline. [Illustration: _Lambessa and Its Ruins_] [Illustration: LAMBESE] Farther on is a great three-bayed arch built under Septimus Severus and a pagan temple to Esculapius. The Capitol, in its ground-plan, and with respect to a great part of its walls, stands proud and magnificent as of yore. It was dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. The ruins of a Roman aqueduct lie to the south of the Capitol. To the north, a matter of four kilometres or so, is a pyramidal tomb to Flavius Maximus, Prefect of the Third Augustan Legion. Close beside all this buried treasure is the great government penitentiary. Two thousand Turk, Jew, and Arab thieves and murderers are there shut up; when they want exercise, they are given a pick and shovel and set to work as one of the "outside contingent," digging away the débris of ages from these magnificent Roman ruins. This is the sort of criminal labour which doesn't affect competition. The _forçats_ of Algeria accomplish some good in life after all. Timgad is twenty-five kilometres beyond Lambessa, and, though only the site of a ruined Roman city, founded under the Emperor Trajan, has hotel accommodation of a very acceptable, if not luxurious, kind (Hotel Meille). One should take a guide, once arrived at Timgad, to save time, otherwise he may worry it all out with the map herewith. Sidi Hassin, our guide at Timgad, was a man of medium size, young, thin and muscular, with an incipient scraggy beard. He was dressed modestly and even becomingly, for he [Illustration: TIMGAD] had not mingled Manchester goods with his _haïk_ and burnous woven in some Kabyle village. On his head was a little round turban, and his sandals were laced with leather thongs. He was decidedly a home-made product. His compressed visage bespoke energy and intelligence, and a little mocking laugh, a sort of audible smile, was ever on his lips, in strong contrast to the melancholic indifference of the average Arab. Sidi Hassin seemed the right sort of a philosopher and friend for our journey around Timgad, so we took him as soon as he offered his services. His recommendation for the job was, in his own words, as follows: "_Tu es sous le doigt de Dieu et sous le mien! Je réponds de toi. Tu reviendras sain et sauf._" Thamugadi was founded by Trajan in the year 100 A.D., the actual labour being the work of the soldiers of the Third Legion, then encamped at Lambessa. Thamugadi, a _foyer_ of Roman civilization in a still barbarous land, was of great importance and wealth. It lived in security and prosperity until the early part of the sixth century, when it was destroyed by the Berbers. More luxuriously disposed even than Lambessa, Timgad presents the very ideal of a ruined Roman city. It had not, perhaps, the wealth of Pompeii, and it had not Pompeii's wonderful background of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, but it was more ample and more splendid in its arrangements than any other ruined Roman city left for tourists to marvel at to-day. The French "Service des Monuments Historiques" began excavating Timgad's ruins in 1881, and now one is able to locate with accuracy the various civic and military structures. These cover such a large territory that the city must ever take rank as one of the most interesting ruins unearthed to this date. The ground-plan here given explains it all precisely, and the reader is referred to the "Guide Illustré de Timgad," on sale at the Hotel Meille, for detailed descriptions which cannot be elaborated here. A Byzantine fortress, built under Justinian in the sixth century, is also here. It was an outpost or defence which guarded the pass through the rock wall of the Aures, from the high plateau of Numidia to the Lybian Desert to the south. Its thick walls, two metres or more, are still flanked by eight towers. From Timgad to Kenchela is some seventy kilometres, and is covered by diligence once a day, the journey taking twelve hours and costs ten francs. You pass several _foums_, or springs, and cross several _oueds_ or river-beds on the way, and finally, after a steep climb, you reach Kenchela, built upon the site of the ancient Mascula, one of the contemporaries of Lambæsis and Thamugadi. To-day Kenchela has nothing for the tourist but its Hôtel de France, and its Monday market, which like other _indigène_ markets is full of iridescent local colour and life. Near by, on the flank of the mountains, were Roman baths, known as the Aquæ Flavianæ, passed by on the road from Timgad. Two huge pools, one round and the other square, are all that remain to-day. To reach Tebessa from Kenchela one may take the railway to Ain-Beïda,--a matter of fifty kilometres. There are no ruins _en route_ except at Ksar-Baghai, a great Byzantine fortress built by Justinian. Its square donjon and round towers look like those of the feudal strongholds of Europe. They are not the least African. From Ain-Beïda to Tebessa is another eighty-eight kilometres of well-laid modern roadway. It is covered by a daily diligence in ten hours, at a cost of fifteen francs. Tebessa is a worthy rival of Lambessa and Timgad. Its ruins are many to-day. The most notable ones are Caracalla's Arch of Triumph, a temple of the same epoch (the beginning of the third century of our era), and innumerable finds preserved in the local museum. The great arch is a stupendous and very beautiful work, and the temple worthy to rank with the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, the svelt proportions and marble Corinthian columns of which are its chief features. [Illustration: TEBESSA] The present city of Tebessa sits in the midst of a vast expanse scattered with Roman ruins and surrounded by the still existing Byzantine walls built by one Salomon, a general of the Legion of Justinian. These walls have stood for thirteen centuries, restored from time to time, until now, with the coming of the French, the aspect of the modern walled city has the disposition given above. Fourteen rectangular towers, including the massive fortress-gate of Caracalla, add considerably to the value of the defences. Not only at Tebessa, but all around for a radius of twenty-five kilometres, the ground is strewn with old Roman and Byzantine relics; notably at Morsott, where has recently been unearthed the site of the ancient Theverte of the Romans. It is entirely a new discovery, and what great finds may ultimately be brought to light, no one as yet can conjecture. Two basilicas have already been brought to the surface, two isolated mausoleums, a vast monumental gateway, a drinking-fountain of astonishing proportions, baths, and many beautiful and practically undefiled mosaics. These ruins are scattered over an area of seven thousand square metres, and, almost without exception, their preservation is in such a condition that, so far as outlines are concerned, one is able to construct anew what must have been a very important centre of Roman civilization. This group of neighbouring Roman towns and cities of the past, beginning with Tebessa and ending with Lambessa, form perhaps the most curious and extensive area of Roman ruins to be found to-day within a like radius. [Illustration: MORSOTT] The first exploration of the ruins of Morsott was through the means of the "Société Archéologique" of Constantine, but the French government has stepped in and claimed them for its own and classed them as "Monuments Historiques," which means that no more will strangers be able to lug away with them as excess baggage a Roman capital, to be used as a garden seat at home. This is right and proper, the most passionate collector will admit. CHAPTER XXII TUNIS AND THE SOUKS "A travers la douceur de tes jeunes jardins Je m'avance vers toi, Tunis, ville étrangère. Je te vois du haut des gradins De ta colline d'herbe et de palmes légères." By sea one approaches Tunis through the canal which runs from La Goulette to the _quais_ and docks in the new town of Tunis; and one pays the company which exploits the harbour works four francs for the privilege. It's progress if you like, but it's about the most expensive half a dozen miles of travel by water that exists in all the known world. By land one arrives by railway, and is mulcted a similar amount by some red-fezzed, nut-brown Arab for pointing out the way to your hotel. The _porteurs_, _portefaix_, and _faccini_ who carry your luggage at Tunis are most importunate. If they happen to tumble your trunk overboard, they still strike you for their pay. You say: "_Pourquoi vous donnerais-je?_" And the answer is: "_Parceque c'est moi qui a perdu votre malle._" Moral, travel light. You take your choice, it's only four francs either way. And truly it is worth it, for there is nothing, short of Constantinople or Cairo, as Oriental as old Tunis, the Tunis of the _souks_, of the mosques, and minarets. The other Tunis, that one down by the docks, and the new-made land lying before the Arab quarter, is as conventionally twentieth-century as Paris or New York. It is very up to date (a sign of prosperity and progress), and that's what the French and native government officials are working for. Tunis is the coming land of exploitation, a little corner of the globe as rich in the products of nature, mines and fruits and vegetables, as any other wherever found. The Lake of Tunis is no longer seething with the variegated commerce of old; things are more prosaic with steam than with sail, but to pass through her sea-gate is to be surrounded by the people of the Bible, the Arabian Nights, and the Alhambra of the days of the Moors. Tunis is the veritable gate of Eastern life, of the life of Haroun-Al-Rachid. The European city by the harbour is of to-day. The walled native city is almost unconscious of the existence of modern Europe. It is the most interesting tourist resort of North Africa, more so than Algiers by far, with its _souks_, its proximity to Carthage, and its Orientalism. Tunis is a city of consulates. Not all of them have business to transact, but still they are there, the consulates of all nations under the sun. "Do you have many of your country people to look after?" the writer interrogated of one accredited from a South American government, a German, by the way, whom he met in a Tunis café. He replied: "But there are none of my government's people here; they neither live here, trade here, nor pass through as tourists, as do the English and Americans." "What then do you do?" he was asked. "I correspond with my government." "Well, why not be frank about it, that is what most consuls and consulates do!" The expatriate who wants help or even information from his government's representative is usually met by some underling, who at once begins edging him toward the door and says guilelessly: "This office has no information on that subject," or, "I really don't know myself; you'll have to see the consul, but just at present...." These receptions are stupefying in their asininity, but they come to pass in most consulates, and those at Tunis are no exception. Tunis' Arab town is less spoilt by the encroachment of outside influences than that of Algiers. Day or night, it is a wonderful chapter from the "Arabian Nights" that one lives, as he strolls aimlessly up one narrow, twisting _ruelle_ and down another. Here is a great towering minaret of a mosque which seemingly does business at all hours, and there is a synagogue which has Saturday for a busy day. The perfume-sellers of the Souk des Parfums are Mohammedans, and intersperse religion with business; the saddle-makers, jewellers, and leather-workers are often Jews, and attend strictly to business for six days in the week and shut up shop on Saturday, make their necessary devotions quickly and stand around on their door-sills the rest of the day dressed in their holiday clothes. All castes and creeds are here, from the Italian chestnut-vendor to the Jew old-clo' dealer, and from the desert nomad horse-dealer to the town-bred Arab who wears a silk burnous and carries a cane. The _souks_ or bazaars of Tunis are the chief delight of the stranger, and certainly no such "shopping" can be done elsewhere as here; no, not even at Cairo, for, after all, Tunis is "less spoiled" than Cairo, though even here the stranger is a fair mark for the Arab trader, who augments his price a hundred per cent. You must bargain with the Oriental, be he Arab, Turk, Jew, Hindu, Chinaman, or Japanese, and the further east you go, the more the necessity for bargaining. One of the pleasantest features of travel for many, no doubt, is visiting the shops. Travellers should, however, exercise judgment and discrimination, and should take a little trouble to ascertain what are the genuine specialties of the place. "_Articles de touriste_" should at all times be avoided; nine cases out of ten they are made to sell. At Tunis, as at Cairo or Constantinople, one is painfully at the mercy of his guide, who, if he can, takes him to the large shops, which, as a rule, deal mainly in pseudo-curios, or articles manufactured solely for strangers. These are invariably the shops where the enterprising shopkeepers pay the guides the largest commission. No doubt the farce of solemnly presenting coffee to the purchaser, a custom which the tourist has been told by his guide-book to expect, is effective "playing-up," but the innocent stranger may rest assured that while he is thus literally imbibing the Oriental atmosphere, he will pay for it as well in the bill. He may not notice it, but it is there. [Illustration: _In the Bazaars, Tunis_] The most characteristic finds to be had in Tunis to-day are the fine old mirrors, made at Genoa and Florence for wealthy Turks and Arabs of a hundred or two years ago; _moucharabias_, stolen from some Moorish house; the thousand and one decorations of tile and baked clay which are unmistakable as to their genuineness; and good Kabyle silver jewelry. There are one or two shops in the European quarter where one can be confident he is getting the real thing, and where they sell it by weight, at two hundred francs a kilo. In another category, more or less tawdry to be sure, but ever fascinating to the stranger, are such things as stuffed lizards, gazelles' horns and skins, panther and jackal skins, curious engraved boxes covered with camel-skin, negro tom-toms, castanets, amulets, and pottery, Arab knives, daggers and muskets, Morocco slippers, saddle-bags and purses, Touareg weapons and leather goods, ostrich eggs and feathers, copper bowls and ornaments. Perhaps the above suggestions will seem prosaic and matter-of-fact to the sentimental traveller, to whom the very word bazaar offers a suggestion of romantic adventure, to say nothing of the possibility of real "discoveries." But in places of tourist resort bargaining is no longer conducted after the stately fashion of the "Arabian Nights," when the purchase of a brass tray or an embroidered saddle-cloth was a solemn treaty, and the bargain for a lamp a diplomatic event, not to be lightly undertaken or hurriedly concluded. To-day it is simply a businesslike transaction in which the golden rule plays a no more prominent part than it does in Chicago's wheat-pit. There is the coffee-drinking left, to be sure, but that is only part of the game. The foreign element has made astonishing inroads into the trade of Tunis, and the Italian, the Greek, the Maltese, and the Jew are everywhere working at everything. The Jew, more than any other race, has made the greatest progress, as the following tale, or legend, if it be not entirely a veracious tale, will show. A Jew of Tunis a couple of centuries ago commissioned a French merchant to order for him a cargo of black hats, green shawls and red silk stockings. When, however, the goods arrived, the Jew repudiated the order. Haled before the Bey, who in those days administered justice himself, the Jew denied not only the order, but also all knowledge of the French merchant. "Where are your witnesses?" asked the Bey of the Frenchman. "I have none, Sire," he replied, "not even a line of writing. The order was given me verbally by the Jew." "Then," decided the Bey, "as it is only oath against oath, I cannot pronounce judgment in your favour." The Frenchman walked sadly away, knowing that this meant to him absolute ruin. Hardly had he reached his home, when he was amazed and alarmed by a great tumult in the streets. Hurrying out to ascertain its cause, he found a vast crowd, mostly Jews, following one of the Beylical _entourage_, who was making the following proclamation: "Every Jew who, within twenty-four hours after the issue of this proclamation, shall be found in any street of Tunis without a black beaver hat on his head, a green shawl round his shoulders, and silk stockings on his legs, shall be forthwith seized and conveyed to the first court of our palace, where he will be publicly flogged to death." Within an hour the French merchant's shop was besieged by Jews eager to pay him any price he chose to ask for his derelict cargo of black hats, green shawls and red silk stockings. If the foregoing tale proves anything, it proves hatred of the Jews and love for the French, and if that state of affairs does not exist to its fullest extent in Tunis to-day, every competent observer can but remark that the Tunisian, be he Jew or Berber, under combined French and Beylical rule is very well cared for indeed. The life of Tunis is, as might be supposed, very mixed. A Tunisian Arab will sometimes marry a European, though not often; but never a Jewess. There is a tale of a certain Arab shopkeeper of the Souk d'Etoffes who married a stranger from overseas. How the tryst was carried on is not stated, but married they were, and of course everybody was shocked; not because it was everybody's business, but because it was nobody's business. "Does she really love him?" asked the ladies around the tea-tables at the Tunisia Palace Hotel when the tale was recounted. "Well, they look happy," said the discoverer of the _ménage_, "and joy lasts seven days, or seven years, they say." "It makes me just sick," said a new-made bride, doing her honeymoon in the Mediterranean. "How long has she been married?" asked another; this time a spinster. "Oh, about two years, and they tell me she gets thinner and thinner each year. It's the case of oil and water,--the East and the West,--they can't mix." This was only gossip, of course, but it was a sign of the times. The population of Tunis is the most interesting of all nations under the sun, particularly of a spring or autumn evening as it sits on the broad terrace of one of the boulevard cafés, well dressed and gay, and the Arab the gayest of them all. The Arab of Tunis, when he arrives to a certain distinction, dresses in robes of silk, and silk stockings, too, which he holds up over his bare calves with a "Boston garter," or a very good imitation thereof. Certainly an Arab whose burnous, _haïk_, _gandurah_, _caftan_, socks, and garters are silk must be a "personage." A curious thing to be remarked in the cafés of Tunis is the avidity with which the exiled French population devours the Paris papers upon the arrival of the mail-boat. Another curious thing is the fact that the newsboys sell them in twos and threes; there not being a mail every day, they arrive in bunches of two, three, and sometimes four. One glances at the last one first, but reads it last, at least most people do it that way. It's human nature. Throughout Tunis' Arab quarter the wide-spread hand of Fatmah as a sign of good luck is seen everywhere. It may be stencilled on some shop window, painted over the chimney in a Moorish café, or even stained upon the flank of a horse or donkey. The _main de Fatmah_ is the "good-luck" charm of the Arab, and, as a souvenir to be carried away by the stranger, in the form of a bangle or watch-charm, is about the most satisfactory and characteristic thing that can be had. After the _souks_, the palaces and mosques are of chief interest to the traveller. One may not enter the mosques--the French authorities hold the temple of the Mussulman's God inviolate; but the Dar el Bey and the Bardo, the chief administrative buildings of the native government, may be checked off the indefatigable tourist's list of "things to see;" as have been Bunker Hill Monument, the Paris Morgue, and Ellen Terry's cottage at Winchelsea, for presumably these have been "done" first. Such is the craze for seeing sights without knowing what they all mean. "Is it old?" "Does the King, Prince, Bey, or Sultan really live there?" "And are the blood-spots real?" are fair representatives of [Illustration] the class of information which most conventional tourists demand. The great gates of the inner Arab city of Tunis are most fascinating, with their swarming hordes of passers-by and their grim battlemented walls and towers. The new boulevarded streets circle the old town, and an electric tramway runs in either direction from the Port de France back again to the Port de France. Outside, all is twentieth-century; within, all is a couple of hundred years behind the times at least. High up above all, behind the Dar el Bey and overlooking the roof-tops of the _souks_ and the town below, is the Kasba and the quaintly decorated minaret of its mosque, the oldest in Tunis, and quite the finest of all the decorative minarets of the world of Islam. Other mosque minarets at Tunis are svelt and beautiful, dainty and more or less ornate, but they lack the massive luxuriance of that of the Kasba, which was the work, be it recalled, of Italian infidels, not of Mussulman faithful. Within the charmed circle of the outer boulevards Tunis' Arab town has an appearance as archaic as one may expect to find in these progressive days. Veiled women are everywhere, and turbaned; high-coiffed, fat, wobbly Jewesses, and Sicilians and Maltese with poignards in their belts. It's a mixed crew indeed that makes up the life and movement of Tunis. This impression is heightened still further when you see the Bey drive by in state in a dingy carriage drawn by six black, silver-harnessed mules, the outriders yelling, "_Arri! Arri! Arri!_" like the donkey-boys of the more plebeian world. This sight is followed in the twinkling of an eye by a caravan of camels and nomads of the desert; then perhaps a couple of gaily painted Sicilian carts; an automobile of a very early vintage; another more modern (the _dernier cri_, in fact), and finally a troop of little _bourriquets_, grain-laden, making their way westward into the open country. This moving panorama, or another as varied, will pass you inside half an hour as you sit on the terrace of the café opposite the Residency. At Bab Souika, just without the Arab town, and passed by the tram _en route_ for the Kasba, is the centre of the popular animation of native life. In the Halfaouine quarter are the Moorish cafés, at Bab Djedid still another aspect of Arab loafing and idling, and all of it picturesque to the extreme. The Jewish dancers of the cafés of the Place Sidi-Baian are recommended as "sights to be seen" by Baedeker and Jouanne. These dancers have eyes like _merlans frits_, and the _ventre doré_, and are of the same variety that one has become accustomed to on the "Midway" and the "Pike," and in the "Streets of Cairo," which have made the rounds of recent expositions. They are no better nor no worse. The only difference is that here at Biskra, at Constantine, and at Tunis one sees things on their native heath. [Illustration: DANCING GIRLS _At_ TUNIS B. McM. 1907] Everything in the way of a ceremonial at Tunis centres around the Bey and the Resident-General. The Bey gives a function at the Bardo or at his palace at La Marsa, and the Governor-General attends. The Resident-General has a reception at the Residency, and the Bey drives up behind his six black mules, and, with the first interpreter of his palace, goes in and pays his respects to the representative of Republican France, the real ruler of the "Régence." "Bon jour"--"Au revoir," is about the extent of the conversation expected at such functions, and with these simple words said, the ceremony is over. But it is impressive while it lasts, with much gold lace, much bowing and scraping, much music and much helter-skeltering of the entourage here, there, and everywhere. Republican France still holds out for ceremony, and the President's "Chasse Nationale" each year at Rambouillet is still reminiscent of "La Chasse Royale" of other days. Not so our bear-hunts in Louisiana cane-breaks. The Bey of Tunis is still the titular head of his people and their religion, but the hand that rules the destiny of his Régence is that of the representative of the French Republic. CHAPTER XXIII IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOSQUE Old Tunis fortunately remains old Tunis. It has not been spoiled, as has Algiers, in a way. Its crooked streets and culs-de-sac are still as they were when pachas kept their harems well filled as a matter of right, and not by the toleration of the French government. Surrounding the vast spider's web of narrow streets of old Tunis is a circling line of tramway, within which is as Oriental an aspect as that of old (save the electric lights and the American sewing-machines, which are everywhere). Without this magic circle, all bustles with the cosmopolitan clamour which we fondly designate twentieth-century progress and profess to like: automobiles, phonographs, type-writing machines, railway trains, great hotels, cafés and restaurants, always the same wherever found. There is quite as much life and movement in the _souks_ of the old town of Tunis as on the boulevards of the European quarter, and it is quite as feverish, but with a difference. The perfume-makers of the Souk des Parfums still pound their leaves and blossoms by hand in a mortar, and the saddle and shoe makers still stitch and embroider by hand the gold-threaded arabesques of their ancestors. You can get all the products of the _souks_, of the made-in-Belgium variety, which look quite like the real thing, but in fact are but base "Dutch metal," unworthy of Arab, Turk, or Jew, and only fit for strangers. Here in the _souks_ you must know how to "shop." In Tunis, more than in any other city along the Mediterranean, one must know how to sift the dross from the fine metal, and only too frequently the dealer himself will not give you the frank counsel that you need. Just off the _Souk des Grains_ is the "Street of the Pearls." In this romantically named thoroughfare, and huddled close beneath the squat, mushroom domes of the Mosque of Sidi-Mahrez is a great brass-studded and bolted doorway, closing an entrance between two svelt marble columns, stolen from Carthage long ago by some unscrupulous Turk or Arab. Above is a great Moorish horseshoe arch. This is the sole entrance to a magnificent, typical Oriental establishment, built three hundred years since by some Turkish pacha fled from Constantinople for political reasons and his country's good. Not long since the proprietor of this fine old house was "sold out." He wasn't exactly a "poor miserable," but the establishment he was keeping up was not in keeping with the lining of his purse. He was not as his forefathers, who, if they toiled not nor yet did spin, had the good luck to gather riches by some means or other while they lived. Whilst he, on a scant patrimony to which nothing was being added, was going the pace a little too fast. His creditors called in the bailiff, and the bailiff called in the auctioneer, and the "_bel immeuble_," a "_vaste bâtiment 30 mètres carrés, avec cour, fontaine et plusieures pièces au rez-de-chaussée, et balcon_," was put up at auction. There were no takers, it appeared,--at the price. The "knock-down" was thirty thousand francs, and it was worth it, the finest house in the Oriental quarter of Tunis, high and dry and built of marble and tile, and safe-guarded by the _pigeons de bonheur_, which lodged on the great central dome of the mosque which overhung the roof-top terrace. French and Italians, and strangers of all nationalities (including some affected Mussulmans as well), were piling themselves story upon story in great apartment houses in the flat, monotonous new town below, laid out on what a quarter of a century ago was a reedy marsh. Not one of them would consider for a moment the question of taking on this fine establishment for a dwelling all his own. They all had their summer-houses out at Carthage, where they were spoiling the landscape, as well as that magnificent historic site, by erecting villas of questionable taste. For their town dwellings these ambitious folk were one and all bent on living in a flat. It was in this manner that this fine example of Oriental domicile fell to our friend, the attaché of the Embassy. He, at least, knew a good thing when he saw it, and, though he was a bachelor (and never for a moment thought of setting up a harem in the vast _zenana_ at the rear), he relished with good will the delights of dwelling in marble halls of his own,--particularly such splendid ones. It was a problem as to what our friend should do, on account of the great size of the many apartments of this Moorish-Arab house; but like the Japanese and the Moors themselves, he did not make the mistake of filling them with trumpery bric-à-brac and saddle-bag furniture. It was more or less a great undertaking for a young man to whom housekeeping had hitherto been an unknown accomplishment,--this taking of a great house to live in all alone. For days and weeks, as occasion offered, he stalked its marble halls and pictured the "Arabian Nights" over again, and hazarded many soft and sentimental imaginings as to the personalities of the veiled beauties who once made it their home. Our friend's first possession was a servant, of the indefinable species called simply a "man servant;" he at any rate could keep the marbles white and the tiles burnished, and the dust from out the crevices of the carved stone vaultings, if there was nothing else to do. The serving man was readily enough found. He bore the name of Habib, the Algerian, at least that was the translation that he gave in French of its queer Arab characters, though his explanation as to how he came to descend from parents who were born in Kairouan, the Holy City of Tunisia, and still have the suffix of "_the Algerian_" tacked on at the end, was not very lucid. Habib was gentle and faithful, but vain and superstitious. To begin with, he was perfectly willing to become a part and parcel of the _ménage_; but he must take rank as a body-servant (whatever his duties might be), and would not be a mere caretaker or a concierge. For that M'sieu René must have a Moroccan, the _chiens fidèles_ of North African concierges, or he must go without. Sleep in the house Habib would not; the spirits of past dwellers--some of them perhaps wraiths of folk who had been murdered--would rise up in the dark hours and prevent that; of that he was sure. Stranger infidels might not believe in spooks and spirits, but it was a part of Habib's faith that he should not put himself in a position where they might destroy his rest. Nothing of the kind had ever happened to him up to now, but the fear was always present, and he was minded to take all possible precautions. Habib ultimately capitulated, and came to "sleeping in." He made his plans stealthily for taking up his residence under the shadow of the mosque. Though Habib's belongings were few, his preparations for moving in were elaborate and lengthy. Habib had not much more than the clothes on his back,--and a silver-headed cane, without which he never walked the streets of the European quarter, day or night. "In the Arab town you were safe," he said, "but '_là-bas_,' with all the civilized and cosmopolitan riffraff of a great Mediterranean seaport, one's life was not worth a piastre without a weapon of defence." You must have a license to carry a revolver in Tunis, a permission which the authorities do not readily grant to an Arab; and anyway Habib was afraid of firearms (he was afraid of most everything, as it appeared later, even work), so he resorted to a cane. With Habib's clothes on his back, and his cane, arrived a little plush pillow about the size of a pincushion. This was to be his protection against the real, or fancied, evil spirits which he still believed were lurking away between the walls, as indeed they probably had been for centuries. This little plush cushion had been deftly fashioned for him, doubtless, by some veiled Fatmah or Zorah. It may have honestly been thought by its maker, and of course by Habib, to be an effective antidote for the wiles of roving spirits, but certainly no one would ever attribute to it the least virtues as a pillow. The Japanese wooden head-rest were preferable to Habib's spirit-charmer for wooing Morpheus. Habib at last had taken the fatal step, he had become a part and parcel of the establishment. To be sure he had not much to do; the new patron, being alone, had furnished only a part of the chambers, apartments, and salons in semi-European fashion, and Habib's chief duties consisted only in "turning them out" in succession, on consecutive days, and putting them in order again. There is not a great quantity of grime and dirt that ever penetrates beyond the courtyard of an Arab house, and the actual labour of keeping it clean would please the indolent mind of the laziest "maid of all work" that ever lived. Habib handled the situation as well as might be expected--for a time. Afterwards he fell off a bit. He was faithful, obliging, smiling and sentimental, but he still slept bad o' nights, or said he did. The powers of his pincushion pillow were evidently negative or neutral so far as the particular spirits which lodged here were concerned. With his new station in life Habib came to an increased importance, and from a loose white cotton robe or burnous, he came to be the proud possessor of a flowing creation in crimson silk which was the envy of all his acquaintances. Beneath it he wore a yellow embroidered vest, red silk stockings, and yellow boots of Morocco leather, not really boots, nor yet shoes, but a sort of a cross between a shoe and a moccasin, which cost him the extravagant sum of twenty francs, half a month's pay. On his head was perched the conventional red Tunisian fez, with an inordinately long tassel dangling down behind, as effective a _chasse-mouches_ as one would want. This was not all. A dollar watch, with a silver-gilt chain and fob of quaint Kabyle workmanship,--worth probably twenty times the value of the watch,--completed his personal adornment. As an accessory, Habib became the proud possessor of a visiting-card, which, more than all else, was successful in impressing his confrères and the neighbouring shopkeepers with his importance. They imagined him, doubtless, a sort of seneschal or majordomo of some kingdom in little. Habib bore his honours lightly and gaily. There was not much fault to be found with him, simply from the fact that he had so little to do that he would be a numskull indeed if he could not, or would not, perform it well. He did perform his duties well, ordinarily, but the first time a good round day's work fell to his share, such as cleaning down the walls and mopping up the whole area of marbled floor, he rendered an account for the services of "_quatre juifs, quarante sous_." Forty cents for the services of four house-cleaners for a day is not dear, and Habib was not even of the same faith as his workmen, so the _châtelain_ paid it gracefully in the next week's account which Habib rendered. [Illustration: _Habib's Visiting Card_] Habib's bookkeeping was as original as himself. His accounts for the house-cleaning week read as follows: Quatre juifs 2 fcs. Lait en boite (pour le matou) 1 Gâteau de miel (pour la gazelle) 60 centimes Divers (tortue, etc.) 1 20 ------------------- Totaux à payer de suite 4 fcs. 80 centimes How he made both ends meet with the sum total of his modest budget was ever a problem with our friend. The city-bred Arab has the reputation of being unreliable in money matters, but certainly the hidden graft lying dormant in four francs eighty centimes can not be very great after paying two francs for four Jews, a franc for condensed milk for the cat, sixty centimes for honey-cakes for the gazelle, and a franc twenty centimes for sundry and diverse odds and ends like soap, metal-polish, barley for the turtle, etc. Habib was certainly a good thing! Habib's chief pride in the house and its belongings was for the cat, the gazelle, and the turtle, each of them gifts from the same amiable youth. Perhaps he had no place to keep them himself, and in this he saw an opportunity of getting them housed and fed free. Habib may have been wiser than he looked, but at any rate here the menagerie came to be installed as proper and picturesque occupants of this marble palace of other days. The cat is a useful and even necessary animal in any home, and its virtues have often been praised. A gazelle is purely decorative, but as agreeable and affectionate a little beast as ever lived. The turtle catches flies and lives in a pool of the fountain, and is also useful in keeping down microbes which might otherwise be disseminated. This array of live stock ought to be an adjunct of every house with a fountain courtyard, and if it can be had on the terms as supplied by the faithful Habib, not forgetting the small cost of the animals' keep, why so much the better. The particular quarter where our friend's house was situated was indeed the most quaintly variegated one in all Tunis. At Bab-Souika one turned sharply and entered a veritable labyrinth of narrow, twisting streets, never arriving at the great gate of the house by the same itinerary. Sometimes you arrived directly, and sometimes you circled and tacked like a ship at sea. From the Place Bab-Souika itself, whence radiated a burning fever of the Arab life of all the ten tribes, it was but the proverbial stone's throw, by a bird's-eye view from the roof-top terrace, though by the twisting lanes and alleys it was perhaps a kilometre. There was an occultism and Orientalism here that was to be seen nowhere else in North Africa, and for "mystery" it beat that of the desert, over which poets and novelists rave, all to pieces. No one but an Arab and a Mussulman could ever be a part of that wonderful kaleidoscopic chapter of life. We poor dogs of infidels can only stand by and wonder. All night long the Place Bab-Souika was as animated as in the day. It was fringed with many Moorish cafés, interspersed with the _échoppes_ of the Tunisian Jews, who push in everywhere, and make a living off of pickings that others think too trivial for their talents. A few boulevard-like trees flank a group of transformed and remodelled Arab houses and give a suspicion of modernity, but the general aspect throughout is Oriental and mediæval. A regular ant-hill of hiving humanity: Moors, Arabs, Turks, Jews, Soudanese, and Touaregs, all with costumes as varied as their origins. Here a creamy-white burnous jostles with a baggy blue _pantalon_, and the cowled nodding head of a Bedouin rests on the shoulder of an equally somnolent red-fezzed soldier of the Bey. The more wide-awake members of the hangers-on of the cafés enliven the scene with singing and even dancing, perhaps with some Tunisian dancing-girl as a partner. All is gay and scintillating as if it were the most gorgeous café of the Boulevard des Italiens. One and all of the merrymakers are richly costumed, with broidered vests and flowing robes of silk, and clattering silver ornaments and bouquets of flowers,--or a single flower stuck behind the ear, like the Spaniard's cigarette. All blends into a wonderful fanfare of colour, and it was through this stage-setting our friend had to pass every night as he made his way from the European town below to his Arab house on the height. The Oriental, when he is making merry at a café, is wholly indifferent to the affairs of the workaday world, if he ever did occupy himself therewith. His point of view is peculiarly his own; we outsiders will never appreciate it, study the question as we may. Besides the Moorish cafés, the fruit and sweetmeat sellers seem also to do as large a midnight traffic as that of the day. The after-theatre supper of the Arab, if he were given to that sort of thing, would not be difficult of consummation here. The Arab old-clo' dealer is another habitué of the neighbourhood. "_T'meniach! ra sourdis! T'meniach 'ra T'meniach!_" This is the Arab's old clothes cry. And for a hundred sous, paid over on the Place Bab-Souika, you can be transformed into a Bedouin from head to heel,--with a ragged burnous full of holes and a pair of very-much-down-at-the-heel _babouches_ which have already trod off untold kilometres on the Tunisian highway and are good for many more. There is another class of ambulant merchant who is a frequenter of this most animated of Tunis' native quarter. He deals in a better line of goods, in that his wares are new and not second-hand, though tawdry enough, many of them. If you wish you may buy--after appropriate and not to be avoided bargaining, at which you will probably come off second best--a collaret of false sequins, an Arab blanket, or a Turkish ink-pot, which may not be old in spite of its looks. All these things are made to order to-day, after the ancient models and styles, like the cotton goods of India with palm-leaf designs, which are mostly made in Manchester. "_Veux-tu un foulard, Sidi, un beau foulard de Tounis? Vois achète-moi ce poignard Kabyle! Tiens, veux-tu ce bracelet pour madame?_" You want none of these things, but you make out as if you did and accordingly you buy "something" before you are through, guiltily thinking you have taken advantage of the poor fellow in that you beat him down from fifteen francs to five for a foulard which cost him, probably, not more than thirty sous of some Israelite "_fournisseur_" in the _souks_. One day Habib the Algerian would work no more. He had succumbed to a bad case of the wandering foot, though what brought it about, save the ennui of his position,--not enough work to do--our friend René never knew. It was doubtful if Habib knew himself. It was as if the termination of Habib's name had set him to thinking. Habib the Algerian! Why should he not travel a bit, as did these dogs of Christians who were overrunning his beloved land, to Algeria even, he who bore the name of the Algerian, though he had lived since his infancy beneath the shadow of Tunis' mosques. "_Où vas-tu?_" asked his employer, as Habib's bag and baggage were on the door-sill, a parcel of worldly goods now grown to some proportions, including a nickel alarm-clock, a phonograph, and an oil-stove. American products all of them. "_Moi? En Algérie!_" answered Habib in jerky, limpid French. "_Et pourquoi?_" "_Pourquoi? Pour rien. Pour aller. Chimin-di-fi andar plus vite que chevil. Hou! Hou! Hou!_" he continued, attempting to imitate the wheezy locomotives of the Bôna-Guelma line, which link Tunisia with Algeria, his eyes meanwhile expressing the joy of an infant. The travel fever was on with Habib; it had struck in, even as it had before now with some of the rest of us. That was the last that was seen or heard of Habib the Algerian, except that we caught a glimpse of him at the railway station as he was pushing insistently into a third-class carriage already full to overflowing with other wandering, huddling Arabs, who, too, thought with Habib that the "_chimin-di-fi andar plus vite que li chivil. Hou! Hou! Hou!_" This was probably but the beginning of another chapter of Habib's history; but now that he was gone he had passed from mind. But he had left the gazelle, the cat, the goldfish and the turtle behind. It was as if a part of the old house itself had been wrenched away. Habib had become a part and parcel of the whole machine, and in spite of his shortcomings he fitted in with things in a marvellously competent manner. No other soft-footed Arab could quite take his place, and many were tried. The cat ate the goldfish, the turtle mysteriously disappeared up or down a spout, and the gazelle died of a broken heart, or because of the irregularity of the supply of honey-cakes. With such sad memories our friend René had to desert his "_maison arabe_," where he had lived so comfortably, and go and live in a flat in the new town below, where the view from the windows was comprised principally of a _kiosque_ of the Paris boulevard variety, a row of taximètre cabs, and the seven-story façade of another apartment house on the other side of the street. There is a fine old Arab house at Tunis, midway between the "Residency" and the Kasba, still for rent, if any there be who think they would care to undertake the struggle of keeping it running in proper order. It has many things in its favour, and some which are manifestly against it, the chief of these last being the difficulty of solving the servant question. It is the same question which ruffles householders the world over, in Tunis as in Toledo, in Kairouan as in Kalamazoo. CHAPTER XXIV THE GLORY THAT ONCE WAS CARTHAGE Carthage, redolent of the memories of Dido, of Æneas, of Hannibal, of Cato, of Scipio, and a thousand other classic souvenirs of history, is the chief sight for tourists in the neighbourhood of Tunis. All we have learned to expect is there, deformed ruins and relics of a grandeur long since past. The aqueduct which plays so grand a rôle in the opera of "Salambo" is there, but it is manifestly Roman and not Punic. Thus did Flaubert nod, as indeed did Homer before him. Carthage, as Carthage is to-day, is not much. It is but a vast, conglomerate mass of fragmentary ruins, a circus whose outlines can scarcely be traced, a very much ruined amphitheatre, various ground-plans of great villas of other days, the cisterns of the Romans, some Punic tombs, and the two ports of Carthage around which history, romance and legend have woven many tales. The rest is modern, the great basilica of St. Louis, the palaces of the Bey, and the princes of his family, the villas of the foreign consuls, the seminary of the White Fathers and a hotel or two. That is Carthage to-day. Thus the history and romance of a past day must supply the motive for the visitors' emotions, for there is little else save the magnificent site and the knowledge that one is treading historic ground. The tract might well have been made a sort of national park, and kept inviolate; but it has been given over to the land exploiter like Tottenham Park and South New York, and the overflow from Tunis is already preëmpting choice plots. Through the gates of the Venice of Antiquity, all the wealth of the East was brought to be stored in the warehouses of the ports of Carthage, but to-day all this is only an historic memory. The palaces and warehouses have disappeared, and the two mud-puddle "ports" have silted up into circular pools which glisten in the African sunlight like mirrors of antiquity,--which is exactly what they are. Carthage, or what is left of it, is a dozen or fifteen kilometres from Tunis, by a puffing little steam-tram (to be supplanted some day by an electric railway, which will be even less in keeping). [Illustration: _The Ports of Carthage_] One gets off at La Malga, and, in a round of half a dozen kilometres "does" Carthage, Sidi-bou-Saïd, and La Marsa in the conventional manner in half a day. If he, or she, is an artist or an archæologist, he, or she, spends a day, a week, or a month, and then will have cause to return if opportunity offers. According to tradition the Tyrians founded Carthage in 813 B.C., being conducted thither by Elissa, a progressive young woman, the sister of Pygmalion. _Cart-hadchat_ was its original name, which the Romans evolved into _Carthago_, signifying "the new city," that is to say, probably, the "_New Tyre_." Owing to its proximity to Sicily, to all the vast wealth of Africa, and the undeveloped and unexplored shores of the Western Mediterranean, Carthage was bound to prosper. As Tyre fell into decadence, and the Greeks menaced the Phoenicians in the East, Carthage came to its own very rapidly, not by a mushroom growth, as with new-made cities of to-day, but still rapidly for its epoch. The riches of the people of Carthage became immense, every one prospered, and its merchants trafficked with the Soudan and sailed the seas to Britain, while Hanno, the Carthaginian admiral, first discovered and explored the full extent of the West African Atlantic coast. In the first Punic war Carthage disputed the ownership of Sicily with Rome, but without success; though indeed she was able to hold the gateway of the Western Mediterranean, and thus remain mistress of the trade with the outside world. With the second Punic war Carthage lost further prestige, and her military and maritime strength was reduced to such an extent that her hitherto vast African Empire was restricted to the city itself and a closely bounding suburban area. Even then Carthage ranked as the richest city in the world, with a population of 700,000 souls. In the year 146 B.C. the Romans rose again and gave Carthage a sweeping knock-out blow so far as its independence went. Cæsar and Augustus came, and the city, peopled anew, was restored to something resembling its former magnificent lines and made the capital of the Roman African Province. A commercial city, wealthy, luxurious, gay, and cultivated, it became, next to Rome, the first Latin city of the Occident. Christianity was introduced in the early centuries, and through the gateway of Carthage was spread over all North Africa. Religious partisanship was as rife and violent here as elsewhere, and Tertullian tells how, in the great circus amphitheatre, whose scantly outlined ruins are still to be seen as one leaves the railway at La Malga, Saint Perpétua and her companions were put to death by ferocious beasts, and how, in 258 A.D., Saint Cyprien, who was bishop at the time, was martyred. The Vandals captured the city in 439 A.D., and the Byzantine powers under Justinian's general, Belisarius, got it all back again in 533 A.D., though they held it but a hundred and sixty years. The city finally succumbed, in the seventh century, to Hassan-ben-Nomane, who destroyed it completely. How completely this destruction was one may judge by a contemplation of the ruins to-day. The Tunisians and the Italians have used the site as a quarry for centuries, and Pisa's cathedral was constructed in no small part from marbles and stone from glorious Carthage. Dido, Hannibal, and Salambo have passed away, and with them the glory of Carthage. To-day tourists come and go, the "White Fathers" exploit their vineyards, and the promoters sell land in this new subdivision to the profit, the great profit--of some one. The Punic remains at Carthage, the tombs and other minor constructions, are of course few (the Musée Lavigerie on the height now guarding all the discoveries of value). But the fragments of the great civic buildings of the Romans are everywhere scattered about. These ruins cannot even be detailed here, and the plan herewith will serve as a much better guide than a mere perfunctory catalogue. Various erudite historical accounts and guide-books have been written concerning this historic ground; shorter works, of more interest to the tourist, can be had in the Tunis book-shops. The discoveries of the last ten years on the site of the ancient Carthage have been many and momentous. They are of intense interest, revealing a people who possessed a far higher development than had been supposed, and who were, contrary to the general belief in modern times, something more than mere traffickers and merchants, and who evolved an art of their own, a unique and fascinating blend of the ideals of the Semitic and the Greek. Our knowledge of the Phoenicians is still [Illustration: CARTHAGE] shadowy and fragmentary; but the work conducted by the "White Fathers" of Carthage, under the direction of Père Delattre, has provided at least a foundation for further researches and comparisons, which no doubt will soon be undertaken. The recent discoveries of Carthage may well be described as fascinating. Take for example the sarcophagus of a Phoenician priestess unearthed in 1902. It is believed that she lived in the third century B.C. The coloured marble sarcophagus is of the best period of Greek workmanship. A Greek carved this tomb, no doubt, but in the representation of the priestess we have a figure of a type unlike any Greek art known,--a type of beauty delightfully strange, a countenance of a noble loveliness and charm. A sympathetic French _archéologue_ puts it in the following words: "The brilliancy of colour and strangeness of attire, far from detracting from the dignity of her presence, seem to enhance the noble simplicity and reserve suggested by the figure. A rare and lovely personality seems to have been the inspiration of the sculptor. She was not a Greek, nor an Egyptian, and the Semitic features are hardly recognizable. The dove in the figure's right hand may well be taken as a symbol of her own gentle beauty and sweetness. Surely this is a pure type of Phoenician womanhood. That majestic calm which is the outward and visible sign of the highest courage within comports well with the reputation of the women of Carthage, and their bearing in that terrible siege which tried them unto death." This is the sort of sentiment which still hovers over Carthage; but to sense it to the full, one must know the city's history in detail, and not merely by a hurried half a day round, out from Tunis and back between breakfast and dinner. Another recent find is the unearthed Roman palace built up over an old Punic burial-place. Luxurious, though of diminutive proportions, this palace, or villa, possesses a pavement in mosaic worthy to rank with that classic example of the Villa Hadrian at Tivoli. It may be seen to-day at the Musée, and is one of the things to be noted down by even the hurried traveller. _En route_ from Tunis to Bizerta, thirty-five kilometres from the former city and about the same from Carthage, is the ancient Utica, founded by the Phoenicians centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, and which, after the destruction of Carthage, became the first city of Africa. [Illustration: _ANCIENT UTICA_] To-day the domain of Bou-Chateur, belonging to a M. Chabannes, contains all that remains above ground of this vassal city of Carthage. Once a seaport of importance, like Carthage, it gradually succumbed to a sort of dry rot and is no more. The remains existing to-day are extensive, but very fragmentary. Only bare outlines are here and there visible; but from them some one has been able to construct a plan of the city on something approaching its former lines. Immediately neighbouring upon Carthage is Sidi-bou-Saïd, easily the most picturesque village around Tunis, if one excepts the low-lying fishing village of La Goulette, better known by its Italian name of La Goletta. La Goulette itself played an important rôle in the sixteenth century. Charles V occupied it in 1535, and it became a fortified stronghold of the Spanish; but in spite of the fact that it was further fortified by Don Juan of Austria, after the battle of Lepanto, it was captured by the Turks under Sinan-Pacha the following year after a memorable siege. For the devout, La Goulette is of great interest from the fact that Saint Vincent de Paul was a captive here in the seventeenth century. The little _indigène_ village of Sidi-bou-Saïd sits on the promontory called Cap Carthage and has a local colour all its own. It is purely "native," the land agent not yet having marked it for his own. The panorama of the snow-white walls and domes and turrets of the little town, the red-rock base on which it sits, the blue sea offshore, and the blue sky overhead, is a wonderful sight to the person of artistic tastes. Certainly its like is not in Africa, if elsewhere along the shores of the Mediterranean. Beyond Sidi-bou-Saïd is La Marsa, without character or history, save that the Bey's summer palace and the country residences of the foreign consuls are here. The site is delightful and looks seaward in most winning fashion. On the hillsides round about is grown the grape from which is made the celebrated "_vin blanc de Carthage_," as much an accompaniment of the shrimps of the Lac de Tunis as is the "vin de Cassis" of _bouillabaisse_, or Chablis of oysters. In the neighbourhood are numerous caves, forming the ancient Jewish necropolis of Carthage under Roman domination. Due north from Tunis a matter of nearly a hundred kilometres is Bizerta, now a French Mediterranean naval base as formidable, or at any rate as useful, as Gibraltar. It was the Hippo-Diarrhytus of the ancients, whose inhabitants were at continual warfare with those of Carthage. Under the Empire it was a Roman colony, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries became one of the refuges of the Moors expelled from Spain. The French occupation has made of Bizerta and its lake a highly active and prosperous neighbourhood, where formerly a scant population of the mixed Mediterranean races gave it only the dignity of a fishing village. It is very picturesque, its waterside, its canals, and its _quais_, but the primitiveness of other days is giving way before the moves in the game of peace and war, until everywhere one hears the bustle and groan of ships and shipping, and sees clouds of smoke piling up into the cloudless sky from the gaping chimneys of machine-shops on shore and torpedo boats and battle-ships on the water. It is old Bizerta rubbing shoulders with new Bizerta at every step. Bizerta is now the most important strategic point in the Mediterranean. Gibraltar is covered by the Spanish fortifications at Algeçiras and Ceuta, and Malta is merely a rock-bound fortress that could be starved out in a month. The Mediterranean is French,--a French lake if you will,--as it always has been, and as it always will be. Tripoli in Barbary and Morocco, when they come under the French flag, as they are bound to do, will only accentuate the fact. CHAPTER XXV THE BARBARY COAST The real Barbary coast of the romantic days of the corsairs was the whole North African littoral. Here the pirates and corsairs had their lairs, their inlet harbours known only to themselves and their _confrères_, who as often pillaged and murdered among themselves as they did among strangers. To-day all this is changed. It was the government of the United States and Decatur, as much as any other outside power, who drove the Barbary pirates from the seas. Under the reign of Louis XIV Duquesne was charged to suppress the piracies of the Tripolitan coasts. The celebrated admiral--it was he who also gave the original name to the site of the present city of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela--got down to business once the orders were given, sighted eight of the Barbary feluccas and gave them chase. They took refuge in the Sultan's own port of Chio, but, with the French close on their heels, they were captured forthwith, and the Pacha of Tripoli was forced without more ado to make a treaty containing many onerous conditions. The corsairs gave back a ship which they had taken, and all the French who had fallen prisoners in their hands and who were virtually held in slavery. The admirals of those days had a way of doing things. After the French came the English. Blake, the British admiral, who never trod the deck of a vessel until he was fifty, did his part to sweep these fierce Mediterranean pirates of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli from the seas. The United States Navy did the rest. This is history; let those who are further interested look it up. The North African coast-line from Tunis to Tangier has the aspect of much of the rest of the Mediterranean littoral, but that strip sweeping around from Cap Carthage to Tripoli in Barbary, the shores of the great Tripolitan gulf, may still furnish the setting for as fierce a piratical tale as can be conceived,--only the pirates are wanting. This low-lying ground south of Tunis is not a tourist-beaten ground; it is almost unknown and unexplored to the majority of winter travellers, who include only Algiers, Biskra, and Tunis in their African itinerary. South from Tunis, the first place of importance is Hammamet, an embryotic watering-place for the Tunisians, called by the natives "the city of pigeons." [Illustration: _The Sud-Tunisien_] This up-and-coming station on the route which binds "Numidia" with "Africa" is possessed of a remarkable source of fresh-water supply. The Romans in ancient times exploited this same source, and built a monumental arcade on the site. All vestiges of this architectural work have however disappeared. At Nabeul, a few kilometres away, one gets a curious glimpse of native life interspersed with that of the Jews. Mosques, _souks_, and synagogues give an Oriental blend as lively in colouring and variety as will satisfy the most insistent. Nabeul's industry consists chiefly in the fabrication of pottery,--a fragile, crude, but lovely pottery, which travellers carry afar, and which is the marvel of all who contemplate it. The enterprise is of French origin, but the labour which produces these quaint jugs, vases, and platters (which are not dear in price) is purely native. The potter's thumb marks are over all. The pieces have not been rubbed and burnished down, and accordingly the collector knows he has got the real thing, and not a German or Belgian clay-thrower's imitation. Nabeul was the ancient Neapolis, which was destroyed by the Romans at the same time that Carthage came under the domination of Augustus. South again from Nabeul, by road or rail, for the railroad still continues another hundred kilometres, and one is at Sousse. Change cars for Kairouan, the Holy City of Tunisia! Sousse is an important and still growing port with as mixed a population as one will see in any Mediterranean town of twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The French number perhaps twelve hundred, the Italians three or four thousand, and the Maltese as many as the French. The rest are Arabs; you might call them seafaring Arabs rather than desert Arabs, for they are as often on the sea as off it. The _souks_ of Sousse are famous. There is no longer a great Berber or Byzantine city closed in with walls with a gate on each cardinal face; all this has disappeared in the march of progress; but the Arab town, everywhere in Algeria and Tunisia, is a feature of the life of the times, even though it has been encroached upon by European civilization. The _souks_, or markets, are here more bizarre and further removed from our twentieth-century ideas of how business is, and should be, done than in any other mixed European-Mussulman centre of population. In the Souk des Herbages are sold roots and herbs of all sorts, pimento peppers, henna, garance, dried peas, and other vegetables. The Souk des Arabes holds the rug and carpet sellers, the armourers, the weavers of the cloth of the burnous, tailors, etc. In the Souk des Juifs, a dark, ill-smelling, tiny nest of narrow corridors, are found the jewelry makers and the broiderers. This and more of the same kind is Sousse. In addition there are the brilliant variegated sails of the Italian and Maltese fishing-boats, the _dhows_ of the Arabs, and all the miscellaneous riffraff which associates itself mysteriously with a great seaport. Sousse is an artist's paradise, and its hotels are excellent,--if one cares for sea food and eternal mutton and lamb. The Kasba of Sousse sits high on the hillside overlooking the Arab town and the _souks_. A long swing around the boulevards brings one to the same culminating point. A Phoenician acropolis stood here before the eleventh century, and the remains of a pagan temple to-day bear witness to the strong contrast of the manners of yesterday and to-day. The great signal-tower of the citadel is a reconstruction of a pharo called Khalef-el-Feta, which stood here in 1068. Whatever may have been the value of this fortification in days gone by, it looks defective enough to-day with its hybrid mass of nondescript structures. At all times, and from all points of view, it is imposing and spectacular, and is the dominant note of every landscape round about. Its angularities are not beautiful, nor even solid-looking, and the whole thing is stagy; but for all that it is imposing and above all grim and suggestive of unspeakable Turkish atrocities that may have been carried on in its immediate neighbourhood. Monastir is a near neighbour of Sousse, twenty odd kilometres away, over as fine a roadway as one may see anywhere. Automobilists take notice! The Hôtel de Paris at Monastir has a "sight" in its dining-hall, which alone is worth coming to see, aside from the excellent breakfast which you get for fifty sous. This apartment was formerly the great reception-hall of the Arab governors of the province, and as such becomes at once an historic shrine and a novelty. Not a town in Algeria or Tunisia has so quaint a vista as that looking down Monastir's "Grande Rue." It's not very ancient, nor squalidly picturesque, but somehow it is characteristically quaint. And it "composes" wonderfully well, for either the artist's canvas or the kodaker's film. Sousse and Monastir should be omitted from no artist's itinerary which is supposed to include unspoiled sketching grounds. Kairouan, the Mohammedan Holy City of Tunisia, lies sixty kilometres southwest from Sousse. Kairouan dates only from the Mussulman conquest, having been founded by the propagator of Islam in Africa, Okba-ben-Nafi (50 Heg. 671 A.D.). Kairouan became the capital of what is now Tunisia in the ninth century, and Tunis itself was its servitor. Up to this day Kairouan has guarded its religious supremacy as the Holy City of the Eastern Moghreb, and accordingly is a place of pilgrimage for the faithful of all North Africa. The French occupied the city in 1881 without resistance on the part of the inhabitants. And to-day it is a live, wide-awake important centre of affairs, besides being a Mohammedan shrine of the very first rank. The native city is entirely free from French innovations and remains almost as it was centuries ago. The mosques and the native city are all-in-all for the stranger within the gates, particularly the mosques, for here, of all places in Tunisia, their doors are opened to the "dogs of infidels" of overseas. But you must remove your shoes as you enter, or put on _babouches_ over your "demi-Americain" boots, which you bought in Marseilles before leaving France (poor things, by the way; one suspects they were made in England, not in America at all). Of first importance are the mosques of Sidi-Okba, the "Grande Mosquée;" and of Sidi-Sahab, the "Mosquée du Barbier." The Djama Sidi-Okba, or "Grande Mosquée," is a grandly imposing structure with a massive square minaret of the regulation Tunisian variety. Within it is of the classic type, with seventeen aisles and eight great thoroughfares crossing at right angles. It is a cosmopolitan edifice in all its parts, having been variously rebuilt and added to with the march of time, the earliest constructive details being of the third century of the Hegira, the ninth of our era. The _minbar_, or pulpit, the _faïences_, the ceilings and the best of Hispano-Arabic details are here all of a superlative luxuriance and mystery. The "Mosquée du Barbier" ("Sidi-Sahab") is built over the sepulchre of one of the companions of the Prophet himself. Legend says that he always carried with him three hairs of the beard of the Prophet. These were buried with him, of course, but whether that was his sole recommendation for immortality the writer does not know. Less imposing than [Illustration: _In a Kairouan Mosque_] the "Grande Mosquée," this latter is quite as elaborately beautiful in all its parts. The carved wooden ceiling, the rugs and carpets of rare weaves, the stuccos and the _faïences_, are all very effective and seemingly genuine, though here and there (as in the tomb of Sidi-Sahab) one sees the hand of the Renaissance Italian workman instead of that of the Moor. Kairouan has a special variety of _cafés chantants_ and _cafés dansants_, which is much more the genuine thing than those at Biskra or Tunis. Still south from Tunis, further south even than Sousse, Kairouan, and Sfax, lies a wonderful, undeveloped and little known country of oases and _chotts_, the latter being great expanses of marshy land sometime doubtless arms of the sea itself. The oases of Gabès and Tozeur are called the _pays des dattes_, for here flourish the finest date-palms known to the botanical world; while the oases themselves take rank as the most populous and beautiful of all those of the great African desert. The _chotts_ are great depressions in the soil and abound in the region lying between Touggourt and Biskra in Algeria, and Gabès in Tunisia. The _chotts_ are undoubtedly dried-out beds of some long disappeared river, lake or bay, and their crystallized surfaces are to-day veritable death-traps to the stranger who wanders away from the beaten caravan tracks which cross them. The _chotts_ are very ancient, and an account of a caravan which was lost in one of them was published by a Spanish historian of the ninth century. Herodotus, too, makes mention of a Lake Triton, probably the Chott-Nefzaoua of to-day, which communicated with the Syrte, now the Gulf of Gabès. The "Sud-Tunisien," as all this vast region is known, is all but an unknown land to the tourist. Sousse and Sfax are populous, busy maritime cities, largely Europeanized, but still retaining an imprint quite their own. Kairouan, just westward from Sousse, where the railway ends, is the chief tourist shrine of Tunis outside Tunis itself and Carthage. But beyond, except for an occasional stranger who would hunt the gazelle, the moufflon, or the wild boar, none ever penetrate, save those who are engaged in the development of the country, and the military, who are everywhere. Between Sousse and Sfax is El Djem, the Thysdrus of the time of Cæsar, and afterwards one of the richest cities of North Africa. Gordian, the proconsul, was proclaimed emperor of the colony in 238 A.D., and the present grand old ruin of an amphitheatre, a great oval like the Colosseum at Rome, served many times as a fortification against Berber and Vandal hordes, besides performing its conventional functions. El Djem and its marvellous arena, nearly five hundred feet in length and four hundred in width, is one of the surprises of the Tunisian itinerary. [Illustration] From Sfax, which is linked with Sousse by a service of public automobiles, another apologetic loose end of railway takes birth and runs west to Gafsa, a military post of importance and not much else; a favourite spot for the French army board to exile refractory soldiers. They leave them here to broil under a summer sun and work at road-making in the heat of the day. After that they are less refractory, if indeed they are not dead of the fever. CHAPTER XXVI THE OASIS OF TOZEUR One arrives at Tozeur via Sfax and Gafsa and the light narrow-gauge railway belonging to the company exploiting the phosphate mines. Beyond Gafsa the line runs to Metlaoui, peopled only by six hundred phosphate workers of the mines, a mixed crew of Arabs, Sicilians, and Maltese, speaking a veritable _jargon des ours_, which nobody but themselves can understand. It is strange, this little industrial city of the desert, but it is unlovely, consisting only of little whitewashed cubes of houses, a school-house, a miniature church and mosque, and a few miserable little shops. Gafsa is the chief metropolis of the region of the _chotts_. It is called by the Arabs the pearl of the Djérid, and is a military post, and the _bled_, or market town, for untold thousands of desert nomads. The same word _bled_, when used by the city dweller, means the desert. Such are the inconsistencies of Arab nomenclature. They almost equal our own. Tozeur is reached from Gafsa by any one of a half dozen means. On foot, on bicycle,--if you will, by automobile,--if you have the courage, by diligence, _calèche_, or on horse, donkey, or camel back. If by either of the latter means, you will of course be accompanied by a grinning blackamoor who will respond to the name of Mohammed, and be thoroughly useless except to prod the animal now and then. You and he will understand each other by sign language, or by what might be called phonetic French, and you will get on very well. Tozeur is eighty odd kilometres from Gafsa over a "_route carrossable_," as the French describe a carriage road,--sandy and rutty in places; but still a road which ranks considerably higher than most of those of Ohio or Indiana. There are no means of obtaining provisions, or even water, _en route_, so the journey must be made either in a day, or arrangements made for camping out overnight. With a good guide the journey might preferably be made at night, for a nocturnal ramble in the desert is likely to awaken emotions in the sentimentally inclined which will be something unique among their previous experiences. An Arab horse or mule will think nothing of doing sixty kilometres between sunrise and sunset, but if a _calèche_ is to be one's mode of conveyance, thirty-six hours is none too long to allow for the journey from Gafsa to Tozeur. The high-class Arab professes a contempt for the donkey or the mule, though this indeed is no part of his creed, for we must not ignore that it was a donkey that the Prophet most loved among beasts. For the masses who have passed the _bourriquet_ stage, the mule is the beast of burden par excellence. The Bey of Tunis, when he takes his promenades abroad, has a team of six mules attached to his band-wagon coach, and superb and distinguished-looking beasts they are; but the desert Sheik will have nothing but an Arabian horse, not the "charger shod with fire" of the drawing-room song, but a sound, sturdy, agile beast, a good goer and handsome to look upon. The _indigène's_ mule will amble along over a desert track fourteen or sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, carrying his human burden in the characteristic Arab saddle known as a _borda_, and scarcely seeming to feel the weight. The Arab is habitually kind to his beast of burden, at least he is no more cruel to him than most lighter coloured humanity, and not nearly as much so as the Sicilian and the Spaniard. [Illustration: _El Oued_] The little donkey to which the Prophet showed compassion was doubtless a contrary little beast at times; but, since he is reputed to have been able to go leagues and leagues without either eating or drinking, loaded with burdens at which a full-grown mule and horse had balked, the _bourriquet_ of the desert Arab must have had (and has) some undeniable virtues. Not often is his lot an unhappy one, and the strangling curb and bit and the resounding whacks from a spade or shovel, with which the sunny-faced Italian usually regales his four-footed friends, are seldom to be noted in North Africa. The Arab is voluntarily just towards all living things, and if he sometimes forgets himself, and gives his camel or his donkey a vicious prod, he, perhaps, has had provocation, for both are contrary beasts at times. _En route_ one passes many caravans, fifty or a hundred camels in a bunch, half as many horses and mules, a score of donkeys, and a troop of women, children, and dogs bringing up the rear. Most of them are making for Kairouan or Gabès, coming from Algeria through the gateways of El Oued and Ourgala. The camels march in Indian file, loaded down with bales and barrels, a hundred, a hundred and fifty and more kilos to each. No other means of transportation is so practicable for the commerce of the desert, nor will be until some one invents a broad-tired automobile that won't sink in the sand. The camel's foot, by the way, doesn't sink in the sand, and that is why he is more of a success in the desert than any other carrier. When the ideal automobile for the desert comes, the ship of the desert will disappear, as the horse is disappearing from the cities and towns of Europe and America. Intermingled with the caravans are occasional flocks of sheep, black-faced sheep and rams, with two, three, and even four horns apiece, and fat, wobbly tails of extraordinary size, the characteristic, it seems, of the sheep of the Sud-Tunisien. Like the hump and the six stomachs of the camel, this fat caudal appendage of the Tunisian sheep is a sort of reserve supply of energy, and when it is dry picking along the route, they live on their fat. Other animals often starve under like conditions. Long before Tozeur is reached one wonders if the guide has not lost his bearings. Probably he hasn't, but it is all like the trackless ocean to the man in the saddle, and the mule or donkey or camel doesn't seem to care in the least which way his head is turned so long as he is not made to push forward at full speed. If one encounters a native, the guide being momentarily hidden behind a sand-dune, most likely a _bonjour_ or a _salut_ will be forthcoming; but that is all. The native's French vocabulary is often small, and in these parts he is quite as likely to know as much of Italian, Maltese or Hebrew. One that we encountered looked particularly intelligent, so after the formal courtesies of convention, we risked: "Tozeur? loin?" "Là-bas." "Combien de temps?" "Il en faut." "Quelle distance?" "Au bout." Our interrogatory was not a success. Another time we should trust to our guide and bury suspicion. The Arab has some admirable traits, but he often does not carry things to a finish, not even for his own benefit, and his acquaintance with French is apt to be limited and his conversation laconic. The Oriental proverb on the life of the nomad suits the Arab to-day as well as it ever did. _Mieux vaut être assis que debout,_ _Couché qu' assis,_ _Mort que couché._ Finally a blue line of haze appears on the horizon, something a little more tangible than anything seen before, unless indeed it prove to be a mirage. If not a mirage, most likely it is Tozeur, or rather the palms surrounding that sad, but interesting centre of civilization. "Tozeur?" you ask again, of Mohammed this time, and that faithful Arab with a curt assent breathes the words "_C'est bien ça_." Mohammed is learned, has mingled with the world, and is suspicious that your confidence in his powers is not all that he would have wished. "Well, here we are," he thinks, "now what have you got to say?" "_C'est bien ça: Tozeur! Oui! oui! Je n'ai trompé pas jamais, moi, Mohammed._" By this time he has thought it all out and is really mad, but his mood soon passes and he becomes as before, taciturn, faithful and willing. The Arab doesn't bear malice for trivial things. By contrast with the houses of Kairouan, Sousse and Sfax, which cut the blue of the sky with a dazzling line of white, Tozeur is but a low, rambling mud-coloured town of native-made bricks called _tobs_. The impression from [Illustration: _A Street in Tozeur_] afar is one singularly sad and gloomy, for the architectural scheme of the builders of Tozeur is more akin to that of the Soudanese than to that of the Berber or Arab. In its detailed aspect the architecture of Tozeur is remarkably appealing, quaint, decorative, and founded on principles which the Roman builders of old spread to all corners of the known world of their day. This may be the evolution of the architecture of Tozeur or it may not, but certainly the flat-brick construction is wonderfully like that of the baths and cisterns of the Romans. Tozeur itself is melancholy, but its situation is charming and contrastingly interesting to all who hitherto have known only the Arabe-Mauresque architecture of the cities of the littoral, or the Roman ruins of the dead cities of Lambessa, Timgad and Tebessa. The little garrison which the French planted here some years ago has gone, and only a few European functionaries remain, those in control of the _impôt_, a doctor and an innkeeper, who doubtless means well, but who has a most inadequate establishment. And this in spite of the fact that Tozeur is the capital of the Djérid. The Djérid itself is a great expansive region between the plateau steppes and the desert proper. The natives are Berbers who have become what the French call _Arabisé_, though many of their traditions seem to be paganly Roman rather than Mussulman. The hotel accommodations of Tozeur are endurable, but as before said they are inadequate. Travellers are rare in this desert oasis, and two or three sleeping-rooms scantily furnished--a bed, a chair and a wash-basin--are the extent of the resources of Mme. Besson's apologetic little hotel. Tozeur's market is a mere alley of inverted V-shaped huts of reed, wherein are sold--after much solemn bargaining and drinking of coffee--all the small wants of the desert Arab, such as a morsel of town-baked bread, hobnails for his shoes, a piece of tanned leather--with the fur on--with which to make a new sole, a hank of thread, a tin pot or pan, or a bandanna handkerchief--which however must have stamped upon its border some precept from the Koran. The Arab's personal wants are not great, and as he almost invariably carries his worldly goods about with him they are accordingly not bulky. Our only diversion at Tozeur was watching an hysterical fête or pilgrimage to the neighbouring tomb of a marabout who died in recent years richly endowed with sanctity. The history of this holy man was told us as follows: This man, Alfaoui, had lived all his life in Algeria, practising the virtues of the Koran so assiduously that he was reckoned by his friends and neighbours as one of the good and great. Having taken too active a part in the insurrection of 1871, when the whole country--except Kabylie--was ablaze with sedition, he fled precipitately from Algeria and settled with his goods and chattels at Tamerza in Tunisia, one of the oasis villages of Tozeur, arriving in time to great repute and respect among the people. Alfaoui's compact with Allah was not however so intimate but that he occasionally conspired against the French, who, in the eighties, came to occupy Tunisia, as they had Algeria fifty years before. His conspiracies were in a way harmless enough, and consisted principally in "doing" the French officials at every opportunity. He refused to pay his taxes, and advised his followers to do the same; he smuggled tobacco, firearms and matches, and trafficked in them among the natives, to the loss of a certain revenue to the fiscal authorities, who, when they finally ran him to earth _en flagrant délit_, found only some thousands of empty match boxes with English labels,--but made in Belgium nevertheless,--the kind of matches where you scratch three before you get one to burn, or as the French say of their own abominable _allumettes_, it takes a match to light a match. Alfaoui was tried and condemned by the French tribunal, and it was this ready-made "martyrdom by infidels" that caused the faithful roundabout to elevate the meddlesome Alfaoui the Algerian to the distinction of a marabout, and a house or _kouba_ was built for him entirely of brick taken from the sepulchres of a neighbouring cemetery. Thus are holy reputations made to order in the fanatical faith of the Mussulman. Alfaoui's followers to-day are many, and without knowing why they venerate him, thousands make the pilgrimage to his shrine, and wail and chant and weep and have a good time generally. The government says nothing. It fears nothing to-day, and since the Mussulman must have many and convenient shrines for the excesses of his devotion to the principles of the Koran, why that of a _contrebandier_ and agitator serves as well as any other and no harm done. The great date-palm plantations of Tozeur are watered by a complicated system of irrigating canals whose flood-gates are opened every morning by the authorities. A very deep spring gives an abundant supply of sweet, limpid water which runs in miniature rivulets around and through the tentacle-like roots of the Djérid's million palm-trees, bringing the means of livelihood and prosperity to a conglomerate population of thirty thousand souls. Thirty millions of kilogrammes of dates bring a considerable profit to the cultivator, even if a goodly share does go to the exploiter, the transportation company and the middleman. Four hundred thousand frances in taxes and duties are collected yearly, from this most fertile of all African date-growing regions. All this is something to think about and marvel at when one is threading his way slowly through the palisaded trunks of a grove of a million palm-trees. The Arab knows the value of dates as a food product, but it needed the European to exploit the industry profitably. The Arab's veneration for the date-palm is great, and he affectionately refers to it as "the tree which grows with its feet in the water and its head in the fire of the sky." There is another product of the palm-tree less beneficial to man, and that is a sort of wine or sap which is gathered much as the Mexican gathers _pulque_, or as the resin is sapped from the pine-tree. It's a soft, pleasant, somewhat sticky liquid, seemingly innocuous, but its after effects may be safely guaranteed as being of the "stone-fence" variety. The Arab, by tradition, is a temperate person in food and drink, but the European has taught him to drink white wine and he himself has copied the French and taken (in small numbers fortunately) to absinthe, and now he has got a ready-made distillery of _lagmi_ in every palm-tree. The government proposes some sort of control of this "moonshining," but the wheels of the law, like those of God, move slowly, and the seed of dissolution may yet be sown among the Arabs of Tozeur before the fiscal authorities find a way to levy a tax on _lagmi_. No one who ever saw the _indigène_ villages attached to a fertile Saharan oasis will fail to remark that in spite of the proximity of the cool, welcome shadow of the thick-growing palm-trees, the _adobé_ (_tob_) huts are invariably huddled together upon some blazing, baked spot of ground with not so much shelter from the sun's rays as is given by a flagpole. Why indeed is it so? The Arab may be like the Neapolitan in his contempt for those who walk or live in the shade, but certainly the sun-baked existence which most dwellers in Arab mud houses live for twelve months out of the twelve must be enervating and discouraging, or would be if the Arab ever felt the effects of heat and cold, which apparently he does not. Perhaps this is the explanation of the motive which prompts him to select his town sites where he does. The case is not so hopeless though; the palm-tree grows quickly; and a dozen years would transform the most dreary, monotonous Arab town of sun-cured mud walls and roofs into a garden city which would rival Paradise. Perhaps some day the "movement"--as we call the latest vogue in America and England--will strike North Africa, and then we shall have graded streets, lamp-posts on every corner and artificial lakes with goldfish in them. And then where will be the rude picturesqueness of the Arab town which charms us to-day? Tozeur is not a lovely town, even as African towns go, but it is interesting, comfortable, and accessible, after you have once got to Sfax and Gafsa. It is altogether a little bit of mediævalism which even the life of the Arab of to-day cannot change. And there is scarcely any evidence plainly visible to indicate that Tozeur is not living three centuries back in the past. The environs of Tozeur offer views of ravishing beauty to the artist or the more sentimentally inclined. From the height of the minaret of Ouled-Medjed one commands a view of the entire oasis of Degach, with here and there a clump of dismantled ruined habitations and on the horizon the illimitable, miraculous desert mirage. To the direct south is the great _chott_, so shallow that the trail to Gabès can cross it at its widest part. To the four cardinal points one frames his views of that marvellous African landscape; seen only at its best from within a horseshoe-arched window, the invariable ogive accompaniment of the true Arab replica of Moorish architecture. The view from the height of Tozeur's mosque is a replica of that of which Richepin sang. It is not Kipling, but it is good sentiment, nevertheless. "Loin, loin, toujours plus loin, la mer morte des sables S'étalait sans limite, et rien ne remuait Sur l'immobilité des flots infranchissables, Sur l'immobilité de l'air lourd et muet." Coming down to earth, and making our way gropingly back to Mme. Besson's humble rest house, a storm broke over our heads. It came with the suddenness of night; and sticks and stones and much sand, and hailstones as big as plover's eggs, fell through a suffocating stillness with blinding force. It was all over in a moment. It came and went like the characters of the stage, without announcement and without adieu, and Tozeur settled down again to its wonted calm. The _muezzin_ calls to prayer at sundown and night falls brusquely on the silent desert air as if an inky wave had engulfed all before it. THE END. Index _Abd-el-Kader_, 241, 250 _Adam, de l'Isle, Villiers_, 1 _Adam, the brothers_, 98 _Aeneas_, 389 Africa, the granary of, 309 The palm-trees of, 33 The wheat of, 32 Ain-Beïda, 352 Diligence from, to Tebessa, 352 Railway from Kenchela, to, 352 Ain-Séfra, 221 _Alfaoui, the Algerian_, 339, 340 Alger, "La Blanche," 245 Highest peak in, province of, 53 Province of, 25, 51, 53 Algeria, 9, 22, 23, 36, 37, 38, 42, 44, 56, 57, 64, 65, 67, 68, 76, 78, 91, 93, 98, 99, 107, 113, 135, 144, 147, 170, 173, 174, 176, 197, 198, 200, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 212, 213, 214, 215, 228, 232, 235, 241, 256, 262, 263, 264, 281, 283, 315, 330, 333, 403, 408, 411, 417, 423 Algeria, Agriculture in, 55, 56 Arab of the, 264, 337 Arab chiefs in, 147 Arab and Berber, population of, 43 Climate of, 50-51, 54 Commercial possibilities in, 46 Currency in, 45-46 Forçats of, the, 347 Glimpse of real countryside of, 259 Goum of, the, 206 Hebrew of, the, 142 Kabyles, the Auvergnats of, 282 Koubas of, 106 Native Arab soldiery, 203-208 Nomad Arab, 332 Negro café in, the, 312-314 Of to-day, 42-56 One of the richest agricultural lands, 31 Population of, 42-44 Railways of, 54-55, 72 Regular soldiery in, the, 199 Revenues of, 42 Romantic character in history of, 200 Routes Nationales of, 55 Spahis and Turcos of, 202 Taxes in, 34 Tax on wine, in, 48 Tobacco, a source of profit in, 47-48 Trade between, and France, 31 Wild beasts killed in, list of, 24 Wine industry of, 55-56 Winter in, 51 Algeria and Tunisia, 4, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23, 37 Arab town in, the, 406 Architecture of mosques in, 101 Barbary fig in, 33 Diligence of, 20-22 Divisions of native Mussulman population, 129 Foreign population in, 28 French policy in, 76 Horses seen in, 169 Immigration of Arab population of, 66 Jews in, 142-144 Marabout of, the, 90-91 Marabouts in, 92 Newcomers to, 193 Pilgrims from, 93 Ports of, 36 Roads of, 22 Sheiks of, 76 Story of, the, 4 Wines of, 34 Algerian, Arab horse, the, 171 Budget, the, 42 Coast, temperature on, 37-38 Gold coin, 45 Journal, account of divorce in, 161-163 Mountains, 288 Quick-lunch, 263 Wine, 35 Algiers, 1, 11, 12, 15, 17, 26, 37, 42, 44, 51, 67, 103, 105, 137, 138, 144, 164, 173, 178, 200, 212, 214, 228, 229, 231, 235, 238, 239, 240, 242, 252, 260, 264, 266, 273, 275, 281, 284, 288, 289, 290, 295, 299, 320, 328, 338, 359, 403 And beyond, 259-272 And its life, 247 Arabs of, the, 251 Arab town of, the, 249-250 Architectural charms, 248 Café d'Apollon in, 27 Environs of, 246 Grande Mosquée of, 246 Great White City, 245-258 Historical and romantic figures of, 254 Icosium of the Romans, the, 245 Jewesses of, 283 Kasba at, the, 245, 248, 249 Minarets of, 103 Mosque Marabout of Sidi-Brahim, at, 106 Pacha of, a (see _Salah Raïs_) Place du Gouvernement at, 246 Population of, 253 Port of, 254 Shoeblacks of, 27 Streets of, 246 Suburban, 52 Veiled women of, 256-258 _Ali-ben-Embarek_, 241 _Ali-Bey_ (see _Si-Ali-Bey_) Andalusia, 29, 35, 109, 220, 221 Arba, 178, 264, 265, 266 _Arnaud_, 3 Atlas Mts., the, 11, 49, 51, 92, 277 _Augustus_, 32, 237, 287, 392 Third legion of, 346, 348 Aumale, 47, 264, 266, 267, 268 Auzia, the, of the Romans, 267 Diligence from Algiers to, 266 Route Nationale from, to Bou-Saada, 267 Temperatures at, 54 Aures, the, 310, 351 Auzia (see Aumale) Bagdad, Kalif of, 78 Tomb of Sidi-el-Hadji-Abd-el-Kader-el-Djilali at, 93 _Balzac_, 92, 149 Barbary, Coast, the, 5, 339, 402, 413 Slaves of, 143-144 States, form of minarets in, 110 _Barberousse_, the brothers, 254 _Barrucaud, Victor_, 3 Bastion de France, 340 Batna, 52, 310, 315, 344, 345, 346 Guide at, 311-312 Hôtel des Etrangers et Continentals at, 311 La-bivouac, 345 Negro village at, 312-314 School for Arab children, 314-315 Tomb of Massinissa, 345 _Belisarius_, 393 Ben-Izguen, 333 Beni-Ferah, 317 Beni-Mançour, 275, 281, 287, 289 Beni-Ounif, 11, 221 Beni-Salah, Mts. of, 232 Beni-Souf, 234 _Bertrand, Louis_, 3 Beryan, 333 _Besnard_, 5 _Besson, Mme._, 422, 428 Biskra, 1, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 49, 225, 233, 289, 310, 317, 320-329, 334, 344, 369, 403, 411 And the desert beyond, 320-335 Café Glacier at, 323 Casino, the, at, 322, 329 Conquered by the Duc d'Aumale, 264 Danseuses of, 128 Excursions from, 329 From Constantine to, 309 Guides at, 322 Hôtel des Ziban, 323 The Moorish cafés of, 324-326 The Ouled Naïl dancers of, 323, 326-329 Plan of, 321 Rue Sainte of, 323, 327 Temperatures at, 54 Bizerta, 12, 61, 63, 400-401 Hippo Diarrhytus of the ancients, 400 Bizerte (see Bizerta) _Blake_, 403 Blida, 51, 56, 217, 229, 231, 232-234, 243, 265, 289, 309 Bois Sacré of, 232 Excursions from, 243 Known as Khaaba, 232 Known as Ouarda, 232 Marabout of Sidi-Yacoub-ech-Chérif at, 232 Mauresques of, 234 Route de, 230 Bona, 52, 93, 213, 338-339 Basilica of St. Augustin at, 338 Hôtel de l'Orient at, 339 Kasba, the, at, 339 Road from, to La Calle, 340 Roman quais at, 36 The ancient Hippo Regius, 338 Tomb of Sidi-Brahmin at, 338 Bona-Guelma railway, 345 Bone (see Bona) Bou-Chateur, domain of, 398 Bou-Noura, 333 Bou-Saada, 10, 11, 47, 49, 267-270 El Hamel 15 kilometres from, 270 From Aumale to, 267 Hôtel Bailly at, 268 Route Nationale to, 264 Boufarik, 227-231, 265, 289 Hôtel Benoit at, 228 Its market, 228, 230 Bougie, 281, 287-290 Off the beaten track, 288 Roman ruins at, 290 Saldae of the ancients, 287 Roman quais at, 36 Boumezou, the, 300 _Bourmont, General_, 200 _Bugeaud_, 201 _Burton, Sir Richard_, 3, 67 _Cabannes_, 5 _Cæsar_, 69, 293, 341, 392, 412 _Caïd of the Tell, the_, anecdote of, 138 Cairo, 16, 18, 26, 41, 60, 67, 101, 107, 122, 166, 173, 246, 252, 294, 299, 306, 322, 359, 360 Cape to, 10 Kalif of, 78 Minaret of Mosque of El Bardenei, 103 Minaret of Mosque of Kalaun, 103 Mosque of Hmrou at, 109 Mosque of Iba Touloum at, 109 Cap Bon, 13 Cap Carthage, 13, 339, 402 Cap Matifou, 245 _Caracalla_, Arch of Triumph of, 353, 354 Cart-hadchat (see Carthage) Carthage, 13, 30, 61, 170, 238, 240, 337, 372, 374, 389-397, 398, 400, 405, 412 Basilica of St. Louis at, 389 Musée Lavigerie at, 394 Plan of, 395 Recent discoveries at, 396-397 Steam tram from Tunis to, 390 The glory that once was, 389-401 Vin blanc de, 35, 400 Carthago (see Carthage) Casablanca, 206 Castiglione, 236 Tombeau de la Chrétienne, near, 236-237 _Cato_, 389 _Cervantes_, 254 Cesarea, capital of Mauretania, 239 _Chabannes, M._, 398 _Charles V_, 209, 255, 290, 399 Chelia, Mt., 53 Chellu (see Collo) Cherchell, 229, 231, 235, 238, 239, 240, 241, 248, 338 Ancient port of, 239 From Tipazato, by road, 239 Grande Mosquée of, 240 Population of, 240 Road to, 235 Roman ruins at, 240 Roman quais at, 36, 240 Chiffa, Gorges de, (see Gorges de Chiffa) Chio, 402 Chott Nefzaoua, 412 Chotts, the, 411-412, 414 Cirta (see Constantine) _Clauzel, General_, 283 _Cleopatra_, 284 Col des Genets, 288 Col des Oliviers, 307 Collo, 287 Chellu of the ancients, 341 Roman quais at, 36 Colomb-Béchar, 224 _Columbus_, 211 _Constant_, 5 Constantine, 34, 42, 52, 234, 289, 309, 310, 320, 326, 328, 341, 344, 369 And the Gorge du Rummel, 291-308 Arab cemetery at, 303 Arab town of, the, 298, 299 Camel caravan from, 178 Cirta of the ancients, 294, 341 Danseuses of, 128 Environs of, 307 First glimpse of, 293 Monuments of, 295 Mosque of Salah Bey at, 295 Mussulman festival at, 301-306 Palace of Bey at, 295-296 Plague of locusts in, 47 Plan of tomb of Médracen, 343 Province of, 25, 51, 53 Railway from, to Biskra, 309 Rock of, 292 Roman remains at, 341 "Siège de," by Vernet, 291 Société Archéologique of, 355 Streets of, 294 Tomb of Constantine, near, 342 Tomb of Médracen on road from, to Batna, 344 Temperature, and rainfall at, 54 _Constantine_, tomb of, 342, 343 Constantinople, 6, 67, 101, 103, 166, 294, 299, 359, 373 Kalif of, 78 Minarets of St. Sophia at, 103 Sultans of, are religious heads, 75 _Cook_, 11, 16 Cordova, 92, 109 _Corot_, 233 Costechica, 211 _D'Annunzio_, 210 _De Amicis, Edmond_, 88 _De Nerval_, 2 _De Vegas_, 255 _Decatur_, 402 Degach, Oasis of, 428 _Delacroix_, 201 _Delattre, Père_, 396 Dellys, 287 Diana, Temple of, 346 Diana (see Zana) _Dido_, 389, 393 _Dinet_, 5 Djeefa, temperature and rainfall at, 54 Djemel (see El-Djem) Djerid, the, 69, 414, 421 Date-palms of the, 425 The "pearl" of the, 414 Tozeur, the capital of, 421 Djidjelli, ancient colony of Igilgili, 287 Djurjura, the, 245 Kabylie du, 287 _Don Juan of Austria_, 399 Dougga, ruined portal at, 336 _Duc d'Aumale_, 264, 267 _Dumas_, 7 _Duquesne_, 402 _Duval, M. Jules_, 277 _Eberhardt, Isabelle_, 3 Egypt, 30, 57, 78, 109, 111, 112, 113, 170, 172 El Ateuf, 333 _El Bekri_, 344 El Djem, 412-413 Amphitheatre at, 413 Thysdrus of the ancients, 412 El Guerrah, 137, 345 El Hamel, visit to Marabout of, 270-272 El Kantara, 315-319, 320, 329, 334 An artist's paradise, 317 Bridge of, 292, 300 Excursions from, 317 Gorge of, 310, 316 Hôtel Bertrand at, 315 El-Moungar, 197 El Oued, 234, 417 _Elissa_, 391 _Esculapius_, temple to, 347 _Fatmah_, sign of the hand of, 366 _Ferdinand_, 209 Fez, 60, 92, 111 Kalif of, 78 Kingdom of, 92 Sultan of, 75 Figuig, 12, 49, 221, 222, 224, 225 Grand Hôtel du Sahara, at, 11, 224 To Laghouat by caravan, 225 _Flaubert_, 389 _Flavius Maximus, Prefect_, 348 Fort National, 273, 275, 287, 288 Temperature and rainfall, 54 _Fragonard_, 233 _Fromentin_, 4 _Fronton_, 341 Gabès, 12, 23, 73, 192, 411, 417 Gulf of, the ancient Syrte, 412 Oases of, and Tozeur, 10, 411 Railway from Tlemcen to, 12 Trail to, 428 Gafsa, 109, 414, 415, 416, 427 Journey from, to Tozeur, 415-420 Railway to, 413 _Garner_, 150 _Gautier, Théophile_, 2, 102, 121, 201 _Gerhard, Paul_, work on butterflies of North Africa, 41 _Gérome_, 23 Géryville, temperature and rainfall at, 54 Ghardaïa, 11, 333 Gibraltar, 108, 400, 401 Strait of, 7, 113 _Gide, André_, 3 Goletta, La (see La Goletta) _Gordian, Proconsul_, 412 Gorges de Chiffa, the, 243 Gorges de Maafa, 317 Gorges de Tilatou, 317 Goulette, La (see La Goletta) Granada, 29, 107 Guerrara, 333 _Guillaumet_, 5 _Habib, the Algerian_, anecdote, 375-388 _Hadj-Ahmed_, last Bey of Constantine, 295, 297 Hamma, Valley of, 307 Hammam-Rm'hira, 11, 16, 243, 244 Its mineral springs, 243 Hammamet, 404 _Hannibal_, 389, 393 _Hanno_, 391 _Haroun-Al-Rachid_, 89, 357 _Harry, Myriam, Mme._, 3 _Hassan-ben-Nomane_, 394 _Herodotus_, 182, 412 Hippo-Diarrhytus (see Bizerta) Hippone, 338 Hippo Regius, 338 _Houdin, Robert_, sent to Algeria, 264 _Hugo, Victor_, 2 _Hunéric_, the Vandal king, 238 _Hussein Dey_, 255 Icosium (see Algiers) Igilgili (see Djidjelli) Iol, Phoenician colony of, 239 (see Cherchell) _Isabella_, 209 Jaffa, 6, 37 _Jeanne, "La Folle,"_ 209 Jerusalem, 37 Mosque of Omar, at, 109 _Jouanne_, 369 Jouggourt, incident at, 160 _Jubal II_, 237, 239 _Jugurtha_, 294 _Juno_, 347 _Jupiter_, 347 _Justinian_, 351, 352, 354 Kabylie, 11, 34, 51, 120, 248, 273, 275, 287, 288 And the Kabyles, 273-290 Des Babors, 287 Du Djurdjura, 287 Grande, 287-288 Mountain villages of, 273 Mountain women of, 283 Mountains of, 11, 52 Mountains of Grande, 53, 273, 310 Mountains of Petite, 273 Petite, 287 Story of wood-cutter of, 118-120 Kairouan, 10, 60, 101, 107, 330, 405, 408-411, 412, 417, 420 Cafés of, 411 Mosque of Okba Ibm Maffi at, 109 Mosque of Sidi-Okba, 410 Mosque of Sidi-Sahab, 410-411 Mosques of, 98 Kantara, El (see El Kantara) The Oued, 316 Kano, 188 Kassar-Saïd, 63 Kef Cnecora, 301 Kenchela, 47, 352 Diligence from Timgad to, 351 Hôtel de France at, 352 Railway from, to Ain Beida, 352 Site of ancient Mascula, 352 Khaaba (see Blida) _Khair Ed Din_, 255 Khoumir region, the, 340 _Kinglake_, 67 _Kings of Mauretania_, 237 _Kipling_, 428 Kolea, 234-235 Hôtel de France at, 235 "Vin Rosé" of, 35, 235 Korbus, 13 Kroubs, 342 Plan of tomb of Constantine, 342 Tomb of Constantine on road to, 343 Ksar-Baghai, Byzantine fortress at, 352 La Calle, 339-341 Coral fisheries of, 340 Sardine fisheries of, 341 The Tunizia of the Romans, 339 La Goletta, 13, 399 Canal to Tunis from, 356 La Malga, 391 La Marsa, 13, 62, 63, 391, 399-400 La Trappe, 51 (see Staouëli-La-Trappe) Laghouat, 44, 47, 225 From Figuig by caravan, to, 225 Temperatures at, 54 Lake Tchad, 62 Lake Triton, 412 Lake of Tunis, 357 Lalla Marnia, 220 Fêtes of, 220 Numerus Syrorum of the Syrians, 220 Lambæsis (see Lambessa) Lambese (see Lambessa) Lambessa, 311, 336, 344, 346-348, 352, 355, 421 Aqueduct at, 348 Arch of Septimus Severus at, 347 Baths at, 347 Capitol at, 347 Forum at, 347 From Batna to, 346 Government penitentiary, 348 Lambæsis of the Romans, 346, 352 Plan of, 347 Prætorium at, 336, 346 Roman ruins at, 346 Third Legion at, 346, 350 Tomb of Flavius Maximus, 348 Lamiggiga, 345 _Livingstone, Dr._, 10 _Longfellow_, 315 _Lord Cromer_, 114 _Loti_, 4 _Louis XIV_, 255, 402 _Louis Philippe_, 201, 264 Lybia, 57, 68 Maafa, Gorges de (see Gorges de Maafa) _Macrin, the Emperor_, 346 _Madghasen_ (see _Médracen_) Mahdia, 109 _Mahomet_ (see _Mohammed_) Maison Carrée, 259, 264, 265 Market of, 259-263 Majorca, 213 Mansourah, 217 Hills of, 307 _Marcus Aurelius_, 341 Marseilles, 1, 2, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 71, 196, 289, 409 _Maryval_, 3 Mascula (see Kenchela) _Masqueray_, 5 _Massinissa_, 345 _Maupassants, the_, 5 Mauretania, 238 Province of, 239 Tomb of Kings of, 237 Mecca, 3, 80, 84, 95, 109 First Kouba at, 106 Pilgrimage to, 93 Médea, 217 Occupation of in 1840, 241 Road to, 243 Wines of, 35 Médenine, 73 Medina, 3, 109 _Médracen, tomb of_, 344 Melika, 333 _Merimée_, 2 _Messaoud-ben-Ghebana_, 317 Metlaoui, 414 Mila, 341 Mileum (see Mila) Miliana, 229, 231, 241-242, 243 Mosque of Sidi-Ahmed-ben-Youssef at, 242 Zucchabar of the Romans, 241 _Minerva_, 347 Mitidja, the, 51, 227, 231, 264, 309 Agha of, 241 And the Sahel, 227-244 Moucharabias in the, 105 Mogador, 223 _Mohammed_, 77, 86, 306 _Mohammed-el-Hadi-Bey_, 59, 61 _Mohammed-en-Nacer-Bey_, 59, 63 Monastir, 71, 408 Bricks and tiles of, 72 Hôtel de Paris at, 408 _Montmaur_, 140 Monts des Ouled-Naïls, 332 Monts du Zab (see Ziban) Morocco, 18, 22, 30, 61, 78, 109, 114, 170, 198, 206, 216, 262, 401 Jews in, 144 Kingdom of, 92 Marabouts in, 91 Morsott, 354-355 Plan of, 355 Ruins at, 354 Site of the ancient Theverte, 354 Moulouia, The, 339 Mount Chelia, 53 Mount Mourdjadja, 212 Mountains of Algeria, 53 Beni-Salah, 232 Grande Kabylie, 53, 273, 310 Kabylie, 11, 52 Petite Kabylie, 273 The Aures, 310 The Petit Atlas, 241, 245 Msaaba, Sheik of the, 11 Msaken, 134 Mustapha, 10, 16, 164, 245, 247 M'zabs, region of the, 332 Towns of the, 333 Nabeul, 405 Potteries of, 70, 405 Pottery of, 71 The ancient Neapolis, 405 _Napoleon_, Saying of, 190 Neapolis (see Nabeul) Nédroma, 220, 221 Nefzaoua, The, 69 North Africa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 18, 28, 29, 50, 69, 170, 197, 220, 221, 229, 232, 273, 289, 312, 330, 334, 337, 346, 382, 409, 412, 417, 427 Arab of, the, 114 Arabian horse-flesh, rare in, 169 Arabs and Berbères Arabisés of, 79 Climate of, 37-38 Germans in, 40-41 Possibilities of trade with America and, 38-39 Races met with in, 129 Railways of, 1 Social system of races of, 142 Tlemcen, the most original city in, 213 Arab of most interest in, 144-145 Donkey's paradise, 173 Garden of, 227 Land of the burnous, 136 Mauresques of, 163-165 Moorish coffee shops of, 323-324 Path of the Roman through, 336 North African Arab, The, 251 Numerus Syrorum, (see Lalla Marnia) Numidia, 53 (see Tell, The) _Numidian Kings_, 341 Oasis of Degach, 428 Oasis of Gabès, 10 _Okba-ben-Nafi_, 329 _Okba-ben-Nofi_, 409 _Omar, The Khalif_, 109, 110 Oran, 12, 37, 42, 50, 129, 144, 206, 209-213 Cathedral of St. Louis at, 212 From, to the Morocco frontier, 209-226 Grande Mosquée at, 212 Markets of, 210 Population of, 209 Province of, 51 Ouarda (see Blida) Ouardja, 234 Ouarsenis, The, 242 Oudjda, 220 Fêtes of, 220 Oued Bou-Saada, The, 272 Oued Kantara, The, 316 Oued-Righ, valley of the, 53 Oued-Souf, 10, 225, 334 Maison Française at, 11 _Ouida_, 18, 19 Ourgala, 417 Paris, 6, 11, 31, 42, 173, 196, 227 Passage des Roches, 300 Pasteur, 345 Site of the ancient Lamiggiga, 345 _Pedro Navarro_, 254, 290 _Percy's Reliques_, (anecdote), 101 Perrégaux, railway from, south, 221 Petit Atlas, The, 245 Mountains of, 241 Philippeville, 52, 213, 307-308 Rusicade of the ancients, 341 _Pliny_, 32, 182 _Point, Armand_, 5 Pointe Pescade, 164, 235 Pomaria (see Tlemcen) Port Saïd, 6, 40, 101, 294 _Potter_, 5 _Pygmalion_, 391 _Rabelais_, 16 _Rhodes, Cecil_, 10, 62 _Richepin_, 428 Rovigo, steam-tram to, 264 Rivière des Sables, 300 Rocher du Lac, 301 Ruisseau des Singes, 243 Hôtel at the, 243 Rummel, The, 292, 300 Rummel, The Gorge of The, 293, 298, 299-301 Ruins of bridge across, 342 Rusicade (see Philippeville) _St. Augustin_, Bishop of Hippo Regius, 338 _St. Cyprien_, 393 _St. Perpétua_, 393 _St. Vincent de Paul_, 399 _Saddok-Bey_, 59 Sahel, The, 67, 70, 71, 229, 231, 248, 254 The Mitidja, and The, 227-244 Saint Eugène, 164, 235, 245 _Salah Raïs_, Pacha of Algiers in 1555, 237 _Salah Bey_, Mosque of, 295, 342 _Salambo_, 393 Opera of, 389 Saldae (see Bougie) _Salomon_, 354 _Sallust_, 293 _Salsa_, patron saint of Tipaza, 238 _Scipio_, 389 _Septimus Severus_, arch built under, 347 Seriana (see Pasteur) Setif, 239, 289 Population of, 287 Seville, minaret of the Giralda, at, 111 Sfax, 12, 72, 93, 411, 412, 420, 427 Railway from, to Gafsa, 413 Railway from, to Tozeur, 414 _Si-Ali-Bey_, 59, 60, 61 _Sid Ben Gannah_, Grand chef of the Sud-Constantinois, 233 _Sidi-Ahmed-ben-Youssef_, the marabout, 242 Sidi-bou-Saïd, 13, 391, 398-399 _Sidi-Brahim_, the marabout, 106 Tomb of, 338 _Sidi-el-Hadji-Abd-el-Kader-el-Djilali_, 93 Sidi-Ferruch, 235 _Sidi Hassin_, 348-350 Sidi-M'cid, hills of, 307 Sidi-Okba, 329-330 Arab school at, 330 Café restaurant at, 329 Mosque at, 330 Shrine of, 329 Tomb of, at, 330 _Sinan Pacha_, 399 _Sittius_, 341 Souk-Ahras, 50, 345 Sousse, 72, 405-408, 409, 411, 412, 413, 420 By rail or road from Nabeul to, 405 Citadel of, 407 Kasba of, 407 Population of, 406 Souks of, 406 Spain, 2, 23, 35-36, 57, 92, 110, 112, 129, 176, 213, 292, 400 Arabs and Moors of, 115 Oran, a penal colony of, 211 _Stanley_, 10 Staouëli-la-Trappe, 236 Abbey at, 236 Stora, 307 A port of antiquity, 338 Gulf of, 307 Roman quais at, 36 Sud-Algérie, 34 Sud-Algerien, The goum of the, 206 Sud-Constantinois, 12, 225, 321 Sud-Oranais, 34, 221, 224 Spread of civilization in, 222 Sud-Tunisien, 62, 338, 412 Sheep of the, 418 Syrte, The (see Gulf of Gabès) _Tacitus_, 182 Tamerza, 423 Tangier, 40, 111, 403 Tebessa, 336, 344, 345, 352-354, 355, 421 Arch of Triumph at, 336, 353 Byzantine walls, 353-354 Plan of, 353 To, from Ain-Beïda, 352 Temperature and rainfall at, 54 Tell, The, 52, 309, 336 A Caïd of the, 138 Roman cities of, 344 The Numidia of the ancients, 53 _Tertullian_, 393 Theverte (see Morsott) Thamugadi (see Timgad) Thusuras (see Tozeur) Thysdrus (see El-Djem) Tilatou, Gorges de (see Gorges de Tilatou) Timgad, 311, 336, 344, 348-351, 352, 421 Byzantine fortress at, 351 Diligence from, to Kenchela, 351 Guide, 348-350 "Guide Illustré de," 351 Hôtel Meille at, 348 Plan of, 349 Thamugadi of the ancients, 350, 352 Tipaza, 237, 238, 248, 338 Population of, 238 Roman ruins at, 238 To Cherchell, 239 Tirourda, The pass of, 288 Tizi-Ouzou, 248, 273, 287 Diligence from, to Fort National, 288 Railway not beyond, 274 Troops of, 206 Tlemcen, 10, 11, 12, 16, 23, 53, 101, 213-220, 221, 268, 338 Camel Caravans from, 178 Legend of Mosque of Mansourah, 217-219 Minaret of El Mansourah at, 111 Minaret of Sidi-bou-Medine, 111 Mosque of Djama l'Hassen at, 215 Mosque of El Haloui, 216 Mosque of El Mansourah at, 109 Mosques in, 98 Pomaria of the Romans, 213, 338 Population of, 215 Railway from Oran to, 213 Siege of, in 3d century, 216 Temperature and rainfall in, 54 Touabet, Mt., 53 Touggourt, 11, 12, 44, 225, 411 The Touaregs south of, 190 Tozeur, 11, 12, 73, 225, 338, 420-429 Architecture of, 421 Hotel at, 422, 428 Journey from Gafsa to, 415-420 Market at, 422 Oases of Gabès and, 411, 414 Oasis of, 414-429 Thusuros of the ancients, 338 View from Minaret of Ouled-Medjed at, 428 _Trajan_, 350 Tripoli, 61, 62, 113, 170 Caravans in, 188 De Barbarie, 30 In Barbary, 12, 61, 114, 401, 403 Pacha of, 402 Pirates of, 403 Tunis, 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 26, 30, 54, 58, 67, 70, 71, 72, 105, 129, 135, 144, 173, 246, 252, 268, 284, 289, 294, 299, 326, 411, 412 A city of consulates, 358 A Jew of (anecdote), 362-363 And The Souks, 356-370 Arab town of, the, 359, 367, 368 Bardo, 367 Bey of (anecdote), 124-126 Camel caravans from, 178 Danseuses of, 128 Dar El-Bey at, 296, 366, 367 En route from, to Bizerta, 397 Foreigners in, 28 Gates of Arab city of, 367 Jewesses of, 283 Jewish dancers of, 369 Kasba, 367 La Musique Beylicale at, 122 La ville, 67 Lake of, 357 Life of, 364 Minarets of, 103 Minaret of Ez-Zitouna at, 111 Minaret of the Kasba, 111 Moorish cafés, 368 Mosque of Djama Ez-Zitouna at, 109 Mosque of Sidi-Mahrez, 372 Old, 371 Population of, 365 Prosperity of, 67 Souks of the old town of, 371-372 Souks or bazaars of, 359-362, 398, 400, 403, 404, 409, 411, 412 Steam-tram from, to Carthage, 390 Tunisia, 22, 31, 46, 59, 63, 69, 78, 98, 99, 107, 113, 144, 147, 170, 176, 197, 262, 403, 408, 409, 411, 423 Army a necessity for, 60 Authorization for travel into interior of, 73 Efforts at colonizing the Régence of, 73 Greater prosperity to come to, 62 Kairouan, The Holy City of, 405, 408 Lybia of the ancients, 57, 68 Need of capital in, 69 Political status of native of, 64, 65, 66 Railways of, 72 Régence of, and the Tunisians, 57-73 Taxes in, 34 Vineyards of, in 1900, 68 Tunisia and Algeria, 24, 108, 114 Koubas in, 331 Tunizia (see La Calle) Utica, 397 Plan of ancient, 398 Ruins at, 398 _Valée, General_, 292 _Vernet, Horace_, 201, 291 _Yacoub-el-Nansourd, The Sultan_, 111 _Yusuf_, 200 Zana, 345-346 Byzantine fortress at, 346 Diana of the ancients, 345 Temple of Diana at, 346 Triumphal arches at, 346 Zaccar-Gharbi, The, 241 Ziban, The, 53, 331, 332 Inhabitants of, 331 _Ziem_, 5 _Zorah-ben-Mohammed_, incident of, 269, 270 Zucchabar (see Miliana) * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: Sud-Algerie=> Sud-Algérie {pg 34} compared wih California or Bermuda=> compared with California or Bermuda {pg 37} Kassar-Said=> Kassar-Saïd {pg 63} Berberes Arabisés=> Berbères Arabisés {pg 79} no eyes with which to sea=> no eyes with which to see {pg 127} arcades and faiences=> arcades and faïences {pg 295} Hamam-Rm'hira=> Hammam-Rm'hira {pg 436} _Haroun-Al-Raschid_, 89, 357=> _Haroun-Al-Rachid_, 89, 357 {pg 436} Sidi-bou-Said, 13, 391, 398-399=> Sidi-bou-Said, 13, 391, 398-399 {pg 440} _Alfaoui, the Algerian_, 923, 924=> _Alfaoui, the Algerian_, 339, 340 {pg 431} 
9069	----	Flis, and Distributed Proofreaders SAINT AUGUSTIN BY LOUIS BERTRAND TRANSLATED BY VINCENT O'SULLIVAN TRANSLATOR'S NOTE The quotations from Saint Augustin's _Confessions_ are taken from Canon Bigg's scholarly version, which seems to me the best in English. But there are places where M. Bertrand's reading of the original text differs from Dr. Bigg's, and in such cases I have felt myself obliged to follow the author of this book. These differences never seriously affect the meaning of a passage; sometimes it is a mere matter of choice, as with the word _collactaneum_ (i, 7) which Dr. Bigg translates "twin," and M. Bertrand, like Pusey, _frère de lait_, or "foster-brother." As a rule, Dr. Bigg chooses the quietest terms, and M. Bertrand the most forcible. Those curious in such matters may like to see an instance. The original text runs:-- Avulsa a latere meo tanquam impedimento conjugii, cum quâ cubare solitus eram, cor ubi adhaerebat, concisum et vulneratum mihi erat, et trahebat sanguinem. (_Confessiones_, vi, 15.) M. Bertrand translates:-- Quand on arracha de mes flancs, sous prétexte qu'elle empêchait mon mariage, celle avec qui j'avais coutume de dormir, depuis si longtemps, là où mon coeur était attaché au sien, il se déchira, et je traînais mon sang avec ma blessure. Canon Bigg's version is:-- My mistress was torn from my side as an obstacle to my marriage, and my heart, which clung to her, was torn and wounded till it bled. In this place, it will be observed that Dr. Bigg does not emphasize the word _ubi_ which, as the reader will find on turning to page 185 of this volume, M. Bertrand thinks so significant. The remaining English versions of the writings of Saint Augustin and of the other Latin authors quoted are my own, except the passages from _The City of God_, including the verse translation of Persius, which are taken, with some necessary alterations, from the Seventeenth century translation ascribed to John Healey. V. O'S. CONTENTS CHAPTER PROLOGUE THE FIRST PART DAYS OF CHILDHOOD I. AN AFRICAN FREE-TOWN SUBJECT TO ROME II. THE FAMILY OF A SAINT III. THE COMFORT OF THE MILK IV. THE FIRST GAMES V. THE SCHOOLBOY OF MADAURA VI. THE HOLIDAYS AT THAGASTE THE SECOND PART THE ENCHANTMENT OF CARTHAGE I. CARTHAGO VENERIS II. THE AFRICAN ROME III. THE CARTHAGE STUDENT IV. THE SWEETNESS OF TEARS V. THE SILENCE OF GOD THE THIRD PART THE RETURN I. THE CITY OF GOLD II. THE FINAL DISILLUSION III. THE MEETING BETWEEN AMBROSE AND AUGUSTIN IV. PLANS OF MARRIAGE V. THE CHRIST IN THE GARDEN THE FOURTH PART THE HIDDEN LIFE I. THE LAST SMILE OF THE MUSE II. THE ECSTASY OF SAINT MONNICA III. THE MONK OF THAGASTE IV. AUGUSTIN A PRIEST THE FIFTH PART THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AND OF CATHOLIC UNITY I. THE BISHOP OF HIPPO II. WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE BASILICA OF PEACE III. THE BISHOP'S BURTHEN IV. AGAINST "THE ROARING LIONS" THE SIXTH PART FACE TO FACE WITH THE BARBARIANS I. THE SACK OF ROME II. THE CITY OF GOD III. THE BARBARIAN DESOLATION IV. SAINT AUGUSTIN INDEX SAINT AUGUSTIN PROLOGUE Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. "Our heart finds no rest until it rests in Thee." _Confessions_, I, i. Saint Augustin is now little more than a celebrated name. Outside of learned or theological circles people no longer read him. Such is true renown: we admire the saints, as we do great men, on trust. Even his _Confessions_ are generally spoken of only from hearsay. By this neglect, is he atoning for the renewal of glory in which he shone during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal--has that affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been any beings who do not resemble Augustin, and whom probably he would have attacked with all his eloquence and all the force of his dialectic, they are the Jansenists. Doubtless he would have said with contempt: "The party of Jansen," even as in his own day, with his devotion to Catholic unity, he said: "The party of Donatus." It must be acknowledged also that the very sight of his works is terrifying, whether we take the enormous folios in two columns of the Benedictine edition, or the volumes, almost as compact, and much more numerous, of recent editions. Behind such a rampart of printed matter he is well defended against profane curiosity. It needs courage and perseverance to penetrate into this labyrinth of text, all bristling with theology and exegesis and metaphysics. But only cross the threshold of the repellent enclosure, grow used to the order and shape of the building, and it will not be long ere you are overcome by a warm sympathy, and then by a steadily increasing admiration for the host who dwells there. The hieratic face of the old bishop lights up, becomes strangely living, almost modern, in expression. You discover under the text one of the most passionate lives, most busy and richest in instruction, that history has to shew. What it teaches is applicable to ourselves, answers to our interests of yesterday and to-day. This existence, and the century in which it was passed, recall our own century and ourselves. The return of similar circumstances has brought similar situations and characters; it is almost our portrait. And we feel half ready to conclude that at the present moment there is no subject more actual than St. Augustin. At least he is one of the most interesting. What, indeed, is more romantic than this wandering life of rhetorician and student that the youthful Augustin led, from Thagaste to Carthage, from Carthage to Milan and to Rome--begun in the pleasures and tumult of great cities, and ending in the penitence, the silence, and recollection of a monastery? And again, what drama is more full of colour and more profitable to consider than that last agony of the Empire, of which Augustin was a spectator, and, with all his heart faithful to Rome, would have prevented if he could? And then, what tragedy more stirring and painful than the crisis of soul and conscience which tore his life? Well may it be said that, regarded as a whole, the life of Augustin was but a continual spiritual struggle, a battle of the soul. It is the battle of every moment, the never-ceasing combat of body and spirit, which the poets of that time dramatized, and which is the history of the Christian of all times. The stake of the battle is a soul. The upshot is the final triumph, the redemption of a soul. What makes the life of Augustin so complete and so truly typical is that he fought the good fight, not only against himself, but against all the enemies of the Church and the Empire. If he was a doctor and a saint, so was he too the type of the man of action in one of the most disheartened periods. That he triumphed over his passions--this, in truth, concerns only God and himself. That he preached, wrote, shook crowds, disturbed minds, may seem without importance to those who reject his doctrine. But that across the centuries his soul, afire with charity, continues to warm our own; that without our knowledge he still shapes us; and that, in a way more or less remote, he is still the master of our hearts, and, in certain aspects, of our minds--there is what touches each and all of us, without distinction. Not only has Augustin always his great place in the living communion of all christened people, but the Western soul is marked with the stamp of his soul. First of all, his fate is confused with that of the dying Empire. He witnessed, if not the utter disappearance, at least the gradual swooning away of that admirable thing called the Roman Empire, image of Catholic unity. Well, we are the wreckage of the Empire. Usually, we turn away with contempt from those wretched centuries which underwent the descents of the Barbarians. For us, that is the Lower-Empire, a time of shameful decadence which deserves nothing but our scorn. However, it is out of this chaos and this degradation that we have arisen. The wars of the Roman republic concern us less than the outlawry of the Barbarian chiefs who separated our Gaul from the Empire, and without knowing it, prepared the dawn of France. After all, what are the rivalries of Marius and Sylla to us? The victory of Aëtius over the Huns in the plains of Chalons concerns us a good deal more. Further, it is unfair to the Lower-Empire to view it only as a time of feebleness and cowardice and corruption. It was also an epoch of immense activity, prolific of daring and high-flying adventurers, some of them heroic. Even the most degenerate of the last Emperors never lost the conviction of Roman majesty and grandeur. Unto the very end, they employed all the ruses of their diplomacy to prevent the Barbarian chiefs from imagining themselves anything else but vassals of the Empire. Honorius, at bay in Ravenna, persisted in refusing Alaric the title of commander of the _Cohortes Urbanæ_, even though his refusal were to lead to the sack of Rome and imperil his own life. Simply by his fidelity to the Empire, Augustin shews himself one like ourselves--a Latin of Occitania. But still closer resemblances draw him near to us. His time was very like our own time. Upon even a slight familiarity with his books we recognize in him a brother-soul who has suffered, felt, thought, pretty nearly like us. He came into an ending world, on the eve of the great cataclysm which was going to carry away an entire civilization--a tragic turning-point of history, a time troubled and often very grievous, which was hard to live in for all, and to even the most determined minds must have appeared desperate. The peace of the Church was not yet settled; consciences were divided. People hesitated between the belief of yesterday and the belief of to-morrow. Augustin was among those who had the courage to choose, and who, having once chosen their faith, proclaimed it without weakening. The belief of a thousand years was dying out, quenched by a young belief to which was promised an eternal duration. How many delicate souls must have suffered from this division, which cut them off from their traditions and obliged them, as they thought, to be false to their dead along with the religion of their ancestors! All the irritations which the fanatics of to-day inflict upon believing souls, many must have had to suffer then. The sceptics were infused by the intolerance of the others. But the worst (even as it is to-day) was to watch the torrent of foolishness which, under cover of religion, philosophy, or miracle-working, pretended to the conquest of mind and will. Amid this mass of wildest doctrines and heresies, in this orgy of vapid intellectualism, they had indeed solid heads who were able to resist the general intoxication. And among all these people talking nonsense, Augustin appears admirable with his good sense. This "intellectual," this mystic, was not only a man of prayer and meditation. The prudence of the man of action and the administrator balanced his outbursts of dialectical subtility, often carried too far. He had that sense of realities such as we flatter ourselves that we have; he had a knowledge of life and passion. Compared to the experience of, say, Bossuet, how much wider was Augustin's! And with all that, a quivering sensitiveness which is again like our own--the sensitiveness of times of intense culture, wherein the abuse of thought has multiplied the ways of suffering in exasperating the desire for pleasure. "The soul of antiquity was rude and vain." It was, above all, limited. The soul of Augustin is tender and serious, eager for certainties and those enjoyments which do not betray. It is vast and sonorous; let it be stirred ever so little, and from it go forth deep vibrations which render the sound of the infinite. Augustin, before his conversion, had the apprehensions of our Romantics, the causeless melancholy and sadness, the immense yearnings for "anywhere but here," which overwhelmed our fathers. He is really very close to us. He has broadened our Latin souls by reconciling us with the Barbarian. The Latin, like the Greek, only understood himself. The Barbarian had not the right to express himself in the language of the Empire. The world was split into two parts which endeavoured to ignore each other, Augustin has made us conscious of the nameless regions, the vague countries of the soul, which hitherto had lain shrouded in the darkness of barbarism. By him the union of the Semitic and the Occidental genius is consummated. He has acted as our interpreter for the Bible. The harsh Hebraic words become soft to our ears by their passage through the cultivated mouth of the rhetorician. He has subjugated us with the word of God. He is a Latin who speaks to us of Jehovah. Others, no doubt, had done it before him. But none had found a similar emotion, a note of tenderness so moving. The gentle violence of his charity wins the adherence of hearts. He breathes only charity. After St. John, it is he who is the Apostle of Love. His tireless voice dominated the whole of the West. The Middle Ages still heard it. For centuries his sermons and treatises were copied over and over again; they were repeated in cathedrals, commented in abstracts of theology. People came to accept even his theory of the fine arts. All that we have inherited from the ancients reaches us through Augustin. He is the great teacher. In his hands the doctrinal demonstration of the Catholic religion takes firm shape. To indicate the three great stages of the onward march of the truth, one may say: Jesus Christ, St. Paul, St. Augustin. Nearest to our weakness is the last. He is truly our spiritual father. He has taught us the language of prayer. The words of Augustin's prayers are still upon the lips of the devout. This universal genius, who during forty years was the speaking-trumpet of Christendom, was also the man of one special century and country. Augustin of Thagaste is the great African. Well may we be proud of him and adopt him as one of our glories--we who have kept up, for now almost a century, a struggle like to that which he maintained for the unity of the Roman Empire, we who consider Africa as an extension of France. More than any other writer, he has expressed the temperament and the genius of his country. This motley Africa, with its eternal mixture of races at odds with one another, its jealous sectarianism, the variety of its scenery and climate, the violence of its sensations and passions, its seriousness of character and its quick-changing humour, its mind at once practical and frivolous, its materialism and its mysticism, its austerity and its luxury, its resignation to servitude and its instincts of independence, its hunger to rule--all that comes out with singularly vivid touches in the work of Augustin. Not only was he his country's voice, but, as far as he could, he realized its old dream of dominion. The supremacy in spiritual matters that Carthage disputed so long and bitterly with Rome, it ended by obtaining, thanks to Augustin. As long as he lived, the African Church was the mistress of the Churches of the West. As for me--if I may venture to refer to myself in such a matter--I have had the joy to recognize in him, besides the Saint and Teacher whom I revere, the ideal type of the Latin of Africa. The image of which I descried the outline long ago through the mirages of the South in following the waggons of my rugged heroes, I have seen at last become definite, grow clear, wax noble and increase to the very heaven, in following the traces of Augustin. And even supposing that the life of this child of Thagaste, the son of Monnica, were not intermingled so deeply with ours, though he were for us only a foreigner born in a far-off land, nevertheless he would still remain one of the most fascinating and luminous souls who have shone amid our darkness and warmed our sadness--one of the most human and most divine creatures who have trod our highways. THE FIRST PART DAYS OF CHILDHOOD Sed delectabat ludere. "Only, I liked to play." _Confessions_, I, 9. I AN AFRICAN FREE-TOWN SUBJECT TO ROME Little streets, quite white, which climb up to clay-formed hills deeply furrowed by the heavy winter rains; between the double row of houses, brilliant in the morning sun, glimpses of sky of a very tender blue; here and there, in the strip of deep shade which lies along the thresholds, white figures crouched upon rush-mats--indolent outlines, draped with bright colours, or muffled in rough and sombre wool-stuffs; a horseman who passes, bent almost in two in his saddle, the big hat of the South flung back over his shoulders, and encouraging with his heel the graceful trot of his horse--such is Thagaste as we see it to-day, and such undoubtedly it appeared to the traveller in the days of Augustin. Like the French town built upon its ruins, the African free-city lay in a sort of plain taken between three round hills. One of them, the highest one, which is now protected by a _bordj_, must have been defended in old days by a _castellum_. Full-flowing waters moisten the land. To those coming from the stony regions about Constantine and Setif, or the vast bare plain of the Medjerda, Thagaste gives an impression of freshness and cool. It is a laughing place, full of greenery and running water. To the Africans it offers a picture of those northern countries which they have never seen, with its wooded mountains covered by pines and cork trees and ilex. It presents itself as a land of mountain and forest--especially forest. It is a hunter's country. Game is plentiful there--boar, hare, redwing, quail, partridge. In Augustin's time, wild beasts were apparently more numerous in the district than they are to-day. When he compares his adversaries, the Donatists, to roaring lions, he speaks like a man who knows what a lion is. To the east and west, wide stretches of woodland, rounded hill-summits, streams and torrents which pour through the valleys and glens--there you have Thagaste and the country round about--the world, in fact, as it revealed itself to the eyes of the child Augustin. But towards the south the verdure grows sparse; arid mountain-tops appear, crushed down as blunted cones, or jutted in slim Tables of the Law; the sterility of the desert becomes perceptible amid the wealth of vegetation. This full-foliaged land has its harsh and stern localities. The African light, however, softens all that. The deep green of the oaks and pines runs into waves of warm and ever-altering tints which are a caress and a delight for the eye. A man has it thoroughly brought home to him that he is in a land of the sun. To say the least, it is a country of strongly marked features which affords the strangest contrast with the surrounding districts. This wooded Numidia, with its flowing brooks, its fields where the cattle graze, differs in the highest degree from the Numidia towards Setif--a wide, desolate plain, where the stubble of the wheat-fields, the sandy _steppes_, roll away in monotonous undulations to the cloudy barrier of Mount Atlas which closes the horizon. And this rough and melancholy plain in its turn offers a striking contrast with the coast region of Boujeiah and Hippo, which is not unlike the Italian Campania in its mellowness and gaiety. Such clear-cut differences between the various parts of the same province doubtless explain the essential peculiarities of the Numidian character. The bishop Augustin, who carried his pastoral cross from one end to the other of this country, and was its acting and thinking soul, may perhaps have owed to it the contrasts and many-sidedness of his own rich nature. Of course, Thagaste did not pretend to be a capital. It was a free-town of the second or third order; but its distance from the great centres gave it a certain importance. The neighbouring free-towns, Thubursicum, Thagura, were small. Madaura and Theveste, rather larger, had not perhaps the same commercial importance. Thagaste was placed at the junction of many Roman roads. There the little Augustin, with other children of his age, would have a chance to admire the out-riders and equipages of the Imperial Mail, halted before the inns of the town. What we can be sure of is that Thagaste, then as now, was a town of passage and of traffic, a half-way stopping-place for the southern and coast towns, as well as for those of the Proconsulate and Numidia. And like the present Souk-Ahras, Thagaste must have been above all a market. Bread-stuffs and Numidian wines were bartered for the flocks of the Aures, leather, dates, and the esparto basket-work of the regions of Sahara. The marbles of Simitthu, the citron-wood of which they made precious tables, were doubtless handled there. The neighbouring forests could furnish building materials to the whole country. Thagaste was the great mart of woodland Numidia, the warehouse and the bazaar, where to this day the nomad comes to lay in a stock of provisions, and stares with childish delight at the fine things produced by the inventive talent of the workers who live in towns. Thus images of plenty and joy surrounded the cradle of Augustin. The smile of Latin beauty welcomed him also from his earliest steps. It is true that Thagaste was not what is called a fine city. The fragments of antiquity which have been unearthed there are of rather inferior workmanship. But how little is needed to give wings to the imagination of an intelligent child! At all events, Thagaste had a bathing-hall paved with mosaics and perhaps ornamented with statues; Augustin used to bathe there with his father. And again, it is probable that, like the neighbouring Thubursicum and other free-cities of the same level, it had its theatre, its forum, its nymph-fountains, perhaps even its amphitheatre. Of all that nothing has been found. Certain inscribed stone tablets, capitals and shafts of columns, a stone with an inscription which belonged to a Catholic church--that is all which has been discovered up to this present time. Let us not ask for the impossible. Thagaste had columns--nay, perhaps a whole street between a double range of columns, as at Thimgad. That would be quite enough to delight the eyes of a little wondering boy. A column, even injured, or scarcely cleansed from wrack and rubbish, has about it something impressive. It is like a free melody singing among the heavy masses of the building. To this hour, in our Algerian villages, the mere sight of a broken column entrances and cheers us--a white ghost of beauty streaming up from the ruins among the modern hovels. There were columns at Thagaste. II THE FAMILY OF A SAINT It was in this pleasant little town, shaded and beautified for many years now by the arts of Rome, that the parents of Augustin lived. His father, Patricius, affords us a good enough type of the Romanized African. He belonged to the order of _Decuriones_, to the "very brilliant urban council of Thagaste" (_splendidissimus ordo Thagastensis_), as an inscription at Souk-Ahras puts it. Although these strong epithets may be said to be part of the ordinary official phraseology, they indicate, just the same, the importance which went with such a position. In his township, Patricius was a kind of personage. His son assures us that he was poor, but we may suspect the holy bishop of exaggerating through Christian humility. Patricius must certainly have owned more than twenty-five acres of land, for this was made a condition of being elected to the _curia_. He had vineyards and orchards, of which Augustin later on recalled the plentiful and sweet-tasting fruits. In short, he lived in considerable style. It is true that in Africa household expenses have never at any time been a great extravagance. Still, the sons of Patricius had a pedagogue, a slave specially engaged to keep them under his eye, like all the children of families comfortably off. It has been said that as Augustin's father was a member of the _curia_, he must have been a ruined man. The Decurions, who levied taxes and made themselves responsible for their collection, were obliged to supply any deficiency in the revenue out of their own money. Patricius, it is thought, must have been one of the numerous victims of this disastrous system. But no doubt there were a good many exceptions. Besides, there is nothing in Augustin's reminiscences which authorizes us to believe that his father ever knew embarrassment, to say nothing of actual poverty. What seems by far the most probable is that he lived as well as he could upon the income of his estate as a small country landowner. In Africa people are satisfied with very little. Save for an unusually bad year following a time of long drought, or a descent of locusts, the land always gives forth enough to feed its master. To hunt, to ride horseback, now and then to go on parade, to look after his small-holders and agricultural slaves, to drive one of those bargains in which African cunning triumphs--such were the employments of Patricius. In short, he drifted through life on his little demesne. Sometimes this indolent man was overcome by a sudden passion for work; or again he was seized by furious rages. He was violent and brutal. At such moments he struck out right and left. He would even have hit his wife or flogged the skin off her back if the quietude of this woman, her dignity and Christian mildness, had not overawed him. Let us not judge this kind of conduct by our own; we shall never understand it. The ancient customs, especially the African customs, were a disconcerting mixture of intense refinement and heedless brutality. That is why it will not do to exaggerate the outbursts of Patricius, which his son mentions discreetly. Although he may not have been very faithful to his wife, that was in those days, more than in ours, a venial sin in the eyes of the world. At heart the African has always longed for a harem in his house; he inclines naturally to the polygamy of Muslemism. In Carthage, and elsewhere, public opinion was full of indulgence for the husband who allowed himself liberties with the serving-women. People laughed at it, and excused the man. It is true they were rather harder on the matron who took the same kind of liberty with her men-slaves. However, that went on too. The Bishop of Hippo, in his sermons, strongly rebuked the Christian married couples for these frequent adulteries which were scarcely regarded as errors. Patricius was a pagan, and this partly explains his laxity. It would doubtless be going too far to say that he remained faithful to paganism all his life. It is not likely that this urban councillor of Thagaste was a particularly assured pagan. Speculative and intellectual considerations made a very moderate appeal to him. He was not an arguer like his son. He was pagan from habit, from that instinctive conservatism of the citizen and landowner who sticks obstinately to his class and family traditions. Prudence and diplomacy had also something to do with it. Many great landlords continued to defend and practise paganism, probably from motives similar to those of Patricius himself. As for him, he had no desire to get wrong with the important and influential people of the country; he might have need of their protection to save his small property from the ravenous public treasury. Moreover, the best-paid posts were still controlled by the pagan priesthood. And so Augustin's father thought himself very wise in dealing cautiously with a religion which was always so powerful, and rewarded its adherents so well. But for all that, it is undeniable that paganism about this time was in an awkward position from a political point of view. The Government eyed it with disapproval. Since the death of Constantine, the "accursed emperors" had waged against it a furious war. In 353, just before the birth of Augustin, Constantius promulgated an edict renewing the order for the closing of the temples and the abolition of sacrifices--and that too under pain of death and confiscation. But in distant provinces, such as Numidia, the action of the central power was slow and irregular. It was often represented by officials who were hostile or indifferent to Christianity. The local aristocracy and their following scoffed at it more or less openly. In their immense villas, behind the walls of their parks, the rich landowners offered sacrifices and organized processions and feasts as if there were no law at all. Patricius knew all that. And, on the other side, he could take note of the encroachments of the new religion. During the first half of the fourth century Thagaste had been conquered by the Donatists. Since the edict of Constans against these schismatics, the inhabitants of the little city had come back to Catholicism out of fear of the severity of the imperial government. But the settlement was far from being complete and final. As a consequence of the edict, the whole region of the Aures had been in revolution. The Bishop of Bagai, fortified in his episcopal city and basilica, had stood an actual siege from the Roman troops. Almost everywhere the struggle between Donatists and Catholics still went on below the surface. There cannot be the least doubt that Thagaste took its share in these quarrels. To those who urged him to be baptized, the father of Augustin might well answer with ironic politeness: "I am only waiting till you agree among yourselves, to see where the truth lies." In his heart this rather lukewarm pagan had no inveterate dislike to Christianity. What proves it at once is that he married a Christian. How did Monnica become the wife of Patricius? How did these two beings, so little alike, between whom there was such a great difference of age, not to mention all the rest, come to join their fate? Those are questions which it would never have occurred to the people of Thagaste to ask. Patricius married to be like everybody else--and also because he was well over forty, and his mother an old woman who would soon be no longer able to run his house. Monnica also had her mother. The two old women had a meeting, with many politenesses and ceremonious bowings, and because the thing appeared to them reasonable and most suitable, they settled the marriage. Had Patricius ever seen the girl that he was going to take, according to custom, so as to have a child-bearer and housewife? It is quite likely he had not. Was she pretty, rich, or poor? He considered such matters as secondary, since the marriage was not a love-match but a traditional duty to fulfil. If the union was respectable, that was quite enough. But however the matter fell out, what is certain is that Monnica was very young. She was twenty-two when Augustin was born, and he was probably not her first child. We know that she was hardly marriageable when she was handed over, as Arab parents do to-day with their adolescent or little girls, to the man who was going to marry her. Now in Africa girls become marriageable at a very early age. They are married at fourteen, sometimes even at twelve. Perhaps she was seventeen or eighteen at most when she married Patricius. She must have had first a son, Navigius, whom we shall meet later on at Milan, and also a daughter, of whom we do not even know the name, but who became a nun, and superior of a convent in the diocese of Hippo. For us the features of these two other children of Monnica and Patricius are obliterated. They are concealed by the radiance of their illustrious great brother. Monnica was fond of telling stories of her girlhood to her son. He has handed down some of them to us. She was brought up strictly, according to the system of that time. Both her parents came of families which had been Christian, and Catholic-Christian, for many generations. They had never been carried away by the Donatist schism; they were people very obstinate in their convictions--a character quite as frequent in Africa as its opposite, the kind of Numidian or Moor, who is versatile and flighty. It is not unimportant that Augustin came from this hard-headed race, for this it was, with the aid of God's grace, that saved him--the energetic temper of his will. Still, if the faith of the young Monnica was confirmed from her earliest years, it is not so much to the lessons of her mother that she owed it, as to the training of an old woman-servant of whom she always spoke with gratitude. In the family of her master, this old woman had a place like the one which to-day in a Turkish family is held by the nurse, the _dada_, who is respected by all the harem and all the household. Doubtless she herself was born in the house and had seen all the children born. She had carried Monnica's father on her back when he was little, just as the Kabylian women or the Bedouin nomads carry their babies still. She was a devoted slave, just a bit unreasonable--a veritable housedog who in the zeal of guardianship barks more than is necessary at the stranger who passes. She was like the negress in the Arab houses to-day, who is often a better Muslem, more hostile to the Christian, than her employers. The old woman in Monnica's family had witnessed the last persecutions; she had perhaps visited the confessors in prison; perhaps she had seen flow the blood of the martyrs. These exciting and terrible scenes would have been graven on her memory. What inflamed stories the old servant must have told her young mistresses, what vital lessons of constancy and heroism! Monnica listened to them eagerly. Because of her great faith, this simple slave was revered as a saint by her owners, who entrusted her with the supervision of their daughters. She proved a stern governess, who would stand no trifling with her rules. She prevented these girls from drinking even water except at meals. Cruel suffering for little Africans! Thagaste is not far from the country of thirst. But the old woman said to them: "You drink water now because you can't get at the wine. In time to come, when you are married and have bins and cellars of your own, you'll turn up your nose at water, and your habit of drinking will be too much for you." Monnica came near fulfilling the prophecy of the honest woman. It was before she was married. As she was very well-behaved and very temperate, she used to be sent to the cellar to draw the wine from the cask. Before pouring it into the flagon she would sip just a little. Being unaccustomed to wine, she was not able to drink more; it was too strong for her gullet. She did this, not because she liked the wine, but from naughtiness, to play a trick on her parents who trusted her, and also, of course, because it was prohibited. Each time she swallowed a little more, and so it went on till she ended by finding it rather nice, and came to drinking greedily one cup after another. One day a slave-girl, who went with her to the cellar, began to grumble. Monnica gave her a sharp answer. Upon this the girl called Monnica a drunkard.... Drunkard! This bitter taunt so humiliated the self-respect of the future saint, that she got the better of her taste for drink. Augustin does not say it was through piety she did this, but because she felt the ugliness of such a vice. There is a certain roughness in this story of childhood, the roughness of ancient customs, with which is always mingled some decency or dignity. Christianity did the work of polishing the soul of Monnica. At the time we are dealing with, if she was already a very devout young girl, she was far as yet from being the grand Christian that she became afterwards. When she married Patricius she was a girl very reserved and cold to all appearances (in reality, she was very passionate), precise in attending to her religious duties, even a little strict, with her exaggeration of the Christian austerity in her hate of all the brutalities and all the careless morals that paganism condoned. Nevertheless, this rigid soul knew how to bend when it was necessary. Monnica had tact, suppleness, and, when it was needed, a very acute and very reasonable practical sense of which she gave many a proof in the bringing up and management of her son Augustin. This soul, hard for herself, veiled her uncompromising religion under an unchangeable sweetness which was in her rather the work of grace than a natural gift. There can be little doubt that her behaviour and character greatly disturbed Patricius at the beginning of their married life. Perhaps he regretted the marriage. What use had he for this nun alongside of him! Both of them must have suffered the usual annoyances which always appeared before long in unions of this kind between pagan and Christian. True, it was no longer the time of Tertullian, the heroic century of persecutions, when the Christian women glided into the prisons to kiss the shackles of the martyrs. (What a revenge did woman take then for her long and enforced confinement to the women's apartments! And how outrageous such conduct must have seemed to a husband brought up in the Roman way!) But the practices of the Christian life established a kind of intermittent divorce between husbands and wives of different religion. Monnica often went out, either alone, or accompanied by a faithful bondwoman. She had to attend the services of the Church, to go about the town visiting the poor and giving alms. And there were the fast-days which occurred two or three times a week, and especially the long fast of Lent--a grievous nuisance when the husband wanted to give a dinner-party just on those particular days! On the vigil of festivals, Monnica would spend a good part of the night in the Basilica. Regularly, doubtless on Sundays, she betook herself to the cemetery, or to some chapel raised to the memory of a martyr who was often buried there--in fact, they called these chapels "Memorials" (_memoriæ_). There were many of these chapels--even too many in the opinion of austere Christians. Monnica went from one to another carrying in a large basket made of willow branches some pieces of minced meat, bread, and wine mixed with water. She met her friends in these places. They would sit down around the tombs, of which some were shaped like tables, unpack the provisions, and eat and drink piously in honour of the martyr. This was a residue of pagan superstition among the Christians. These pious _agapæ_, or love-feasts, often turned into disgusting orgies. When Augustin became Bishop of Hippo he had considerable trouble to get his people out of the habit of them. Notwithstanding his efforts, the tradition still lasts. Every Friday the Muslem women keep up the custom of visiting the cemeteries and the marabouts. Just as in the time of St. Monnica, they sit around the tombs, so cool with their casing of painted tiles, in the shade of the cypress and eucalyptus. They gobble sweetmeats, they gossip, they laugh, they enjoy themselves--the husbands are not there. Monnica made these visits in a really pious state of mind, and was far from trying to find in them opportunities for lewdness or carouse. She was content to drink a little wine very carefully--she always bore in mind her youthful sin. Besides, this wine weakened with water that she brought from the house, was tepid by the time she reached the cemetery; it would be a drink of very moderate relish, little likely to stimulate the senses. She distributed what was left of it among the needy, together with the contents of her basket, and came back modestly to her house. But however staid and reserved she might be, still these outings gave rise to scandalous talk. They annoyed a suspicious husband. All the Africans are that. Marital jealousy was not invented by Islam. Moreover, in Monnica's time men and women took part in these funeral love-feasts and mingled together disturbingly. Patricius got cross about it, and about a good many other things too. His old mother chafed his suspicions by carrying to him the ugly gossip and even the lies of the servants about his wife. By dint of patience and mildness and attentions, Monnica ended by disarming her mother-in-law and making it clear that her conduct was perfect. The old woman flew into a rage with the servants who had lied to her, and denounced them to her son. Patricius, like a good head of a household, had them whipped to teach them not to lie any more. Thanks to this exemplary punishment, and the good sense of the young wife, peace reigned once more in the family. Women, friends of Monnica, were amazed that the good understanding was not oftener upset, at least in an open manner, between husband and wife. Everybody in Thagaste knew the quick-tempered and violent character of Patricius. And yet there were no signs that he beat his wife. Nor did any one say he did. Other women who had less passionate husbands were nevertheless beaten by them. When they came to Monnica's house they shewed her the marks of the whacks they had got, their faces swollen from blows, and they burst out in abuse of men, clamouring against their lechery, which, said these matrons, was the cause of the ill-treatment they had to endure. "Blame your own tongue," retorted Monnica. According to her, women should close their eyes to the infidelities of their husbands and avoid arguing with them when they were angry. Silence, submissiveness, were the all-powerful arms. And since, as a young woman, she had a certain natural merriment, she added, laughing: "Remember what was read to you on your wedding-day. You were told that you are the handmaids of your husbands. Don't rebel against your masters!..." Possibly this was a keen criticism of the pagan code, so hard in its rules. Still, in this matter, the Roman law was in agreement with the Gospel. Sincere Christian as she was, the wife of Patricius never had any quarrel with him on account of his infidelities. So much kindness and resignation touched the dissolute and brutal husband, who besides was an excellent man and warm-hearted. The modesty of his wife, after a while, made her attractive in his eyes. He loved her, so to speak, on the strength of his respect and admiration for her. He would indeed have been a churl to find fault with a wife who interfered with him so little and who was a perfect housekeeper, as we shall see later on when we come to her life at Cassicium. In one point, where even she did not intend it, she forwarded the interests of her husband by gaining him the good-will of the Christians in Thagaste; while he, on his side, could say to the pagans who looked askance at his marriage: "Am I not one of yourselves?" In spite of all the differences between him and Monnica, Patricius was a contented husband. III THE COMFORT OF THE MILK Augustin came into this world the thirteenth of November of the year of Christ 354. It was just one little child more in this sensual and pleasure-loving Africa, land of sin and of carnal productiveness, where children are born and die like the leaves. But the son of Monnica and Patricius was predestined: he was not to die in the cradle like so many other tiny Africans. Even if he had not been intended for great things, if he had been only a head in the crowd, the arrival of this baby ought, all the same, to affect us, for to the Christian, the destiny of the obscurest and humblest of souls is a matter of importance. Forty years afterwards, Augustin, in his _Confessions_, pondered this slight ordinary fact of his birth, which happened almost unnoticed by the inhabitants of Thagaste, and in truth it seems to him a great event, not because it concerns himself, bishop and Father of the Church, but because it is a soul which at this imperceptible point of time comes into the world. Let us clearly understand Augustin's thought. Souls have been ransomed by a Victim of infinite value. They have themselves an infinite value. Nothing which goes on in them can be ignored. Their most trifling sins, their feeblest stirrings towards virtue, are vital for the eternity of their lot. All shall be attributed to them by the just Judge. The theft of an apple will weigh perhaps as heavily in the scales as the seizure of a province or a kingdom. The evil of sin is in the evil intention. Now the fate of a soul, created by God, on Him depends. Hence everything in a human life assumes an extreme seriousness and importance. In the history of a creature, all is worthy of being examined, weighed, studied, and perhaps also, for the edification of others, told. Here is an altogether new way of regarding life, and, proceeding from that, of understanding art. Even as the slaves, thanks to Christianity, came into the spiritual city, so the most minute realities by this outlook are to be included in literature. The _Confessions_ will be the first model of the art of the new era. A deep and magnificent realism, because it goes even to the very depths of the divine--utterly distinct, at any rate, from our surface realism of mere amusement--is about to arise from this new conception. Without doubt, in Augustin's eyes, beauty dwells in all things, in so far forth as beauty is a reflection of the order and the thought of the Word. But it has also a more essential character--it has a moral signification and value. Everything, in a word, can be the instrument of the loss or the redemption of a soul. The most insignificant of our actions reverberates to infinitude on our fate. Regarded from this point, both things and beings commence to live a life more closely leagued together and at the same time more private; more individual and more general. All is in the lump, and nevertheless all is separate. Our salvation concerns only ourselves, and yet through charity it becomes involved with the salvation of our fellows. In this spirit let us look at the cradle of Augustin. Let us look at it with the eyes of Augustin himself, and also, perchance, of Monnica. Bending over the frail body of the little child he once was, he puts to himself all the great desperate questions which have shaken humanity for thousands of years. The mystery of life and death rises before him, formidable. It tortures him to the point of anguish, of confusion: "Yet suffer me to speak before Thy mercy, me who am but dust and ashes. Yea, suffer me to speak, for, behold, I speak not to man who scorns me, but to Thy mercy. Even Thou perhaps dost scorn me, but Thou wilt turn and have pity. For what is it that I would say, O Lord my God, save that I know not whence I came hither into this dying life, shall I call it, or living death?... And, lo, my infancy has long been dead, and I live. But Thou, O Lord, who ever livest and in whom nothing ever dies--tell me, I beseech Thee, O God, and have mercy on my misery, tell me whether another life of mine died before my infancy began." One is reminded here of Pascal's famous prosopopoeia: "I know not who has put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor myself. I am in a terrible ignorance about everything.... All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least of all is this very death which I cannot escape." The phrases of the _Pensées_ are only the echo of the phrases of the _Confessions_. But how different is the tone! Pascal's charge against human ignorance is merciless. The God of Port-Royal has the hard and motionless face of the ancient Destiny: He withdraws into the clouds, and only shews Himself at the end to raise up His poor creature. In Augustin the accent is tender, trusting, really like a son, and though he be harassed, one can discern the thrill of an unconquerable hope. Instead of crushing man under the iron hand of the Justice-dealer, he makes him feel the kindness of the Father who has got all ready, long before its birth, for the feeble little child: "The comforts of Thy pity received me, as I have heard from the father and mother of my flesh.... And so the comfort of woman's milk was ready for me. For my mother and my nurses did not fill their own bosoms, but Thou, O Lord, by their means gavest me the food of infancy, according to Thy ordinance...." And see! his heart overflows at this remembrance of his mother's milk. The great doctor humbles his style, makes it simple and familiar, to tell us of his first mewlings, and of his baby angers and joys. He too was a father; he knew what is a new-born child, and a young mother who gives it suck, because he had seen that with his own eyes close beside him. All the small bothers which mingle with the pleasures of fatherhood he had experienced himself. In his own son he studied himself. * * * * * This child, born of a Christian mother, and who was to become the great defender of the faith, was not christened at his birth. In the early Church, and especially in the African Church, it was not usual to do so. The baptismal day was put as far off as possible, from the conviction that the sins committed after the sacrament were much more serious than those which went before. The Africans, very practical folk, clearly foresaw that they would sin again even after baptism, but they wanted to sin at a better rate, and lessen the inflictions of penance. This penance in Augustin's time was far from being as hard as in the century before. Nevertheless, the remembrance of the old severity always remained, and the habit was taken to put off baptism so as not to discourage sinners overmuch. Monnica, always sedulous to conform with the customs of her country and the traditions of her Church, fell in with this practice. Perhaps she may have had also the opposition of her husband to face, for he being a pagan would not have cared to give too many pledges to the Christians, nor to compromise himself in the eyes of his fellow-pagans by shewing that he was so far under the control of Christian zealots as to have his child baptized out of the ordinary way. There was a middle course, and this was to inscribe the child among the catechumens. According to the rite of the first admission to the lowest order of catechumens, the sign of the cross was made on Augustin's forehead, and the symbolic salt placed between his lips. And so they did not baptize him. Possibly this affected his whole life. He lacked the baptismal modesty. Even when he was become a bishop, he never quite cast off the old man that had splashed through all the pagan uncleannesses. Some of his words are painfully broad for chaste ears. The influence of African conditions does not altogether account for this. It is only too plain that the son of Patricius had never known entire virginity of soul. They named him Aurelius Augustinus. Was Aurelius his family name? We cannot tell. The Africans always applied very fantastically the rules of Roman nomenclature. Anyhow, this name was common enough in Africa. The Bishop of Carthage, primate of the province and a friend of Augustin, was also called Aurelius. Pious commentators have sought to find in this name an omen of Augustin's future renown as an orator. They have remarked that the word _aurum_, gold, is contained in Aurelius--a prophetic indication of the golden mouth of the great preacher of Hippo. Meanwhile, he was a baby like any other baby, who only knew, as he tells us, how to take his mother's breast. However, he speaks of nurses who suckled him; no doubt these were servants or slaves of the household. They gave him their milk, like those Algerian women who, to-day, if their neighbour is called away, take her child and feed it. Besides, with them children are weaned much later than with us. You can see mothers sitting at their doors put down their work and call to a child of two or three playing in the street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin remember these things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts they made to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and the servants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of the populace and small trader class. He learned Punic without thinking about it, in playing with other children of Thagaste, just as the sons of our colonists learn Arab in playing with little boys who wear chechias on their heads. He is a Christian, a bishop, already a venerated Father, consulted by the whole Catholic world, and he tells us all that. He tells it in a serious and contrite way, with a manifest anxiety to attribute to God, as the sole cause, all the benefits which embellished his childhood, as well as to deplore his faults and wretchedness, fatal consequence of the original Fall. And still, we can make out clearly that these suave and far-off memories have a charm for him which he cannot quite guard himself against. The attitude of the author of the _Confessions_ is ambiguous and a little constrained. The father who has loved his child, who has joined in his games, struggles in him against the theologian who later on was to uphold the doctrine of Grace against the heretics. He feels that he must shew, not only that Grace is necessary for salvation and that little children ought to be baptized, but that they are capable of sinning. Yes, the children sin even at nurse. And Augustin relates this story of a baby that he had seen: "I know, because I have seen, jealousy in a babe. It could not speak, yet it eyed its foster-brother _with pale cheeks and looks of hate_." Children are already men. The egoism and greediness of the grown man may be already descried in the newly born. However, the theologian of Grace was not able to drive from his mind this verse of the Gospel: _Sinite ad me parvulos venire_--"Suffer little children to come unto Me." But he interprets this in a very narrow sense, luring it into an argument which furthers his case. For him, the small height of children is a symbol of the humility without which no one can enter God's kingdom. The Master, according to him, never intended us to take children as an example. They are but flesh of sin. He only drew from their littleness one of those similitudes which He, with His fondness for symbols, favoured. Well, let us dare to say it: Augustin goes wrong here. Such is the penalty of human thought, which in its justest statements always wounds some truth less clear or mutilates some tender sentiment. Radically, Augustin is right. The child is wicked as man is. We know it. But against the relentlessness of the theologian we place the divine gentleness of Christ: "Suffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom of God." IV THE FIRST GAMES "I loved to play," Augustin says, in telling us of those far-off years. Is it surprising if this quick and supple intelligence, who mastered without effort, and as if by instinct, the encyclopædic knowledge of his age, who found himself at his ease amidst the deepest abstractions, did, at the beginning, take life as a game? The amusements of the little Africans of to-day are not very many, nor very various either. They have no inventive imagination. In this matter their French playfellows have taught them a good deal. If they play marbles, or hopscotch, or rounders, it is in imitation of the _Roumis_. And yet they are great little players. Games of chance attract them above all. At these they spend hour after hour, stretched out flat on their stomachs in some shady corner, and they play with an astonishing intensity of passion. All their attention is absorbed in what they are about; they employ on the game all the cunning of their wits, precociously developed, and so soon stuck fast in material things. When Augustin recalls the games of his childhood, he only mentions "nuts," handball, and birds. To capture a bird, that winged, light, and brilliant thing, is what all children long to do in every country on earth. But in Africa, where there are plenty of birds, big people as well as little love them. In the Moorish cafés, in the wretchedest _gourbis_, cages made of reeds are hung on the walls, all rustling with trills and fluttering of wings. Quail, thrushes, nightingales are imprisoned in them. The nightingale, the singing-bird beyond all others, so difficult to tame, is the honoured guest, the privileged dweller in these rustic cages. With the rose, he is an essential part of Arab poetry. The woods round about Thagaste were full of nightingales. Not the least doubt that the child Augustin had felt the little musical throats of these singing-birds throb between his hands. His sermons, his heaviest treatises, have a recollection of them. He draws from them an evidence in favour of the creating Word who has put beauty and harmony everywhere. In the song of the nightingale he finds, as it were, an echo of the music of the spheres. If he loved birds, as a poet who knows not that he is a poet, did he love as well to play at "nuts"? "Nuts," or thimble-rigging, is only a graceful and crafty game, too crafty for a dreaming and careless little boy. It calls for watchfulness and presence of mind. Grown men play at it as well as children. A step of a staircase is used as a table by the players, or the pavement of a courtyard. Three shells are laid on the stone and a dried pea. Then, with rapid baffling movements, hands brown and alert fly from one shell to another, shuffle them, mix them up, juggle the dried pea sometimes under this shell, sometimes under that,--and the point is to guess which shell the pea has got under. By means of certain astute methods, an artful player can make the pea stick to his fingers, or to the inside of the shell, and the opponent loses every time. They cheat with a calm shamelessness. Augustin cheated too--which did not prevent him from bitterly denouncing the cheating of his fellow-players. The truth is, that he would not have quite belonged to his country if he had not lied and stolen now and then. He lied to his tutor and to his schoolmasters. He stole at his parents' table, in the kitchen, and in the cellar. But he stole like a man of quality, to make presents and to win over his playfellows: he ruled the other boys by his presents--a noteworthy characteristic in this future ruler of souls. Morals like these, a little rough, shape free and bold natures. Those African children were much less coddled, much less scolded, than to-day. Monnica had something else to do than to look after the boys. So for them it was a continual life in the open air, which makes the body strong and hard. Augustin and his companions should be pictured as young wild-cats. This roughness came out strong at games of ball, and generally at all the games in which there are two sides, conquerors and prisoners, or fights with sticks and stones. Stone-throwing is an incurable habit among the little Africans. Even now in the towns our police are obliged to take measures against these ferocious children. In Augustin's time, at Cherchell, which is the ancient _Cæsarea Mauretaniæ_, the childish population was split into two hostile camps which stoned each other. On certain holidays the fathers and big brothers joined the children; blood flowed, and there were deaths. The bishop Augustin recalls with severity the "superb victories" he won in jousts of this kind. But I find it hard to believe that such a delicate child (he was sickly almost all his life) could have got much pleasure out of these brutal sports. If he was drawn into them by the example of others, it must have been through the imagination they appealed to him. In these battles, wherein sides took the field as Romans against Carthaginians, Greeks against Trojans, he believed himself Scipio or Hannibal, Achilles or Hector. He experienced beforehand, as a rhetorician, the intoxication of a triumph which playfellows who were stronger and better provided with muscles gave him a hard fight for. He did not always get the upper hand, except perhaps when he bribed the enemy. But an eager young soul, such as he was, can hardly be content with half-victories; he wants to excel. Accordingly, he sought his revenge in those games wherein the mind has the chief part. He listened to stories with delight, and in his turn repeated them to his little friends, thus trying upon an audience of boys that charm of speech by which later he was to subdue crowds. They also played at acting, at gladiators, at drivers and horses. Some of Augustin's companions were sons of wealthy citizens who gave splendid entertainments to their fellow-countrymen. As these dramatic representations, or games of the arena or circus, drew near, the little child-world was overcome by a fever of imitation. All the children of Thagaste imitated the actors, the _mirmillones_, or the horsemen in the amphitheatre, just as the young Spaniards of to-day imitate the _toreros_. In the midst of these amusements Augustin fell ill; he had fever and violent pains in the stomach. They thought he was going to die. It appears that it was himself who in this extreme situation asked for baptism. Monnica was making all haste to have the sacrament administered, when suddenly, against all expectation, the child recovered. Again was baptism postponed, and from the same reason: to lessen the gravity of the sins which young Augustin was bound to commit. His mother, who no doubt foresaw some of them, again fell in with the custom. It is possible that Patricius interfered this time in a more decided way. Just at this period Catholicism was in an unfavourable situation. The short reign of Julian had started a violent pagan reaction. Everywhere the temples were reopening, the sacrifices beginning again. Moreover, the Donatists secretly aided the pagans. Their _Seids_, more or less acknowledged, the Circoncelliones, bands of fanatical peasants, scoured through the Numidian country, attacking the Catholics, ravaging and pillaging, and burning their farms and villas. Was this a good time to make a noisy profession of faith, to be enrolled among the ranks of the conquered party? Little Augustin knew nothing of all these calculations of motherly prudence and fatherly diplomacy: he begged for baptism, so he tells us. This seems very remarkable in so young a child. But he lived in a house where all the service was done by Christians. He heard the talk of Monnica's friends; perhaps, too, of his grandparents, who were Catholics faithful and austere. And then, his soul was naturally religious. That explains everything: he asked for baptism to be like grown-up people, and because he was predestined. Among children, the chosen have these sudden flashes of light. At certain moments they feel what one day they shall be. Anyhow, Monnica must have seen this sign with joy. He got well, and took up again his little boy's life, divided between play, and dawdling, and school. School! painful memory for Augustin! They sent him to the _primus magister_, the elementary teacher, a real terror, armed with a long switch which came down without pity on idle boys. Seated on benches around him, or crouched on mats, the boys sang out all together: "One and one are two, two and two are four"--horrible refrain which deafened the whole neighbourhood. The school was often a mere shed, or a _pergola_ in the fields which was protected fairly well from sun and rain by cloths stretched overhead--a hut rented for a trifle, wide open to the winds, with a mosquito-net stretched out before the entrance. All who were there must have frozen in winter and broiled in summer. Augustin remembered it as a slaves' chain-prison (_ergastulum_) of boyhood. He hated school and what they taught there--the alphabet, counting, and the rudiments of Latin and Greek grammar. He had a perfect horror of lessons--of Greek above all. This schoolboy, who became, when his turn came, a master, objected to the methods of school. His mind, which grasped things instinctively at a single bound, could not stand the gradual procedure of the teaching faculty. He either mastered difficulties at once, or gave them up. Augustin was one of the numerous victims of the everlasting mistake of schoolmasters, who do not know how to arrange their lessons to accord with various kinds of mind. Like most of those who eventually become great men, he was no good as a pupil. He was often punished, thrashed--and cruelly thrashed. The master's scourge filled him with an unspeakable terror. When he was smarting all over from cuts and came to complain to his parents, they laughed at him or made fun of him--yes, even the pious Monnica. Then the poor lad, not knowing whom to turn to, remembered hearing his mother and the servants talk of a Being, very powerful and very good, who defends the orphan and the oppressed. And he said from the depths of his heart: "O my God, please grant that I am not whipped at school." But God did not hear his prayer because he was not a good boy. Augustin was in despair. It is evident that these punishments were cruel, because forty years afterwards he denounces them with horror. In his mind, they are tortures comparable to the wooden horse or the iron pincers. Nothing is small for children, especially for a sensitive child like Augustin. Their sensitiveness and their imagination exaggerate all things out of due measure. In this matter, also, schoolmasters often go wrong. They do not know how to handle delicate organizations. They strike fiercely, when a few words said at the right moment would have much more effect on the culprit.... Monnica's son suffered as much from the rod as he took pride in his successes at games. If, as Scipio, he was filled with a sensation of glory in his battles against other boys, no doubt he pictured himself a martyr, a St. Laurence or St. Sebastian, when he was swished. He never pardoned--save as a Christian--his schoolmasters for having brutalized him. Nevertheless, despite his hatred for ill-ordered lessons, his precocious intelligence was remarked by everybody. It was clear that such lucky gifts should not be neglected. Monnica, no doubt, was the first to get this into her head, and she advised Patricius to make Augustin read for a learned profession. The business of the _curia_ was not exactly brilliant, and so he may have perceived that his son might raise their fortunes if he had definite employment. Augustin, a professor of eloquence or a celebrated pleader, might be the saviour and the benefactor of his family. The town councils, and even the Imperial treasury, paid large salaries to rhetoricians. In those days, rhetoric led to everything. Some of the professors who went from town to town giving lectures made considerable fortunes. At Thagaste they pointed with admiration to the example of the rhetorician Victorinus, an African, a fellow-countryman, who had made a big reputation over-seas, and had his statue in the Roman Forum. And many years before, had not M. Cornelius Fronto, of Cirta, another African, become the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, who covered him with honours and wealth and finally raised him to the Consulship? Pertinax himself, did he not begin as a simple teacher of grammar, and become Proconsul of Africa and then Emperor of Rome? How many stimulants for provincial ambition!... Augustin's parents reasoned as the middle-class parents of to-day. They discounted the future, and however hard up they were, they resolved to make sacrifices for his education. And as the schools of Thagaste were inadequate, it was decided to send this very promising boy to Madaura. V THE SCHOOLBOY OF MADAURA A new world opened before Augustin. It was perhaps the first time he had ever gone away from Thagaste. Of course, Madaura is not very far off; there are about thirty miles at most between the two towns. But there are no short journeys for children. This one lay along the military road which ran from Hippo to Theveste--a great Roman causeway paved with large flags on the outskirts of towns, and carefully pebbled over all the rest of the distance. Erect upon the high saddle of his horse, Augustin, who was to become a tireless traveller and move about ceaselessly over African roads during all his episcopal life--Augustin got his first glimpse of the poetry of the open road, a poetry which we have lost for ever. How amusing they were, the African roads of those days, how full of sights! Pauses were made at inns with walls thick as the ramparts of citadels, their interiors bordered by stables built in arcades, heaped up with travellers' packs and harness. In the centre were the trough and cistern; and to the little rooms opening in a circle on to the balcony, drifted up a smell of oil and fodder, and the noise of men and of beasts of burthen, and of the camels as they entered majestically, curving their long necks under the lintel of the door. Then there was talk with the merchants, just arrived from the south, who brought news of the nomad countries, and had stories to tell. And then, without hurrying, a start was made again for the next stage. Long files of chariots were encountered carrying provisions to soldiers garrisoned on the frontier, or the State-distributed corn of the Roman people to the sea-ports; or again, from time to time, the _lectica_, brought along by slaves or mules, of a bishop on a visitation; and then the litter, with close-drawn curtains, of a matron or some great personage. Of a sudden all pulled sharp to one side; the vehicles lined up on the edge of the road; and there passed at full speed, in a cloud of dust, a messenger of the Imperial Post.... Certainly this road from Hippo to Theveste was one of the busiest and most picturesque in the province: it was one of its main arteries. At first the look of the country is rather like the neighbourhood of Thagaste. The wooded and mountainous landscape still spreads out its little breast-shaped hills and its sheets of verdure. Here and there the road skirts the deeply-ravined valley of the Medjerda. At the foot of the precipitous slopes, the river can be heard brawling in a torrent over its stony bed, and there are sharp descents among thickets of juniper and the fringed roots of the dwarf-pines. Then, as the descent continues, the land becomes thinner and spaces bare of vegetation appear oftener. At last, upon a piece of tableland, Madaura comes into view, all white in the midst of the vast tawny plain, where to-day nothing is to be seen but a mausoleum in ruins, the remains of a Byzantine fortress, and vague traces vanishing away. This is the first rise of the great plain which declines towards Theveste and the group of the Aures Mountains. Coming from the woodland country of Thagaste, the nakedness of it is startling. Here and there, thin cows crop starveling shrubs which have grown on the bank of some _oued_ run dry. Little asses, turned loose, save themselves at a gallop towards the tents of the nomads, spread out, black and hairy, like immense bats on the whiteness of the land. Nearer, a woman's red _haick_ interposes, the single stain of bright colour breaking the indefinite brown and grey of the plain. Here is felt the harshness of Numidia; it is almost the stark spaces of the desert world. But on the side towards the east, the architecture of mountains, wildly sculptured, stands against the level reaches of the horizon. Upon the clear background of the sky, shew, distinctly, lateral spurs and a cone like to the mystic representation of Tanit. Towards the south, crumbling isolated crags appear, scattered about like gigantic pedestals uncrowned of their statues, or like the pipes of an organ raised there to capture and attune the cry of the great winds of the _steppe_. This country is characterized by a different kind of energy from Thagaste. There is more air and light and space. If the plantation is sparse, the beautiful shape of the land may be observed all the better. Nothing breaks or lessens the grand effects of the light.... And let no one say that Augustin's eyes cared not for all that, he who wrote after his conversion, and in all the austerity of his repentance: "If sentient things had not a soul, we should not love them so much." It is here, between Madaura and Thagaste, during the eager years of youth, that he gathered together the seeds of sensations and images which, later on, were to burst forth into fiery and boiling metaphors in the _Confessions_, and in his homilies and paraphrases of Holy Scripture. Later on, he will not have the time to observe, or he will have lost the power. Rhetoric will stretch its commonplace veil between him and the unceasing springtide of the earth. Ambition will turn him away from those sights which reveal themselves only to hearts unselfish and indifferent. Then, later on, Faith will seize hold of him to the exclusion of all else. He will no longer perceive the creation save at odd moments in a kind of metaphysical dream, and, so to speak, across the glory of the Creator. But in these youthful years all things burst upon him with extraordinary violence and ecstasy. His undulled senses swallowed greedily the whole banquet offered by this wide world to his hunger for pleasure. The fugitive beauty of things and beings, with all their charms, revealed itself to him in its newness: _novissimarum rerum fugaces pulchritudines, earumque suavitates_. This craving for sensation will still exist in the great Christian teacher, and betray itself in the warm and coloured figures of his style. Of course, he was not as a worldly describer, who studies to produce phrases which present an image, or arranges glittering pictures--all such endeavours he knew nothing about. But by instinct, and thanks to his warm African temperament, he was a kind of impressionist and metaphysical poet. If the rural landscape of Thagaste is reflected in certain passages--the pleasantest and most well known--of the _Confessions_, all the intellectual part of Augustin's work finds its symbolical commentary here in this arid and light-splashed plain of Madaura. Like it, the thought of Augustin has no shadows. Like it too, it is lightened by strange and splendid tints which seem to come from far off, from a focal fire invisible to human eyes. No modern writer has better praised the light--not only the immortal light of the blessed, but that light which rests on the African fields, and is on land and sea; and nobody has spoken of it with more amplitude and wonder. The truth is, that in no country in the world, not even in Egypt, in the rose-coloured lands of Karnak and Luxor, is the light more pure and admirable than in these great bare plains of Numidia and the region of the Sahara. Is there not enchantment for the eyes of the metaphysician in this play of light, these nameless interfulgent colours which appear flimsy as the play of thought? For the glowing floating haze is made of nothing--of lines, of gleam, of unregulated splendour. And all this triumph of fluctuating light and elusive colour is quenched with the sun, smoulders into darkness, even as ideas in the obscure depths of the intelligence which reposes.... Not less than this land, stern even to sadness, but hot and sumptuous, the town of Madaura must have impressed Augustin. It was an old Numidian city, proud of its antiquity. Long before the Roman conquest, it had been a fortress of King Syphax. Afterwards, the conquerors settled there, and in the second century of our era, Apuleius, the most famous of its children, could state before a proconsul, not without pride, that Madaura was a very prosperous colony. It is probable that this old town was not so much Romanized as its neighbours, Thimgad and Lambesa, which were of recent foundation and had been built all at once by decree of the Government. But it may well have been as Roman as Theveste, a no less ancient city, where the population was probably just as mixed. Madaura, like Theveste, had its temples with pillars and Corinthian porticoes, its triumphal arches (these were run up everywhere), its forum surrounded by a covered gallery and peopled with statues. Statues also were very liberally distributed in those days. We know of at least three at Madaura which Augustin mentions in one of his letters: A god Mars in his heroic nakedness, and another Mars armed from head to foot; opposite, the statue of a man, in realistic style, stretching out three fingers to neutralize the evil eye. These familiar figures remained very clear in the recollection of Augustin. In the evening, or at the hour of the siesta, he had stretched himself under their pedestals and played at dice or bones in the cool shade of the god Mars, or of the Man with outstretched fingers. The slabs of marble of the portico made a good place to play or sleep. Among these statues, there was one perhaps which interested the lad and stimulated all his early ambitions--that of Apuleius, the great man of Madaura, the orator, philosopher, sorcerer, who was spoken of from one end to the other of Africa. By dint of gazing at this, and listening to the praises of the great local author, did the young scholar become aware of his vocation? Did he have from this time a confused sort of wish to become one day another Apuleius, a Christian Apuleius--to surpass the reputation of this celebrated pagan? These impressions and admirations of youth have always a more or less direct influence upon what use a boy makes of his talents. Be that as it will, Augustin could not take a step in Madaura without running against the legend of Apuleius, who was become almost a divinity for his fellow-countrymen. He was looked upon not only as a sage, but as a most wily nigromancer. The pagans compared him to Christ--nay, put him higher than Christ. In their view he had worked much more astonishing miracles than those of Jesus or of Apollonius of Tyana. And people told the extravagant stories out of his _Metamorphoses_ as real, as having actually happened. Nothing was seen on all sides but wizards, men changed into animals, animals, or men and women, under some spell. In the inns, a man watched with a suspicious look the ways of the maidservant who poured out his drink or handed him a dish. Perhaps some magic potion was mingled with the cheese or bread that she was laying on the table. It was an atmosphere of feverish and delirious credulity. The pagan madness got the better of the Christians themselves. Augustin, who had lived in this atmosphere, will later find considerable trouble in maintaining his strong common sense amid such an overflow of marvels. For the moment, the fantasy of tales filled him with at least as much enthusiasm as the supernatural. At Madaura he lived in a miraculous world, where everything charmed his senses and his mind, and everything stimulated his precocious instinct for Beauty. More than Thagaste, no doubt, Madaura bore the marks of the building genius of the Romans. Even to-day their descendants, the Italians, are the masons of the world, after having been the architects. The Romans were the building nation above all others. They it was who raised and established towns upon the same model and according to the same ideal as an oration or a poem. They really invented the house, _mansio_, not only the shelter where one lives, but the building which itself lives, which triumphs over years and centuries, a huge construction ornamental and sightly, existing as much--and perhaps more--for the delight of the eyes as for usefulness. The house, the _Town-with-deep-streets_, perfectly ordered, were a great matter of amazement for the African nomad--he who passes and never settles down anywhere. He hated them, doubtless, as the haunts of the soldier and the publican, his oppressors, but he also regarded them with admiration mixed with jealousy as the true expression of a race which, when it entered a country, planted itself for eternity, and claimed to join magnificence and beauty to the manifestation of its strength. The Roman ruins which are scattered over modern Algeria humiliate ourselves by their pomp--us who flatter ourselves that we are resuming the work of the Empire and continuing its tradition. They are a permanent reproach to our mediocrity, a continual incitement to grandeur and beauty. Of course, the Roman architecture could not have had on Augustin, this still unformed young African, the same effect as it has to-day on a Frenchman or a man from Northern Europe. But it is certain that it formed, without his knowledge, his thought and his power of sensation, and extended for him the lessons of the Latin rhetoricians and grammarians. All that was not exactly very Christian. But from these early school years Augustin got further and further away from Christianity, and the examples he had under his eyes, at Madaura were hardly likely to strengthen him in his faith. It was hardly an edifying atmosphere there for a Catholic youth who had a lively imagination, a pleasure-loving temperament, and who liked pagan literature. The greatest part of the population were pagans, especially among the aristocrats. The Decurions continued to preside at festivals in honour of the old idols. These festivals were frequent. The least excuse was taken to engarland piously the doors of houses with branches, to bleed the sacrificial pig, or slaughter the lamb. In the evening, squares and street corners were illuminated. Little candles burned on all the thresholds. During the mysteries of Bacchus, the town councillors themselves headed the popular rejoicings. It was an African carnival, brutal and full of colour. People got tipsy, pretended they were mad. For the sport of the thing, they assaulted the passers and robbed them. The dull blows on tambourines, the hysterical and nasal preludes of the flutes, excited an immense elation, at once sensual and mystic. And all quieted down among the cups and leather flagons of wine, the grease and meats of banquets in the open air. Even in a country as sober as Africa, the pagan feasts were never much else than excuses for gorging and orgies. Augustin, who after his conversion had only sarcasms for the carnival of Madaura, doubtless went with the crowd, like many other Christians. Rich and influential people gave the example. There was danger of annoying them by making a group apart. And then, there was no resisting the agreeableness of such festivals. Perhaps he was even brought to these love-feasts by those in whose charge he was. For, in fact, to whom had he been entrusted? Doubtless to some host of Patricius, a pagan like himself. Or did he lodge with his master, a grammarian, who kept a boarding-house for the boys? Almost all these schoolmasters were pagan too. Is it wonderful that the Christian lessons of Monnica and the nurses at Thagaste became more and more blurred in Augustin's mind? Many years after, an old Madaura grammarian, called Maximus, wrote to him in a tone of loving reproach: "Thou hast drawn away from us"--_a secta nostra deviasti_. Did he wish to hint that at this time Augustin had glided into paganism? Nothing is more unlikely. He himself assures us that the name of Christ remained always "graven on his heart." But while he was at Madaura he lived indifferently with pagans and Christians. Besides that, the teaching he got was altogether pagan in tone. No doubt he picked out, as he always did, the subjects which suited him. Minds such as his fling themselves upon that which is likely to nourish them: they throw aside all the rest, or suffer it very unwillingly. Thus Augustin never wavered in his dislike for Greek: he was a poor Greek scholar. He detested the Greeks by instinct. According to Western prejudice, these men of the East were all rascals or amusers. Augustin, as a practical African, always regarded the Greeks as vain, discoursing wits. In a word, they were not sincere people whom it would be safe to trust. The entirely local patriotism of the classical Greek authors further annoyed this Roman citizen who was used to regard the world as his country: he thought them very narrow-minded to take so much interest in the history of some little town. As for him, he looked higher and farther. It must be remembered that in the second half of the fourth century the Greek attitude, broadened and fully conscious of itself, set itself more and more against Latinism, above all, politically. There it lay, a hostile and impenetrable block before the Western peoples. And here was a stronger reason for a Romanized African to dislike the Greeks. So he painfully construed the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, very cross at the difficulties of a foreign language which prevented him from grasping the plots of the fine, fabulous narratives. There were, however, abridgments used in the schools, a kind of summaries of the Trojan War, written by Latin grammarians under the odd pseudonyms of Dares the Phrygian and Dictys of Crete. But these abridgments were very dry for an imagination like Augustin's. He much preferred the _Æneid_, the poem admired above all by the Africans, on account of the episode devoted to the foundation of Carthage. Virgil was his passion. He read and re-read him continually; he knew him by heart. To the end of his life, in his severest writings, he quoted verses or whole passages out of his much-loved poet. Dido's adventure moved him to tears. They had to pluck the book out of his hands. Now the reason is that there was a secret harmony between Virgil's soul and the soul of Augustin. Both were gracious and serious. One, the great poet, and one, the humble schoolboy, they both had pity on the Queen of Carthage, they would have liked to save her, or at any rate to mitigate her sadness, to alter a little the callousness of Æneas and the harshness of the Fates. But think of it! Love is a divine sickness, a chastisement sent by the gods. It is just, when all's said, that the guilty one should endure her agony to the very end. And then, such very great things are going to arise out of this poor love! Upon it depends the lot of two Empires. What counts a woman before Rome and Carthage? Besides, she was bound to perish: the gods had decreed it.... There was in all that a concentrated emotion, a depth of sentiment, a religious appeal which stirred Augustin's heart, still unaware of itself. This obedience of the Virgilian hero to the heavenly will, was already an adumbration of the humility of the future Christian. Certainly, Augustin did not perceive very plainly in these turbid years of his youth the full religious significance of Virgil's poem. Carried away by his headstrong nature, he yielded to the heart-rending charm of the romantic story: he lived it, literally, with the heroine. When his schoolmasters desired him to elaborate the lament of the dying Queen Dido in Latin prose, what he wrote had a veritable quiver of anguish. Without the least defence against lust and the delusions of the heart, he spent intellectually and in a single outburst all the strength of passion. He absorbed every love-poem with the eagerness of a participating soul. If he took pleasure in the licentiousness of Plautus and Terence, if he read delightfully those comedies wherein the worst weaknesses are excused and glorified, I believe that he took still more pleasure in the Latin Elegiacs who present without any shame the romantic madness of Alexandrine love. For what sing these poets even to weariness, unless it be that no one can resist the Cyprian goddess, that life has no other end but love? Love for itself, to love for the sake of loving--there is the constant subject of these sensualists, of Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid. After the story of Dido, the youthful reader was ravished by the story of Ariadne, even more disturbing, because no remorse modifies the frenzy of it. He read: _Now while the careless hero flees, beating the wave with his and casting to the gales of the open sea his idle promises,--there, standing among the shingle of the beach, the daughter of Minos follows him, alas! with her beautiful sad eyes: she stares, astonied, like to a Bacchante changed into a statue. She looks forth, and her heart floats upon the great waves of her grief. She lets slip from her head her fine-spun coif, she tears away the thin veils which cover her bosom, and the smooth cincture which supports her quivering breasts. All that slips from her body into the salt foam which ripples round her feet. But little she cares for her coif or for her apparel carried away by the tide! Lost, bewildered, with all her heart and all her soul, she is clinging to thee, O Theseus._ And if Augustin, when he had read these burning verses of Catullus, looked through the Anthologies which were popular in the African schools, he would come upon "The Vigil of Venus," that eclogue which ends with such a passionate cry: _O my springtime, when wilt thou come? When shall I be as the swallow? When shall I cease to be silent?... May he love to-morrow, he has not loved yet. And he who has already loved, may he love again to-morrow._ Imagine the effect of such exhortations on a youth of fifteen! Truly, this springtide of love, which the poet cries for in his distress, the son of Monnica knew well was come for him. How he must have listened to the musical and melancholy counsellor who told his pain to the leaves of the book! What stimulant and what food for his boyish longings and dreams! And what a divine chorus of beauties the great love-heroines of ancient epic and elegy, Helen, Medea, Ariadne, Phædra, formed and re-formed continually in his dazzled memory! When we of to-day read such verses at Augustin's age, some bitterness is mixed with our delight. These heroes and heroines are too far from us. These almost chimerical beings withdraw from us into outlying lands, to a vanished world which will never come again. But for Augustin, this was the world he was born into--it was his pagan Africa where pleasure was the whole of life, and one lived only for the lusts of the flesh. And the race of fabulous princesses--they were not dead, those ladies: they were ever waiting for the well-beloved in the palaces at Carthage. Yes, the scholar of Madaura lived wonderful hours, dreaming thus of love between the pages of the poets. These young dreams before love comes are more bewitching than love itself: a whole unknown world suddenly discovered and entered with a quivering joy of discovery at each step. The unused strength of illusion appears inexhaustible, space becomes deeper and the heart more strong.... A long time afterwards, when, recovered from all that, Augustin speaks to us of the Divine love, he will know fully the infinite value of it from having gone through all the painful entrancements of the other. And he will say to us, with the sureness of experience: "The pleasure of the human heart in the light of truth and the abundance of wisdom--yea, the pleasure of the human heart, of the faithful heart, and of the heart which is holy, stands alone. You will find nothing in any voluptuousness fit to be compared to it. I say not that this other pleasure is less, for that which is called less hath only to increase to become equal. No, I shall not say that all other pleasure is less. No comparison can be made. It is another kind, it is another reality." VI THE HOLIDAYS AT THAGASTE In the city of Apuleius, the Christian Monnica's son became simply a pagan. He was near his sixteenth year: the awkward time of early virility was beginning for him. Prepared at Madaura, it suddenly burst out at Thagaste. Augustin came back to his parents, no doubt during the vacation. But this vacation lasted perhaps a whole year. He had come to the end of his juvenile studies. The grammarians at Madaura could teach him nothing more. To round off his acquirements, it would be necessary to attend the lectures of some well-known rhetorician. Now there were very good rhetoricians only at Carthage. Besides, it was a fashion, and point of honour, for Numidian families to send their sons to finish their education in the provincial capital. Patricius was most eager to do this for his son, who at Madaura had shewn himself a very brilliant pupil and ought not therefore to be pulled up half-way down the course. But the life of a student cost a good deal, and Patricius had no money. His affairs were always muddled. He was obliged to wait for the rents from his farms, to grind down his tenants, and, ultimately, despairing of any other way out of it, to ask for an advance of money from a rich patron. That needed time and diplomacy. Days and months went by, and Augustin, with nothing to do, joined in with easily-made friends and gave himself up to the pleasures of his time of life, like all the young townsmen of Thagaste--pleasures rather rough and little various, such as were to be got in a little free-town of those days, and as they have remained for the natives of to-day, whether they live a town or country life. To hunt, to ride horseback, to play at games of chance, to drink, eat, and make love--they wanted nothing beyond that. When Augustin in his _Confessions_ accuses himself of his youthful escapades he uses the most scathing language. He speaks of them with horror and disgust. Once more we are tempted to believe that he exaggerates through an excess of Christian remorse. There are even some who, put on their guard by this vehement tone, have questioned the historical value of the _Confessions_. They argue that when the Bishop of Hippo wrote these things his views and feelings had altered. He could no longer judge with the same eye and in the same spirit the happenings of his youth. All this is only too certain: when he wrote, it was as a Christian he judged himself, and not as a cold historian who refuses to go beyond the brutal fact. He tried to unravel the origin and to trace the consequences of the humblest of his actions, because this is of the highest importance for salvation. But however severe his judgment may be, it does not impair the reality of the fact itself. Moreover, in natures like his, acts which others would hardly think of have a vibration out of all proportion with the act itself. The evil of sin depends upon the consciousness of the sin and the pleasure taken in it. Augustin was very intelligent and very sensual. In any case, young Africans develop early, and the lechery of the race is proverbial. It must have been a good deal stronger at a time when Christianity still had to fight against pagan slackness in these matters, ere Islam had imposed its hypocritical austerity upon the general conduct. There is even room for wonder that in Augustin's case this crisis of development did not happen earlier than his sixteenth year. It seems that it was only more violent. In what language he describes it! "I dared to roam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves beneath the shade." But he was not yet in love--this he points out himself. In his case then it was simple lust. "From the quagmire of concupiscence, from the well of puberty, exhaled a mist which clouded and befogged my heart, so that I could not distinguish between the clear shining of affection and the darkness of lust.... I could not keep within the kingdom of light, where friendship binds soul to soul.... And so I polluted the brook of friendship with the sewage of lust." Let us not try to make it clearer than he has left it himself. When one thinks of all the African vices, one dare not dwell upon such avowals. "Lord," he says, "I was loathsome in Thy sight." And with pitiless justice he analyses the effect of the evil: "It stormed confusedly within me, whirling my thoughtless youth over the precipices of desire. And I wandered still further from Thee, and Thou didst leave me to myself; the torrent of my fornications tossed and swelled and boiled and ran over." And during this time: "Thou saidst nothing, O my God!" This silence of God is the terrible sign of hardened sin, of hopeless damnation. It meant utter depravity of the will; he did not even feel remorse any more. Here he is, then, as if unfastened from his child's soul--separated from himself. The object of his youthful faith has no more meaning for him. He understands no longer, and it is all one to him that he does not. Thus, told by himself, does this first crisis of Augustin's life emerge from the autobiography; and it takes on a general significance. Once for all, under a definite form, and to a certain degree classic, he has diagnosed with his subtle experience of doctor of souls the pubescent crisis in all young men of his age, in all the young Christians who are to come after him. For the story of Augustin is the story of each of us. The loss of faith always occurs when the senses first awaken. At this critical moment, when nature claims us for her service, the consciousness of spiritual things is, in most cases, either eclipsed or totally destroyed. The gradual usage to the brutalities of the instinct ends by killing the sensitiveness of the inward feelings. It is not reason which turns the young man from God; it is the flesh. Scepticism but provides him with excuses for the new life he is leading. Thus started, Augustin was not able to pull up half-way on the road of pleasure; he never did anything by halves. In these vulgar revels of the ordinary wild youth, he wanted again to be best, he wanted to be first as he was at school. He stirred up his companions and drew them after him. They in their turn drew him. Among them was found that Alypius, who was the friend of all his life, who shared his faults and mistakes, who followed him even in his conversion, and became Bishop of Thagaste. These two future shepherds of Christ roamed the streets with the lost sheep. They spent the nights in the open spaces of the town, playing, or wantonly dreaming before cups of cool drinks. They lounged there, stretched out on mats, with a crown of leaves on the head, a jasmine garland round the neck, a rose or marigold thrust above the ear. They never knew what to do next to kill time. So one fine evening the reckless crew took it into their heads to rifle a pear tree of one of Patricius's neighbours. This pear tree was just beyond the vineyard belonging to Augustin's father. The rascals shook down the pears. They took a few bites to find out the taste, and having decided this to be rather disappointing, they chucked all the rest to the hogs. In this theft, done merely for the pleasure of the thing, Augustin sees an evidence of diabolical mischief. Doubtless he committed many another misdeed where, like this, the whole attraction lay in the Satanic joy of breaking the law. His fury for dissolute courses knew no rest. Did Monnica observe anything of this change in Augustin? The boy, grown big, had escaped from the supervision of the women's apartments. If the mother guessed anything, she did not guess all. It fell to her husband to open her eyes. With the freedom of manners among the ancients, Augustin relates the fact quite plainly.... That took place in the bath-buildings at Thagaste. He was bathing with his father, probably in the _piscina_ of cold baths. The bathers who came out of the water with dripping limbs were printing wet marks of their feet upon the mosaic flooring, when Patricius, who was watching them, suddenly perceived that his son had about him the signs of manhood, that he was already bearing--as Augustin says himself in his picturesque language--the first signs of turbulent youth, like another _toga praetexta_. Patricius, as a good pagan, welcomed with jubilation this promise of grand-children, and rushed off joyously to brag of his discovery to Monnica. She took the news in quite another way. Frightened at the idea of the dangers to which her son's virtue was exposed, she lectured him in private. But Augustin, from the height of his sixteen years, laughed at her. "A lot of old-women's gossip! Why does she want to talk about things she can't understand!..." Tired out at last, Monnica tried to get a promise from her son that he would at least have some restraint in his dissipation--that he would avoid women of the town, and above all, that he would have nothing to do with married women. For the rest, she put him in God's hands. It may be wondered--Augustin himself wonders--that she did not think of finding him a wife. They marry early in Africa. Even now any Arab labourer buys a wife for his son, hardly turned sixteen, so that the fires of a too warm youth may be quenched in marriage. But Monnica, who was not yet a saint, acted in this matter like a foreseeing and practical woman of the prosperous class. A wife would be a drag for a young man like Augustin, who seemed likely to have such a brilliant career. A too early marriage would jeopardize his future. Before all things, it was important that he should become an illustrious rhetorician, and raise the fortunes of the family. For her, all else yielded to this consideration. But she hoped at least that the headstrong student might consent to be good into the bargain. This was also Patricius's way of looking at the matter. And so, says Augustin, "My father gave himself no concern how I grew towards Thee, or how chaste I was, provided only that I became a man of culture--however destitute of Thy culture, O God.... My mother and he slackened the curb without regard to due severity, and I was suffered to enjoy myself according to my dissolute fancy." Meanwhile, Patricius was now become (very tardily) a catechumen. The entreaties of his wife had won him to the Catholic faith. But his sentiments were not much more Christian--"He hardly thought of Thee, my God," acknowledges his son, who nevertheless was pleased at this conversion. If Patricius decided to get converted, it was probably from political reasons. Since the death of Julian the Apostate, paganism appeared finally conquered. The Emperor Valentinianus had just proclaimed heavy penalties against night-sacrifices. In Africa, the Count Romanus persecuted the Donatists. All the Christians in Thagaste were Catholic. What was the good of keeping up a useless and dangerous resistance? Perhaps the end of Patricius--which was near--was as edifying as Monnica could wish. But at all events, at the present moment, he was not the man to interfere with Augustin's pleasures: he only thought of the eventual fortune of the young man. Alone, Monnica might have had some influence on him, and she herself was fascinated by his future career in the world. Perhaps, to quiet her conscience, she said to herself that this frivolous education would be more or less of a help to her son towards bringing him back to God, that a day would come when the famous rhetorician would plead the cause of Christ?... Scandalized though she might be at his conduct, it is however apparent that it was about this time she began to get fonder of him, to worry over him as her favourite child. But it was not till much later that the union between mother and son became quite complete. Too many old customs still remained preventing close intercourse between the men and women of a family. And it will hardly do to picture such intimacy from the intimacy which may exist between a mother and son of our own time. There was none of the spoiling, or indulgence, or culpable weakness which enervates maternal tenderness and makes it injurious to the energy of a manly character. Monnica was severe and a little rough. If she let her feelings be seen, it was solely before God. And yet it is most certain that in the depth of her heart she loved Augustin, not only as a future member of Christ, but humanly, as a woman frustrated of love in a badly assorted marriage may spend her love on her child. The brutality of pagan ways revolted her, and she poured on this young head all her stored-up affection. In Augustin she loved the being she wished she could love in her husband. A number of personal considerations were no doubt involved in the deep and unselfish attachment she had for her son: instinctively, she looked for him to protect her against the father's violence. She felt that he would be the support of her old age, and also, she foresaw dimly what one day he would be. All this aided to bring about the tie, the understanding, which grew more and more close between Augustin and Monnica. And so from this time they both appear to us as they were to appear to all posterity--the pattern of the Christian Mother and Son. Thanks to them, the hard law of the ancients has been abrogated. There shall be no more barriers between the mother and her child. No longer shall it be vain exterior rites which draw together the members of the same family: they shall communicate in spirit and truth. Heart speaketh to heart. The fellowship of souls is founded, and the ties of the domestic hearth are drawn close, as they never were in antiquity. No more shall they work in concert only for material things; they will join together to love--and to love each other more. The son will belong more to his mother. At the time we have now come to, Monnica was already undertaking the conquest of Augustin's soul. She prayed for him fervently. The young man cared very little: gratitude came to him only after his conversion. At this time he was thinking of nothing but amusement. For this he even forgot his career. But Monnica and Patricius thought of it constantly--especially Patricius, who gave himself enormous trouble to enable this student on a holiday to finish his studies. Eventually he got together the necessary money, possibly borrowed enough to make up the sum from some rich landowner who was the patron of the people of small means in Thagaste--say, that gorgeous Romanianus, to whom Augustin, in acknowledgment, dedicated one of his first books. The young man could now take the road for Carthage. He left by himself, craving for knowledge and glory and pleasure, his heart full of longing for what he knew not, and melancholy without cause. What was going to become of him in the great, unknown city? THE SECOND PART THE ENCHANTMENT OF CARTHAGE Amare et amari. "To love and to be loved." _Confessions_, III, i. I CARTHAGO VENERIS "I went to Carthage, where shameful loves bubbled round me like boiling oil." This cry of repentance, uttered by the converted Augustin twenty-five years later, does not altogether stifle his words of admiration for the old capital of his country. One can see this patriotic admiration stirring between the lines. Carthage made a very strong impression on him. He gave it his heart and remained faithful to the end. His enemies, the Donatists, called him "the Carthaginian arguer." After he became Bishop of Hippo, he was continually going to Carthage to preach, or dispute, or consult his colleagues, or to ask something from men in office. When he is not there, he is ever speaking of it in his treatises and plain sermons. He takes comparisons from it: "You who have been to Carthage--" he often says to his listeners. For the boy from little Thagaste to go to Carthage, was about the same as for our youths from the provinces to go to Paris. _Veni Carthaginem_--in these simple words there is a touch of naive emphasis which reveals the bewilderment of the Numidian student just landed in the great city. And, in fact, it was one of the five great capitals of the Empire: there were Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria--Carthage. Carthage was the sea-port capital of the whole western Mediterranean. With its large new streets, its villas, its temples, its palaces, its docks, its variously dressed cosmopolitan population, it astonished and delighted the schoolboy from Madaura. Whatever local marks were left about him, or signs of the rustic simpleton, it brushed off. At first, Augustin must have felt himself as good as lost there. There he was, his own master, with nobody to counsel and direct him. He does indeed mention his fellow-countryman, that Romanianus, the patron of his father and of other people in Thagaste, as a high and generous friend who invited him to his house when he, a poor youth, came to finish his studies in a strange city, and helped him, not only with his purse, but with his friendship. Unfortunately the allusion is not very clear. Still, it does seem to shew that Augustin, in the first days after his arrival at Carthage, stayed with Romanianus. It is not in the least improbable that Romanianus had a house at Carthage and spent the winter there: during the rest of the year he would be in his country houses round about Thagaste. This opulent benefactor might not have been satisfied with giving Augustin a good "tip" for his journey when he was leaving his native town, but may also have put him up in his own house at Carthage. Such was the atonement for those enormous fortunes of antiquity: the rich had to give freely and constantly. With the parcelling out of wealth we have become much more egoistical. In any case, Romanianus, taken up with his pleasures and business, could not have been much of a guide for Monnica's son. Augustin was therefore without control, or very nearly. No doubt he came to Carthage with a strong desire to increase his knowledge and get renown, but still more athirst for love and the emotions of sentiment. The love-prelude was deliriously prolonged for him. He was at that time so overwhelmed by it, that it is the first thing he thinks of when he relates his years at Carthage. "To love and be loved" seems to him, as to his dear Alexandrine poets, the single object of life. Yet he was not in love, "but he loved the idea of love." _Nondum amabam, et amare amabam ... amare amans...._ Truly, never a pagan poet had hitherto found such language to speak of love. These subtle phrases are not only the work of a marvellous word-smith: through their almost imperceptible shades of meaning may be descried an entirely new soul, the pleasure-loving soul of the old world awakening to spiritual life. Modern people have repeated the words more than enough, but by translating them too literally--"I loved to love"--they have perhaps distorted the sense. They have made Augustin a kind of Romantic like Alfred de Musset, a dilettante in love. Augustin is not so modern, although he often seems one of ourselves. When he wrote those words he was a bishop and a penitent. What strikes him above all in looking back upon his uneasy and feverish life as a youth and young man, is the great onrush of all his being which swept him towards love. Plainly, man is made for love, since he loves without object and without cause, since in itself alone the idea of love is already for him a beginning of love. Only he falls into error in giving to creatures a heart that the Creator alone can fill and satisfy. In this love for love's sake, Augustin discerned the sign of the predestined soul whose tenderness will find no rest but in God. That is why he repeats this word "Love" with a kind of intoxication. He knows that those who love like him cannot love long with a human love. Nor does he blush to acknowledge it:--he loved--he loved with all his soul--he loved to the point of loving the coming of love. Happy intimation for the Christian! A heart so afire is pledged to the eternal marriage. With this heat of passion, this lively sensibility, Augustin was a prey for Carthage. The voluptuous city took complete hold on him by its charm and its beauty, by all the seductions of mind and sense, by its promises of easy enjoyment. First of all, it softened this young provincial, used to the harder country life of his home; it relaxed the Numidian contracted by the roughness of his climate; it cooled his eyes burned by the sun in the full-flowing of its waters and the suavity of its horizons. It was a city of laziness, and above all, of pleasure, as well for those plunged in business as for the idlers. They called it _Carthago Veneris_--Carthage of Venus. And certainly the old Phoenician Tanit always reigned there. Since the rebuilding of her temple by the Romans, she had transformed herself into _Virgo Coelestis_. This Virgin of Heaven was the great Our Lady of unchastity, towards whom still mounted the adoration of the African land four hundred years after the birth of Christ. "Strange Virgin," Augustin was to say later, "who can only be honoured by the loss of virginity." Her dissolving influence seemed to overcome the whole region. There is no more feminine country than this Carthaginian peninsula, ravished on all sides by the caress of the waters. Stretched out between her lakes on the edge of the sea, Carthage lounged in the humid warmth of her mists, as if in the suffocating atmosphere of her vapour-baths. She stole away the energies, but she was an enchantment for the eyes. From the top of the impressive flight of steps which led up to the temple of Æsculapius on the summit of the Acropolis, Augustin could see at his feet the huge, even-planned city, with its citadel walls which spread out indefinitely, its gardens, blue waters, flaxen plains, and the mountains. Did he pause on the steps at sunset, the two harbours, rounded cup-shape, shone, rimmed by the quays, like lenses of ruby. To the left, the Lake of Tunis, stirless, without a ripple, as rich in ethereal lights as a Venetian lagoon, radiated in ever-altering sheens, delicate and splendid. In front, across the bay, dotted with the sails of ships close-hauled to the wind, beyond the wind-swept and shimmering intervals, the mountains of Rhodes raised their aerial summit-lines against the sky. What an outlook on the world for a young man dreaming of fame! And what more exhilarating spot than this Mount Byrsa, where, in deep layers, so many heroic memories were gathered and superimposed. The great dusty plains which bury themselves far off in the sands of the desert, the mountains--yes, and isles and headlands, all bowed before the Hill that Virgil sang and seemed to do her reverence. She held in awe the innumerable tribes of the barbaric continent; she was mistress of the sea. Rome herself, from the height of her Palatine, surged less imperial. More than any other of the young men seated with him on the benches of the school of rhetoric, Augustin hearkened to the dumb appeals which came from the ancient ruins and new palaces of Carthage. But the supple and treacherous city knew the secret of enchaining the will. She tempted him by the open display of her amusements. Under this sun which touches to beauty the plaster of a hut, the grossest pleasures have an attraction which men of the North cannot understand. The overflowing of lust surrounds you. This prolific swarming, all these bodies, close-pressed and soft with sweat, give forth as it were a breath of fornication which melts the will. Augustin breathed in with delight the heavy burning air, loaded with human odours, which filled the streets and squares of Carthage. To all the bold soliciting, to all the hands stretched out to detain him as he walked, he yielded. But for a mind like his Carthage had more subtle allurements in reserve. He was taken by her theatres, by the verses of her poets and the melodies of her musicians. He shed tears at the plays of Menander and Terence; he lamented upon the misfortunes of separated lovers; he shared their quarrels, rejoiced and despaired with them. And still he awaited the epiphany of Love--that Love which the performance of the actors shewed him to be so touching and fine. Such then was Augustin, given over to the irresponsibility of his eighteen years--a heart spoiled by romantic literature, a mind impatient to try every sort of intellectual adventure in the most corrupting and bewitching city known to the pagan centuries, set amidst one of the most entrancing landscapes in the world. II THE AFRICAN ROME Carthage did not offer only pleasures to Augustin; it was besides an extraordinary subject to think about for an understanding so alert and all-embracing as his. At Carthage he understood the Roman grandeur as he could not at Madaura and the Numidian towns. Here, as elsewhere, the Romans made a point of impressing the minds of conquered races by the display of their strength and magnificence. Above all, they aimed at the immense. The towns built by them offered the same decorative and monumental character of the Greek cities of the Hellenistic period, which the Romans had further exaggerated--a character not without emphasis and over-elaboration, but which was bound to astonish, and that was the main thing in their view. In short, their ideal was not perceptibly different from that of our modern town councillors. To lay out streets which intersected at right angles; to create towns cut into even blocks like chessboards; to multiply prospects and huge architectural masses--all the Roman cities of this period revealed such an aim, with an almost identical plan. Erected after this type, the new Carthage caused the old to be forgotten. Everybody agreed that it was second only to Rome. The African writers squandered the most hyperbolical praises upon it. For them it is "The splendid, the august, the sublime Carthage." Although there may well be a certain amount of triviality or of patriotic exaggeration in these praises, it is certain that the Roman capital of the Province of Africa was no less considerable than the old metropolis of the Hanno and Barcine factions. With a population almost as large as that of Rome, it had almost as great a circumference. It must further be recalled that as it had no ramparts till the Vandal invasion, the city overflowed into the country. With its gardens, villas, and burial-places of the dead, it covered nearly the entire peninsula, to-day depopulated. Carthage, as well as Rome, had her Capitol and Palatine upon Mount Byrsa, where rose no doubt a temple consecrated to the Capitolean triune deities, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, not far from the great temple of Æsculapius, a modern transformation of the old Punic Eschmoum. Hard by these sanctuaries, the Proconsul's palace dominated Carthage from the height of the acclivity of the Acropolis. The Forum was at the foot of the hill, probably in the neighbourhood of the ports--a Forum built and arranged in the Roman way, with its shops of bankers and money-changers placed under the circular galleries, with the traditional image of Marsyas, and a number of statues of local celebrities. Apuleius no doubt had his there. Further off was the Harbour Square, where gathered foreigners recently landed and the idlers of the city in search of news, and where the booksellers offered the new books and pamphlets. There was to be seen one of the curiosities of Carthage--a mosaic representing fabulous monsters, men without heads, and men with only one leg and one foot--a huge foot under which, lying upon their backs, they sheltered from the sun, as under a parasol. On account of this feature they were called the _sciapodes_. Augustin, who like everybody else had paused before these grotesque figures, recalls them somewhere to his readers.... Beside the sea, in the lower town and upon the two near hills of the Acropolis, were a number of detached buildings that the old authors have preserved the names of and briefly described. Thanks to the zeal of archæologists, it is now become impossible to tell where they stood. The pagan sanctuaries were numerous. That of the goddess Coelestis, the great patroness of Carthage, occupied a space of five thousand feet. It comprised, besides the actual [Greek: hieron], where stood the image of the goddess, gardens, sacred groves, and courts surrounded with columns. The ancient Phoenician Moloch had also his temple under the name of Saturn. They called him _The Old One_, so Augustin tells us, and his worshippers were falling away. On the other hand, Carthage had another sanctuary which was very fashionable, a _Serapeum_ as at Alexandria, where were manifested the pomps of the Egyptian ritual, celebrated by Apuleius. Neighbouring the holy places, came the places of amusement: the theatre, the Odeum, circus, stadium, and amphitheatre--this last, of equal dimensions with the Colosseum at Rome, its gallery rising upon gallery, and its realistic sculptures of animals and artisans. Then there were the buildings for the public service: the immense cisterns of the East and the Malga, the great aqueduct, which, after being carried along a distance of fifty-five miles, emptied the water of the Zaghouan into the reservoirs at Carthage. Finally, there were the Baths, some of which we know--those of Antoninus and of Maximianus, and those of Gargilius, where one of the most important Councils known to the history of the African Church assembled. There were likewise many Christian basilicas at the time of Augustin. The authors mention seventeen: it is likely there were more. That of Damous-el-Karita, the only one of which considerable traces have been found, was vast and richly decorated, and was perhaps the cathedral of Carthage. What other buildings there were are utterly lost to history. It may be conjectured, however, that Carthage, as well as Rome, had a _septizonium_--a decorative building with peristyles one above the other which surrounded a reservoir. In fact, it is claimed that the one at Rome was copied from Carthage. Straight streets paved with large flags intersected around these buildings, forming a network of long avenues, very bright and ventilated. Some of them were celebrated in the ancient world either for their beauty or the animation of their trade: the street of the Jewellers, the street of Health, of Saturn, of Coelestis, too, or of Juno. The fig and vegetable markets and the public granaries were also some of the main centres of Carthaginian life. It is unquestionable that Carthage, with its buildings and statues, its squares, avenues and public gardens, looked like a large capital, and was a perfect example of that ideal of rather brutal magnificence and strength which the Romans obtruded everywhere. And even while it dazzled the young provincial from Thagaste, the African Rome shewed him the virtue of order--social and political order. Carthage, the metropolis of Western Africa, maintained an army of officials who handled the government in its smallest details. First of all, there were the representatives of the central power, the imperial rulers--the Proconsul, a sort of vice-emperor, who was surrounded by a full court, a civil and military staff, a privy council, an _officium_ which included a crowd of dignitaries and subaltern clerks. Then there was the Proprætor of Africa who, being in control of the government of the whole African province, had an _officium_ still larger perhaps than the Proconsul's. After them came the city magistrates, who were aided in their functions by the Council of the Decurions--the Senate of Carthage. These Carthaginian senators cut a considerable figure: for them their colleagues at Rome were full of airs and graces, and the Emperors endeavoured to keep them in a good-humour. All the details of city government came under their supervision: the slaughter-houses, buildings, the gathering of municipal taxes, and the police, which comprised even the guardians of the Forum. Then there were the army and navy. The home port of a grain-carrying fleet which conveyed the African cereals to Ostia, Carthage could starve Rome if she liked. The grain and oil of all countries lay in her docks--the storehouses of the state provisions, which were in charge of a special prefect who had under his orders a whole corporation of overseers and clerks. Augustin must have heard a good deal of grumbling at Carthage against this excess of officialism. But, all the same, so well-governed a city was a very good school for a young man who was to combine later the duties of bishop, judge, and governor. The blessings of order, of what was called "the Roman peace" no doubt impressed him the more, as he himself came from a turbulent district often turned upside down by the quarrels of religious sects and by the depredations of the nomads--a boundary-land of the Sahara regions where it was much harder to bring the central government into play than in Carthage and the coast-towns. To appreciate the beauty of government, there is nothing like living in a country where all is at the mercy of force or the first-comer's will. Such of the Barbarians who came in contact with Roman civilization were overcome with admiration for the good order that it established. But what astonished them more than anything else was that the Empire was everywhere. No man, whatever his race or country, could help feeling proud to belong to the Roman city. He was at home in all the countries in the world subject to Rome. Our Europe, split into nationalities, can hardly understand now this feeling of pride, so different from our narrow patriotisms. The way to feel something of it is to go to the colonies: out there the least of us may believe himself a sovereign, simply from the fact that he is a subject of the governing country. This feeling was very strong in the old world. Carthage, where the striking effect of the Empire appeared in all its brilliancy, would increase it in Augustin. He had only to look around him to value the extent of the privilege conferred by Rome on her citizens. Men coming from all countries, without exception of race, were, so to speak, made partners of the Empire and collaborated in the grandeur of the Roman scheme. If the Proconsul who then occupied the Byrsa palace, the celebrated Symmachus, belonged to an old Italian family, he whom he represented, the Emperor Valentinian, was the son of a Pannonian soldier. The Count Theodosius, the general who suppressed the insurrection of Firmus in Mauretania, was a Spaniard, and the army he led into Africa was made up, for the most part, of Gauls. Later on, under Arcadius, another Gaul, Rufinus, shall be master of the whole of the East. An active mind like Augustin's could not remain indifferent before this spectacle of the world thrown open by Rome to all men of talent. He had the soul of a poet, quick to enthusiasm; the sight of the Eagles planted on the Acropolis at Carthage moved him in a way he never forgot. He acquired the habit of seeing big, and began to cast off race prejudices and all the petty narrowness of a local spirit. When he became a Christian he did not close himself up, like the Donatists, within the African Church. His dream was that Christ's Empire upon earth should equal the Empire of the Cæsars. Still, it is desirable not to fall into error upon this Roman unity. Behind the imposing front it shewed from one end to the other of the Mediterranean, the variety of peoples, with their manners, traditions, special religions, was always there, and in Africa more than elsewhere. The population of Carthage was astonishingly mixed. The hybrid character of this country without unity was illustrated by the streaks found in the Carthaginian crowds. All the specimens of African races elbowed one another in the streets, from the nigger, brought from his native Soudan by the slave-merchant, to the Romanized Numidian. The inflow, continually renewed, of traffickers and cosmopolitan adventurers increased this confusion. And so Carthage was a Babel of races, of costumes, of beliefs and ideas. Augustin, who was at heart a mystic, but also a dialectician extremely fond of showy discussions, found in Carthage a lively summary of the religions and philosophies of his day. During these years of study and reflection he captured booty of knowledge and observation which he would know how to make use of in the future. In the Carthage sanctuaries and schools, in the squares and the streets, he could see pass the disciples of all the systems, the props of all the superstitions, the devotees of all the religions. He heard the shrill clamour of disputes, the tumult of fights and riots. When a man was at the end of his arguments, he knocked down his opponent. The authorities had a good deal of trouble to keep order. Augustin, who was an intrepid logician, must have longed to take his share in these rows. But one cannot exactly improvise a faith between to-day and to-morrow. While he awaited the enlightenment of the truth, he studied the Carthaginian Babel. First of all, there was the official religion, the most obvious and perhaps the most brilliant, that of the Divinity of the Emperors, which was still kept up even under the Christian Cæsars. Each year, at the end of October, the elected delegates of the entire province, having at their head the _Sacerdos province_, the provincial priest, arrived at Carthage. Their leader, clad in a robe broidered with palms, gold crown on head, made his solemn entry into the city. It was a perfect invasion, each member dragging in his wake a mob of clients and servants. The Africans, with their taste for pomp and colour, seized the chance to give themselves over to a display of ruinous sumptuosities: rich dresses, expensive horses splendidly caparisoned, processions, sacrifices, public banquets, games at the circus and amphitheatre. These strangers so overcrowded the city that the imperial Government had to forbid them, under severe penalties, to stay longer than five days. A very prudent measure! At these times, collisions were inevitable between pagans and Christians. It was desirable to scatter such crowds as soon as possible, for riots were always smouldering in their midst. No less thronged were the festivals of the Virgin of Heaven. A survival of the national religion, these feasts were dear to the hearts of the Carthaginians. Augustin went to them with his fellow-students. "We trooped there from every quarter," he says. There was a great gathering of people in the interior court which led up to the temple. The statue, taken from its sanctuary, was placed before the peristyle upon a kind of repository. Wantons, arrayed with barbarous lavishness, danced around the holy image; actors performed and sang hymns. "Our eager eyes," Augustin adds maliciously, "rested in turn on the goddess, and on the girls, her adorers." The Great Mother of the Gods, the Goddess of Mount Berecyntus, was worshipped with similar license. Every year the people of Carthage went to wash her solemnly in the sea. Her statue, carried in a splendid litter, robed with precious stuffs, curled and farded, passed through the streets of the city, with its guard of mummers and Corybants. These last, "with hair greasy from pomade, pale faces, and a loose and effeminate walk, held out bowls for alms to the onlookers." The devotion to Isis was yet another excuse for processions: the _Serapeum_ was a rival attraction to the temple of the Heavenly Maiden. If we may trust Tertullian, the Africans swore only by Serapis. Possibly Mithras had also worshippers in Carthage. Anyhow, the occult religions were fully represented there. Miracle-working was becoming more and more the basis even of paganism. Never had the soothsayers been more flourishing. Everybody, in secret, pried into the entrails of the sacrificial victims, or used magic spells. As to the wizards and astrologists, they did business openly. Augustin himself consulted them, like all the Carthaginians. The public credulity had no limits. On the opposite side from the pagan worship, the sects which had sprung from Christianity sprouted. True, Africa has given birth to but a small number of heresies: the Africans had not the subtle mind of the Orientals and they were not given to theorizing. But a good many of the Eastern heresies had got into Carthage. Augustin must have still met Arians there, although at this period Arianism was dying out in Africa. What is certain is that orthodox Catholicism was in a very critical state. The Donatists captured its congregations and churches; they were unquestionably in the majority. They raised altar against altar. If Genethlius was the Catholic bishop, the Donatist bishop was Parmenianus. And they claimed to be more Catholic than their opponents. They boasted that they were the Church, the single, the unique Church, the Church of Christ. But these schismatics themselves were already splitting up into many sects. At the time Augustin was studying at Carthage, Rogatus, Bishop of Tenes, had just broken publicly with Parmenian's party. Another Donatist, Tyconius, published books wherein he traversed many principles dear to his fellow-religionists. Doubt darkened consciences. Amid these controversies, where was the truth? Among whom did the Apostolic tradition dwell? To put the finishing touch on this anarchy, a sect which likewise derived from Christianity--Manicheeism--began to have numerous adepts in Africa. Watched with suspicion by the Government, it concealed part of its doctrine, the most scandalous and subversive. But the very mystery which enveloped it, helped it to get adherents. Among all these apostles preaching their gospel, these devotees beating the drum before their god, these theologians reciprocally insulting and excommunicating one another, Augustin brought the superficial scepticism of his eighteenth year. He wanted no more of the religion in which his mother had brought him up. He was a good talker, a clever dialectician; he was in a hurry to emancipate himself, to win freedom for his way of thinking as for his way of life; and he meant to enjoy his youth. With such gifts, and with such dispositions, he could only choose among all these doctrines that which would help most the qualities of his mind, at once flattering his intellectual pretensions, and leaving his pleasure-loving instincts a loose rein. III THE CARTHAGE STUDENT However strong were the attractions of the great city, Augustin well knew that he had not been sent there to amuse himself, or to trifle as an amateur with philosophy. He was poor, and he had to secure his future--make his fortune. His family counted on him. Neither was he ignorant of the difficult position of his parents and by what sacrifices they had supplied him with the means to finish his studies. Necessarily he was obliged to be a student who worked. With his extraordinary facility, he stood out at once among his fellow-students. In the rhetoric school, where he attended lectures, he was, he tells us, not only at the top, but he was the leader of his companions. He led in everything. At that time, rhetoric was extremely far-reaching: it had come to take in all the divisions of education, including science and philosophy. Augustin claims to have learned all that the masters of his time had to teach: rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, music, mathematics. Having gone through the whole scholastic system, he thought of studying law, and aided by his gift of words, to become a barrister. For a gifted young man it was the shortest and surest road to money and honours. Unhappily for him, hardly was he settled down at Carthage than his father died. This made his future again problematical. How was he to keep up his studies without the sums coming from his father? The affairs of Patricius must have been left in the most parlous condition. But Monnica, clinging to her ambitious plans for her son, knew how to triumph over all difficulties, and she continued to send Augustin money. Romanianus, the Mæcenas of Thagaste, who was doubtless applied to by her, came once more to the rescue of the hard-up student. The young man, set at ease about his expenses, resumed light-heartedly his studious and dissipated life. As a matter of fact, this family bereavement does not seem to have caused him much grief. In the _Confessions_ he mentions the death of his father in a few words, and, so to speak, in parenthesis, as an event long foreseen without much importance. And yet he owed him a great deal. Patricius was hard pressed, and he took immense trouble to provide the means for his son's education. But with the fine egotism of youth, Augustin perhaps thought it enough to have profited by his father's sacrifices, and dispensed himself from gratitude. In any case, his affection for his father must have been rather lukewarm; the natural differences between them ran too deep. In these years, Monnica filled all the heart of Augustin. But the influence of Monnica herself was very slight upon this grown-up youth, eighteen years old. He had forgotten her lessons, and it did not trouble him much if his conduct added to the worries of the widow, who was now struggling with her husband's creditors. At heart he was a good son and he deeply loved his mother, but inevitably the pressure of the life around him swept him along. He has pictured his companions for us, after his conversion, as terrible blackguards. No doubt he is too severe. Those young men were neither better nor worse than elsewhere. They were rowdy, as they were in the other cities of the Empire, and as one always is at that age. Imperial regulations enjoined the police to have an eye on the students, to note their conduct and what company they kept. They were not to become members of prohibited societies, not to go too often to the theatre, nor to waste their time in raking and feastings. If their conduct became too outrageous, they were to be beaten with rods and sent back to their parents. At Carthage there was a hard-living set of men who called themselves "The Wreckers." Their great pleasure was to go and make a row at a professor's lecture; they would burst noisily into the classroom and smash up anything they could lay hold of. They amused themselves also by "ragging" the freshmen, jeering at their simplicity, and playing them a thousand tricks. Things haven't much changed since then. The fellow-students of Augustin were so like students of to-day that the most modern terms suggest themselves to describe their performances. Augustin, who was on the whole well conducted, and, as behoved a future professor, had a respect for discipline, disapproved of "The Wreckers" and their violence. This did not prevent him from enjoying himself in their society. He was overcome with shame because he could not keep pace with them--we must believe it at least, since he tells us so himself. With a certain lack of assurance, blended however with much juvenile vanity, he joined the band. He listened to that counsel of vulgar wisdom which is disastrous to souls like his: "Do as others do." He accordingly did do as the others; he knew all their debauchery, or he imagined he did, for however low he went, he was never able to do anything mean. He was then so far from the faith that he arranged love-trysts in the churches. "I was not afraid to think of my lust, and plan a scheme for securing the deadly fruit of sin, even within the walls of Thy church during the celebration of Thy mysteries." We might be reading the confession of a sensualist of to-day. One grows astonished at these morals, at once so old and so modern. What, already! These young Christian basilicas, but newly sprung out of the earth, where the men were strictly separated from the women--were they already become places of assignation, where love-letters were slipped into hands, and procuresses sold their furtive services!... At length the great happiness for which Augustin had so long been sighing was granted him: he loved and he was loved. He loved as he indeed was able to love, with all the impetuosity of his nature and all the fire of his temperament, with all his heart and all his senses. "I plunged headlong into love, whose fetters I longed to wear." But as he went at once to extremes, as he meant to give himself altogether, and expected all in return, he grew irritated at not receiving this same kind of love. It was never enough love for him. Yet he was loved, and the very certainty of this love, always too poor to his mind, exasperated the violence and pertinacity of his desire. "Because I was loved, I proudly riveted round myself the chain of woe, to be soon scourged with the red-hot iron rods of jealousy, torn by suspicions, fears, anger, and quarrels." This was passion with chorus and orchestra, a little theatrical, with its violences, its alternations between fury and ecstasy, such as an African, steeped in romantic literature, would conceive it. Deceived, he flung himself in desperate pursuit of the ever-flitting love. He had certainly more than one passion. Each one left him more hungry than the last. He was sensual, and he felt each time how brief is pleasure, in what a limited circle all enjoyment turns. He was tender, eager to give himself; and he saw plainly that one never gives oneself quite altogether, that even in the maddest hours of surrender one always reserves oneself in secret, keeping for oneself something of oneself; and he felt that most of the time his tenderness got no answer. When the joyous heart brings the offering of its love, the heart of her he loves is absent. And when it is there, on the edge of the lips, decked and smiling to meet the loved one, it is the other who is absent. Almost never do they join together, and they never join together altogether. And so this Love, which claims to be constant and even eternal, ought to be, if it would prolong itself, a continual act of faith, and hope, and charity. To believe in it in spite of its darkening and falling away; to hope its return, often against all evidence; to pardon its injustices and sometimes its foul actions--how many are capable of such abnegation? Augustin went through all that. He was in despair about it. And then, the nostalgia of predestined souls took hold of him. He had an indistinct feeling that these human loves were unworthy of him, and that if he must have a master, he was born to serve another Master. He had a desire to shake off the platitude of here below, the melancholy fen where stagnated what he calls "the marsh of the flesh"; to escape, in a word, from the wretched huts wherein for a little he had sheltered his heart; to burn all behind him, and so prevent the weakness of a return; and to go and pitch his tent further, higher, he knew not where--upon some unapproachable mountain where the air is icy, but before the eyes, the vasty stretches of light and space.... These first loves of Augustin were really too fierce to last. They burned up themselves. Augustin did not keep them up long. There was in him, besides, an instinct which counteracted his exuberant, amorous sentimentality--the sense of beauty. That in itself was enough to make him pause on the downhill of riot. The anarchy and commotion of passion was repellent to a mind devoted to clearness and order. But there was still another thing--the son of the Thagaste freeholder had any amount of common sense. That at least was left to him of the paternal heritage. A youth of what we call the lower middle class, strictly brought up in the hard and frugal discipline of the provinces, he felt the effects of his training. The bohemianism in which his friends revelled could not hold him indefinitely. Besides this, the career he desired, that of a barrister or professor, had a preliminary obligation to maintain a certain outward decorum. He himself tells us so; in the midst of his most disreputable performances he aspired to be known for his fashion and wit--_elegans atque urbanus_. Politeness of speech and manners, the courteous mutual deference of the best society--such, was the ideal of this budding professor of rhetoric. Anxiety about his future, joined to his rapid disenchantments, ere long sobered the student: he just took his fling and then settled down. Love turned for him into sensual habit. His head became clear for study and meditation. The apprentice to rhetoric liked his business. Up to his last breath, despite his efforts to change, he continued, like all his contemporaries, to love rhetoric. He handled words like a worker in verbals who is aware of their price and knows all their resources. Even after his conversion, if he condemns profane literature as a poisoner of souls, he absolves the beauty of language. "I accuse not words," he says. "Words are choice and precious vessels. I accuse the wine of error that drunken doctors pour out for us into these fair goblets." At the Rhetoric School he took extreme pleasure in declaiming. He was applauded; the professor gave him as an example to the others. These scholastic triumphs foretold others more celebrated and reverberating. And so, in his heart, literary vanity and ambition disputed the ever-lively illusions of love. And then, above all! he had to live; Monnica's remittances were necessarily small; the generosity of Romanianus had its limit. So he beat about to enlarge his small student's purse. He wrote verses for poetic competitions. Perhaps already he was able to act as tutor to certain of his fellow-students, less advanced. If the need of loving tormented his sentimental heart, he tried to assuage it in friendship. He loved friendship as he loved love. He was a passionate and faithful friend up to his death. At this time of his life, he was riveting friendships which were never to be broken. He had beside him his fellow-countryman, Alypius, the future Bishop of Thagaste, who had followed him to Carthage and would, later on, follow him to Milan; Nebridius, a not less dear companion, fated to die early; Honoratus, whom he drew into his errors and later did his best to enlighten; and, finally, that mysterious young man, whose name he does not tell us, and whose loss he mourned as never any one has mourned the death of a friend. They lived in daily and hourly intimacy, in continual fervour and enthusiasm. They were great theatre-goers, where Augustin was able to satisfy his desire for tender emotions and romantic adventures. They had musical parties; they tried over again the popular airs heard at the Odeum or some other of the innumerable theatres at Carthage. All the Carthaginians, even the populace, were mad about music. The Bishop of Hippo, in his sermons, recalls a mason upon his scaffolding, or a shoemaker in his stall, singing away the tunes of well-known musicians. Then our students strolled on the quays or in the Harbour Square, contemplating the many-coloured sea, this splendour of waters at the setting sun, which Augustin will extol one day with an inspiration unknown to the ancient poets. Above all, they fell into discussions, commented what they had lately read, or built up astonishing plans for the future. So flowed by a happy and charming life, abruptly interpolated with superb anticipations. With what a full heart the Christian penitent calls it back for us!--"What delighted me in the intercourse of my friends, was the talk, the laughter, the good turns we did each other, the common study of the masters of eloquence, the comradeship, now grave now gay, the differences that left no sting, as of a man differing with himself, the spice of disagreement which seasoned the monotony of consent. Each by turns would instruct or listen; impatiently we missed the absent friend, and savoured the joy of his return. We loved each other with all our hearts, and such tokens of friendship springing from the heart and displayed by a word, a glance, an expression, by a thousand pretty complaisances, supply the heat which welds souls together, and of many make one." It is easily understood that such ties as these had given Augustin a permanent disgust for his rowdy comrades of a former time: he went no more with "The Wreckers." The small circle he took pleasure in was quiet and cheerful. Its merriment was controlled by the African gravity. He and his friends come before my eyes, a little like those students of theology, or those cultivated young Arabs, who discuss poetry, lolling indolently upon the cushions of a divan, while they roll between their fingers the amber beads of their rosary, or walking slowly under the arcades of a mosque, draped in their white-silk simars, with a serious and meditative air, gestures elegant and measured, courteous and harmonious speech, and something discreet, polite, and already clerical in their tone and manners. In fact, the life which Augustin was at that time relishing was the pagan life on its best and gentlest side. The subtle network of habits and daily occupations enveloped him little by little. There was some risk of his growing torpid in this soft kind of life, when suddenly a rude shock roused him.... It was a chance, but in his eyes a providential chance, which put the _Hortensius_ of Cicero between his hands. Augustin was about nineteen, still a student; according to the order which prevailed in the schools, the time had come for him to read and explain this philosophical dialogue. He had no curiosity about the book. He took it from his sense of duty as a student, because it figured on the schedule. He unrolled the book, and began it, doubtless with calm indifference. All of a sudden, a great unexpected light shone between the lines. His heart throbbed. His whole soul sprang towards these phrases, so dazzling and revealing. He awoke from his long drowsiness. Before him shone a marvellous vision.... As this dialogue is lost, we can hardly to-day account for such enthusiasm, and we hold that the Roman orator was a very middling philosopher. We know, however, through Augustin himself, that the book contained an eloquent praise of wisdom. And then, words are naught without the soul of the reader; all this, falling into Augustin's soul, rendered a prolonged and magnificent sound. It is evident, too, that just at the moment when he unrolled the book he was in a condition to receive this uplifting summons. In such minutes, when the heart, ignorant of itself, swells like the sea before a storm, when all the inner riches of the being overflow, the slightest glimmer is enough to reveal all these imprisoned forces, and the least shock to set them free. He has at least preserved for us, in pious and faithful gratitude, some phrases of this dialogue which moved him so deeply. Especially does he admire this passage, wherein the author, after a long discussion, ends in these terms: "If, as pretend the philosophers of old time, who are also the greatest and most illustrious, we have a soul immortal and divine, it behoves us to think, that the more it has persevered in its way, that is to say, in reason, love, and the pursuit of truth, and the less it has been intermingled and stained in human error and passion, the easier will it be for it to raise itself and soar again to the skies." Such phrases, read in a certain state of mind, might well overwhelm this young man, who was ere long to yearn for the cloister and was destined to be the founder of African monasticism. To give his whole life to the study of wisdom, to compel himself towards the contemplation of God, to live here below an almost divine life--this ideal, impossible to pagan wisdom, Augustin was called to realize in the name of Christ. That had dawned on him, all at once, while he was reading the _Hortensius_. And this ideal appeared to him so beautiful, so well worth the sacrifice of all he had hitherto loved, that nothing else counted for him any more. He despised rhetoric, the vain studies it compelled him to pursue, the honour and glory it promised him. What was all that to the prize of wisdom? For wisdom he felt himself ready to give up the world.... But these heroic outbursts do not, as a rule, keep up very long in natures so changeable and impressionable as Augustin's. Yet they are not entirely thrown away. Thus, in early youth, come dim revelations of the future. There comes a presentiment of the port to which one will some day be sailing; a glimpse of the task to fulfil, the work to build up; and all this rises before the eyes in an entrancement of the whole being. Though the bright image be eclipsed, perhaps for years, the remembrance of it persists amid the worst degradations or the worst mediocrities. He who one single time has seen it pass, can never afterwards live quite like other people. This fever calmed, Augustin set himself to reflect. The ancient philosophers promised him wisdom. But Christ also promised it! Was it not possible to reconcile them? And was not the Gospel ideal essentially more human than that of the pagan philosophers? Suppose he tried to submit to that, to bring the faith of his childhood into line with his ambitions as a young man of intellect? To be good after the manner of his mother, of his grandparents, of the good Thagaste servants, of all the humble Christian souls whose virtues he had been taught to respect, and at the same time to rival a Plato by the strength of thought--what a dream! Was it possible?... He tells us himself that the illusion was brief, and that he grew cool about the _Hortensius_ because he did not find the name of Christ in it. He deceives himself, probably. At this time he was not so Christian. He yields to the temptation of a fine phrase: when he wrote his _Confessions_ he had not yet entirely lost this habit. But what remains true is, that feeling the inadequateness of pagan philosophy, he returned for a moment towards Christianity. The Ciceronian dialogue, by disappointing his thirst for the truth, gave him the idea of knocking at the door of the Church and trying to find out if on that side there might not be a practicable road for him. This is why the reading of _Hortensius_ is in Augustin's eyes one of the great dates of his life. Although he fell back in his errors, he takes credit for his effort. He recognizes in it the first sign, and, as it were, a promise of his conversion. "Thenceforth, my God, began my upward way, and my return towards Thee." He began then to study the Holy Scriptures with a more or less serious intention to instruct himself in them. But to go to the Bible by way of Cicero was to take the worst road. Augustin got lost there. This direct popular style, which only cares about saying things, and not about how they are said, could only repel the pupil of Carthage rhetoricians, the imitator of the harmonious Ciceronian sentences. Not only had he much too spoiled a taste in literature, but there was also too much literature in this pose of a young man who starts off one fine morning to conquer wisdom. He was punished for his lack of sincerity, and especially of humility. He understood nothing of the Scripture, and "I found it," he says, "a thing not known to the proud, nor yet laid open to children, but poor in appearance, lofty in operation, and veiled in mysteries. At that time, I was not the man to bow my head so as to pass in at its door."... He grew tired very quickly. He turned his back on the Bible, as he had thrown aside _Hortensius_, and he went to find pasture elsewhere. Nevertheless, his mind had been set in motion. Nevermore was he to know repose, till he had found truth. He demanded this truth from all the sects and all the churches. So it was, that in despair he flung himself into Manicheeism. Some have professed amazement that this honest and practical mind should have stuck fast in a doctrine so tortuous, so equivocal, contaminated by fancies so grossly absurd. But perhaps it is forgotten that there was everything in Manicheeism. The leaders of the sect did not deliver the bulk of the doctrine all at once to their catechumens; the entire initiation was a matter of several degrees. Now Augustin never went higher than a simple _auditor_ in the Manichean Church. What attracted specially fine minds to the Manichees, was that they began by declaring themselves rationalists. To reconcile faith with natural science and philosophy has been the fad of heresiarchs and free-thinkers in all ages. The Manicheans bragged that they had succeeded. They went everywhere, crying out: "Truth, Truth!" That suited Augustin very well: it was just what he was looking for. He hastened to the preachings of these humbugs, impatient to receive at last this "truth," so noisily announced. From what they said, it was contained in several large books written by their prophet under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. There was quite a library of them. By way of bamboozling the crowd, they produced some of them which looked very important, ponderous as Tables of the Law, richly bound in vellum, and embellished with striking illuminations. How was it possible to doubt that the entire revelation was contained in such beautiful books? One felt at once full of respect for a religion which was able to produce in its favour the testimony of such a mass of writings. However, the priests did not open them. To allay the impatience of their hearers, they amused them by criticizing the books and dogmas of the Catholics. This preliminary criticism was the first lesson of their instruction. They pointed out any number of incoherences, absurdities, and interpolations in the Bible: according to them, a great part of the Scriptures had been foisted on the world by the Jews. But they triumphed especially in detecting the contradictions of the Gospel narratives. They sapped them with syllogisms. It is easy to understand that these exercises in logic should have at once attracted the youthful Augustin. With his extraordinary dialectical subtilty, he soon became very good at it himself--much better even than his masters. He made speeches in their assemblies, fenced against a text, peremptorily refuted it, and reduced his adversaries to silence. He was applauded, covered with praise. A religion which brought him such successes must be the true one. After he became a bishop, he tried to explain to himself how it was that he fell into Manicheeism, and could find only two reasons. "The first," he says, "was a friendship which took hold of me under I know not what appearance of kindness, and was like a cord about my neck.... The second was those unhappy victories that I almost always won in our disputes." But there is still another which he mentions elsewhere, and it had perhaps the most weight. This was the loose moral code which Manicheeism authorized. This doctrine taught that we are not responsible for the evil we do. Our sins and vices are the work of the evil Principle--the God of Darkness, enemy of the God of Light. Now at the moment when Augustin was received as _auditor_ by the Manichees, he had a special need of excusing his conduct by a moral system so convenient and indulgent. He had just formed his connection with her who was to become the mother of his child. IV THE SWEETNESS OF TEARS Augustin was nearly twenty. He had finished his studies in rhetoric within the required time. According to the notions of that age, a young man ought to have concluded his course by his twentieth year. If not, he was considered past mending and sent back there and then to his family. It may appear surprising that a gifted student like Augustin did not finish his rhetoric course sooner. But after his terms at Madaura, he had lost nearly a year at Thagaste. Besides, the life of Carthage had so many charms for him that doubtless he was in no hurry to leave. However that may be, the moment was now come for him to make up his mind about his career. The wishes of his parents, the advice of his masters, as well as his own ambitions and qualities, urged him, as we know, to become a barrister. But now, suddenly, all his projects for the future changed. Not only did he give up the law, but at the very moment when all appeared to smile on him, at the opening of his youth, he left Carthage to go and bury himself as a teacher of grammar in the little free-town his birthplace. As he has neglected to give any explanation of this sudden determination, we are reduced to conjectures. It is likely that his mother was bothered about household expenses and could no longer afford to keep him at Carthage. Besides, she had other children, a son and daughter, to start in life. Augustin was on the point of being, if not poor, at least very hard up. He must do something to earn his living, and as quickly as possible. In these conditions, the quickest way out of the difficulty was to sell to others what he had bought from his masters. To live, he would open a word-shop, as he calls it disdainfully. But as he had only just ceased to be a student, he could not dream of becoming a professor in a great city such as Carthage, and setting himself up in rivalry to so many celebrated masters. The best thing he could do, if he did not want to vegetate, was to fall back on some more modest post. Now his protector, Romanianus, wanted him to go to Thagaste. This rich man had a son almost grown up, whom it was necessary to put as soon as possible in the hands of a tutor. Augustin, so often helped by the father, was naturally thought of to look after the youth. Furthermore, Romanianus, who appreciated Augustin's talent, must have been anxious to attract him to Thagaste and keep him there. With an eye to the interests of his free-town, he desired to have such a shining light in the place. So he asked this young man, whom he patronized, to return to his native district and open a grammar school. He promised him pupils, and, above all, the support of his influence, which was considerable, Monnica, as we may conjecture, added her entreaties to those of the great head of the Thagaste municipality. Augustin yielded. Did it grieve him very much to make up his mind to this exile? It must have been extremely hard for a young man of twenty to give up Carthage and its pleasures. Moreover, it is pretty nearly certain that at this time he had already started that connection which was to last so long. To leave a mistress whom he loved, and that in all the freshness of a passion just beginning--one wonders how he was able to make up his mind to it. And yet he did leave, and spent nearly a year at Thagaste. One peculiar mark of the youth, and even of the whole life of Augustin, is the ease with which he unlearns and breaks off his habits--the sentimental as well as the intellectual. He used up a good many doctrines before resting in the Catholic truth; and even afterwards, in the course of a long life, he contradicted and corrected himself more than once in his controversies and theological writings. His _Retractations_ prove this. One might say that the accustomed weighs on him as a hindrance to his liberty; that the look of the places where he lives becomes hateful to him as a threat of servitude. He feels dimly that his true country is elsewhere, and that if he must settle anywhere it is in the house of his Heavenly Father. _Inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te...._ "Restless are our hearts, O my God, until they rest in Thee." Long before St. Francis of Assisi, he practised the mystic rule: "As a stranger and a pilgrim." It is true that in his twentieth year he was very far from being a mystic. But he already felt that restlessness which made him cross the sea and roam Italy from Rome to Milan. He is an impulsive. He cannot resist the mirages of his heart or his imagination. He is always ready to leave. The road and its chances tempt him. He is eager for the unknown. He lets himself be carried in delight by the blowing wind. God calls him; he obeys without knowing where he goes. This unsettled young man, halting between contrary passions, who feels at home nowhere, has already the soul of an apostle. This changeableness of mood was probably the true cause of his departure for Thagaste. But other more apparent reasons, reasons more patent to a juvenile consciousness, guided him also. No doubt he was not sorry to reappear in his little town, although he was so young, with the importance and authority of a master. His former companions were going to become his pupils. And then the Manichees had fanaticized him. Carried away by the neophyte's bubbling zeal, elevated by his triumphs at the public meetings in Carthage, he meant to shine before his fellow-countrymen, and perhaps convert them. He departed with his mind made up to proselytize. Let us believe also, that in spite of his dissolute life, and the new passion that filled his heart, he did not come back to Thagaste without an affectionate thought at the back of his head for his mother. The reception that Monnica had in reserve for him was going to surprise him considerably. Since her widowhood, the wife of Patricius had singularly advanced in the way of Christian perfection. The early Church not only offered widows the moral help of its sacraments and consolations, it also granted a special dignity with certain privileges to those who made a vow to refrain from sex-intercourse. They had in the basilicas, even as the consecrated virgins, a place of honour, divided from that of the other matrons by a balustrade. They wore a special dress. They were obliged to a conduct which would shew them worthy of all the outer marks of respect which surrounded them. The austerity of Monnica had increased with the zeal of her faith. She set an example to the Church people at Thagaste. Docile to the teachings of her priests, eager to serve her brethren, multiplying alms as much as she could with her straitened means, she was unfailing at the services of the Church. Twice daily, morning and evening, she might be seen, exact to the hour of prayer and sermon. She did not go there, her son assures us, to mingle in cabals and the gossip of pious females, but to hear God's word in homily, and that God might hear her in prayer. The widow compelled all who were about her to the same severe rule which she herself observed. In this rigid atmosphere of his home, the student from Carthage, with his free, fashionable airs, must have caused a painful astonishment. Monnica felt at once that she and her son understood each other no longer. She began by remonstrating with him. Augustin rebelled. Things got worse when, with his presumption of the young professor new-enamelled by the schools, the harsh and aggressive assurance of the heresiarch, he boasted as loud as he could of being a Manichee. Monnica, deeply wounded in her piety and motherly tenderness, ordered him to give up his errors. He refused, and only replied by sarcasms to the poor woman's complaints. Then she must have believed that the separation was final, that Augustin had committed an irreparable crime. Being an African Christian, absolute in her faith and passionate for its defence, she regarded her son as a public danger. She was filled with horror at his treason. It is possible, too, that guided by the second-sight of her affection, she saw clearer into Augustin's heart than he did himself. She was plunged in sorrow that he mistook himself to this extent, and refused the Grace which desired to win him to the Catholic unity. And as he was not content with losing himself, but also drew others into peril--disputing, speech-making before his friends, abusing his power of language to throw trouble into consciences--Monnica finally made up her mind. She forbade her son to eat at her table, or to sleep under her roof. She drove him from the house. This must have been a big scandal in Thagaste. It does not appear, however, that Augustin cared much. In all the conceit of his false knowledge, he had that kind of inhumanity which drives the intellectual to make litter of the sweetest and deepest feelings as a sacrifice to his abstract idol. Not only did he not mind very much if his apostasy made his mother weep, but he did not trouble, either, to reconcile the chimeras of his brain with the living reality of his soul and the things of life. Whatever he found inconvenient, he tranquilly denied, content if he had talked well and entangled his adversary in the net of his syllogisms. Put in interdict by Monnica, he simply went and quartered himself on Romanianus. The sumptuous hospitality he received there very soon consoled him for his exile from his home. And if his self-esteem had been affronted, the pride of living familiarly with so important a personage was, for a vain young man, a very full compensation. In fact, this Romanianus roused the admiration of the whole country by his luxury and lavish expenditure. He was bound to ruin himself in the long run, or, at any rate, to raise up envious people bent upon his ruin. Being at the head of the Decurions, he was the protector, not only of Thagaste, but of the neighbouring towns. He was the great patron, the influential man, who had nearly the whole country for his dependents. The town council, through gratitude and flattery, had had his name engraved upon tables of brass, and had put up statues to him. It had even conferred powers on him wider than municipal powers. The truth is that Romanianus did not dole out his benefactions to his fellow-citizens. He gave them bear-fights and other spectacles till then unknown at Thagaste. He did not grudge public banquets, and every day a free meal was to be got at his house. The guests were served plentifully. After having eaten his dinner, they dipped in the purse of the host. Romanianus knew the art of doing an obliging thing discreetly, and even how to anticipate requests which might be painful. So he was proclaimed unanimously, "the most humane, the most liberal, the most polite and happiest of men." Generous to his dependents, he did not forget himself. He built a villa which, by the space it occupied, was a real palace, with _thermæ_ walled in precious marbles. He passed his time in the baths, or gaming, or hunting--in short, he led the life of a great landed proprietor of those days. No doubt these villas had neither the beauty nor the art-value of the great Italian villas, which were a kind of museums in a pretty, or grand, natural frame; but they did not lack charm. Some of them, like that of Romanianus, were built and decorated at lavish expense. Immensely large, they took in sometimes an entire village; and sometimes, also, the villa, properly speaking, the part of the building where the master dwelt, was fortified, closed in by walls and towers like a feudal castle. Upon the outer gates and the entrance door might be read in big letters: "The Property of So-and-so." Often, the inscription was repeated upon the walls of an enclosure or of a farm, which really belonged to a dependent of the great man. Under the shelter of the lord's name, these small-holders defended themselves better against fiscal tyranny, or were included in the immunities of their patrons. So was formed, under the cover of patronage, a sort of African feudalism. Augustin's father, who owned vineyards, was certainly a vassal of Romanianus. As the African villa was a centre of agricultural activity, it maintained on the estate a whole population of slaves, workmen, and small-holders. The chief herdsman's house neighboured that of the forester. Through deer-parks, enclosed by latticed fences, wandered gazelles. Oil factories, vats and cellars for wine, ran on from the bath-buildings and the offices. Then there was the main building with its immense doorway, its belvedere of many stories, as in the Roman villas, its interior galleries, and wings to the right and left of the _atrium_. In front lay the terraces, the gardens with straight walks formed by closely-clipped hedges of box which led to pools and jets of water, to arbours covered with ivy, to nymph-fountains ornamented with columns and statues. In these gardens was a particular place called the "philosopher's corner." The mistress of the house used to go there to read or dream. Her chair, or folding-seat, was placed under the shade of a palm tree. Her "philosopher" followed her, holding her parasol and leading her little favourite dog. It is easy to realize that Augustin managed to stand his mother's severity without overmuch distress in one of these fine country houses. To be comfortable there, he had only to follow his natural inclination, which was, he tells us, epicureanism. It is most certain that at this period the only thing he cared about and sought after was pleasure. Staying with Romanianus, he took his share in all the pleasant things of life, _suavitates illius vitæ_--shared the amusements of his host, and only bothered about his pupils when he had nothing better to do. He must have been as little of a grammarian as possible--he hadn't the time. With the tyrannical friendship of rich people, who are hard put to it to find occupation, Romanianus doubtless monopolized him from morning till night. They hunted together, or dined, or read poetry, or discussed in the evergreen alleys of the garden or "the philosopher's corner." And naturally, the recent convert to Manicheeism did his best to indoctrinate and convert his patron--so far at least as a careless man like Romanianus could be converted. Augustin accuses himself of having "flung" Romanianus into his own errors. Augustin probably was not so guilty. His wealthy friend does not seem to have had any very firm convictions. In all likelihood, he was a pagan, a sceptical or hesitating pagan, such as existed in numbers at that time. Led by Augustin, he drew near to Manicheeism. Then, when Augustin gave up Manicheeism for Platonic philosophy, we see Romanianus take the airs of a philosopher. Later, when Augustin came back to Catholicism, he drew Romanianus in his wake towards that religion. This man of fashion was one of those frivolous people who never go deep into things, for whom ideas are only a pastime, and who consider philosophers or men of letters as amusers. But it is certain that he liked to listen to Augustin, and let himself be influenced. If he trifled with Manicheeism, the reason was that Augustin dazzled him with his arguments and fine phrases. This orator of twenty had already extraordinary charm. So Augustin led a delightful life with Romanianus. Everything pleased him--his talking triumphs, the admiration of his hearers, the flattery and luxury which surrounded him. Meanwhile, Monnica was plunged in grief at his conduct, and implored God to draw him from his errors. She began to be sorry that she had sent him away, and with the clear-sightedness of the Christian, she perceived that Romanianus' house was not good for the prodigal. It would be better to have him back. Near her he would run less risk of being corrupted. Through intense praying, came to her a dream which quickened her determination. "She dreamed that she was weeping and lamenting, with her feet planted on a wooden rule, when she saw coming towards her a radiant youth who smiled upon her cheerfully. He asked the reason of her sorrow and her daily tears ... and when she told him she was bewailing my perdition, he bade her be of good comfort, look and see, for where she was, there was I also. She looked, and saw me standing by her side on the same rule." Filled with joy by this promise from on high, Monnica asked her son to come home. He did come back, but with the quibbles of the Sophist, the rhetorician cavilled against his mother. He tried to upset her happiness. He said to her: "Since, according to your dream, we are to be both standing on the same rule, that means that you are going to be a Manichean." "No," answered Monnica. "_He_ did not say, where he is you will be, but where you are he will be." Augustin confesses that this strong good sense made a certain impression on him. Nevertheless he did not change. For still nine years he remained a Manichee. As a last resource, Monnica begged a bishop she knew, a man deeply read in the Scriptures, to speak with her son and refute his errors. But so great was the reputation of Augustin as an orator and dialectician that the holy man dared not try a fall with such a vigorous jouster. He answered the mother very wisely, that a mind so subtle and acute could not long continue in such gross sophisms. And he offered his own example, for he, too, had been a Manichee. But Monnica pressed him with entreaties and tears. At last the bishop, annoyed by her persistence, but at the same time moved by her tears, answered with a roughness mingled with kindness and compassion: "Go, go! Leave me alone. Live on as you are living. It cannot be that the son of such tears should be lost." _Filius istarum lacrymarum_: the son of such tears!... Was it indeed the country bishop, or rather the rhetorician Augustin who, in a burst of gratitude, hit upon this sublime sentence? Certain it is that later on Augustin saw in his mother's tears as it were a first baptism whence he came forth regenerate. After having borne him according to the flesh, Monnica, by her tears and moans, gave him birth into the spiritual life. Monnica wept because of Augustin. Monnica wept for Augustin. This is rather astonishing in the case of so severe a mother--this African a trifle rough. The expressions--tears and moans and weeping--occur so often in her son's writings, that we are at first tempted to take them for pious metaphors--figures of a sacred rhetoric. We suspect that Monnica's tears must come from the Bible, an imitation of King David's penitential tears. But it would be quite an error to believe that. Monnica wept real tears. In her whole-hearted prayers she bedewed the pavement of the basilica; she moistened the balustrade against which she leant her forehead. This austere woman, this widow whose face nobody saw any more, whose body was shapeless by reason of the mass of stuffs, grey and black, which wrapped her from head to foot--this rigid Christian concealed a heart full of love. Love such as this was then a perfectly new thing. That an African woman should carry her piety to the point of fanaticism; that she should work to conquer her son to her faith; that, if he strayed from it, she should hate him and drive him out with curses--this has been seen in Africa at all times. But that a mother should mourn at the thought that her child is lost for another life; that she grows terror-stricken and despairing when she thinks that she may possess a happiness in which he will have no part, and walk in the gardens of Heaven while her child will not be there--no, this had never been seen before. "Where I am you will be," near me, against my heart, our two hearts meeting in the one same love--in this union of souls, continued beyond the grave, lies all the Christian sweetness and hope. Augustin was no longer, or not yet, a Christian. But in his tears he is the true son of his mother. This gift of tears that Saint Lewis of France begged God with so much earnestness and contrition to grant him, Monnica's son had to the full. "For him to weep was a pleasure." [1] He inebriated himself with his tears. Now, just while he was at Thagaste, he lost a friend whom he loved intensely. This death set free the fountain of tears. They are not yet the holy tears which he will shed later before God, but only poor human tears, more pathetic perhaps to our own weakness. [Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve.] Who was this friend? He tells us in very vague terms. We only know that they had grown up as boys together and had gone to the same schools; that they had just passed a year together, probably at Carthage; that this young man, persuaded by him, was become a Manichee; and that, in a word, they loved passionately. Augustin, while speaking of him, recalls in a deeper sense what Horace said of his friend Virgil: _dimidium animæ_--"O thou half of my soul!" Well, this young man fell gravely sick of a fever. As all hope was at an end, they baptized him, according to the custom. He grew better, was almost cured, "As soon as I was able to talk to him," says Augustin--"and that was as soon as he could bear it, for I never left his side, and we were bound up in one another--I ventured a jest, thinking that he would jest too, about the baptism which he had received, when he could neither think nor feel. But by this time he had been told of his baptism. He shrank from me as from an enemy, and with a wonderful new-found courage, warned me never to speak so to him again, if I wished to remain his friend. I was so astounded and confused that I said no more, resolving to wait till he should regain his strength, _when I would tell him frankly what I thought_." So, at this serious moment, he whom they called "the Carthaginian disputer" was sorry not to be able to measure himself in a bout of dialectics with his half-dead friend. The intellectual poison had so perverted his mind, that it almost destroyed in him the feelings of common decency. But if his head, as he acknowledges, was very much spoiled, his heart remained intact. His friend died a few days after, and Augustin was not there. He was stunned by it. His grief wrought itself up to wildness and despair. "This sorrow fell like darkness on my heart, and wherever I looked I saw nothing but death. My country became a torture, my father's house a misery. All the pleasures that I had shared with him, turned into hideous anguish now that he was gone. My eyes sought for him everywhere, and found him not. I hated the familiar scenes because he was not there, and they could no more cry to me, 'Lo! he will come.' as they used when he was absent but alive...." Then Augustin began to weep louder, he prolonged his weeping, finding consolation only in tears. Monnica's tenderness was restrained; in him it was given full vent and exaggerated. At that time, the Christian moderation was unknown to him, as well as the measure which the good taste of the ancients prompted. He has often been compared to the most touching geniuses, to Virgil, to Racine, who had also the gift of tears. But Augustin's tenderness is more abandoned, and, so to speak, more romantic. It even works up, sometimes, into an unhealthy excitement. To be full of feeling, as Augustin was then, is not only to feel with excessive sensitiveness the least wounds, the slightest touches of love or hate, nor is it only to give oneself with transport; but it is especially to take delight in the gift of oneself, to feel at the moment of full abandonment that one is communicating with something infinitely sweet, which already has ceased to be the creature loved. It is love for love, it is to weep for the pleasure of tears, it is to mix with tenderness a kind of egoism avid of experiences. Having lost his friend, Augustin loathes all the world. He repeats: "Tears were my only comfort. I was wretched, and my wretchedness was dear to me." And accordingly, he did not want to be consoled. But as, little by little, the terrors of that parting subsided, he perceived himself that he played with grief and made a joy of his tears. "My tears," he says, "were dearer to me than my friend had been." By degrees the friend is almost forgotten. Though Augustin may hate life because his friend has gone, he confesses naively that he would not have sacrificed his existence for the sake of the dead. He surmises that what is told of Orestes and Pylades contending to die for each other is but a fable. Ultimately, he comes to write: "Perhaps I feared to die, _lest the other half of him whom I had loved so dearly, should perish_." He himself, in his _Retractations_, condemns this phrase as pure rhetoric. It remains true that what was perhaps the deepest sorrow of his life--this sorrow so sincere and painful which had "rent and bloodied his soul"--ended with a striking phrase. It should be added, that in a stormy nature like his, grief, like love, wears itself out quickly. It burns up passion and sentiment as it does ideas. When at length he regained his calm, everything appeared drab. Thagaste became intolerable. With his impulsive temperament, his changeable humour, he all at once hit upon a plan: To go back to Carthage and open a rhetoric school. Perhaps, too, the woman he loved and had abandoned there was pressing him to return. Perhaps she told him that she was about to become a mother. Always ready to go away, Augustin scarcely hesitated. It is more than likely that he did not consult Monnica. He only told Romanianus, who, as he had all kinds of reasons for wanting to keep Augustin at Thagaste, at first strongly objected. But the young man pointed to his future, his ambition to win fame. Was he going to bury all that in a little town? Romanianus yielded, and with a generosity that is no longer seen, he paid the expenses this time too. V THE SILENCE OF GOD Augustin was going to live nine years at Carthage--nine years that he squandered in obscure tasks, in disputes sterile or unfortunate for himself and others--briefly, in an utter forgetfulness of his true vocation. "And during this time Thou wert silent, O my God!" he cries, in recalling only the faults of his early youth. Now, the silence of God lay heavy. And yet even in those years his tormented soul had not ceased to appeal. "Where wert Thou then, O my God, while I looked for Thee? Thou wert before me. But I had drawn away from myself and I could not find myself. How much less, then, could I find Thee." This was certainly the most uneasy, and, at moments, the most painful time of his life. Hardly was he got back to Carthage than he had to struggle against ever-increasing money difficulties. Not only had he to get his own living, but the living of others--possibly his mother's and that of his brother and sister--at all events, he had to support his mistress and the child. It is possible that the infant was born before its father left Thagaste; if not, the birth must have occurred shortly after. The child was called Adeodatus. There is a kind of irony in this name, which was then usual, of Adeodatus--"Gift of God." This son of his sin, as Augustin calls him, this son whom he did not want, and the news of whose birth must have been a painful shock--this poor child was a gift of Heaven which the father could have well done without. And then, when he saw him, he was filled with joy, and he cherished him as a real gift from God. He accepted his fatherhood courageously, and, as it happens in such cases, he was drawn closer to his mistress, their association taking on something of conjugal dignity. Did the mother of Adeodatus justify such attachment--an attachment which was to last more than ten years? The mystery in which Augustin intended that the woman he had loved the most should remain enveloped for all time, is nearly impenetrable to us. No doubt she was of a very humble, not to say low class, since Monnica judged it impossible to bring about a marriage between the ill-assorted pair. There must have been an extreme inequality between the birth and education of the lovers. This did not prevent Augustin from loving his mistress passionately, for her beauty perhaps, or perhaps for her goodness of heart, or both. Nevertheless, it is surprising, that in view of his changing humour, and his prompt and impressionable soul, he remained faithful to her so long. What was to prevent his taking his son and going off? Ancient custom authorized such an act. But Augustin was tender-hearted. He was afraid to cause pain; he dreaded for others the wounds that caused him so much suffering himself. So he stayed on from kindness, from pity, habit too, and also because, in spite of everything, he loved the mother of his child. Up to the time of his conversion, they lived like husband and wife. So now, to keep his family, he really turns "a dealer in words." In spite of his youth (he was barely twenty) the terms he had kept at Thagaste as a teacher of grammar allowed him to take his place among the rhetoricians at Carthage. Thanks to Romanianus, he got pupils at once. His protector at Thagaste sent his son, that young Licentius whose education Augustin had already begun, with one of his brothers, doubtless younger. It seems likely that the two youths lived in Augustin's house. A small fact which their master has preserved, looks like a proof of this. A spoon having been lost in the house, Augustin, to find out where it was, told Licentius to go and consult a wizard, one Albicerius, who had, just then, a great name in Carthage. This message is scarcely to be explained unless we suppose the lad was lodging in his professor's house. Another of the pupils is known to us. This is Eulogius, who was later on a rhetorician at Carthage, and of whom Augustin relates an extraordinary dream. Finally, there was Alypius, a little younger than himself, his friend--"the brother of his heart," as he calls him. Alypius had been attending his lessons at Thagaste. When the schoolmaster abruptly threw up his employment, the father of the pupil was angry, and in sending his son to Carthage, he forbade him to go near Augustin's class. But it was difficult to keep such eager friends apart. Little by little, Alypius overcame his father's objections, and became a pupil of his friend. Augustin's knowledge, when he began to lecture, could not have been very deep, for he had only lately quitted the student's bench himself. His duties forced him to learn what he did not know. In teaching he taught himself. It was at this time that he did most of the reading which afterwards added substance to his polemics and treatises. He tells us himself that he read in those days all that he could lay hands on. He is very proud of having read by himself and understood without any assistance from a master, the _Ten Categories_ of Aristotle, which was considered one of the most abstruse works of the Stagirite. In an age when instruction was principally by word of mouth, and books comparatively rare, it is obvious that Augustin was not what we call an "all-devouring reader." We do not know if Carthage had many libraries, or what the libraries were worth. It is no less true that the author of _The City of God_ is the last of the Latin writers who had a really all-round knowledge. It is he who is the link between modern times and pagan antiquity. The Middle Age hardly knew classical literature, save by the allusions and quotations of Augustin. So in spite of family and professional cares, he did not lose his intellectual proclivities. The conquest of truth remained always his great ambition. He still hoped to find it in Manicheeism, but he began to think that it was a long time coming. The leaders of the sect could not have trusted him thoroughly. They feared his acute and subtle mind, so quick to detect the flaw in a thesis or argument. That is why they postponed his initiation into their secret doctrines. Augustin remained a simple _auditor_ in their Church. By way of appeasing the enormous activity of his intelligence, they turned him on to controversy, and the critical discussion of the Scriptures. Giving themselves out for Christians, they adopted a part of them, and flung aside as interpolated or forged all that was not in tune with their theology. Augustin, as we know, triumphed in disputes of this kind, and was vain because he excelled in them. And when he grew tired of this negative criticism and asked his evangelists to give him more substantial food, they put him on some exoteric doctrine calculated to appeal to a young imagination by its poetic or philosophical colouring. The catechumen was not satisfied, but he put up with it for lack of anything better. Very prettily he compares these enemies of the Scriptures to the snarers of birds, who defile or fill with earth all the water-places where the birds use to drink, save one mere; and about this they set their snares. The birds all fly there, not because the water is better, but because there is no other water, and they know not where else to go and drink. So Augustin, not knowing where to quench his thirst for truth, was fain to make the best of the confused pantheism of the Manichees. What remains noteworthy is, that however unstable his own convictions were, he yet converted everybody about him. It was through him that his friends became Manichees: Alypius one of the first; then Nebridius, the son of a great landowner near Carthage; Honoratius, Marcianus; perhaps, too, the youngest of his pupils, Licentius and his brother--all victims of his persuasive tongue, which he exerted later on to draw them back from their errors. So great was his charm--so deep, especially, was public credulity! This fourth century was no longer a century of strong Christian faith. On the other hand, the last agony of paganism was marked by a new attack of the lowest credulity and superstition. As the Church energetically combated both one and the other, it is not surprising that it was chiefly the pagans who were contaminated. The old religion was to end by foundering in magic. The greatest minds of the period, the neo-Platonists, the Emperor Julian himself, were miracle-workers, or at any rate, adepts in the occult sciences. Augustin, who was then separated from Christianity, followed the general impulse, together with the young men he knew. Just now we saw him sending to consult the soothsayer, Albicerius, about the loss of a spoon. And this man of intellect believed also in astrologers and nigromancers. Strips of lead have been found at Carthage upon which are written magic spells against horses entered for races in the circus. Just like the Carthaginian jockeys, Augustin had recourse to these hidden and fraudulent practices, to make sure of success. On the eve of a verse competition in the theatre, he fell in with a wizard who offered, if they could agree about the price, to sacrifice a certain number of animals to buy the victory. Upon this, Augustin, very much annoyed, declared that if the prize were a crown of immortal gold, not a fly should be sacrificed to help him win it. Really, magic was repellent to the honesty of his mind, as well as to his nerves, by reason of the suspicious and brutal part of its operations. As a rule, it was involved with haruspicy, and had a side of sacred anatomy and the kitchen which revolted the sensitive--dissection of flesh, inspection of entrails, not to mention the slaughtering and strangling of victims. Fanatics, such as Julian, gave themselves up with delight to these disgusting manipulations. What we know of Augustin's soul makes it quite clear why he recoiled with horror. Astrology, on the contrary, attracted him by its apparent science. Its adepts called themselves "mathematicians," and thus seemed to borrow from the exact sciences something of their solidity. Augustin often discussed astrology with a Carthage physician, Vindicianus, a man of great sense and wide learning, who even reached Proconsular honours. In vain did he point out to the young rhetorician that the pretended prophecies of the mathematicians were the effect of chance; in vain did Nebridius, less credulous than his friend, join his arguments to those of the crafty physician; Augustin clung obstinately to his chimera. His dialectical mind discovered ingenious justifications for what the astrologers claimed. Thus, dazzled by all the intellectual phantasms, he strayed from one science to another, repeating meanwhile in his heart the motto of his Manichean masters: "The Truth, the Truth!". But whatever might be the attractions of the speculative life, he had first to face the needs of actual life. The sight of his child called him back to a sense of his position. To get money, and for that purpose to push himself forward, put himself in evidence, increase his reputation--Augustin worked at that as hard as he could. It led him to enter for the prize of dramatic poetry. He was declared the winner. His old friend, the physician Vindicianus, who was then Proconsul, placed the crown, as he says, upon his "disordered head." The future Father of the Church writing for the theatre--and what a theatre it was then!--is not the least extraordinary thing in this life so disturbed and, at first sight, so contradictory. It was also from literary ambition that about the same time he wrote a book on æsthetics called _Upon the Beautiful and the Fit_, which he dedicated to a famous colleague, the Syrian Hierius, "orator to the City of Rome," one of the professors of the official education appointed either by the Roman municipality or the Imperial treasury. This Levantine rhetorician had an immense success in the capital of the Empire. His renown had got beyond academical and fashionable circles and crossed the sea. Augustin admired him on trust, like everybody else. It is clear that, at this time he could not imagine a more glorious fortune for himself than to become, like Hierius, orator to the City of Rome. Later in life, the Bishop of Hippo, while condemning the vanity of his youthful ambitions, must have made some extremely ironical reflections as to their modesty. How mistaken he was about himself! An Augustin had dreamed of equalling one day this obscure pedagogue, of whom nobody, save for him, would ever have spoken again. Men of instinct, like Augustin, continually go wrong in this way about their object and the means to employ. But their mistakes are only in appearance. A will stronger than their own leads them, by mysterious ways, whither they ought to go. This first book of Augustin's is lost, and we are unable to say whether there be any reason to regret it. He himself recalls it to us in a very indifferent tone and rather vague terms. It would seem, however, that his æsthetic had a basis of Manichean metaphysics. But what is significant for us, in this youthful essay, is that the first time Augustin wrote as an author it was to define and to praise Beauty. He did not yet know, at least not directly from the text, the dialogues of Plato, and he is already inclined to Platonism. He was this by nature. His Christianity will be a religion all of light and beauty. For him, the supreme Beauty is identical with the supreme Love. "Do we love anything," he used to say to his friends, "except what is beautiful?" _Num amamus aliquid, nisi pulchrum?_ Again, at the end of his life, when he strives in _The City of God_ to make clear for us the dogma of the resurrection of the body, he thinks our bodies shall rise free from all earthly flaws, in all the splendour of the perfect human type. Nothing of the body will be lost. It will keep all its limbs and all its organs _because they are beautiful_. One recognizes in this passage, not only the Platonist, but the traveller and art-lover, who had gazed upon some of the finest specimens of ancient statuary. This first book had hardly any success. Augustin does not even say whether the celebrated Hierius paid him a compliment about it, and he has an air of giving us to understand that he had no other admirer but himself. New disappointments, more serious mortifications, changed little by little his state of mind and his plans for the future. He was obliged to acknowledge that after years of effort he was scarcely more advanced than at the start. There was no chance to delude himself with vain pretences: it was quite plain to everybody that the rhetorician Augustin was not a success. Now, why was this? Was it that he lacked the gift of teaching? Perhaps he had not the knack of keeping order, which is the most indispensable of all for a schoolmaster. What suited him best no doubt was a small and select audience which he charmed rather than ruled. Large and noisy classes he could not manage. At Carthage, these rhetoric classes were particularly difficult to keep in order, because the students were more rowdy than elsewhere. At any moment "The Wreckers" might burst in and make a row. Augustin, who had not joined in these "rags" when he was a student, saw himself obliged to endure them as a professor. He had nothing worse to complain of than his fellow-professors, in whose classes the same kind of disturbance took place. That was the custom and, in a manner of speaking, the rule in the Carthage schools. For all that, a little more authoritative bearing would not have harmed him in the eyes of these disorderly boys. But he had still graver defects for a professor who wants to get on: he was not a schemer, and he could not make the most of himself. It is quite possible that he did not possess the qualities which just then pleased the pagan public in a rhetorician. The importance that the ancients attached to physical advantages in an orator is well known. Now, according to an old tradition, Augustin was a little man and not strong: till the end of his life he complained of his health. He had a weak voice, a delicate chest, and was often hoarse. Surely this injured him before audiences used to all the outward emphasis and all the studied graces of Roman eloquence. Finally, his written and spoken language had none of those brilliant and ingenious curiosities of phrase which pleased in literary and fashionable circles. This inexhaustibly prolific writer is not in the least a stylist. In this respect he is inferior to Apuleius, or Tertullian, though he leaves them far behind in the qualities of sincere and deep sentiment, poetic flow, colour, the vividness of metaphor, and, besides, the emotion, the suavity of the tone. With all that, no matter how hard he tried, he could never grasp what the rhetoricians of his time understood by style. This is why his writings, as well as his addresses, were not very much liked. Nevertheless, good judges recognized his value, and guessed the powers, lying still unformed within him, which he was misusing ere they were mature. He was received at the house of the Proconsul Vindicianus, who liked to talk with him, and treated him with quite fatherly kindness. Augustin knew people in the best society. He did all his life. His charm and captivating manners made him welcome in the most exclusive circles. But just because he was valued by fashionable society, it came home to him more painfully that he had not the position he deserved with the public at large. Little by little his humour grew bitter. In this angry state of mind he was no longer able to consider things with the same confidence and serenity. His mental disquietudes took hold of him again. His ideas were affected, first of all. He began to have doubts, more and more definite, about Manicheeism. He began by suspecting the rather theatrical austerity which the initiated of the sect made such a great parade of. Among other turpitudes, he saw one day in one of the busiest parts of Carthage "three of the Elect whinny after some women or other who were passing, and begin making such obscene signs that they surpassed the coarsest people for impudence and shamelessness." He was scandalized at that; but, after all, it was a small thing. He himself was not so very virtuous then. Generally your intellectual worries very little about squaring his conduct with his principles, and does not bother about the practical part. No; what was much worse in his eyes is that the Manichean physical science, a congeries of fables more or less symbolical, suddenly struck him as ruinous. He had just been studying astronomy, and he found that the cosmology of the Manichees--of these men who called themselves materialists--did not agree with scientific facts. Therefore Manicheeism must be wrong universally, since it ran counter to reason confirmed by experience. Augustin spoke about his doubts, not only to his friends, but to the priests of his sect. These got out of the difficulty by evasions and the most dazzling promises. A Manichee bishop, a certain Faustus, was coming to Carthage. He was a man of immense learning. Most certainly he would refute every objection without the least trouble. He would confirm the young _auditors_ in their faith.... So Augustin and his friends waited for Faustus as for a Messiah. Their disappointment was immense. The supposed doctor turned out to be an ignorant man, who possessed no tincture of science or philosophy, and whose intellectual baggage consisted of nothing but a little grammar. A delightful talker and a wit, the most he could do was to discourse pleasantly on literature. This disappointment, joined to the set-backs in his profession, brought about a crisis of soul and conscience in Augustin. So this Truth which he had sighed after so long, which had been so much promised to him, was only a decoy! One must be content not to know!... Then what was left to do since truth was unapproachable? Possibly fortune and honours would console him for it. But he was far enough from them too. He felt that he was on the wrong road, that he was getting into a rut at Carthage, as he had got into a rut at Thagaste. He must succeed, whatever the cost!... And then he gave way to one of those moments of weariness, when a man has no further hope of saving himself save by some desperate step. He was sick of where he was and of those about him. His friends, whom he knew too well, had nothing more to teach him, and could not help him in the only search which passionately interested him. And his entanglement became irksome. Here was nine years that this sharing of bed and board had lasted. His son was at that unattractive age which rather bores a young father than it revives an affection already old. No doubt he did not want to abandon him. He did not intend to break altogether with his mistress. But he felt the need of a change of air, to take himself off somewhere else, where he could breathe more freely and get fresh courage for his task. Then it dawned on him to try his fortune at Rome. It was there that literary reputations were made. He would find there, no doubt, better judges than at Carthage. He would very likely end by getting a post in the public instruction, with a steady salary--this would relieve him of present worries, at all events. Probably he had already this plan in his head when he sent his treatise _On the Beautiful_ to Hierius, orator to the City of Rome; he thought that by this politeness he might depend, later, on the backing of the well-known rhetorician. Lastly, his friends, Honoratius, Marcianus, and the others, earnestly persuaded him to go and find a stage worthy of him at Rome. Alypius, who was at this time finishing his law studies there, and must have felt their separation, pressed him to come to Rome and promised him success. Once more, Augustin was ready to go away. He was not long in making up his mind. He was going to leave all belonging to him, his mistress, his child, till the time when his new position would enable him to send for them. He himself tells us that the chief motive which led him to decide on this journey was that the Roman students were said to be better disciplined and less noisy than the students at Carthage. Evidently, that is a reason which would weigh with a professor who objected to act the policeman in his class. But besides the reasons we have given, there were others which must have influenced his decision. Theodosius had lately ordered very heavy penalties against the Manichees. Not only did he condemn them to death, but he had instituted a perfect Inquisition, with the special duty of spying upon and prosecuting these heretics. Did it occur to Augustin that he might hide better in Rome, where he was unknown, than in a city where he was a marked man on account of his proselytizing zeal? In any case, his departure gave rise to calumnies which his adversaries, the Donatists, did not fail many years later to bring up again and make worse. They accused him of having run away from prosecution; he fled the country, so they said, on account of a judgment which was out against him, pronounced by the Proconsul Messianus. Augustin had no trouble in refuting these false insinuations. But all these facts seem to prove that the most ordinary prudence warned him to cross the sea as soon as possible. Accordingly, he prepared to set sail. Let us hope that in spite of his lofty indifference to material things, he made some provision for the existence of the woman and child he left behind. As for her, she appeared to agree without over-many violent scenes to this parting, which, he said, was temporary. It was not the same with his mother. The very idea of Rome, which seemed to her another Babylon, terrified this austere African woman. What spiritual dangers lay in wait for her son there! She wanted to keep him near her, both to bring him to the faith and also to love him--this Augustin who had been her only human love. And then he was doubtless the chief support of the widow. Without him, what was going to become of her? The fugitive was forced to put a trick on Monnica so as to carry out his plan. She would not leave him a moment, folded him in her arms, implored him with tears not to go. The night he was to sail she followed him down to the dock, although Augustin, to allay her suspicions, had told her a lie. He pretended that he was only going down to the ship with a friend to see him off. But Monnica, only half believing, followed. Night fell. Meanwhile, the ship, anchored in a little bay to the north of the city, did not move. The sailors were waiting till a wind rose to slip their moorings. The weather was moist and oppressive, as it usually is in the Mediterranean in August and September. There was not a breath of air. The hours passed on. Monnica, overcome by heat and fatigue, could hardly stand. Then Augustin cunningly persuaded her to go and pass the night in a chapel hard by, since it was plain that the ship would not weigh anchor till dawn. After many remonstrances, she at length agreed to rest in this chapel--a _memoria_ consecrated to St. Cyprian, the great martyr and patron of Carthage. Like most of the African sanctuaries of those days, and the _marabouts_ of to-day, this one must have been either surrounded, or approached, by a court with a portico in arcades, where it was possible to sleep. Monnica sat down on the ground under her heap of veils among other poor people and travellers, who were come like her to try to find a little cool air on this stifling night near the relics of the blessed Cyprian. She prayed for her child, offering to God "the blood of her heart," begging God not to let him go, "for she loved to keep me with her" says Augustin, "as mothers are wont, yes, far more than most mothers." And like a true daughter of Eve, "weeping and crying, she sought again with groans the son she had brought forth with groans." She prayed for a long time; then, worn out with sorrow, she slept. The porter of the chapel, without knowing it, watched that night not only the mother of the rhetorician Augustin, but the ancestor of an innumerable line of souls; this humble woman, who slept there on the ground, on the flags of the courtyard, carried in her heart all the yearning of all the mothers of the future. While she slept, Augustin went stealthily on board. The silence and the tempered splendour of the night weighed him down. Sometimes the cry of the sailors on watch took a strange note in the lustrous vaporous spaces. The Gulf of Carthage gleamed far off under the scintillation of the stars, under the palpitating of a milky way all white like the flowers of the garden of Heaven. But Augustin's heart was heavy, heavier than the air weighted by the heat and sea-damp--heavy from the lie and the cruelty he had just committed. He saw already the awakening and sorrow of his mother. His conscience was troubled, overcome by remorse and forebodings.... Meanwhile, his friends tried to cheer him, and urged him to have courage and hope. Marcianus, while embracing him, reminded him of the verses of Terence: "This day which brings to thee another life Demands that thou another man shalt be." Augustin smiled sadly. At last the ship began to move. The wind had risen, the wind of the grand voyage which was bearing him to the unknown.... Suddenly, at the keen freshness of the open sea, he thrilled. His strength and confidence rushed back. To go away! What enchantment for all those who cannot fasten themselves to a corner of the earth, who know by instinct that they belong _elsewhere_, who always pass "as strangers and as pilgrims," and who go away with relief, as if they cast a burthen behind them. Augustin was of those people--of those who, among the fairest attractions of the Road, never cease to think of the Return. But he knew not where God was leading him. Marcianus was right: a new life was really beginning for him; only it was not the life that either of them hoped for. He who departed as a rhetorician, to sell words, was to come back as an apostle, to conquer souls. THE THIRD PART THE RETURN Et ecce ibi es in corde eorum, in corde confitentium tibi, et projicientium se in te, et plorantium in sinu tuo, post vias suas difficiles. "And behold! Thou art there in their hearts, in the hearts of that confess to Thee, and cast themselves upon Thee, and sob upon Thy breast, after their weary ways." _Confessions_, V, 2. I THE CITY OF GOLD Augustin fell ill just after he got to Rome. It would seem that he arrived there towards the end of August or beginning of September, before the students reassembled, just at the time of heat and fevers, when all Romans who could leave the city fled to the summer resorts on the coast. Like all the great cosmopolitan centres at that time, Rome was unhealthy. The diseases of the whole earth, brought by the continual inflow of foreigners, flourished there. Accordingly, the inhabitants had a panic fear of infection, like our own contemporaries. People withdrew prudently from those suffering from infectious disorders, who were left to their unhappy fate. If, from a sense of shame, they sent a slave to the patient's bedside, he was ordered to the sweating-rooms, and there disinfected from head to foot, before he could enter the house again. Augustin must have had at least the good luck to be well looked after, since he recovered. He had gone to the dwelling of one of his Manichee brethren, an _auditor_ like himself, and an excellent kind of man, whom he stayed with all the time he was in Rome. Still, he had such a bad attack of fever that he very nearly died. "I was perishing," he says; "and I was all but lost." He is frightened at the idea of having seen death so near, at a moment when he was so far from God--so far, in fact, that it never occurred to him to ask for baptism, as he had done, in like case, when he was little. What a desperate blow would that have been for Monnica! He still shudders when he recalls the danger: "Had my mother's heart been smitten with that wound, it never could have been healed. _For I cannot express her tender love towards me_, or with how far greater anguish she travailed of me now in the spirit, than when she bore me in the flesh." But Monnica prayed. Augustin was saved. He ascribes his recovery to the fervent prayers of his mother, who, in begging of God the welfare of his soul, obtained, without knowing it, the welfare of his body. As soon as he was convalescent, he had to set to work to get pupils. He was obliged to ask the favours of many an important personage, to knock at many an inhospitable door. This unfortunate beginning, the almost mortal illness which he was only just recovering from, this forced drudgery--all that did not make him very fond of Rome. It seems quite plain that he never liked it, and till the end of his life he kept a grudge against it for the sorry reception it gave him. In the whole body of his writings it is impossible to find a word of praise for the beauty of the Eternal City, while, on the contrary, one can make out through his invectives against the vices of Carthage, his secret partiality for the African Rome. The old rivalry between the two cities was not yet dead after so many centuries. In his heart, Augustin, like a good Carthaginian--and because he was a Carthaginian--did not like Rome. The most annoying things joined together as if on purpose to disgust him with it. The bad season of the year was nigh when he began to reside there. Autumn rains had started, and the mornings and evenings were cold. What with his delicate chest, and his African constitution sensitive to cold, he must have suffered from this damp cold climate. Rome seemed to him a northern city. With his eyes still full of the warm light of his country, and the joyous whiteness of the Carthage streets, he wandered as one exiled between the gloomy Roman palaces, saddened by the grey walls and muddy pavements. Comparisons, involuntary and continual, between Carthage and Rome, made him unjust to Rome. In his eyes it had a hard, self-conscious, declamatory look, and gazing at the barren Roman _campagna_, he remembered the laughing Carthage suburbs, with gardens, villas, vineyards, olivets, circled everywhere by the brilliance of the sea and the lagoons. And then, besides, Rome could not be a very delightful place to live in for a poor rhetoric master come there to better his fortune. Other strangers before him had complained of it. Always to be going up and down the flights of steps and the ascents, often very steep, of the city of the Seven Hills; to be rushing between the Aventine and Sallust's garden, and thence to the Esquiline and Janiculum! To bruise the feet on the pointed cobbles of sloping alley-ways! These walks were exhausting, and there seemed to be no end to this city. Carthage was also large--as large almost as Rome. But there Augustin was not seeking employment. When he went for a walk there, he strolled. Here, the bustle of the crowds, and the number of equipages, disturbed and exasperated the southerner with his lounging habits. Any moment there was a risk of being run over by cars tearing at full gallop through the narrow streets: men of fashion just then had a craze for driving fast. Or again, the passenger was obliged to step aside so that some lady might go by in her litter, escorted by her household, from the handicraft slaves and the kitchen staff, to the eunuchs and house-servants--all this army manoeuvring under the orders of a leader who held a rod in his hand, the sign of his office. When the street became clear once more, and at last the palace of the influential personage to whom a visit had to be paid was reached, there was no admittance without greasing the knocker. In order to be presented to the master, it was necessary to buy the good graces of the slave who took the name (_nomenclator_), and who not only introduced the suppliant, but might, with a word, recommend or injure. Even after all these precautions, one was not yet sure of the goodwill of the patron. Some of these great lords, who were not always themselves sprung from old Roman families, prided themselves upon their uncompromising nationalism, and made a point of treating foreigners with considerable haughtiness. The Africans were regarded unfavourably in Rome, especially in Catholic circles. Augustin must have had an unpleasant experience of this. Through the long streets, brilliantly lighted at evening (it would seem that the artificial lighting of Rome almost equalled the daylight), he would return tired out to the dwelling of his host, the Manichee. This dwelling, according to an old tradition, was in the Velabrum district, in a street which is still to-day called _Via Greca_, and skirts the very old church of Santa Maria-in-Cosmedina--a poor quarter where swarmed a filthy mass of Orientals, and where the immigrants from the Levantine countries, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Egyptians, lodged. The warehouses on the Tiber were not very far off, and no doubt there were numbers of labourers, porters, and watermen living in this neighbourhood. What a place for him who had been at Thagaste the guest of the magnificent Romanianus, and intimate with the Proconsul at Carthage! When he had climbed up the six flights of stairs to his lodging, and crouched shivering over the ill-burning movable hearth, in the parsimonious light of a small bronze or earthenware lamp, while the raw damp sweated through the walls, he felt more and more his poverty and loneliness. He hated Rome and the stupid ambition which had brought him there. And yet Rome should have made a vivid appeal to this cultured man, this æsthete so alive to beauty. Although the transfer of the Court to Milan had drawn away some of its liveliness and glitter, it was still all illuminated by its grand memories, and never had it been more beautiful. It seems impossible that Augustin should not have been struck by it, despite his African prejudices. However well built the new Carthage might be, it could not pretend to compare with a city more than a thousand years old, which at all periods of its history had maintained the princely taste for building, and which a long line of emperors had never ceased to embellish. When Augustin landed at Ostia, he saw rise before him, closing the perspective of the _Via Appia_, the Septizonium of Septimus Severus--an imitation, doubtless, on a far larger scale, of the one at Carthage. This huge construction, water-works probably of enormous size, with its ordered columns placed line above line, was, so to speak, the portico whence opened the most wonderful and colossal architectural mass known to the ancient world. Modern Rome has nothing at all to shew which comes anywhere near it. Dominating the Roman Forum, and the Fora of various Emperors--labyrinths of temples, basilicas, porticoes, and libraries--the Capitol and the Palatine rose up like two stone mountains, fashioned and sculptured, under the heap of their palaces and sanctuaries. All these blocks rooted in the soil, suspended, and towering up from the flanks of the hills, these interminable regiments of columns and pilasters, this profusion of precious marbles, metals, mosaics, statues, obelisks--in all that there was something enormous, a lack of restraint which disturbed the taste and floored the imagination. But it was, above all, the excessive use of gold and gilding that astonished the visitor. Originally indigent, Rome became noted for its greed of gold. When the gold of conquered nations began to come into its hands, it spread it all over with the rather indiscreet display of the upstart. When Nero built the Golden House he realized its dream. The Capitol had golden doors. Statues, bronzes, the roofs of temples, were all gilded. All this gold, spread over the brilliant surfaces and angles of the architecture, dazzled and tired the eyes: _Acies stupet igne metalli_, said Claudian. For the poets who have celebrated it, Rome is the city of gold--_aurata Roma_. A Greek, such as Lucian, had perhaps a right to be shocked by this architectural debauch, this beauty too crushing and too rich. A Carthage rhetorician, like Augustin, could feel at the sight of it nothing but the same irritated admiration and secret jealousy as the Emperor Constans felt when he visited his capital for the first time. Even as the Byzantine Cæsar, and all the provincials, Augustin, no doubt, examined the curiosities and celebrated works which were pointed out to strangers: the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian; the Pantheon; the temple of Roma and of Venus; the Place of Concord; the theatre of Pompey; the Odeum, and the Stadium. Though he might be stupefied by all this, he would remember, too, all that the Republic had taken from the provinces to construct these wonders, and would say to himself: "'Tis we who have paid for them." In truth, all the world had been ransacked to make Rome beautiful. For some time a muffled hostility had been brewing in provincial hearts against the tyranny of the central power, especially since it had shewn itself incapable of maintaining peace, and the Barbarians were threatening the frontiers. Worn out by so many insurrections, wars, massacres, and pillages, the provinces had come to ask if the great complicated machine of the Empire was worth all the blood and money that it cost. For Augustin, moreover, the crisis was drawing near which was to end in his return to the Catholic faith. He had been a Christian, and as such brought up in principles of humility. With these sentiments, he would perhaps decide that the pride and vanity of the creature at Rome claimed far too much attention, and was even sacrilegious. It was not only the emperors who disputed the privileges of immortality with the gods, but anybody who took it into his head, provided that he was rich or had any kind of notoriety. Amid the harsh and blinding gilt of palaces and temples, how many statues, how many inscriptions endeavoured to keep an obscure memory green, or the features of some unknown man! Of course, at Carthage too, where they copied Rome, as in all the big cities, there were statues and inscriptions in abundance upon the Forum, the squares, and in the public baths. But what had not shocked Augustin in his native land, did shock him in a strange city. His home-sick eyes opened to faults which till then had been veiled by usage. In any case, this craze for statues and inscriptions prevailed at Rome more than anywhere else. The number of statues on the Forum became so inconvenient, that on many occasions certain ones were marked for felling, and the more insignificant shifted. The men of stone drove out the living men, and forced the gods into their temples. And the inscriptions on the walls bewildered the mind with such a noise of human praise, that ambition could dream of nothing beyond. It was all a kind of idolatry which revolted the strict Christians; and in Augustin, even at this time, it must have offended the candour of a soul which detested exaggeration and bombast. The vices of the Roman people, with whom he was obliged to live cheek by jowl, galled him still more painfully. And to begin with, the natives hated strangers. At the theatres they used to shout: "Down with the foreign residents!" Acute attacks of xenophobia often caused riots in the city. Some years before Augustin arrived, a panic about the food supply led to the expulsion, as useless mouths, of all foreigners domiciled in Rome, even the professors. Famine was an endemic disease there. And then, these lazy people were always hungry. The gluttony and drunkenness of the Romans roused the wonder and also the disgust of the sober races of the Empire--of the Greeks as well as the Africans. They ate everywhere--in the streets, at the theatre, at the circus, around the temples. The sight was so ignoble, and the public intemperance so scandalous, that the Prefect, Ampelius, was obliged to issue an order prohibiting people who had any self-respect from eating in the street, the keepers of wine-shops from opening their places before ten o'clock in the morning, and the hawkers from selling cooked meat in the streets earlier than a certain hour of the day. But he might as well have saved himself the trouble. Religion itself encouraged this greediness. The pagan sacrifices were scarcely more than pretexts for stuffing. Under Julian, who carried the great public sacrifices of oxen to an abusive extent, the soldiers got drunk and gorged themselves with meat in the temples, and came out staggering. Then they would seize hold of any passers-by, whom they forced to carry them shoulder-high to their barracks. All this must be kept in mind so as to understand the strictness and unyielding attitude of the Christian reaction. This Roman people, like the pagans in general, was frightfully material and sensual. The difficulty of shaking himself free from matter and the senses is going to be the great obstacle which delays Augustin's conversion; and if it was so with him, a fastidious and intellectual man, what about the crowd? Those people thought of nothing but eating and drinking and lewdness. When they left the tavern or their squalid rooms, they had only the obscenities of mimes, or the tumbles of the drivers in the circus, or the butcheries in the amphitheatre to elevate them. They passed the night there under the awnings provided by the municipality. Their passion for horse-races and actors and actresses, curbed though it was by the Christian emperors, continued even after the sack of Rome by the Barbarians. At the time of the famine, when the strangers were expelled, they excepted from this wholesale banishment three thousand female dancers with the members of their choirs, and their leaders of orchestra. The aristocracy did not manifest tastes much superior. Save a few cultivated minds, sincerely fond of literature, the greatest number only saw in the literary pose an easy way of being fashionable. These became infatuated about an unknown author, or an ancient author whose books were not to be had. They had these books sought for and beautifully copied. They, "who hated study like poison," spoke only of their favourite author: the others did not exist for them. As a matter of fact, music had ousted literature: "the libraries were closed like sepulchres." But fashionable people were interested in an hydraulic organ, and they ordered from the lute-makers "lyres the size of chariots." Of course, this musical craze was sheer affectation. Actually, they were only interested in sports: to race, to arrange races, to breed horses, to train athletes and gladiators. As a pastime, they collected Oriental stuffs. Silk was then fashionable, and so were precious stones, enamels, heavy goldsmiths' work. Rows of rings were worn on each finger. People took the air in silk robes, held together by brooches carved in the figures of animals, a parasol in one hand, and a fan with gold fringes in the other. The costumes and fashions of Constantinople encroached upon the old Rome and the rest of the Western world. Immense fortunes, which had gathered in the hands of certain people, either through inheritance or swindling, enabled them to keep up a senseless expenditure. Like the American millionaires of to-day, who have their houses and properties in both hemispheres, these great Roman lords possessed them in every country in the Empire. Symmachus, who was Prefect of the City when Augustin was in Rome, had considerable estates not only in Italy and in Sicily, but even in Mauretania. And yet, in spite of all their wealth and all the privileges they enjoyed, these rich people were neither happy nor at ease. At the least suspicion of a despotic power, their lives and property were threatened. Accusations of magic, of disrespect to the Cæsar, of plots against the Emperor--any pretext was good to plunder them. During the preceding reign, that of the pitiless Valentinian, the Roman nobility had been literally decimated by the executioner. A certain vice-Prefect, Maximinus, had gained a sinister reputation for cleverness in the art of manufacturing suspects. By his orders, a basket at the end of a string was hung out from one of the windows of the Prætorium, into which denunciations might be cast. The basket was in use day and night. It is clear that at the time that Augustin settled in Rome this abominable system was a little moderated. But accusation by detectives was always in the air. And living in this atmosphere of mistrust, hypocrisy, bribery, and cruelty--small wonder if the Carthaginian fell into bitter reflections upon Roman corruption. However impressive from the front, the Empire was not nice to look at close at hand. But Augustin was, above all, home-sick. When he strolled tinder the shady trees of the Janiculum or Sallust's gardens, he already said to himself what he would repeat later to his listeners at Hippo: "Take an African, put him in a place cool and green, and he won't stay there. He will feel he must go away and come back to his blazing desert." As for himself, he had something better to regret than a blazing desert. In front of the City of Gold, stretched out at his feet, and the horizon of the Sabine Hills, he remembered the feminine softness of the twilights upon the Lake of Tunis, the enchantment of moonlit nights upon the Gulf of Carthage, and that astonishing landscape to be discovered from the height of the terrace of Byrsa, which all the grandeur of the Roman _campagna_ could not make him forget. II THE FINAL DISILLUSION 'The new professor had managed to secure a certain number of pupils whom he gathered together in his rooms. He could make enough to live at Rome by himself, if he could not support there the woman and child he had left behind at Carthage. In this matter of finding work, his host and his Manichee friends had done him some very good turns. Although forced to conceal their beliefs since the edict of Theodosius, there were a good many Manichees in the city. They formed an occult Church, strongly organized, and its adepts had relations with all classes of Roman society. Possibly Augustin presented himself as one driven out of Africa by the persecution. Some compensation would be owing to this young man who had suffered for the good cause. It was his friend Alypius, "the brother of his heart," who, having preceded him to Rome to study law at his parents' wishes, now was the most useful in helping Augustin to make himself known and find pupils. Himself a Manichee, converted by Augustin, and a member of one of the leading families in Thagaste, he had not long to wait for an important appointment in the Imperial administration. He was assessor to the Treasurer-General, or "Count of the Italian Bounty Office," and decided fiscal questions. Thanks to his influence, as well as to his acquaintances among the Manichees, he was a valuable friend for the new arrival, a friend who could aid him, not only with his purse, but with advice. Without much capacity for theorizing, this Alypius was a practical spirit, a straight and essentially honest soul, whose influence was excellent for his impetuous friend. Of very chaste habits, he urged Augustin to restraint. And even in abstract studies, the religious controversies which Augustin dragged him into, his strong good sense moderated the imaginative dashes, the overmuch subtilty which sometimes led the other beyond healthy reason. Unhappily they were both very busy--the judge and the rhetorician--and although their friendship became still greater during this stay in Rome, they were not able to see each other as much as they desired. Their pleasures, too, were perhaps not the same. Augustin did not in the least care about being chaste, and Alypius had a passion for the amphitheatre--a passion which his friend disapproved of. Some time earlier, at Carthage, Augustin had filled him with disgust of the circus. But hardly was Alypius arrived in Rome, than he became mad about the gladiatorial shows. Some fellow-students took him to the amphitheatre, almost by force. Thereupon, he said that he would stay, since they had dragged him there; but he bet that he would keep his eyes shut all through the fight, and that nothing could make him open them. He sat down on the benches with those who had brought him, his eyelids pressed down, refusing to look. Suddenly there was a roar of shouting, the shout of the crowd hailing the fall of the first wounded. His lids parted of themselves; he saw the flow of blood. "At the sight of the blood" says Augustin, "he drank in ruthlessness; no longer did he turn away, but fixed his gaze, and he became mad--and he knew no more.... He was fascinated by the criminal atrocity of this battle, and drunk with the pleasure of blood." These breathless phrases of the _Confessions_ seem to throb still with the wild frenzy of the crowd. They convey to us directly the kind of Sadic excitement which people went to find about the arena. Really, a wholesome sight for future Christians, for all the souls that the brutality of pagan customs revolted! The very year that Augustin was at Rome, certain prisoners of war, Sarmatian soldiers, condemned to kill each other in the amphitheatre, chose suicide rather than this shameful death. There was in this something to make him reflect--him and his friends. The fundamental injustices whereon the ancient world rested--the crushing of the slave and the conquered, the contempt for human life--these things they touched with the finger when they looked on at the butcheries in the amphitheatre. All those whose hearts sickened with disgust and horror before these slaughter-house scenes, all those who longed for a little more mildness, a little more justice, were all recruits marked out for the peaceful army of the Christ. For Alypius, especially, it was not a bad thing to have known this blood-drunkenness at first hand: he shall be only the more ashamed when he falls at the feet of the merciful God. Equally useful was it for him to have personal experience of the harshness of men's justice; and in the fulfilment of his duties as a judge to observe its errors and flaws. While he was a student at Carthage he just escaped being condemned to death upon a false accusation of theft--the theft of a piece of lead! Already they were dragging him, if not to the place of capital punishment, at least to prison, when a chance meeting with a friend of his who was a senator saved him from the threatening mob. At Rome, while Assessor to the Count of the Italian Bounty Office, he had to resist an attempt to bribe him, and by doing so risked losing his appointment, and, no doubt, something worse too. Official venality and dishonesty were evils so deeply rooted, that he himself nearly succumbed. He wanted some books copied, and he had the temptation to get this done at the charge of the Treasury. This peculation had, in his eyes, a good enough excuse, and it was certain to go undetected. Nevertheless, when he thought it over he changed his mind, and virtuously refrained from giving himself a library at the expense of the State. Augustin, who relates these anecdotes, draws the same moral from them as we do, to wit--that for a man who was going to be a bishop and, as such, administrator and judge, this time spent in the Government service was a good preparatory school. Most of the other great leaders of this generation of Christians had also been officials; before ordination, they had been mixed up in business and politics, and had lived freely the life of their century. So it was with St. Ambrose, with St. Paulinus of Nola, with Augustin himself, and Evodius and Alypius, his friends. And yet, however absorbed in their work the two Africans might be, it is pretty near certain that intellectual questions took the lead of all others. This is manifest in Augustin's case at least. He must have astonished the good Alypius when he got to Rome by acknowledging that he hardly believed in Manicheeism any longer. And he set forth his doubts about their masters' cosmogony and physical science, his suspicions touching the hidden immorality of the sect. As for himself, the controversies, which were the Manichees' strong point, did not dazzle him any longer. At Carthage, but lately, he had heard a Catholic, a certain Helpidius, oppose to them arguments from Scripture, which they were unable to refute. To make matters worse, the Manichee Bishop of Rome made a bad impression on him from the very outset. This man, he tells us, was of rough appearance, without culture or polite manners. Doubtless this unmannerly peasant, in his reception of the young professor, had not shewn himself sufficiently alive to his merits, and the professor felt aggrieved. From then, his keen dialectic and his satirical spirit (Augustin had formidable powers of ridicule all through his life) were exercised upon the backs of his fellow-religionists. Provisionally, he had admitted as indisputable the basic principles of Manicheeism: first of all, the primordial antagonism of the two substances, the God of Light and the God of Darkness; then, this other dogma, that particles of that Divine Light, which had been carried away in a temporary victory of the army of Darkness, were immersed in certain plants and liquors. Hence, the distinction they made between clean and unclean food. All those foods were pure which contained some part of the Divine Light; impure, those which did not. The purity of food became evident by certain qualities of taste, smell, and appearance. But now Augustin found a good deal of arbitrariness in these distinctions, and a good deal of simplicity in the belief that the Divine Light dwelt in a vegetable. "Are they not ashamed," he said, "to search God with their palates or with their nose? And if His presence is revealed by a special brilliancy, by the goodness of the taste or the smell, why allow that dish and condemn this, which is of equal savour, light, and perfume? "Yea, why do they look upon the golden melon as come out of God's treasure-house, and yet will have none of the golden fat of the ham or the yellow of an egg? Why does the whiteness of lettuce proclaim to them the Divinity, and the whiteness of cream nothing at all? And why this horror of meat? For, look you, roast sucking-pig offers us a brilliant colour, an agreeable smell, and an appetizing taste--sure signs, according to them, of the Divine Presence."... Once started on this topic, Augustin's vivacity has no limits. He even drops into jokes which would offend modern shamefacedness by their Aristophanic breadth. These arguments, to say the truth, did not shake the foundations of the doctrine, and if a doctrine must be judged according to its works, the Manichees might entrench themselves behind their rigid moral rules, and their conduct. Contrary to the more accommodating Catholicism, they paraded a puritan intolerance. But Augustin had found out at Carthage that this austerity was for the most part hypocrisy. At Rome he was thoroughly enlightened. The Elect of the religion made a great impression by their fasts and their abstinence from meat. Now it became clear that these devout personages, under pious pretexts, literally destroyed themselves by over-eating and indigestion. They held, in fact, that the chief work of piety consisted in setting free particles of the Divine Light, imprisoned in matter by the wiles of the God of Darkness. They being the Pure, they purified matter by absorbing it into their bodies. The faithful brought them stores of fruit and vegetables, served them with real feasts, so that by eating these things they might liberate a little of the Divine Substance. Of course, they abstained from all flesh, flesh being the dwelling-place of the Dark God, and also from fermented wine, which they called "the devil's gall." But how they made up for it over the rest! Augustin makes great fun of these people who would think it a sin if they took as a full meal a small bit of bacon and cabbage, with two or three mouthfuls of undiluted wine, and yet ordered to be served up, from three o'clock in the afternoon, all kinds of fruit and vegetables, the most exquisite too, rendered piquant by spices, the Manichees holding that spices were very full of fiery and luminous principles. Then, their palates titillating from pepper, they swallowed large draughts of mulled wine or wine and honey, and the juice of oranges, lemons, and grapes. And these junketings began over again at nightfall. They had a preference for certain cakes, and especially for truffles and mushrooms--vegetables more particularly mystic. Such a diet put human gluttony to a heavy test. Many a scandal came to light in the Roman community. The Elect made themselves sick by devouring the prodigious quantity of good cheer brought to them with a view to purification. As it was a sacrilege to let any be lost, the unhappy people forced themselves to get down the lot. There were even victims: children, gorged with delicacies, died of stuffing. For children, being innocent things, were deemed to have quite special purifying virtues. Augustin was beginning to get indignant at all this nonsense. Still, except for these extravagances, he continued to believe in the asceticism of the Elect--asceticism of such severity that the main part of the faithful found it impossible to practise. And see! just at this moment, whom should he discover very strange things about but Bishop Faustus, that Faustus whom he had looked for at Carthage as a Messiah. The holy man, while he preached renunciation, granted himself a good many indulgences: he lay, for one thing, on feathers, or upon soft goatskin rugs. And these puritans were not even honest. The Manichee Bishop of Rome, that man of rough manners who had so offended Augustin, was on the point of being convicted of stealing the general cash-box. Lastly, there were rumours in the air, accusing the Elect of giving themselves over to reprehensible practices in their private meetings. They condemned marriage and child-bearing as works of the devil, but they authorized fornication, and even, it is said, certain acts against nature. That, for Augustin, was the final disillusion. In spite of it, he did not separate openly from the sect. He kept his rank of _auditor_ in the Manichee Church. What held him to it, were some plausible considerations on the intellectual side. Manicheeism, with its distinction of two Principles, accounted conveniently for the problem of evil and human responsibility. Neither God nor man was answerable for sin and pain, since it was the other, the Dark Principle, who distributed them through the world among men. Augustin, who continued to sin, continued likewise to be very comfortable with such a system of morals and metaphysics. Besides, he was not one of those convinced, downright minds who feel the need to quarrel noisily with what they take to be error. No one has opposed heresies more powerfully, and with a more tireless patience, than he has. But he always put some consideration into the business. He knew by experience how easy it is to fall into error, and he said this charitably to those whom he wished to persuade. There was nothing about him like St. Jerome. Personal reasons, moreover, obliged him not to break with his fellow-religionists who had supported him, nursed him even, on his arrival at Rome, and who, as we shall see in a moment, might still do him services. Augustin was not, like his friend Alypius, a practical mind, but he had tact, and in spite of all the impulsiveness and mettle of his nature, a certain suppleness which enabled him to manoeuvre without too many collisions in the midst of the most embarrassing conjunctures. Through instinctive prudence he prolonged his indecision. Little by little, he who had formerly flung himself so enthusiastically in pursuit of Truth, glided into scepticism--the scepticism of the Academics in its usual form. And at the same time that he lost his taste for speculative thinking, new annoyances in his profession put the finishing touch on his discouragement. If the Roman students were less noisy than those of Carthage, they had a deplorable habit of walking off and leaving their masters unpaid. Augustin was ere long victimized in this way: he lost his time and his words. As at Carthage, so at Rome, he had to face the fact that he could not live by his profession. What was he to do? Would he have to go back home? He had fallen into despair, when an unforeseen chance turned up for him. The town council of Milan threw open a professorship of Rhetoric to public competition. It would be salvation for him if he could get appointed. For a long time he had wanted a post in the State education. In receipt of a fixed salary, he would no longer have to worry about beating up a class, or to guard against the dishonesty of his pupils. He put his name down immediately among the candidates. But no more in those days than in ours was simple merit by itself enough. It was necessary to pull strings. His friends the Manichees undertook to do this for him. They urged his claims warmly on the Prefect Symmachus, who doubtless presided at the competitive trials. By an amusing irony of fate, Augustin owed his place to people he was getting ready to separate from, whom even he was soon going to attack, and also to a man who was in a way the official enemy of Christianity. The pagan Symmachus appointing to an important post a future Catholic bishop--there is matter for surprise in that! But Symmachus, who had been Proconsul at Carthage, protected the Africans in Rome. Furthermore, it is likely that the Manichees represented their candidate to him as a man hostile to Catholics. Now in this year, A.D. 384, the Prefect had just begun an open struggle with the Catholics. He believed, therefore, that he made a good choice in appointing Augustin. So a chain of events, with which his will had hardly anything to do, was going to draw the young rhetorician to Milan--yes, and how much farther!--to where he did not want to go, to where the prayers of Monnica summoned him unceasingly: "Where I am, there shall you be also." When he was leaving Rome, he did not much expect that. What he chiefly thought of was that he had at last won an independent financial position, and that he was become an official of some importance. He had a flattering evidence of this at once: It was at the expense of the city of Milan and in the Imperial carriages that he travelled through Italy to take up his new post. III THE MEETING BETWEEN AMBROSE AND AUGUSTIN Before he left Rome, and during his journey to Milan, Augustin must have recalled more than once the verses of Terence which his friend Marcianus had quoted by way of encouragement and advice the night he set sail for Italy: "This day which brings to thee another life Demands that thou another man shalt be." He was thirty years old. The time of youthful wilfulness was over. Age, disappointments, the difficulties of life, had developed his character. He was now become a man of position, an eminent official, in a very large city which was the second capital of the Western Empire and the principal residence of the Court. If he wished to avoid further set-backs in his career, it behoved him to choose a line of conduct carefully thought out. And first of all, it was time to get rid of Manicheeism. A Manichee would have made a scandal in a city where the greatest part of the population was Christian, and the Court was Catholic, although it did not conceal its sympathy with Arianism. It was a long time now since Augustin had been a Manichee in his heart. Accordingly, he was not obliged to feign in order to re-enter a Church which already included him formally among its catechumens. Doubtless he was a very lukewarm catechumen, since at intervals he inclined to scepticism. But he thought it decent to remain, at least for the time being, in the Catholic body, in which his mother had brought him up, until the day when some sure light should arise to direct his path. Now St. Ambrose was at that time the Catholic Bishop of Milan. Augustin was very eager to gain his goodwill. Ambrose was an undoubted political power, an important personage, a celebrated orator whose renown was shed all across the Roman world. He belonged to an illustrious family. His father had been Prætorian prefect of Gaul. He himself, with the title of Consul, was governing the provinces of Emilia and Liguria when the Milanese forced him, much against his will, to become their bishop. Baptized, ordained priest, and consecrated, one on top of the other, it was only apparently that he gave up his civil functions. From the height of his episcopal throne he always personified the highest authority in the country. As soon as he arrived at Milan, Augustin hurried to call upon his bishop. Knowing him as we do, he must have approached Ambrose in a great transport of enthusiasm. His imagination, too, was kindled. In his thought this was a man of letters, an orator, a famous writer, almost a fellow-worker, that he was going to see. The young professor admired in Bishop Ambrose all the glory that he was ambitious of, and all that he already believed himself to be. He fancied, that however great might be the difference in their positions, he would find himself at once on an equal footing with this high personage, and would have a familiar talk with him, as he used to have at Carthage with the Proconsul Vindicianus. He told himself also that Ambrose was a priest, that is to say, a doctor of souls: he meant to open to him all his spiritual wretchedness, the anguish of his mind and heart. He expected consolation from him, if not cure. Well, he was mistaken. Although in all his writings he speaks of "the holy Bishop of Milan" with feelings of sincere respect and admiration, he lets it be understood that his expectations were not realized. If the Manichean bishop of Rome had offended him by his rough manners, Ambrose disconcerted him alike by his politeness, his kindliness, and by the reserve, perhaps involuntarily haughty, of his reception. "He received me," says Augustin, "like a father, and as a bishop he was pleased enough at my coming:"--_peregrinationem meam satis episcopaliter dilexit_. This _satis episcopaliter_ looks very like a sly banter at the expense of the saint. It is infinitely probable that St. Ambrose received Augustin, not exactly as a man of no account, but still, as a sheep of his flock, and not as a gifted orator, and that, in short, he shewed him the same "episcopal" benevolence as he had from a sense of duty for all his hearers. It is possible too that Ambrose was on his guard from the outset with this African, appointed a municipal professor through the good offices of the pagan Symmachus, his personal enemy. In the opinion of the Italian Catholics, nothing good came from Carthage: these Carthaginians were generally Manichees or Donatists--sectaries the more dangerous because they claimed to be orthodox, and, mingling with the faithful, hypocritically contaminated them. And then Ambrose, the great lord, the former Governor of Liguria, the counsellor of the Emperors, may not have quite concealed a certain ironic commiseration for this "dealer in words," this young rhetorician who was still puffed up with his own importance. Be this as it will, it was a lesson in humility that St. Ambrose, without intending it, gave to Augustin. The lesson was not understood. The rhetoric professor gathered only one thing from the visit, which was, that the Bishop of Milan had received him well. And as human vanity immediately lends vast significance to the least advances of distinguished or powerful persons, Augustin felt thankful for it. He began to love Ambrose almost as much as he admired him, and he admired him for reasons altogether worldly. "Ambrose I counted one of the happy ones of this world, because he was held in such honour by the great." The qualification which immediately follows shews naively enough the sensual Augustin's state of mind at that time: "Only it seemed to me that celibacy must be a heavy burthen upon him." In those years the Bishop of Milan might, indeed, pass for a happy man in the eyes of the world. He was the friend of the very glorious and very victorious Theodosius; he had been the adviser of the young Emperor Gratian, but lately assassinated; and although the Empress Justina, devoted to the Arians, plotted against him, he had still great influence in the council of Valentinian II--a little Emperor thirteen years old, whom a Court of pagans and Arians endeavoured to draw into an anti-Catholic reaction. Almost as soon as Augustin arrived in Milan, he was able to see for himself the great authority and esteem which Ambrose possessed, the occasion being a dispute which made a great noise. Two years earlier, Gratian had had the statue and altar of _Victory_ removed from the _Curia_, declaring that this pagan emblem and its accompaniments no longer served any purpose in an assembly of which the majority was Christian. By the same stroke, he suppressed the incomes of the sacerdotal colleges with all their privileges, particularly those of the Vestals; confiscated for the revenue the sums granted for the exercise of religion; seized the property of the temples; and forbade the priests to receive bequests of real estate. This meant the complete separation of the State and the ancient religion. The pagan minority in the Senate, with Symmachus, the Prefect, at its head, protested against this edict. A deputation was sent to Milan to place the pagan grievances before the Emperor. Gratian refused to receive them. It was thought that his successor, Valentinian II, being feebler, would be more obliging. A new senatorial committee presented themselves with a petition drawn up by Symmachus--a genuine piece of oratory which Ambrose himself admired, or pretended to admire. This speech made a deep impression when it was read in the Imperial Council. But Ambrose intervened with all his eloquence. He demanded that the common law should be applied equally to pagans as to Christians, and it was he who won the day. _Victory_ was not replaced in the Roman _Curia_, neither were the goods of the temples returned. Augustin must have been very much struck by this advantage which Catholicism had gained. It became clear that henceforth this was to be the State religion. And he who envied so much the fortunate of the world, might take note, besides, that the new religion brought, along with the faith, riches and honours to its adepts. At Rome he had listened to the disparaging by pagans and his Manichee friends of the popes and their clergy. They made fun of the fashionable clerics and legacy hunters. It was related that the Roman Pontiff, servant of the God of the poor, maintained a gorgeous establishment, and that his table rivalled the Imperial table in luxury. The prefect Prætextatus, a resolute pagan, said scoffingly to Pope Damasus: "Make me Bishop of Rome, and I'll become a Christian at once." Certainly, commonplace human reasons can neither bring about nor account for a sincere conversion. Conversion is a divine work. But human reasons, arranged by a mysterious Will with regard to this work, may at least prepare a soul for it. Anyhow, it cannot be neglected that Augustin, coming to Milan full of ambitious plans, there saw Catholicism treated with so much importance in the person of Ambrose. This religion, which till then he had despised, now appeared to him as a triumphant religion worth serving. But though such considerations might attract Augustin's attention, they took no hold on his conscience. It was well enough for an intriguer about the Court to get converted from self-interest. As for him, he wanted all or nothing; the chief good in his eyes was certainty and truth. He scarcely believed in this any longer, and surely had no hope of finding it among the Catholics; but still he went to hear Ambrose's sermons. He went in the first place as a critic of language, with the rather jealous curiosity of the trained man who watches how another man does it. He wanted to judge himself if the sacred orator was as good as his reputation. The firm and substantial eloquence of this former official, this statesman who was more than anything a man of action, immediately got control of the frivolous rhetorician. To be sure, he did not find in Ambrose's sermons the exhilaration or the verbal caress which had captivated him in those of Faustus the Manichean; but yet they had a persuasive grace which held him. Augustin heard the bishop with pleasure. Still, if he liked to hear him talk, he remained contemptuous of the doctrine he preached. Then, little by little, this doctrine forced itself on his meditations: he perceived that it was more serious than he had thought hitherto, or, at least, that it could be defended. Ambrose had started in Italy the exegetical methods of the Orientals. He discovered in Scripture allegorical meanings, sometimes edifying, sometimes deep, always satisfying for a reasonable mind. Augustin, who was inclined to subtilty, much relished these explanations which, if ingenious, were often forced. The Bible no longer seemed to him so absurd. Finally, the immoralities which the Manichees made such a great point of against the Holy Writ, were justified, according to Ambrose, by historical considerations: what God did not allow to-day, He allowed formerly by reason of the conditions of existence. However, though the Bible might be neither absurd nor contrary to morals, this did not prove that it was true. Augustin found no outlet for his doubts. He would have been glad to have Ambrose help him to get rid of them. Many a time he tried to have a talk with him about these things. But the Bishop of Milan was so very busy a personage! "I could not ask him," says Augustin, "what I wanted as I wanted, because the shoals of busy people who consulted him about their affairs, and to whose infirmities he ministered, came between me and his ear and lips. And in the few moments when he was not thus surrounded, he was refreshing either his body with needful food, or his mind with reading. While he read his eye wandered along the page and his heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and his tongue were at rest. Often when we attended (for the door was open to all, and no one was announced), we saw him reading silently, but never otherwise, and after sitting for some time without speaking (_for who would presume to trouble one so occupied?_) we went away again. We divined that, for the little space of time which was all that he could secure for the refreshment of his mind, he allowed himself a holiday from the distraction of other people's business, and did not wish to be interrupted; _and perhaps he was afraid lest eager listeners should invite him to explain the harder passages of his author, or to enter upon the discussion of difficult topics_, and hinder him from perusing as many volumes as he wished.... _Of course the reason that guided a man of such remarkable virtue must have been good...._" Nobody could comment more subtly--nor, be it said also, more maliciously--the attitude of St. Ambrose towards Augustin, than Augustin himself does it here. At the time he wrote this page, the events he was relating had happened a long time ago. But he is a Christian, and, in his turn, he is a bishop: he understands now what he could not understand then. He feels thoroughly at heart that if Ambrose withdrew himself, it was because the professor of rhetoric was not in a state of mind to have a profitable discussion with a believer: he lacked the necessary humility of heart and intellect. But at the moment, he must have taken things in quite another way, and have felt rather hurt, not to say more, at the bishop's apparent indifference. Just picture a young writer of to-day, pretty well convinced of his value, but uneasy about his future, coming to ask advice of an older man already famous--well, Augustin's advances to Ambrose were not unlike that, save that they had a much more serious character, since it was not a question of literature, but of the salvation of a soul. At this period, what Augustin saw in Ambrose, even when he consulted him on sacred matters, was chiefly the orator, that is to say, a rather older rival.... He enters. He is shewn into the private room of the great man, without being announced, _like any ordinary person_. The great man does not lay aside his book to greet him, does not even speak a word to him.... What would the official professor of Rhetoric to the City of Milan think of such a reception? One can make out clearly enough through the lines of the _Confessions_. He said to himself that Ambrose, being a bishop, had charge of souls, and he was surprised that the bishop, no matter how great a lord he might be, made no attempt whatever to offer him spiritual aid. And as he was still devoid of Christian charity, no doubt he thought too that Ambrose was conscious that he had not the ability to wrestle with a dialectician of Augustin's strength, and that, into the bargain, the prelate was to seek in knowledge of the Scriptures. And, in truth, Ambrose had been made a bishop so suddenly that he must have found himself obliged to improvise a hasty knowledge. Anyhow, Augustin concluded that if he refused to discuss, it was because he was afraid of being at a disadvantage. Very surely St. Ambrose had no notion of what the catechumen was thinking. He soared too high to trouble about miserable stings to self-respect. In his ministry he was for all alike, and he would have thought it against Christian equality to shew any special favour to Augustin. If, in the brief talks he had with the young rhetorician, he was able to gather anything of his character, he could not have formed a very favourable opinion of it. The high-strung temperament of the African, these vague yearnings of the spirit, these sterile melancholies, this continual temporizing before the faith--all that could only displease Ambrose, the practical Roman, the official used all his life to command. However that was, Augustin, in following years, never allowed himself the least reproach towards Ambrose. On the contrary, everywhere he loads him with praise, quotes him repeatedly in his treatises, and takes refuge on his authority. He calls him his "father." But once, when he is speaking of the spiritual desolation in which he was plunged at Milan, there does escape him something like a veiled complaint which appears to be aimed at Ambrose. After recalling the eagerness with which he sought truth in those days, he adds: "If any one could have been found then to trouble about instructing me, he would have had a most willing and docile pupil." This phrase, in such marked contrast with so many laudatory passages in the _Confessions_ about St. Ambrose, seems to be indeed a statement of the plain truth. If God made use of Ambrose to convert Augustin, it is nevertheless likely that Ambrose personally did nothing, or very little, to bring about this conversion. IV PLANS OF MARRIAGE But even as he draws nearer the goal, Augustin would appear, on the contrary, to get farther away from it. Such are God's secret paces, Who snatches souls like a thief: He drops on them without warning. Till the very eve of the day when Christ shall come to take him, Augustin will be all taken up with the world and the care of making a good figure in it. Although Ambrose's sermons stimulated him to reflect upon the great historical reality which Christianity is, he had as yet but dim glimpses of it. He had given up his superficial unbelief, and yet did not believe in anything definite. He drifted into a sort of agnosticism compounded of mental indolence and discouragement. When he scrutinized his conscience to the depths, the most he could find was a belief in the existence of God and His providence--quite abstract ideas which he was incapable of enlivening. But whatever was the use of speculating upon Truth and the Sovereign Good! The main thing to do was to live. Now that his future was certain, Augustin endeavoured to arrange his life with a view to his tranquillity. He had no longer very large ambitions. What he principally wanted to do was to create for himself a nice little existence, peaceful and agreeable, one might almost say, middle-class. His present fortune, although small, was still enough for that, and he was in a hurry to enjoy it. Accordingly, he had not been long in Milan ere he sent for his mistress and his son. He had rented an apartment in a house which gave on a garden. The owner, who did not live there, allowed him the use of the whole house. A house, the dream of the sage! And a garden in Virgil's country! Augustin, the professor, should have been wonderfully happy. His mother soon joined him. Gradually a whole tribe of Africans came down on him, and took advantage of his hospitality. Here was his brother, Navigius, his two cousins, Rusticus and Lastidianus, his friend Alypius, who could not make up his mind to part from him, and probably Nebridius, another of his Carthage friends. Nothing could be more in harmony with the customs of the time. The Rhetorician to the City of Milan had a post which would pass for superb in the eyes of his poor relations. He was acquainted with very important people, and had access to the Imperial Court, whence favours and bounties came. Immediately, the family ran to put themselves under his protection and be enrolled beneficiaries, to get what they could out of his new fortune and credit. And then these immigrations of Africans and Orientals into the northern countries always come about in the same way. It is enough if one of them gets on there: he becomes immediately the drop of ink on the blotting-paper. The most important person in this little African phalanstery was unquestionably Monnica, who had taken in hand the moral and material control of the house. She was not very old--not quite fifty-four--but she wanted to be in her own country. That she should have left it, and faced the weariness of a long journey over sea and land, she must have had very serious reasons. The poverty into which she had fallen since the death of her husband would not be an adequate explanation of her departure from her native land. She had still some small property at Thagaste; she could have lived there. The true motives of her departure were of an altogether different order. First of all, she passionately loved her son, to the point that she was not able to live away from him. Let us recall Augustin's touching words: "For she loved to keep me with her, as mothers are wont, yes, far more than most mothers." Besides that, she wanted to save him. She completely believed that this was her work in the world. Beginning from now, she is no longer the widow of Patricius: she is already Saint Monnica. Living like a nun, she fasted, prayed, mortified her body. By long meditating on the Scriptures, she had developed within her the sense of spiritual realities, so that before long she astonished Augustin himself. She had visions; perhaps she had trances. As she came over the sea from Carthage to Ostia, the ship which carried her ran into a wild gale. The danger became extreme, and the sailors themselves could no longer hide their fear. But Monnica intrepidly encouraged them. "Never you fear, we shall arrive in port safe and sound!" God, she declared, had promised her this. If, in her Christian life, she knew other minutes more divine, that was truly the most heroic. Across Augustin's calm narrative, we witness the scene. This woman lying on the deck among passengers half dead from fatigue and terror, suddenly flings back her veils, stands up before the maddened sea, and with a sudden flame gleaming over her pale face, she cries to the sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. _I am sure of it!_" The glorious act of faith! At this solemn moment, when she saw death so near, she had a clear revelation of her destiny; she knew with absolute certainty that she was entrusted with a message for her son, and that her son would receive this message, in spite of all, in spite of the wildness of the sea--aye, in spite of his own heart. When this sublime emotion had subsided, it left with her the conviction that sooner or later Augustin would change his ways. He had lost himself, he was mistaken about himself. This business of rhetorician was unworthy of him. The Master of the field had chosen him to be one of the great reapers in the time of harvest. For a long while Monnica had foreseen the exceptional place that Augustin was to take in the Church. Why fritter away his talent and intelligence in selling vain words, when there were heresies to combat, the Truth to make shine forth, when the Donatists were capturing the African basilicas from the Catholics? What, in fact, was the most celebrated rhetorician compared to a bishop--protector of cities, counsellor of emperors, representative of God on earth? All this might Augustin be. And he remained stubborn in his error! Prayers and efforts must be redoubled to draw him from that. It was also for herself that she struggled, for the dearest of her hopes as a mother. To bear a soul to Jesus Christ--and a chosen soul who would save in his turn souls without number--for this only had she lived. And so it was that on the deck, tired by the rolling of the ship, drenched by the seas that were breaking on board, and hardly able to stand in the teeth of the wind, she cried out to the sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. I am sure of it...." At Milan she was regarded by Bishop Ambrose as a model parishioner. She never missed his sermons and "hung upon his lips as a fountain of water springing up to eternal life." And yet it does not appear that the great bishop understood the mother any better than he did the son: he had not the time. For him Monnica was a worthy African woman, perhaps a little odd in her devotion, and given to many a superstitious practice. Thus, she continued to carry baskets of bread and wine and pulse to the tombs of the martyrs, according to the use at Carthage and Thagaste. When, carrying her basket, she came to the door of one of the Milanese basilicas, the doorkeeper forbade her to enter, saying that it was against the bishop's orders, who had solemnly condemned such practices because they smacked of idolatry. The moment she learned that this custom was prohibited by Ambrose, Monnica, very much mortified, submitted to take away her basket, for in her eyes Ambrose was the providential apostle who would lead her son to salvation. And yet it must have grieved her to give up this old custom of her country. Save for the fear of displeasing the bishop, she would have kept it up. Ambrose was gratified by her obedience, her fervour and charity. When by chance he met the son, he congratulated him on having such a mother. Augustin, who did not yet despise human praise, no doubt expected that Ambrose would in turn pay some compliments to himself. But Ambrose did not praise him at all, and perhaps he felt rather vexed. He himself, however, was always very busy; he had hardly any time to profit by the pious exhortations of the bishop. His day was filled by his work and his social duties. In the morning he lectured. The afternoon went in friendly visits, or in looking up men of position whom he applied to for himself or his relations. In the evening, he prepared to-morrow's lecture. In spite of this very full and stirring life, which would seem to satisfy all his ambitions, he could not manage to stifle the cry of his heart in distress. He did not feel really happy. In the first place, it is doubtful whether he liked Milan any better than Rome. He felt the cold there very much. The Milanese winters are very trying, especially for a southerner. Thick fogs rise from the canals and the marsh lands which surround the city. The Alpine snows are very near. This climate, damper and frostier even than at Rome, did no good to his chest. He suffered continually from hoarseness; he was obliged to interrupt his lectures--a most disastrous necessity for a man whose business it is to talk. These attacks became so frequent that he was forced to wonder if he could keep on long in this state. Already he felt that he might be obliged to give up his profession. Then, in those hours when he lost heart, he flung to the winds all his youthful ambitions. As a last resort, the voiceless rhetorician would take a post in one of the administrative departments of the Empire. The idea of being one day a provincial governor did not rouse any special repugnance. What a fall for him! "Yes, but it is the wisest, the wisest thing," retorted the ill-advising voice, the one we are tempted to listen to when we doubt ourselves. Friendship, as always with Augustin, consoled him for his hopeless thoughts. Near him was "the brother of his heart," the faithful Alypius, and also Nebridius, that young man so fond of metaphysical discussions. Nebridius had left his rich estate in the Carthaginian suburbs, and a mother who loved him, simply to live with Augustin in the pursuit of truth. Romanianus was also there, but for a less disinterested reason. The Mæcenas of Thagaste, after his ostentatious expenditure, found that his fortune was threatened. A powerful enemy, who had started a law-suit against him, worked to bring about his downfall. Romanianus had come to Milan to defend himself before the Emperor, and to win the support of influential personages about the Court. And so it came about that he saw a great deal of Augustin. Besides this little band of fellow-countrymen, the professor of rhetoric had some very distinguished friends among the aristocracy. He was especially intimate with that Manlius Theodorus whom the poet Claudian celebrates, and to whom he himself later on was to dedicate one of his books. This rich man, who had been Proconsul at Carthage, where no doubt he had met Augustin, lived at this time retired in the country, dividing his leisure hours between the study of the Greek philosophers, especially of the Platonists, and the cultivation of his vineyards and olive trees. Here, as at Thagaste, in these beautiful villas on the shores of the Italian lakes, the son of Monnica gave himself up once more to the sweetness of life. "I liked an easy life," he avows in all simplicity. He felt himself to be more Epicurean than ever. He might have chosen Epicureanism altogether, if he had not always kept a fear of what is beyond life. But when he was the guest of Manlius Theodoras, fronting the dim blue mountains of lake Como, framed in the high windows of the _triclinium_, he did not think much about what is beyond life. He said to himself: "Why desire the impossible? So very little is needed to satisfy a human soul." The enervating contact of luxury and comfort imperceptibly corrupted him. He became like those fashionable people whom he knew so well how to charm with his talk. Like the fashionable people of all times, these designated victims of the Barbarians built, with their small daily pleasures, a rampart against all offensive or saddening realities, leaving the important questions without answer, no longer even asking them. And they said: "I have beautiful books, a well-heated house, well-trained slaves, a delightfully arranged bathroom, a comfortable vehicle: life is sweet. I don't wish for a better. What's the use? This one is good enough for me." At the moment when his tired intellect gave up everything, Augustin was taken in the snare of easy enjoyment, and desired to resemble these people at all points, to be one of them. But to be one of them he must have a higher post than a rhetorician's, and chiefly it would be necessary to put all the outside forms and exterior respectability into his life that the world of fashion shews. Thus, little by little, he began to think seriously of marriage. His mistress was the only obstacle in the way of this plan. He got rid of her. That was a real domestic drama, which he has tried to hide; but it must have been extremely painful for him, to judge by the laments which he gives vent to, despite himself, in some phrases, very brief and, as it were, ashamed. In this drama Monnica was certainly the leader, though it is likely that Augustin's friends also played their parts. No doubt, they objected to the professor of rhetoric, that he was injuring his reputation as well as his future by living thus publicly with a concubine. But Monnica's reasons were more forcible and of quite another value. To begin with, it is very natural that she should have suffered in her maternal dignity, as well as in her conscience as a Christian, by having to put up with the company of a stranger who was her son's mistress. However large we may suppose the house where the African tribe dwelt, a certain clashing between the guests was unavoidable. Generally, disputes as to who shall direct the domestic arrangements divide mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who live under one roof. What could be Monnica's feelings towards a woman who was not even a daughter-in-law and was regarded by her as an intruder? She did not consider it worth while to make any attempt at regulating the entanglement of her son by marrying them: this person was of far too low a class. It is all very well to be a saint, but one does not forget that one is the widow of a man of curial rank, and that a middle-class family with self-respect does not lower itself by admitting the first-comer into its ranks by marriage. But these were secondary considerations in her eyes. The only one which could have really preyed on her mind is that this woman delayed Augustin's conversion. On account of her, as Monnica saw plainly, he put off his baptism indefinitely. She was the chain of sin, the unclean past under whose weight he stifled. He must be freed from her as soon as possible. Convinced therefore that such was her bounden duty, she worked continually to make him break off. By way of putting him in some sort face to face with a deed impossible to undo, she searched to find him a wife, with the fine eagerness that mothers usually put into this kind of hunt. She discovered a girl who filled, as they say, all the requirements, and who realized all the hopes of Augustin. She had a fortune considerable enough not to be a burthen on her husband. Her money, added to the professor's salary, would allow the pair to live in ease and comfort. So they were betrothed. In the uncertainty about all things which was Augustin's state just then, he allowed his mother to work at this marriage. No doubt he approved, and like a good official he thought it was time for him to settle down. From that moment, the separation became inevitable. How did the poor creature who had been faithful to him during so many years feel at this ignominious dismissal? What must have been the parting between the child Adeodatus and his mother? How, indeed, could Augustin consent to take him from her? Here, again, he has decided to keep silent on this painful drama, from a feeling of shame easy to understand. Of course, he was no longer strongly in love with his mistress, but he was attached to her by some remains of tenderness, and by that very strong tie of pleasure shared. He has said it in words burning with regret. "When they took from my side, as an obstacle to my marriage, her with whom I had been used for such a long time to sleep, my heart was torn at the place where it was stuck to hers, and the wound was bleeding." The phrase casts light while it burns. "At the place where my heart stuck to hers"--_cor ubi adhærebat_. He acknowledges then that the union was no longer complete, since at many points he had drawn apart. If the soul of his mistress had remained the same, his had changed: however much he might still love her, he was already far from her. Be that as it will, she behaved splendidly in the affair--this forsaken woman, this poor creature whom they deemed unworthy of Augustin. She was a Christian; perhaps she perceived (for a loving woman might well have this kind of second-sight) that it was a question not only of the salvation of a loved being, but of a divine mission to which he was predestined. She sacrificed herself that Augustin might be an apostle and a saint--a great servant of God. So she went back to her Africa, and to shew that she pardoned, if she could not forget, she vowed that she would never know any other man. "She who had slept" with Augustin could never be the wife of any one else. However low she may have been to begin with, the unhappy woman was great at this crisis. Her nobility of soul humiliated Augustin, and Monnica herself, and punishment was not slow in falling on them both--on him, for letting himself be carried away by sordid plans for success in life, and upon her, the saint, for having been too accommodating. As soon as his mistress was gone, Augustin suffered from being alone. "I thought that I should be miserable," says he, "without the embraces of a woman." Now his promised bride was too young: two years must pass before he could marry her. How could he control himself till then? Augustin did not hesitate: he found another mistress. There was Monnica's punishment, cruelly deceived in her pious intentions. In vain did she hope a great deal of good from this approaching marriage: the silence of God shewed her that she was on the wrong track. She begged for a vision, some sign which would reveal to her how this new-planned marriage would turn out. Her prayer was not heard. "Meanwhile," says Augustin, "my sins were being multiplied." But he did not limit himself to his own sins: he led others into temptation. Even in matrimonial matters, he felt the need of making proselytes. So he fell upon the worthy Alypius. He, to be sure, guarded himself chastely from women, although in the outset of his youth, to be like everybody else, he had tried pleasure with women; but he had found that it did not suit his taste. However, Augustin put conjugal delights before him with so much heat, that he too began to turn his thoughts that way, "not that he was overcome by the desire of pleasure, _but out of curiosity_." For Alypius, marriage would be a sort of philosophic and sentimental experience. Here are quite modern expressions to translate very old conditions of soul. The fact is, that these young men, Augustin's friends and Augustin himself, were startlingly like those of a generation already left behind, alas! who will probably keep in history the presumptuous name they gave themselves: _The Intellectuals_. Like us, these young Latins of Africa, pupils of the rhetoricians and the pagan philosophers, believed in hardly anything but ideas. All but ready to affirm that Truth is not to be come at, they thought, just the same, that a vain hunt after it was a glorious risk to run, or, at the very least, an exciting game. For them this game made the whole dignity and value of life. Although they had spasms of worldly ambition, they really despised whatever was not pure speculation. In their eyes, the world was ugly; action degrading. They barred themselves within the ideal garden of the sage, "the philosopher's corner," as they called it, and jealously they stopped up all the holes through which the painful reality might have crept through to them. But where they differed from us, is that they had much less dryness of soul, with every bit as much pedantry--but such ingenuous pedantry! That's what saved them--their generosity of soul, the youth of their hearts. They loved each other, and they ended by growing fond of life and getting in contact with it again. Nebridius journeyed from Carthage to Milan, abandoning his mother and family, neglecting considerable interests, not only to talk philosophy with Augustin, but to live with him as a friend. From this moment they might have been putting in practice those words of the Psalm, which Augustin ere long will be explaining to his monks with such tender eloquence: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" This is not baseless hypothesis: they had really a plan for establishing a kind of lay monastery, where the sole rule would be the search after Truth and the happy life. There would be about a dozen solitaries. They would make a common stock of what means they possessed. The richest, and among these Romanianus, promised to devote their whole fortune to the community. But the recollection of their wives brought this naive plan to nothing. They had neglected to ask the opinions of their wives, and if these, as was likely, should refuse to enter the convents with their husbands, the married men could not face the scheme of living without them. Augustin especially, who was on the point of starting a new connection, declared that he would never find the courage for it. He had also forgotten that he had many dependents: his whole family lived on him. Could he leave his mother, his son, his brother, and his cousins? In company with Alypius and Nebridius, he sincerely lamented that this fair dream of coenobite life was impracticable. "We were three famishing mouths," he says, "complaining of our distress one to another, and waiting upon Thee that Thou mightest give us our meat in due season. And in all the bitterness that Thy mercy put into our worldly pursuits, we sought the reason why we suffered; and all was darkness. Then we turned to each other shuddering, and asked: 'How much longer can this last?'..." One day, a slight commonplace fact which they happened upon brought home to them still more cruelly their intellectual poverty. Augustin, in his official position as municipal orator, had just delivered the official panegyric of the Emperor. The new year was opening: the whole city was given over to mirth. And yet he was cast down, knowing well that he had just uttered many an untruth, and chiefly because he despaired of ever being happy. His friends were walking with him. Suddenly, as they crossed the street, they came upon a beggar, quite drunk, who was indulging in the jolliest pranks. So there was a happy man! A few pence had been enough to give him perfect felicity, whereas they, the philosophers, despite the greatest efforts and all their knowledge, could not manage to win happiness. No doubt, as soon as the drunkard grew sober, he would be more wretched than before. What matters that, if this poor joy--yes, though it be an illusion--can so much cheer a poor creature, thus raise him so far above himself! That minute, at least, he shall have lived in full bliss. And to Augustin came the temptation to do as the beggar-man, to throw overboard his philosophical lumber and set himself simply to live without afterthoughts, since life is sometimes good. But an instinct, stronger than the instinct of pleasure, said to him: "_There is something else!_--Suppose that were true?--Perhaps you might be able to find out." This thought tormented him unceasingly. Now eager, now disheartened, he set about trying to find the "something else." V THE CHRIST IN THE GARDEN "I was tired of devouring time and of being devoured by it." The whole moral crisis that Augustin is about to undergo might be summed up in these few words so concentrated and so strong. No more to scatter himself among the multitude of vain things, no more to let himself flow along with the minutes as they flowed; but to pull himself together, to escape from the rout so as to establish himself upon the incorruptible and eternal, to break the chains of the old slave he continues to be so as to blossom forth in liberty, in thought, in love--that is the salvation he longs for. If it be not yet the Christian salvation, he is on the road which leads to that. One might amuse oneself by drawing a kind of ideal map-route of his conversion, and fastening into one solid chain the reasons which made him emerge at the act of faith: he himself perhaps, in his _Confessions_, has given way too much to this inclination. In reality, conversion is an interior fact, and (let us repeat it) a divine fact, which is independent of all control by the reason. Before it breaks into light, there is a long preparation in that dark region of the soul which to-day is called the subconscious. Now nobody has more _lived_ his ideas than did Augustin at this time of his life. He took them, left them, took them up again, persisted in his desperate effort. They reflect in their disorder his variable soul, and the misgivings which troubled it to its depths. And yet it cannot be that this interior fact should be in violent contradiction with logic. The head ought not to hinder the heart. With the future believer, a parallel work goes on in the feelings and in the thought. If we are not able to reproduce the marches and counter-marches, or follow their repeatedly broken line, we can at least shew the main halting-places. Let us recall Augustin's state of mind when he came to Milan. He was a sceptic, the kind of sceptic who regards as useless all speculation upon the origin of things, and for whom cognition is but an approximation of the true. Vaguely deist, he saw in Jesus Christ only a wise man among the wise. He believed in God and the providences of God, which amounts to this: That although materialist by tendency, he admitted the divine interference in human affairs--the miracle. This is an important point which differentiates him from modern materialists. Next, he listened to the preaching of Ambrose. The Bible no longer seemed to him absurd or at variance with a moral scheme. Ambrose's exegesis, half allegorical, half historic, might be accepted, taken altogether, by self-respecting minds. But what, above all, struck Augustin in the Scriptures, was the wisdom, the practical efficiency. Those who lived by the Christian rule were not only happy people, but, as Pascal would say, good sons, good husbands, good fathers, good citizens. He began to suspect that this life here below is bearable and has a meaning only when it is fastened to the life on high. Even as for nations glory is daily bread, so for the individual the sacrifice to something which is beyond the world is the only way of living in the world. So, little by little, Augustin corrected the false notions that the Manichees had filled him with about Catholicism. He acknowledged that in attacking it he had "been barking against the vain imaginations of carnal thoughts." Still, he found great difficulty in getting free of all his Manichean prejudices. The problem of Evil remained inexplicable for him, apart from Manichee teachings. God could not be the author of evil. This truth admitted, he went on from it to think, against his former masters, that nothing is bad in itself--bad because it has within it a corrupting principle. On the contrary, all things are good, though in varying degrees. The apparent defects of creation, perceived by our senses, blend into the harmony of the whole. The toad and the viper have their place in the operation of a perfectly arranged world. But physical ill is not the only ill; there is also the evil that we do and the evil that others do us. Crime and pain are terrible arguments against God. Now the Christians hold that the first is the product solely of the human will, of liberty corrupted by original sin, and that the other is permitted by God as a means of purifying souls. Of course, this was a solution, but it implied a belief in the dogmas of the Fall and of the Redemption. Augustin did not accept them yet. He was too proud to recognize an impaired will and the need of a Saviour. "My puffed-out face," he says, "closed up my eyes." Nevertheless he had taken a great step in rejecting the fundamental dogma of Manicheeism--the double Principle of good and evil. Henceforth for Augustin there exists only one Principle, unique and incorruptible--the Good, which is God. But his view of this divine substance is still quite materialistic, to such an extent is he governed by his senses. In his thought, it is corporeal, spatial, and infinite. He pictures it as a kind of limitless sea, wherein is a huge sponge bathing the world that it pervades throughout.... He was at this point, when one of his acquaintances, "a man puffed up with immense vanity," gave him some of the Dialogues of Plato, translated into Latin by the famous rhetorician Victorinus Afer. It is worth noting, as we pass, that Augustin, now thirty-two years old, a rhetorician by profession and a philosopher by taste, had not yet read Plato. This is yet another proof to what extent the instruction of the ancients was oral, resembling in this the Mussulmans' instruction of to-day. Up to now, he had only known Plato by hearsay. He read him, and it was as a revelation. He learned that a reality could exist without diffusion through space. He saw God as unextended and yet infinite. The sense of the divine Soul was given to him. Then the primordial necessity of the Mediator or Word was borne in upon his mind. It is the Word which has created the world. It is through the Word that the world, and God, and all things, including ourselves, become comprehensible to us. What an astonishment! Plato corresponded with St. John! "In the beginning was the Word"--_in principio erat verbum_--said the fourth Gospel. But it was not only an Evangelist that Augustin discovered in the Platonist dialogues, it was almost all the essential part of the doctrine of Christ. He saw plainly the profound differences, but for the moment he was struck by the resemblances, and they carried him away. What delighted him, first of all, is the beauty of the world, constructed after His own likeness by the Demiurgus. God is Beauty; the world is fair as He who made it. This metaphysical vision entranced Augustin; his whole heart leaped towards this ineffably beautiful Divinity. Carried away by enthusiasm he cries: "I marvelled to find that now I loved Thee, O my God, and not a phantasm in Thy stead. If I was not yet in a state to enjoy Thee, _I was swept up to Thee by Thy beauty_." But such an abandonment could not endure: "I was not yet in a state to enjoy Thee." There is Augustin's main objection to Platonism. He felt that instead of touching God, of enjoying Him, he would be held by purely mental conceptions, that he would be always losing his way among the phantasmagoria of idealism. What was the use of giving up the illusory realities of the senses, if it were not to get hold of more _solid_ realities? Though his intelligence, his poet's imagination, might be attracted by the glamour of Platonism, his heart was not satisfied. "It is one thing," he says, "from some wooded height to behold the land of peace, another thing to march thither along the high road." St. Paul it was who shewed him this road. He began to read the _Epistles_ carefully, and the more he read of them the more he became aware of the abyss which separates philosophy from wisdom--the one which marshals the ideas of things, the other which, ignoring ideas, leads right up to the divine realities whereon the others are suspended. The Apostle taught Augustin that it was not enough to get a glimpse of God through the crystal of concepts, but that it is necessary to be united to Him in spirit and in truth--to possess and enjoy Him. And to unite itself to this Good, the soul must get itself into a fit state for such a union, purify and cure itself of all its fleshly maladies, descry its place in the world and hold to it. Necessity of repentance, of humility, of the contrite and humble heart. Only the contrite and humble heart shall see God. "The broken heart shall be cured," says the Scripture, "but the heart of the proud man shall be shattered." So Augustin, the intellectual, had to change his methods, and he felt that this change was right. If the writer who wants to write beautiful things ought to put himself beforehand into some sort of a state of grace, wherein not only vile actions, but unworthy thoughts become impossible, the Christian, in like manner, must cleanse and prepare his inward eye to perceive the divine verities. Augustin grasped this thought in reading St. Paul. But what, above all, appealed to him in the _Epistles_, was their paternal voice, the mildness and graciousness hidden beneath the uncultivated roughness of the phrases. He was charmed by this. How different from the philosophers! "Those celebrated pages have no trace of the pious soul, the tears of repentance, nor of Thy sacrifice, O my God, nor of the troubled spirit.... No one there hearkened to the Christ that calleth, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour!' They think it scorn to learn from Him, because He is meek and lowly of heart. For Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." But it is not much to bend: what is, above all, requisite for him is to get rid of his passions. Now Augustin's passions were old friends. How could he part with them? He lacked courage for this heroic treatment. Just think of what a young man of thirty-two is. He is always thinking of women. Lust holds him by the entanglements of habit, and he takes pleasure in the impurity of his heart. When, yielding to the exhortations of the Apostle, he tried to shape his conduct to his new way of thinking, the old friends trooped to beg of him not to do anything of the kind. "They pulled me," he says, "by the coat of my flesh, and they murmured in my ear--What, are you leaving us? Shall we be no more with you, for ever? _Non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum?_... And from that instant, the thing you well know, and still another thing, will be forbidden you for ever--for eternity...." Eternity! Dread word. Augustin shook with fear. Then, calming himself, he said to them: "I know you; I know you too well! You are Desire without hope, the Gulf without soundings that nothing can fill up. I have suffered enough because of you." And the anguished dialogue continued: "What matters that! If the only possible happiness for you is to suffer on our account, to fling your body into the voracious gulf, without end, without hope!"--"Let cowards act so!... For me there is another happiness than yours. There is _something else_: I am certain." Then the friends, put a little out of countenance by this convinced tone, muttered in a lower voice: "Still, just suppose you are losing this wretched pleasure for a phantasm still more empty.... Besides, you are mistaken about your strength. You cannot--no, you never can exist without us." They had touched the galling spot: Augustin knew his weakness only too well. And his burning imagination presented to him with extraordinary lucidity these pleasures which he could not do without. They were not only embracements, but also those trifles, those superfluous nothings, "those light pleasantnesses which make us fond of life." The perfidious old friends continued to whisper: "Wait a bit yet! The things you despise have a charm of their own; they bring even no small sweetness. You ought not to cut yourself off light-heartedly, for it would be shameful to return to them afterwards." He passed in review all the things he was going to give up; he saw them shine before him tinted in the most alluring colours: gaming, elaborate entertainments, music, song, perfumes, books, poetry, flowers, the coolness of forests (he remembered the woods about Thagaste, and his hunting days with Romanianus)--in a word, all that he had ever cared about, even to "that freshness of the light, so kind to human eyes." Augustin was not able to decide in this conflict between temptation and the decree of his conscience, and he became desperate. His will, enfeebled by sin, was unable to struggle against itself. And so he continued to endure life and to be "devoured by time." The life of that particular period, if it was endurable for quiet folk who were careful to have nothing to do with politics--this life of the Empire near its end, could be nothing but a scandalous spectacle for an honest-minded and high-souled man such as Augustin. It ought to have disgusted him at once with remaining in the world. At Milan, connected as he was with the Court, he was in a good position to see how much baseness and ferocity may spring from human avarice and ambition. If the present was hideous, the future promised to be sinister. The Roman Empire no longer existed save in name. Foreigners, come from all the countries of the Mediterranean, plundered the provinces under its authority. The army was almost altogether in the hands of the Barbarians. They were Gothic tribunes who kept order outside the basilica where Ambrose had closed himself in with his people to withstand the order of the Empress Justina, who wished to hand over this church to the Arians. Levantine eunuchs domineered over the exchequer-clerks in the palace, and officials of all ranks. All these people plundered where they could. The Empire, even grown feeble, was always an excellent machine to rule men and extract gold from nations. Accordingly, ambitious men and adventurers, wherever they came from, tried for the Purple: it was still worth risking one's skin for. Even more than the patriots (and there were still some very energetic men of this sort who were overcome with grief at the state of things), the men of rapine and violence were interested in maintaining the Empire. The Barbarians themselves desired to be included, so that they might pillage it with more impunity. As for the emperors, even sincere Christians, they were obliged to become abominable tyrants to defend their constantly threatened lives. Never were executions more frequent or more cruel than at this time. At Milan they might have shewn Augustin, hard by the Imperial sleeping apartments, the cave where the preceding Emperor, choleric Valentinian, kept two bears, "Bit of Gold" and "Innocence," who were his rapid executioners. He fed them with the flesh of those condemned to die. Possibly "Bit of Gold" was still living. "Innocence"--observe the atrocious irony of this name--had been restored to the liberty of her native forests, as a reward for her good and loyal services. Was Augustin, who still thought of becoming an official, going to mix in with this lot of swindlers, assassins, and brute beasts? As he studied them near at hand, he felt his goodwill grow weak. Like all those who belong to worn-out generations, he must have been disgusted with action and the villainies it involves. Just before great catastrophes, or just after, there is an epidemic of black pessimism which freezes delicate souls. Besides, he was ill--a favourable circumstance for a disappointed man if he entertains thoughts of giving up the world. In the fogs of Milan his chest and throat became worse and worse. And then it is likely enough that he was not succeeding better as rhetorician than he had at Rome. It was a kind of fatality for all Africans. However great their reputation in their own country, that was the end of it as soon as they crossed the sea. Apuleius, the great man of Carthage, had tried the experiment to his cost. They had made fun of his guttural Carthaginian pronunciation. The same kind of thing happened to Augustin. The Milanese turned his African accent into ridicule. He even found among them certain purists who discovered solecisms in his phrases. But these scratches at his self-respect, this increasing disgust of men and things, were small matters compared to what was going on within him. Augustin had a sick soul. The forebodings he had always been subject to were now become the suffering of every moment. At certain times he was assailed by those great waves of sadness which unfurl all of a sudden from the depths of the unknown. In such minutes we believe that the whole world is hurling itself against us. The great wave rolled him over; he got up again all wounded. And he felt stretch forth in him a new will which was not his own, under which the other, the will to sin, struggled. It was like the approach of an invisible being whose contact overcame him with an anguish which was full of pleasure. This being wanted to open out within him, but the weight of his old sins prevented. Then his soul cried out in pain. In those moments, what a relief it was to let himself float on the canticles of the Church! The liturgical chants were then something new in the West. It was in the very year we are dealing with that St. Ambrose started the custom in the Milanese basilicas. The childhood of our hymns! One cannot think about that without being moved. One envies Augustin for having heard them in their spring freshness. These lovely musics, which were to sound during so many centuries, and still soar against the vaults of cathedrals, were leaving the nest for the first time. We cannot think that a day will come when they will fold their wings and fall silent. Since human bodies, temples of the Holy Ghost, will live again in glory, one would like to believe with Dante that the hymns, temples of the Word, are likewise immortal, and that they will still be heard in the everlasting. Doubtless in the twilight glens of Purgatory the bewailing souls continue to sing the _Te lucis ante terminum_, even as in the star-circles, where the Blessed move ever, will always leap up the triumphant notes of the _Magnificat_.... Even on those who have lost the faith, the power of these hymns is irresistible. "If you knew," said Renan, "the charm that the Barbarian magicians knew how to put into their canticles. When I remember them, my heart melts." The heart of Augustin, who had not yet the faith, melted too in hearing them: "How I have cried, my God, over the hymns and canticles when the sweet sound of the music of Thy Church thrilled my soul! As the music flowed into my ears, and Thy truth trickled into my heart, the tide of devotion swelled high within me, and the tears ran down, and there was gladness in those tears." His heart cast off its heaviness, while his mind was shaken by the heavenly music. Augustin loved music passionately. At this time he conceived God as the Great Musician of the spheres; and soon he will write that "we are a strophe in a poem." At the same time, the vivid and lightning figures of the Psalms, sweeping over the insipid metaphors of the rhetoric which encumbered his memory, awoke in the depths of him his wild African imagination and sent him soaring. And then the affectionate note, the plaint in those sacred songs: _Deus, Deus meus!_--"O God! O _my_ God!" The Divinity was no longer a cold abstraction, a phantom that withdrew into an unapproachable infinite; He became the actual possession of the loving soul. He leant over His poor scarred creature, took him in His arms, and comforted him like a kind father. Augustin wept with tenderness and ecstasy, but also with despair. He wept upon himself. He saw that he had not the courage to be happy with the only possible happiness. What, indeed, was he seeking, unless it were to capture this "blessed life" which he had pursued so long? What he had tried to get out of all his loves was the complete gift of his soul--to realize himself completely. Now, this completeness of self is only in God--_in Deo salutari meo_. The souls we have wounded are in unison with us, and with themselves, only in God.... And the sweet Christian symbolism invited him with its most enticing images: the Shades of Paradise; the Fountain of Living Water; the Repose in the Lord God; the green Branch of the Dove, harbinger of peace.... But the passions still resisted. "To-morrow! Wait a little yet! Shall we be no more with you, for ever? _Non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum?_..." What a dismal sound in these syllables, and how terrifying for a timid soul! They fell, heavy as bronze, on the soul of Augustin. An end had to be put to it somehow. What was needed was some one who would force him out of his indecision. Instinctively, led by that mysterious will which he felt had arisen within him, he went to see, and consult in his distress, an old priest named Simplicianus, who had converted or directed Bishop Ambrose in his young days. No doubt Augustin spoke to him of what he had lately been reading, and particularly of his Platonist studies, and of all the efforts he made to enter the communion of Christ. He acknowledged that he was convinced, but he could not bend to the practice of the Christian life. Then, very skilfully, as one artful in differentiating souls, perceiving that vanity was not yet dead in Augustin, Simplicianus offered him as an example the very translator of those Platonic books which he had just been reading so enthusiastically--that famous Victorinus Afer, that orator so learned and admired, who had his statue in the Roman Forum. Because of some remains of philosophical pride, and also from fear of offending his friends among the Roman aristocracy, who were still almost altogether pagan, Victorinus was a Christian only in his head. In vain Simplicianus pointed out to him how illogical his conduct was. But suddenly and unexpectedly he decided. The day of the baptism of the catechumens, this celebrated man mounted the platform set up in the basilica for the profession of faith of the newly converted, and there, like the meanest of the faithful, he delivered his profession before all the assembled people. That was a dramatic stroke. The crowd, jubilant over this fine performance, cheered the neophyte. And on all sides they shouted: "Victorinus! Victorinus!" Augustin listened to this little story, whereof all the details were so happily chosen to act on an imagination like his:--the statue in the Roman Forum; the platform from the height of which the orator had spoken a language so new and unexpected; the exulting shouts of the crowd: "Victorinus! Victorinus!" Already he saw himself in the same position. There he was in the basilica, on the platform, in presence of Bishop Ambrose; he too repeated his profession of faith, and the people of Milan clapped their hands--"Augustin! Augustin!" But can a humble and contrite heart thus take pleasure in human adulation? If Augustin did become a convert, it would be entirely for God and before God. Very quickly he put aside the temptation.... Nevertheless, this example, coming from so exalted a man, made a very deep and beneficial impression. He looked upon it as a providential sign, a lesson in courage which concerned him personally. Some time after that, he received a visit from a fellow-countryman, a certain Pontitianus, who had a high position in the Imperial household. Augustin happened to be alone in the house with his friend Alypius. They sat down to talk, and by chance the visitor noticed the Epistles of St. Paul lying on a table for playing games. This started the conversation. Pontitianus, who was a Christian, praised the ascetic life, and especially the wonders of holiness wrought by Antony and his companions in the Egyptian deserts. This subject was in the air. In Catholic circles at Rome, they spoke of little else than these Egyptian solitaries, and of the number, growing larger and larger, of those who stripped themselves of their worldly goods to live in utter renunciation. What was the good of keeping these worldly goods, that the avarice of Government taxation confiscated so easily, and that the Barbarians watched covetously from afar! The brutes who came down from Germany would get hold of them sooner or later. And even supposing one might save them, retain an ever-uncertain enjoyment of them, was the life of the time really worth the trouble of living? There was nothing more to hope for the Empire. The hour of the great desolation was at hand.... Pontitianus, observing the effect of his words on his hearers, was led to tell them a quite private adventure of his own. He was at Trèves, in attendance on the Court. Well, one afternoon while the Emperor was at the circus, he and three of his friends, like himself attached to the household, went for a stroll beyond the city walls. Two of them parted from the others and went off into the country, and there they came upon a hut where dwelt certain hermits. They went in, and found a book--_The Life of St. Antony_. They read in it; and for them that was a conversion thunder-striking, instantaneous. The two courtiers resolved to join the solitaries there and then, and they never went back to the Palace. And they were betrothed!... The tone of Pontitianus as he recalled this conscience-drama which he had witnessed, betrayed a strange emotion which gradually took hold of Augustin. His guest's words resounded in him like the blows of a clapper in a bell. He saw himself in the two courtiers of Trèves. He too was tired of the world, he too was betrothed. Was he going to do as the Emperor--remain in the circus taken up with idle pleasures, while others took the road to the sole happiness? When Pontitianus was gone, Augustin was in a desperate state. The repentant soul of the two courtiers had passed into his. His will uprose in grievous conflict and tortured itself. He seized Alypius roughly by the arm and cried out to him in extraordinary excitement: "What are we about? Yes, I say, what are we about? Did you not hear? Simple men arise and take Heaven by violence, and we with all our heartless learning--look how we are wallowing in flesh and blood!" Alypius stared at him, stupefied. "The truth is," adds Augustin, "that I scarcely knew what I said. My face, my eyes, my colour, and the change in my voice expressed my meaning much better than my words." If he guessed from this upheaval of his whole frame how close at hand was the heavenly visitation, all he felt at the moment was a great need to weep, and he wanted solitude to weep freely. He went down into the garden. Alypius, feeling uneasy, followed at a distance, and in silence sat down beside him on the bench where he had paused. Augustin did not even notice that his friend was there. His agony of spirit began again. All his faults, all his old stains came once more to his mind, and he grew furious against his cowardly feebleness as he felt how much he still clung to them. Oh, to tear himself free from all these miseries--to finish with them once for all!... Suddenly he sprang up. It was as if a gust of the tempest had struck him. He rushed to the end of the garden, flung himself on his knees under a fig-tree, and with his forehead pressed against the earth he burst into tears. Even as the olive-tree at Jerusalem which sheltered the last watch of the Divine Master, the fig-tree of Milan saw fall upon its roots a sweat of blood. Augustin, breathless in the victorious embrace of Grace, panted: "How long, how long?... To-morrow and to-morrow?... Why not now? Why not this hour make an end of my vileness?..." Now, at this very moment a child's voice from the neighbouring house began repeating in a kind of chant: "_Take and read, take and read_." Augustin shuddered. What was this refrain? Was it a nursery-rhyme that the little children of the countryside used to sing? He could not recollect it; he had never heard it before.... Immediately, as upon a divine command, he rose to his feet and ran back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for he had left St. Paul's Epistles lying there. He opened the book, and the passage on which his eyes first fell was this: _Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof_.... The flesh!... The sacred text aimed at him directly--at him, Augustin, still so full of lust! This command was the answer from on high.... He put his finger between the leaves, closed the volume. His frenzy had passed away. A great peace was shed upon him--it was all over. With a calm face he told Alypius what had happened, and without lingering he went into Monnica's room to tell her also. The Saint was not surprised. It was long now since she had been told, "Where I am, there shalt thou be also." But she gave way to an outburst of joy. Her mission was done. Now she might sing her canticle of thanksgiving and enter into God's peace. Meanwhile, the good Alypius, always circumspect and practical, had opened the book again and shewn his friend what followed the verse, for Augustin, in his excitement, had neglected to read further. The Apostle said, "_Him that is weak in the faith receive ye_." This also applied to Augustin. That was only too certain: his new faith was still very unsteady. Let not presumption blind him! Yes, no doubt with all his soul he desired to be a Christian. It now remained for him to become one. THE FOURTH PART THE HIDDEN LIFE Fac me, Pater, quaerere te. "Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father." _Soliloquies_, I, i. I THE LAST SMILE OF THE MUSE Now that Augustin had been at last touched by grace, was he after all going to make a sensational conversion like his professional brother, the celebrated Victorinus? He knew well enough that there is a good example set by these noisy conversions which works on a vast number of people. And however "contrite and humble" his heart might be, he was quite aware that in Milan he was an important personage. What excitement, if he were to resign his professorship on the ground that he wished to spend the rest of his life in the ascetic way of the Christians!... But he preferred to avoid the scandal on one side, and the loud praise on the other. God alone and some very dear friends should witness his repentance. There were now hardly twenty days before the vacation. He would be patient till then. Thus, the parents of his pupils would not have any ground to reproach him for leaving them before the end of term, and as his health was getting worse, he would have a good excuse to give up his post. The dampness of the climate had given him a sort of chronic bronchitis which the summer had not cured. He had difficulty in breathing; his voice was muffled and thin--so much so, that he began to think his lungs were attacked. Augustin's health really needed care. This was a quite good enough reason to interrupt his lectures. Having fulfilled his professional duties to the very end--and he assures us that it took some courage--he left the professorial chair with the declared intention of never occupying it again. Here, then, he is free from all worldly ties. From now on he can prepare himself for baptism in silence and retreat. But still he must live somehow! Augustin had more souls depending on him than ever: his son, his mother, his brother, his cousins--a heavy burthen which he had been struggling under for a long time. It is probable that once more Romanianus, who was still in Milan, came to his assistance. It will be remembered that the Mæcenas of Thagaste had taken up warmly the plan of a lay monastery which Augustin and his friends had lost their heads over, and he had promised to subscribe a large sum. Augustin's retreat was a first step towards realizing this plan in a new shape. Romanianus, no doubt, approved of it. In any case, he asked Augustin to keep on giving lessons to his son Licentius. Another young man, Trygetius, begged for the same favour. Augustin therefore did not intend to give up his employment altogether. He had changed, for the present at least, from a Government professor into a private one. This meant that he had a certain living. All he wanted now was a shelter. A friend, a colleague, the grammarian Verecundus, graciously offered him this. Verecundus thus repaid a favour which Augustin had quite recently done him. It was at Augustin's request that Nebridius, who was a friend of both, agreed to take over the classes of the grammarian, who was obliged to go away. Although rich, full of talent, and very eager for peace and solitude, Nebridius, simply out of good-nature, was willing to take the place of Verecundus in his very modest employment. One cannot too much admire the generosity and kindliness of these ancient and Christian manners. In those days, friendship knew nothing of our narrow and shabby egoisms. Now Verecundus owned a country house just outside Milan, at Cassicium. He suggested to Augustin to spend the vacation there, and even to live there permanently with all his people, on condition of looking after the property and keeping it up. Attempts have been made to find traces of this hospitable dwelling where the future monk of Thagaste and Hippo bade farewell to the world. Cassicium has disappeared. The imagination is free to rebuild it fancifully in any part of the rich country which lies about Milan. Still, if the youthful Licentius has not yielded too much to metaphor in the verses wherein he recalls to Augustin "Departed suns among Italian mountain-heights," it is likely that the estate of Verecundus lay upon those first mountain-slopes which roll into the Brianza range. Even to-day, the rich Milanese have their country houses among those hills. To Augustin and his companions this flourishing Lombardy must have seemed another promised land. The country, wonderfully fertile and cultivated, is one orchard, where fruit trees cluster, and, in all ways, deep streams wind, slow-flowing and stocked with fish. Everywhere is the tremor of running water--inconceivably fresh music for African ears. A scent of mint and aniseed; fields with grass growing high and straight in which you plunge up to the knees. Here and there, deeply engulfed little valleys with their bunches of green covert, slashed with the rose plumes of the lime trees and the burnished leaves of the hazels, and where already the northern firs lift their black needles. Far off, blended in one violet mass, the Alps, peak upon peak, covered with snow; and nearer in view, sheer cliffs, jutting fastnesses, ploughed through with black gorges which make flare out plainer the bronze-gold of their slopes. Not far off, the enchanted lakes slumber. It seems that an emblazonment fluctuates from their waters, and writhing above the crags which imprison them drifts athwart a sky sometimes a little chill--Leonardo's pensive sky of shadowed amethyst--again of a flushed blue, whereupon float great clouds, silken and ruddy, as in the backgrounds of Veronese's pictures. The beauty of the light lightens and beautifies the over-heavy opulence of the land. And wherever the country house of Verecundus may be placed, some bit of this triumphal landscape will be found. As for the house itself, Augustin has said enough about it for us to see it fairly well. It was no doubt one of those old rustic buildings, inhabited only some few months of the year, in the warmest season, and for the rest of the time given over to the frolics of mice and rats. Without any pretence to architectural form, it had been enlarged and renovated simply for the greater convenience of those who lived there. There was no attempt at symmetry; the main door was not in the middle of the building, and there was another door on one of the sides. The sole luxury of this country house was perhaps the bath-houses. These baths, however simple they might be, nevertheless reminded Augustin of the decoration of gymnasiums. Does this mean that he found there rich pavements, mosaics, and statues? These were quite usual things in Roman villas. The Italians have always had, at all periods, a great fondness for statues and mosaics. Not very particular about the quality, they made up for it by the quantity. And when they could not treat themselves to the real thing, it was good enough to give themselves the make-believe in painting. I can imagine easily enough Verecundus' house, painted in fresco from top to bottom, inside and out, like those houses at Pompeii, or the modern Milanese villas. There was no attempt at ornamental gardens at Cassicium. The surroundings must have been kitchen-garden, grazing-land, or ploughed fields, as in a farm. A meadow--not in the least the lawns found in front of a large country house--lay before the dwelling, which was protected from sun and wind by clumps of chestnut trees. There, stretched on the grass under the shade of one of these spreading trees, they chatted gaily while listening to the broken song of the brook, as it flowed under the windows of the baths. They lived very close to nature, almost the life of field-tillers. The whole charm of Cassicium consisted in its silence, its peace, and, above all, its fresh air. Augustin's tired lungs breathed there a purer air than in Milan, where the humid summer heat is crushing. His soul, yearning for retirement, discovered a retreat here in harmony with his new desires, a country solitude of which the Virgilian grace still appealed to his literary imagination. The days he passed there were days of blessedness for him. Long afterwards he was deeply moved when he recalled them, and in an outburst of gratitude towards his host, he prayed God to pay him his debt. "Thou wilt recompense him, O Lord, on the day of the resurrection of the just.... For that country house at Cassicium where we found shelter in Thee from the burning summer of our time, Thou wilt repay to Verecundus the coolness and evergreen shade of Thy paradise...." That was an unequalled moment in Augustin's life. Following immediately upon the mental crisis which had even worn out his body, he seems to be experiencing the pleasure of convalescence. He slackens, and, as he says himself, he rests. His excitement is quenched, but his faith remains as firm as ever. With a cairn and supremely lucid mind he judges his condition; he sees clearly all that he has still to do ere he becomes a thorough Christian. First, he must grow familiar with the Scripture, solve certain urgent questions--that of the soul, for example, its nature and origin--which possessed him just then. Then he must change his conduct, alter his ways of thought, and, if one may so speak, disinfect his mind still all saturated with pagan influences: a delicate work--yes, and an uneasy, at times even painful, which would take more than one day. After twenty centuries of Christianity, and in spite of our claim to understand all things, we do not yet realize very well what an abyss lies between us and paganism. When by chance we come upon pagan traces in certain primitive regions of the South of Europe, we get muddled, and attribute to Catholicism what is but a survival of old abolished customs, so far from us that we cannot recognize them any more. Augustin, on the contrary, was right next to them. When he strolled over the fields and through the woods around Cassicium, the Fauns and woodland Nymphs of the old mythology haunted his memory, and all but stood before his eyes. He could not take a walk without coming upon one of their chapels, or striking against a boundary-mark still all greasy from the oil with which the superstitious peasants had drenched it. Like himself, the old pagan land had not yet quite put on the Christ of the new era. He was like that Hermes Criophorus, who awkwardly symbolized the Saviour on the walls of the Catacombs. Even as the Bearer of Rams changed little by little into the Good Shepherd, the Bishop of Hippo emerged slowly from the rhetorician Augustin. He became aware of it during that languid autumn at Cassicium--that autumn heavy with all the rotting of summer, but which already promised the great winter peace. The yellow leaves of the chestnuts were heaped by the roadside. They fell in the brook which flowed near the baths, and the slowed water ceased to sing. Augustin strained his ears for it. His soul also was blocked, choked up by all the deposit of his passions. But he knew that soon the chant of his new life would begin in triumphal fashion, and he said over to himself the words of the psalm: _Cantate mihi canticum novum_--"Sing unto me a new song." Unfortunately for Augustin, his soul and its salvation was not his only care at Cassicium: he had a thousand others. So it shall be with him throughout his life. Till the very end he will long for solitude, for the life in God, and till the end God will charge him with the care of his brethren. This great spirit shall live above all by charity. At the house of Verecundus he was not only the head, but he had a complete country estate to direct and supervise. Probably all the guests in the house helped him. They divided the duties. The good Alypius, who was used to business and versed in the twisted ways of the law, took over the foreign affairs--the buying and selling, probably the accounts also. He was continually on the road to Milan. Augustin attended to the correspondence, and every morning appointed their work to the farm-labourers. Monnica looked after the household, no easy work in a house where nine sat down to table every day. But the Saint fulfilled her humble duties with touching kindness and forgetfulness of self: "She took care of us," says Augustin, "as if we had all been her children, and she served us as if each of us had been her father." Let us look a little at these "children" of Monnica. Besides Alypius, whom we know already, there was the young Adeodatus, the child of sin--"my son Adeodatus, whose gifts gave promise of great things, unless my love for him betrays me." Thus speaks his father. This little boy was, it seems, a prodigy, as shall be the little Blaise Pascal later: "His intelligence filled me with awe"--_horrori mihi erat illud ingenium_--says the father again. What is certain is that he had a soul like an angel. Some sayings of his have been preserved by Augustin. They are fragrant as a bunch of lilies. The other members of the family are nearer the earth. Navigius, Augustin's brother, an excellent man of whom we know nothing save that he had a bad liver--the icterus of the African colonist--and that on this account he abstained from sweetmeats. Rusticus and Lastidianus, the two cousins, persons as shadowy as the "supers" in a tragedy. Finally, Augustin's pupils, Trygetius and Licentius. The first, who had lately served some time in the army, was passionately fond of history, "like a veteran." Although his master in some of his Dialogues has made him his interlocutor, his character remains for us undeveloped. With Licentius it is different. This son of Romanianus, the Mæcenas of Thagaste, was Augustin's beloved pupil. It is easy to make that out. All the phrases he devotes to Licentius have a warmth of tone, a colour and relief which thrill. This Licentius comes before us as the type of the spoiled child, the son of a wealthy family, capricious, vain, presuming, unabashed, never hesitating if he sees a chance to have a joke with his master. Forgetful, besides, prone to sudden fancies, superficial, and rather blundering. With all that, the best boy in the world--a bad head, but a good heart. He was a frank pagan, and I believe remained a pagan all his life, in spite of the remonstrances of Augustin and those of the gentle Paulinus of Nola, who lectured him in prose and verse. A great eater and a fine drinker, he found himself obliged to do penance at St. Monnica's rather frugal table. But when the fever of inspiration took hold of him, he forgot eating and drinking, and in his poetical thirst he would would have drained--so his master says--all the fountains of Helicon. Licentius had a passion for versifying: "He is an almost perfect poet," wrote Augustin to Romanianus. The former rhetorician knew the world, and the way to talk to the father of a wealthy pupil, especially if he is your benefactor. At Cassicium, under Augustin's indulgent eyes, the pupil turned into verse the romantic adventure of Pyramus and Thisbe. He declaimed bits of it to the guests in the house, for he had a fine loud voice. Then he flung aside the unfinished poem and suddenly fell in love with Greek tragedies of which, as it happened, he understood nothing at all, though this did not prevent him from boring everybody he met with them. Another day it was the Church music, then quite new, which flung him into enthusiasm. That day they heard Licentius singing canticles from morning till night. In connection with this, Augustin relates with candid freedom an anecdote which to-day needs the indulgence of the reader to make it acceptable. As it gives light upon that half-pagan, half-Christian way of life which was still Augustin's, I will repeat it in all its plainness. It happened, then, one evening after dinner, that Licentius went out and took his way to a certain mysterious retreat, and there he suddenly began singing this verse of the Psalm: "Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." As a matter of fact, he had hardly sung anything else for a long time. He kept on repeating this verse over and over again, as people do with a tune they have just picked up. But the pious Monnica, who heard him, could not tolerate the singing of such holy words in such a place. She spoke sharply to the offender. Upon this the young scatter-brains answered rather flippantly: "Supposing, good mother, that an enemy had shut me up in that place--do you mean to say that God wouldn't have heard me just the same?" The next day he thought no more about it, and when Augustin reminded him, he declared that he felt no remorse. "As far as I am concerned," replied the excellent master, "I am not in the least shocked by it.... The truth is, that neither that place, which has so much scandalized my mother, nor the darkness of night, is altogether inappropriate to this canticle. For whence, think you, do we implore God to drag us, so that we may be converted and gaze upon His face? Is it not from that jakes of the senses wherein our souls are plunged, and from that darkness of which the error is around us?..." And as they were discussing that day the order established by Providence, Augustin made it a pretext to give a little edifying lecture to his pupil. Having heard the sermon to the end, the sharp Licentius put in with sly maliciousness: "I say, what a splendid arrangement of events to shew me that nothing happens except in the best way, and for our great good!" This reply gives us the tone of the conversation between Augustin and his pupils. Nevertheless, however free and merry the talks might be, the purpose was always instructive, and it was always substantial. Let us not forget that the Milanese rhetorician is still a professor. The best part of his days was devoted to these two youths who had been put under his charge. As soon as he had settled the business of the farm, talked to the peasants, and given his orders to the workmen, he fell back upon his business of rhetorician. In the morning they went over Virgil's _Eclogues_ together. At night they discussed philosophy. When the weather was fine they walked in the fields, and the discussion continued under the shade of the chestnut trees. If it rained, they took refuge in the withdrawing-room adjoining the baths. Beds were there, cushions, soft chairs convenient for talking, and the equal temperature from the vapour-baths close at hand was good for Augustin's bronchial tubes. There is no stiffness in these dialogues, nothing which smacks of the school. The discussion starts from things which they had under the eyes, often from some slight accidental happening. One night when Augustin could not sleep--he often suffered from insomnia--the dispute began in bed, for the master and his pupils slept in the same room. Lying there in the dark, he listened to the broken murmur of the stream. He was trying to think out an explanation of the pauses in the sound, when Licentius shifted under the bedclothes, and reaching out for a piece of stick lying on the floor, he rapped with it on the foot of the bed to frighten the mice. So he was not asleep either, nor Trygetius, who was stirring about in his bed. Augustin was delighted: he had two listeners. Immediately he put this question: "Why do those pauses come in the flow of the stream? Do they not follow some secret law?..." They had hit upon a subject for debate. During many days they discussed the order of the world. Another time, as they were going into the baths, they stopped to look at two cocks fighting. Augustin called the attention of the youths "to a certain order full of propriety in all the movements of these fowls deprived of reason." "Look at the conqueror," said he. "He crows triumphantly. He struts and plumes himself as a proud sign of victory. And now look at the beaten one, without voice, his neck unfeathered, a look of shame. All that has I know not what beauty, in harmony with the laws of nature...." New argument in favour of order: the debate of the night before is started rolling again. For us, too, it is well worth while to pause on this little homely scene. It reveals to us an Augustin not only very sensitive to beauty, but very attentive to the sights of the world surrounding him. Cockfights were still very popular in this Roman society at the ending of the Empire. For a long time sculptors had found many gracious subjects in the sport. Reading this passage of Augustin's, one recalls, among other similar designs, that funeral urn at the Lateran upon which are represented two little boys, one crying over his beaten cock, while the other holds his tenderly in his arms and kisses it--the cock that won, identified by the crown held in its spurs. Augustin is always very close to these humble realities. Every moment outside things start up in the dialogues between the master and his pupils.... They are in bed on a rainy night in November. Gradually, a vague gleam rests on the windows. They ask each other if that can be the moon, or the break of day.... Another time, the sun rises in all its splendour, and they decide to go into the meadow and sit on the grass. Or else, the sky darkens and lights are brought in. Or again, it is the appearance of diligent Alyphis, just come back from Milan.... In the same way as he notes these light details in passing, Augustin welcomes all his guests into his dialogues and admits them to the debate: his mother, his brother, the cousins, Alypius between his business journeys, down to the child Adeodatus. He knew the value of ordinary good sense, the second-sight of a pure heart, or of a pious soul strengthened by prayer. Monnica used often to come into the room when they were arguing, to let them know that dinner was ready, or for something of the kind. Her son asked her to remain. Modestly she shewed her astonishment at such an honour. "Mother," said Augustin, "do you not love truth? Then why should I blush to give you a place among us? Even if your love for truth were only half-hearted, I ought still to receive you and listen to you. How much more then, since you love it more than you love me, _and I know how much you love me_.... Nothing can separate you from truth, neither fear, nor pain of whatever kind it be--no, nor death itself. Do not all agree that this is the highest stage of philosophy? How can I hesitate after that to call myself your disciple?" And Monnica, utterly confused by such praise, answered with affectionate gruffness: "Stop talking! You have never told bigger lies." Most of the time these conversations were simply dialectic games in the taste of the period, games a little pedantic, and fatiguing from subtilty. The boisterous Licentius did not always enjoy himself. He was often inattentive; and his master scolded him. But all the same, the master understood how to amuse his two foster-children while he exercised their intelligence. At the end of one discussion he said to them laughing: "Just at this hour, the sun warns me to put the playthings I had brought for the children back in the basket...." Let us remark in passing that this is the last time, before those centuries which are coming of universal intellectual silence or arid scholasticism--the last time that high questions will be discussed in this graceful light way, and with the same freedom of mind. The tradition begun by Socrates under the plane-trees on the banks of the Ilissus, is ending with Augustin under the chestnuts of Cassicium. And yet, however gay and capricious the form, the substance of these dialogues, "On the Academics," "On Order," and "On the Happy Life," is serious, and even very serious. The best proof of their importance in Augustin's eyes is, that after taking care to have them reported in shorthand, he eventually published them. The _notarii_ attended these discussions and let nothing be lost. The rise of the scrivener, of the notary, dates from this period. The administration of the Lower-Empire was frightfully given to scribbling. By contact with it, the Church became so too. Let us not press our complaints about it, since this craze for writing has procured for us, with a good deal of shot-rubbish, some precious historical documents. In Augustin's case, these reports of his lectures at Cassicium have at least the value of shewing us the state of soul of the future Bishop of Hippo at a decisive moment of his life. For these _Dialogues_, although they look like school exercises, reveal the intimate thoughts of Augustin on the morrow of his conversion. While he seems to be refuting the Academics, he is fighting the errors from which he, personally, had suffered so long. He clarified his new ideal. No; the search for truth, without hope of ever reaching it, cannot give happiness. And genuine happiness is only in God. And if a rhythm is to be found in things, then it is necessary to make the soul rhythmic also and so enable it to contemplate God. It is necessary to still within it the noise of the passions. Hence, the need of inward reformation, and, at a final analysis, of asceticism. But Augustin knew full well that these truths must be adapted to the weakness of the two lads he was teaching, and also to the common run of mankind. He has not yet in these years the uncompromising attitude which ere long will give him a sterner virtue--an attitude, however, unceasingly tempered by his charity and by the persistent recollections of his reading. It was now that he shaped the rule of conduct in worldly morals and education which the Christian experience of the future will adopt: "If you have always order in your hearts," he said to his pupils, "you must return to your verses. _For a knowledge of liberal sciences, but a controlled and exact knowledge_, forms men who will love the truth.... But there are other men, or, to put it better, other souls, who, although held in the body, are sought for the eternal marriage by the best and fairest of spouses. For these souls it is not enough to live; they wish to live happy.... But as for you, go, _meanwhile_, and find your Muses!" "Go and find your Muses!" What a fine saying! How human and how wise! Here is clearly indicated the double ideal of those who continue to live in the world according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and of those who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He will never more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewell to the pagan Muse. II THE ECSTASY OF SAINT MONNICA They stayed through the winter at Cassicium. However taken up he might be by the work of the estate and the care of his pupils, Augustin devoted himself chiefly to the great business of his salvation. The _Soliloquies_, which he wrote then, render even the passionate tone of the meditations which he perpetually gave way to during his watches and nights of insomnia. He searched for God, moaning: _Fac me, Pater, quærere te_--"Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father." But still, he sought Him more as a philosopher than as a Christian. The old man in him was not dead. He had not quite stripped off the rhetorician or the intellectual. The over-tender heart remained, which had so much sacrificed to human love. In those ardent dialogues between himself and his reason, it is plain to see that reason is not quite the mistress. "I love only God and the soul," Augustin states with a touch of presumption. And his reason, which knows him well, answers: "Do you not then love your friends?"--"I love the soul; how therefore should I not love them?" What does this phrase, of such exquisite sensibility, and even already so aloof from worldly thoughts--what does it lack to give forth a sound entirely Christian? Just a slight change of accent. He himself began to see that he would do better not to philosophize so much and to draw nearer the Scripture, in listening to the wisdom of that with a contrite and humble heart. Upon the directions of Ambrose, whose advice he had asked by letter, he tried to read the prophet Isaiah, because Isaiah is the clearest foreteller of the Redemption. He found the book so difficult that he lost heart, and he put it aside till later. Meanwhile, he had forwarded his resignation as professor of Rhetoric to the Milan municipality. Then, when the time was come, he sent to Bishop Ambrose a written confession of his errors and faults, and represented to him his very firm intention to be baptized. He was quietly baptized on the twenty-fifth of April, during the Easter season of the year 387, together with his son Adeodatus, and his friend Alypius. Alypius had prepared most piously, disciplining himself with the harshest austerities, to the point of walking barefoot on the frozen soil. So now the solitaries of Cassicium are back in Milan. Augustin's two pupils were gone. Trygetius doubtless had rejoined the army. Licentius had gone to live in Rome. But another fellow-countryman, an African from Thagaste, Evodius, formerly a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, came to join the small group of new converts. Evodius, the future Bishop of Uzalis, in Africa, and baptized before Augustin, was a man of scrupulous piety and unquestioning faith. He talked of devout subjects with his friend, who, just fresh from baptism, experienced all the quietude of grace. They spoke of the community which St. Ambrose had either founded or organized at the gates of Milan, and in comparison with a life so austere, Augustin perceived that the life he had led at Cassicium was still stained with paganism. He must carry out his conversion to the end and live as a hermit after the manner of Antony and the solitaries of the Thebaid. Then it occurred to him that he still owned a little property at Thagaste--a house and fields. There they would settle and live in self-denial like the monks. The purity of the young Adeodatus predestined him to this ascetic existence. As for Monnica, who long since had taken the widow's veil, she had to make no change in her ways to lead a saintly life in the company of her son and grandson. It was agreed among them all to go back to Africa, and to start as soon as possible. Thus, just after his baptism, Augustin shews but one desire: to bury himself in a retreat, to lead a humble and hidden life, divided between the study of the Scripture and the contemplation of God. Later on, his enemies were to accuse him of having become a convert from ambition, in view of the honours and riches of the episcopate. This is sheer calumny. His conversion could not have been more sincere, more disinterested--nor more heroic either: he was thirty-three years old. When we think of all he had loved and all he gave up, we can only bow the head and bend the knee before the lofty virtue of such an example. In the course of the summer the caravan started and crossed the Apennines to set sail at Ostia. The date of this exodus has never been made quite clear. Perhaps Augustin and his companions fled before the hordes of the usurper Maximus, who, towards the end of August, crossed the Alps and marched on Milan, while the young Valentinian with all his Court took refuge at Aquileia. In any case, it was a trying journey, especially in the hot weather. When Monnica arrived she was very enfeebled. At Ostia they had to wait till a ship was sailing for Africa. Propitious conditions did not offer every day. At this period, travellers were at the mercy of the sea, of the wind, and of a thousand other circumstances. Time did not count; it was wasted freely. The ship sailed short distances at a time, skirting the coasts, where the length of the stay at every point touched depended on the master. On board these ships--feluccas hardly decked over--if the crossing was endless and unsafe, it was, above all, most uncomfortable. People were in no hurry to undergo the tortures of it, and spaced them out as much as possible by frequent stoppages. On account of all these reasons, our Africans made a rather long stay at Ostia. They lodged, no doubt, with Christian brethren, hosts of Augustin or Monnica, in a tranquil house far out of earshot of the cosmopolitan crowd which overflowed in the hotels on the quay. Ostia, situated at the mouth of the Tiber, was both the port and bond-warehouse of Rome. The Government stores-ships landed the African oil and corn there. It was a junction for commerce, the point where immigrants from all parts of the Mediterranean disbarked. To-day there is only left a wretched little village. But at some distance from this hamlet, the excavations of archæologists have lately brought to light the remains of a large town. They have discovered at the entrance a place of burial with arcosol-tombs; and here perhaps the body of St. Monnica was laid. In this place of graves they came upon also a beautiful statue injured--a funeral Genius, or a Victory, with large folded wings like those of the Christian angels. Further on, the forum with its shops, the guard-house of the night-cohort, baths, a theatre, many large temples, arcaded streets paved with large flags, warehouses for merchandise. There may still be seen, lining the walls, the holes in which the ends of the amphoræ used to be dropped to keep them upright. All this wreckage gives an idea of a populous centre where the stir of traffic and shipping was intense. And yet in this noisy town, Augustin and his mother found means to withdraw themselves and join together in meditation and prayer. Amid this rather vulgar activity, in a noise of trade and seafaring, a mystic scene develops where the purified love of mother and son gleams upon us as in a light of apotheosis. They had at Ostia a foretaste, so to speak, of the eternal union in God. This was in the house where they had come on arrival. They talked softly, resting against a window which looked upon the garden.... But the scene has been made popular by Ary Scheffer's too well-known painting. You remember it: two faces, pale, bloodless, stripped of flesh, in which live only the burning eyes cast upward to the sky--a dense sky, baffling, heavy with all the secrets of eternity. No visible object, nothing, absolutely nothing, distracts them from their contemplation. The sea itself, although indicated by the painter, almost blends into the blue line of the horizon. Two souls and the sky--there you have the whole subject. It is living poetry congealed in abstract thought. The attitude of the characters, majestically seated, instead of leaning on the window-ledge, has, in Scheffer's picture, I know not what touch of stiffness, of slightly theatrical. And the general impression is a cold dryness which contrasts with the lyric warmth of the story in the _Confessions_. For my part, I always thought, perhaps on the testimony of the picture, that the window of the house at Ostia opened above the garden in view of the sea. The sea, symbol of the infinite, ought to be present--so it seemed to me--at the final conversation between Monnica and Augustin. At Ostia itself I was obliged to give up this too literary notion; the sea is not visible there. No doubt at that time the channel was not so silted up as it is to-day. But the coast lies so low, that just hard by the actual mouth of the Tiber, the nearness of the sea can only be guessed by the reflection of the waves in the atmosphere, a sort of pearly halo, trembling on the edge of the sky. At present I am inclined to think that the window of the house at Ostia was very likely turned towards the vast melancholy horizon of the _Agro Romano_. "We passed through, one after another," says Augustin, "all the things of a material order, unto heaven itself." Is it not natural to suppose that these things of a material order--these shapes of the earth with its plantations, its rivers, towns, and mountains--were under their eyes? The bleak spectacle which unrolled before their gaze agreed, at all events, with the disposition of their souls. This great desolate plain has nothing oppressive, nothing which retains the eyes upon details too material. The colours about it are pale and slight, as if on the point of swooning away. Immense sterile stretches, fawn-coloured throughout, with here and there shining a little pink, a little green; gorse, furze-bushes by the deep banks of the river, or a few _boschetti_ with dusty leaves, which feebly stand out upon the blondness of the soil. To the right, a pine forest. To the left, the undulations of the Roman hills expire into an emptiness infinitely sad. Afar, the violet scheme of the Alban mountains, with veiled and dream-like distances, shape indefinitely against the pearl light, limpid and serene, of the sky. Augustin and Monnica, resting on the window-ledge, looked forth. Doubtless it was towards evening, at the hour when southern windows are thrown open to the cool after a burning day. They looked forth. "We marvelled," says Augustin, "at the beauty of Thy works, O my God!..." Rome was back there beyond the hills, with its palaces, its temples, the gleam of its gilding and its marbles. But the far-off image of the imperial city could not conquer the eternal sadness which rises from the _Agro_. An air of funeral loneliness lay above this plain, ready to be engulfed by the creeping shadows. How easy it was to break free of these vain corporeal appearances which decomposed of themselves! "Then," Augustin resumes, "we soared with glowing hearts still higher." (He speaks as if he and his mother were risen with equal flight to the vision. It is more probable that he was drawn up by Monnica, long since familiar with the ways of the spirit, used to visions, and to mystic talks with God....) Where was this God? All the creatures, questioned by their anguished entreaty, answered: _Quære super nos_--"Seek above us!" They sought; they mounted higher and higher: "And so we came to our own minds, and passed beyond them into the region of unfailing plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth.... And as we talked, and we strove eagerly towards this divine region, _by a leap with the whole force of our hearts, we touched it for an instant_.... Then we sighed, we fell back, and left there fastened the first fruits of the Spirit, and heard again the babble of our own tongues, this mortal speech wherein each word has a beginning and an ending." "We fell back!" The marvellous vision had vanished. But a great silence was about them, silence of things, silence of the soul. And they said to each other: "If the tumult of the flesh were hushed; hushed these shadows of earth, sea, sky; suppose this vision endured, and all other far inferior modes of vision were taken away, and this alone were to ravish the beholder, and absorb him, and plunge him in mystic joy, so that eternal life might be like this moment of comprehension which has made us sigh with Love--might not that be the fulfilment of 'Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord'? Ah, when shall this be? Shall it not be, O my God, when we rise again among the dead...?" Little by little they came down to earth. The dying colours of the sunset-tide smouldered into the white mists of the _Agro_. The world entered into night. Then Monnica, impelled by a certain presentiment, said to Augustin: "My son, as for me, I find no further pleasure in life. What I am still to do, or why I still linger here, I know not.... There was only one thing made me want to tarry a little longer in this life, that I might see you a Christian and a Catholic before I died. My God has granted me this boon far beyond what I hoped for. So what am I doing here?" She felt it; her work was done. She had exhausted, as Augustin says, all the hope of the century--_consumpta spe sæculi_. For her the parting was near. This ecstasy was that of one dying, who has raised a corner of the veil, and who no longer belongs to this world. * * * * * And, in fact, five or six days later she fell ill. She had fever. The climate of Ostia bred fevers, as it does to-day, and it was always unsanitary on account of all the foreigners who brought in every infection of the Orient. Furthermore, the weariness of a long journey in summer had worn out this woman, old before her time. She had to go to bed. Soon she got worse, and then lost consciousness. They believed she was in the agony. They all came round her bed--Augustin, his brother Navigius, Evodius, the two cousins from Thagaste, Rusticus, and Lastidianus. But suddenly she shuddered, raised herself, and asked in a bewildered way: "Where was I?" Then, seeing the grief on their faces, she knew that she was lost, and she said in a steady voice: "You will bury your mother here." Navigius, frightened by this sight of death, protested with all his affection for her: "No. You will get well, mother. You will come home again. You won't die in a foreign land." She looked at him with sorrowful eyes, as if hurt that he spoke so little like a Christian, and turning to Augustin: "See how he talks," she said. And after a silence, she went on in a firmer voice, as if to impress on her sons her final wishes: "Lay this body where you will, and be not anxious about it. Only I beseech you, remember me at the altar of God, wherever you are." That was the supreme renunciation. How could an African woman, so much attached to her country, agree to be buried in a stranger soil? Pagan notions were still very strong in this community, and the place of burial was an important consideration. Monnica, like all other widows, had settled upon hers. At Thagaste she had had her place prepared beside her husband Patricius. And here now she appeared to give that up. Augustin's companions were astonished at such abnegation. As for himself, he marvelled at the completeness of the change worked in his mother's soul by Grace. And as he thought over all the virtues of her life, the strength of her faith--from that moment, he had no doubt that she was a saint. She still lingered for some time. Finally, on the ninth day of her illness, she died at the age of fifty-six. Augustin closed her eyes. A great sorrow surged into his heart. And yet he who was so quick to tears had the courage not to cry.... Suddenly a noise of weeping rose in the room of death: it was the young Adeodatus, who lamented at the sight of the corpse. He sobbed in such a heartbroken way that those who were there, demoralized by the distress of it, were obliged to rebuke him. This struck Augustin so deeply, that many years afterwards the broken sound of this sobbing still haunted his ears. "Methought," he says, "that it was my own childish soul which thus broke out in the weeping of my son." As for him, with the whole effort of his reason struggling against his heart, he only wanted to think of the glory which the saint had just entered into. His companions felt likewise. Evodius caught up a psalter, and before Monnica's body, not yet cold, he began to chant the Psalm, "My song shall be of mercy and judgment; unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing." All who were in the house took up the responses. In the meantime, while the layers-out were preparing the corpse for burial, the brethren drew Augustin into another room. His friends and relations stood round him. He consoled the others and himself. He spoke, as the custom was, upon the deliverance of the faithful soul and the happiness which is promised. They might have imagined that he had no sense of grief, "But in Thy hearing, O my God, where none of them could hear, I was chiding the softness of my heart, and holding back the tide of sorrow.... Alas! well did I know what I was choking down in my heart." Not even at the church, where the sacrifice was offered for Monnica's soul, nor at the cemetery before the coffin, did he weep. From a sense of Christian seemliness, he feared to scandalize his brethren by imitating the desolation of the pagans and of those who die without hope. But this very effort that he made to keep back his tears became another cause of suffering. The day ended in a black sadness, a sadness he could not shake off. It stifled him. Then he remembered the Greek proverb--"The bath drives away sorrow;" and he determined to go and bathe. He went into the _tepidarium_ and stretched himself out on the hot slab. Useless remedy! "The bitterness of my trouble was not carried from my heart with the sweat that flowed from my limbs." The attendants rolled him in warm towels and led him to the resting-couch. Worn out by tiredness and so many emotions, he fell into a heavy sleep. The next day, upon awaking, a fresh briskness was in all his being. Some verses came singing into his memory; they were the first words of the confident and joyous hymn of St. Ambrose: "Creator of the earth and sky, Ruling the firmament on high, Clothing the day with robes of light, Blessing with gracious sleep the night,-- That rest may comfort weary men To face their usual toil again, And soothe awhile the harassed mind, And sorrow's heavy load unbind." Suddenly, at the word _sorrow_, the thought of his dead mother came back to him, with the regret for that kind heart he had lost. A wave of despair overwhelmed him. He flung himself sobbing on the bed, and at last wept all the tears he had pent up so long. III THE MONK OF THAGASTE Almost a year went by before Augustin continued his journey. It is hard to account for this delay. Why should he thus put off his return to Africa, he who was so anxious to fly the world? It is likely that Monnica's illness, the arrangements about her funeral, and other matters to settle, kept him at Ostia till the beginning of winter. The weather became stormy, the sea dangerous. Navigation was regularly interrupted from November--sometimes even earlier, from the first days of October, if the tempests and the equinox were exceptionally violent. It would then be necessary to wait till spring. Besides, word came that the fleet of the usurper Maximus, then at war with Theodosius, blockaded the African coast. Travellers ran the risk of being captured by the enemy. From all these reasons, Augustin would be prevented from sailing before the end of the following summer. In the meantime, he went to live in Rome. He employed his leisure to work up a case against the Manichees, his brethren of the day before. Once he had adopted Catholicism, he must have expected passionate attacks from his former brothers in religion. To close their mouths, he gathered against them an elaborate mass of documents, bristling with the latest scandals. He busied himself also with a thorough study of their doctrines, the better to refute them: in him the dialectician never slept. Then, when he had an opportunity, he visited the Roman monasteries, studying their rule and organization, so as to decide on a model for the convent which he always intended to establish in his own country. At last, he went back to Ostia some time in August or September, 388, where he found a ship bound for Carthage. Four years earlier, about the same time of year, he had made the same voyage, coming the opposite way. He had a calm crossing; hardly could one notice the movement of the ship. It is the season of smooth seas in the Mediterranean. Never is it more etherial than in these summer months. The vague blue sky is confused with the bleached sea, spread out in a large sheet without creases--liquid and flexible silk, swept by quivering amber glow and orange saffron when the sun falls. No distinct shape, only strange suffusions of soft light, a pearl-like haze, the wistful blue reaching away indefinably. At Carthage, Augustin had grown used to the magnificence of this pageantry of the sea. Now, the sea had the same appeased and gleaming face he had seen four years sooner. But how much his soul had since been changed! Instead of the tumult and falsehood which rent his heart and filled it with darkness, the serene light of Truth, and deeper than the sea's peace, the great appeasement of Grace. Augustin dreamed. Far off the Æolian isles were gloomed in the impending shadows, the smoky crater of Stromboli was no more than a black point circled by the double blue of waves and sky. So the remembrance of his passions, of all that earlier life, sank under the triumphant uprising of heavenly peace. He believed that this blissful state was going to continue and fill all the hours of his new life, and he knew of nothing so sweet.... This time, again, he was mistaken about himself. Upon the thin plank of the boat which carried him, he did not feel the force of the immense element, asleep now under his feet, but quick to be unchained at the first gust of wind; and he did not feel either the overflowing energy swelling his heart renewed by Grace--an energy which was going to set in motion one of the most complete and strenuous existences, one of the richest in thought, charity, and works which have enlightened history. Thinking only of the cloister, amidst the friends who surrounded him, no doubt he repeated the words of the Psalm: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." He pressed the hands of Alypius and Evodius, and tears came to his eyes. The sun was gone. All the cold waste of waters, forsaken by the gleam, blurred gradually in vague anguish beneath the fall of night. * * * * * After skirting the Sicilian coasts, they arrived at last at Carthage. Augustin did not linger there; he was eager to see Thagaste once more, and to retire finally from the world. Favourable omens drew him to the place, and seemed to hearten him in his resolution. A dream had foretold his return to his former pupil, Elogius, the rhetorician. He was present, too, at the miraculous cure of a Carthage lawyer, Innocentius, in whose house he dwelt with his friends. Accordingly, he left for Thagaste as soon as he could. There he made himself popular at once by giving to the poor, as the Gospel prescribed, what little remained of his father's heritage. But he does not make clear enough what this voluntary privation exactly meant. He speaks of a house and some little meadows--_paucis agellulis_--that he sequestrated. Still, he did not cease to live in the house all the time he was at Thagaste. The probability is that he did sell the few acres of land he still owned and bestowed the product of the sale on the poor. As to the house, he must have made it over with the outbuildings to the Catholic body of his native town, on condition of keeping the usufruct and of receiving for himself and his brethren the necessities of life. At this period many pious persons acted in this way when they gave their property to the Church. Church goods being unseizable, and exempt from taxation, this was a roundabout way of getting the better of fiscal extortion, whether in the shape of arbitrary confiscations, or eviction by force of arms. In any case, such souls as were tired of the world and longing for repose, found in these bequests an heroic method of saving themselves the trouble of looking after a fortune or a landed estate. When these fortunes and lands were extensive, the generous donors felt, we are told, an actual relief in getting rid of them. This financial question settled, Augustin took up the task of turning the house into a monastery, like those he had seen at Rome and Milan. His son Adeodatus, his friends Alypius and Evodius, Severus, who became Bishop of Milevia, shared his solitude. But it is certain that he had other solitaries with him whom he alludes to in his letters. Their rule was as yet a little easy, no doubt. The brothers of Thagaste were not confined in a cloister. They were simply obliged to fasts, to a special diet, to prayers and meditations in common. In this half-rustic retreat (the monastery was situated at the gates of the town) Augustin was happy: he had at last realized the project he had had so long at heart. To enter into himself, pray, above all, to study the Scripture, to fathom even its most obscure places, to comment it with the fervour and piety which the African of all times has brought to _what is written down_--it seemed to him that he had enough there to fill all the minutes of his life. But no man can teach, lecture, discuss, write, during twenty years, in vain. However much Augustin might be converted, he remembered the school at Thagaste, just as he did at Cassicium. Still, it was necessary to finish with this sort of thing once for all. The new monk made what may be called his will as a professor. He finished, at this time, or revised his school treatises, which he had begun at Milan, comprising all the liberal arts--grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, philosophy, music. Of all these books he only finished the first, the treatise on grammar. The others were only summaries, and are now lost. On the other hand, we have still the six books on music, likewise begun at Milan, which he finished, almost as an amusement, at Thagaste. They are dialogues between himself and his pupil, the poet Licentius, upon metre and scansion. But we know from himself that he intended to make this book longer, and to write a second part upon melody, that is to say, music, properly so called. He never found the time: "Once," he says, "the burthen of ecclesiastical affairs was placed on my shoulders, _all these pleasant things_ slipped from my hands." Thus, the monk Augustin only rests from prayer and meditation to study music and poetry. He has thought it necessary to excuse himself. "In all that," says he, "I had but one purpose. For, as I did not wish to pluck away too suddenly either young men, or those of another age, on whom God had bestowed good wits, from ideas of the senses and carnal literature, _things it is very hard for them not to be attached to_, I have tried by reasoning lessons to turn them little by little, and by the love of unchanging truth, to attach them to God, sole master of all things.... He who reads these books will see that if I have touched upon the poets and grammarians, 'twas more by the exigency of the journey than by any desire to settle among them.... Such is the life I have chosen to walk with the feeble, not being very strong myself, rather than to hurl myself out on the void with wings still half-fledged...." Here again, how human all that is, and wise--yes, and modest too. Augustin has no whit of the fanatic about him. No straighter conscience than his, or even more persistent in uprooting error. But he knows what man is, that life here below is a voyage among other men weak as himself, and he fits in with the needs of the voyage. Oh, yes, no doubt, for the Christian who has arrived at supreme renunciation--what is poetry, what is knowledge, "what is everything that is not eternal?" But this carnal literature and science are so many steps of a height proportionate to our feebleness, to lead us imperceptibly to the conceptual world. As a prudent guide of souls, Augustin did not wish to make the ascent too rapidly. As for music, he has still more indulgence for that than for any of the other arts, for "it is by sounds that we best perceive the power of numbers in every variety of movement, and their study thus leads us gradually to the closest and highest secrets of truth, and discovers to those who love and seek it the divine Wisdom and Providence in all things...." He is always coming back to it--to this music he loves so much; he comes back to it in spite of himself. Later, in great severity, he will reproach himself for the pleasure he takes in the liturgical chants, but nevertheless the old instinct will remain. He was born a musician. He will remain one to his last gasp. If he did not break completely with profane art and letters at this present moment of his life, his chief reasons were of a practical order. Still another object may be discerned in these educational treatises--namely, to prove to the pagans that one may be a Christian and yet not be a barbarian and ignorant. Augustin's position in front of his adversaries is very strong indeed. None of them can attempt to cope with him either in breadth of knowledge, or in happy versatility, or in plenitude of intellectual gifts. He had the entire heritage of the ancient world between his hands. Well might he say to the pagans: "What you admire in your orators and philosophers, I have made my own. Behold it! On my lips recognize the accent of your orators.... Well, all that, which you deem so high, I despise. The knowledge of this world is nothing without the wisdom of Christ." Of course, Augustin has paid the price of this all-round knowledge--too far-reaching, perhaps, at certain points. He has often too much paraded his knowledge, his dialectic and oratorical talents. What matters that, if even in this excess he aims solely at the welfare of souls--to edify them and set them aglow with the fire of his charity? At Thagaste, he disputes with his brethren, with his son Adeodatus. He is always the master--he knows it; but what humility he puts into this dangerous part! The conclusion of his book, _The Master_, which he wrote then, is that all the words of him who teaches are useless, if the hidden Master reveal not the truth to him who listens. So, under his ungainly monk's habit, he continues his profession of rhetorician. He has come to Thagaste with the intention of retiring from the world and living in God; and here he is disputing, lecturing, writing more than ever. The world pursues him and occupies him even in his retreat. He says to himself that down there at Rome, at Carthage, at Hippo, there are men speaking in the forums or in the basilicas, whispering in secret meetings, seducing poor souls defenceless against error. These impostors must be immediately unmasked, confounded, reduced to silence. With all his heart Augustin throws himself into this work at which he excels. Above all, he attacks his old friends the Manichees.... He wrote many tracts against them. From the animosity he put into these, may be judged to what extent Manicheeism filled his thoughts, and also the progress of the sect in Africa. This campaign was even the cause of a complete change in his way of writing. With the object of reaching the plainest sort of people, he began to employ the popular language, not recoiling before a solecism, when the solecism appeared to him indispensable to explain his thought. This must have been a cruel mortification for him. In his very latest writings he made a point of shewing that no elegance of language was unknown to him. But his real originality is not in that. When he writes the fine style, his period is heavy, entangled, often obscure. On the other hand, nothing is more lively, clear and coloured, and, as we say to-day, more direct, than the familiar language of his sermons and certain of his treatises. This language he has really created. He wanted to clarify, comment, give details, and he felt how awkward classical Latin is to decompose ideas and render shades. And so, in a popular Latin, already very close to the Romance languages, he has thrown out the plan of analytical prose, the instrument of thought of the modern West. Not only did he battle against the heretics, but his restless friendship continually scaled the walls of his cell to fly to the absent ones dear to his heart. He feels that he must expand to his friends, and make them sharers in his meditations: this nervous man, in poor health, spends a part of his nights meditating. The argument he has hit upon in last night's insomnia--his friends must be told that! He heaps his letters on them. He writes to Nebridius, to Romanianus, to Paulinus of Nola; to people unknown and celebrated, in Africa, Italy, Spain, and Palestine. A time will come when his letters will be real encyclicals, read throughout Christendom. He writes so much that he is often short of paper. He has not tablets enough to put down his notes. He asks Romanianus to give him some. His beautiful tablets, the ivory ones, are used up; he has used the last one for a ceremonial letter, and he asks his friend's pardon for writing to him on a wretched bit of vellum. Besides all that, he interests himself in the affairs of his fellow-townsmen. Augustin is a personage at Thagaste. The good folk of the free-town are well aware that he is eloquent, that he has a far-reaching acquaintance, and that he has great influence in high quarters. They ask for his protection and his interference. It is even possible that they obliged him to defend them in the courts. They were proud of their Augustin. And as they were afraid that some neighbouring town might steal away their great man, they kept a guard round his house. They prevented him from shewing himself too much in the neighbourhood. Augustin himself agreed with this, and lived retired as far as he could, for he was afraid they would make him a bishop or priest in spite of himself. In those days that was a danger incurred by all Christians who were rich or had talent. The rich gave their goods to the poor when they took orders. The men of talent defended the interests of the community, or attracted opulent benefactors. And because of all these reasons, the needy or badly managed churches stalked as a prey the celebrated Augustin. In spite of this supervision, this unremitting rush of business, the work of all kinds which he undertook, he experienced at Thagaste a peace which he was never to find again. One might say that he pauses and gathers together all his strength before the great exhausting labour of his apostolate. In this Numidian country, so verdant and cool, where a thousand memories of childhood encompassed him, where he was not able to take a step without encountering the ever-living image of his mother, he soared towards God with more confidence. He who sought in the things of sense ladder-rungs whereby to mount to spiritual realities, still turned kindly eyes on the natural scene. From the windows of his room he saw the forest pines rounding their heads, like little crystal goblets with stems slim and thin. His scarred chest breathed in deliriously the resinous breath of the fine trees. He listened like a musician to the orchestra of birds. The changing scenes of country life always attracted him. It is now that he wrote: "Tell me, does not the nightingale seem to you to modulate her voice delightfully? Is not her song, so harmonious, so suave, so well attuned to the season, the very voice of the spring?..." IV AUGUSTIN A PRIEST This halt did not last long. Soon was going to begin for Augustin the time of tribulation, that of his struggles and apostolic journeys. And first, he must mourn his son Adeodatus, that young man who seemed destined to such great things. It is indeed most probable that the young monk died at Thagaste during the three years that his father spent there. Augustin was deeply grieved; but, as in the case of his mother's death, he mastered his sorrow by all the force of his Christian hope. No doubt he loved his son as much as he was proud of him. It will be remembered what words he used to speak of this youthful genius, whose precocity frightened him. Little by little his grief quietened down, and in its place came a mild resignation. Some years later he will write about Adeodatus: "Lord, early didst Thou cut off his life from this earth, but I remember him without a shadow of misgiving. My remembrance is not mixed with any fear for his boyhood, or the youth he was, or the man he would have been." No fear! What a difference between this and the habitual feelings of the Jansenists, who believed themselves his disciples! While Augustin thinks of his son's death with a calm and grave joy which he can scarce hide, those of Port Royal could only think in trembling of the judgment of God. Their faith did not much resemble the luminous and confident faith of Augustin. For him, salvation is the conquest of joy. At Thagaste he lived in joy. Every morning in awaking before the forest pines, glistening with the dews of the morning, he might well say with a full heart: "My God, give me the grace to live here under the shades of Thy peace, while awaiting that of Thy Paradise." But the Christians continued to watch him. It was to the interest of a number of people that this light should not be hid under a bushel. Perhaps a snare was deliberately laid for him. At any rate, he was imprudent enough to come out of his retreat and travel to Hippo. He thought he might be safe there, because, as the town had a bishop already, they would not have any excuse to get him consecrated in spite of himself. An inhabitant of Hippo, a clerk of the Imperial Ministry of the Interior, begged his spiritual assistance. Doubts, he maintained, still delayed him on the way to an entire conversion. Augustin alone could help him to get clear of them. So Augustin, counting already on a new recruit for the Thagaste monastery, went over there at the request of this official. Now, if there was a bishop at Hippo (a certain Valerius), priests were lacking. Furthermore, Valerius was getting on in years. Originally Greek, he knew Latin badly, and not a word of Punic--a great hindrance for him in his duties of judge, administrator, and catechist. The knowledge of the two languages was indispensable to an ecclesiastic in such a country, where the majority of the rural population spoke only the old Carthaginian idiom. All this proves to us that Catholicism was in bad shape in the diocese of Hippo. Not only was there a lack of priests, but the bishop was a foreigner, little familiar with African customs. There was a general demand for a native to take his place--one young, active, and well enough furnished with learning to hold his own against the heretics and the schismatics of the party of Donatus, and also sufficiently able to watch over the interests of the Church at Hippo, and above all, to make it prosperous. Let us not forget that at this time, in the eyes of a crowd of poor wretches, Christianity was first and foremost the religion which gave out bread. Even in those early days, the Church did its best to solve the eternal social question. While Augustin was at Hippo, Valerius preached a sermon in the basilica in which, precisely, he deplored this lack of priests the community suffered from. Mingled with the congregation, Augustin listened, sure that he would be unrecognized. But the secret of his presence had leaked out. People pointed to him while the bishop was preaching. The next thing was that some furious enthusiasts seized hold of him and dragged him to the foot of the episcopal chair, yelling: "Augustin a priest! Augustin a priest!" Such were the democratic ways of the Church in those days. The inconveniences are plain enough. What is certain is, that if Augustin had resisted, he might have lost his life, and that the bishop would have provoked a riot in refusing him the priesthood. In Africa, religious passions are not to be trifled with, especially when they are exasperated by questions of profit or politics. In his heart, the bishop was delighted with this brutal capture which gained him the distinction of such a well-known fellow-worker. There and then he ordained the Thagaste monk. And so, as Augustin's pupil, Possidius, the future Bishop of Guelma, puts it, "This shining lamp, which sought the darkness of solitude, was placed upon the lamp-stand..." Augustin, who saw the finger of God in this adventure, submitted to the popular will. Nevertheless, he was in despair, and he wept at the change they were forcing on him. Then, some of those present, mistaking the significance of his tears, said to console him: "Yes, you are right. The priesthood is not good enough for your merits. But you may be certain that you will be our bishop." Augustin well knew all that the crowd meant by that, and what it expected of its bishop. He who only thought of leaving the world, grew frightened at the practical cares he would have to take over. And the spiritual side of his jurisdiction frightened him no less. To speak of God! Proclaim the word of God! He deemed himself unworthy of so high a privilege. He was so ill-prepared! To remedy this fault of preparation, as well as he could, he desired that he might be given a little leisure till the following Easter. In a letter addressed to Valerius, and no doubt intended to be made public, he humbly set forth the reasons why he asked for delay. They were so apposite and so creditable, that very likely the bishop yielded. The new priest received permission to retire to a country house near Hippo. His flock, who did not feel at all sure of their shepherd, would not have let him go too far off. He took up his duties as soon as possible. Little by little he became, to all intents, the coadjutor of the bishop, who charged him with the preaching and the baptism of catechumens. These were the two most important among the episcopal prerogatives. The bishops made a point of doing these things themselves. Certain colleagues of Valerius even grew scandalized that he should allow a simple priest to preach before him in his own church. But soon other bishops, struck by the advantages of this innovation, followed the example of Valerius, and allowed their clerks to preach even in their presence. The priest of Hippo did not lose his head among so many honours. He felt chiefly the perils of them, and he regarded them as a trial sent by God. "I have been forced into this," he said, "doubtless in punishment of my sins; for from what other motive can I think that the second place at the helm should be given to me--to me who do not even know how to hold an oar...." Meanwhile, he had not relinquished his purpose of monastic life. Though a priest, he meant to remain a monk. It was heart-breaking for him to be obliged to leave his monastery at Thagaste. He spoke of his regret to Valerius, who, perceiving the usefulness of a convent as a seminary for future priests, gave him an orchard belonging to the church of Hippo, that he might found a new community there. So was established the monastery which was going to supply a great number of clerks and bishops to all the African provinces. Among the ruins of Hippo, that old Roman and Phoenician city, they search for the place where Augustin's monastery stood, without much hope of ever finding it. Some have thought to locate it upon that hill where the water brought from the near mountains by an aqueduct used to pour into immense reservoirs, and where to-day rises a new basilica which attracts all eyes out at sea. Behind the basilica is a convent where the Little Sisters of the Poor lodge about a hundred old people. So is maintained among the African Mussulmans the remembrance of the grand Christian _marabout_. One might possibly wish to see there a building more in the pure and quiet taste of antiquity. But after all, the piety of the intention is enough. This hospital serves admirably to call up the memory of the illustrious bishop who was charity itself. As for the basilica, Africa has done all she can to make it worthy of him. She has given her most precious marbles, and one of her fairest landscapes as a frame. It is chiefly in the evening, in the closing dusk, that this landscape reveals all its special charm and its finer values. The roseate glow of the setting sun throws into sharp relief the black profile of the mountains, which command the Seybouse valley. Under the mustering shadows, the pallid river winds slowly to the sea. The gulf, stretching limitless, shines like a slab of salt strangely bespangled. In this atmosphere without mists, the sharp outlines of the coast, the dense movelessness of the aspect, has an indescribable effect. It is like a hitherto unknown and virginal revelation of the earth. Then the stars bloom out, with a flame, an hallucinating palpability. Charles's Wain, burning low on the gorges of the Edough, seems like a golden waggon rolling through the fields of Heaven. A deep peace settles upon farmland and meadow country, only broken by a watch-dog's bark now and then.... But it matters not which spot is chosen in the surroundings of Hippo to place Augustin's monastery, the view will be equally beautiful. From all parts of the plain, mounded by heaps of ruins, the sea can be seen--a wide bay circled in soft bland curves, like at Naples. All around, an arena of mountains--the green ravines of the Edough and its wooded slopes. Along the surbased roads rise the great sonorous pines, and through them wanders the æolian complaint of the sea-winds. Blue of the sea, blue of the sky, noble foliage of Italy's ancient groves--it is one of Lamartine's landscapes under a more burning sun. The gaiety of the mornings there is a physical luxury for heart and eyes, when the new-born light laughs upon the painted cupolas of the houses, and dark blue veils float between the walls, glaring white, of the steep streets. Among the olives and orange-trees of Hippo, Augustin must have seen happy days pass by, as at Thagaste. The rule he had given the convent, which he himself obeyed like any one else, was neither too slack nor too strict--in a word, such as it should be for men who have lived in the culture of letters and works of the mind. There was no affectation of excessive austerity. Augustin and his monks wore very simple clothes and shoes, but suitable for a bishop and his clerks. Like laymen, they wore the byrrhus, a garment with a hood, which seems very like the ancestor of the Arab burnous. To keep an even line between daintiness and negligence in costume, to have no exaggeration in anything, is what Augustin aimed at. The poet Rutilius Numatianus, who about that time was attacking the sordid and culture-hating monks with sombre irony, would have had a chance to admire a restraint and decorum in the Hippo monastery which recalled what was best in the manners of the ancient world. At table, a like moderation. Vegetables were generally provided, and sometimes meat when any one was sick, or guests arrived. They drank a little wine, contrary to the regulations of St. Jerome, who condemned wine as a drink for devils. When a monk infringed the rule, his share of the wine was stopped. Through some remains of fastidious habits in Augustin, or perhaps because he had nothing else, the table service he used himself was silver. On the other hand, the pots and dishes were of earthenware, or wood, or common alabaster. Augustin, who was very temperate in eating and drinking, seemed at table to pay attention only to what was being read or talked about. He cared very little what he ate, provided the food was not a stimulant to lubricity. He used to say to those Christians who paraded a Pharisaic severity: "It is the pure heart which makes pure food." Then, with his constant desire for charity, he prohibited all spiteful gossip in the conversation in the refectory. In those times of religious struggle, the clerics ferociously blackened each other's characters. Augustin caused to have written on the walls a distich, which ran thus: "He who takes pleasure in slandering the life of the absent, Should know he is unworthy to sit at this table." "One day," says Possidius, "some of his intimate friends, even other bishops, having forgotten this sentence, he reproached them warmly, and very much perturbed, he cried out that he was going to remove those verses from the refectory, or rise from table and withdraw to his cell. I was present with many others when this happened." It was not only slanderous talk or interior dissensions which troubled Augustin's peace of mind. He combined the duties of priest, of a head of a convent, and of an apostle. He had to preach, instruct the catechumens, battle against the disaffected. The town of Hippo was very unruly, full of heretics, schismatics, pagans. Those of the party of Donatus were triumphant, driving the Catholics from their churches and lands. When Augustin came into the country, Catholicism was very low. And then the ineradicable Manichees continued to recruit proselytes. He never stopped writing tracts, disputing against them, overwhelming them under the close logic of his arguments. At the request of the Donatists themselves, he had an argument with one of their priests, a certain Fortunatus, in the baths of Sossius at Hippo. He reduced this man to silence and to flight. Not in the least discouraged were the Manichees: they sent another priest. If the enemies of the Church shewed themselves stubborn, Augustin's own congregation were singularly turbulent, hard to manage. The weakness of old Valerius must have allowed a good many abuses to creep into the community. Ere long the priest of Hippo had a foretaste of the difficulties which awaited him as bishop. Following the example of Ambrose, he undertook to abolish the custom of feasts in the basilicas and on the tombs of the martyrs. This was a survival of paganism, of which the festivals included gluttonous eating and orgies. At every solemnity, and they were frequent, the pagans ate in the courts and under the porticoes around the temples. In Africa, above all, these public repasts gave an opportunity for repugnant scenes of stuffing and drunkenness. As a rule, the African is very sober; but when he does let himself go he is terrible. This is quite easily seen to-day, in the great Muslem feasts, when the rich distribute broken bits of meat to the poor of their district. As soon as these people, used to drink water and to eat a little boiled rice, have tasted meat, or drunk only one cup of wine, there is no holding them: there are fights, stabbing matches, a general brawl in the hovels. Just picture this popular debauch in full blast in the cemeteries and the courts of the basilicas, and it will be understood why Augustin did his best to put an end to such scandals. For this purpose, he joined hands first of all with his bishop, Valerius, and then with the Primate of Carthage, Aurelius, who shall be henceforth his firmest support in his struggle against the schismatics. During Lent, the subject fitting in naturally with the season, he spoke against these pagan orgies; and this gave rise to a good deal of discontent, outside. Easter went by without trouble. But the day after the Ascension, the people of Hippo were used to celebrate what they called "the Joy-day," by a traditional good feed and drink. The day before, which was the religious festival, Augustin intrepidly spoke against "the Joy-day." They interrupted the preacher. Some of them shouted that as much was done at Rome in St. Peter's basilica. At Carthage, they danced round the tomb of St. Cyprian. To the shrilling of flutes, amid the dull blows of the gongs, mimes gave themselves up to obscene contortions, while the spectators sang to the clapping of their hands.... Augustin knew all about that. He declared that these abominations might have been tolerated in former times so as not to discourage the pagans from becoming converts; but that henceforth the people, altogether Christian, should give them up. In the end, he spoke with such touching eloquence that the audience burst into tears. He believed he had won. The next day it was all to do over again. Agitators had worked among the crowd to such an extent that a riot was feared. Nevertheless, Augustin, preceded by his bishop, entered the basilica at the hour of service. At the same moment the Donatists were banqueting in their church, which was quite near. Through the walls of their own church the Catholics heard the noise of this carouse. It required the coadjutor's most urgent remonstrances to keep them from imitating their neighbours. The last murmurs died down, and the ceremony ended with the singing of the sacred hymns. Augustin had carried the position. But the conflict had got to the point that he had to threaten the people with his resignation, and, as he wrote to Alypius, "to shake out on them the dust from his clothes." All this promised very ill for the future. He who already considered the priesthood as a trial, saw with terror the bishopric drawing near. THE FIFTH PART THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AND OF CATHOLIC UNITY Dic eis ista, ut plorent ... et sic eos rape tecum ad Deum: quia de spiritu ejus haec dicis eis, si dicis ardens igne caritatis. "Tell them this, O my soul, that they may weep ... and thus carry them up with thyself to God; because by His Spirit thou sayest these things, if Thou speakest burning with the flame of charity." _Confessions_, IV, 12. I THE BISHOP OF HIPPO In his monastery, Augustin was still spied upon by the neighbouring Churches, who wanted him for their bishop. They would capture him on the first opportunity. The old Valerius, fearing his priest would be taken unawares, urged him to hide himself. But he knew by the very case of Augustin, forced into the priesthood in spite of himself, that the greatest precautions are useless against those determined to gain their ends by any means. It would be safest to anticipate the danger. He determined therefore to share the bishopric with Augustin, to have him consecrated during his own lifetime, and to indicate him as his successor. This was against the African usage, and what was more, against the Canons of the Council of Nice--though it is true that Valerius, like Augustin himself, was unaware of this latter point. But surely the rule could be waived in view of the exceptional merits of the priest of Hippo. The old bishop began by sounding Aurelius, the Primate of Carthage, and when he was satisfied as to the agreement and support of this high personage, he took the opportunity of a religious solemnity to make known his intentions to the people. Some of the neighbouring bishops--Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of Numidia, among them--being gathered at Hippo to consecrate a new bishop, Valerius announced publicly in the basilica that he wished Augustin to be consecrated at the same ceremony. This had been the wish of his people for a long time. Really, in demanding this honour for his priest, the old bishop did no more than follow the wish of the public. Immediately, his words were received with cheers. The faithful with loud shouts demanded Augustin's consecration. Megalius alone objected. He even made himself the voice of certain calumnies, so as to have the candidate put aside as unworthy. There is nothing astonishing in such an attitude. This Megalius was old (he died a short time after), and, like all old men, he took the gloomiest view of innovations. Already, in the face of settled custom, had Valerius granted Augustin the right to preach in his presence. And see now, by a new sinking, he was attempting to place two bishops at once in the see of Hippo! Whatever this young priest's talents might be, enough, had been done for him--a recent convert into the bargain, and, what was still more serious, a refugee from the Manicheans. What was not related about the abominations committed in the mysteries of those people? Just how far had Augustin dipped into them? They snarled against him everywhere at Hippo, and at Carthage too, where he had compromised himself by his excessive zeal; Catholics and Donatists alike gossiped. Megalius, a punctilious defender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up these malevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for making Augustin mark time, so to speak. Commonplace people always feel a secret delight in humiliating to the common rule those whom they can feel are beings of a different quality from themselves. One of the slanders set abroad about Valerius' priest, Megalius seems to have believed. He allowed himself to be persuaded that Augustin had given a philtre to a woman, one of his penitents, whom he wished to possess. It was then the fashion among the pious to exchange _eulogies_, or bits of holy bread, to signify a spiritual communion. Augustin was said to have mixed certain magic potions with some of these breads and offered them hypocritically to the woman he was in love with. This accusation started a big scandal, and the remembrance of it persisted long, because five or six years later the Donatist Petilian was still repeating it. Augustin cleared himself victoriously. Megalius avowed his mistake. He did better: not only did he apologize to him he had slandered, but he solemnly asked forgiveness from his fellow-bishops for having misled them upon false rumours. It is probable that some time during the inquiry he had got to know Valerius' coadjutor better. Augustin's charm, taken with the austerity of his life, acted upon the vexed old man and altered his views. Be that so or not, it was at any rate by Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of Numidia, that Augustin was consecrated Bishop of Hippo. He was in consternation over his rise. He has said it again and again. We may take his word for it. Yet the honours and advantages of the episcopate were then so considerable that his enemies were able to describe him as an ambitious man. Nothing could agree less with his character. In his heart, Augustin only wished to live in quiet. Since his retreat at Cassicium, fortune he had given up, as well as literary glory. His sole wish was to live in pondering the divine truths, and to draw nearer to God. _Videte et gustate quam mitis sit Dominus_--"O taste and see that the Lord is good." This perhaps, of the whole Bible, is the verse he liked best, which answered best to the close desire of his soul; and he quotes it oftenest in his sermons. Then, to study the Holy Writings, scan the least syllables of them, since all truth lies there--well, a whole life is not too much for such labour as that! And to do it, one should sever all ties with the world, take refuge forbiddingly in the cloister. But this sincere Christian analysed himself too skilfully not to perceive that he had a dangerous tendency to isolation. He took too much pleasure in cutting himself off from the society of mankind to enshroud himself in study and meditation. He who acknowledged a secret tendency to the Epicurean indolence--was he going to live a life of the dilettante and the self-indulgent under cover of holiness? Alone could action save him from selfishness. Others doubtless fulfilled the laws of charity in praying, in mortifying themselves for their brethren. But when, like him, a man has exceptional faculties of persuasion and eloquence, such vigour in dialectics, such widespread culture, such power to bring to naught the wrong--would it not be insulting to God to let such gifts lie idle, and a serious failure in charity to deprive his brethren of the support of such an engine? Besides that, he well knew that no man draws near to truth without a purified heart. Might not his passions, which were so violent, begin to torment him again after this respite with greater frenzy than before his conversion? Against that, too, action was the main antidote. In the duties of the bishopric he saw a means of asceticism--a kind of courageous purification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxieties and so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidious voice of his "old friends." Could he manage to silence them at once? This unheard-of grace--would it be granted to him? Or would not rather the struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as certain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down, nevermore play any part in his life. From the moment he fell on his knees under the fig-tree at Milan, his sinful heart is a dead heart. He has been freed from almost all the weaknesses of the old nature, not only from its vices and carnal affections, but from its most pardonable lapses--save, perhaps, some old sediment of intellectual and literary vanity. His books, at the first glance, shew us him no more save as the doctor, and already the saint. What is seen at once is an entirely bare intelligence, an entirely pure heart, fired only by the divine love. And yet the affectionate and tender heart which his had been, always warms his discussions and his most abstract exegesis. It does not take long to feel the heat of them, the power of pouring forth emotion. Augustin takes no heed of that. Of himself he no longer thinks; he no longer belongs to himself. If he has accepted the episcopate, it is so as to give himself altogether to the Church, to be all things to all men. He is the man-word, the man-pen, the sounding-board of the truth. He becomes the man of the miserable crowds which the Saviour covered with His pity. He is theirs, to convince them and cure them of their errors. He is a machine which works without ever stopping for the greater glory of Christ. Bishop, pastor, leader of souls--he has no desire for anything else. But it was a heavy labour for this intellectual, who till then had lived only among books and ideas. The day after his consecration, he must have regarded it with more terror than ever. During his nights of insomnia, or at the recreation hour in the monastery garden, he thought over it with great distress. His eyes wide open in the darkness of his cell, he sought to define a theory upon the nature and origin of the soul; or else, at the fall of day, he saw between the olive branches "the sea put on fluctuating shades like veils of a thousand colours, sometimes green, a green of infinite tints; sometimes purple; blue sometimes...." And his soul, easily stirred to poetry, at once arose from these material splendours to the invisible region of ideas. Then, immediately, he caught himself up: it was not a question of all that! He said to himself that he was henceforth the bishop Augustin, that he had charge of souls, that he must work for the needs of his flock. He would have to struggle in a combat without a moment's respite. Thereupon he arranged his plans of attack and defence. With a single glance he gauged the huge work before him. A crushing work, truly! He was Bishop of Hippo, but a bishop almost without a flock, in comparison with the rival community of Donatists. The bishop of the dissentients, Proculeianus, boasted that he was the true representative of orthodoxy, and as he had on his side the advantage of numbers, he certainly cut a much greater figure in the town than the successor of Valerius, with all his knowledge and all his eloquence. The schismatics' church, as we have seen, was quite near the Catholic church. Their noise interfered with Augustin's sermons. Possibly the situation had become slightly better in Hippo since the edict of Theodosius. But it was not so long ago that those of the Donatist party had the upper hand. A little before the arrival of the new bishop, the Donatist clergy forbade their faithful to bake bread for Catholics. A fanatical baker had even refused a Catholic deacon who was his landlord. These schismatics believed themselves strong enough to put those who did not belong to them under interdict. The rout of Catholicism appeared to be an accomplished fact from one end to the other of Africa. Quite recently a mere fraction of the Donatist party had been able to send three hundred and ten bishops to the Council of Bagai, who were to judge the recalcitrants of their own sect. Among these bishops, the terrible Optatus of Thimgad became marked on account of his bloody zeal, rambling round Numidia and even the Proconsulate at the head of armed bands, burning farms and villas, rebaptizing the Catholics by main force, spreading terror on all sides. Augustin knew all this, and when he sought help from the local authorities he was obliged to acknowledge sadly that there was no support to be expected from Count Gildo, who had tyrannized over Carthage and Africa for nearly ten years. This Gildo was a native, a Moor, to whom the ministers of the young Valentinian II had thought it a good stroke of policy to confide the government of the province. Knowing the weakness of the Empire, the Moor only thought of cutting out for himself an independent principality in Africa. He openly favoured Donatism, which was the most numerous and influential party. The Bishop of Thimgad, Optatus, swore only by him, regarding him as his master and his "god." In consequence, he was called "the Gildonian." Against such enemies, the Imperial authority could only act irregularly. Augustin was well aware of it. He knew that the Western Empire was in a critical position. Theodosius had just died, in the midst of war with the usurper Eugenius. The Barbarians, who made up the greater part of the Roman armies, shewed themselves more and more threatening. Alaric, entrenched in the Peloponnesus, was getting ready to invade Italy. However, the all-powerful minister of the young Honorius, the half-Barbarian Stilicho, did his best to conciliate the Catholics, and assured them that he would continue the protection they had had from Theodosius, Augustin therefore turned to the central power. It alone could bring about a little order in the provinces--and then, besides, the new emperors were firmly attached to the defence of Catholicism. The Catholic Bishop of Hippo did his best, accordingly, to keep on good terms with the representatives of the Metropolitan Government--the proconsuls; the proprætors; the counts; and the tribunes, or the secretaries, sent by the Emperor as Government commissioners. There was no suspicion of flattery in his attitude, no idolatry of power. At Milan, Augustin had been near enough to the Court to know what the Imperial functionaries were worth. Now, he simply adapted himself as well as he could to the needs of the moment. And with all that, he could have wished in the depths of his heart that this power were stronger, so as to give the Church more effective support. This cultured man, brought up in the respect of the Roman majesty, was by instinct a faithful servant of the Cæsars. A man who held to authority and tradition, he maintained that obedience is due to princes: "There is a general agreement," he said, "of human society to obey its Kings." In one of his sermons he compares thought, which commands the body, to the Emperor seated upon his throne, and from the depths of his palace dictating orders which set the whole Empire moving--a purely ideal image of the sovereign of that time, but one which pleased his Latin imagination. Alas! Augustin had no illusions about the effect of Imperial edicts; he knew too well how little they were regarded, especially in Africa. So he could hardly count upon Government support for the defence of Catholic unity and peace. He found he must trust to himself; and all his strength was in his intelligence, in his charity, in his deeply compassionate soul. Most earnestly did he wish that Catholicism might be a religion of love, open to all the nations of the earth, even as its Divine Founder Himself had wished. A glowing and dominating intelligence, charity which never tired--those were Augustin's arms. And they were enough. These qualities gave him an overwhelming superiority over all the men of his time. Among them, pagans or Christians, he looks like a colossus. From what a height he crushes, not only the professors who had been his colleagues, such as Nectarius of Guelma or Maximus of Madaura, but the most celebrated writers of his time--Symmachus, for instance, and Ammianus Marcellinus. After reading a treatise of Augustin's, one is astounded by the intellectual meagreness of these last pagans. The narrowness of their mind and platitude of thought is a thing that leaves one aghast. Even the illustrious Apuleius, who belonged to the golden age of African literature, the author of _The Doctrine of Plato_, praises philosophy and the Supreme Being in terms which recall the professions of faith of the chemist and druggist, Homais, in _Madame Bovary_. Nor among those who surrounded Augustin, his fellow-bishops, was there one fit to be compared with him, even at a distance. Except perhaps Nebridius, his dearest friends, Alypius, Severus, or Evodius, are merely disciples, not to say servants of his thought. Aurelius, Primate of Carthage, an energetic administrator, a firm and upright character, if he is not on Augustin's level, is at any rate capable of understanding and supporting him. The others are decent men, like that Samsucius, Bishop of Tours, very nearly illiterate, but full of good sense and experience, and on this ground consulted respectfully by his colleague of Hippo. Or else they are plotters, given to debauch, engaged in business, like Paulus, Bishop of Cataqua, who became involved in risky speculations, swindled the revenue, and by his expensive way of life ruined his diocese. Others, on the Donatist side, are mere swashbucklers, half-brigands, half-fanatics, like the Gildonian Optatus, Bishop of Thimgad, a manifestation in advance of the Mussulman _marabout_ who preached the holy war against the Catholics, raiding, killing, burning, converting by sabre blows and bludgeoning. Amid these insignificant or violent men, Augustin will endeavour to realize to the full the admirable type of bishop, at once spiritual father, protector, and support of his people. He had promised himself to sacrifice no whit of his ideal of Christian perfection. As bishop, he will remain a monk, as he did during his priesthood. Beside the monastery established in Valerius' garden, where it is impossible to receive properly his guests and visitors, he will start another in the episcopal residence. He will conform to the monastic rule as far as his duties allow. He will pray, study the Scriptures, define dogmas, refute heresies. At the same time, he means to neglect nothing of his material work. He has mouths to feed, property to look after, law-cases to examine. He will labour at all that. For this mystic and theorist it means a never-ceasing immolation. First, to give the poor their daily bread. Like all the communities of that time, Hippo maintained a population of beggars. Often enough, the diocesan cash-box was empty. Augustin was obliged to hold out the hand, to deliver from the height of his pulpit pathetic appeals for charity. Then, there are hospitals to be built for the sick, a lodging-house for poor wanderers. The bishop started these institutions in houses bequeathed to the church of Hippo. For reasons of economy, he thought better not to build. That would overload his budget. Next came the greatest of all his cares--the administration of Church property. To increase this property, he stipulated that his clergy should give up all they possessed in favour of the community, thus giving the faithful an example of voluntary poverty. He also accepted gifts from private persons. But he also often refused these--for example, the bequest of a father or mother, who, in a moment of anger, disinherited their children. He did not wish to profit by the bad feelings of parents to plunder orphans. On another side, he objected to engage the Church in suits at law with the exchequer upon receiving certain heritages. When a business man at Hippo left to the diocese his share of profits in the service of boats for carrying Government stores, Augustin came to the conclusion that it would be better to refuse. In case of shipwreck, they would be obliged to make good the lost corn to the Treasury, or else to put the captain and surviving sailors to the torture to prove that the crew was not responsible for the loss of the ship. Augustin would not hear tell of it. "Is it fit," he said, "that a bishop should be a shipowner?... A bishop a torturer? Oh, no; that does not agree at all with a servant of Jesus Christ." The people of Hippo did not share his views. They blamed Augustin's scruples. They accused him of compromising the interests of the Church. One day he had to explain himself from the pulpit: "Well I know, my brothers, that you often say between yourselves: 'Why do not people give anything to the Church of Hippo? Why do not the dying make it their heir? The reason is that Bishop Augustin is too easy; he gives all back to the children; he keeps nothing!' I acknowledge it, I only accept gifts which are good and pious. Whoever disinherits his son to make the Church his heir, let him find somebody willing to accept his gifts. It is not I who will do it, and by God's grace, I hope it will not be anybody.... Yes, I have refused many legacies, but I have also accepted many. Need I name them to you? I will give only one instance. I accepted the heritage of Julian. Why? Because he died without children...." The listeners thought that their bishop really put too fine a point on things. They further reproached him with not knowing how to attract and flatter the rich benefactors. Augustin would not allow, either, that they had any right to force a passing stranger to receive the priesthood and consequently to give up his goods to the poor. All this really was very wise, not only according to the spirit of the Gospel, but according to human prudence. If Augustin, for the sake of the good fame of his Church, did not wish to incur the accusation of grasping and avarice, he dreaded nothing so much as a law-case. To accept lightly the gifts and legacies offered was to lay himself open to expensive pettifogging. Far better to refuse than to lose both his money and reputation. So were reconciled, in this man of prayer and meditation, practical good sense with the high disinterestedness of the Christian teaching. The bishop was disinterested; his people were covetous. The people of those times wished the Church to grow rich, because they were the first to profit by its riches. Now these riches were principally in houses and land. The diocese of Hippo had to deal with many houses and immense _fundi_, upon which lived an entire population of artisans and freed-men, agricultural labourers, and even art-workers--smelters, embroiderers, chisellers on metals. Upon the Church lands, these small people were protected from taxes and the extortions of the revenue officers, and no doubt they found the episcopal government more fatherly and mild than the civil. Augustin, who had made a vow of poverty and given his heritage to the poor, became by a cruel irony a great landowner as soon as he was elected Bishop of Hippo. Doubtless he had stewards under him to look after the property of the diocese. This did not save him from going into details of management and supervising his agents. He heard the complaints, not only of his own tenants, but also of those who belonged to other estates and were victimized by dishonest bailiffs. Anyhow, we have a thousand signs to shew that no detail of country life was unfamiliar to him. On horseback or muleback, he rode for miles through the country about Hippo to visit his vineyards and olivets. He examined, found out things, questioned the workmen, went into the presses and the mills. He knew the grape good to eat, and the grape to make wine with. He pointed out where the ensilage pits had been dug in too marshy land, which endangered the young corn. As a capable landowner he was abreast of the law, careful about the terms of contracts. He knew the formulas employed for sales or benefactions. He saw to it that charcoal was buried around the landmarks in the fields, so that if the post disappeared, its place could be found. And as he was a poet, he gathered on his course a whole booty of rural images which later on went to brighten his sermons. He made ingenious comparisons with the citron-tree, "which is seen to give flowers and fruits all the year if it be watered constantly," or else with the goat "who gets upon her two hind legs to crop the bitter leaves of the wild olive." These journeys in the open air, however tiring they might be, were after all a rest for his overworked brain. But there was one among his episcopal duties which wearied him to disgust. Every day he had to listen to parties in dispute and give judgment. Following recent Imperial legislation, the bishop became judge in civil cases--a tiresome and endless work in a country where tricky quibbling raged with obstinate fury. The litigants pursued Augustin, overran his house, like those fellahs in dirty burnous who block our law-courts with their rags. In the _secretarium_ of the basilica, or under the portico of the court leading to the church, Augustin sat like a Mussulman cadi in the court of the mosque. The emperors had only regulated an old custom of apostolic times in placing the Christians under the jurisdiction of their bishop. In accordance with St. Paul's advice, the priests did their utmost to settle differences among the faithful. Later, when their number had considerably increased, the Government adopted a system not unlike the "Capitulations" in countries under the Ottoman suzerainty. Lawsuits between clerics and laymen could not be equitably judged by civil servants, who were often pagans. Moreover, the parties based their claims on theological principles or religious laws that the arbitrator generally knew nothing about. In these conditions, it was natural enough that the Imperial authority should say to the disputants, "Fight it out among yourselves". And it happened, just at the moment when Augustin began to fill the see of Hippo, that Theodosius broadened still more the judicial prerogatives of the bishops. The unhappy judge was overwhelmed with law-cases. Every day he sat till the hour of his meal, and sometimes the whole day when he fasted. To those who accused him of laziness, he answered: "I can declare on my soul that if it were question of my own convenience, I should like much better to work at some manual labour at certain hours of the day, as the rule is in well-governed monasteries, and have the rest of the time free to read or pray or meditate upon the Holy Scripture, instead of being troubled with all the complications and dull talk of lawsuits." The rascality of the litigants made him indignant. From the pulpit he gave them advice full of Christian wisdom, but which could not have been much relished. A suit at law, according to him, was a loss of time and a cause of sorrow. It would be better to let the opponent have the money, than to lose time and be filled with uneasiness. Nor was this, added the preacher in all good faith, to encourage injustice; for the robber would be robbed in his turn by a greater robber than himself. These reasons seemed only moderately convincing. The pettifoggers did not get discouraged. On the contrary, they infested the bishop with their pleas. As soon as he appeared, they rushed up to him in a mob, surrounded him, kissed his hand and his shoulder, protesting their respect and obedience, urging him, constraining him to busy himself about their affairs. Augustin yielded. But the next day in a vehement sermon he cried out to them: _Discedite a me, maligni!_--"Go far from me, ye wicked ones, and let me study in peace the commandments of my God!" II WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE BASILICA OF PEACE Let us try to see Augustin in his pulpit and in his episcopal city. We cannot do much more than reconstruct them by analogy. Royal Hippo is utterly gone. Bona, which has taken its place, is about a mile and a half away, and the fragments which have been dug out of the soil of the dead city are very inadequate. But Africa is full of Christian ruins, and chiefly of basilicas. Rome has nothing equal to offer. And that is easily understood. The Roman basilicas, always living, have been changed in the course of centuries, and have put on, time after time, the garb forced upon them by the fashion. Those of Africa have remained just as they were--at least in their principal lines--on the morrow of the Arab invasion, as Augustin's eyes had seen them. They are ruins, no doubt, and some very mutilated, but ruins of which no restoration has altered the plan or changed the features. As the traces of Hippo and its church are swept away or deeply buried, we are obliged, in order to get some approximate idea, to turn towards another African town which has suffered less from time and devastation. Theveste with its basilica, the best preserved, the finest and largest in all Africa, can restore to us a little of the look and colour and atmosphere of Hippo in those final years of the fourth century. Ancient Theveste was much larger than the present town, the French Tebessa. This, even reduced to the perimeter of the Byzantine fortress built under Justinian, still surprises the traveller by its singularly original aspect. Amid the wide plains of alfa-grass which surround it, with its quadrangular enclosure, its roads on the projection of the walls behind the battlements, its squat turrets, it has a look as archaic, as strange, as our own Aigues-Mortes amid its marshy fen. Nothing can be more rich and joyous to the eye than the rust which covers its ruins--a complete gilding that one would say had been laid on by the hand of man. It has a little temple which is a wonder and has been compared to the ancient Roman temple--the _Maison Carrée_--at Nîmes. But how much warmer, more living are the stones! The shafts of the columns, and the pilasters of the peristyle, barked by time, seem as scaly and full of sap as the trunks of palm-trees. The carved acanthus-leaves in the capitals of the pillars droop like bunches of palms reddened by the summer. Quite near, at the end of a narrow street, lined with modern and squalid hovels, the triumphal arch of Septimus Severus and of Caracalla extends its luminous bow; and high above the heavy mass of architecture, resting upon slim aerial little columns, a buoyant _ædiculus_ shines like a coral tabernacle or a coffer of yellow ivory. All about, forms in long draperies are huddled. The Numidian burnous has the whiteness of the toga. It has also the same graceful folds. At the sight of them you suddenly feel yourself to be in a strange land--carried back very far across the centuries. No sooner is the vision of antiquity outlined than it grows firm. Down below there, a horseman, clad in white, is framed with his white horse in the moulded cincture of a door. He passes, and upon the white wall of the near tower his shadow rests a moment, like a bas-relief upon the marble of a frieze. Beyond the Byzantine enclosure, the basilica, with its minor buildings, forms another town almost as large as the present Theveste, and also closed in by a belt of towers and ramparts. One is immediately struck by the opulent colour of the stones--rose, grown pale and thinner in the sun; and next, by the solid workmanship and the structural finish. The stones, as in the Greek temples, are placed on top of one another in regular layers: the whole holds together by the weight of the blocks and the polish of the surfaces. The proportions are on a large scale. There was no grudging for the buildings, or the materials, or the land. In front of the basilica is a wide rectangular court bordered with terraces; a portico at the far end; and in the middle four large fountains to water the walk. A flagged avenue, closed by two gateways, divides this court from the basilica, properly so called, which is reached by a staircase between two columns. The staircase leads to the _atrium_ decorated by a Corinthian portico. In the centre is the font for purifications, a huge monolithic bason in the shape of a four-leaved clover. Three doors give entrance from the _atrium_ to the basilica, which is divided by rows of green marble columns into three aisles. The galleries spread out along the side aisles. The floor was in mosaic. In the apse, behind the altar, stood the bishop's throne. Around the main building clustered a great number of others: a baptistry; many chapels (one vaulted in the shape of a three-leaved clover) dedicated, probably, to local martyrs; a graveyard; a convent with its cells, and its windows narrow as loop-holes; stables, sheds, and barns. Sheltered within its walls and towers, amid its gardens and outbuildings, the basilica of Theveste thus early resembled one of our great monasteries of the Middle Age, and also in certain ways the great mosques of Islam--the one at Cordova, or that at Damascus, with their vestibules surrounded by arcades, their basons for purification, and their walks bordered with orange-trees. The faithful and the pilgrims were at home there. They might spend the day stretched upon the flags of the porticoes, in loafing or sleeping in the blue shade of the columns and the cool of the fountains. In the full sense of the word, the church was the House of God, open to all. Very likely the basilicas at Hippo had neither the size nor the splendour of this one. Nor were there very many. At the time Augustin was ordained priest, that is to say, when the Donatists had still a majority in the town, it seems clear that the orthodox community owned but one single church, the _Basilica major_, or Basilica of Peace. Its very name proves this. With the schismatics, "Peace" was the official name for Catholicism. "Basilica of Peace" meant simply "Catholic Basilica." Was not this as much as to say that the others belonged to the dissenters? Doubtless they restored later on, after the promulgations of Honorius, the Leontian Basilica, founded by Leontius, Bishop of Hippo, and a martyr. A third was built by Augustin during his episcopate--the Basilica of the Eight Martyrs of the White Mace. It was in the Major, or Cathedral, that Augustin generally preached. To preach was not only a duty, but one of the privileges of a bishop. As has been said, the bishop alone had the right to preach in his church. This arose from the fact that the African dioceses, although comparatively widespread, had scarcely more people than one of our large parishes to-day. The position of a bishop was like that of one of our parish priests. There were almost as many as there were villages, and they were counted by hundreds. However that may be, preaching, the real apostolic ministry, was an exhausting task. Augustin preached almost every day, and often many times a day--rough work for a man with such a fragile chest. Thus it often happened that, to save his voice, he had to ask his audience to keep still. He spoke without study, in a language very near the language of the common people. Stenographers took down his sermons as he improvised them: hence those repetitions and lengthinesses which astonish the reader who does not know the reason for them. There is no plan evident in these addresses. Sometimes the speaker has not enough time to develop his thought. Then he puts off the continuation till the next day. Sometimes he comes with a subject all prepared, and then treats of another, in obedience to a sudden inspiration which has come to him with a verse of Scripture he has just read. Other times, he comments many passages in succession, without the least care for unity or composition. Let us listen to him in this Basilica of Peace, where during thirty-five years he never failed to announce the Word of God.... The chant of the Psalms has just died away. At the far end of the apse, Augustin rises from his throne with its back to the wall, his pale face distinct against the golden hue of the mosaic. From that place, as from the height of a pulpit, he commands the congregation, looking at them above the altar, which is a plain wooden table placed at the end of the great aisle. The congregation is standing, the men on one side, the women on the other. On the other side of the balustrade which separates them from the crowd, are the widows and consecrated virgins, wrapped in their veils black or purple. Some matrons, rather overdressed, lean forward in the front rank of the galleries. Their cheeks are painted, their eyelashes and eyebrows blackened, their ears and necks overloaded with jewels. Augustin has noticed them; after a while he will read them a lesson. This audience is all alive with sympathy and curiosity before he begins. With all its faith and all its passion it collaborates with the orator. It is turbulent also. It expresses its opinions and emotions with perfect freedom. The democratic customs of those African Churches surprise us to-day. People made a noise as at the theatre or the circus. They applauded; they interrupted the preacher. Certain among them disputed what was said, quoting passages from the Bible. Augustin is thus in perpetual communication with his audience. Nobody has done less soaring than he. He keeps his eye on the facial expressions and the attitudes of his public. He talks to them familiarly. When his sermon is a little lengthy, he wants to know if his listeners are getting tired--he has kept them standing so long! The time of the morning meal draws near. Bellies are fasting, stomachs wax impatient. Then says he to them with loving good-fellowship: "Go, my very dear brothers and sisters, go and restore your strength--I do not mean that of your minds, for I see well that they are tireless, but the strength of your bodies which are the servants of your souls. Go then and restore your bodies so that they may do their work well, and when they are restored, come back here and take your spiritual food." Upon certain days, a blast of the sirocco has passed over the town. The faithful, crowded in the aisles, are stifling, covered with sweat. The preacher himself, who is very much worked up, has his face dripping, and his clothes are all wet. By this he perceives that once more he has been extremely long. He excuses himself modestly. Or again, he jokes like a rough apostle who is not repelled by the odour of a lot of human-kind gathered together. "Oh, what a smell!" says he. "I must have been speaking a long while to-day." These good-natured ways won the hearts of the simple folk who listened to him. He is aware of the charm he exerts on them, and of the sympathy they give him back in gratitude for his charity. "You have loved to come and hear me, my brothers," he said to them. "But whom have you loved? If it is me--ah, even that is good, my brothers, for I want to be loved by you, if I do not want to be loved for myself. As for me, I love you in Christ. And you too, do you love me in Him. Let our love for one another moan together up to God--and that is the moaning of the Dove spoken of in the Scripture...." Although he preaches from the height of his episcopal throne, he is anxious that his hearers should regard him, Christianly, as their equal. So he seems as little of the bishop as possible. "All Christians are servants of the same master.... I have been in the place where you are--you, my brothers, who listen to me. And now, if I give the spiritual bread from the height of this chair to the servants of the Master of us all--well, it is but a few years since I received this spiritual food with them in a lower place. A bishop, I speak to laymen, but I know to how many future bishops I speak...." So he puts himself on an equal footing with his audience by the brotherly accent in his words. It is not Christendom, the Universal Church, or I know not what abstract listener he addresses, but the Africans, the people of Hippo, the parishioners of the Basilica of Peace. He knows the allusions, the comparisons drawn from local customs, which are likely to impress their minds. The day of the festival of St. Crispina, a martyr of those parts, after he had developed his subject at very great length, he asked pardon in these terms: "Let us think, brothers, that I have invited you to celebrate the birthday of the blessed Crispina, and that I have kept up the feast a little too long. Well, might not the same thing happen if some soldier were to ask you to dinner and obliged you to drink more than is wise? Let me do as much for the Word of God, with which you should be drunk and surfeited." Marriages, as well as birthday feasts, supplied the orator with vivid allegories. Thus he says that when a marriage feast is made in a house, organs play upon the threshold, and musicians and dancers begin to sing and to act their songs. And yet how poor are these earthly enjoyments which pass away so soon!... "In the House of God, the feast has no end." Continually, through the commentaries on the Psalms, like comparisons rise to the surface--parables suited to stir the imagination of Africans. A thousand details borrowed from local habits and daily life enliven the exegesis of the Bishop of Hippo. The mules and horses that buck when one is trying to cure them, are his symbol for the recalcitrant Donatists. The little donkeys, obstinate and cunning, that trot in the narrow lanes of Algerian _casbahs_, appear here and there in his sermons. The gnats bite in them. The unendurable flies plaster themselves in buzzing patches on the tables and walls. Then there are the illnesses and drugs of that country: the ophthalmias and collyrium. What else? The tarentulas that run along the beams on the ceiling; the hares that scurry without warning between the horses' feet on the great Numidian plains. Elsewhere, he reminds his audience of those men who wear an earring as a talisman; of the dealings between traders and sailors--a comparison which would go home to this seafaring people. The events of the time, the little happenings of the moment, glide into his sermons. At the same time as the service in church to-day, there is going to be horse-racing at the circus, and fights of wild beasts or gladiators at the arena. In consequence, there will not be many people in the Basilica. "So much the better," says Augustin. "My lungs will get some rest." Another time, it is advertised through the town that most sensational attractions will be offered at the theatre--there will be a scene representing the open sea. The preacher laughs at those who have deserted the church to go and see this illusion: "They will have," says he, "the sea on the stage; but we, brothers--ah, we shall have our port in Jesus Christ." This Saturday, while he is preaching, some Jewish women set themselves to dance and sing on the terraces of the near houses, by way of celebrating the Sabbath. In the basilica, the bashing of the crotolos can be heard, and the thuds of the tambourines. "They would do better," says Augustin, "to work and spin their wool." He dwells upon the catastrophes which were then convulsing the Roman world. The news of them spread with wonderful rapidity. Alaric's Barbarians have taken Rome and put it to fire and sword. At Jerusalem has been an earthquake, and the bishop John organizes a subscription for the sufferers throughout Christendom. At Constantinople, globes of fire have been seen in the sky. The _Serapeum_ of Alexandria has just been destroyed in a riot.... All these things follow each other in lively pictures, without any apparent order, throughout Augustin's sermons. It is not he who divides his discourse into three parts, and refrains from passing to the second till he has learnedly expounded the first. Whether he comments upon the Psalms or the Gospels, his sermons are no more than explanations of the Scriptures which he interprets, sometimes in a literal sense, and sometimes in an allegoric. Let us acknowledge it--his allegoric discourses repel us by their extreme subtilty, sometimes by their bad taste; and when he confines himself to the letter of the text, he stumbles among small points of grammar which weary the attention. We follow him no longer. We think his audience was very obliging to listen so long--and on their feet--to these endless dissertations.... And then, suddenly, a great lyrical and oratorical outburst which carries us away--a wind which blows from the high mountains, and in the wink of an eye sweeps away like dust all those fine-spun reasonings. He is fond of certain commonplaces, and also of certain books of the Bible--for instance, _The Song of Songs_ and the Gospel of St. John, the one satisfying in him the intellectual, and the other the mystic of love. He confronts the verse of the Psalm: "Before the morning star have I begotten thee," with the sublime opening of the Fourth Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word." He lingers upon the beauty of Christ: _Speciosus forma præ filiis hominum_, "Thou art fairer than the children of men." This is why he is always repeating with the Psalmist: "Thy face, Lord, have I sought"--_Quæsivi vultum tuum, Domine._ And the orator, carried away by enthusiasm, adds: "Magnificent saying! Nothing more divine could be said. Those feel it who truly love." Another of his favourite subjects is the kindness of God: _Videte et gustate quam mitis sit Dominus_--"O taste and see that the Lord is good." Naught can equal the pleasure of this contemplation, of this life in God. Augustin conceives it as a musician who has fathomed the secret of numbers. "Let your life," he said, "be one prolonged song.... We do not sing only with the voice and lips when we intone a canticle, but in us is an inward singing, because there is also in us Some One who listens...." To live this rhythmic and divine life we must get free of ourselves, give ourselves up utterly in a great outburst of charity. "Why," he cries--"Oh, why do you hesitate to give yourselves lest you should lose yourselves? It is rather by not giving yourselves that you lose yourselves. Charity herself speaks to you by the mouth of Wisdom and upholds you against the terror which fills you at the sound of those words: 'Give yourself.' If some one wanted to sell you a piece of land, he would say to you: 'Give me your gold.' And for something else, he would say: 'Give me your silver, give me your money.' Listen to what Charity says to you by the mouth of Wisdom: 'My son, give me thy heart.' 'Give me,' quoth she. Give what? 'My son, give me thy heart.'... Thy heart was not happy when it was governed by thee, and was thine, for it turned this way and that way after gawds, after impure and dangerous loves. 'Tis from there thy heart must be drawn. Whither lift it up? Where to place it? 'Give me thy heart,' says Wisdom, 'let it be mine, and it will belong to thee for always.'" After the chant of love, the chant of the Resurrection. _Cantate mihi canticum novum_--"Sing to me a new song!" Augustin repeats these words over and over again. "We wish to rise from the dead," cry souls craving for eternity. And the Church answers: "Verily, I say unto you, that you shall rise from the dead. Resurrection of bodies, resurrection of souls, ye shall be altogether reborn." Augustin has explained no dogma more passionately. None was more pleasing to the faithful of those times. Ceaselessly they begged to be strengthened in the conviction of immortality and of meeting again brotherlike in God. With what intrepid delight it rose--this song of the Resurrection in those clear African basilicas swimming in light, with all their brilliant ornamentation of mosaics and marbles of a thousand colours! And what artless and confident language those symbolic figures spoke which peopled their walls--the lambs browsing among clusters of asphodels, the doves, the green trees of Paradise. As in the Gospel parables, the birds of the field and farmyard, the fruits of the earth, figured the Christian truths and virtues. Their purified forms accompanied man in his ascension towards God. Around the mystic chrisms, circled garlands of oranges and pears and pomegranates. Cocks, ducks, partridges, flamingoes, sought their pasture in the Paradisal fields painted upon the walls of churches and cemeteries. Those young basilicas were truly the temples of the Resurrection, where all the creatures of the Ark saved from the waters had found their refuge. Never more in the centuries to follow shall humanity know this frank joy at having triumphed over death--this youth of hope. III THE BISHOP'S BURTHEN Augustin is not only the most human of all the saints, he is also one of the most amiable in all the senses of that hackneyed word--amiable according to the world, amiable according to Christ. To be convinced of this, he should be observed in his dealings with his hearers, with his correspondents, even with those he attacks--with the bitterest enemies of the faith. Preaching, the administration of property, and sitting in judgment were but a part of that episcopal burthen, _Sarcina episcopatus_, under which he so often groaned. He had furthermore to catechize, baptize, direct consciences, guard the faithful against error, and dispute with all those who threatened Catholicism. Augustin was a light of the Church. He knew it. Doing his best, with admirable conscientiousness and charity he undertook these tasks. God knows what it must have cost this Intellectual to fulfil precisely all the duties of his ministry, down to the humblest. What he would have liked, above all, was to pass his life in studying the Scriptures and meditating on the dogmas--not from a love of trifling with theories, but because he believed such knowledge necessary to whoever gave forth the Word of God. Most of the priests of that age arrived at the priesthood without any previous study. They had to improvise, as quick as they could, a complete education in religious subjects. We are left astounded before the huge labour which Augustin must have given to acquire his. Before long he even dominated the whole exegetical and theological knowledge of his time. In his zeal for divine letters, he knew sleep no more. And yet he did not neglect any of his tasks. Like the least of our parish priests, he prepared the neophytes for the Sacraments. He was an incomparable catechist, so clear-sighted and scrupulous that his instructions may still be taken as models by the catechists of to-day. Neither did he, as an aristocrat of the intelligence, only trouble himself with persons of culture, and leave to his deacons the care of God's common people. All had a right to his lessons, the simple peasants as well as the rich and scholarly. One day, a farmer he was teaching walked off and left him there in the middle of his discourse. The poor man, who had fasted, and now listened to his bishop standing, was faint from hunger and felt his legs tremble under him. He thought it better to run away than to fall down exhausted at the feet of the learned preacher. With his knowledge of men, Augustin carefully studied the kind of people his catechumens were, and adapted his instructions to the character of each. If they were city folk, Carthaginians, used to spending their time in theatres and taverns, drunken and lazy, he took a different tone with them from what he used with rustics who had never left their native _gourbi_. If he were dealing with fashionable people who had a taste for literature, he did not fail to exalt the beauties of the Scripture, although, he would say, they had there a very trifling attraction compared to the truths contained in it. Of all the catechumens, the hardest to deal with, the most fearsome in his eyes, were the professors--the rhetoricians and the grammarians. These men are bloated with vanity, puffed up with intellectual pride. Augustin knew something about that. It will be necessary to rouse them violently, and before anything else, to exhort them to humility of mind. The good saint goes further. Not only is he anxious about the souls, but also about the bodies of his listeners. Are they comfortable for listening? As soon as they feel tired they must not hesitate to sit down, as is the usage in the basilicas beyond seas. "Would not our arrogance be unbearable," he asked, "if we forbade men who are our brothers to sit down in our presence, and, much more, men whom we ought to try with all possible care to make our brothers?..." If they are seen to yawn, "then things ought to be said to them to awaken their attention, or to scatter the sad thoughts which may have come into their minds." The catechist should shew, now a serene joy--the joy of certainty; now a gaiety which charms people into belief; "and always that light-heartedness we should have in teaching." Even if we ourselves are sad from this reason or that, let us remember that Jesus Christ died for those who are listening to us. Is not the thought of bringing Him disciples enough to make us joyful? Bishop Augustin set the example for his priests. It is not enough to have prepared the conversion of his catechumens with the subtlety of the psychologist, and such perfect Christian charity; but he accompanies them to the very end, and charges them once more before the baptismal piscina. How he is changed! One thinks of the boon-fellow of Romanianus and of Manlius Theodorus, of the young man who followed the hunts at Thagaste, and who held forth on literature and philosophy in a select company before the beautiful horizons of the lake of Como. Here he is now with peasants, slaves, sailors, and traders. And he takes pleasure in their society. It is his flock. He ought to love it with all his soul in Jesus Christ. What an effort and what a victory upon himself an attitude so strange reveals to us! For really this liking for mean people was not natural to him. He must have put an heroic will-power into it, helped by Grace. A like sinking of his preferences is evident in the director of consciences he became. Here he was obliged to give himself more thoroughly. He was at the mercy of the souls who questioned him, who consulted him as their physician. He spends his time in advising them, and exercises a never-failing supervision of their morals. It is an almost discouraging enterprise to bend these hardened pagans--above all, these Africans--to Christian discipline. Augustin is continually reproaching their drunkenness, gluttony, and lust. The populace were not the only ones to get drunk and over-eat themselves. The rich at their feasts literally stuffed till they choked. The Bishop of Hippo never lets a chance go by to recall them to sobriety. Oftener still, he recalls them to chastity. He writes long letters on this subject which are actual treatises. The morals of the age and country are fully disclosed in them. Husbands are found loudly claiming a right to free love for themselves, while they force their wives to conjugal fidelity. The adultery they allow themselves, they punish with death in their wives. They make an abusive practice of divorce. Upon the most futile reasons, they send the wife the _libellus repudii_--the bill repudiating the marriage--as the various peoples of Islam do still. This society in a state of transition was always creating cases of conscience for strict Christians. For example: If a man cast off his wife under pretext of adultery, might he marry again? Augustin held that no marriage can be dissolved as long as both parties are living. But may not this prohibition provoke husbands to kill their adulterous wives, so as to be free to take a new wife? Another problem: A catechumen divorced under the pagan law and since remarried, presents himself for baptism. Is he not an adulterer in the eyes of the Church? A man who lives with a woman and does not hide it, who even declares his firm intention of continuing to live with his concubine--can he be admitted to baptism? Augustin has to answer all these questions, and go into the very smallest details of casuistry. Is it forbidden to eat the meats consecrated to idols, even when a man or woman is dying of hunger? May one enter into agreements with native camel-drivers and carriers who swear by their gods to keep the bargain? May a lie be told in certain conditions?--say, so as to get among heretics in pretending to be one of themselves, and thus be able to spy on them and denounce them? May adultery be practised with a woman who promises in exchange to point out heretics?... The Bishop of Hippo severely condemns all these devious or shameful ways, all these compromises which are contrary to the pure moral teaching of the Gospel. But he does this without affecting intolerance and rigidity, and with a reminder that the evil of sin lies altogether in the intention, and in the consent of the will. In a word, one must tolerate and put up with what one is powerless to hinder. Other questions, which it is quite impossible to repeat here, give us a strange idea of the corruption of pagan morals. Augustin had all he could do to maintain the Christian rule in such surroundings, where the Christians themselves were more or less tainted with paganism. But if this troop of sinners and backsliders was hard to drive, the devout were perhaps harder. There were the _continents_--the widowers and widows who had made a vow of chastity and found this vow heavy; the consecrated virgins who lived in too worldly a fashion; the nuns who rebelled against their spiritual director or their superior; the monks, either former slaves who did not want to do another stroke of work, or charlatans who played upon public credulity in selling talismans and miraculous ointments. Then, the married women who refused themselves to their husbands; and those who gave away their goods to the poor without their husbands' consent; and also the proud virgins and widows who despised and condemned marriage. Then came the crowd of pious souls who questioned Augustin on points of dogma, who wanted to know all, to clear up everything; those who thought they should be able here below to see God face to face, to know how we shall arise, and who asked if the angels had bodies.... Augustin complains that they are annoying, when he has so many other things to trouble him, and that they take him from his studies. But he tries charitably to satisfy them all. Besides all this, he was obliged to keep up a correspondence with a great number of people. In addition to his friends and fellow-bishops, he wrote to unknown people and foreigners; to men in high place and to lowly people; to the proconsuls, the counts and the vicars of Africa; to the very mighty Olympius, Master of the Household to the Emperor Honorius; or again, "to the Right Honourable Lady Maxima," "to the Illustrious Ladies Proba and Juliana," "to the Very Holy Lady Albina"--women who belonged either to the provincial nobility, or to the highest aristocracy of Rome. To whom did he not write?... And what is admirable in these letters is that he does not answer negligently to get rid of a tiresome duty. Almost all of them are full of substantial teaching, long thought over. Many were intended to be published--they are practically charges. And yet, however grave the tone of them may be, the cultivated man of the world he had been may be traced. His correspondents, after the fashion of the time, overwhelm the bishop with the most fulsome praises. These he accepts, with much ceremony indeed, but he does accept them as evidence of the charity of his brethren. Ingenuously, he does his best to return them. Let us not grow over-scandalized because our men of letters of to-day have debased the value of complimentary language by squandering and exaggerating it. The most austere cotemporaries of Augustin, and Augustin himself, outdid them by a long way in the art and in the abuse of compliments. Paulinus of Nola, always beflowered and elegant, wrote to Augustin: "Your letters are a luminous collyrium spread over the eyes of my mind." Augustin, who remonstrated with him upon the scarcity of his own letters, replies in language which our own _Précieuses_ would not have disowned: "What! You allow me to pass two summers--and two African summers!--in such thirst?... Would to God that you would allow enter to the opulent banquet of your book, the long fast from your writings which you have put me upon during all a year! If this banquet be not ready, I shall not give over my complaints, unless, indeed, that in the time between, you send me something to keep up my strength." A certain Audax, who begged the honour of a special letter from the great man, calls him "the oracle of the Law"; protests that the whole world celebrates and admires him; and finally, at the end of his arguments, conjures him in verse to "Let fall upon me the dew of thy divine word." Augustin, with modesty and benignity, returns his compliments, but not without slipping into his reply a touch of banter: "Allow me to point out to you that your fifth line has seven feet. Has your ear betrayed you, or did you want to find out if I was still capable of judging these things?"... Truly, he is always capable of judging these things, nor is he sorry to have it known. A young Greek named Dioscorus, who is passing through Carthage, questions him upon the philosophy of Cicero. Augustin exclaims at any one daring to interrupt a bishop about such trifles. Then, little by little, he grows milder, and carried away by his old passion, he ends by sending the young man quite a dissertation on this good subject. Those are among his innocent whimsicalities. Then, alongside of letters either too literary, or erudite, or profound, there are others which are simply exquisite, such as the one he wrote to a young Carthage girl called Sapida. She had embroidered a tunic for her brother. He was dead, and she asked Augustin kindly to wear this tunic, telling him that if he would do this, it would be a great comfort for her in her grief. The bishop consented very willingly. "I accept this garment," he said to her, "and I have begun to wear it before writing to you...." Then gently he pities her sorrow, and persuades her to resignation and hope. "We should not rebuke people for weeping over the dead who are dear to them.... When we think of them, and through habit we look for them still around us, then the heart breaks, and the tears fall like the blood of our broken heart...." At the end, in magnificent words, he chants the hymn of the Resurrection: "My daughter, your brother lives in his soul, if in his body he sleeps. Does not the sleeper wake? God, who has received his soul, will put it again in the body He has taken from him, not to destroy it--oh, no, but some day to give it to him back." * * * * * This correspondence, voluminous as it is, is nothing beside his numberless treatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it is by these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended by hiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. And this is a mistake. He himself would not have allowed for a moment that his _Confessions_ should be preferred to his treatises on Grace. To study, to comment the Scriptures, to draw more exact definitions from the dogmas--he saw no higher employment for his mind, or obligation more important for a bishop. To believe so as to understand, to understand the better to believe--it is a ceaseless movement of the intelligence which goes from faith to God and from God to faith. He throws himself into this great labour without a shade of any attempt to make literature, with a complete sinking of his tastes and his personal opinions, and in it he entirely forgets himself. One single time he has thought of himself, and it is precisely in the _Confessions_, the spirit of which modern people understand so ill, and where they try to find something quite different from what the author intended. He composed them just after he was raised to the bishopric, to defend himself against the calumnies spread about his conduct. It seems as if he wanted to say to his detractors: "You believe me guilty. Well, I am so, and more perhaps than you think, but not in the way you think." A great religious idea alters this personal defence. It is less a confession, or an excuse for his faults, in the present sense of the word, than a continual glorification of the divine mercy. It is less the shame of his sins he confesses, than the glory of God. After that, he never thought again of anything but Truth and the Church, and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, the Pelagians--the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by without refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. He might well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fighting journalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderful vigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have the last word. He brought eloquence to it, yet more charity--sometimes even wit. And lastly, he had a patience which nothing could dishearten. He repeats the same things a hundred times over. These tiresome repetitions, into which he was driven by the obstinacy of his opponents, caused him real pain. Every time it became necessary, he took up again the endless demonstration without letting himself grow tired. The moment it became a question of the Truth, Augustin could not see that he had any right to keep quiet. In Africa and elsewhere they made fun of what they called his craze for scribbling. He himself, in his _Retractations_, is startled by the number of his works. He turns over the Scripture saying which the Donatists amusingly opposed to him: _Væ mullum loquentibus_--"Woe unto them of many words." But calling God to witness, he says to Him: _Væ tacentibus de te_--"Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee." In the eyes of Augustin, the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. And elsewhere he adds: "They may believe me or not as they will, but I like much better to read than to write books...." In any case, his modesty was evident. "I am myself," he acknowledges, "almost always dissatisfied with what I say." To the heretics he declares, with a glance back at his own errors, "I know by experience how easy it is to be wrong." When there is some doubt in questions of dogma, he does not force his explanations, but suggests them to his readers. How much intellectual humility is in that prayer which ends his great work on the Trinity: "Lord my God, one Trinity, if in these books I have said anything which comes from Thee, may Thou and Thy chosen receive it. But if it is from me it comes, may Thou and Thine forgive me." And again, how much tolerance and charity in those counsels to the faithful of his diocese who, having been formerly persecuted by the Donatists, now burned to get their revenge: "It is the voice of your bishop, my brothers, sounding in your ears. He implores you, all of you who are in this church, to keep yourselves from insulting those who are outside, but rather to pray that they may enter with you into communion." Elsewhere, he reminds his priests that they must preach at the Jews in a spirit of friendliness and loving-kindness, without troubling to know if they listen with gratitude or indignation. "We ought not," said he, "to bear ourselves proudly against these broken branches of Christ's tree."... This charity and moderation took nothing from the firmness of his character. This he proved in a startling way in the discussion he had with St. Jerome over a passage In the Epistle to the Galatians, and upon the new translation, of the Bible which Jerome had undertaken. The solitary of Bethlehem saw a "feint" on the part of St. Paul in the disputed passage: Augustin said, a "lie." What, then, would become of evangelic truth if in such a place the Apostle had lied? And would not this be a means of authorizing all the exegetical fantasies of heresiarchs, who already rejected as altered or forged all verses of the holy books which conflicted with their own doctrines?... As to the new translation of the Bible, it would bring about trouble in the African churches, where they were accustomed to the ancient version of the Septuagint. The mistranslations, pointed out by Jerome in the old version, would upset the faithful and lead them to suspect that the entire Scripture was false. In this double matter, Augustin defended at once orthodoxy and tradition from very praiseworthy reasons of prudence. Jerome retorted in a most aggressive and offensive tone. He flatly accused the Bishop of Hippo of being jealous of him and of wishing to cut out a reputation for learning at his expense. In front of his younger and more supple adversary, he took on the air of an old wrestler who was still capable of knocking out any one who had the audacity to attack him. He hurled at Augustin this phrase heavy with menaces: "The tired ox stands firmer than ever on his four legs." For all that, Augustin stuck to his opinion, and he confined himself to replying gently: "In anything I say, I am not only always ready to receive your observations upon what you find wounding and contrary to your feelings, but I even ask your advice as earnestly as I can."... IV AGAINST "THE ROARING LIONS" One day (this was soon after he became bishop) Augustin went to visit a Catholic farmer in the suburbs of Hippo, whose daughter had been lessoned by the Donatists, and had just enrolled herself among their consecrated virgins. The father at first had shouted at the deserter, and flogged her unmercifully by way of improving her state of mind. Augustin, when he heard of the affair, condemned the farmer's brutality and declared that he would never receive the girl back into the community unless she came of her own free will. He then went out to the place to try and settle the matter. On the way, as he was crossing an estate which belonged to a Catholic matron, he fell in with a priest of the Donatist Church at Hippo. The priest at once began to insult him and his companions, and yelled: "Down with the traitors! Down with the persecutors!" And he vomited out abominations against the matron herself who owned the land. As much from prudence as from Christian charity, Augustin did not answer. He even prevented those with him from falling upon the insulter. Incidents of this kind happened almost every day. About the same time, the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of another apostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loafer who beat his old mother, and the bishop severely rebuked his monstrous conduct. "Well, as you talk in that tone of voice," said the loafer, "I'm going to be a Donatist." Through bravado, he continued to ill-treat the poor old woman, and to make the worst kind of threats. He roared in savage fury: "Yes, I'll become a Donatist, and I'll have your blood." And the young ruffian did really go over to the Donatist party. In accordance with the custom among the heretics, he was solemnly rebaptized in their basilica, and he exhibited himself on the platform clad in the white robe of the purified. People in Hippo were much shocked. Augustin, full of indignation, addressed his protests to Proculeianus, the Donatist bishop. "What! is this man, all bloody with a murder in his conscience, to walk about for eight days in white robes as a model of innocence and purity?" But Proculeianus did not condescend to reply. These cynical proceedings were trifling compared to the vexations which the Donatists daily inflicted on their opponents. Not only did they tamper with Augustin's people, but the country dwellers of the Catholic Church were continually interfered with on their lands, pillaged, ravaged, and burned out by mobs of fanatical brigands who organized a rule of terror from one end of Numidia to the other. Supported in secret by the Donatists, they called themselves "the Athletes of Christ." The Catholics had given them the contemptuous name of "Circoncelliones," or prowlers around cellars, because they generally plundered cellars and grain-houses. Troops of fanaticized and hysterical women rambled round with them, scouring the country like your true bacchantes, clawing the unfortunate wretches who fell into their hands, burning farms and harvests, broaching barrels of wine and oil, and crowning these exploits by orgies with "the Athletes of Christ." When they saw a haystack blazing in the fields, the country-folk were panic-stricken--the "Circoncelliones" were not far off. Soon they appeared, brandishing their clubs and bellowing their war cry: _Deo laudes!_--"Praise be to God." "Your shout," said Augustin to them, "is more dreaded by our people than the roaring of lions." Something had to be done to quell these furious monsters, and to resist the encroachments and forcible acts of the heretics. These, by way of frightening the Catholic bishops, told them roundly: "We don't want any of your disputes, and we are going to rebaptize just as it suits us. We are going to lay snares for your sheep and to rend them like wolves. As for you, if you are good shepherds, keep quiet!" Augustin was not a man to keep quiet, nor yet to spend his strength in small local quarrels. He saw big; he did not imprison himself within the limits of his diocese. He knew that Numidia and a good part of Africa were in the hands of the Donatists; that they had a rival primate to the Catholic primate at Carthage; that they had even sent a Pope of their community to Rome. In a word, they were in the majority. Everywhere a dissenting Church rose above the orthodox Church, when it did not succeed in stifling it altogether. At all costs the progress of this sect must be stopped. In Augustin's eyes there was no more urgent work. For him and his flock it was a question of insuring their lives, since they were attacked even in their fields and houses. From the moment he first came to Hippo, as a simple priest, he had thrown himself intrepidly into this struggle. He never ceased till Donatism was conquered and trampled underfoot. To establish peace and Catholic unity everywhere was the great labour of his episcopate. Who, then, were these terrible Donatists whom we have been continually striking against since the beginning of this history? It would soon be a century since they had been disturbing and desolating Africa. Just after the great persecution of Diocletian, the sect was born, and it increased with amazing rapidity. During this persecution, evidence had not been wanting of the moral slackness in the African Church. A large number of lay people apostatized, and a good number of bishops and priests handed over to the pagan authorities, besides the devotional objects, the Scriptures and the muniments of their communities. In Numidia, and especially at Constantine, scandalous scenes took place. The cowardice of the clergy was lamentable. Public opinion branded with the names of _traditors_, or traitors, those who had weakened and given over the sacred books to the pagans. The danger once over, the Numidians, whose behaviour had been so little brilliant, determined to redeem themselves by audacity, and to prove with superb impudence that they had been braver than the others. So they set themselves to shout _traditor_ against whoever displeased them, and particularly against those of Carthage and the Proconsulate. At bottom it was the old rivalry between the two Africas, East and West. Under the reign of Constantine a peace had been patched up, when it fell out that a new Bishop of Carthage had to be elected, and the Archdeacon Cæcilianus, whose name was put forward, was accused of preventing the faithful from visiting the martyrs in their prisons. The zealots contended that in collusion with his bishop, Mensurius, he had given up the Holy Scriptures to the Roman authorities to be burned. The election promised to be stormy. The supporters of the Archdeacon, who feared the hostility of the Numidian bishops, did not wait for their arrival. They hurried things over. Cæcilianus was elected and consecrated by three bishops of the district, of whom one was a certain Felix of Abthugni. At once the opposite clan, backed up by the Numidians, objected. At their head was a wealthy Spanish woman named Lucilla, an unbalanced devotee, who, it seemed, always carried about her person a bone of a martyr, and a doubtful one at that. She would ostentatiously kiss her relic before receiving the Eucharist. The Archdeacon Cæcilianus forbade this devotion as superstitious, and thus made a relentless enemy of the fanatical Spaniard. All the former accusations were renewed against him, and it was added that Felix of Abthugni, who had consecrated him, was a _traditor_. Hence the election was void, by the single fact of the unworthiness of the consecrating bishops. Lucilla, having bribed a section of the bishops assembled in council, Cæcilianus was deposed, and the deacon Majorinus elected in his room. He himself was soon after succeeded by Donatus, an active, clever, and energetic man, who organized resistance so ably, and who represented so well the spirit of the sect, that he left it his name. Henceforth, Donatism enters into history. But Cæcilianus had on his side the bishops overseas and the Imperial Government. The Pope of Rome and the Emperor recognized him as legitimately elected. Besides that, he cleared himself of all the grievances urged against him. Finally, an inquiry, conducted by laymen, proved that Felix of Abthugni was not a _traditor_. The Donatists appealed to Constantine, then to two Councils convoked successively at Rome and Arles. Everywhere they were condemned. Moreover, the Council of Arles declared that the character of him who confers the Sacraments has no influence whatever on their validity. Thus, baptism and ordination, even conferred by a _traditor_, were canonically sound. This decision was regarded as an abominable heresy by the Donatists. As a matter of fact, there was an old African tradition, accepted by St. Cyprian himself, that an unworthy priest could not administer the Sacraments. The local prejudice would not yield: all were rebaptized who had been baptized by the Catholics--that is to say, by the supporters of the _traditors_. The theological question was complicated with a question of property which was all but insoluble. Since the Donatist bishops were resolved to separate from the Catholic communion, did they mean to give up, with their title, their basilicas and the property belonging to their churches? Supposing that they themselves were disinterested, they had behind them the crowd of clients and land-tillers who got their living out of the Church, and dwelt on Church property. Never would these people allow a rival party to alter the direction of the charities, to plant themselves in their fields and their _gourbis_, to expel them from their cemeteries and basilicas. Other reasons, still deeper perhaps, induced the Donatists to persevere in the schism. These religious dissensions were agreeable to that old spirit of division which at all times has been the evil genius of Africa. The Africans have always felt the need of segregating themselves from one another in hostile _cofs_. They hate each other from one village to another--for nothing, just, for the pleasure of hating and felling each other to the ground. At bottom, here is what Donatism really was: It was an extra sharp attack of African individualism. These rebels brought in nothing new in dogma. They would not even have been heretics without their claim to rebaptize. They limited themselves to retain a position gained long ago; to keep their churches and properties, or to seize those of the Catholics upon the pretence that they were themselves the legitimate owners. With that, they affected a respect for tradition, an austerity in morals and discipline, which made them perfect puritans. Yes, they were the pure, the irreconcilables, who alone had not bent before the Roman officials. All this was very pleasing to the discontented and quarrelsome, and caressed the popular instinct in its tendency to particularism. That is why the sect became, little by little, mistress of almost the whole country. Then it subdivided, crumbled up into little churches which excommunicated each other. In Southern Numidia, the citadels of orthodox Donatism, so to speak, were Thimgad and Bagai. Carthage, with its primate, was the official centre. But in the Byzacena and Tripolitana Regio, there were the Maximianists, and the Rogatists in Mauretania, who had cut themselves off from the Great Church. These divisions of the schism corresponded closely enough to the natural compartments of North Africa. There must be some incompatibility of temper between these various regions. To this day, Algiers prides itself on not thinking like Constantine, which does not think like Bona or like Tunis. Are we to see in Donatism a nationalist or separatist movement directed against the Roman occupation? That would be to transport quite modern ideas into antiquity. No more in Augustin's time than in our own was there such a thing as African nationality. But if the sectaries had no least thought of separating from Rome, it is none the less true that they were in rebellion against her representatives, temporal as well as spiritual. Supposing that Rome had yielded to them--an impossible event, of course--that would have meant a surrender to the claims of Africans who wished to be masters of their property as well as of their religious beliefs in their own country. What more could they have wanted? It little mattered to them who was the nominal master, provided that they had the realities of government in their hands. Altogether, Donatism is a regionalist revindication, very strongly characterized. It is a remarkable fact that it was among the indigenous population, ignorant of Latin, that the most of its adherents were recruited. * * * * * Such was the position of the Church in Africa when Augustin was named Bishop of Hippo. He judged it at once, with his clear-sightedness, his strong good sense, his broad outlook of a Roman citizen freed from the smallnesses of a local spirit, his Christian idealism which took no heed of the accidents or considerations of worldly prosperity. What! was Catholicism to become an African religion, a restricted sect, wretchedly tied to the letter of tradition, to the exterior practices of worship? To reign in a little corner of the world--did Christ die for that? Never! Christ died for the wide world. The only limits of His Church are the limits of the universe. And besides, in this resolution to exclude, what becomes of the great principle of Charity? It is by charity, above all, that we are Christians. Faith without love is a faith stagnant and dead.... Augustin also foresaw the consequences of spiritual separation; he had them already under his eyes. The Church is the great spring, not only of love, but of intelligence. Once cut away from this reviving spring, Donatism would become dry and stunted like a branch stripped from a tree. The deep sense of its dogmas would become impoverished as its works emptied themselves of the spirit of charity. Obstinacy, narrowness, lack of understanding, fanaticism, and cruelty--there you had the inevitable fruits of schism. Augustin knew the rudeness and ignorance of his opponents, even of the most cultivated among them: he might well ask himself in anguish what would become of the African Church deprived of the benefit of Roman culture, isolated from the great intellectual current which united all the churches beyond seas. Finally, he knew his fellow-countrymen; he knew that the Donatists, even victorious, even sole masters of the land, would turn against themselves the fury they now satisfied against the Catholics, and never stop tearing each other in pieces. Here was now nearly a hundred years that they had kept Africa in fire and blood. This meant before very long a return to barbarism. Separated from Catholicism, they would really separate from the Empire and even from civilization. And so it was that in fighting for Catholic unity, Augustin fought for the Empire and for civilization. Confronted with these barbarians and sectaries, his attitude could not be doubtful for a single moment. He must do his best to bring them back to the Church. It was only a matter of hitting upon the most effectual means. Preaching, for an orator such as he was, should be an excellent weapon. His eloquence, his dialectic, his profane and sacred learning, gave him an immense superiority over the defenders of the opposite side. He certainly kept in the Church many Catholics who were ready to apostatize. But before the crowd of schismatics, all these high gifts were as good as lost. The people were in no wise anxious to know upon which side truth was to be found. They were Donatists, as they were Numidians or Carthaginians, without knowing why--because everybody about them was. Many might have answered like that grammarian of Constantine, who told the Inquisitors with astute simplicity: "I am a professor of Roman literature, a teacher of Latin grammar. My father was a decurion at Constantine; my grandfather was a soldier and had served in the guard. Our family is of Moorish blood.... As for me, I am quite ignorant about the origin of the schism: I am just one of the ordinary faithful of the people called Christians. When I was at Carthage, Bishop Secundus came there one day. I heard tell that they found out that Bishop Cæcilianus had been ordained irregularly by I don't know who, and they elected another bishop against him. That's how the schism began at Carthage. I have no means of knowing much about the origin of the schism, because there has never been more than one church in our city. If there has been a schism here, we know nothing about it." When a grammarian talked thus, what could have been the thoughts of agricultural labourers, city workmen, and slaves? They belonged to an estate, or a quarter of a town, where no other faith than theirs had ever been professed. They were Donatists like their employers, like their neighbours, like the other people of the _cof_ to which they had belonged from father to son. The theological side of the question left them absolutely indifferent. If Augustin tried to debate with them, they refused to listen and referred him to their bishops. That was the word of command. The bishops, on their side, avoided all discussion. Augustin tried in vain to arrange an argument with Proculeianus, his Donatist colleague at Hippo. And if some of them shewed themselves more obliging, the evasions and reticences of the antagonist, and sometimes outside circumstances, made the debate utterly futile. At Thubursicum the audience raised such a noise in the place where Augustin was debating with the bishop Fortunius, that they were no longer able to hear each other. At other times, the meeting sank to an oratorical joust, wherein they tired themselves out passading against words, instead of attacking the matters at issue. Augustin felt that he was losing his time. Besides, the Donatist bishops presented an obstinate front against which everything smashed. "Leave us in our errors," they said ironically. "If we are lost in your eyes, why follow us about? We don't want to be saved." And they prohibited their flocks from saluting Catholics, from speaking to them, from going into their churches or into their houses, from sitting down in the midst of them. They laid an interdict on their adversaries. Primanius, the Donatist Primate of Carthage, upon being invited to a conference, answered proudly: "The sons of the martyrs can have nothing to do with the race of traitors." This being the state of the case, no method of pacification was left but written controversy. Augustin shewed himself tireless at it. It was chiefly in these letters and treatises against the Donatists that he was not afraid to repeat himself. He knew that he was dealing with the deaf, and with the deaf who did not want to hear: he was obliged to raise his voice. With admirable self-denial he reiterated the same arguments a hundred times over, a hundred times took up the history of the quarrel from the beginning, spreading such a light over the quibbles and refinings of his contradictors, that it should have brought conviction to the bluntest minds. "No," he repeated, "Cæcilianus was not a _traditor_, nor Felix of Abthugni either who consecrated him bishop. The documents are there to prove this. And even supposing they were, can the fault of a single man be charged to the whole Church?... Then why do you baptize the Catholics under the pretence that their priests are _traditors_ and as such unworthy to administer the Sacraments? It is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and not the virtue of the priest which renders baptism efficacious. If it were otherwise, what was the good of the Redemption? It is the fact that by the voluntary death of Christ, all men have been called to salvation. Salvation is not the privilege of Africans only. Being Catholic, the Church should take in the whole world...." In the long run, these continual repetitions end by seeming wearisome to modern readers: for us there arises out of all these discussions a dense and intolerable boredom. But let us remember that all this was singularly living for Augustin's cotemporaries, that these thankless developments were read with passion. And then, too, it was a question of the unity of the Church which involved, as we cannot too often repeat, the interest of the Empire and civilization. Against so persuasive a power the Donatists opposed a conspiracy of silence. Their bishops forbade the people to read what Augustin wrote. They did more--they concealed their own libels so that it was impossible to reply to them. But Augustin used all his skill to unearth them. He refuted them, and had his refutations recopied and posted on the walls of the basilicas. The copies circulated through the province and the whole Roman world. This would have had an excellent result if the quarrel had been entirely over questions of theory. But immense property interests came into it, and rancours and terrible hates. Augustin was forced to pass from verbal polemics to direct action--defensive action, at first, and then attack. While he and his fellow-bishops did their utmost to preach peace, the Donatist bishops urged their followers to the holy war. Augustin even received threats on his life. During one of his visitations, he was nearly assassinated. Men in ambush lay in wait for him. By a providential chance, he took the wrong road, and owed his life to this mistake. His pupil Possidius, who was then Bishop of Guelma, was not so lucky. Brought to bay in a house by the Donatist bishop Crispinus, he defended himself desperately. They set fire to the house to turn him out. When there was nothing else left but to be burned alive, he did come out. The band of Donatists seized him, and would have beaten his brains out, if Crispinus himself, fearing a prosecution for murder, had not interfered. But the assailants sacked the property and slaughtered all the horses and mules in the stables. At Bagai, Bishop Maximianus was stabbed in his basilica. A furious mob smashed the altar and began to strike the victim with the fragments, and left him for dead on the flags. The Catholics lifted up his body, but the Donatists plucked him out of their hands and flung him from the top of a tower, and he fell on a dunghill which broke the fall. The unhappy man still breathed, and by a miracle he recovered. Meanwhile, the Circoncelliones, armed with their bludgeons, continued to pillage and burn the farms. They tortured the owners to extract their money from them. They made them toil round the mill-path like beasts of burthen, while they lashed at them with whips. At their back, the Donatist priests invaded the Catholic churches and lands. There and then they rebaptized the labourers. These doings were, indeed, very like the practices of the African Mussulmans to-day, who, in like circumstances, always begin by converting the Christian farm-hands by main force. Then they purified the basilicas by scraping down the walls and washing the floors with big douches of water; and after demolishing the altar, they scattered salt where it had stood. It was a perfect disinfection. The Donatists treated the Catholics like the plague-stricken. Such acts cried out for vengeance. Augustin, who up till this time had recoiled from asking the public authorities to prosecute, who, as an observer of the apostolic tradition, did not recognize the interference of the civil power in Church matters--well, Augustin had to give way to circumstances, and also to the pressure brought to bear on him by his colleagues. Councils assembled at Carthage petitioned the Emperor to take exceptional measures against the Donatists, who laughed at all the laws directed against heretics. When they were summoned before the courts they demonstrated to the judges, who were often pagans incompetent to decide in these questions, that it was they who really belonged to the only orthodox Church. Something must be done to end this equivocal position, and to bring about once for all a categorical condemnation of the schism. Augustin, acting in concert with the primate Aurelius, was the ruling spirit of these meetings. Let us not judge his conduct by modern ideas, or be in a hurry to exclaim against his intolerance. He and the Catholic bishops, in acting thus, were complying with the old tradition which had influenced all the pagan governments. Rome, particularly, though it recognized all the local sects, all the foreign religions, never allowed any of its subjects to refuse to fall in with the official religion. The persecutions of the Christians and the Jews had no other motive. Now that it was become the State religion, Christianity, willingly or unwillingly, had to summon people to the same obedience. The Emperors made a special point of this from political reasons easy to understand--to prevent riots and maintain public order. Even if the bishops had refrained from all complaint, the Imperial Government would have acted without them and suppressed the disturbances caused by the heretics. Just look at the situation and the men as they were at that moment in Africa. It was the Catholics who were persecuted, and that with revolting fury and cruelty. They were obliged to defend themselves. In the next place, the distribution of property in those countries made conversions in batches singularly easy. Multitudes of farm tenants, workmen, and agricultural slaves, lived upon the immense estates of one owner. Without any interest in dogmatic questions, they were Donatists simply because their master was. To change these devouring wolves into tranquil sheep, it was often quite enough if the master got converted. The great blessing of peace depended upon pressure being brought to bear on certain persons. When all day and every day there was a risk of being murdered or burned out by irresponsible ruffians, the temptation was very strong to fall back on such a prompt and simple remedy. Augustin and his colleagues ended by making up their minds to do so. For that matter, they had no choice. They were bound to strike, or be themselves suppressed by their enemies. However, before resorting to rigorous measures, they resolved to send forth a supreme appeal for reconciliation. The Catholics proposed a meeting to the Donatists in which they would loyally examine one another's grievances. As personal or material questions made the great bar to an understanding, they promised that every Donatist bishop who turned convert should keep his see. In places where a schismatic and an orthodox bishop were found together, they would come to a friendly agreement to govern the diocese by turns. Where it was impossible for this to be done, it was proposed that the Catholic should resign in favour of the other. Augustin lent all his eloquence to carry this motion, which was sufficiently heroic for a good number of bishops who were not so detached as he from the goods of this world. And one must allow that it was difficult to go much further in the way of self-denial. After a good deal of skirmishing and hesitation on the side of the schismatics, the Conference met at Carthage in June of the year 411, under the presidency of an Imperial commissioner, the tribune Marcellinus. Once again, the Donatists saw themselves condemned. Upon the report of the commissioner, a decree of Honorius classed them definitely among heretics. They were forbidden to rebaptize or to assemble together, under penalties of fine and confiscation. Refractory countrymen and slaves would be liable to corporal punishment, and as for the clerics, they would be banished. The effect of these new laws was not long in appearing, and it fully answered the wishes of the orthodox bishops. Many populations returned, or pretended to return, to the Catholic communion. This result was largely the work of Augustin, who for twenty years had worked to bring it about by preaching and controversy. But, as might be expected, he did not overdo his triumph. Without delay, he set himself to preach moderation to the conquerors. Nor had he waited till the enemy was defeated to do that. Ten years before, while the Donatists were besetting the Catholics everywhere, he said to the priests of his communion: "Remember this, my brothers, so as to practise and preach it with never-varying gentleness. Love the men; kill the lie! Lean on truth without pride; fight for it without cruelty. Pray for those whom you chide, and for those to whom you shew their error." However, the victory of the party of peace was not so thorough as it had seemed at first. A good many fanatics here and there grew obstinate in their resistance. The Circoncelliones, maddened, distinguished themselves by a new outbreak of ravages and cruelties. They tortured and mutilated all the Catholics who fell into their hands. They had invented an unheard-of refinement of torture, which was to cover with lime diluted with vinegar the eyes of their victims. The priest Restitutus was assassinated in the suburbs of Hippo. A bishop had his tongue and his hand cut off. If the towns were pretty quiet, terror began to reign once more in the country places. The Roman authorities exerted themselves to put an end to these bloody scenes. They heavily chastised the offenders whenever they could catch them. In his charity, Augustin interceded for them with the judges. He wrote to the tribune Marcellinus: "We would not that the servants of God should be revenged by hurts like to those they suffered. Surely, we are not against depriving the guilty of the means to do harm, but we consider it will be enough, without taking their lives or wrenching any limb from them, to turn them from their senseless tumult by the restraining power of the laws, in bringing them back to calm and reason; or, in a last resort, to take away the opportunity for criminal actions by employing them in some useful work.... Christian judge, in this matter fulfil the duty of a father, and while repressing injustice, do not forget humanity." This compassion of Augustin was shewn particularly in his meeting with Emeritus, the Donatist Bishop of Cherchell (or as it was then called, Mauretanian Cæsarea), one of the most stubborn among the irreconcilables. His attitude in dealing with this uncompromising enemy was not only humane, but courteous, full of graciousness, and of the most sensitive charity. This fell out in the autumn of the year 418, seven years after the great Conference at Carthage. Augustin was sixty-four years old. How was it that he who had always had such feeble health undertook at this age the long journey from Hippo to Cæsarea? We know that the Pope, Zozimus, had entrusted him with a mission to the Church of that town. With his tireless zeal, always ready to march for the glory of Christ, the old bishop doubtless saw in this journey a fresh opportunity for an apostle. So he started off, in spite of the roads, which were very unsafe in those troublous times, in spite of the crushing heat of the season--the end of September. He travelled six hundred miles across the endless Numidian plain and the mountainous regions of the Atlas, preaching in the churches, halting in the towns and the hamlets to decide questions of private interest, ever pursued by a thousand business worries and by the squabbles of litigants and the discontented. At last, after many weeks of fatigue and tribulation, he reached Cherchell, where he was the guest of Deuterius, the metropolitan Bishop of Mauretania. Now Emeritus, the deposed bishop, lived mysteriously in the suburbs, in constant fear of some forcible action on the part of the authorities. When he learned the friendly intentions of Augustin, he came out of his hiding-place and shewed himself in the town. In one of the squares of Cæsarea the two prelates met. Augustin, who had formerly seen Emeritus at Carthage, recognized him, hurried over to him, saluted him, and at once suggested a friendly talk. "Let us go into the church," he said. "This square is hardly suitable for a talk between two bishops." Emeritus, flattered, agreed. The conversation continued in such a cordial tone that Augustin was already rejoicing upon having won back the schismatic. Deuterius, following the line of conduct which the Catholic bishops had adopted, spoke of resigning and handing over the see to the other. It was agreed that within two days Emeritus should come to the cathedral for a public discussion with his colleague of Hippo. At the appointed hour he appeared. A great crowd of people gathered to hear the two orators. The basilica was full. Then Augustin, turning to the impenitent Donatist, said to him mildly: "Emeritus, my brother, you are here. You were also at our Conference at Carthage. If you were beaten there, why do you come here now? If, on the other hand, you think that you were not beaten, tell us what leads you to believe that you had the advantage...." What change had Emeritus undergone in two days? Whatever it was, he disappointed the hopes of Augustin and the people of Cæsarea. He returned only ambiguous phrases to the most pressing and brotherly urging. Finally, he took refuge in an angry silence from which it was found impossible to draw him. Augustin went home without having converted the heretic. No doubt he was sorely disappointed. Nevertheless, he shewed no resentment; he even took measures to ensure the safety of the recalcitrant, in a charitable fear less the roused people might do him a bad turn. With all that, when he looked back at the results of nearly thirty years of struggle against schism, he might well say to himself that he had done good work for the Church. Donatism, in fact, was conquered, and conquered by him. Was he at last to have a chance to rest himself, with the only rest suitable to a soul like his, in a steady meditation and study of the Scriptures? Henceforth, would he be allowed to live a little less as a bishop and a little more as a monk? This was always the strong desire of his heart.... But new and worse trials awaited him at Hippo. THE SIXTH PART FACE TO FACE WITH THE BARBARIANS Et nunc veniant omnes quicumque amant Paradisum, locum quietis, locum securitatis, locum perpetuae felicitatis, locum in quo non pertimescas Barbarum. "And now let all those come who love Paradise, the place of quiet, the place of safety, the place of eternal happiness, the place where the Barbarian need be feared no more." _Sermon upon the Barbarian Persecution_, vii, 9. I THE SACK OF ROME During June of the year 403, an astonishing event convulsed the former capital of the Empire. The youthful Honorius, attended by the regent Stilicho, came there to celebrate his triumph over Alaric and the Gothic army, defeated at Pollentia. The pageantry of a triumph was indeed a very astonishing sight for the Romans of that period. They had got so unused to them! And no less wonderful was the presence of the Emperor at the Palatine. Since Constantine's reign, the Imperial palaces had been deserted. They had hardly been visited four times in a century by their master. Rome had never got reconciled to the desertion of her princes. When the Court was moved to Milan, and then to Ravenna, she felt she had been uncrowned. Time after time the Senate appealed to Honorius to shew himself, at least, to his Roman subjects, since political reasons were against his dwelling among them. This journey was always put off. The truth is, the Christian Cæsars did not like Rome, and mistrusted her still half-pagan Senate and people. It needed this unhoped-for victory to bring Honorius and his councillors to make up their minds. The feeling of a common danger had for the moment drawn the two opposing religions together, and here they were apparently making friends in the same patriotic delight. Old hates were forgotten. In fact, the pagan aristocracy had hopes of better treatment from Stilicho. On account of all these reasons, the triumphant Cæsar was received at Rome with delirious joy. The Court, upon leaving Ravenna, had crossed the Apennines. A halt was called on the banks of the Clitumnus, where in ancient times the great white herds were found which were sacrificed at the Capitol during a triumph. But the gods of the land had fallen; there would be no opiman bull this time on their altars. The pagans felt bitter about it. Thence, by Narnia and the Tiber valley, they made their way down into the plain. The measured step of the legions rang upon the large flags of the Flaminian way. They crossed the Mulvius bridge--and old Rome rose like a new city. In anticipation of a siege, the regent had repaired the Aurelian wall. The red bricks of the enclosure and the fresh mason-work of the towers gleamed in the sun. Finally, striking into the _Via lata_, the procession marched to the Palatine. The crowd was packed in this long, narrow street, and overflowed into the nearest alleys. Women, elaborately dressed, thronged the balconies, and even the terraces of the palace. All at once the people remarked that the Senate was not walking before the Imperial chariot. Stilicho, who wished to conciliate their good graces, had, contrary to custom, dispensed them from marching on foot before the conqueror. People talked with approval of this wily measure in which they saw a promise of new liberties. But applause and enthusiastic cheers greeted the young Honorius as he passed by, sharing with Stilicho the honour of the triumphal car. The unequalled splendour of his _trabea_, of which the embroideries disappeared under the number and flash of colour of the jewels, left the populace gaping. The diadem, a masterpiece of goldsmith's work, pressed heavily on his temples. Emerald pendants twinkled on each side of his neck, which, as it was rather fat, with almost feminine curves, suggested at once to the onlookers a comparison with Bacchus. They found he had an agreeable face, and even a soldierly air with his square shoulders and stocky neck. Matrons gazed with tender eyes on this Cæsar of nineteen, who had, at that time, a certain beauty, and the brilliance, so to speak, of youth. This degenerate Spaniard, who was really a crowned eunuch, and was to spend his life in the society of the palace eunuchs and die of dropsy--this son of Theodosius was just then fond of violent exercise, of hunting and horses. But he was even now becoming ponderous with unhealthy fat. His build and bloated flesh gave those who saw him at a distance a false notion of his strength. The Romans were most favourably impressed by him, especially the young men. But the army, the safeguard of the country, was perhaps even more admired than the Emperor. The legions, following the ruler, had almost deserted the capital. The flower of the troops were almost unknown there. In consequence, the march past of the cavalry was quite a new sight for the people. A great murmur of admiration sounded as the _cataphracti_ appeared, gleaming in the coats of mail which covered them from head to foot. Upon their horses, caparisoned in defensive armour, they looked like equestrian, statues--like silver horsemen on bronze horses. Childish cries greeted each _draconarius_ as he marched by carrying his ensign--a dragon embroidered on a long piece of cloth which flapped in the wind. And the crowd pointed at the crests of the helmets plumed with peacock feathers, and the scarfs of scarlet silk flowing over the camber of the gilded cuirasses.... The military show poured into the Forum, swept up the _Via Sacra_, and when it had passed under the triumphal arches of the old emperors, halted at the Palace of Septimus Severus. In the Stadium, the crowd awaited Honorius. When he appeared on the balcony of the Imperial box, wild cheering burst out on all the rows of seats. The Emperor, diadem on head, bowed to the people. Upon that the cheers became a tempest. Rome did not know how to express her happiness at having at last got her master back. On the eve of the worst catastrophes she had this supreme day of glory, of desperate pride, of unconquerable faith in her destiny. The public frenzy encouraged them in the maddest hopes. The poet Claudian, who had followed the Court, became the mouthpiece of these perilous illusions. "Arise!" he cried to Rome, "I prithee arise, O venerable queen! Trust in the goodwill of the gods. O city, fling away the mean fears of age, _thou who art immortal as the heavens_!..." For all that, the Barbarian danger continued to threaten. The victory of Pollentia, which, moreover, was not a complete victory, had settled nothing. Alaric was in flight in the Alps, but he kept his eye open for a favourable chance to fall back upon Italy and wrench concessions of money and honours from the Court of Ravenna. Supported by his army of mercenaries and adventurers in the pay of the Empire like himself, his dealings with Honorius were a kind of continual blackmail. If the Imperial Government refused to pay the sums which he protested it owed him for the maintenance of his troops, he would pay himself by force. Rome, where fabulous riches had accumulated for so many centuries, was an obvious prey for him and his men. He had coveted it for a long time; and to get up his courage for this daring exploit, as well as to work upon his soldiers, he pretended that he had a mission from Heaven to chastise and destroy the new Babylon. In his Pannonian forests it would seem he had heard mysterious voices which said to him: "Advance, and thou shalt destroy the city!" This leader of clans had nothing of the conqueror about him. He understood that he was in no wise cut out to wear the purple; he himself felt the Barbarian's cureless inferiority. But he also felt that neither was he born to obey. If he asked for the title of Prefect of the City, and if he persisted in offering his services to the Empire, it was as a means to get the upper hand of it more surely. Repulsed, disdained by the Court, he tried to raise himself in his own eyes and in the eyes of the common people by giving himself the airs of an instrument of justice, a man designed by fate, who marches blindly to a terrible purpose indicated by the divine wrath. It often happened that he was duped by his own mummery. This turbid Barbarian soul was prone to the most superstitious terrors. Notwithstanding his rodomontades, it is certain that in his heart he was scared by Rome. He hardly dared to attack it. In the first place, it was not at all a convenient operation for him. His army of mercenaries had no proper implements to undertake the siege of this huge city, of which the defence lines were thrown out in so wide a perimeter. He had to come back to it twice, before he could make up his mind to invest it seriously. The first time, in 408, he was satisfied with starving the Romans by cutting off the food supply. He had pitched his camp on the banks of the Tiber in such a way as to capture the shipping between the capital and the great store-houses built near the mouth of the river. From the ramparts, the Romans could see the Barbarian soldiers moving about, with their sheepskin coats dyed to a crude red. Panic-stricken, the aristocracy fled to its villas in Campania, or Sicily, or Africa. They took with them whatever they were able to carry. They sought refuge in the nearest islands, even in Sardinia and Corsica, despite their reputation for unhealthiness. They even hid among the rocks of the seashore. The terror was so great that the Senate agreed to everything demanded by Alaric. He was paid an enormous indemnity which he claimed as a condition of his withdrawal. The following year he used the same method of intimidation to force on the people an emperor he had chosen, and to get conferred on him the title of Prefect of the City which he had desired so long. Finally, in the year 410, he struck the supreme blow. The Barbarian knew what he was about, and that he did not risk much in blockading Rome. Famine would open the gates to him sooner or later. All who were able had left the city, especially the rich. There was no garrison to defend it. Only a lazy populace remained behind the walls, unused to arms, and still more enfeebled by long starvation. And yet this wretched and decimated population, in an outburst of patriotism, resisted with desperate energy. The siege was long. Doubtless it began before the spring; it ended only at the end of the summer. In the night of the twenty-fourth of August, 410, amid the glare of lightning and crashes of thunder, Alaric entered Rome by the Salarian gate. It is certain that he only managed it even then by treachery. The prey was handed to him. The sack of Rome seems to have lasted for three days and three nights. Part of the town was burned. The conquered people underwent all the horrors which accompany such events--violent and stupid destruction, rapes, murders of individuals, wholesale slaughter, torture, and mutilation. But in reality the Barbarians only wanted the Roman gold. They acted like perfect highway robbers. If they tortured their victims without distinction of age or sex, it was to pluck the secret of their treasure-houses out of them. It is even said that in these conditions the Roman avarice produced some admirable examples of firmness. Some let themselves be tortured to their last gasp rather than reveal where their treasures were hid. At last, when Alaric decided that his army was gorged enough with spoil, he gave the order to evacuate the city, and took to the roads with his baggage-waggons full. Let us be careful not to judge these doings after our modern notions. The capture of Rome by Alaric was not a national disaster. It was plundering on a huge scale. The Goth had no thought at all of destroying the Empire. He was only a mercenary in rebellion--an ambitious mercenary, no doubt--but, above all, a looter. As a consequence of this attack on the Eternal City, one after another caught the disease of plunder, which contaminated even the functionaries and the subjects of Rome. Amid the general anarchy, where impunity seemed certain, nobody restrained himself any longer. In Africa especially, where the old instinct of piracy is always half-awake, they applied themselves to ransack the fugitive Romans and Italians. Many rich people were come there, seeking a place of safety in the belief that they would be more secure when they had put the sea between themselves and the Barbarians. The report of their riches had preceded them, exaggerated out of all measure by popular rumour. Among them were mentioned patricians such as the Anicii, whose property was so immense and their palaces so splendid that they could not find purchasers. These multi-millionaires in flight were a miraculous windfall for the country. They were bled without mercy. Quicker than any one else, the military governor of Africa, Count Heraclianus, was on the spot to pick the pockets of the Italian immigrants. No sooner were they off the boat than he had very distinguished ladies seized, and only released them when he had extorted a large ransom. He sold those unable to pay to the Greek and Syrian slave-merchants who provided human flesh for the Oriental harems. When the example came from such a height, the subordinates doubtless said to themselves that they would be very wrong to have the least shame. From one end of the province to the other, everybody struggled to extract as much as possible from the unfortunate fugitives. Augustin's own parishioners at Hippo undertook to tear a donation from one of those gorgeous Anicii, whose lands stretched further than a kite could fly--from Pinian, the husband of St. Melania the younger. They wanted to force him to be ordained priest in spite of himself, which, as has been explained, involved the handing over of his goods to the Catholic community. Augustin, who opposed this, had to give in to the crowd. There was almost a riot in the basilica. Such were the far-off reverberations of the capture of Rome by Alaric. Carthaginians and Numidians pillaged the Romans just like the Barbarians. Now, how did it come about that this monstrous loot took on before the eyes of contemporaries the magnitude of a world-catastrophe? For really nothing was utterly lost. The Empire remained standing. After Alaric's retreat, the Romans had come back to their city and they worked to build up the ruins. Ere long, the populace were crying out loud that if the circus and amphitheatre games were given back to them, they would look upon the descent of the Goths as a bad dream. It is no less certain that this sensational occurrence had struck the whole Mediterranean world into a perfect stupor. It seized upon the imaginations of all. The idea that Rome could not be taken, that it was integral and almost sacred, had such a hold on people's minds, that they refused to credit the sinister news. Nobody reflected that the sack of Rome by the Barbarians should have been long ago foreseen--that Rome, deprived of a garrison, abandoned by the Imperial army, was bound to attract the covetousness of the Goths, and that the pillage of a place without defence, already enfeebled by famine, was not a very glorious feat, very difficult, or very extraordinary. People only saw the brutal fact: the Eternal City had been captured and burned by the mercenaries. All were under the influence of the shock caused by the narratives of the refugees. In one of his sermons, Augustin has transmitted to us an echo of the general panic: "Horrible things," said he, "have been told us. There have been ruins, and fires, and rapine, and murder, and torture. That is true; we have heard it many times; we have shuddered at all this disaster; we have often wept, and we have hardly been able to console ourselves." This capture of Rome was plainly a terrible warning for the future. But party spirit strangely exaggerated the importance and meaning of the calamity. For pagans and Christians alike it became a subject for speeches, a commonplace of religious polemic. Both saw the event as a manifestation of the wrath of Heaven. "While we sacrificed to our gods," the pagan said, "Rome was standing, Rome was happy. Now that our sacrifices are forbidden, you see what has become of Rome...." And they went about repeating that Christianism was responsible for the ruin of the Empire. On their side, the Christians answered: In the first place, Rome has not fallen: it is always standing. It has been only chastised, and this happened because it is still half pagan. By this frightful punishment (and they heightened the description of the horrors committed), God has given it a warning. Let it be converted, let it return to the virtues of its ancestors, and it will become again the mistress of nations. There is what Augustin and the bishops said. Still, the flock of the faithful were only half convinced. It was all well enough to remonstrate to them that the Christians of Rome, and even a good number of pagans, had been spared at the name of Christ, and that the Barbarian leader had bestowed a quite special protection and respect upon the basilicas of the holy apostles; it was impossible to prevent their thinking that many Christians had perished in the sack of the city, that consecrated virgins had experienced the last outrages, and that, as a matter of fact, all the inhabitants had been robbed of their property.... Was it thus that God protected His chosen? What advantage was there in being Christian if they had the same treatment as the idolaters? This state of mind became extremely favourable for paganism to come back again on the offensive. Since the very hard laws of Theodosius, which forbade the worship of the ancient gods, even within the house, the pagans had not overlooked any chance to protest against the Imperial severity. At Carthage there were always fights in the streets between pagans and Christians, not to say riots. In the colony of Suffetula, sixty Christians had been massacred. The year before the capture of Rome, there had been trouble with the pagans at Guelma. Houses belonging to the Church were burned, a monk killed in a brawl. Whenever the Government inspection relaxed, or the political situation appeared favourable, the pagans hurried to proclaim their belief. Only just lately, in Rome beleaguered by Alaric, the new consul, Tertullus, had thought fit to revive the old customs. Before assuming office, he studied gravely the sacred fowls in their cages, traced circles in the sky with the augur's wand, and marked the flight of birds. Besides, a pagan oracle circulated persistently among the people, promising that after a reign of three hundred and sixty-five years Christianity would be conquered. The centuries of the great desolation were fulfilled; the era of revenge was about to begin for the outcast gods. These warlike symptoms did not escape Augustin's vigilance. His indignation no longer arose only from the fact that paganism was so slow in dying; he was now afraid that the feebleness of the Empire might allow it to take on an appearance of life. It must be ended, as Donatism had been ended. The old apostle was summoned to a new campaign, and in it he would spend the best of his strength to the eve of his death. II THE CITY OF GOD For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and a thousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept the Africans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his _City of God_, the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and also the arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants and defenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal. It is not for us to examine the details of this immense work, for our sole aim is to study Augustin's soul, and we quote scarcely anything from his books save those parts wherein a little of this ardent soul pulsates--those which are still living for us of the twentieth century, which contain teachings and ways of feeling still likely to move us. Now, Augustin's attitude towards paganism is one of those which throw the greatest light on his nature and character. And it may even yet come to be our own attitude when we find opposed to us a conception of life and the world which may indeed be ruined for a time, but is reborn as soon as the sense of spirituality disappears or grows feeble. "Immortal Paganism, art thou dead? So they say. But Pan scoffs under his breath, and the Chimæra laughs." [1] [Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve.] Like ourselves, Augustin, brought up by a Christian mother, knew it only through literature, and, so to speak, æsthetically. Recollections of school, the emotions and admirations of a cultivated man--there is what the old religion meant for him. Nevertheless, he had one great advantage over us for knowing it well: the sight of the pagan customs and superstitions was still under his eyes. That the lascivious, romantic, and poetic adventures of the ancient gods, their statues, their temples, and all the arts arising from their religion, had beguiled him and filled him with enthusiasm before his conversion, is only too certain. But all this mythology and plastic art were looked upon as secondary things then, even by pagans. The serious, the essential part of the religion was not in that. Paganism, a religion of Beauty, is an invention of our modern æsthetes; it was hardly thought of in that way in Augustin's time. Long before this, the Roman Varro, the great compiler of the religious antiquities of paganism, made a threefold distinction of the doctrine concerning the gods. The first--that of the theatre, as he calls it, or fabulous mythology, adapted to poets, dramatists, sculptors, and jesters. Invented by these, it is only a fantasy, a play of imagination, an ornament of life. The third is civil theology, serious and solid, which claims the respect and piety of all. "It is that which men in cities, and chiefly the priests, _ought to be_ cunning in. It teaches which gods to worship in public, and with what ceremonies and sacrifices each one must be served." Finally, the second, physical or metaphysical theology, is reserved for philosophers and exceptional minds; it is altogether theoretical. The only important and truly religious one, which puts an obligation on the believer, is the third--the civil theology. Now, we never take account of this. What we persist in regarding as paganism is what Varro himself called "a religion for the theatre"--matter of opera, pretext for ballets, for scenery, and for dance postures. Transposed into another key by our poets, this mythology is inflated now and then by mysticism, or by a vague symbolism. Playthings of our pretty wits! The living paganism, which Augustin struggled against, which crowds defended at the price of their blood, in which the poor believed and the wisest statesmen deemed indispensable as a safeguard of cities--that paganism is quite another matter. Like all religions which are possible, it implied and it _enforced_ not only beliefs, but ritual, sacrifices, festivals. And this is what Augustin, with the other Christians of that time, spurned with disgust and declared to be unbearable. He saw, or he had seen with his own eyes, the reality of the pagan worship, and the most repellent of all to our modern delicacy--the sacrifices. At the period when he wrote _The City of God_, private sacrifices, as well as public, were forbidden. This did not prevent the devout from breaking the law whenever a chance offered. They hid themselves more or less when they sacrificed before a temple, a chapel, or on some private estate. The rites could not be carried out according to all the minute instructions of the pontifical books. It was no more than a shadow of the ceremonies of former times. But in his childhood, in the reign of Julian, for instance, Augustin could have attended sacrifices which were celebrated with full pomp and according to all the ritual forms. They were veritable scenes of butchery. For Heaven's sake let us forget the frieze of the Parthenon, and its sacrificers with their graceful lines! If we want to have a literal translation of this sculpture, and find the modern representation of a hecatomb, we must go to the slaughter-houses at La Villette. Among the heaps of broken flesh, the puddles of blood, the mystic Julian was attacked by a kind of drunkenness. There were never enough beasts strangled or slaughtered to suit him. Nothing satisfied his fury for sacred carnage. The pagans themselves made fun of this craze for sacrificing. During the three years his reign lasted the altars streamed with blood. Oxen by hundreds were slain upon the floors of the temples, and the butchers throttled so many sheep and other domestic animals that they gave up keeping count of them. Thousands of white birds, pigeons or sea-gulls, were destroyed day by day by the piety of the prince. He was called the _Victimarius_, and when he started upon his campaign against the Persians, an epigram was circulated once more which had been formerly composed against Marcus Aurelius (the philosophic emperor!) who was equally generous of hecatombs: "To Marcus Cæsar from the white oxen. It will be all over with us if you come back a conqueror." People said that Julian, on his return, would depopulate stables and pasture-lands. The populace, who gathered their very considerable profit from these butcheries, naturally encouraged such an excess of devotion. At Rome, under Caligula, more than a hundred and sixty thousand victims were immolated in three months--nearly two thousand a day. And these massacres took place upon the approaches of the temples; in the middle of the city; on the forums; in narrow squares crowded with public buildings and statues. Just try to call up the scene in summer, between walls at a white heat, with the smells and the flies. Spectators and victims rubbed against one another, pressed close in the restricted space. One day, Caligula, while he was attending a sacrifice, was splashed all over by the blood of a flamingo as they cut its neck. But the august Cæsar was not so fastidious; he himself operated in these ceremonies armed with a mallet and clad in the short shirt of the killers. The ignominy of all this revolted the Christians, and whoever had nerves at all sensitive. The bloody mud in which passers slipped, the hissing of the fat, the heavy odour of flesh, were sickening. Tertullian held his nose before the "stinking fires" on which the victims were roasting. And St. Ambrose complained that in the Roman Curia the senators who were Christians were obliged to breathe in the smoke and receive full in the face the ashes of the altar raised before the statue of Victory. The manipulations of the _haruspicina_ seemed an even worse abomination in the eyes of the Christians. Dissection of bowels, examination of entrails, were practices very much in fashion in all classes of society. The pagans generally took more or less interest in magic. One was scarcely a philosopher without being a miracle-worker. In this there was a kind of perfidious rivalry to the Christian miracles. The ambitious or the discontented opened the bellies of animals to learn when the Emperor was going to die, and who would succeed him. But although it did not pretend to magic, the _haruspicina_ made an essential part of the sacrifices. As soon as the dismemberment was done, the diviners examined the appearance of the entrails. Consulting together, they turned them over frequently with anxious attention. This business might continue for a long time. Plutarch relates that Philip, King of Macedonia, when sacrificing an ox on the Ithomæa, with Aratus of Sicyon and Demetrius of Pharos, wished to inquire out from the entrails of the victim concerning the wisdom of a piece of strategy. The _haruspex_ put the smoking mass in his hands. The King shewed it to his companions, who derived contradictory presages from it. He listened to one side and the other, holding meanwhile the ox's entrails in his hands. Eventually, he decided for the opinion of Aratus, and then tranquilly gave the handful back to the sacrificer.... No doubt in Augustin's time these rites were no longer practised openly. For all that, they were of the first importance in the ancient religion, which desired nothing better than to restore them. It is easy to understand the repulsion they caused in the author of _The City of God_. He who would not have a fly killed to make sure of the gold crown in the contest of poets, looked with horror on these sacred butchers, and manglers, and cooks. He flung the garbage of the sacrifices into the sewer, and shewed proudly to the pagans the pure oblation of the eucharistic Bread and Wine. But what, above all, he attacked, because it was a present and permanent scandal, was the gluttony, the drunkenness, and lust of the pagans. Let us not exaggerate these vices--not the two first, at least. Augustin could not judge them as we can. It is certain that the Africans of his time--and for that matter, those of to-day--would have struck us modern people as very sober. The outbursts of intemperance which he accuses them of only happened at intervals, at times of public festivity or some family celebration. But as soon as they did begin they were terrible. When one thinks of the orgies of our Arabs behind locked doors! But it is no less true that the pagan vices spread themselves out cynically under the protecting shadow of religion. Popular souses of eating and drinking were the obligatory accompaniments of the festivals and sacrifices. A religious festival meant a carouse, loads of victuals, barrels of wine broached in the street. These were called the Dishes, _Fercula_, or else, the Rejoicing, _Lætitia_. The poor people, who knew meat only by sight, ate it on these days, and they drank wine. The effect of this unaccustomed plenty was felt at once. The whole populace were drunk. The rich in their houses possibly did it with more ceremony, but it was really the same brutishness. The elegant Ovid, who in the _Art of Love_ teaches fine manners to the beginners in love, advises them not to vomit at table, and to avoid getting drunk like the husbands of their mistresses. Plainly, religion was only an excuse for these excesses. Augustin goes too far when he makes the gods responsible for this riot of sensuality. What is true is that they did nothing to hinder it. And it is also true that the lechery, which he flings so acridly in the face of the pagans, the gross stage-plays, the songs, dances, and even prostitution, were all more or less included in the essence of paganism. The theatre, like the games of the arena and circus, was a divine institution. At certain feasts, and in certain temples, fornication became sacred. All the world knew what took place at Carthage in the courts and under the porticoes of the Celestial Virgin, and what the ears of the most chaste matrons were obliged to hear, and also what the use was of the castrated priests of the Great Mother of the gods. Augustin, who declaims against these filthy sports, has not forced the note of his denunciation to make out a good case. If anybody wants to know in more detail the sights enjoyed at the theatre, or what were the habits of certain pious confraternities, he has only to read what is told by Apuleius, the most devout of pagans. He takes evident pleasure in these stories, or, if he sometimes waxes indignant, it is the depravity of men he accuses. The gods soar at a great height above these wretched trifles. To Augustin, on the contrary, the gods are unclean devils who fill their bellies with lust and obscenities, as if they were hankering for the blood and grease of sacrifices. And so he puts his finger on the open wound of paganism--its basic immorality, or, if you like, its unmorality. Like our scientism of to-day, it was unable to lay down a system of morals. It did not even try to. What Augustin has written on this subject in _The City of God_, is perhaps the strongest argument ever objected to polytheism. Anyhow, pages like this are very timely indeed to consider: "But such friends and such worshippers of those gods, whom they rejoice to follow and imitate in all villainies and mischiefs--do they trouble themselves about the corruption and great decay of the Republic? Not so. Let it but stand, say they; let it but prosper by the number of its troops and be glorious by its victories; or, _which is best of all, let it but enjoy security and peace_, and what care we? Yes, what we care for above all is that every one may have the means to increase his wealth, to pay the expenses of his usual luxury, and that the powerful may still keep under the weak. Let the poor crouch to the rich to be fed, or to live at ease under their protection; let the rich abuse the poor as things at their service, and to shew how many they have soliciting them. Let the people applaud such as provide them with pleasures, not such as have a care for their interests. _Let naught that is hard be enjoined, nothing impure be prohibited_.... Let not subdued provinces obey their governors as supervisors of their morality, but as masters of their fortune and the procurers of their pleasures. What matters it if this submission has no sincerity, but rests upon a bad and servile fear! _Let the law protect estates rather than fair justice_. Let there be a good number of public harlots, either for all that please to enjoy themselves in their company, or for those that cannot keep private ones. Let stately and sumptuous houses be erected, so that night and day each one according to his liking or his means may gamble and drink and revel and vomit. Let the rhythmed tinkling of dances be ordinary, the cries, the uncontrolled delights, the uproar of all pleasures, even the bloodiest and most shameful in the theatres. He who shall assay to dissuade from these pleasures, let him be condemned as a public enemy. And if any one try to alter or suppress them--let the people stifle his voice, let them banish him, let them kill him. On the other hand, those that shall procure the people these pleasures, and authorize their enjoyment, let them be eternized for the true gods."... However, Augustin acknowledges a number of praiseworthy minds among pagans--those philosophers, with Plato in the first rank, who have done their best to put morality into the religion. The Christian teacher renders a magnificent tribute to Platonism. But these high doctrines have scarcely got beyond the portals of the schools, and this moral teaching which paganism vaunts of, is practically limited to the sanctuaries. "Let them not talk," says he, "of some closely muttered instructions, taught in secret, and whispered in the ear of a few adepts, which hold I know not what lessons of uprightness and virtue. But let them shew the temples ordained for such pious meetings, wherein were no sports with lascivious gestures and loose songs.... Let them shew us the places where the gods' doctrine was heard against covetousness, the suppression of ambition, the bridling of luxury, and where wretches might learn what the poet Persius thunders unto them, saying: 'Learn, wretches, and conceive the course of things, What man is, and why nature forth him brings;... How to use money; how to help a friend; What we on earth, and God in us, intend.' Let them shew where their instructing gods were used to give such lessons; and where their worshippers used to go _often_ to hear these matters. As for us, we can point to our churches, built for this sole purpose, wheresoever the religion of Christ is diffused." Can it surprise, then, if men so ignorant of high morality, and so deeply embedded in matter, were also plunged in the grossest superstitions? Materialism in morals always ends by producing a low credulity. Here Augustin triumphs. He sends marching under our eyes, in a burlesque array, the innumerable army of gods whom the Romans believed in. There are so many that he compares them to swarms of gnats. Although he explains that he is not able to mention them all, he amuses himself by stupefying us with the prodigious number of those he discovers. Dragged into open day by him, a whole divine population is brought out of the darkness and forgetfulness where it had been sleeping perhaps for centuries: the little gods who work in the fields, who make the corn grow and keep off the blight, those who watch over children, who aid women in labour, who protect the hearth, who guard the house. It was impossible to take a step among the pagans, to make a movement, without the help of a god or goddess. Men and things were as if fettered and imprisoned by the gods. "In a house," says Augustin scoffingly, "there is but one porter. He is but a mere man, yet he is sufficient for that office. But it takes three gods, Forculus for the door, Cardea for the hinge, Limentinus for the threshold. Doubtless, Forculus all alone could not possibly look after threshold, door and hinges." And if it is a case of a man and woman retiring to the bridal chamber after the wedding, a whole squadron of divinities are set in motion for an act so simple and natural. "I beseech you," cries Augustin, "leave something for the husband to do!" This African, who had such a strong sense of the unity and fathomless infinity of God, waxed indignant at this sacrilegious parcelling of the divine substance. But the pagans, following Varro, would answer that it was necessary to distinguish, among all these gods, those who were just the imagination of poets, and those who were real beings--between the gods of fable and the gods of religion. "Then," as Tertullian had said already, "if the gods be chosen as onions are roped, it is obvious that what is not chosen is condemned." "Tertullian carries his fancy too far," comments Augustin. The gods refused as fabulous are not held reprobate on that account. The truth is, they are a cut of the same piece as the admitted gods. "Have not the pontiffs, like the poets, a bearded Jupiter and a Mercury without beard?... Are the old Saturn and the young Apollo so much the property of the poets that we do not see their statues too in the temples?..." And the philosophers, in their turn, however much they may protest against the heap of fabulous gods and, like Plato and Porphyry, declare that there exists but one God, soul of the universe, yet they no less accepted the minor gods, and intermediaries or messengers betwixt gods and men, whom they called demons. These hybrid beings, who pertained to humanity by their passions, and to the divinity by the privilege of immortality, had to be appeased by sacrifices, questioned and gratified by magic spells. And there is what the highest pagan wisdom ended in--yes, in calling up spirits, and the shady operations of wizards and wonder-smiths. That is what the pagans defended, and demanded the continuation of with so much obstinacy and fanaticism. By no means, replied Augustin. It does not deserve to survive. It is not the forsaking of these beliefs and superstitious practices which has brought about the decay of the Empire. If you are asking for the temples of your gods to be opened, it is because they are easy to your passions. At heart, you scoff at them and the Empire; all you want is freedom and impunity for your vices. There we have the real cause of the decadence! Little matter the idle grimaces before altars and statues. Become chaste, sober, brave, and poor, as your ancestors were. Have children, agree to compulsory military service, and you will conquer as they did. Now, all these virtues are enjoined and encouraged by Christianity. Whatever certain heretics may say, the religion of Christ is not contrary to marriage or the soldier's profession. The Patriarchs of the old law were blest in marriage, and there are just and holy wars. And even supposing, that in spite of all efforts to save it, the Empire is condemned, must we therefore despair? We should be prepared for the end of the Roman city. Like all the things of this world, it is liable to old age and death. It will die then, one day. Far from being cast down, let us strengthen ourselves against this disaster by the realization of the eternal. Let us strengthen our hold upon that which passes not. Above the earthly city, rises the City of God, which is the communion of holy souls, the only one which gives complete and never-failing joy. Let us try to be the citizens of that city, and to live the only life worth calling life. For the life here below is but the shadow of a shadow.... The people of those times were wonderfully prepared to hearken to such exhortations. On the eve of the Barbarian invasions, these Christians, for whom the dogma of the Resurrection was perhaps the chief reason of their faith, these people, sick at heart, who looked on in torture at the ending of a world, must have considered this present life as a bad dream, from which there should be no delay in escaping. At the very moment even that Augustin began to write _The City of God_, his friend Evodius, Bishop of Uzalis, told him this story. He had as secretary a very young man, the son of a priest in the neighbourhood. This young man had begun by obtaining a post as stenographer in the office of the Proconsul of Africa. Evodius, who was alarmed at what might happen to his virtue in such surroundings, having first made certain of his absolute chastity, offered to take him into his service. In the bishop's house, where he had scarcely anything to do but read the Holy Scripture, his faith became so enthusiastic that he longed for nothing now but death. To go out of this life, "to be with Christ," was his eager wish. It was heard. After sixteen days of illness he died in the house of his parents. "Now, two days after his funeral, a virtuous woman of Figes, a servant of God, a widow for twelve years, had a dream, and in her dream she saw a deacon who had been dead some four years, together with men, and women too, virgins and widows--she saw these servants of God getting ready a palace. This dwelling was so rich that it shone with light, and you would have believed it was all made of silver. And when the widow asked whom these preparations were for, the deacon replied that they were for a young man, dead the evening before, the son of a priest. In the same palace, she saw an old man, all robed in white, and he told two other persons, also robed in white, to go to the tomb of this young man, and lift out the body, and carry it to Heaven. When the body had been drawn from the tomb and carried to Heaven, there arose (said she) out of the tomb a bush of virgin-roses, which are thus named because they never open...." So the son of the priest had chosen the better part. What was the good of remaining in this abominable world, where there was always a risk of being burned or murdered by Goths and Vandals, when, in the other world, angels were preparing for you palaces of light? III THE BARBARIAN DESOLATION Augustin was seventy-two years old when he finished the _City of God_. This was in 426. That year, an event of much importance occurred at Hippo, and the report of it was inserted in the public acts of the community. "The sixth of the calends of October," _The Acts_ set forth, "the very glorious Theodosius being consul for the twelfth time, and Valentinian Augustus for the second, Augustin the bishop, accompanied by Religianus and Martinianus, his fellow-bishops, having taken his place in the Basilica of Peace at Hippo, and the priests Saturnius, Leporius, Barnaby, Fortunatianus, Lazarus, and Heraclius, being present, with all the clergy and a vast crowd of people--Augustin the bishop said: "'Let us without delay look to the business which I declared yesterday to your charity, and for which I desired you to gather here in large numbers, as I see you have done. If I were to talk to you of anything else, you might be less attentive, seeing the expectation you are in. "'My brothers, we are all mortal in this life, and no man knows his last day. God willed that I should come to dwell in this town in the force of my age. But, as I was a young man then--see, I am old now, and as I know that at the death of bishops, peace is troubled by rivalry or ambition (this have I often seen and bewailed it)--I ought, so far as it rests with me, to turn away so great a mischief from your city.... I am going then to tell you that my will, which I believe also to be the will of God, is that I have as successor the priest Heraclius.' "At these words all the people cried out: "'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!' "And this cry they repeated three-and-twenty times. "'Christ, hear us! Preserve us Augustin!' "This cry they repeated sixteen times. "'Be our father! Be our bishop!' "This cry they repeated eight times. "When the people became silent, the bishop Augustin spoke again in these words: "'There is no need for me to praise Heraclius. As much as I do justice to his wisdom, in equal measure should I spare his modesty.... As you perceive, the secretaries of the church gather up what we say and what you say. My words and your shouts do not fall to the ground. To put it briefly, these are ecclesiastical decrees that we are now drawing up, and I desire by these means, as far as it is in the power of man, to confirm what I have declared to you.' "Here the people cried out: "'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!' * * * * * "'Be our father, and let Heraclius be our bishop!' "When silence was made again, Augustin the bishop thus spoke: "'I understand what you would say. But I do not wish that it happen to him as it happened to me. Many of you know what was done at that time.... I was consecrated bishop during the lifetime of my father and bishop, the aged Valerius, of blessed memory, and with him I shared the see. I was ignorant, as he was, that this was forbidden by the Council of Nice. I would not therefore that men should blame in Heraclius, my son, what they blamed in me.' "With that the people cried out thirteen times: "'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!' "After a little silence, Augustin the bishop said again: "'So he will remain a priest till it shall please God for him to be a bishop. But with the aid and mercy of Christ, I shall do in future what up to now I have not been able to do.... You will remember what I wanted to do some years ago, and you have not allowed me. For a work upon the Holy Scriptures, with which my brothers and my fathers the bishops had deigned to charge me in the two Councils of Numidia and Carthage, _I was not to be disturbed by anybody during five days of the week_. That was a thing agreed upon between you and me. The act was drawn up, and you all approved of it after hearing it read. But your promise did not last long. I was soon encroached upon and overrun by you all. I am no longer free to study as I desire. Morning and afternoon, I am entangled in your worldly affairs. I beg of you and supplicate you in Christ's name to suffer me to shift the burthen of all these cares upon this young man, the priest Heraclius, whom I signal, in His name, as my successor in the bishopric.' "Upon this the people cried out six-and-twenty times: "'We thank thee for thy choice!' "And the people having become silent, Augustin the bishop said: "'I thank you for your charity and goodwill, or rather, I thank God for them. So, my brothers, you will address yourselves to Heraclius upon all the points you are used to submit to me. Whenever he needs counsel, my care and my help will not be wanting.... In this way, without any loss to you, I shall be able to devote the remainder of life which it may please God still to leave me, not to laziness and rest, but to the study of the Holy Scriptures. This work will be useful to Heraclius, and hence to yourselves. Let nobody then envy my leisure, for this leisure will be very busy.... "'It only remains for me to ask you, at least those who can, to sign these acts. Your agreement I cannot do without; so kindly let me learn it by your voices.' "At these words the people shouted: "'Let it be so! Let it be so!' * * * * * "When all there became silent, Augustin the bishop made an end, saying: "'It is well. Now let us fulfil our duty to God. While we offer Him the Sacrifice, and during this hour of supplication, I would urge of your charity to lay aside all business and personal cares, and to pray the Lord God for this church, for me, and for the priest Heraclius.'" The dryness and official wording of the document do not succeed in stifling the vividness and colour of this crowded scene. Through the piety of the formal cries, it is easy to see that Augustin's hearers were hard to manage. This flock, which he loved and scolded so much, was no easier to lead now than when he first became bishop. Truly it was no sinecure to rule and administrate the diocese of Hippo! The bishop was literally the servant of the faithful. Not only had he to feed and clothe them, to spend his time over their business and quarrels and lawsuits, but he belonged to them body and soul. They kept a jealous eye on the employment of his time; if he went away, they asked for an explanation. Whenever Augustin went to preach at Carthage or Utica, he apologized to his own people. And before he can undertake a commentary on the Scriptures, a commentary, moreover, which he has been asked by two Councils to prepare, he must get their permission, or, at any rate, their agreement. At last, at seventy-two years old, after he had been a bishop for thirty-one years, he got their leave to take a little rest. But what a rest! He himself said: "This leisure will be very busy"--this leisure which is going to fill the five holidays in the week. He intends to study and fathom the Scripture, and this, besides, to the profit of his people and clergy and the whole Church. It is the fondest dream of his life--the plan he was never able to realize. All that, at first sight, astonishes us. We ask ourselves, "What else had he been doing up to this time in his treatises and letters and sermons, in all that sea of words and writings which his enemies threw up at him, if he was not studying and explaining the Holy Scriptures?" The fact is, that in most of these writings and sermons he elucidates the truth only in part, or else he is confuting heresiarchs. What he wanted to do was to study the truth for its own sake, without having to think of and be hindered by the exposure of errors; and above all, to seize it in all its breadth and all its depths, to have done with this blighting and irritating eristic, and to reflect in a vast _Mirror_ the whole and purest light of the sacred dogmas. He never found the time for it. He had to limit himself to a handbook of practical morals, published under this title before his death, and now lost. Once more the heresiarchs prevented him from leading a life of speculation. During his last years, amid the cruellest anxieties, he had to battle with the enemies of Grace and the enemies of the Trinity, with Arius and Pelagius. Pelagius had found an able disciple in a young Italian bishop, Julian of Eclanum, who was a formidable opponent to the aged Augustin. As for Arianism, which had seemed extinguished in the West, here it was given a new life by the Barbarian invasion. It was a grave moment for Catholicism, as it was for the Empire. The Goths, the Alani, and the Vandals, after having laid waste Gaul and Spain, were taking measures to pass over into Africa. Should they renew the attempts of Alaric and Radagaisus against Italy, they would soon be masters of the entire Occident. Now these Barbarians were Arians. Supposing (and it seemed more and more likely) that Africa and Italy were vanquished after Gaul and Spain, then it was all over with Western Catholicism. For the invaders carried their religion in their baggage, and forced it on the conquered. Augustin, who had cherished the hope of equalling the earthly kingdom of Christ to that of the Cæsars, was going to see the ruin of both. His terrified imagination exaggerated still more the only too real and threatening peril. He must have lived hours of agony, expecting a disaster. If only the truth might be saved, might swim in this sea of errors which spread like a flood in the wake of the Barbarian onflow! It was from this wish, no doubt, that sprang the tireless persistence which the old bishop put into a last battle with heresy. If he selected Pelagius specially to fall upon with fury, if he forced his principles to their last consequences in his theory of Grace, the dread of the Barbarian peril had perhaps something to do with it. This soul, so mild, so moderate, so tenderly human, promulgated a pitiless doctrine which does not agree with his character. But he reasoned, no doubt, that it was impossible to drive home too hard the need of the Redemption and the divinity of the Redeemer in front of these Arians, these Pelagians, these enemies of Christ, who to-morrow perhaps would be masters of the Empire. Therefore, Augustin continued to write, and discuss, and disprove. There came a time when he had to think of fighting otherwise than with the pen. His life, the lives of his flock, were threatened. He had to see to the bodily defence of his country and city. The fact was, that some time before the great drive of the Vandals, forerunners of them, in the shape of hordes of African Barbarians, had begun to lay waste the provinces. The Circoncelliones were not dead, nor their good friends the Donatists either. These sectaries, encouraged by the widespread anarchy, came out of their hiding-places and shewed themselves more insolent and aggressive than ever. Possibly they hoped for some effective support against the Roman Church from the Arian Vandals who were drawing near, or at least a recognition of what they believed to be their rights. Day after day, bands of Barbarians were landing from Spain. In the rear of these wandering troops of brigands or irregular soldiers, the old enemies of the Roman peace and civilization, the Nomads of the South, the Moors of the Atlas, the Kabylian mountaineers, flung themselves upon country and town, pillaging, killing, and burning everything that got in their way. All was laid desolate. "Countries but lately prosperous and populated have been changed into solitudes," said Augustin. At last, in the spring of the year 429, the Vandals and the Alani, having joined forces on the Spanish coast under their King, Genseric, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar. It was devastation on a large scale this time. An army of eighty thousand men set themselves methodically to plunder the African provinces. Cherchell, which had already been sorely tried during the revolt of Firmus the Moor, was captured again and burned. All the towns and fortified places on the coast fell, one after another. Constantine alone, from the height of its rock, kept the invaders at bay. To starve out those who fled from towns and farms and took refuge in the fastnesses of the Atlas, the Barbarians destroyed the harvest, burned the grain-houses, and cut down the vines and fruit trees. And they set fire to the forests which covered the slopes of the mountains, to force the refugees out of their hiding-places. This stupid ravaging was against the interest of the Vandals themselves, because they were injuring the natural riches of Africa, the report of which had brought them there. Africa was for them the land of plenty, where people could drink more wine than they wanted and eat wheaten bread. It was the country where life was comfortable, easy, and happy. It was the granary of the Mediterranean, the great supply-store of Rome. But their senseless craving for gold led them to ruin provinces, in which, nevertheless, they counted upon settling. They behaved in Africa as they had behaved in Rome under Alaric. By way of tearing gold out of the inhabitants, they tortured them as they had tortured the wealthy Romans. They invented worse ones. Children, before their parents' eyes, were sliced in two like animals in a slaughterhouse. Or else their skulls were smashed against the pavements and walls of houses. The Church was believed to be very rich; and perhaps, as it had managed to comprise in its domains the greatest part of the landed estates, it was upon it chiefly that the Barbarians flung themselves. The priests and bishops were tortured with unheard-of improvements of cruelty. They were dragged in the rear of the army like slaves, so that heavy ransoms might be extracted from the faithful in exchange for their pastors. They were obliged to carry the baggage like the camels and mules, and when they gave out the Barbarians prodded them with lances. Many sank down beside the road and never rose more. But it is certain that fanaticism added to the covetousness and ferocity of the Vandals. These Arians bore a special grudge against Catholicism, which was, besides, in their eyes, the religion of the Roman domination. This is why they made their chief attacks on basilicas, convents, hospitals, and all the property of the Church. And throughout the country public worship was stopped. In Hippo, these atrocities were known before the Barbarians arrived. The people must have awaited them and prepared to receive them with gloomy resignation. Africa had not been tranquil for a century. After the risings of Firmus and Gildo, came the lootings of the southern Nomads and the Berber mountaineers. And it was not so long since the Circoncelliones were keeping people constantly on the alert. But this time everybody felt that the great ruin was at hand. They were stunned by the news that some town or fortified place had been captured by the Vandals, or that some farm or villa in the neighbourhood was on fire. Amid the general dismay, Augustin did his best to keep calm. He, indeed, saw beyond the material destruction, and at every new rumour of massacre or burning he would repeat to his clerics and people the words of the Wise Man: "Doth the firm of heart grieve to see fall the stones and beams, and death seize the children of men?" They accused him of being callous. They did not understand him. While all about him mourned the present misfortunes, he was already lamenting over the evil to come, and this clear-sightedness pained him more than the shock of the daily horrors committed by the Barbarians. His disciple Possidius, the Bishop of Guelma, who was with him in these sad days, naively applied to him the saying out of _Ecclesiastes_: "In much wisdom is much grief." Augustin did really suffer more than others, because he thought more profoundly on the disaster. He foresaw that Africa was going to be lost to the Empire, and consequently to the Church. They were bound together in his mind. What was there to do against brutal strength? All the eloquence and all the charity in the world would be as nothing against that unchained elemental mass of Vandals. It was as impossible to convert the Barbarians as it had been to convert the Donatists. Force was the only resource against force. Then in despair the man of God turned once more to Cæsar. The monk appealed to the soldier. He charged Boniface, Count of Africa, to save Rome and the Church. This Boniface, a rather ambiguous personage, was a fine type of the swashbuckler and official of the Lower-Empire. Thracian by origin, he joined the trickery of the Oriental to all the vices of the Barbarian. He was strong, clever in all bodily exercises like the soldiers of those days, overflowing with vigour and health, and even brave at times. In addition, he was fond of wine and women, and ate and drank like a true pagan. He was married twice, and after his second marriage he kept in the sight and knowledge of everybody a harem of concubines. He was sent, first of all, to Africa as a Tribune--that is to say, as Commissioner of the Imperial Government, probably to carry out the decrees of Honorius against the Donatists; and ere long he was made commander of the military forces of the province, with the title of Count. In reality, while seeming to protect the country, he set himself to plunder it, as the tradition was among the Roman officials. His _officium_, still more grasping than himself, persuaded him to deeds which the Bishop of Hippo, who was, however, anxious to remain on the right side of him, protested against by hints. Boniface was obliged to overlook much robbery and pillage on the part of his subordinates so as to keep them faithful. Moreover, he himself stole. He was bound to close his eyes to the depredations of others, that his own might be winked at. Once become the accomplice of this band of robbers, he had no longer the authority to control them. How did Augustin ever believe in the goodwill and good faith of this adventurer full of coarse passions, so far as to put his final hopes in him? Augustin knew men very well; he could detect low and hypocritical natures at a distance. How came it that he was taken in by Boniface? Well, Augustin wanted his support, first of all, when he came as Imperial Commissioner to Carthage to bring the Donatists into line. Generally, we see only the good points of people who do us good turns. Besides, in order to propitiate the bishop, and the devout Court at Ravenna, the Tribune advertised his great zeal in favour of Catholicism. His first wife, a very pious woman whom he seems to have loved much, encouraged him in this. When she died, he was so overcome by despair that he took refuge in the extremest practices of religion--and in this, perhaps, he was quite sincere. It is also possible that he was becoming discredited at Ravenna, where they must have known about his oppressions and suspected his ambitious intrigues. Anyhow, whether he was really disgusted with the world, or whether he deemed it prudent to throw a little oblivion over himself just then, he spoke on all hands of resigning his post and living in retreat like a monk. It was just at this moment that Augustin and Alypius begged him not to desert the African army. They met the Commander-in-Chief at Thubunæ, in Southern Numidia, where, no doubt, he was reducing the Nomads. We must remark once more Augustin's energy in travelling, to the very eve of his death. It was a long and dangerous road from Hippo to Thubunæ. Before making up his mind to so much fatigue, the old bishop must have judged the situation to be very serious. At Thubunæ, was Boniface playing a game, or was he, indeed, so crushed by his grief that the world had become unbearable and he pondered genuine thoughts of changing his way of life? What is sure is, that he gave the two prelates the most edifying talk. When they heard the Count of Africa speaking with unction of the cloister and of his desire to retire there, they were a little astonished at so much piety in a soldier. Besides, these excellent resolutions were most inconvenient for their plans. They remonstrated with him that it was quite possible to save one's soul in the army, and quoted the example of David, the warrior king. They ended by telling him all the expectations they founded upon his resource and firmness. They begged him to protect the churches and convents against fresh attacks of the Donatists, and especially against the Barbarians of Africa. These were at this moment breaking down all the old defence lines and laying waste the territories of the Empire. Boniface allowed himself to be easily convinced--promised whatever he was asked. But he never budged. From now on, his conduct becomes most singular. He is in command of all the military strength of the province, and he takes no steps to suppress the African looters. It would seem as if he only thought of filling the coffers of himself and his friends. The country was so systematically scoured by them that, as Augustin said, there was nothing more left to take. This inactivity lent colour to the rumours of treason. Nor is it impossible that he had cherished a plan from the beginning of his command to cut out an independent principality for himself in Africa. Was this the reason that he dealt softly with the native tribes, so as to make certain of their help in case of a conflict with the Imperial army? However that may be, his behaviour was not frank. Some years later, he landed on the Spanish coast to war against the Vandals under the command of the Prefect Castinus, and there he married a Barbarian princess who was by religion an Arian. It is true that the new Countess of Africa became a convert to Catholicism. But her first child was baptized by Arian priests, who rebaptized, at the same time, the Catholic slaves of Boniface's household. This marriage with a Vandal, these concessions to Arianism, gave immense scandal to the orthodox. Rumours of treason began to float about again. No doubt Boniface took great advantage of his fidelity to the Empress Placidia. But he was standing between the all-powerful Barbarians and the undermined Empire. He wanted to remain on good terms with both, and then, when the hour came, to go over to the stronger. This double-faced diplomacy caused his downfall. His rival Aëtius accused him of high treason before Placidia. The Court of Ravenna declared him an enemy of the Empire, and an army was sent against him. Boniface did not hesitate; he went into open rebellion against Rome. Augustin was thunderstruck by his desertion. But what way was there to make this violent man listen to reason, who had at least the appearances of right on his side, since there was a chance they had slandered him to the Empress, and who thought it quite natural to take vengeance on his enemies? His recent successes had still more intoxicated him. He had just defeated the two generals who had been sent to reduce him, and he was accordingly master of the situation in Africa. What was he going to do? The worst resolutions were to be feared from this conqueror, all smarting, and hungry for revenge.... Nevertheless, Augustin resolved to write to him. His letter is a masterpiece of tact, of prudence, and also of Christian and episcopal firmness. It would have been dangerous to declare to this triumphant rebel: "You are in the wrong. Your duty is to submit to the Emperor, your master." Boniface was quite capable of answering: "What are you interfering for? Politics are no business of yours. Look after your Church!" This is why Augustin very cleverly speaks to him from beginning to end of his letter simply as a bishop, eager for the salvation of a very dear son in Jesus Christ. And so, by keeping strictly to his office of spiritual director, he gained his end more surely and entirely; and, as a doctor of souls, he ventured to remind Boniface of certain truths which he would never have dared to mention as counsellor. According to Augustin, the disgrace of the Count, and the evils which this event had brought on Africa, came principally from his attachment to worldly benefits. It was the ambition and covetousness of himself and his followers which had done all the harm. Let him free himself from perishable things, let him prevent the thefts and plundering of those under him. Let him, who some time ago wished to live in perfect celibacy, now keep at least to his wife and no other. Finally, let him remember his sworn allegiance. Augustin did not mean to go into the quarrel between Boniface and Placidia, and he gave no opinion as to the grievances of either. He confined himself to saying to the general in rebellion: "If you have received so many benefits from the Roman Empire, do not render evil for good. If, on the other hand, you have received evil, do not render evil for evil." It is clear that the Bishop of Hippo could scarcely have given any other advice to the Count of Africa. To play the part of political counsellor in the very entangled state of affairs was extremely risky. How was it possible to exhort a victorious general to lay down his arms before the conquered? And yet, in estimating the situation from the Christian standpoint alone, Augustin had found a way to say everything essential, all that could profitably be said at the moment. How did Boniface take a letter which was, in the circumstances, so courageous? What we know is that he did not alter his plans. It would indeed have been very difficult for him to withdraw and yield; and more than ever since a new army under Sigisvultus had been sent against him in all haste. A real fatality compelled him to remain in revolt against Rome. Did he believe he was ruined, as has been stated, or else, through his family connections--let us remember that his wife was a Barbarian--had he been for a long time plotting with Genseric to divide Africa? He has been accused of that. What comes out is, that as soon as he heard of the arrival of Sigisvultus and the new expeditionary force, he called in the Vandals to his aid. This was the great invasion of 429. Ere long, the Barbarians entered Numidia. The borderlands about Hippo were threatened. Stricken with terror, the inhabitants in a mass fled before the enemy, leaving the towns empty. Those who were caught in them rushed into the churches, imploring the bishops and priests to help them. Or else, giving up all hope of life, they cried out to be baptized, confessed, did penance in public. The Vandals, as we have seen, aimed specially at the clergy; they believed that the Catholic priests were the soul of the resistance. Should not these priests, then, in the very interest of the Church, save themselves for quieter times, and escape the persecution by flight? Many sheltered themselves behind the words of Christ: "When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another." But Augustin strongly condemned the cowardliness of the deserters. In a letter addressed to his fellow-bishop, Honoratus, and intended to be read by all the clergy in Africa, he declares that bishops and priests should not abandon their churches and dioceses, but stay at their post till the end--till death and till martyrdom--to fulfil the duties of their ministry. If the faithful were able to withdraw into a safe place, their pastors might accompany them; if not, they should die in the midst of them. Thus they would have at least the consolation of lending aid to the dying in their last moments, and especially of preventing the apostasies which readily took place under the shock of the terror. For Augustin, who foresaw the future, the essential thing was that later, when the Vandal wave had swept away, Catholicism might flourish again in Africa. To this end, the Catholics must be made to remain in the country, and the greatest possible number be strengthened in their faith. Otherwise, the work of three centuries would have to be done all over again. We must admire this courage and clear-mindedness in an old man of seventy-five, who was being continually harassed by the complaints and lamentations of a crowd of demoralized fugitives. The position became more and more critical. The siege lines were drawing closer. But in the midst of all this dread, Augustin was given a gleam of hope: Boniface made his peace with the Empire. Henceforward, his army, turning against the Barbarians, might protect Hippo and perhaps save Africa. Had Augustin a hand in this reconciliation? There is not the least doubt that he desired it most earnestly. In a letter to Count Darius, the special envoy sent from Ravenna to treat with the rebel general, he warmly congratulates the Imperial plenipotentiary on his mission of peace. "You are sent," he said to him, "to stop the shedding of blood. Therefore rejoice, illustrious and very dear son in Jesus Christ, rejoice in this great and real blessing, and rejoice upon it in the Lord, Who has made you what you are, and entrusted to you a task so beautiful and important. May God seal the good work He has done for us through you!" ... And Darius answered: "May you be spared to pray such prayers for the Empire and the Roman State a long time yet, my Father." But the Empire was lost in Africa. If the reconciliation of the rebellious Count had given some illusions to Augustin, they did not last long. Boniface, having failed in his endeavours to negotiate the retreat of the Vandals, was defeated by Genseric, and obliged to fall back into Hippo with an army of mercenary Goths. Thus it came about that Barbarians held against other Barbarians one of the last Roman citadels in Africa. From the end of May, 430, Hippo was blockaded on the land side and on the side of the sea. In great tribulation, Augustin resigned himself to this supreme humiliation, and to all the horrors which would have to be endured if the city were captured. As a Christian, he left all to the will of God, and he would repeat to those about him the words of the Psalm: "Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgments." A number of fugitive priests, and among them Possidius, Bishop of Guelma, had taken refuge in the episcopal residence. One day, when he lost heart, Augustin, who was at table with them, said: "In front of all these disasters, I ask God to deliver this city from the siege, or, if that be not His decree, to give His servants the necessary strength to do His will, or at least to take me from this world and receive me into His bosom." But it is more than probable that discouragement of that kind was only momentary with him, and that in his sermons, as well as in his conversations with Boniface, he did his utmost to stimulate the courage of the people and the general. His correspondence includes a series of letters written about this time to the Count of Africa, which manifest here and there a very warlike spirit. These letters are most certainly apocryphal. Yet they do reveal something of what must have been the sentiments just then of the people of Hippo and of Augustin himself. One of these letters emphatically congratulates Boniface upon an advantage gained over the Barbarians. "Your Excellency knows, I believe, that I am stretched upon my bed, and that I long for my last day to come. I am overjoyed at your victory. I urge you to save the Roman city. Rule your soldiers like a good Count. Do not trust too much to your own strength. Put your glory in Him Who gives courage, and you will never fear any enemy. Farewell!" The words do not matter much. Whatever may have been Augustin's last farewell to the defender of Hippo, it was no doubt couched in language not unlike this. In any case, posterity has wished to believe that the dying bishop maintained to the end his unyielding demeanour face to face with the Barbarians. It would be a misuse of words to represent him as a patriot in the present sense of the term. It is no less true that this African, this Christian, was an admirable servant of Rome. Until his death he kept his respect for it, because in his eyes the Empire meant order, peace, civilization, the unity of faith in the unity of rule. IV SAINT AUGUSTIN In the third month of the siege, he fell ill. He had a fever--no doubt an infectious fever. The country people, the wounded soldiers who had taken refuge in Hippo after the rout of Boniface, must have brought in the germs of disease. It was, moreover, the end of August, the season of epidemics, of damp heats and oppressive evenings, the time of the year most dangerous and trying for sick people. All at once, Augustin took to his bed. But even there, upon the bed in which he was going to die, he was not left in quiet. People came to ask his prayers for some possessed by devils. The old bishop was touched; he wept and asked God to give him this grace, and the devils went out of those poor crazy men. This cure, as may well be thought, made a great noise in the city. A man brought him another one sick to be healed. Augustin, being most weary, said to the man: "My son, you see the state I am in. If I had any power over illnesses, I should begin by curing myself." But the man had no idea of being put off: he had had a dream. A mysterious voice had said to him, "Go and see Augustin: he will put his hands on the sick person, who will rise up cured." And, in fact, he did. I think these are the only miracles the saint made in his life. But what matters that, when the continual miracle of his charity and his apostolate is considered? Soon the bishop's illness grew worse. Eventually, he succeeded in persuading them not to disturb him any more, and that they would let him prepare for death in silence and recollection. During the ten days that he still lingered, nobody entered his cell save the physicians, and the servants who brought him a little food. He availed himself of the quiet to repent of his faults. For he was used to say to his clergy that "even after baptism, Christians--nay, priests, however holy they might be, ought never go out of life without having made a general confession." And the better to rouse his contrition, he had desired them to copy out on leaves the Penitential Psalms, and to put these leaves on the wall of his room. He read them continually from his pillow. Here, then, he is alone with himself and God. A solemn moment for the great old man! He called up his past life, and what struck him most, and saddened him, was the foundering of all his human hopes. The enemies of the Church, whom he had battled with almost without ceasing for forty years, and had reason to believe conquered--all these enemies were raising their heads: Donatists, Arians, Barbarians. With the Barbarians' help, the Arians were going to be the masters of Africa. The churches, reformed at the price of such long efforts, would be once more destroyed. And see now! the authority which might have supported them, which he had perhaps too much relied upon--well, the Empire was sinking too. It was the end of order, of substantial peace, of that minimum of safety which is indispensable for all spiritual effort. From one end to the other of the Western world, Barbarism triumphed. Sometimes, amid these sad thoughts of the dying man, the clangour of clarions blared out--there was a call to arms on the ramparts. And these musics came to him in his half-delirious state very mournfully, like the trumpets proclaiming the Judgment Day. Yes, it might well be feared that the Day of Wrath was here! Was it really the end of the world, or only the end of a world?... Truly, there were then enough horrors and calamities to make people think of the morrow with dismay. Many of the signs predicted by Scripture dazed the imagination: desolations, wars, persecutions of the Church, increased with terrific steadiness and cruelty. Yet all the signs foretold were not there. How many times already had humanity been deceived in its fear and its hope! In reality, though all seemed to shew that the end of time was drawing nigh, no one could tell the day nor the hour of the Judgment. Hence, men should watch always, according to the words of Christ.... But if this trial of Barbarian war was to pass like the others, how woeful it was while it endured! How hard for Augustin, above all, who saw nearly the whole of his work thrown down. One thought at least consoled him, that since his conversion, for forty years and more, he had done all he was able--he had worked for Christ even beyond his strength. He said to himself that he left behind him the fruit of a huge labour, a whole body of doctrine and apology which would safeguard against error whatever was left of his flock and of the African Church. He himself had founded a Church which might serve as an example, his dear Church of Hippo, that he had done his best to fashion after the divine plan. And he had also founded convents, and a library full of books, which had become still larger recently through the generosity of Count Darius. He had lessoned his clergy who, once the disasters were past, would scatter the good seed of Truth. Books, monasteries, priests, a sure and solid nourishment for the mind, shelters and guides for souls--there is what he bequeathed to the workers of the future. And with a little joy mingling with his sorrow, he read on the corner of the wall where his bed was, this verse of the Psalm: _Exibit homo ad opus suum et operationem suam usque ad vesperum_--"Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening." He, too, had worked until evening. If the earthly reward seemed to slip from him now, if all was sinking around him, if his episcopal city was beleaguered, if he himself, although still a strong man--"he had the use of all his limbs," says Possidius; "a keen ear and perfect sight"--if he himself was dying too soon, it was doubtless in expiation for the sins of his youth. At this remembrance of his disorders, the tears fell over his face.... And yet, however wild had been his conduct at that time, he could descry in it the sure marks of his vocation. He recalled the despair and tears of his mother, but also his enthusiasm when he read the _Hortensius_; his disgust for the world and all things when he lost his friend. In the old man he recognized the new. And he said to himself: "Nay! but that was myself. I have not changed. I have only found myself. I have only changed my ways. In my youth, in the strongest time of my mistakes, I had already risen to turn to Thee, my God!" His worst foolishness had been the desire to understand all things. He had failed in humility of mind. Then God had given him the grace to submit his intelligence to the faith. He had believed, and then he had understood, as well as he could, as much as he could. In the beginning, he acknowledged very plainly that he did not understand. And then faith had thrown open the roads of understanding. He had splendidly employed his reason, within the limits laid down against mortal weakness. Had that not been the proud desire of his youth? To understand! What greater destiny? To love also. After he had freed himself from carnal passions, he had much employed his heart. He thought of all the charity he had poured out upon his people and the Church, upon all he had loved in God--upon all he had done, upon all the consequence of his labour, inspired and strengthened by the divine love.... Yes, to love--all was in that! Let the Barbarians come! Had not Christ said: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world"? So long as there shall be two men gathered together for love of Him, the world will not be entirely lost, the Church and civilization will be saved. The religion of Christ is a leaven of action, understanding, sacrifice, and charity. If the world be not at this hour already condemned, if the Day of Judgment be still far off, it is from this religion that shall arise the new influences of the future.... And so Augustin forgot his sufferings and his human disappointments in the thought that, in spite of all, the Church is eternal. The City of God gathered in the wreckage of the earthly city: "The Goth cannot capture what Christ protects"--_Non tollit Gothus quod custodit Christus_. And as his sufferings increased, he turned all his thoughts on this unending City, "where we rest, where we see, where we love," where we find again all the beloved ones who have gone away. All--he called them all in this supreme moment: Monnica, Adeodatus, and her who had nearly lost herself for him, and all those he had held dear.... On the fifth day of the calends of September, Augustin, the bishop, was very low. They were praying for him in the churches at Hippo, and especially in the Basilica of Peace, where he had preached and worked for others so long. Possidius of Guelma was in the bishop's room, and the priests and monks. They sent up their prayers with those of the dying man. And no doubt they sang for the last time before him one of those liturgical chants which long ago at Milan had touched him even to tears, and now, since the siege, in the panic caused by the Barbarians, they dared not sing any more. Augustin, guarding himself even now against the too poignant sweetness of the melody, attended only to the sense of the words. And he said: "My soul thirsts after the living God. When shall I appear before His face?" Or again: "He Who is Life has come down into this world. He has suffered our death, and He has caused it to die by the fullness of His life.... Life has come down to you--and will you not ascend towards Him and live?..." He was passing into Life and into Glory. He was going very quietly, amid the chanting of hymns and the murmur of prayers.... Little by little his eyes were veiled, the lines of his face became rigid. His lips moved no more. Possidius, the faithful disciple, bent over him. Like a patriarch of the Scriptures, Augustin of Thagaste "slept with his fathers."... * * * * * And now, whatever may be the worth of this book, which has been planned and carried out in a spirit of veneration and love for the saint, for the great heart and the great intellect that Augustin was, for this unique type of the Christian, the most perfect and the most admirable perhaps that has ever been seen--the author can only repeat in all humility what was said fifteen hundred years ago by the Bishop of Guelma, Augustin's first biographer: "I do desire of the charity of those into whose hands this work shall fall, to join with me in thanksgiving and blessing to Our Lord, Who has inspired me to make known this life to those present and those absent, and has given me the strength to do it. Pray for me and with me, that I may try here below to follow in the steps of this peerless man, whom, by God's goodness, I have had the happiness of living with for such a long time...." THE END 
19108	----	THE GOLDEN SILENCE BOOKS BY C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON THE MOTOR MAID LORD LOVELAND DISCOVERS AMERICA SET IN SILVER THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR THE PRINCESS PASSES MY FRIEND THE CHAUFFEUR LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER ROSEMARY IN SEARCH OF A FATHER THE PRINCESS VIRGINIA THE CAR OF DESTINY THE CHAPERON [Illustration] "'Allah sends thee a man--a strong man, whose brain and heart and arm are at thy service'" THE GOLDEN SILENCE by C.N. & A.M. WILLIAMSON [Illustration] Illustrated by GEORGE BREHM GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1911 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON TO _Effendi_ HIS BOOK THE GOLDEN SILENCE I Stephen Knight was very angry, though he meant to be kind and patient with Margot. Perhaps, after all, she had not given the interview to the newspaper reporter. It might be what she herself would call a "fake." But as for her coming to stop at a big, fashionable hotel like the Carlton, in the circumstances she could hardly have done anything in worse taste. He hated to think that she was capable of taking so false a step. He hated to think that it was exactly like her to take it. He hated to be obliged to call on her in the hotel; and he hated himself for hating it. Knight was of the world that is inclined to regard servants as automata; but he was absurdly self-conscious as he saw his card on a silver tray, in the hand of an expressionless, liveried youth who probably had the famous interview in his pocket. If not there, it was only because the paper would not fit in. The footman had certainly read the interview, and followed the "Northmorland Case" with passionate interest, for months, from the time it began with melodrama, and turned violently to tragedy, up to the present moment when (as the journalists neatly crammed the news into a nutshell) "it bade fair to end with marriage-bells." Many servants and small tradespeople in London had taken shares, Stephen had heard, as a speculative investment, in the scheme originated to provide capital for the "other side," which was to return a hundred per cent. in case of success. Probably the expressionless youth was inwardly reviling the Northmorland family because he had lost his money and would be obliged to carry silver trays all the rest of his life, instead of starting a green grocery business. Stephen hoped that his own face was as expressionless, as he waited to receive the unwelcome message that Miss Lorenzi was at home. It came very quickly, and in a worse form than Stephen had expected. Miss Lorenzi was in the Palm Court, and would Mr. Knight please come to her there? Of course he had to obey; but it was harder than ever to remain expressionless. There were a good many people in the Palm Court, and they all looked at Stephen Knight as he threaded his intricate way among chairs and little tables and palms, toward a corner where a young woman in black crape sat on a pink sofa. Her hat was very large, and a palm with enormous fan-leaves drooped above it like a sympathetic weeping willow on a mourning brooch. But under the hat was a splendidly beautiful dark face. "Looks as if he were on his way to be shot," a man who knew all about the great case said to a woman who had lunched with him. "Looks more as if he were on his way to shoot," she laughed, as one does laugh at other people's troubles, which are apt to be ridiculous. "He's simply glaring." "Poor beggar!" Her companion found pleasure in pitying Lord Northmorland's brother, whom he had never succeeded in getting to know. "Which is he, fool or hero?" "Both. A fool to have proposed to the girl. A hero to stick to her, now he has proposed. He must be awfully sick about the interview. I do think it's excuse enough to throw her over." "I don't know. It's the sort of business a man can't very well chuck, once he's let himself in for it. Every one blames him now for having anything to do with Miss Lorenzi. They'd blame him a lot more for throwing her over." "Women wouldn't." "No. Because he happens to be young and good-looking. But all his popularity won't make the women who like him receive his wife. She isn't a woman's woman." "I should think not, indeed! We're too clever to be taken in by that sort, all eyes and melodrama. They say Lord Northmorland warned his brother against her, and prophesied she'd get hold of him, if he didn't let her alone. The Duchess of Amidon told Lady Peggy Lynch--whom I know a little--that immediately after Lorenzi committed suicide, this Margot girl wrote to Stephen Knight and implored him to help her. I can quite believe she would. Fancy the daughter of the unsuccessful claimant to his brother's title writing begging letters to a young man like Stephen Knight! It appeals to one's sense of humour." "What a pity Knight didn't see it in that light--what?" "Yet he has a sense of humour, I believe. It's supposed to be one of his charms. But the sense of humour often fails where one's own affairs are concerned. You know he's celebrated for his quaint ideas about life. They say he has socialistic views, or something rather like them. His brother and he are as different from one another as light is from darkness. Stephen gives away a lot of money, and Lady Peggy says that nobody ever asks him for anything in vain. He can't stand seeing people unhappy, if he can do anything to help. Probably, after he'd been kind to the Lorenzi girl, against his brother's advice, and gone to see her a few times, she grovelled at his feet and told him she was all alone in the world, and would die if he didn't love her. He's just young enough and romantic enough to be caught in that way!" "He's no boy. He must be nearly thirty." "All nice, normal men are boys until after thirty. Lady Peggy's new name for this poor child is the Martyr Knight." "St. Stephen the Second is the last thing I heard. Stephen the First was a martyr too, wasn't he? Stoned to death or something." "I believe so," hastily returned the lady, who was not learned in martyrology. "He will be stoned, too, if he tries to force Miss Lorenzi on his family, or even on his friends. He'll find that he'll have to take her abroad." "That might be a good working plan. Foreigners wouldn't shudder at her accent. And she's certainly one of the most gorgeously beautiful creatures I ever saw." "Yes, that's just the right expression. Gorgeous. And--a _creature_." They both laughed, and fell to talking again of the interview. Stephen Knight's ears were burning. He could not hear any of the things people were saying; but he had a lively imagination, and, always sensitive, he had grown morbidly so since the beginning of the Northmorland-Lorenzi case, when all the failings and eccentricities of the family had been reviewed before the public eye, like a succession of cinematograph pictures. It did not occur to Stephen that he was an object of pity, but he felt that through his own folly and that of another, he had become a kind of scarecrow, a figure of fun: and because until now the world had laughed with instead of at him, he would rather have faced a shower of bullets than a ripple of ridicule. "How do you do?" he inquired stiffly, and shook Miss Lorenzi's hand as she gave it without rising from the pink sofa. She gazed up at him with immense, yellowish brown eyes, then fluttered her long black lashes in a way she had, which was thrilling--the first time you saw it. But Stephen had seen it often. "I am glad you've come, my White Knight!" she said in her contralto voice, which would have been charming but for a crude accent. "I was so afraid you were cross." "I'm not cross, only extremely ang--vexed if you really did talk to that journalist fellow," Stephen answered, trying not to speak sharply, and keeping his tone low. "Only, for Heaven's sake, Margot, don't call me--what you did call me--anywhere, but especially here, where we might as well be on the stage of a theatre." "Nobody can hear us," she defended herself. "You ought to like that dear little name I made up because you came to my rescue, and saved me from following my father--came into my life as if you'd been a modern St. George. Calling you my 'White Knight' shows you how I feel--how I appreciate you and everything. If you just _would_ realize that, you couldn't scold me." "I'm not scolding you," he said desperately. "But couldn't you have stopped in your sitting-room--I suppose you have one--and let me see you there? It's loathsome making a show of ourselves----" "I _haven't_ a private sitting-room. It would have been too extravagant," returned Miss Lorenzi. "Please sit down--by me." Stephen sat down, biting his lip. He must not begin to lecture her, or even to ask why she had exchanged her quiet lodgings for the Carlton Hotel, because if he once began, he knew that he would be carried on to unsafe depths. Besides, he was foolish enough to hate hurting a woman's feelings, even when she most deserved to have them hurt. "Very well. It can't be helped now. Let us talk," said Stephen. "The first thing is, what to do with this newspaper chap, if you didn't give him the interview----" "Oh, I did give it--in a way," she admitted, looking rather frightened, and very beautiful. "You mustn't do anything to him. But--of course it was only because I thought it would be better to tell him the truth. Surely it was?" "Surely it wasn't. You oughtn't to have received him." "Then do you mind so dreadfully having people know you've asked me to marry you, and that I've said 'yes'?" Margot Lorenzi's expression of pathetic reproach was as effective as her eyelash play, when seen for the first time, as Stephen knew to his sorrow. But he had seen the one as often as the other. "You must know I didn't mean anything of the sort. Oh, Margot, if you don't understand, I'm afraid you're hopeless." "If you speak like that to me, I shall simply end everything as my father did," murmured the young woman, in a stifled, breaking voice. But her eyes were blazing. It almost burst from Stephen to order her not to threaten him again, to tell her that he was sick of melodrama, sick to the soul; but he kept silence. She was a passionate woman, and perhaps in a moment of madness she might carry out her threat. He had done a great deal to save her life--or, as he thought, to save it. After going so far he must not fail now in forbearance. And worse than having to live with beautiful, dramatic Margot, would it be to live without her if she killed herself because of him. "Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt you," he said when he could control his voice. She smiled. "No, of course you didn't. It was stupid of me to fly out. I ought to know that you're always good. But I _don't_ see what harm the interview could do you, or me, or any one. It lets all the world know how gloriously you've made up to me for the loss of the case, and the loss of my father; and how you came into my life just in time to save me from killing myself, because I was utterly alone, defeated, without money or hope." She spoke with the curiously thrilling emphasis she knew how to give her words sometimes, and Stephen could not help thinking she did credit to her training. She had been preparing for the stage in Canada, the country of the Lorenzis' adoption, before her father brought her to England, whither he came with a flourish of trumpets to contest Lord Northmorland's rights to the title. "The world knew too much about our affairs already," Stephen said aloud. "And when you wished our engagement to be announced in _The Morning Post_, I had it put in at once. Wasn't that enough?" "Every one in the world doesn't read _The Morning Post_. But I should think every one in the world has read that interview, or will soon," retorted Margot. "It appeared only yesterday morning, and was copied in all the evening papers; in this morning's ones too; and they say it's been cabled word for word to the big Canadian and American dailies." Stephen had his gloves in his hand, and he tore a slit across the palm of one, without knowing it. But Margot saw. He was thinking of the heading in big black print at the top of the interview: "Romantic Climax to the Northmorland-Lorenzi Case. Only Brother of Lord Northmorland to Marry the Daughter of Dead Canadian Claimant. Wedding Bells Relieve Note of Tragedy." "We've nothing to be ashamed of--everything to be proud of," Miss Lorenzi went on. "You, of your own noble behaviour to me, which, as I said to the reporter, must be making my poor father happy in another world. Me, because I have won You, _far_ more than because some day I shall have gained all that father failed to win for me and himself. His heart was broken, and he took his own life. My heart would have been broken too, and but for you I----" "Don't, please," Stephen broke in. "We won't talk any more about the interview. I'd like to forget it. I should have called here yesterday, as I wired in answer to your telegram saying you were at the Carlton, but being at my brother's place in Cumberland, I couldn't get back till----" "Oh, I understand," Margot cut in. Then she laughed a sly little laugh. "I think I understand too why you went to Cumberland. Now tell me. Confession's good for the soul. Didn't your brother wire for you the minute he saw that announcement in _The Morning Post_, day before yesterday?" "He did wire. Or rather the Duchess did, asking me to go at once to Cumberland, on important business. I found your telegram, forwarded from my flat, when I got to Northmorland Hall. If I'd known you were moving, I wouldn't have gone till to-day." "You mean, dear, you wouldn't have let me move? Now, do you think there's any harm in a girl of my age being alone in a hotel? If you do, it's dreadfully old-fashioned of you. I'm twenty-four." During the progress of the case, it had been mentioned in court that the claimant's daughter was twenty-nine (exactly Stephen Knight's age); but Margot ignored this unfortunate slip, and hoped that Stephen and others had forgotten. "No actual harm. But in the circumstances, why be conspicuous? Weren't you comfortable with Mrs. Middleton? She seemed a miraculously nice old body for a lodging-house keeper, and fussed over you no end----" "It was for your sake that I wanted to be in a good hotel, now our engagement has been announced," explained Miss Lorenzi. "I didn't think it suitable for the Honourable Stephen Knight's future wife to go on living in stuffy lodgings. And as you've insisted on my accepting an income of eighty pounds a month till we're married, I'm able to afford a little luxury, dearest. I can tell you it's a pleasure, after all I've suffered!--and I felt I owed you something in return for your generosity. I wanted your _fiancée_ to do you credit in the eyes of the world." Stephen bit his lip. "I see," he said slowly. Yet what he saw most clearly was a very different picture. Margot as she had seemed the day he met her first, in the despised South Kensington lodgings, whither he had been implored to come in haste, if he wished to save a wretched, starving girl from following her father out of a cruel world. Of course, he had seen her in court, and had reluctantly encountered her photograph several times before he had given up looking at illustrated papers for fear of what he might find in them. But Margot's tragic beauty, as presented by photographers, or as seen from a distance, loyally seated at the claimant's side, was as nothing to the dark splendour of her despair when the claimant was in his new-made grave. It was the day after the burial that she had sent for Stephen; and her letter had arrived, as it happened, when he was thinking of the girl, wondering whether she had friends who would stand by her, or whether a member of his family might, without being guilty of bad taste, dare offer help. Her tear-blotted letter had settled that doubt, and it had been so despairing, so suggestive of frenzy in its wording, that Stephen had impulsively rushed off to South Kensington at once, without stopping to think whether it would not be better to send a representative combining the gentleness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent, and armed for emergencies with a blank cheque. Margot's hair, so charmingly dressed now, folding in soft dark waves on either side her face, almost hiding the pink-tipped ears, had been tumbled, that gloomy afternoon six weeks ago, with curls escaping here and there; and in the course of their talk a great coil had fallen down over her shoulders. It was the sort of thing that happens to the heroine of a melodrama, if she has plenty of hair; but Stephen did not think of that then. He thought of nothing except his sympathy for a beautiful girl brought, through no fault of her own, to the verge of starvation and despair, and of how he could best set about helping her. She had not even money enough to buy mourning. Lorenzi had left debts which she could not pay. She had no friends. She did not know what was to become of her. She had not slept for many nights. She had made up her mind to die as her father had died, because it seemed the only thing to do, when suddenly the thought of Stephen had flashed into her mind, as if sent there by her guardian angel. She had heard that he was good and charitable to everybody, and once she had seen him looking at her kindly, in court, as if he were sorry for her, and could read something of what was in her heart. She had imagined it perhaps. But would he forgive her for writing to him? Would he help her, and save her life? Any one who knew Stephen could have prophesied what his answer would be. He had hated it when she snatched his hand to kiss at the end of their interview; but he would scarcely have been a human young man if he had not felt a sudden tingle of the blood at the touch of such lips as Margot Lorenzi's. Never had she seemed so beautiful to him since that first day; but he had called again and again, against his brother's urgent advice (when he had confessed the first visit); and the story that the Duchess of Amidon was telling her friends, though founded entirely on her own imagination of the scene which had brought about Stephen's undoing, was not very far from the truth. Now, he saw a picture of Margot as he had seen her in the lodgings she hated; and he wished to heaven that he might think of her as he had thought of her then. "I've got something important to say to you," the girl went on, when she realized that Stephen intended to dismiss the subject of the hotel, as he had dismissed the subject of the interview. "That's the reason I wired. But I won't speak a word till you've told me what your brother and the Duchess of Amidon think about you and me." "There's nothing to tell," Stephen answered almost sullenly. And indeed there was no news of his Cumberland visit which it would be pleasant or wise to retail. Margot Lorenzi's complexion was not one of her greatest beauties. It was slightly sallow, so she made artistic use of a white cosmetic, which gave her skin the clearness of a camellia petal. But she had been putting on rather more than usual since her father's death, because it was suitable as well as becoming to be pale when one was in deep mourning. Consequently Margot could not turn perceptibly whiter, but she felt the blood go ebbing away from her face back upon her heart. "Stephen! Don't they mean to receive me, when we're married?" she stammered. "I don't think they've much use for either of us," Stephen hedged, to save her feelings. "Northmorland and I have never been great pals, you know. He's twenty years older than I am; and since he married the Duchess of Amidon----" "And her money! Oh, it's no use beating about the bush. I hate them both. Lord Northmorland has a fiendish, vindictive nature." "Come, you mustn't say that, Margot. He has nothing of the sort. He's a curious mixture. A man of the world, and a bit of a Puritan----" "So are you a Puritan, at heart," she broke in. Stephen laughed. "No one ever accused me of Puritanism before." "Maybe you've never shown any one else that side of you, as you show it to me. You're always being shocked at what I do and say." For that, it was hardly necessary to be a Puritan. But Stephen shrugged his shoulders instead of answering. "Your brother is a cold-hearted tyrant, and his wife is a snob. If she weren't, she wouldn't hang on to her duchess-hood after marrying again. It would be good enough for _me_ to call myself Lady Northmorland, and I hope I shall some day." Stephen's sensitive nostrils quivered. He understood in that moment how a man might actually wish to strike a nagging virago of a woman, no matter how beautiful. And he wondered with a sickening heaviness of heart how he was to go on with the wretched business of his engagement. But he pushed the question out of his mind, fiercely. He was in for this thing now. He _must_ go on. "Let all that alone, won't you?" he said, in a well-controlled tone. "I can't," Margot exclaimed. "I hate your brother. He killed my father." "Because he defended the honour of our grandfather, and upheld his own rights, when Mr. Lorenzi came to England to dispute them?" "Who knows if they _were_ his rights, or my father's? My father believed they were his, or he wouldn't have crossed the ocean and spent all his money in the hope of stepping into your brother's shoes." There were those--and Lord Northmorland and the Duchess of Amidon were among them--who did not admit that Lorenzi had believed in his "rights." And as for the money he had spent in trying to establish a legal claim to the Northmorland title and estates, it had not been his own, but lent him by people he had hypnotized with his plausible eloquence. "That question was decided in court----" "It would be harder for a foreigner to get an English nobleman's title away than for a camel to go through the eye of the tiniest needle in the world. But never mind. All that's buried in his grave, and you're giving me everything father wanted me to have. I wish I could keep my horrid temper better in hand, and I'd never make you look so cross. But I inherited my emotional nature from Margherita Lorenzi, I suppose. What can you expect of a girl who had an Italian prima donna for a grandmother? And I oughtn't to quarrel with the fair Margherita for leaving me her temper, since she left me her face too, and I'm fairly well satisfied with that. Everybody says I'm the image of my grandmother. And you ought to know, after seeing her picture in dozens of illustrated papers, as well as in that pamphlet poor father published." "If you want me to tell you that you are one of the handsomest women who ever lived, I'll do so at once," said Stephen. Margot smiled. "You really mean it?" "There couldn't be two opinions on that subject." "Then, if you think I'm so beautiful, don't let your brother and his snobbish Duchess spoil my life." "They can't spoil it." "Yes, they can. They can keep me from being a success in their set, your set--the _only_ set." "Perhaps they can do that. But England isn't the only country, anyhow. I've been thinking that when--by and by--we might take a long trip round the world----" "_Hang_ the world! England's my world. I've always looked forward to England, ever since I was a little thing, before mamma died, and I used to hear father repeating the romantic family story--how, if he could only find his mother's letters that she'd tried to tell him about when she was dying, perhaps he might make a legal claim to a title and a fortune. He used to turn to me and say: 'Maybe you'll be a great lady when you grow up, Margot, and I shall be an English viscount.' Then, when he did find the letters, behind the secret partition in grandmother's big old-fashioned sandal-wood fan-box, of which you've heard so much----" "Too much, please, Margot." "I _beg_ your pardon! But anyway, you see why I want to live in England. My life and soul are bound up in my success here. And I could have a success. You know I could. I am beautiful. I haven't seen any woman whose face I'd change for mine. I won't be cheated out of my happiness----" "Very well, we'll live in England, then. That's settled," said Stephen, hastily. "And you shall have all the success, all the happiness, that I can possibly give you. But we shall have to get on without any help from my brother and sister-in-law, and perhaps without a good many other people you might like to have for friends. It may seem hard, but you must make up your mind to it, Margot. Luckily, there'll be enough money to do pleasant things with; and people don't matter so immensely, once you've got used to----" "They do, they do! The right people. I _shall_ know them." "You must have patience. Everybody is rather tired of our names just now. Things may change some day. I'm ready to begin the experiment whenever you are." "You are a dear," said Margot. And Stephen did not even shiver. "That brings me to what I had to tell you. It's this: after all, we can't be married quite as soon as we expected." "Can't we?" he echoed the words blankly. Was this to be a reprieve? But he was not sure that he wanted a reprieve. He thought, the sooner the plunge was made, the better, maybe. Looking forward to it had become almost unbearable. "No, I _must_ run over to Canada first, Stephen. I've just begun to see that. You might say, I could go there with you after we were married, but it wouldn't be the same thing at all. I ought to stay with some of my old friends while I'm still Margot Lorenzi. A lot of people were awfully good to father, and I must show my gratitude. The sooner I sail the better, now the news of our engagement has got ahead of me. I needn't stop away very long. Seven or eight weeks--or nine at most, going and coming." "Would you like to be married in Canada?" Stephen asked; perhaps partly to please her, but probably more to disguise the fact that he had no impatient objections to raise against her plan. "If you wished, I could go whenever----" "Oh no, no!" she exclaimed quickly. "I wouldn't have you come there for anything in the world. That is. I mean----" she corrected herself with an anxious, almost frightened side glance at him--"I must fight it out alone. No, I don't mean that either. What a stupid way of putting it! But it would bore you dreadfully to take such a journey, and it would be nicer anyhow to be married in England--perhaps at St. George's. That used to be my dream, when I was a romantic little girl, and loved to stuff my head full of English novels. I should adore a wedding at St. George's. And oh, Stephen, you won't change your mind while I'm gone? It would kill me if you jilted me after all. I shouldn't live a single day, if you weren't true." "Don't talk nonsense, my dear girl. Of course I'm not going to change my mind," said Stephen. "When do you want to sail?" "The end of this week. You're sure you won't let your brother and that cruel Duchess talk you over? I----" "There's not the slightest chance of their talking to me at all," Stephen answered sharply. "We've definitely quarrelled." II When he had dutifully seen Miss Lorenzi off at the ship, leaving her with as many flowers, novels, and sweets as even she could wish, Stephen expected to feel a sense of relief. But somehow, in a subtle way, he was more feverishly wretched than when Margot was near, and while planning to hurry on the marriage. He had been buoyed up with a rather youthful sense of defiance of the world, a hot desire to "get everything over." The flatness of the reaction which he felt on finding himself free, at least of Margot's society, was a surprise; and yet Stephen vaguely understood its real meaning. To be free, yet not free, was an aggravation. And besides, he did not know what to do or where to go, now that old friends and old haunts had lost much of their attraction. Since the announcement of his engagement to Miss Lorenzi, and especially since the famous interview, copied in all the papers, he disliked meeting people he knew well, lest they should offer good advice, or let him see that they were dying to do so. If it had been weak to say, "Be my wife, if you think I can make you happy," one day when Margot Lorenzi had tearfully confessed her love for him, it would be doubly weak--worse than weak, Stephen thought--to throw her over now. It would look to the world as if he were a coward, and it would look to himself the same--which would be more painful in the end. So he could listen to no advice, and he wished to hear none. Fortunately he was not in love with any other woman. But then, if he had loved somebody else, he would not have made the foolish mistake of saying those unlucky, irrevocable words to Margot. Stephen would have liked to get away from England for a while, but he hardly knew where to look for a haven. Since making a dash through France and Italy just after leaving Oxford, he had been too busy amusing himself in his own country to find time for any other, with the exception of an occasional run over to Paris. Now, if he stopped in England it would be difficult to evade officious friends, and soon everybody would be gossiping about his quarrel with Northmorland. The Duchess was not reticent. Stephen had not yet made up his mind what to do, or whether to do anything at all in his brief interval of freedom, when a letter came, to the flat near Albert Gate, where he had shut himself up after the sailing of Margot. The letter was post-marked Algiers, and it was a long time since he had seen the writing on the envelope--but not so long that he had forgotten it. "Nevill Caird!" he said to himself as he broke the neat seal which was characteristic of the writer. And he wondered, as he slowly, almost reluctantly, unfolded the letter, whether Nevill Caird had been reminded of him by reading the interview with Margot. Once, he and Caird had been very good friends, almost inseparable during one year at Oxford. Stephen had been twenty then, and Nevill Caird about twenty-three. That would make him thirty-two now--and Stephen could hardly imagine what "Wings" would have developed into at thirty-two. They had not met since Stephen's last year at Oxford, for Caird had gone to live abroad, and if he came back to England sometimes, he had never made any sign of wishing to pick up the old friendship where it had dropped. But here was this letter. Stephen knew that Caird had inherited a good deal of money, and a house in Paris, from an uncle or some other near relative; and a common friend had told him that there was also an Arab palace, very ancient and very beautiful, in or near Algiers. Several years had passed since Nevill Caird's name had been mentioned in his hearing, and lately it had not even echoed in his mind; but now, the handwriting and the neat seal on this envelope brought vividly before him the image of his friend: small, slight, boyish in face and figure, with a bright, yet dreamy smile, and blue-grey eyes which had the look of seeing beautiful things that nobody else could see. "DEAR LEGS," began the letter ("Legs" being the name which Stephen's skill as a runner, as well as the length of his limbs, had given him in undergraduate days). "Dear Legs, "I've often thought about you in the last nine years, and hope you've occasionally thought of me, though somehow or other we haven't written. I don't know whether you've travelled much, or whether England has absorbed all your interests. Anyhow, can't you come out here and make me a visit--the longer it is, the more I shall be pleased. This country is interesting if you don't know it, and fascinating if you do. My place is rather nice, and I should like you to see it. Still better, I should like to see you. Do come if you can, and come soon. I should enjoy showing you my garden at its best. It's one of the things I care for most, but there are other things. Do let me introduce you to them all. You can be as quiet as you wish, if you wish. I'm a quiet sort myself, as you may remember, and North Africa suits me better than London or Paris. I haven't changed for the worse I hope, and I'm sure you haven't, in any way. "You can hardly realize how much pleasure it will give me if you'll say 'yes' to my proposal. "Yours as ever "NEVILL CAIRD, alias 'Wings,'" Not a word of "the case," though, of course, he must know all about it--even in Algiers. Stephen's gratitude went out to his old friend, and his heart felt warmer because of the letter and the invitation. Many people, even with the best intentions, would have contrived to say the wrong thing in these awkward circumstances. There would have been some veiled allusion to the engagement; either silly, well-meant congratulations and good wishes, or else a stupid hint of advice to get out of a bad business while there was time. But Caird wrote as he might have written if there had been no case, and no entanglement; and acting on his first impulse, Stephen telegraphed an acceptance, saying that he would start for Algiers in two or three days. Afterwards, when he had given himself time to think, he did not regret his decision. Indeed, he was glad of it, and glad that he had made it so soon. A few weeks ago, a sudden break in his plans would have caused him a great deal of trouble. There would have been dozens of luncheons and dinners to escape from, and twice as many letters to write. But nowadays he had few invitations and scarcely any letters to write, except those of business, and an occasional line to Margot. People were willing to be neglected by him, willing to let him alone, for now that he had quarrelled with Northmorland and the Duchess, and had promised to marry an impossible woman, he must be gently but firmly taught to expect little of Society in future. Stephen broke the news to his man that he was going away, alone, and though the accomplished Molton had regrets, they were not as poignant as they would have been some weeks earlier. Most valets, if not all, are human, and have a weakness for a master whose social popularity is as unbounded as his generosity. Molton's services did not cease until after he had packed Stephen's luggage, and seen him off at Victoria. He flattered himself, as he left the station with three months' wages in his pocket, that he would be missed; but Stephen was surprised at the sense of relief which came as Molton turned a respectable back, and the boat-train began to slide out of the station. It was good to be alone, to have loosed his moorings, and to be drifting away where no eyes, once kind, would turn from him, or turn on him with pity. Out there in Algiers, a town of which he had the vaguest conception, there would be people who read the papers, of course, and people who loved to gossip; but Stephen felt a pleasant confidence that Nevill Caird would know how to protect him from such people. He would not have to meet many strangers. Nevill would arrange all that, and give him plenty to think about during his weeks of freedom. Algiers seemed a remote place to Stephen, who had loved life at home too passionately to care for foreign travel. Besides, there was always a great deal to do in England at every season of the year, and it had been difficult to find a time convenient for getting away. Town engagements began early in the spring, and lasted till after Cowes, when he was keen for Scotland. Being a gregarious as well as an idle young man, he was pleased with his own popularity, and the number of his invitations for country-house visits. He could never accept more than half, but even so, he hardly saw London until January; and then, if he went abroad at all, there was only time for a few days in Paris, and a fortnight on the Riviera, perhaps, before he found that he must get back. Just after leaving Oxford, before his father's death, he had been to Rome, to Berlin, and Vienna, and returned better satisfied than ever with his own capital; but of course it was different now that the capital was dissatisfied with him. He had chosen the night train and it was not crowded. All the way to Dover he had the compartment to himself, and there was no rush for the boat. It was a night of stars and balmy airs; but after the start the wind freshened, and Stephen walked briskly up and down the deck, shivering slightly at first, till his blood warmed. By and by it grew so cold that the deck emptied, save for half a dozen men with pipes that glowed between turned-up coat collars, and one girl in a blue serge dress, with no other cloak than the jacket that matched her frock. Stephen hardly noticed her at first, but as men buttoned their coats or went below, and she remained, his attention was attracted to the slim figure leaning on the rail. Her face was turned away, looking over the sea where the whirling stars dipped into dark waves that sprang to engulf them. Her elbows rested on the railing, and her chin lay in the cup of her two hands; but her hair, under a blue sailor-hat held down with a veil, hung low in a great looped-up plait, tied with a wide black ribbon, so that Stephen, without wasting much thought upon her, guessed that she must be very young. It was red hair, gleaming where the light touched it, and the wind thrashed curly tendrils out from the thick clump of the braid, tracing bright threads in intricate, lacy lines over her shoulders, like the network of sunlight that plays on the surface of water. Stephen thought of that simile after he had passed the girl once or twice, and thinking of it made him think of the girl herself. He was sure she must be cold in her serge jacket, and wondered why she didn't go below to the ladies' cabin. Also he wondered, even more vaguely, why her people didn't take better care of the child: there must be some one belonging to her on board. At last she turned, not to look at him, but to pace back and forth as others were pacing. She was in front of Stephen, and he saw only her back, which seemed more girlish than ever as she walked with a light, springing step, that might have kept time to some dainty dance-music which only she could hear. Her short dress, of hardly more than ankle length, flowed past her slender shape as the black, white-frothing waves flowed past the slim prow of the boat; and there was something individual, something distinguished in her gait and the bearing of her head on the young throat. Stephen noticed this rather interesting peculiarity, remarking it more definitely because of the almost mean simplicity of the blue serge dress. It was of provincial cut, and looked as if the wearer might have bought it ready made in some country town. Her hat, too, was of the sort that is turned out by the thousand and sold at a few shillings for young persons between the ages of twelve and twenty. By and by, when she had walked as far forward as possible, the deck rising under her feet or plunging down, while thin spray-wreaths sailed by on the wind, the girl wheeled and had the breeze at her back. It was then Stephen caught his first glimpse of her face, in a full white blaze of electric light: and he had the picture to himself, for by this time nearly every one else had gone. He had not expected anything wonderful, but it seemed to him in a flash of surprise that this was an amazing beauty. He had never seen such hair, or such a complexion. The large eyes gave him no more than a passing glance, but they were so vivid, so full of blue light as they met his, that he had a startled impression of being graciously accosted. It seemed as if the girl had some message to give him, for which he must stop and ask. As soon as they had passed each other, however, that curious, exciting impression was gone, like the vanishing glint on a gull's wing as it dips from sun into shadow. Of course she had not spoken; of course she had no word to give him. He had seemed to hear her speak, because she was a very vital sort of creature, no doubt, and therefore physically, though unconsciously, magnetic. At their next crossing under the light she did not look at him at all, and he realized that she was not so extraordinarily beautiful as he had at first thought. The glory of her was more an effect of colouring than anything else. The creamy complexion of a very young girl, whipped to rose and white by the sea wind; brilliant turquoise blue eyes under a glitter of wavy red hair; these were the only marvels, for the small, straight nose was exactly like most pretty girls' noses, and the mouth, though expressive and sweet, with a short upper lip, was not remarkable, unless for its firmness. The next time they passed, Stephen granted the girl a certain charm of expression which heightened the effect of beauty. She looked singularly innocent and interested in life, which to Stephen's mood seemed pathetic. He was convinced that he had seen through life, and consequently ceased forever to be interested in it. But he admired beauty wherever he saw it, whether in the grace of a breaking wave, or the sheen on a girl's bright hair, and it amused him faintly to speculate about the young creature with the brilliant eyes and blowing red locks. He decided that she was a schoolgirl of sixteen, being taken over to Paris, probably to finish her education there. Her mother or guardian was no doubt prostrate with sea-sickness, careless for the moment whether the child paraded the deck insufficiently clad, or whether she fell unchaperoned into the sea. Judging by her clothes, her family was poor, and she was perhaps intended for a governess: that was why they were sending her to France. She was to be given "every advantage," in order to command "desirable situations" by and by. Stephen felt dimly sorry for the little thing, who looked so radiantly happy now. She was much too pretty to be a governess, or to be obliged to earn her own living in any way. Women were brutes to each other sometimes. He had been finding this out lately. Few would care to bring a flowerlike creature of that type into their houses. The girl had trouble before her. He was sure she was going to be a governess. After she had walked for half an hour she looked round for a sheltered corner and sat down. But the place she had chosen was only comparatively sheltered, and presently Stephen fancied that he saw her shivering with cold. He could not bear this, knowing that he had a rug which Molton had forced upon him to use on board ship between Marseilles and Algiers. It was in a rolled-up thing which Molton called a "hold-all," along with some sticks and an umbrella, Stephen believed; and the rolled-up thing was on deck, with other hand-luggage. "Will you let me lend you a rug?" he asked, in the tone of a benevolent uncle addressing a child. "I have one close by, and it's rather cold when you don't walk." "Thank you very much," said the girl. "I should like it, if it won't be too much trouble to you." She spoke simply, and had a pretty voice, but it was an American voice. Stephen was surprised, because to find that she was an American upset his theories. He had never heard of American girls coming over to Paris with the object of training to be governesses. He went away and found the rug, returning with it in two or three minutes. The girl thanked him again, getting up and wrapping the dark soft thing round her shoulders and body, as if it had been a big shawl. Then she sat down once more, with a comfortable little sigh. "That does feel good!" she exclaimed. "I _was_ cold." "I think you would have been wiser to stop in the ladies' cabin," said Stephen, still with the somewhat patronizing air of the older person. "I like lots of air," explained the girl. "And it doesn't do me any harm to be cold." "How about getting a chill?" inquired Stephen. "Oh, I never have such things. They don't exist. At least they don't unless one encourages them," she replied. He smiled, rather interested, and pleased to linger, since she evidently understood that he was using no arts to scrape an acquaintance. "That sounds like Christian Science," he ventured. "I don't know that it's any kind of science," said she. "Nobody ever talked to me about it. Only if you're not afraid of things, they can't hurt you, can they?" "Perhaps not. I suppose you mean you needn't let yourself feel them. There's something in the idea: be callous as an alligator and nothing can hit you." "I don't mean that at all. I'd hate to be callous," she objected. "We couldn't enjoy things if we were callous." Stephen, on the point of saying something bitter, stopped in time, knowing that his words would have been not only stupid but obvious, which was worse. "It is good to be young," he remarked instead. "Yes, but I'm glad to be grown up at last," said the girl; and Stephen would not let himself laugh. "I know how you feel," he answered. "I used to feel like that too." "Don't you now?" "Not always. I've had plenty of time to get tired of being grown up." "Maybe you've been a soldier, and have seen sad things," she suggested. "I was thinking when I first saw you, that you looked like a soldier." "I wish I had been. Unfortunately I was too disgustingly young, when our only war of my day was on. I mean, the sort of war one could volunteer for." "In South Africa?" "Yes. You were a baby in that remote time." "Oh no, I wasn't. I'm eighteen now, going on nineteen. I was in Paris then, with my stepmother and my sister. We used to hear talk about the war, though we knew hardly any English people." "So Paris won't be a new experience to you?" said Stephen, disappointed that he had been mistaken in all his surmises. "I went back to America before I was nine, and I've been there ever since, till a few weeks ago. Oh see, there are the lights of France! I can't help being excited." "Yes, we'll be in very soon--in about ten minutes." "I am glad! I'd better go below and make my hair tidy. Thank you ever so much for helping me to be comfortable." She jumped up, unrolled herself, and began to fold the rug neatly. Stephen would have taken it from her and bundled it together anyhow, but she would not let him do that. "I like folded things," she said. "It's nice to see them come straight, and I enjoy it more because the wind doesn't want me to do it. To succeed in spite of something, is a kind of little triumph--and seems like a sign. Good-bye, and thank you once more." "Good-bye," said Stephen, and added to himself that he would not soon again see so pretty a child; as fresh, as frank, or as innocent. He had known several delightful American girls, but never one like this. She was a new type to him, and more interesting, perhaps, because she was simple, and even provincial. He was in a state of mind to glorify women who were entirely unsophisticated. He did not see the girl getting into the train at Calais, though he looked for her, feeling some curiosity as to the stepmother and the sister whom he had imagined prostrate in the ladies' cabin. By the time he had arrived at Paris he felt sleepy and dull after an aggravating doze or two on the way, and had almost forgotten the red-haired child with the vivid blue eyes, until, to his astonishment, he saw her alone parleying with a _douanier_, over two great boxes, for one of which there seemed to be no key. "Those selfish people of hers have left her to do all the work," he said to himself indignantly, and as she appeared to be having some difficulty with the official, he went to ask if he could help. "Thank you, it's all right now," she said. "The key of my biggest box is mislaid, but luckily I've got the man to believe me when I say there's nothing in it except clothes, just the same as in the other. Still it would be very, very kind if you wouldn't mind seeing me to a cab. That is, if it's no bother." Stephen assured her that he would be delighted. "Have your people engaged the cab already," he wanted to know, "or are they waiting in this room for you?" "I haven't any people," she answered. "I'm all by myself." This was another surprise, and it was as much as Stephen could do not to blame her family audibly for allowing the child to travel alone, at night too. The thing seemed monstrous. He took her into the court-yard, where the cabs stood, and engaged two, one for the girl, and one for her large luggage. "You have rooms already taken at an hotel, I hope?" he asked. "I'm going to a boarding-house--a _pension_, I mean," explained the girl. "But it's all right. They know I'm coming. I do thank you for everything." Seated in the cab, she held out her hand in a glove which had been cleaned, and showed mended fingers. Stephen shook the small hand gravely, and for the second time they bade each other good-bye. In the cold grey light of a rainy dawn, which would have suited few women as a background, especially after a night journey, the girl's face looked pearly, and Stephen saw that her lashes, darker at the roots, were bright golden at the turned-up ends. It seemed to him that this pretty child, alone in the greyness and rain of the big foreign city, was like a spring flower thrown carelessly into a river to float with the stream. He felt an impulse of protection, and it went against his instincts to let her drive about Paris unprotected, while night had hardly yielded to morning. But he could not offer to go with her. He was interested, as any man of flesh and blood must be interested, in the fate of an innocent and charming girl left to take care of herself, and entirely unfitted for the task; yet she seemed happy and self-confident, and he had no right, even if he wished, to disturb her mind. He was going away without another word after the good-bye, but on second thoughts felt that he might ask if she had friends in Paris. "Not exactly friends, but people who will look after me, and be kind, I'm sure," she answered. "Thank you for taking an interest. Will you tell the man to go to 278A Rue Washington, and the other cab to follow?" Stephen obeyed, and as she drove away the girl looked back, smiling at him her sweet and childlike smile. III Stephen had meant to stop only one day in Paris, and travel at night to Marseilles, where he would have twelve or fifteen hours to wait before the sailing of the ship on which he had engaged a cabin. But glancing over a French paper while he breakfasted at the Westminster, he saw that a slight accident had happened to the boat during a storm on her return voyage from Algiers, and that she would be delayed three days for repairs. This news made Stephen decide to remain in Paris for those days, rather than go on and wait at Marseilles, or take another ship. He did not want to see any one he knew, but he thought it would be pleasant to spend some hours picture-gazing at the Louvre, and doing a few other things which one ought to do in Paris, and seldom does. That night he went to bed early and slept better than he had slept for weeks. The next day he almost enjoyed, and when evening came, felt desultory, even light-hearted. Dining at his hotel, he overheard the people at the next table say they were going to the Folies Bergères to see Victoria Ray dance, and suddenly Stephen made up his mind that he would go there too: for if life had been running its usual course with him, he would certainly have gone to see Victoria Ray in London. She had danced lately at the Palace Theatre for a month or six weeks, and absorbed as he had been in his own affairs, he had heard enough talk about this new dancer to know that she had made what is called a "sensation." The people at the next table were telling each other that Victoria Ray's Paris engagement was only for three nights, something special, with huge pay, and that there was a "regular scramble" for seats, as the girl had been such a success in New York and London. The speakers, who were English and provincial, had already taken places, but there did not appear to be much hope that Stephen could get anything at the last minute. The little spice of difficulty gave a fillip of interest, however; and he remembered how the charming child on the boat had said that she "liked doing difficult things." He wondered what she was doing now; and as he thought of her, white and ethereal in the night and in the dawn-light, she seemed to him like the foam-flowers that had blossomed for an instant on the crests of dark waves, through which their vessel forged. "For a moment white, then gone forever." The words glittered in his mind, and fascinated him, calling up the image of the girl, pale against the night and rainy sea. "For a moment white, then gone forever," he repeated, and asked himself whence came the line. From Burns, he fancied; and thought it quaintly appropriate to the fair child whose clear whiteness had thrown a gleam into his life before she vanished. All the seats for this second night of Victoria Ray's short engagement were sold at the Folies Bergères, he found, from the dearest to the cheapest: but there was standing room still when Stephen arrived, and he squeezed himself in among a group of light-hearted, long-haired students from the Latin Quarter. He had an hour to wait before Victoria Ray would dance, but there was some clever conjuring to be seen, a famous singer of _chansons_ to be heard, and other performances which made the time pass well enough. Then, at last, it was the new dancer's "turn." The curtain remained down for several minutes, as some scenic preparation was necessary before her first dance. Gay French music was playing, and people chattered through it, or laughed in high Parisian voices. A blue haze of smoke hung suspended like a thin veil, and the air was close, scented with tobacco and perfume. Stephen looked at his programme, beginning to feel bored. His elbows were pressed against his sides by the crowd. Miss Ray was down for two dances, the Dance of the Statue and the Dance of the Shadow. The atmosphere of the place depressed him. He doubted after all, that he would care for the dancing. But as he began to wish he had not come the curtain went up, to show the studio of a sculptor, empty save for the artist's marble masterpieces. Through a large skylight, and a high window at the back of the stage, a red glow of sunset streamed into the bare room. In the shadowy corners marble forms were grouped, but in the centre, directly under the full flood of rose-coloured light, the just finished statue of a girl stood on a raised platform. She was looking up, and held a cup in one lifted hand, as if to catch the red wine of sunset. Her draperies, confined by a Greek ceinture under the young bust, fell from shoulder to foot in long clear lines that seemed cut in gleaming stone. The illusion was perfect. Even in that ruddy blaze the delicate, draped form appeared to be of carved marble. It was almost impossible to believe it that of a living woman, and its grace of outline and pose was so perfect that Stephen, in his love of beauty, dreaded the first movement which must change, if not break, the tableau. He said to himself that there was some faint resemblance between this chiselled loveliness and the vivid charm of the pretty child he had met on the boat. He could imagine that a statue for which she had stood as model might look like this, though the features seemed to his eye more regular than those of the girl. As he gazed, the music, which had been rich and colourful, fell into softer notes; and the rose-sunset faded to an opal twilight, purple to blue, blue to the silver of moonlight, the music changing as the light changed, until at last it was low and slumberous as the drip-drip of a plashing fountain. Then, into the dream of the music broke a sound like the distant striking of a clock. It was midnight, and all the statues in the sculptor's bare, white studio began to wake at the magic stroke which granted them a few hours of life. There was just a shimmer of movement in the dim corners. Marble limbs stirred, marble face turned slowly to gaze at marble face; yet, as if they could be only half awakened in the shadows where the life-giving draught of moonlight might not flow, there was but the faintest flicker of white forms and draperies. It was the just finished statue of the girl which felt the full thrill of moonshine and midnight. She woke rapturously, and drained the silver moon-wine in her cup (the music told the story of her first thought and living heart-beat): then down she stepped from the platform where the sculptor's tools still lay, and began to dance for the other statues who watched in the dusk, hushed back into stillness under the new spell of her enchantments. Stephen had never seen anything like that dance. Many pretty _premières danseuses_ he had admired and applauded, charming and clever young women of France, of Russia, of Italy, and Spain: and they had roused him and all London to enthusiasm over dances eccentric, original, exquisite, or wild. But never had there been anything like this. Stephen had not known that a dance could move him as this did. He was roused, even thrilled by its poetry, and the perfect beauty of its poses, its poises. It must, he supposed, have been practised patiently, perhaps for years, yet it produced the effect of being entirely unstudied. At all events, there was nothing in the ordinary sense "professional" about it. One would say--not knowing the supreme art of supreme grace--that a joyous child, born to the heritage of natural grace, might dance thus by sheer inspiration, in ecstasy of life and worship of the newly felt beauty of earth. Stephen did know something of art, and the need of devotion to its study; yet he found it hard to realize that this awakened marble loveliness had gone through the same performance week after week, month after month, in America and England. He preferred rather to let himself fancy that he was dreaming the whole thing; and he would gladly have dreamed on indefinitely, forgetting the smoky atmosphere, forgetting the long-haired students and all the incongruous surroundings. The gracious dream gave him peace and pleasure such as he had not known since the beginning of the Northmorland case. Through the house there was a hush, unusual at the Folies Bergères. People hardly knew what to make of the dances, so different from any ever seen in a theatre of Paris. Stephen was not alone in feeling the curious dream-spell woven by music and perfection of beauty. But the light changed. The moonlight slowly faded. Dancer and music faltered, in the falling of the dark hour before dawn. The charm was waning. Soft notes died, and quavered in apprehension. The magic charm of the moon was breaking, had broken: a crash of cymbals and the studio was dark. Then light began to glimmer once more, but it was the chill light of dawn, and growing from purple to blue, from blue to rosy day, it showed the marble statues fast locked in marble sleep again. On the platform stood the girl with uplifted arm, holding her cup, now, to catch the wine of sunrise; and on the delicately chiselled face was a faint smile which seemed to hide a secret. When the first ray of yellow sunshine gilded the big skylight, a door up-stage opened and the sculptor came in, wearing his workman's blouse. He regarded his handiwork, as the curtain came down. When the music of the dream had ceased and suddenly became ostentatiously puerile, the audience broke into a tumult of applause. Women clapped their hands furiously and many men shouted "brava, brava," hoping that the curtain might rise once more on the picture; but it did not rise, and Stephen was glad. The dream would have been vulgarized by repetition. For fully five minutes the orchestra played some gay tune which every one there had heard a hundred times; but abruptly it stopped, as if on a signal. For an instant there was a silence of waiting and suspense, which roused interest and piqued curiosity. Then there began a delicate symphony which could mean nothing but spring in a forest, and on that the curtain went up. The prophecy of the music was fulfilled, for the scene was a woodland in April, with young leaves a-flicker and blossoms in birth, the light song of the flutes and violins being the song of birds in love. All the trees were brocaded with dainty, gold-green lace, and daffodils sprouted from the moss at their feet. The birds sang more gaily, and out from behind a silver-trunked beech tree danced a figure in spring green. Her arms were full of flowers, which she scattered as she danced, curtseying, mocking, beckoning the shadow that followed her along the daisied grass. Her little feet were bare, and flitted through the green folding of her draperies like white night-moths fluttering among rose leaves. Her hair fell over her shoulders, and curled below her waist. It was red hair that glittered and waved, and she looked a radiant child of sixteen. Victoria Ray the dancer, and the girl on the Channel boat were one. IV The Shadow Dance was even more beautiful than the Dance of the Statue, but Stephen had lost pleasure in it. He was supersensitive in these days, and he felt as if the girl had deliberately made game of him, in order that he should make a fool of himself. Of course it was a pose of hers to travel without chaperon or maid, and dress like a school girl from a provincial town, in cheap serge, a sailor hat, and a plait of hair looped up with ribbon. She was no doubt five or six years older than she looked or admitted, and probably her manager shrewdly prescribed the "line" she had taken up. Young women on the stage--actresses, dancers, or singers, it didn't matter which--must do something unusual, in order to be talked about, and get a good free advertisement. Nowadays, when professionals vied with each other in the expensiveness of their jewels, the size of their hats, or the smallness of their waists, and the eccentricity of their costumes, it was perhaps rather a new note to wear no jewels at all, and appear in ready-made frocks bought in bargain-sales; while, as for the young woman's air of childlike innocence and inexperience, it might be a tribute to her cleverness as an actress, but it was not a tribute to his intelligence as a man, that he should have been taken in by it. Always, he told himself, he was being taken in by some woman. After the lesson he had had, he ought to have learned wisdom, but it seemed that he was as gullible as ever. And it was this romantic folly of his which vexed him now; not the fact that a simple child over whose fate he had sentimentalized, was a rich and popular stage-dancer. Miss Ray was probably a good enough young woman according to her lights, and it was not she who need be shamed by the success of the Channel boat comedy. He had another day and night in Paris, where he did more sightseeing than he had ever accomplished before in a dozen visits, and then travelled on to Marseilles. The slight damage to the _Charles Quex_ had been repaired, and at noon the ship was to sail. Stephen went on board early, as he could think of nothing else which he preferred to do, and he was repaid for his promptness. By the time he had seen his luggage deposited in the cabin he had secured for himself alone, engaged a deck chair, and taken a look over the ship--which was new, and as handsome as much oak, fragrant cedar-wood, gilding, and green brocade could make her--many other passengers were coming on board. Travelling first class were several slim French officers, and stout Frenchmen of the commercial class; a merry theatrical company going to act in Algiers and Tunis; an English clergyman of grave aspect; invalids with their nurses, and two or three dignified Arabs, evidently of good birth as well as fortune. Arab merchants were returning from the Riviera, and a party of German students were going second class. Stephen was interested in the lively scene of embarkation, and glad to be a part of it, though still more glad that there seemed to be nobody on board whom he had ever met. He admired the harbour, and the shipping, and felt pleasantly exhilarated. "I feel very young, or very old, I'm not sure which," he said to himself as a faint thrill ran through his nerves at the grinding groan of the anchor, slowly hauled out of the deep green water. It was as if he heard the creaking of a gate which opened into an unknown garden, a garden where life would be new and changed. Nevill Caird had once said that there was no sharp, dividing line between phases of existence, except one's own moods, and Stephen had thought this true; but now it seemed as if the sea which silvered the distance was the dividing line for him, while all that lay beyond the horizon was mysterious as a desert mirage. He was not conscious of any joy at starting, yet he was excited, as if something tremendous were about to happen to him. England, that he knew so well, seemed suddenly less real than Africa, which he knew not at all, and his senses were keenly alert for the first time in many days. He saw Marseilles from a new point of view, and wondered why he had never read anything fine written in praise of the ancient Phoenician city. Though he had not been in the East, he imagined that the old part of the town, seen from the sea, looked Eastern, as if the traffic between east and west, going on for thousands of years, had imported an Eastern taste in architecture. The huge, mosque-like cathedral bubbled with domes, where fierce gleams of gold were hammered out by strokes of the noonday sun. A background of wild mountain ranges, whose tortured peaks shone opaline through long rents in mist veils, lent an air of romance to the scene, and Notre Dame de la Garde loomed nobly on her bleached and arid height. "Have no fear: I keep watch and ward over land and sea," seemed to say the majestic figure of gold on the tall tower, and Stephen half wished he were of the Catholic faith, that he might take comfort from the assurance. As the _Charles Quex_ steamed farther and farther away, the church on the mountainous hill appeared to change in shape. Notre Dame de la Garde looked no longer like a building made by man, but like a great sacred swan crowned with gold, and nested on a mountain-top. There she sat, with shining head erect on a long neck, seated on her nest, protecting her young, and gazing far across the sea in search of danger. The sun touched her golden crown, and dusky cloud-shadows grouped far beneath her eyrie, like mourners kneeling below the height to pray. The rock-shapes and island rocks that cut the blue glitter of the sea, suggested splendid tales of Phoenician mariners and Saracenic pirates, tales lost forever in the dim mists of time; and so Stephen wandered on to thoughts of Dumas, wishing he had brought "Monte Cristo," dearly loved when he was twelve. Probably not a soul on board had the book; people were so stupid and prosaic nowadays. He turned from the rail on which he had leaned to watch the fading land, and as he did so, his eyes fell upon a bright red copy of the book for which he had been wishing. There was the name in large gold lettering on a scarlet cover, very conspicuous on the dark blue serge lap of a girl. It was the girl of the Channel boat, and she wore the same dress, the same sailor hat tied on with a blue veil, which she had worn that night crossing from England to France. While Stephen had been absorbed in admiration of Marseilles harbour, she had come up on deck, and settled herself in a canvas chair. This time she had a rug of her own, a thin navy blue rug which, like her frock, might have been chosen for its cheapness. Although she held a volume of "Monte Cristo," she was not reading, and as Stephen turned towards her, their eyes met. Hers lit up with a pleased smile, and the pink that sprang to her cheeks was the colour of surprise, not of self-consciousness. "I _thought_ your back looked like you, but I didn't suppose it would turn out to be you," she said. Stephen's slight, unreasonable irritation could not stand against the azure of such eyes, and the youth in her friendly smile. Since the girl seemed glad to see him, why shouldn't he be glad to see her? At least she was not a link with England. "I thought your statue looked like you," he retorted, standing near her chair, "but I didn't suppose it would turn out to be you until your shadow followed." "Oh, you saw me dance! Did you like it?" She asked the question eagerly, like a child who hangs upon grown-up judgment of its work. "I thought both dances extremely beautiful and artistic," replied Stephen, a little stiffly. She looked at him questioningly, as if puzzled. "No, I don't think you did like them, really," she said. "I oughtn't to have asked in that blunt way, because of course you would hate to hurt my feelings by saying no!" Her manner was so unlike that of a spoiled stage darling, that Stephen had to remind himself sharply of her "innocent pose," and his own soft-hearted lack of discrimination where pretty women were concerned. By doing this he kept himself armed against the clever little actress laughing at him behind the blue eyes of a child. "You must know that there can't be two opinions of your dancing," said he coolly. "You have had years and years of flattery, of course; enough to make you sick of it, if a woman ever----" He stopped, smiling. "Why, I've been dancing professionally for only a few months!" she exclaimed. "Didn't you know?" "I'm ashamed to say I was ignorant," Stephen confessed. "But before the dancing, there must have been something else equally clever. Floating--or flying--or----" She laughed. "Why don't you suggest fainting in coils? I'm certain you would, if you'd ever read 'Alice.'" "As a matter of fact, I was brought up on 'Alice,'" said Stephen. "Do children of the present day still go down the rabbit hole?" "I'm not sure about children of the _present_ day. Children of my day went down," she replied with dignity. "I loved Alice dearly. I don't know much about other children, though, for I never had a chance to make friends as a child. But then I had my sister when I was a little girl, so nothing else mattered." "If you don't think me rude to say so," ventured Stephen, "you would seem to me a little girl now, if I hadn't found out that you're an accomplished star of the theatres, admired all over Europe." "Now you're making fun of me," said the dancer. "Paris was only my third engagement; and it's going to be my last, anyway for ever so long, I hope." This time Stephen was really surprised, and all his early interest in the young creature woke again; the personal sort of interest which he had partly lost on finding that she was of the theatrical world. "Oh, I see!" he ejaculated, before stopping to reflect that he had no right to put into words the idea which jumped into his mind. "You see?" she echoed. "But how can you see, unless you know something about me already?" "I beg your pardon," he apologized. "It was only a thought. I----" "A thought about my dancing?" "Not exactly that. About your not dancing again." "Then please tell me the thought." "You may be angry. I rather think you'd have a right to be angry--not at the thought, but the telling of it." "I promise." "Why," explained Stephen, "when a young and successful actress makes up her mind to leave the stage, what is the usual reason?" "I'm not an actress, so I can't imagine what you mean--unless you suppose I've made a great fortune in a few months?" "That too, perhaps--but I don't think a fortune would induce you to leave the stage yet a while. You'd want to go on, not for the money perhaps, but for the fun." "I haven't been dancing for fun." "Haven't you?" "No. I began with a purpose. I'm leaving the stage for a purpose. And you say you can guess what that is. If you know, you must have been told." "Since you insist, it occurred to me that you might be going to marry. I thought maybe you were travelling to Africa to----" She laughed. "Oh, you _are_ wrong! I don't believe there ever was a girl who thinks less about marrying. I've never had time to think of such things. I've always--ever since I was nine years old--looked to the one goal, and aimed for it, studied for it, lived for it--at last, danced towards it." "You excite my curiosity immensely," said Stephen. And it was true. The girl had begun to take him out of himself. "There is lunch," she announced, as a bugle sounded. Stephen longed to say, "Don't go yet. Stop and tell me all about the 'goal' you're working for." But he dared not. She was very frank, and evidently willing, for some reason, to talk of her aims, even to a comparative stranger; yet he knew that it would be impertinent to suggest her sitting out on deck to chat with him, while the other passengers lunched. He asked if she were hungry, and she said she was. So was he, now that he came to think of it; nevertheless he let her go in alone, and waited deliberately for several minutes before following. He would have liked to sit by Miss Ray at the table, but wished her to see that he did not mean to presume upon any small right of acquaintanceship. As she was on the stage, and extremely attractive, no doubt men often tried to take such advantage, and he didn't intend to be one of them; therefore he supposed that he had lost the chance of placing himself near her in the dining-room. To his surprise, however, as he was about to slip into a far-away chair, she beckoned from her table. "I kept this seat for you," she said. "I hoped you wouldn't mind." "Mind!" He was on the point of repaying her kindness with a conventional little compliment, but thought better of it, and expressed his meaning in a smile. The oak-panelled saloon was provided with a number of small tables, and at the one where Victoria Ray sat, were places for four. Three were already occupied when Stephen came; one by Victoria, the others by a German bride and groom. At the next table were two French officers of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, the English clergyman Stephen had noticed on deck, and a remarkably handsome Arab, elaborately dressed. He sat facing Victoria Ray and Stephen Knight, and Stephen found it difficult not to stare at the superb, pale brown person whose very high white turban, bound with light grey cord, gave him a dignity beyond his years, and whose pale grey burnous, over a gold-embroidered vest of dark rose-colour, added picturesqueness which appeared theatrical in eyes unaccustomed to the East. Stephen had never seen an Arab of the aristocratic class until to-day; and before, only a few such specimens as parade the Galerie Charles Trois at Monte Carlo, selling prayer-rugs and draperies from Algeria. This man's high birth and breeding were clear at first glance. He was certainly a personage aware of his own attractions, though not offensively self-conscious, and was unmistakably interested in the beauty of the girl at the next table. He was too well-bred to make a show of his admiration, but talked in almost perfect, slightly guttural French, with the English clergyman, speaking occasionally also to the officers in answer to some question. He glanced seldom at Miss Ray, but when he did look across, in a guarded way, at her, there was a light of ardent pleasure in his eyes, such as no eyes save those of East or South ever betray. The look was respectful, despite its underlying passion. Nevertheless, because the handsome face was some shades darker than his own, it offended Stephen, who felt a sharp bite of dislike for the Arab. He was glad the man was not at the same table with Miss Ray, and knew that it would have vexed him intensely to see the girl drawn into conversation. He wondered that the French officers should talk with the Arab as with an equal, yet knew in his heart that such prejudice was narrow-minded, especially at the moment when he was travelling to the Arab's own country. He tried, though not very strenuously, to override his conviction of superiority to the Eastern man, but triumphed only far enough to admit that the fellow was handsome in a way. His skin was hardly darker than old ivory: the aquiline nose delicate as a woman's, with sensitive nostrils; and the black velvet eyes under arched brows, that met in a thin, pencilled line, were long, and either dreamy or calmly calculating. A prominent chin and a full mouth, so determined as to suggest cruelty, certainly selfishness, preserved the face from effeminacy at the sacrifice of artistic perfection. Stephen noticed with mingled curiosity and disapproval that the Arab appeared to be vain of his hands, on which he wore two or three rings that might have been bought in Paris, or even given him by European women--for they looked like a woman's rings. The brown fingers were slender, tapering to the ends, and their reddened nails glittered. They played, as the man talked, with a piece of bread, and often he glanced down at them, with the long eyes which had a blue shadow underneath, like a faint smear of kohl. Stephen wondered what Victoria Ray thought of her _vis-à-vis_; but in the presence of the staring bride and groom he could ask no questions, and the expression of her face, as once she quietly regarded the Arab, told nothing. It was even puzzling, as an expression for a young girl's face to wear in looking at a handsome man so supremely conscious of sex and of his own attraction. She was evidently thinking about him with considerable interest, and it annoyed Stephen that she should look at him at all. An Arab might misunderstand, not realizing that he was a legitimate object of curiosity for eyes unused to Eastern men. After luncheon Victoria went to her cabin. This was disappointing. Stephen, hoping that she might come on deck again soon, and resume their talk where it had broken off in the morning, paced up and down until he felt drowsy, not having slept in the train the night before. To his surprise and disgust, it was after five when he waked from a long nap, in his stateroom; and going on deck he found Miss Ray in her chair once more, this time apparently deep in "Monte Cristo." V He walked past, and she looked up with a smile, but did not ask him to draw his chair near hers, though there was a vacant space. It was an absurd and far-fetched idea, but he could not help asking himself if it were possible that she had picked up any acquaintance on board, who had told her he was a marked man, a foolish fellow who had spoiled his life for a low-born, unscrupulous woman's sake. It was a morbid fancy, he knew, but he was morbid now, and supposed that he should be for some time to come, if not for the rest of his life. He imagined a difference in the girl's manner. Maybe she had read that hateful interview in some paper, when she was in London, and now remembered having seen his photograph with Margot Lorenzi's. He hated the thought, not because he deliberately wished to keep his engagement secret, but because the newspaper interview had made him seem a fool, and somehow he did not want to be despised by this dancing girl whom he should never see again after to-morrow. Just why her opinion of his character need matter to him, it was difficult to say, but there was something extraordinary about the girl. She did not seem in the least like other dancers he had met. He had not that feeling of comfortable comradeship with her that a man may feel with most unchaperoned, travelling actresses, no matter how respectable. There was a sense of aloofness, as if she had been a young princess, in spite of her simple and friendly ways. Since it appeared that she had no intention of picking up the dropped threads of their conversation, Stephen thought of the smoking-room; but his wish to know whether she really had changed towards him became so pressing that he was impelled to speak again. It was an impulse unlike himself, at any rate the old self with which he was familiar, as with a friend or an intimate enemy. "I hoped you would tell me the rest," he blurted out. "The rest?" "That you were beginning to tell." The girl blushed. "I was afraid afterwards, you might have been bored, or anyway surprised. You probably thought it 'very American' of me to talk about my own affairs to a stranger, and it _isn't_, you know. I shouldn't like you to think Americans are less well brought up than other girls, just because _I_ may do things that seem queer. I have to do them. And I am quite different from others. You mustn't suppose I'm not." Stephen was curiously relieved. Suddenly he felt young and happy, as he used to feel before knowing Margot Lorenzi. "I never met a brilliantly successful person who was as modest as you," he said, laughing with pleasure. "I was never less bored in my life. Will you talk to me again--and let me talk to you?" "I should like to ask your advice," she replied. That gave permission for Stephen to draw his chair near to hers. "Have you had tea?" he inquired, by way of a beginning. "I'm too American to drink tea in the afternoon," she explained. "It's only fashionable Americans who take it, and I'm not that kind, as you can see. I come from the country--or almost the country." "Weren't you drawn into any of our little ways in London?" He was working up to a certain point. "I was too busy." "I'm sure you weren't too busy for one thing: reading the papers for your notices." Victoria shook her head, smiling. "There you're mistaken. The first morning after I danced at the Palace Theatre, I asked to see the papers they had in my boarding-house, because I hoped so much that English people would like me, and I wanted to be a success. But afterwards I didn't bother. I don't understand British politics, you see--how could I?--and I hardly know any English people, so I wasn't very interested in their papers." Again Stephen was relieved. But he felt driven by one of his strange new impulses to tell her his name, and watch her face while he told it. "'Curiouser and curiouser,' as our friend Alice would say," he laughed. "No newspaper paragraphs, and a boarding-house instead of a fashionable hotel. What was your manager thinking about?" "I had no manager of my very own," said Victoria. "I 'exploited' myself. It costs less to do that. When people in America liked my dancing I got an offer from London, and I accepted it and made all the arrangements about going over. It was quite easy, you see, because there were only costumes to carry. My scenery is so simple, they either had it in the theatres or got something painted: and the statues in the studio scene, and the sculptor, needed very few rehearsals. In Paris they had only one. It was all I had time for, after I arrived. The lighting wasn't difficult either, and though people told me at first there would be trouble unless I had my own man, there never was any, really. In my letters to the managers I gave the dates when I could come to their theatres, how long I could stay, and all they must do to get things ready. The Paris engagement was made only a little while beforehand. I wanted to pass through there, so I was glad to accept the offer and earn extra money which I thought I might need by and by." "What a mercenary star!" Stephen spoke teasingly; but in truth he could not make the girl out. She took the accusation with a smile. "Yes, I am mercenary, I suppose," she confessed with unashamed frankness, "but not entirely for myself. I shouldn't like to be that! I told you how I've been looking forward always to one end. And now, just when that end may be near, how foolish I should be to spend a cent on unnecessary things! Why, I'd have felt _wicked_ living in an expensive hotel, and keeping a maid, when I could be comfortable in a Bloomsbury boarding-house on ten dollars a week. And the dresser in the theater, who did everything very nicely, was delighted with a present of twenty dollars when my London engagement was over." "No doubt she was," said Stephen. "But----" "I suppose you're thinking that I must have made lots of money, and that I'm a sort of little miseress: and so I have--and so I am. I earned seven hundred and fifty dollars a week--isn't that a hundred and fifty pounds?--for the six weeks, and I spent as little as possible; for I didn't get as large a salary as that in America. I engaged to dance for three hundred dollars a week there, which seemed perfectly wonderful to me at first; so I had to keep my contract, though other managers would have given me more. I wanted dreadfully to take their offers, because I was in such a hurry to have enough money to begin my real work. But I knew I shouldn't be blessed in my undertaking if I acted dishonourably. Try as I might, I've only been able to save up ten thousand dollars, counting the salary in Paris and all. Would you say that was enough to _bribe_ a person, if necessary? Two thousand of your pounds." "It depends upon how rich the person is." "I don't know how rich he is. Could an Arab be _very_ rich?" "I daresay there are still some rich ones. But maybe riches aren't the same with them as with us. That fellow at lunch to-day looks as if he'd plenty of money to spend on embroideries." "Yes. And he looks important too--as if he might have travelled, and known a great many people of all sorts. I wish it were proper for me to talk to him." "Good Heavens, why?" asked Stephen, startled. "It would be most improper." "Yes, I'm afraid so, and I won't, of course, unless I get to know him in some way," went on Victoria. "Not that there's any chance of such a thing." "I should hope not," exclaimed Stephen, who was privately of opinion that there was only too good a chance if the girl showed the Arab even the faintest sign of willingness to know and be known. "I've no right to ask it, of course, except that I'm much older than you and have seen more of the world--but do promise not to look at that nigger. I don't like his face." "He isn't a nigger," objected Victoria. "But if he were, it wouldn't matter--nor whether one liked his face or not. He might be able to help me." "To help you--in Algiers?" "Yes, in the same way that you might be able to help me--or more, because he's an Arab, and must know Arabs." Stephen forgot to press his request for her promise. "How can I help you?" he wanted to know. "I'm not sure. Only, you're going to Algiers. I always ask everybody to help, if there's the slightest chance they can." Stephen felt disappointed and chilled. But she went on. "I should hate you to think I _gush_ to strangers, and tell them all my affairs, just because I'm silly enough to love talking. I must talk to strangers. I _must_ get help where I can. And you were kind the other night. Everybody is kind. Do you know many people in Algeria, or Tunisia?" "Only one man. His name is Nevill Caird, and he lives in Algiers. My name is Stephen Knight. I've been wanting to tell you--I seemed to have an unfair advantage, knowing yours ever since Paris." He watched her face almost furtively, but no change came over it, no cloud in the blueness of her candid eyes. The name meant nothing to her. "I'm sorry. It's hardly worth while my bothering you then." Stephen wished to be bothered. "But Nevill Caird has lived in Algiers for eight winters or so," he said. "He knows everybody, French and English--Arab too, very likely, if there are Arabs worth knowing." A bright colour sprang to the girl's cheeks and turned her extreme prettiness into brilliant beauty. It seemed to Stephen that the name of Ray suited her: she was dazzling as sunshine. "Oh, then, I will tell you--if you'll listen," she said. "If I had as many ears as a spear of wheat, they'd all want to listen." His voice sounded young and eager. "Please begin at the beginning, as the children say." "Shall I really? But it's a long story. It begins when I was eight." "All the better. It will be ten years long." "I can skip lots of things. When I was eight, and my sister Saidee not quite eighteen, we were in Paris with my stepmother. My father had been dead just a year, but she was out of mourning. She wasn't old--only about thirty, and handsome. She was jealous of Saidee, though, because Saidee was so much younger and fresher, and because Saidee was beautiful--Oh, you can't imagine how beautiful!" "Yes, I can," said Stephen. "You mean me to take that for a compliment. I know I'm quite pretty, but I'm nothing to Saidee. She was a great beauty, though with the same colouring I have, except that her eyes were brown, and her hair a little more auburn. People turned to look after her in the street, and that made our stepmother angry. _She_ wanted to be the one looked at. I knew, even then! She wouldn't have travelled with us, only father had left her his money, on condition that she gave Saidee and me the best of educations, and allowed us a thousand dollars a year each, from the time our schooling was finished until we married. She had a good deal of influence over him, for he was ill a long time, and she was his nurse--that was the way they got acquainted. And she persuaded him to leave practically everything to her; but she couldn't prevent his making some conditions. There was one which she hated. She was obliged to live in the same town with us; so when she wanted to go and enjoy herself in Paris after father died, she had to take us too. And she didn't care to shut Saidee up, because if Saidee couldn't be seen, she couldn't be married; and of course Mrs. Ray wanted her to be married. Then she would have no bother, and no money to pay. I often heard Saidee say these things, because she told me everything. She loved me a great deal, and I adored her. My middle name is Cecilia, and she was generally called Say; so she used to tell me that our secret names for each other must be 'Say and Seal.' It made me feel very grown-up to have her confide so much in me: and never being with children at all, gave me grown-up thoughts." "Poor child!" said Stephen. "Oh, I was very happy. It was only after--but that isn't the way to tell the story. Our stepmother--whom we always called 'Mrs. Ray,' never 'mother'--liked officers, and we got acquainted with a good many French ones. They used to come to the flat where we lived. Some of them were introduced by our French governess, whose brother was in the army, but they brought others, and Saidee and Mrs. Ray went to parties together, though Mrs. Ray hated being chaperon. If poor Saidee were admired at a dinner, or a dance, Mrs. Ray would be horrid all next day, and say everything disagreeable she could think of. Then Saidee would cry when we were alone, and tell me she was so miserable, she would have to marry in self-defence. That made me cry too--but she promised to take me with her if she went away. "When we had been in Paris about two months, Saidee came to bed one night after a ball, and waked me up. We slept in the same room. She was excited and looked like an angel. I knew something had happened. She told me she'd met a wonderful man, and every one was fascinated with him. She had heard of him before, but this was the first time they'd seen each other. He was in the French army, she said, a captain, and older than most of the men she knew best, but very handsome, and rich as well as clever. It was only at the last, after she'd praised the man a great deal, that she mentioned his having Arab blood. Even then she hurried on to say his mother was a Spanish woman, and he had been partly educated in France, and spoke perfect French, and English too. They had danced together, and Saidee had never met so interesting a man. She thought he was like the hero of some romance; and she told me I would see him, because he'd begged Mrs. Ray to be allowed to call. He had asked Saidee lots of questions, and she'd told him even about me--so he sent me his love. She seemed to think I ought to be pleased, but I wasn't. I'd read the 'Arabian Nights', with pictures, and I knew Arabs were dark people. I didn't look down on them particularly, but I couldn't bear to have Say interested in an Arab. It didn't seem right for her, somehow." The girl stopped, and apparently forgot to go on. She had been speaking with short pauses, as if she hardly realized that she was talking aloud. Her eyebrows drew together, and she sighed. Stephen knew that some memory pressed heavily upon her, but soon she began again. "He came next day. He was handsome, as Saidee had said--as handsome as the Arab on board this ship, but in a different way. He looked noble and haughty--yet as if he might be very selfish and hard. Perhaps he was about thirty-three or four, and that seemed old to me then--old even to Saidee. But she was fascinated. He came often, and she saw him at other houses. Everywhere she was going, he would find out, and go too. That pleased her--for he was an important man somehow, and of good birth. Besides, he was desperately in love--even a child could see that. He never took his eyes off Saidee's face when she was with him. It was as if he could eat her up; and if she flirted a little with the real French officers, to amuse herself or tease him, it drove him half mad. She liked that--it was exciting, she used to say. And I forgot to tell you, he wore European dress, except for a fez--no turban, like this man's on the boat, or I'm sure she couldn't have cared for him in the way she did--he wouldn't have seemed _possible_, for a Christian girl. A man in a turban! You understand, don't you?" "Yes, I understand," Stephen said. He understood, too, how violently such beauty as the girl described must have appealed to the dark man of the East. "The same colouring that I have," Victoria Ray had said. If he, an Englishman, accustomed to the fair loveliness of his countrywomen, were a little dazzled by the radiance of this girl, what compelling influence must not the more beautiful sister have exercised upon the Arab? "He made love to Saidee in a fierce sort of way that carried her off her feet," went on Victoria. "She used to tell me things he said, and Mrs. Ray did all she could to throw them together, because he was rich, and lived a long way off--so she wouldn't have to do anything for Say if they were married, or even see her again. He was only on leave in Paris. He was a Spahi, stationed in Algiers, and he owned a house there." "Ah, in Algiers!" Stephen began to see light--rather a lurid light. "Yes. His name was Cassim ben Halim el Cheikh el Arab. Before he had known Saidee two weeks, he proposed. She took a little while to think it over, and I begged her to say 'no'--but one day when Mrs. Ray had been crosser and more horrid than usual, she said 'yes'. Cassim ben Halim was Mohammedan, of course, but he and Saidee were married according to French law. They didn't go to church, because he couldn't do that without showing disrespect to his own religion, but he promised he'd not try to change hers. Altogether it seemed to Saidee that there was no reason why they shouldn't be as happy as a Catholic girl marrying a Protestant--or _vice versa_; and she hadn't any very strong convictions. She was a Christian, but she wasn't fond of going to church." "And her promise that she'd take you away with her?" Stephen reminded the girl. "She would have kept it, if Mrs. Ray had consented--though I'm sure Cassim didn't want me, and only agreed to do what Saidee asked because he was so deep in love, and feared to lose my sister if he refused her anything. But Mrs. Ray was afraid to let me go, on account of the condition in father's will that she should keep me near her while I was being educated. There was an old friend of father's who'd threatened to try and upset the will, for Saidee's sake and mine, so I suppose she thought he might succeed if she disobeyed father's instructions. It ended in Saidee and her husband going to Algiers without me, and Saidee cried--but she couldn't help being happy, because she was in love, and very excited about the strange new life, which Cassim told her would be wonderful as some gorgeous dream of fairyland. He gave her quantities of jewellery, and said they were nothing to what she should have when she was in her own home with him. She should be covered from head to foot with diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds, if she liked; and of course she would like, for she loved jewels, poor darling." "Why do you say 'poor?'" asked Stephen. "Are you going to tell me the marriage wasn't a success?" "I don't know," answered the girl. "I don't know any more about her than if Cassim ben Halim had really carried my sister off to fairyland, and shut the door behind them. You see, I was only eight years old. I couldn't make my own life. After Saidee was married and taken to Algiers, my stepmother began to imagine herself in love with an American from Indiana, whom she met in Paris. He had an impressive sort of manner, and made her think him rich and important. He was in business, and had come over to rest, so he couldn't stay long abroad; and he urged Mrs. Ray to go back to America on the same ship with him. Of course she took me, and this Mr. Henry Potter told her about a boarding-school where they taught quite little girls, not far from the town where he lived. It had been a farmhouse once, and he said there were 'good teachers and good air.' I can hear him saying it now. It was easy to persuade her; and she engaged rooms at a hotel in the town near by, which was called Potterston, after Mr. Potter's grandfather. By and by they were married, but their marriage made no difference to me. It wasn't a bad little old-fashioned school, and I was as happy as I could be anywhere, parted from Saidee. There was an attic where I used to be allowed to sit on Saturdays, and think thoughts, and write letters to my sister; and there was one corner, where the sunlight came in through a tiny window shaped like a crescent, without any glass, which I named Algiers. I played that I went there to visit Saidee in the old Arab palace she wrote me about. It was a splendid play--but I felt lonely when I stopped playing it. I used to dance there, too, very softly in stockinged feet, so nobody could hear--dances she and I made up together out of stories she used to tell me. The Shadow Dance and the Statue Dance which you saw, came out of those stories, and there are more you didn't see, which I do sometimes--a butterfly dance, the dance of the wheat, and two of the East, which were in stories she told me after we knew Cassim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even in those days, because I loved doing it. It came as natural to dance as to breathe, and Saidee had always encouraged me, so when I was left alone it made me think of her, to dance the dances of her stories." "What about your teachers? Did they never find you out?" asked Stephen. "Yes. One of the young teachers did at last. Not in the attic, but when I was dancing for the big girls in their dormitory, at night--they'd wake me up to get me to dance. But she wasn't much older than the biggest of the big girls, so she laughed--I suppose I must have looked quaint dancing in my nighty, with my long red hair. And though we were all scolded afterwards, I was made to dance sometimes at the entertainments we gave when school broke up in the summer. I was the youngest scholar, you see, and stayed through the vacations, so I was a kind of pet for the teachers. They were of one family, aunts and nieces--Southern people, and of course good-natured. But all this isn't really in the story I want to tell you. The interesting part's about Saidee. For months I got letters from her, written from Algiers. At first they were like fairy tales, but by and by--quite soon--they stopped telling much about herself. It seemed as if Saidee were growing more and more reserved, or else as if she were tired of writing to me, and bored by it--almost as if she could hardly think of anything to say. Then the letters stopped altogether. I wrote and wrote, but no answer came--no answer ever came." "You've never heard from your sister since then?" The thing appeared incredible to Stephen. "Never. Now you can guess what I've been growing up for, living for, all these years. To find her." "But surely," Stephen argued, "there must have been some way to----" "Not any way that was in my power, till now. You see I was helpless. I had no money, and I was a child. I'm not very old yet, but I'm older than my years, because I had this thing to do. There I was, at a farmhouse school in the country, two miles out of Potterston--and you would think Potterston itself not much better than the backwoods, I'm sure. When I was fourteen, my stepmother died suddenly--leaving all the money which came from my father to her husband, except several thousand dollars to finish my education and give me a start in life; but Mr. Potter lost everything of his own and of mine too, in some wild speculation about which the people in that part of Indiana went mad. The crash came a year ago, and the Misses Jennings, who kept the school, asked me to stay on as an under teacher--they were sorry for me, and so kind. But even if nothing had happened, I should have left then, for I felt old enough to set about my real work. Oh, I see you think I might have got at my sister before, somehow, but I couldn't, indeed. I tried everything. Not only did I write and write, but I begged the Misses Jennings to help, and the minister of the church where we went on Sundays. The Misses Jennings told the girls' parents and relations whenever they came to visit, and they all promised, if they ever went to Algiers, they would look for my sister's husband, Captain Cassim ben Halim, of the Spahis. But they weren't the sort of people who ever do go such journeys. And the minister wrote to the American Consul in Algiers for me, but the only answer was that Cassim ben Halim had disappeared. It seemed not even to be known that he had an American wife." "Your stepmother ought to have gone herself," said Stephen. "Oh--_ought_! I very seldom saw my stepmother after she married Mr. Potter. Though she lived so near, she never asked me to her house, and only came to call at the school once or twice a year, for form's sake. But I ran away one evening and begged her to go and find Saidee. She said it was nonsense; that if Saidee hadn't wanted to drop us, she would have kept on writing, or else she was dead. But don't you think I should have _known_ if Saidee were dead?" "By instinct, you mean--telepathy, or something of that sort?" "I don't know what I mean, but _I should have known_. I should have felt her death, like a string snapping in my heart. Instead, I heard her calling to me--I hear her always. She wants me. She needs me. I know it, and nothing could make me believe otherwise. So now you understand how, if anything were to be done, I had to do it myself. When I was quite little, I thought by the time I should be sixteen or seventeen, and allowed to leave school--or old enough to run away if necessary--I'd have a little money of my own. But when my stepmother died I felt sure I should never, never get anything from Mr. Potter." "But that old friend you spoke of, who wanted to upset the will? Couldn't he have done anything?" Stephen asked. "If he had lived, everything might have been different; but he was a very old man, and he died of pneumonia soon after Saidee married Cassim ben Halim. There was no one else to help. So from the time I was fourteen, I knew that somehow I must make money. Without money I could never hope to get to Algiers and find Saidee. Even though she had disappeared from there, it seemed to me that Algiers would be the place to begin my search. Don't you think so?" "Yes, Algiers is the place to begin," Stephen echoed. "There ought to be a way of tracking her. _Some one_ must know what became of a more or less important man such as your brother-in-law seems to have been. It's incredible that he should have been able to vanish without leaving any trace." "He must have left a trace, and though nobody else, so far, has found it, I shall find it," said the girl. "I did what I could before. I asked everybody to help; and when I got to New York last year, I used to go to Cook's office, to inquire for people travelling to Algiers. Then, if I met any, I would at once speak of my sister, and give them my address, to let me know if they should discover anything. They always seemed interested, and said they would really do their best, but they must have failed, or else they forgot. No news ever came back. It will be different with me now, though. I shall find Saidee, and if she isn't happy, I shall bring her away with me. If her husband is a bad man, and if the reason he left Algiers is because he lost his money, as I sometimes think, I may have to bribe him to let her go. But I have money enough for everything, I hope--unless he's very greedy, or there are difficulties I can't foresee. In that case, I shall dance again, and make more money, you know--that's all there is about it." "One thing I do know, is that you are wonderful," said Stephen, his conscience pricking him because of certain unjust thoughts concerning this child which he had harboured since learning that she was a dancer. "You're the most wonderful girl I ever saw or heard of." She laughed happily. "Oh no, I'm not wonderful at all. It's funny you should think so. Perhaps none of the girls you know have had a big work to do." "I'm sure they never have," said Stephen, "and if they had, they wouldn't have done it." "Yes, they would. Anybody would--that is, if they wanted to, _enough_. You can always do what you want to _enough_. I wanted to do this with all my heart and soul, so I knew I should find the way. I just followed my instinct, when people told me I was unreasonable, and of course it led me right. Reason is only to depend on in scientific sorts of things, isn't it? The other is higher, because instinct is your _You_." "Isn't that what people say who preach New Thought, or whatever they call it?" asked Stephen. "A lot of women I know had rather a craze about that two or three years ago. They went to lectures given by an American man they raved over--said he was 'too fascinating.' And they used their 'science' to win at bridge. I don't know whether it worked or not." "I never heard any one talk of New Thought," said Victoria. "I've just had my own thoughts about everything. The attic at school was a lovely place to think thoughts in. Wonderful ones always came to me, if I called to them--thoughts all glittering--like angels. They seemed to bring me new ideas about things I'd been born knowing--beautiful things, which I feel somehow have been handed down to me--in my blood." "Why, that's the way my friends used to talk about 'waking their race-consciousness.' But it only led to bridge, with them." "Well, it's led me from Potterston here," said Victoria, "and it will lead me on to the end, wherever that may be, I'm sure. Perhaps it will lead me far, far off, into that mysterious golden silence, where in dreams I often see Saidee watching for me: the strangest dream-place, and I've no idea where it is! But I shall find out, if she is really there." "What supreme confidence you have in your star!" Stephen exclaimed, admiringly, and half enviously. "Of course. Haven't you, in yours?" "I have no star." She turned her eyes to his, quickly, as if grieved. And in his eyes she saw the shadow of hopelessness which was there to see, and could not be hidden from a clear gaze. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "I don't know how I could have lived without mine. I walk in its light, as if in a path. But yours must be somewhere in the sky, and you can find it if you want to very much." He could have found two in her eyes just then, but such stars were not for him. "Perhaps I don't deserve a star," he said. "I'm sure you do. You are the kind that does," the girl comforted him. "Do have a star!" "It would only make me unhappy, because I mightn't be able to walk in its light, as you do." "It would make you very happy, as mine does me. I'm always happy, because the light helps me to do things. It helped me to dance: it helped me to succeed." "Tell me about your dancing," said Stephen, vaguely anxious to change the subject, and escape from thoughts of Margot, the only star of his future. "I should like to hear how you began, if you don't mind." "That's kind of you," replied Victoria, gratefully. He laughed. "Kind!" "Why, it's nothing of a story. Luckily, I'd always danced. So when I was fourteen, and began to think I should never have any money of my own after all, I saw that dancing would be my best way of earning it, as that was the one thing I could do very well. Afterwards I worked in real earnest--always up in the attic, where I used to study the Arabic language too; study it very hard. And no one knew what I was doing or what was in my head, till last year when I told the oldest Miss Jennings that I couldn't be a teacher--that I must leave school and go to New York." "What did she say?" "She said I was crazy. So did they all. They got the minister to come and argue with me, and he was dreadfully opposed to my wishes at first. But after we'd talked a while, he came round to my way." "How did you persuade him to that point of view?" Stephen catechized her, wondering always. "I hardly know. I just told him how I felt about everything. Oh, and I danced." "By Jove! What effect had that on him?" "He clapped his hands and said it was a good dance, quite different from what he expected. He didn't think it would do any one harm to see. And he gave me a sort of lecture about how I ought to behave if I became a dancer. It was easy to follow his advice, because none of the bad things he feared might happen to me ever did." "Your star protected you?" "Of course. There was a little trouble about money at first, because I hadn't any, but I had a few things--a watch that had been my mother's, and her engagement ring (they were Saidee's, but she left them both for me when she went away), and a queer kind of brooch Cassim ben Halim gave me one day, out of a lovely mother-o'-pearl box he brought full of jewels for Saidee, when they were engaged. See, I have the brooch on now--for I wouldn't _sell_ the things. I went to a shop in Potterston and asked the man to lend me fifty dollars on them all, so he did. It was very good of him." "You seem to consider everybody you meet kind and good," Stephen said. "Yes, they almost always have been so to me. If you believe people are going to be good, it _makes_ them good, unless they're very bad indeed." "Perhaps." Stephen would not for a great deal have tried to undermine her confidence in her fellow beings, and such was the power of the girl's personality, that for the moment he was half inclined to feel she might be right. Who could tell? Maybe he had not "believed" enough--in Margot. He looked with interest at the brooch of which Miss Ray spoke, a curiously wrought, flattened ring of dull gold, with a pin in the middle which pierced and fastened her chiffon veil on her breast. Round the edge, irregularly shaped pearls alternated with roughly cut emeralds, and there was a barbaric beauty in both workmanship and colour. "What happened when you got to your journey's end?" he went on, fearing to go astray on that subject of the world's goodness, which was a sore point with him lately. "Did you know anybody in New York?" "Nobody. But I asked the driver of a cab if he could take me to a respectable theatrical boarding-house, and he said he could, so I told him to drive me there. I engaged a wee back room at the top of the house, and paid a week in advance. The boarders weren't very successful people, poor things, for it was a cheap boarding-house--it had to be, for me. But they all knew which were the best theatres and managers, and they were interested when they heard I'd come to try and get a chance to be a dancer. They were afraid it wasn't much use, but the same evening they changed their minds, and gave me lots of good advice." "You danced for them?" "Yes, in such a stuffy parlour, smelling of gas and dust and there were holes in the carpet it was difficult not to step into. A dear old man without any hair, who was on what he called the 'Variety Stage,' advised me to go and try to see Mr. Charles Norman, a fearfully important person--so important that even I had heard of him, away out in Indiana. I did try, day after day, but he was too important to be got at. I wouldn't be discouraged, though. I knew Mr. Norman must come to the theatre sometimes, so I bought a photograph in order to recognize him; and one day when he passed me, going in, I screwed up my courage and spoke. I said I'd been waiting for days and days. At first he scowled, and I think meant to be cross, but when he'd given me one long, terrifying glare, he grumbled out: "Come along with me, then. I'll soon see what you can do." I went in, and danced on an almost dark stage, with Mr. Norman and another man looking at me, in the empty theatre where all the chairs and boxes were covered up with sheets. They seemed rather pleased with my dancing, and Mr. Norman said he would give me a chance. Then, if I 'caught on'--he meant if people liked me--I should have a salary. But I told him I must have the salary at once, as my money would only last a few more days. I'd spent nearly all I had, getting to New York. Very well, said he, I should have thirty dollars a week to begin with, and after that, we'd see what we'd see. Well, people did like my dances, and by and by Mr. Norman gave me what seemed then a splendid salary. So now you know everything that's happened; and please don't think I'd have worried you by talking so much about myself, if you hadn't asked questions. I'm afraid I oughtn't to have done it, anyway." Her tone changed, and became almost apologetic. She stirred uneasily in her deck chair, and looked about half dazedly, as people look about a room that is new to them, on waking there for the first time. "Why, it's grown dark!" she exclaimed. This fact surprised Stephen equally. "So it has," he said. "By Jove, I was so interested in you--in what you were telling--I hadn't noticed. I'd forgotten where we were." "I'd forgotten, too," said Victoria. "I always do forget outside things when I think about Saidee, and the golden dream-silence where I see her. All the people who were near us on deck have gone away. Did you see them go?" "No," said Stephen, "I didn't." "How odd!" exclaimed the girl. "Do you think so? You had taken me to the golden silence with you." "Where can everybody be?" She spoke anxiously. "Is it late? Maybe they've gone to get ready for dinner." From a small bag she wore at her belt, American tourist-fashion, she pulled out an old-fashioned gold watch of the kind that winds up with a key--her mother's, perhaps, on which she had borrowed money to reach New York. "Something must be wrong with my watch," she said. "It can't be twenty minutes past eight." The same thing was wrong with Stephen's expensive repeater, whose splendour he was ashamed to flaunt beside the modesty of the girl's poor little timepiece. There remained now no reasonable doubt that it was indeed twenty minutes past eight, since by the mouths of two witnesses a truth can be established. "How dreadful!" exclaimed Victoria, mortified. "I've kept you here all this time, listening to me." "Didn't I tell you I'd rather listen to you than anything else? Eating was certainly not excepted. I don't remember hearing the bugle." "And I didn't hear it." "I'd forgotten dinner. You had carried me so far away with you." "And Saidee," added the girl. "Thank you for going with us." "Thank you for taking me." They both laughed, and as they laughed, people began streaming out on deck. Dinner was over. The handsome Arab passed, talking with the spare, loose-limbed English parson, whom he had fascinated. They were discussing affairs in Morocco, and as they passed Stephen and Victoria, the Arab did not appear to turn; yet Stephen knew that he was thinking of them and not of what he was saying to the clergyman. "What shall we do?" asked Victoria. Stephen reflected for an instant. "Will you invite me to dine at your table?" he asked. "Maybe they'll tell us it's too late now to have anything to eat. I don't mind for myself, but for you----" "We'll have a better dinner than the others have had," Stephen prophesied. "I guarantee it, if you invite me." "Oh, do please come," she implored, like a child. "I couldn't face the waiters alone. And you know, I feel as if you were a friend, now--though you may laugh at that." "It's the best compliment I ever had," said Stephen. "And--it gives me faith in myself--which I need." "And your star, which you're to find," the girl reminded him, as he unrolled her from her rug. "I wish you'd lend me a little of the light from yours, to find mine by," he said half gaily, yet with a certain wistfulness which she detected under the laugh. "I will," she said quickly. "Not a little, but half." VI Stephen's prophecy came true. They had a better dinner than any one else had, and enjoyed it as an adventure. Victoria thought their waiter a particularly good-natured man, because instead of sulking over his duties he beamed. Stephen might, if he had chosen, have thrown another light upon the waiter's smiles; but he didn't choose. And he was happy. He gave Victoria good advice, and promised help from Nevill Caird. "He's sure to meet me at the ship," he said, "and if you'll let me, I'll introduce him to you. He may be able to find out everything you want to know." Stephen would have liked to go on talking after dinner, but the girl, ashamed of having taken up so much of his time, would not be tempted. She went to her cabin, and thought of him, as well as of her sister; and he thought of her while he walked on deck, under the stars. "For a moment white, then gone forever." Again the words came singing into his head. She was white--white as this lacelike foam that silvered the Mediterranean blue; but she had not gone forever, as he had thought when he likened her whiteness to the spindrift on the dark Channel waves. She had come into his life once more, unexpectedly; and she might brighten it again for a short time on land, in that unknown garden his thoughts pictured, behind the gate of the East. Yet she would not be of his life. There was no place in it for a girl. Still, he thought of her, and went on thinking, involuntarily planning things which he and Nevill Caird would do to help the child, in her romantic errand. Of course she must not be allowed to travel about Algeria alone. Once settled in Algiers she must stay there quietly till the authorities found her sister. He used that powerful-sounding word "authorities" vaguely in his mind, but he was sure that the thing would be simple enough. The police could be applied to, if Nevill and his friends should be unable to discover Ben Halim and his American wife. Almost unconsciously, Stephen saw himself earning Victoria Ray's gratitude. It was a pleasant fancy, and he followed it as one wanders down a flowery path found in a dark forest. Victoria's thoughts of him were as many, though different. She had never filled her mind with nonsense about men, as many girls do. As she would have said to herself, she had been too busy. When girls at school had talked of being in love, and of marrying, she had been interested, as if in a story-book, but it had not seemed to her that she would ever fall in love or be married. It seemed so less than ever, now that she was at last actually on her way to look for Saidee. She was intensely excited, and there was room only for the one absorbing thought in mind and heart; yet she was not as anxious as most others would have been in her place. Now that Heaven had helped her so far, she was sure she would be helped to the end. It would be too bad to be true that anything dreadful should have happened to Saidee--anything from which she, Victoria, could not save her; and so now, very soon perhaps, everything would come right. It seemed to the girl that somehow Stephen was part of a great scheme, that he had been sent into her life for a purpose. Otherwise, why should he have been so kind since the first, and have appeared this second time, when she had almost forgotten him in the press of other thoughts? Why should he be going where she was going, and why should he have a friend who had known Algiers and Algeria since the time when Saidee's letters had ceased? All these arguments were childlike; but Victoria Ray had not passed far beyond childhood; and though her ideas of religion were her own--unlearned and unconventional--such as they were they meant everything to her. Many things which she had heard in churches had seemed unreal to the girl; but she believed that the Great Power moving the Universe planned her affairs as well as the affairs of the stars, and with equal interest. She thought that her soul was a spark given out by that Power, and that what was God in her had only to call to the All of God to be answered. She had called, asking to find Saidee, and now she was going to find her, just how she did not yet know; but she hardly doubted that Stephen Knight was connected with the way. Otherwise, what was the good of him to her? And Victoria was far too humble in her opinion of herself, despite that buoyant confidence in her star, to imagine that she could be of any use to him. She could be useful to Saidee; that was all. She hoped for nothing more. And little as she knew of society, she understood that Stephen belonged to a different world from hers; the world where people were rich, and gay, and clever, and amused themselves; the high world, from a social point of view. She supposed, too, that Stephen looked upon her as a little girl, while she in her turn regarded him gratefully and admiringly, as from a distance. And she believed that he must be a very good man. It would never have occurred to Victoria Ray to call him, even in thought, her "White Knight," as Margot Lorenzi persisted in calling him, and had called him in the famous interview. But it struck her, the moment she heard his name, that it somehow fitted him like a suit of armour. She was fond of finding an appropriateness in names, and sometimes, if she were tired or a little discouraged, she repeated her own aloud, several times over: "Victoria, Victoria. I am Victoria," until she felt strong again to conquer every difficulty which might rise against her, in living up to her name. Now she was of opinion that Stephen's face would do very well in the picture of a young knight of olden days, going out to fight for the True Cross. Indeed, he looked as if he had already passed through the preparation of a long vigil, for his face was worn, and his eyes seldom smiled even when he laughed and seemed amused. His features gave her an idea that the Creator had taken a great deal of pains in chiselling them, not slighting a single line. She had seen handsomer men--indeed, the splendid Arab on the ship was handsomer--but she thought, if she were a general who wanted a man to lead a forlorn hope which meant almost certain death, she would choose one of Stephen's type. She had the impression that he would not hesitate to sacrifice himself for a cause, or even for a person, in an emergency, although he had the air of one used to good fortune, who loved to take his own way in the small things of life. And so she finally went to sleep thinking of Stephen. It is seldom that even the _Charles Quex_, one of the fastest ships plying between Marseilles and Algiers, makes the trip in eighteen hours, as advertised. Generally she takes two half-days and a night, but this time people began to say that she would do it in twenty-two hours. Very early in the dawning she passed the Balearic Isles, mysterious purple in an opal sea, and it was not yet noon when the jagged line of the Atlas Mountains hovered in pale blue shadow along a paler horizon. Then, as the turbines whirred, the shadow materialized, taking a golden solidity and wildness of outline. At length the tower of a lighthouse started out clear white against blue, as a shaft of sunshine struck it. Next, the nearer mountains slowly turned to green, as a chameleon changes: the Admiralty Island came clearly into view; the ancient nest of those fierce pirates who for centuries scourged the Mediterranean; and last of all, the climbing town of Algiers, old Al-Djézair-el-Bahadja, took form like thick patterns of mother-o'-pearl set in bright green enamel, the patterns eventually separating themselves into individual buildings. The strange, bulbous domes of a Byzantine cathedral on a hill sprang up like a huge tropical plant of many flowers, unfolding fantastic buds of deep rose-colour, against a sky of violet flame. "At last, Africa!" said Victoria, standing beside Stephen, and leaning on the rail. She spoke to herself, half whispering the words, hardly aware that she uttered them, but Stephen heard. The two had not been long together during the morning, for each had been shy of giving too much of himself or herself, although they had secretly wished for each other's society. As the voyage drew to a close, however, Stephen was no longer able to resist an attraction which he felt like a compelling magnetism. His excuse was that he wanted to know Miss Ray's first impressions of the place she had constantly seen in her thoughts during ten years. "Is it like what you expected?" he asked. "Yes," she said, "it's like, because I have photographs. And I've read every book I could get hold of, old and new, in French as well as English. I always kept up my French, you know, for the same reason that I studied Arabic. I think I could tell the names of some of the buildings, without making mistakes. Yet it looks different, as the living face of a person is different from a portrait in black and white. And I never imagined such a sky. I didn't know skies could be of such a colour. It's as if pale fire were burning behind a thin veil of blue." It was as she said. Stephen had seen vivid skies on the Riviera, but there the blue was more opaque, like the blue of the turquoise. Here it was ethereal and quivering, like the violet fire that hovers over burning ship-logs. He was glad the sky of Africa was unlike any other sky he had known. It intensified the thrill of enchantment he had begun to feel. It seemed to him that it might be possible for a man to forget things in a country where even the sky was of another blue. Sometimes, when Stephen had read in books of travel (at which he seldom even glanced), or in novels, about "the mystery of the East," he had smiled in a superior way. Why should the East be more mysterious than the West, or North, or South, except that women were shut up in harems and wore veils if they stirred out of doors? Such customs could scarcely make a whole country mysterious. But now, though he had not yet landed, he knew that he would be compelled to acknowledge the indefinable mystery at which he had sneered. Already he fancied an elusive influence, like the touch of a ghost. It was in the pulsing azure of the sky; in the wild forms of the Atlas and far Kabyle mountains stretching into vague, pale distances; in the ivory white of the low-domed roofs that gleamed against the vivid green hill of the Sahel, like pearls on a veiled woman's breast. "Is it what you thought it would be?" Victoria inquired in her turn. "I hadn't thought much about it," Stephen had to confess, fearing she would consider such indifference uninteresting. He did not add what remained of the truth, that he had thought of Algiers as a refuge from what had become disagreeable, rather than as a beautiful place which he wished to see for its own sake. "I'd made no picture in my mind. You know a lot more about it all than I do, though you've lived so far away, and I within a distance of forty-eight hours." "That great copper-coloured church high on the hill is Notre Dame d'Afrique," said the girl. "She's like a dark sister of Notre Dame de la Garde, who watches over Marseilles, isn't she? I think I could love her, though she's ugly, really. And I've read in a book that if you walk up the hill to visit her and say a prayer, you may have a hundred days' indulgence." Much good an "indulgence" would do him now, Stephen thought bitterly. As the ship steamed closer inshore, the dreamlike beauty of the white town on the green hillside sharpened into a reality which might have seemed disappointingly modern and French, had it not been for the sprinkling of domes, the pointing fingers of minarets with glittering tiles of bronzy green, and the groups of old Arab houses crowded in among the crudities of a new, Western civilization. Down by the wharf for which the boat aimed like a homing bird, were huddled a few of these houses, ancient dwellings turned into commercial offices where shipping business was transacted. They looked forlorn, yet beautiful, like haggard slavewomen who remembered days of greatness in a far-off land. The _Charles Quex_ slackened speed as she neared the harbour, and every detail of the town leaped to the eyes, dazzling in the southern sunshine. The encircling arms of break-waters were flung out to sea in a vast embrace; the smoke of vessels threaded with dark, wavy lines the pure crystal of the air; the quays were heaped with merchandise, some of it in bales, as if it might have been brought by caravans across the desert. There was a clanking of cranes at work, a creaking of chains, a flapping of canvas, and many sounds which blend in the harsh poetry of sea-harbours. Then voices of men rose shrilly above all heavier noises, as the ship slowly turned and crept beside a floating pontoon. The journey together was over for Stephen Knight and Victoria Ray. VII A first glance, at such close quarters, would have told the least instructed stranger that he was in the presence of two clashing civilizations, both tenacious, one powerful. In front, all along the shore, towered with confident effrontery a massive line of buildings many stories high, great cubes of brick and stone, having elaborate balconies that shadowed swarming offices with dark, gaping vaults below. Along the broad, stone-paved street clanged electric tramcars. There was a constant coming and going of men. Cloaked and hooded white forms, or half-clad apparitions wrapped in what looked like dirty bagging, mingled with commonplace figures in Western dress. But huddled in elbow-high with this busy town of modern France (which might have been Marseilles or Bordeaux) was something alien, something remote in spirit; a ghostly band of white buildings, silent and pale in the midst of colour and noise. Low houses with flat roofs or miniature domes, small, secret doorways, tiny windows like eyes narrowed for spying, and overhanging upper stories supported on close-set, projecting sticks of mellow brown which meant great age. Minarets sprang up in mute protest against the infidel, appealing to the sky. All that was left of old Algiers tried to boast, in forced dumbness, of past glories, of every charm the beautiful, fierce city of pirates must have possessed before the French came to push it slowly but with deadly sureness back from the sea. Now, silent and proud in the tragedy of failure, it stood masked behind pretentious French houses, blocklike in ugliness, or flauntingly ornate as many buildings in the Rue de Rivoli or Boulevard Haussmann. In those low-browed dwellings which thickly enamelled the hill with a mosaic of pink and pearly whiteness, all the way up to the old fortress castle, the Kasbah, the true life of African Algiers hid and whispered. The modern French front along the fine street was but a gay veneer concealing realities, an incrusted civilization imposed upon one incredibly ancient, unspeakably different and ever unchanging. Stephen remembered now that he had heard people decry Algiers, pronouncing it spoiled and "completely Frenchified." But it occurred to him that in this very process of spoiling, an impression of tragic romance had been created which less "spoiled" towns might lack. Here were clashing contrasts which, even at a glance, made the strangest picture he had ever seen; and already he began to feel more and more keenly, though not yet to understand, something of the magic of the East. For this place, though not the East according to geographers, held all the spirit of the East--was in essence truly the East. Before the ship lay fairly in harbour, brown men had climbed on board from little boats, demanding to be given charge of the passengers' small luggage, which the stewards had brought on deck, and while one of these was arguing in bad French with Stephen, a tall, dark youth beautifully dressed in crimson and white, wearing a fez jauntily on one side, stepped up with a smile. "_Pardon, monsieur_," he ventured. "_Je suis le domestique de Monsieur Caird._" And then, in richly guttural accents, he offered the information that he was charged to look after monsieur's baggage; that it was best to avoid _tous ces Arabes là_, and that Monsieur Caird impatiently awaited his friend on the wharf. "But you--aren't you Arab?" asked Stephen, who knew no subtle differences between those who wore the turban or fez. He saw that the good-looking, merry-faced boy was no browner than many a Frenchman of the south, and that his eyes were hazel; still, he did not know what he might be, if not Arab. "_Je suis Kabyle, monsieur; Kabyle des hauts plateaux_," replied the youth with pride, and a look of contempt at the shouting porters, which was returned with interest. They darted glances of scorn at his gold-braided vest and jacket of crimson cloth, his light blue sash, and his enormously full white trousers, beneath which showed a strip of pale golden leg above the short white stockings, spurning the immaculate smartness of his livery, preferring, or pretending to prefer, their own soiled shabbiness and freedom. The Kabyle saw these glances, but, completely satisfied with himself, evidently attributed them to envy. Stephen turned towards Victoria, of whom he had lost sight for a moment. He wished to offer the Kabyle boy's services, but already she had accepted those of a very old Arab who looked thin and ostentatiously pathetic. It was too late now. He saw by her face that she would refuse help, rather than hurt the man's feelings. But she had told him the name of the hotel where she had telegraphed to engage a room, and Stephen meant at the instant of greeting his host, to ask if it were suitable for a young girl travelling alone. He caught sight of Caird, looking up and waiting for him, before he was able to land. It was the face he remembered; boyish, with beautiful bright eyes, a wide forehead, and curly light hair. The expression was more mature, but the same quaintly angelic look was there, which had earned for Nevill the nickname of "Choir Boy" and "Wings." "Hullo, Legs!" called out Caird, waving his Panama. "Hullo, Wings!" shouted Stephen, and was suddenly tremendously glad to see the friend he had thought of seldom during the last eight or nine years. In another moment he was introducing Nevill to Miss Ray and hastily asking questions concerning her hotel, while a fantastic crowd surged round all three. Brown, skurrying men in torn bagging, the muscles of whose bare, hairless legs seemed carved in dark oak; shining black men whose faces were ebony under the ivory white of their turbans; pale, patient Kabyles of the plains bent under great sacks of flour which drained through ill-sewn seams and floated on the air in white smoke, making every one sneeze as the crowd swarmed past. Large grey mules roared, miniature donkeys brayed, and half-naked children laughed or howled, and darted under the heads of the horses, or fell against the bright bonnets of waiting motor cars. There were smart victorias, shabby cabs, hotel omnibuses, and huge carts; and, mingling with the floating dust of the spilt flour was a heavy perfume of spices, of incense perhaps blown from some far-off mosque, and ambergris mixed with grains of musk in amulets which the Arabs wore round their necks, heated by their sweating flesh as they worked or stalked about shouting guttural orders. There was a salt tang of seaweed, too, like an undertone, a foundation for all the other smells; and the air was warm with a hint of summer, a softness that was not enervating. As soon as the first greeting and the introduction to Miss Ray were confusedly over, Caird cleverly extricated the newcomers from the thick of the throng, sheltering them between his large yellow motor car and a hotel omnibus waiting for passengers and luggage. "Now you're safe," he said, in the young-sounding voice which pleasantly matched his whole personality. He was several years older than Stephen, but looked younger, for Stephen was nearly if not quite six feet in height, and Nevill Caird was less in stature by at least four inches. He was very slightly built, too, and his hair was as yellow as a child's. His face was clean-shaven, like Stephen's, and though Stephen, living mostly in London, was brown as if tanned by the sun, Nevill, out of doors constantly and exposed to hot southern sunshine, had the complexion of a girl. Nevertheless, thought Victoria--sensitive and quick in forming impressions--he somehow contrived to look a thorough man, passionate and ready to be violently in earnest, like one who would love or hate in a fiery way. "He would make a splendid martyr," the girl said to herself, giving him straight look for straight look, as he began advising her against her chosen hotel. "But I think he would want his best friends to come and look on while he burned. Mr. Knight would chase everybody away." "Don't go to any hotel," Nevill said. "Be my aunt's guest. It's a great deal more her house than mine. There's lots of room in it--ever so much more than we want. Just now there's no one staying with us, but often we have a dozen or so. Sometimes my aunt invites people. Sometimes I do: sometimes both together. Now I invite you, in her name. She's quite a nice old lady. You'll like her. And we've got all kinds of animals--everything, nearly, that will live in this climate, from tortoises of Carthage, to white mice from Japan, and a baby panther from Grand Kabylia. But they keep themselves to themselves. I promise you the panther won't try to sit on your lap. And you'll be just in time to christen him. We've been looking for a name." "I should love to christen the panther, and you are more than kind to say your aunt would like me to visit her; but I can't possibly, thank you very much," answered Victoria in the old-fashioned, quaintly provincial way which somehow intensified the effect of her brilliant prettiness. "I have come to Algiers on--on business that's very important to me. Mr. Knight will tell you all about it. I've asked him to tell, and he's promised to beg for your help. When you know, you'll see that it will be better for me not to be visiting anybody. I--I would rather be in a hotel, in spite of your great kindness." That settled the matter. Nevill Caird had too much tact to insist, though he was far from being convinced. He said that his aunt, Lady MacGregor, would write Miss Ray a note asking her to lunch next day, and then they would have the panther-christening. Also by that time he would know, from his friend, how his help might best be given. But in any case he hoped that Miss Ray would allow his car to drop her at the Hotel de la Kasbah, which had no omnibus and therefore did not send to meet the boat. Her luggage might go up with the rest, and be left at the hotel. These offers Victoria accepted gratefully; and as Caird put her into the fine yellow car, the handsome Arab who had been on the boat looked at her with chastened curiosity as he passed. He must have seen that she was with the Englishman who had talked to her on board the _Charles Quex_, and that now there was another man, who seemed to be the owner of the large automobile. The Arab had a servant with him, who had travelled second class on the boat, a man much darker than himself, plainly dressed, with a smaller turban bound by cheaper cord; but he was very clean, and as dignified as his master. Stephen scarcely noticed the two figures. The fine-looking Arab had ceased to be of importance since he had left the ship, and would see no more of Victoria Ray. The chauffeur who drove Nevill's car was an Algerian who looked as if he might have a dash of dark blood in his veins. Beside him sat the Kabyle servant, who, in his picturesque embroidered clothes, with his jaunty fez, appeared amusingly out of place in the smart automobile, which struck the last note of modernity. The chauffeur had a reckless, daring face, with the smile of a mischievous boy; but he steered with caution and skill through the crowded streets where open trams rushed by, filled to overflowing with white-veiled Arab women of the lower classes, and French girls in large hats, who sat crushed together on the same seats. Arabs walked in the middle of the street, and disdained to quicken their steps for motor cars and carriages. Tiny children with charming brown faces and eyes like wells of light, darted out from the pavement, almost in front of the motor, smiling and begging, absolutely, fearless and engagingly impudent. It was all intensely interesting to Stephen, who was, however, conscious enough of his past to be glad that he was able to take so keen an interest. He had the sensation of a man who has been partially paralyzed, and is delighted to find that he can feel a pinch. The Hotel de la Kasbah, which Victoria frankly admitted she had chosen because of its low prices, was, as its name indicated, close to the mounting of the town, near the corner of a tortuous Arab street, narrow and shadowy despite its thick coat of whitewash. The house was kept by an extremely fat Algerian, married to a woman who called herself Spanish, but was more than half Moorish; and the proprietor himself being of mixed blood, all the servants except an Algerian maid or two, were Kabyles or Arabs. They were cheap and easy to manage, since master and mistress had no prejudices. Stephen did not like the look of the place, which might suit commercial travellers or parties of economical tourists who liked to rub shoulders with native life; but for a pretty young girl travelling alone, it seemed to him that, though it was clean enough, nothing could be less appropriate. Victoria had made up her mind and engaged her room, however; and so as no definite objection could be urged, he followed Caird's example, and held his tongue. As they bade the girl good-bye in the tiled hall (a fearful combination of all that was worst in Arab and European taste) Nevill begged her to let them know if she were not comfortable. "You're coming to lunch to-morrow at half-past one," he went on, "but if there's anything meanwhile, call us up on the telephone. We can easily find you another hotel, or a pension, if you're determined not to visit my aunt." "If I need you, I promise that I will call," Victoria said. And though she answered Caird, she looked at Stephen Knight. Then they left her; and Stephen became rather thoughtful. But he tried not to let Nevill see his preoccupation. VIII As they left the arcaded streets of commercial Algiers, and drove up the long hill towards Mustapha Supérieur, where most of the best and finest houses are, Stephen and Nevill Caird talked of what they saw, and of Victoria Ray; not at all of Stephen himself. Nevill had asked him what sort of trip he had had, and not another question of any sort. Stephen was glad of this, and understood very well that it was not because his friend was indifferent. Had he been so, he would not have invited Stephen to make this visit. To speak of the past they had shared, long ago, would naturally have led farther, and though Stephen was not sure that he mightn't some day refer, of his own accord, to the distasteful subject of the Case and Margot Lorenzi, he could not have borne to mention either now. As they passed gateways leading to handsome houses, mostly in the Arab style, Nevill told him who lived in each one: French, English, and American families; people connected with the government, who remained in Algiers all the year round, or foreigners who came out every winter for love of their beautiful villa gardens and the climate. "We've rather an amusing society here," he said. "And we'd defend Algiers and each other to any outsider, though our greatest pleasure is quarrelling among ourselves, or patching up one another's rows and beginning again on our own account. It's great fun and keeps us from stagnating. We also give quantities of luncheons and teas, and are sick of going to each other's entertainments; yet we're so furious if there's anything we're not invited to, we nearly get jaundice. I do myself--though I hate running about promiscuously; and I spend hours thinking up ingenious lies to squeeze out of accepting invitations I'd have been ill with rage not to get. And there are factions which loathe each other worse than any mere Montagus and Capulets. We have rival parties, and vie with one another in getting hold of any royalties or such like, that may be knocking about; but we who hate each other most, meet at the Governor's Palace and smile sweetly if French people are looking; if not, we snort like war-horses--only in a whisper, for we're invariably polite." Stephen laughed, as he was meant to do. "What about the Arabs?" he asked, with Victoria's errand in his mind. "Is there such a thing as Arab society?" "Very little--of the kind we'd call 'society'--in Algiers. In Tunis there's more. Much of the old Arab aristocracy has died out here, or moved away; but there are a few left who are rich and well born. They have their palaces outside the town; but most of the best houses have been sold to Europeans, and their Arab owners have gone into the interior where the Roumis don't rub elbows with them quite as offensively as in a big French town like this. Naturally they prefer the country. And I know a few of the great Arab Chiefs--splendid-looking fellows who turn up gorgeously dressed for the Governor's ball every year, and condescend to dine with me once or twice while they're staying on to amuse themselves in Algiers." "Condescend!" Stephen repeated. "By Jove, yes. I'm sure they think it's a great condescension. And I'm not sure you won't think so too, when you see them--as of course you will. You must go to the Governor's ball with me, even if you can't be bothered going anywhere else. It's a magnificent spectacle. And I get on pretty well among the Arabs, as I've learned to speak their lingo a bit. Not that I've worried. But nearly nine years is a long time." This was Stephen's chance to tell what he chose to tell of his brief acquaintance with Victoria Ray, and of the mission which had brought her to Algiers. Somehow, as he unfolded the story he had heard from the girl on board ship, the scent of orange blossoms, luscious-sweet in this region of gardens, connected itself in his mind with thoughts of the beautiful woman who had married Cassim ben Halim, and disappeared from the world she had known. He imagined her in an Arab garden where orange blossoms fell like snow, eating her heart out for the far country and friends she would never see again, rebelling against a monstrous tyranny which imprisoned her in this place of perfumes and high white walls. Or perhaps the scented petals were falling now upon her grave. "Cassim ben Halim--Captain Cassim ben Halim," Nevill repeated. "Seems familiar somehow, as if I'd heard the name; but most of these Arab names have a kind of family likeness in our ears. Either he's a person of no particular importance, or else he must have left Algiers before my Uncle James Caird died--the man who willed me his house, you know--brother of Aunt Caroline MacGregor who lives with me now. If I've ever heard anything about Ben Halim, whatever it is has slipped my mind. But I'll do my best to find out something." "Miss Ray believes he was of importance," said Stephen. "She oughtn't to have much trouble getting on to his trail, should you think?" Nevill looked doubtful. "Well, if he'd wanted her on his trail, she'd never have been off it. If he didn't, and doesn't, care to be got at, finding him mayn't be as simple as it would be in Europe, where you can always resort to detectives if worst comes to worst." "Can't you here?" asked Stephen. "Well, there's the French police, of course, and the military in the south. But they don't care to interfere with the private affairs of Arabs, if no crime's been committed--and they wouldn't do anything in such a case, I should think, in the way of looking up Ben Halim, though they'd tell anything they might happen to know already, I suppose--unless they thought best to keep silence with foreigners." "There must be people in Algiers who'd remember seeing such a beautiful creature as Ben Halim's wife, even if her husband whisked her away nine years ago," Stephen argued. "I wonder?" murmured Caird, with an emphasis which struck his friend as odd. "What do you mean?" asked Stephen. "I mean, I wonder if any one in Algiers ever saw her at all? Ben Halim was in the French Army; but he was a Mussulman. Paris and Algiers are a long cry, one from the other--if you're an Arab." "Jove! You don't think----" "You've spotted it. That's what I do think." "That he shut her up?" "That he forced her to live the life of a Mussulman woman. Why, what else could you expect, when you come to look at it?" "But an American girl----" "A woman who marries gives herself to her husband's nation as well as to her husband, doesn't she--especially if he's an Arab? Only, thank God, it happens to very few European girls, except of the class that doesn't so much matter. Think of it. This Ben Halim, a Spahi officer, falls dead in love with a girl when he's on leave in Paris. He feels he must have her. He can get her only by marriage. They're as subtle as the devil, even the best of them, these Arabs. He'd have to promise the girl anything she wanted, or lose her. Naturally he wouldn't give it away that he meant to veil her and clap her into a harem the minute he got her home. If he'd even hinted anything of that sort she wouldn't have stirred a step. But for a Mussulman to let his wife walk the streets unveiled, like a Roumia, or some woman of easy virtue, would be a horrible disgrace to them both. His relations and friends would cut him, and hoot her at sight. The more he loved his wife, the less likely he'd be to keep a promise, made in a different world. It wouldn't be human nature--Arab human nature--to keep it. Besides, they have the jealousy of the tiger, these Eastern fellows. It's a madness." "Then perhaps no one ever knew, out here, that the man had brought home a foreign wife?" "Almost surely not. No European, that is. Arabs might know--through their women. There's nothing that passes which they can't find out. How they do it, who can tell? Their ways are as mysterious as everything else here, except the lives of us _hiverneurs_, who don't even try very hard to hide our own scandals when we have any. But no Arab could be persuaded or forced to betray another Arab to a European, unless for motives of revenge. For love or hate, they stand together. In virtues and vices they're absolutely different from Europeans. And if Ben Halim doesn't want anybody, not excepting his wife's sister, to get news of his wife, why, it may be difficult to get it, that's all I say. Going to Miss Ray's hotel, you could see something of that Arab street close by, on the fringe of the Kasbah--which is what they call, not the old fort alone, but the whole Arab town." "Yes. I saw the queer white houses, huddled together, that looked like blank walls only broken by a door, with here and there a barred window." "Well, what I mean is that it's almost impossible for any European to learn what goes on behind those blank walls and those little square holes, in respectable houses. But we'll hope for the best. And here we are at my place. I'm rather proud of it." They had come to the arched gateway of a white-walled garden. The sun had set fire to the gold of some sunken Arab lettering over the central arch, so that each broken line darted forth its separate flame. "Djenan el Djouad; House of the Nobleman," Nevill translated. "It was built for the great confidant of a particularly wicked old Dey of Algiers, in sixteen hundred and something, and the place had been allowed to fall into ruin when my uncle bought it, about twenty or thirty years ago. There was a romance in his life, I believe. He came to Algiers for his health, as a young man, meaning to stay only a few months, but fell in love with a face which he happened to catch a glimpse of, under a veil that disarranged itself--on purpose or by accident--in a carriage belonging to a rich Arab. Because of that face he remained in Algiers, bought this house, spent years in restoring it, exactly in Arab style, and making a beautiful garden out of his fifteen or sixteen acres. Whether he ever got to know the owner of the face, history doesn't state: my uncle was as secretive as he was romantic. But odd things have been said. I expect they're still said, behind my back. And they're borne out, I'm bound to confess, by the beauty of the decorations in that part of the house intended for the ladies. Whether it was ever occupied in Uncle James's day, nobody can tell; but Aunt Caroline, his sister, who has the best rooms there now, vows she's seen the ghost of a lovely being, all spangled gauze and jewels, with silver khal-khal, or anklets, that tinkle as she moves. I assure my aunt it must be a dream, come to punish her for indulging in two goes of her favourite sweet at dinner; but in my heart I shouldn't wonder if it's true. The whole lot of us, in our family, are romantic and superstitious. We can't help it and don't want to help it, though we suffer for our foolishness often enough, goodness knows." The scent of orange blossoms and acacias was poignantly sweet, as the car passed an Arab lodge, and wound slowly up an avenue cut through a grove of blossoming trees. The utmost pains had been taken in the laying out of the garden, but an effect of carelessness had been preserved. The place seemed a fairy tangle of white and purple lilacs, gold-dripping laburnums, acacias with festoons of pearl, roses looping from orange tree to mimosa, and a hundred gorgeous tropical flowers like painted birds and butterflies. In shadowed nooks under dark cypresses, glimmered arum lilies, sparkling with the diamond dew that sprayed from carved marble fountains, centuries old; and low seats of marble mosaiced with rare tiles stood under magnolia trees or arbours of wistaria. Giant cypresses, tall and dark as a band of Genii, marched in double line on either side the avenue as it straightened and turned towards the house. White in the distance where that black procession halted, glittered the old Arab palace, built in one long façade, and other façades smaller, less regular, looking like so many huge blocks of marble grouped together. Over one of these blocks fell a crimson torrent of bougainvillæa; another was veiled with white roses and purple clematis; a third was showered with the gold of some strange tropical creeper that Stephen did not know. On the roof of brown and dark-green tiles, the sunlight poured, making each tile lustrous as the scale of a serpent, and all along the edge grew tiny flowers and grasses, springing out of interstices to wave filmy threads of pink and gold. The principal façade was blank as a wall, save for a few small, mysterious windows, barred with _grilles_ of iron, green with age; but on the other façades were quaint recessed balconies, under projecting roofs supported with beams of cedar; and the door, presently opened by an Arab servant, was very old too, made of oak covered with an armour of greenish copper. Even when it had closed behind Stephen and Nevill, they were not yet in the house, but in a large court with a ceiling of carved and painted cedar-wood supported by marble pillars of extreme lightness and grace. In front, this court was open, looking on to an inner garden with a fountain more delicate of design than those Stephen had seen outside. The three walls of the court were patterned all over with ancient tiles rare as some faded Spanish brocade in a cathedral, and along their length ran low seats where in old days sat slaves awaiting orders from their master. Out from this court they walked through a kind of pillared cloister, and the façades of the house as they passed on, were beautiful in pure simplicity of line; so white, they seemed to turn the sun on them to moonlight; so jewelled with bands and plaques of lovely tiles, that they were like snowy shoulders of a woman hung with necklaces of precious stones. By the time they had left this cloistered garden and threaded their way indoors, Stephen had lost his bearings completely. He was convinced that, once in, he should never find the clue which would guide him out again as he had come. There was another garden court, much larger than the first, and this, Nevill said, had been the garden of the palace-women in days of old. It had a fountain whose black marble basin was fringed with papyrus, and filled with pink, blue, and white water lilies, from under whose flat dark pads glimmered the backs of darting goldfish. Three walls of this garden had low doorways with cunningly carved doors of cedar-wood, and small, iron-barred windows festooned with the biggest roses Stephen had ever seen; but the fourth side was formed by an immense loggia with a dais at the back, and an open-fronted room at either end. Walls and floor of this loggia were tiled, and barred windows on either side the dais looked far down over a world which seemed all sky, sea, and garden. One of the little open rooms was hung with Persian prayer-rugs which Stephen thought were like fading rainbows seen through a mist; and there were queer old tinselled pictures such as good Moslems love: Borak, the steed of the prophet, half winged woman, half horse; the Prophet's uncle engaged in mighty battle; the Prophet's favourite daughter, Fatma-Zora, daintily eating her sacred breakfast. The other room at the opposite end of the tiled loggia was fitted up, Moorish fashion, for the making of coffee; walls and ceiling carved, gilded, and painted in brilliant colours; the floor tiled with the charming "windmill" pattern; many shelves adorned with countless little coffee cups in silver standards; with copper and brass utensils of all imaginable kinds; and in a gilded recess was a curious apparatus for boiling water. Nevill Caird displayed his treasures and the beauties of his domain with an ingenuous pride, delighted at every word of appreciation, stopping Stephen here and there to point out something of which he was fond, explaining the value of certain old tiles from the point of view of an expert, and gladly lingering to answer every question. Some day, he said, he was going to write a book about tiles, a book which should have wonderful illustrations. "Do you really like it all?" he asked, as Stephen looked out from a barred window of the loggia, over the wide view. "I never even imagined anything so fantastically beautiful," Stephen returned warmly. "You ought to be happy, even if you could never go outside your own house and gardens. There's nothing to touch this on the Riviera. It's a palace of the 'Arabian Nights.'" "There was a palace in the 'Arabian Nights,' if you remember," said Nevill, "where everything was perfect except one thing. Its master was miserable because he couldn't get that thing." "The Roc's egg, of Aladdin's palace," Stephen recalled. "Do you lack a Roc's egg for yours?" "The equivalent," said Nevill. "The one thing which I want, and don't seem likely to get, though I haven't quite given up hope. It's a woman. And she doesn't want me--or my palace. I'll tell you about her some day--soon, perhaps. And maybe you'll see her. But never mind my troubles for the moment. I can put them out of my mind with comparative ease, in the pleasure of welcoming you. Now we'll go indoors. You haven't an idea what the house is like yet. By the way, I nearly forgot this chap." He put his hand into the pocket of his grey flannel coat, and pulled out a green frog, wrapped in a lettuce leaf which was inadequate as a garment, but a perfect match as to colour. "I bought him on the way down to meet you," Nevill explained. "Saw an Arab kid trying to sell him in the street, poor little beast. Thought it would be a friendly act to bring him here to join my happy family, which is large and varied. I don't remember anybody living in this fountain who's likely to eat him, or be eaten by him." Down went the frog on the wide rim of the marble fountain, and sat there, meditatively, with a dawning expression of contentment, so Stephen fancied, on his green face. He looked, Stephen thought, as if he were trying to forget a troubled past, and as if his new home with all its unexplored mysteries of reeds and lily pads were wondrously to his liking. "I wish you'd name that person after me," said Stephen. "You're being very good to both of us,--taking us out of Hades into Paradise." "Come along in," was Nevill Caird's only answer. But he walked into the house with his hand on Stephen's shoulder. IX Djenan El Djouad was a labyrinth. Stephen Knight abandoned all attempt at keeping a mental clue before he had reached the drawing-room. Nevill led him there by way of many tile-paved corridors, lit by hanging Arab lamps suspended from roofs of arabesqued cedar-wood. They went up or down marble steps, into quaint little alcoved rooms furnished with nothing but divans and low tables or dower chests crusted with Syrian mother-o'-pearl, on into rooms where brocade-hung walls were covered with Arab musical instruments of all kinds, or long-necked Moorish guns patterned with silver, ivory and coral. Here and there as they passed, were garden glimpses, between embroidered curtains, looking through windows always barred with greenish wrought iron, so old as to be rarely beautiful; and some small windows had no curtains, but were thickly frilled outside with the violent crimson of bougainvillæa, or fringed with tassels of wistaria, loop on loop of amethysts. High above these windows, which framed flowery pictures, were other windows, little and jewelled, mere plaques of filigree workmanship, fine as carved ivory or silver lace, and lined with coloured glass of delicate tints--gold, lilac, and pale rose. "Here's the drawing-room at last," said Nevill, "and here's my aunt." "If you can call it a drawing-room," objected a gently complaining voice. "A filled-in court, where ghosts of murdered slaves come and moan, while you have your tea. How do you do, Mr. Knight? I'm delighted you've taken pity on Nevill. He's never so happy as when he's showing a new friend the house--except when he's obtained an old tile, or a new monster of some sort, for his collection." "In me, he kills two birds with one stone," said Stephen, smiling, as he shook the hand of a tiny lady who looked rather like an elderly fairy disguised in a cap, that could have been born nowhere except north of the Tweed. She had delicate little features which had been made to fit a pretty child, and had never grown up. Her hair, of a reddish yellow, had faded to a yellowish white, which by a faint fillip of the imagination could be made to seem golden in some lights. Her eyes were large and round, and of a china-blue colour; her eyebrows so arched as to give her an expression of perpetual surprise, her forehead full, her cheekbones high and pink, her small, pursed mouth of the kind which prefers to hide a sense of humour, and then astonish people with it when they have ceased to believe in its existence. If her complexion had not been netted all over with a lacework of infinitesimal wrinkles, she would have looked like a little girl dressed up for an old lady. She had a ribbon of the MacGregor tartan on her cap, and an uncompromising cairngorm fastened her fichu of valuable point lace. A figure more out of place than hers in an ancient Arab palace of Algiers it would be impossible to conceive; yet it was a pleasant figure to see there, and Stephen knew that he was going to like Nevill's Aunt Caroline, Lady MacGregor. "I wish you looked more of a monster than you do," said she, "because you might frighten the ghosts. We're eaten up with them, the way some folk in old houses are with rats. Nearly all of them slaves, too, so there's no variety, except that some are female. I've given you the room with the prettiest ghosts, but if you're not the seventh son of a seventh son, you may not see or even hear them." "Does Nevill see or hear?" asked Stephen. "As much as Aunt Caroline does, if the truth were known," answered her nephew. "Only she couldn't be happy unless she had a grievance. Here she wanted to choose an original and suitable one, so she hit upon ghosts--the ghosts of slaves murdered by a cruel master." "Hit upon them, indeed!" she echoed indignantly, making her knitting needles click, a movement which displayed her pretty, miniature hands, half hidden in lace ruffles. "As if they hadn't gone through enough, in flesh and blood, poor creatures! Some of them may have been my countrymen, captured on the seas by those horrid pirates." "Who was the cruel master?" Stephen wanted to know, still smiling, because it was almost impossible not to smile at Lady MacGregor. "Not my brother James, I'm glad to say," she quickly replied. "It was about three hundred years before his time. And though he had some quite irritating tricks as a young man, murdering slaves wasn't one of them. To be sure, they tell strange tales of him here, as I make no doubt Nevill has already mentioned, because he's immoral enough to be proud of what he calls the romance. I mean the story of the beautiful Arab lady, whom James is supposed to have stolen from her rightful husband--that is, if an Arab can be rightful--and hidden in this house far many a year, till at last she died, after the search for her had long, long gone by." "You're as proud of the romance as I am, or you wouldn't be at such pains to repeat it to everybody, pretending to think I've already told it," said Nevill. "But I'm going to show Knight his quarters. Pretty or plain, there are no ghosts here that will hurt him. And then we'll have lunch, for which he's starving." Stephen's quarters consisted of a bedroom (furnished in Tunisian style, with an imposing four-poster of green and gold ornamented with a gilded, sacred cow under a crown) and a sitting room gay with colourful decorations imported from Morocco. These rooms opened upon a wide covered balcony screened by a carved wooden lattice and from the balcony Stephen could look over hills, near and far, dotted with white villas that lay like resting gulls on the green wave of verdure which cascaded down to join the blue waves of the sea. Up from that far blueness drifted on the wind a murmurous sound like Æolian harps, mingled with the tinkle of fairy mandolins in the fountain of the court below. At luncheon, in a dining-room that opened on to a white-walled garden where only lilies of all kinds grew, to Stephen's amazement two Highlanders in kilts stood behind his hostess's chair. They were young, exactly alike, and of precisely the same height, six foot two at least. "No, you are not dreaming them, Mr. Knight," announced Lady MacGregor, evidently delighted with the admiring surprise in the look he bestowed upon these images. "And you're quite right. They _are_ twins. I may as well break it to you now, as I had to do to Nevill when he invited me to come to Algiers and straighten out his housekeeping accounts: they play Ruth to my Naomi. Whither I go, they go also, even to the door of the bathroom, where they carry my towels, for I have no other maid than they." Stephen could not help glancing at the two giants, expecting to see some involuntary quiver of eye or nostril answer electrically to this frank revelation of their office; but their countenances (impossible to think of as mere faces) remained expressionless as if carved in stone. Lady MacGregor took nothing from Mohammed and the other Kabyle servant who waited on Nevill and Stephen. Everything for her was handed to one of the Highlanders, who gravely passed on the dish to their mistress. If she refused a _plat_ favoured by them, instead of carrying it away, the giants in kilts silently but firmly pressed it upon her acceptance, until in self-defence she seized some of the undesired food, and ate it under their watchful eyes. During the meal a sudden thunderstorm boiled up out of the sea: the sky became a vast brazen bowl, and a strange, coppery twilight bleached the lilies in the white garden to a supernatural pallor. The room, with its embroidered Moorish hangings, darkened to a rich gloom; but Mohammed touched a button on the wall, and all the quaint old Arab lamps that stood in corners, or hung suspended from the cedar roof, flashed out cunningly concealed electric lights. At the same moment, there began a great howling outside the door. Mohammed sprang to open it, and in poured a wave of animals. Stephen hastily counted five dogs; a collie, a white deerhound, a Dandy Dinmont, and a mother and child of unknown race, which he afterwards learned was Kabyle, a breed beloved of mountain men and desert tent-dwellers. In front of the dogs bounded a small African monkey, who leaped to the back of Nevill's chair, and behind them toddled with awkward grace a baby panther, a mere ball of yellow silk. "They don't like the thunder, poor dears," Nevill apologised. "That's why they howled, for they're wonderfully polite people really. They always come at the end of lunch. Aunt Caroline won't invite them to dinner, because then she sometimes wears fluffy things about which she has a foolish vanity. The collie is Angus's. The deerhound is Hamish's. The dandy is hers. The two Kabyles are Mohammed's, and the flotsam and jetsam is mine. There's a great deal more of it out of doors, but this is all that gets into the dining-room except by accident. And I expect you think we are a very queer family." Stephen did think so, for never till now had he been a member of a household where each of the servants was allowed to possess any animals he chose, and flood the house with them. But the queerer he thought the family, the better he found himself liking it. He felt a boy let out of school after weeks of disgrace and punishment, and, strangely enough, this old Arab palace, in a city of North Africa seemed more like home to him than his London flat had seemed of late. When Lady MacGregor rose and said she must write the note she had promised Nevill to send Miss Ray, Stephen longed to kiss her. This form of worship not being permitted, he tried to open the dining-room door for her to go out, but Angus and Hamish glared upon him so superciliously that he retired in their favour. The luncheon hour, even when cloaked in the mysterious gloom of a thunderstorm, is no time for confidences; besides, it is not conducive to sustained conversation to find a cold nose in your palm, a baby claw up your sleeve, or a monkey hand, like a bit of leather, thrust down your collar or into your ear. But after dinner that night, when Lady MacGregor had trailed her maligned "fluffiness" away to the drawing-room, and Nevill and Stephen had strolled with their cigarettes out into the unearthly whiteness of the lily garden, Stephen felt that something was coming. He had known that Nevill had a story to tell, by and by, and though he knew also that he would be asked no questions in return, now or ever, it occurred to him that Nevill's offer of confidences was perhaps meant to open a door, if he chose to enter by it. He was not sure whether he would so choose or not, but the fact that he was not sure meant a change in him. A few days ago, even this morning, before meeting Nevill, he would have been certain that he had nothing intimate to tell Caird or any one else. They strolled along the paths among the lilies. Moon and sky and flowers and white-gravelled paths were all silver. Stephen thought of Victoria Ray, and wished she could see this garden. He thought, too, that if she would only dance here among the lilies in the moonlight, it would be a vision of exquisite loveliness. "For a moment white, then gone forever," he caught himself repeating again. It was odd how, whenever he saw anything very white and of dazzling purity, he thought of this dancing girl. He wondered what sort of woman it was whose image came to Nevill's mind, in the garden of lilies that smelt so heavenly sweet under the moon. He supposed there must always be some woman whose image was suggested to every man by all that was fairest in nature. Margot Lorenzi was the woman whose image he must keep in his mind, if he wanted to know any faint imitation of happiness in future. She would like this moonlit garden, and in one way it would suit her as a background. Yet she did not seem quite in the picture, despite her beauty. The perfume she loved would not blend with the perfume of the lilies. "Aunt Caroline's rather a dear, isn't she?" remarked Nevill, apropos of nothing. "She's a jewel," said Stephen. "Yet she isn't the immediate jewel of my soul. I'm hard hit, Stephen, and the girl won't have me. She's poorer than any church or other mouse I ever met, yet she turns up her little French nose at me and my palace, and all the cheese I should like to see her nibble--my cheese." "Her French nose?" echoed Stephen. "Yes. Her nose and the rest of her's French, especially her dimples. You never saw such dimples. Miss Ray's prettier than my girl, I suppose. But I think mine's beyond anything. Only she isn't and won't be mine that's the worst of it." "Where is she?" Stephen asked. "In Algiers?" "No such luck. But her sister is. I'll take you to see the sister to-morrow morning. She may be able to tell us something to help Miss Ray. She keeps a curiosity-shop, and is a connoisseur of Eastern antiquities, as well as a great character in Algiers, quite a sort of queen in her way--a quaint way. All the visiting Royalties of every nation drop in and spend hours in her place. She has a good many Arab acquaintances, too. Even rich chiefs come to sell, or buy things from her, and respect her immensely. But my girl--I like to call her that--is away off in the west, close to the border of Morocco, at Tlemcen. I wish you were interested in mosques, and I'd take you there. People who care for such things sometimes travel from London or Paris just to see the mosque of Sidi Bou-Medine and a certain Mirab. But I suppose you haven't any fad of that kind, eh?" "I feel it coming on," said Stephen. "Good chap! Do encourage the feeling. I'll lend you books, lots of books, on the subject. She's 'malema,' or mistress of an _école indigène_ for embroideries and carpets, at Tlemcen. Heaven knows how few francs a month she earns by the job which takes all her time and life, yet she thinks herself lucky to get it. And she won't marry me." "Surely she must love you, at least a little, if you care so much for her," Stephen tried to console his friend. "Oh, she does, a lot," replied Nevill with infinite satisfaction. "But, you see--well, you see, her family wasn't up to much from a social point of view--such rot! The mother came out from Paris to be a nursery governess, when she was quite young, but she was too pretty for that position. She had various but virtuous adventures, and married a non-com. in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, who chucked the army for her. The two kept a little hotel. Then the husband died, while the girls were children. The mother gave up the hotel and took in sewing. Everybody was interested in the family, they were so clever and exceptional, and people helped in the girls' education. When their mother became an invalid, the two contrived to keep her and themselves, though Jeanne was only eighteen then, and Josette, my girl, fifteen. She's been dead now for some years--the mother. Josette is nearly twenty-four. Do you see why she won't marry me? I'm hanged if I do." "I can see what her feeling is," Stephen said. "She must be a ripping girl." "I should say she is!--though as obstinate as the devil. Sometimes I could shake her and box her ears. I haven't seen her for months now. She wouldn't like me to go to Tlemcen--unless I had a friend with me, and a good excuse. I didn't know it could hurt so much to be in love, though I was in once before, and it hurt too, rather. But that was nothing. For the woman had no soul or mind, only her beauty, and an unscrupulous sort of ambition which made her want to marry me when my uncle left me his money. She'd refused to do anything more serious than flirt and reduce me to misery, until she thought I could give her what she wanted. I'd imagined myself horribly in love, until her sudden willingness to take me showed me once for all what she was. Even so, I couldn't cure the habit of love at first; but I had just sense enough to keep out of England, where she was, for fear I should lose my head and marry her. My cure was rather slow, but it was sure; and now I know that what I thought was love then wasn't love at all. The real thing's as different as--as--a modern Algerian tile is from an old Moorish one. I can't say anything stronger! That's why I cut England, to begin with, and after a while my interests were more identified with France. Sometimes I go to Paris in the summer--or to a little place in Dauphiny. But I haven't been back to England for eight years. Algeria holds all my heart. In Tlemcen is my girl. Here are my garden and my beasts. Now you have my history since Oxford days." "You know something of _my_ history through the papers," Stephen blurted out with a desperate defiance of his own reserve. "Not much of your real history, I think. Papers lie, and people misunderstand. Don't talk of yourself unless you really want to. But I say, look here, Stephen. That woman I thought I cared for--may I tell you what she was like? Somehow I want you to know. Don't think me a cad. I don't mean to be. But--may I tell?" "Of course. Why not?" "She was dark and awfully handsome, and though she wasn't an actress, she would have made a splendid one. She thought only of herself. I--there was a picture in a London paper lately which reminded me of her--the picture of a young lady you know--or think you know. They--those two--are of the same type. I don't believe either could make a man happy." Stephen laughed--a short, embarrassed laugh. "Oh, happy!" he echoed. "After twenty-five we learn not to expect happiness. But--thank you for--everything, and especially for inviting me here." He knew now why it had occurred to Nevill to ask him to Algiers. Nevill had seen Margot's picture. In silence they walked towards the open door of the dining-room. Somewhere not far away the Kabyle dogs were barking shrilly. In the distance rose and fell muffled notes of strange passion and fierceness, an Arab tom-tom beating like the heart of the conquered East, away in the old town. Stephen's short-lived gaiety was struck out of his soul. "For a moment white, then gone forever." He pushed the haunting words out of his mind. He did not want them to have any meaning. They had no meaning. It seemed to him that the perfume of the lilies was too heavy on the air. X A white peacock, screaming in the garden under Stephen's balcony, waked him early, and dreamily his thoughts strayed towards the events planned for the day. They were to make a morning call on Mademoiselle Soubise in her curiosity-shop, and ask about Ben Halim, the husband of Saidee Ray. Victoria was coming to luncheon, for she had accepted Lady MacGregor's invitation. Her note had been brought in last night, while he and Nevill walked in the garden. Afterwards Lady MacGregor had shown it to them both. The girl wrote an interesting hand, full of individuality, and expressive of decision. Perhaps on her arrival they might have something to tell her. This hope shot Stephen out of bed, though it was only seven, and breakfast was not until nine. He had a cold bath in the private bathroom, which was one of Nevill's modern improvements in the old house, and by and by went for a walk, thinking to have the gardens to himself. But Nevill was there, cutting flowers and whistling tunefully. It was to him that the jewelled white peacock had screamed a greeting. "I like cutting the flowers myself," said he. "I don't think they care to have others touch them, any more than a cow likes to be milked by a stranger. Of course they feel the difference! Why, they know when I praise them, and preen themselves. They curl up when they're scolded, or not noticed, just as I do when people aren't nice to me. Every day I send off a box of my best roses to Tlemcen. _She_ allows me to do that." Lady MacGregor did not appear at breakfast, which was served on a marble loggia; and by half-past nine Stephen and Nevill were out in the wide, tree-shaded streets, where masses of bougainvillæa and clematis boiled over high garden-walls of old plaster, once white, now streaked with gold and rose, and green moss and lichen. After the thunderstorm of the day before, the white dust was laid, and the air was pure with a curious sparkling quality. They passed the museum in its garden, and turned a corner. "There's Mademoiselle Soubise's shop," said Nevill. It was a low white building, and had evidently been a private house at one time. The only change made had been in the shape and size of the windows on the ground-floor; and these were protected by green _persiennes_, fanned out like awnings, although the house was shaded by magnolia trees. There was no name over the open door, but the word "_Antiquités_" was painted in large black letters on the house-wall. Under the green blinds was a glitter of jewels displayed among brocades and a tangle of old lace, or on embossed silver trays; and walking in at the door, out of the shadowy dusk, a blaze of colour leaped to the eyes. Not a soul was there, unless some one hid and spied behind a carved and gilded Tunisian bed or a marqueterie screen from Bagdad. Yet there was a collection to tempt a thief, and apparently no precaution taken against invaders. Delicate rugs, soft as clouds and tinted like opals, were heaped in piles on the tiled floor; rugs from Ispahan, rugs from Mecca; old rugs from the sacred city of Kairouan, such as are made no more there or anywhere. The walls were hung with Tunisian silks and embroidered stuffs from the homes of Jewish families, where they had served as screens for talismanic words too sacred to be seen by common eyes; and there was drapery of ancient banners, Tyrian-dyed, whose gold or silver fringes had been stained with blood, in battle. From the ceiling were suspended antique lamps, and chandeliers of rare rock crystal, whose prisms gave out rose and violet sparks as they caught the light. On shelves and inlaid tables were beggars' bowls of strange dark woods, carried across deserts by wandering mendicants of centuries ago, the chains, which had hung from throats long since crumbled into dust, adorned with lucky rings and fetishes to preserve the wearer from evil spirits. There were other bowls, of crystal pure as full-blown bubbles, bowls which would ring at a tap like clear bells of silver. Some of these were guiltless of ornament, some were graven with gold flowers, but all seemed full of lights reflected from tilted, pearl-framed mirrors, and from the swinging prisms of chandeliers. Chafing-dishes of bronze at which vanished hands had been warmed, stood beside chased brazen ewers made to pour rose-water over henna-stained fingers, after Arab dinners, eaten without knives or forks. In the depths of half-open drawers glimmered precious stones, strangely cut pink diamonds, big square turquoises and emeralds, strings of creamy pearls, and hands of Fatma, a different jewel dangling from each finger-tip. The floor was encumbered, not only with rugs, but with heaps of priceless tiles, Persian and Moorish, of the best periods and patterns, taken from the walls of Arab palaces now destroyed; huge brass salvers; silver anklets, and chain armour, sabres captured from Crusaders, and old illuminated Korans. It was difficult to move without knocking something down, and one stepped delicately in narrow aisles, to avoid islands of piled, precious objects. Everywhere the eye was drawn to glittering points, or patches of splendid colour; so that at a glance the large, dusky room was like a temple decorated with mosaics. There was nothing that did not suggest the East, city or desert, or mountain village of the Kabyles; and the air was loaded with Eastern perfumes, ambergris and musk that blended with each other, and the scent of the black incense sticks brought by caravan from Tombouctou. "Why doesn't some one come in and steal?" asked Stephen, in surprise at seeing the place deserted. "Because there's hardly a thief in Algiers mean enough to steal from Jeanne Soubise, who gives half she has to the poor. And because, if there were one so mean, Haroun el Raschid would soon let her know what was going on," said Nevill. "His latest disguise is that of a parrot, but he may change it for something else at any moment." Then Stephen saw, suspended among the crystal chandeliers and antique lamps, a brass cage, shaped like a domed palace. In this cage, in a coral ring, sat a grey parrot who regarded the two young men with jewel-eyes that seemed to know all good and evil. "He yells if any stranger comes into the shop when his mistress is out," Nevill explained. "I am an humble friend of His Majesty's, so he says nothing. I gave him to Mademoiselle Jeanne." Perhaps their voices had been heard. At all events, there was a light tapping of heels on unseen stairs, and from behind a red-curtained doorway appeared a tall young woman, dressed in black. She was robust as well as tall, and Stephen thought she looked rather like a handsome Spanish boy; yet she was feminine enough in her outlines. It was the frank and daring expression of her face and great black eyes which gave the look of boyishness. She had thick, straight eyebrows, a large mouth that was beautiful when she smiled, to show perfect teeth between the red lips that had a faint, shadowy line of down above them. "Ah, Monsieur Nevill Caird!" she exclaimed, in English, with a full voice, and a French accent that was pretty, though not Parisian. She smiled at Stephen, too, without waiting to be introduced. "Monsieur Caird is always kind in bringing his friends to me, and I am always glad to see them." "I've brought Mr. Knight, not to buy, but to ask a favour," said Nevill. "To buy, too," Stephen hastened to cut in. "I see things I can't live without. I must own them." "Well, don't set your heart on anything Mademoiselle Soubise won't sell. She bought everything with the idea of selling it, she admits, but now she's got them here, there are some things she can't make up her mind to part with at any price." "Oh, only a few tiles--and some Jewish embroideries--and bits of jewellery--and a rug or two or a piece of pottery--and maybe _one_ copy of the Koran, and a beggar's bowl," Jeanne Soubise excused herself, hastily adding more and more to her list of exceptions, as her eyes roved wistfully among her treasures. "Oh, and an amphora just dug up near Timgad, with Roman oil still inside. It's a beauty. Will you come down to the cellar to look at it?" Nevill thanked her, and reserved the pleasure for another time. Then he inquired what was the latest news from Mademoiselle Josette at Tlemcen; and when he heard that there was nothing new, he told the lady of the curiosity-shop what was the object of the early visit. "But of course I have heard of Ben Halim, and I have seen him, too," she said; "only it was long ago--maybe ten years. Yes, I could not have been seventeen. It is already long that he went away from Algiers, no one knows where. Now he is said to be dead. Have you not heard of him, Monsieur Nevill? You must have. He lived at Djenan el Hadj; close to the Jardin d'Essai. You know the place well. The new rich Americans, Madame Jewett and her daughter, have it now. There was a scandal about Ben Halim, and then he went away--a scandal that was mysterious, because every one talked about it, yet no one knew what had happened--never surely at least." "I told you Mademoiselle would be able to give you information!" exclaimed Nevill. "I felt sure the name was familiar, somehow, though I couldn't think how. One hears so many Arab names, and generally there's a 'Ben' or a 'Bou' something or other, if from the South." "Flan-ben-Flan," laughed Jeanne Soubise. "That means," she explained, turning to Stephen, "So and So, son of So and So. It is strange, a young lady came inquiring about Ben Halim only yesterday afternoon; such a pretty young lady. I was surprised, but she said they had told her in her hotel I knew everything that had ever happened in Algiers. A nice compliment to my age. I am not so old as that! But," she added, with a frank smile, "all the hotels and guides expect commissions when they send people to me. I suppose they thought this pretty girl fair game, and that once in my place she would buy. So she did. She bought a string of amber beads. She liked the gold light in them, and said it seemed as if she might see a vision of something or some one she wanted to find, if she gazed through the beads. Many a good Mussulman has said his prayers with them, if that could bring her luck." The two young men looked at one another. "Did she tell you her name?" Stephen asked. "But yes; she was Mees Ray, and named for the dead Queen Victoria of England, I suppose, though American. And she told me other things. Her sister, she said, married a Captain Ben Halim of the Spahis, and came with him to Algiers, nearly ten years ago. Now she is looking for the sister." "We've met Miss Ray," said Nevill. "It's on her business we've come. We didn't know she'd already been to you, but we might have guessed some one would send her. She didn't lose much time." "She wouldn't," said Stephen. "She isn't that kind." "I knew nothing of the sister," went on Mademoiselle Soubise. "I could hardly believe at first that Ben Halim had an American wife. Then I remembered how these Mohammedan men can hide their women, so no one ever knows. Probably no one ever did know, otherwise gossip would have leaked out. The man may have been jealous of her. You see, I have Arab acquaintances. I go to visit ladies in the harems sometimes, and I hear stories when anything exciting is talked of. You can't think how word flies from one harem to another--like a carrier-pigeon! This could never have been a matter of gossip--though it is true I was young at the time." "You think, then, he would have shut her up?" asked Nevill. "That's what I feared." "But of course he would have shut her up--with another wife, perhaps." "Good Heavens!" exclaimed Stephen. "The poor child has never thought of that possibility. She says he promised her sister he would never look at any other woman." "Ah, the promise of an Arab in love! Perhaps she did not know the Arabs--that sister. It is only the men of princely families who take but one wife. And he would not tell her if he had already looked at another woman. He would be sure, no matter how much in love a Christian girl might be, she would not marry a man who already had a wife." "We might find out that," suggested Stephen. "It would be difficult," said the Frenchwoman. "I can try, among Arabs I know, but though they like to chat with Europeans, they will not answer questions. They resent that we should ask them, though they are polite. As for you, if you ask men, French or Arab, you will learn nothing. The French would not know. The Arabs, if they did, would not tell. They must not talk of each other's wives, even among themselves, much less to outsiders. You can ask an Arab about anything else in the world, but not his wife. That is the last insult." "What a country!" Stephen ejaculated. "I don't know that it has many more faults than others," said Nevill, defending it, "only they're different." "But about the scandal that drove Ben Halim away?" Stephen ventured on. "Strange things were whispered at the time, I remember, because Ben Halim was a handsome man and well known. One looked twice at him in his uniform when he went by on a splendid horse. I believe he had been to Paris before the scandal. What he did afterwards no one can say. But I could not tell Mees Ray what I had heard of that scandal any more than I would tell a young girl that almost all Europeans who become harem women are converted to the religion of Islam, and that very likely the sister wasn't Ben Halim's first wife." "Can you tell us of the scandal, or--would you rather not talk of the subject?" Stephen hesitated. "Oh, I can tell you, for it would not hurt your feelings. People said Ben Halim flirted too much with his Colonel's beautiful French wife, who died soon afterwards, and her husband killed himself. Ben Halim had not been considered a good officer before. He was too fond of pleasure, and a mad gambler; so at last it was made known to him he had better leave the army of his own accord if he did not wish to go against his will; at least, that was the story." "Of course!" exclaimed Nevill. "It comes back to me now, though it all happened before I lived in Algiers. Ben Halim sold his house and everything in it to a Frenchman who went bankrupt soon after. It's passed through several hands since. I go occasionally to call on Mrs. Jewett and her daughter." "It is said they wish you would call oftener, Monsieur Caird." Nevill turned red. Stephen thought he could understand, and hid a smile. No doubt Nevill was a great "catch" in Algerian society. And he was in love with a teacher of Arab children far away in Tlemcen, a girl "poor as a church mouse," who wouldn't listen to him! It was a quaint world; as quaint in Africa as elsewhere. "What did you tell Miss Ray?" Nevill hurried to ask. "That Ben Halim had left Algiers nine years ago, and had never been heard of since. When I saw she did not love his memory, I told her people believed him to be dead; and this rumour might be true, as no news of him has ever come back. But she turned pale, and I was sorry I had been so frank. Yet what would you? Oh, and I thought of one more thing, when she had gone, which I might have mentioned. But perhaps there is nothing in it. All the rest of the day I was busy with many customers, so I was tired at night, otherwise I would have sent a note to her hotel. And this morning since six I have been hurrying to get off boxes and things ordered by some Americans for a ship which sails at noon. But you will tell the young lady when you see her, and that will be better than my writing, because sending a note would make it seem too important. She might build hopes, and it would be a pity if they did explode." Both men laughed a little at this ending of the Frenchwoman's sentence, but Stephen was more impatient than Nevill to know what was to come next. He grudged the pause, and made her go on. "It is only that I remember my sister telling me, when she was at home last year for a holiday, about a Kabyle servant girl who waits on her in Tlemcen. The girl is of a great intelligence, and my sister takes an interest in her. Josette teaches her many things, and they talk. Mouni--that is the Kabyle's name--tells of her home life to my sister. One thing she did was to serve a beautiful foreign lady in the house of a rich Arab. She was only a child then, not more than thirteen, for such girls grow up early; but she has always thought about that lady, who was good to her, and very sad. Mouni told Josette she had never seen any one so beautiful, and that her mistress had hair of a natural colour, redder than hair dyed with henna and powdered with gold dust. It was this describing of the hair which brought the story back to my head when Miss Ray had gone, because she has hair like that, and perhaps her sister had it too." "By Jove, we'll run over to Tlemcen in the car, and see that Kabyle girl," Nevill eagerly proposed, carefully looking at his friend, and not at Jeanne Soubise. But she raised her eyebrows, then drew them together, and her frank manner changed. With that shadow of a frown, and smileless eyes and lips, there was something rather formidable about the handsome young woman. "Mees Ray may like to manage all her own beesiness," she remarked. And it occurred to Stephen that it would be a propitious moment to choose such curios as he wished to buy. In a few moments Mademoiselle Soubise was her pleasant self again, indicating the best points of the things he admired, and giving him their history. "There's apparently a conspiracy of silence to keep us from finding out anything about Miss Ray's sister as Ben Halim's wife," he said to Nevill when they had left the curiosity-shop. "Also, what has become of Ben Halim." "You'll learn that there's always a conspiracy of silence in Africa, where Arabs are concerned," Nevill answered. There was a far-off, fatal look in his eyes as he spoke, those blue eyes which seemed at all times to see something that others could not see. And again the sense of an intangible, illusive, yet very real mystery of the East, which he had felt for a moment before landing, oppressed Stephen, as if he had inhaled too much smoke from the black incense of Tombouctou. XI Stephen and Nevill Caird were in the cypress avenue when Victoria Ray drove up in a ramshackle cab, guided by an Arab driver who squinted hideously. She wore a white frock which might have cost a sovereign, and had probably been made at home. Her wide brimmed hat was of cheap straw, wound with a scarf of thin white muslin; but her eyes looked out like blue stars from under its dove-coloured shadow, and a lily was tucked into her belt. To both young men she seemed very beautiful, and radiant as the spring morning. "You aren't superstitious, engaging a man with a squint," said Nevill. "Of course not," she laughed. "As if harm could come to me because the poor man's so homely! I engaged him because he was the worst looking, and nobody else seemed to want him." They escorted her indoors to Lady MacGregor, and Stephen wondered if she would be afraid of the elderly fairy with the face of a child and the manner of an autocrat. But she was not in the least shy; and indeed Stephen could hardly picture the girl as being self-conscious in any circumstances. Lady MacGregor took her in with one look; white hat, red hair, blue eyes, lily at belt, simple frock and all, and--somewhat to Stephen's surprise, because she was to him a new type of old lady--decided to be charmed with Miss Ray. Victoria's naïve admiration of the house and gardens delighted her host and hostess. She could not be too much astonished at its wonders to please them, and, both being thoroughbred, they liked her the better for saying frankly that she was unused to beautiful houses. "You can't think what this is like after school in Potterston and cheap boarding-houses in New York and London," she said, laughing when the others laughed. Stephen was longing to see her in the lily-garden, which, to his mind, might have been made for her; and after luncheon he asked Lady MacGregor if he and Nevill might show it to Miss Ray. The garden lay to the east, and as it was shadowed by the house in the afternoon, it would not be too hot. "Perhaps you won't mind taking her yourself," said the elderly fairy. "Just for a few wee minutes I want Nevill. He is to tell me about accepting or refusing some invitations. I'll send him to you soon." Stephen was ashamed of the gladness with which he could not help hearing this proposal. He had nothing to say to the girl which he might not say before Nevill, or even before Lady MacGregor, yet he had been feeling cheated because he could not be alone with Victoria, as on the boat. "Gather Miss Ray as many lilies as she can carry away," were Nevill's parting instructions. And it was exactly what Stephen had wished for. He wanted to give her something beautiful and appropriate, something he could give with his own hands. And he longed to see her holding masses of white lilies to her breast, as she walked all white in the white lily-garden. Now, too, he could tell her what Mademoiselle Soubise had said about the Kabyle girl, Mouni. He was sure Nevill wouldn't grudge his having that pleasure all to himself. Anyway he could not resist the temptation to snatch it. He began, as soon as they were alone together in the garden, by asking her what she had done, whether she had made progress; and it seemed that she retired from his questions with a vague suggestion of reserve she had not shown on the ship. It was not that she answered unwillingly, but he could not define the difference in her manner, although he felt that a difference existed. It was as if somebody might have been scolding her for a lack of reserve; yet when he inquired if she had met any one she knew, or made acquaintances, she said no to the first question, and named only Mademoiselle Soubise in reply to the second. That was Stephen's opportunity, and he began to tell of his call at the curiosity-shop. He expected Victoria to cry out with excitement when he came to Mouni's description of the beautiful lady with "henna-coloured, gold-powdered hair"; but though she flushed and her breath came and went quickly as he talked, somehow the girl did not appear to be enraptured with a new hope, as he had expected. "My friend Caird proposes that he and I should motor to Tlemcen, which it seems is near the Moroccan border, and interview Mouni," he said. "We may be able to make sure, when we question her, that it was your sister she served; and perhaps we can pick up some clue through what she lets drop, as to where Ben Halim took his wife when he left Algiers--though, of course, there are lots of other ways to find out, if this should prove a false clue." "You are both more than good," Victoria answered, "but I mustn't let you go so far for me. Perhaps, as you say, I shall be able to find out in other ways, from some one here in Algiers. It does sound as if it might be my sister the maid spoke of to Mademoiselle Soubise. How I should love to hear Mouni talk!--but you must wait, and see what happens, before you think of going on a journey for my sake." "If only there were some woman to take you, you might go with us," said Stephen, more eagerly than he was aware, and thinking wild thoughts about Lady MacGregor as a chaperon, or perhaps Mademoiselle Soubise--if only she could be persuaded to leave her beloved shop, and wouldn't draw those black brows of hers together as though tabooing a forbidden idea. "Let's wait--and see," Victoria repeated. And this patience, in the face of such hope, struck Stephen as being strange in her, unlike his conception of the brave, impulsive nature, ready for any adventure if only there were a faint flicker of light at the end. Then, as if she did not wish to talk longer of a possible visit to Tlemcen, Victoria said: "I've something to show you: a picture of my sister." The white dress was made without a collar, and was wrapped across her breast like a fichu which left the slender white stem of her throat uncovered. Now she drew out from under the muslin folds a thin gold chain, from which dangled a flat, open-faced locket. When she had unfastened a clasp, she handed the trinket to Stephen. "Saidee had the photograph made specially for me, just before she was married," the girl explained, "and I painted it myself. I couldn't trust any one else, because no one knew her colouring. Of course, she was a hundred times more beautiful than this, but it gives you some idea of her, as she looked when I saw her last." The face in the photograph was small, not much larger than Stephen's thumb-nail, but every feature was distinct, not unlike Victoria's, though more pronounced; and the nose, seen almost in profile, was perfect in its delicate straightness. The lips were fuller than Victoria's, and red as coral. The eyes were brown, with a suggestion of coquetry absent in the younger girl's, and the hair, parted in the middle and worn in a loose, wavy coil, appeared to be of a darker red, less golden, more auburn. "That's exactly Saidee's colouring," repeated Victoria. "Her lips were the reddest I ever saw, and I used to say diamonds had got caught behind her eyes. Do you wonder I worshipped her--that I just _couldn't_ let her go out of my life forever?" "No, I don't wonder. She's very lovely," Stephen agreed. The coquetry in the eyes was pathetic to him, knowing the beautiful Saidee's history. "She was eighteen then. She's twenty-eight now. Saidee twenty-eight! I can hardly realize it. But I'm sure she hasn't changed, unless to grow prettier. I used always to think she would." Victoria took back the portrait, and gazed at it. Stephen was sorry for the child. He thought it more than likely that Saidee had changed for the worse, physically and spiritually, even mentally, if Mademoiselle Soubise were right in her surmises. He was glad she had not said to Victoria what she had said to him, about Saidee having to live the life of other harem women. "I bought a string of amber beads at that curiosity-shop yesterday," the girl went on, "because there's a light in them like what used to be in Saidee's eyes. Every night, when I've said my prayers and am ready to go to sleep, I see her in that golden silence I told you about, looking towards the west--that is, towards me, too, you know; with the sun setting and streaming right into her eyes, making that jewelled kind of light gleam in them, which comes and goes in those amber beads. When I find her, I shall hold up the beads to her eyes in the sunlight and compare them." "What is the golden silence like?" asked Stephen. "Do you see more clearly, now that at last you've come to Africa?" "I couldn't see more clearly than I did before," the girl answered slowly, looking away from him, through the green lace of the trees that veiled the distance. "Yet it's just as mysterious as ever. I can't guess yet what it can be, unless it's in the desert. I just see Saidee, standing on a large, flat expanse which looks white. And she's dressed in white. All round her is a quivering golden haze, wave after wave of it, endless as the sea when you're on a ship. And there's silence--not one sound, except the beating which must be my own heart, or the blood that sings in my ears when I listen for a long time--the kind of singing you hear in a shell. That's all. And the level sun shining in her eyes, and on her hair." "It is a picture," said Stephen. "Wherever Say was, there would always be a picture," Victoria said with the unselfish, unashamed pride she had in her sister. "How I hope Saidee knows I'm near her," she went on, half to herself. "She'd know that I'd come to her as soon as I could--and she may have heard things about me that would tell her I was trying to make money enough for the journey and everything. If I hadn't hoped she _might_ see the magazines and papers, I could never have let my photograph be published. I should have hated that, if it hadn't been for the thought of the portraits coming to her eyes, with my name under them; 'Victoria Ray, who is dancing in such and such a place.' _She_ would know why I was doing it; dancing nearer and nearer to her." "You darling!" Stephen would have liked to say. But only as he might have spoken caressingly to a lovely child whose sweet soul had won him. She seemed younger than ever to-day, in the big, drooping hat, with the light behind her weaving a gold halo round her hair and the slim white figure, as she talked of Saidee in the golden silence. When she looked up at him, he thought that she was like a girl-saint, painted on a background of gold. He felt very tender over her, very much older than she, and it did not occur to him that he might fall in love with this young creature who had no thought for anything in life except the finding of her sister. A tiny streak of lily-pollen had made a little yellow stain on the white satin of her cheek, and under her blue eyes were a few faint freckles, golden as the lily-pollen. He had seen them come yesterday, on the ship, in a bright glare of sunlight, and they were not quite gone yet. He had a foolish wish to touch them with his finger, to see if they would rub off, and to brush away the lily-pollen, though it made her skin look pure as pearl. "You are an inspiration!" was all he said. "I? But how do you mean?" she asked. He hardly knew that he had spoken aloud; yet challenged, he tried to explain. "Inspiration to new life and faith in things," he answered almost at random. But hearing the words pronounced by his own voice, made him realize that they were true. This child, of whose existence he had not known a week ago, could give him--perhaps was already giving him--new faith and new interests. He felt thankful for her, somehow, though she did not belong to him, and never would--unless a gleam of sunshine can belong to one on whom it shines. And he would always associate her with the golden sunshine and the magic charm of Algeria. "I told you I'd given you half my star," she said, laughing and blushing a little. "Which star is it?" he wanted to know. "When I don't see you any more, I can look up and hitch my thought-wagon to Mars or Venus." "Oh, it's even grander than any planet you can see, with your real eyes. But you can look at the evening star if you like. It's so thrilling in the sunset sky, I sometimes call it my star." "All right," said Stephen, with his elder-brother air. "And when I look I'll think of you." "You can think of me as being with Saidee at last." "You have the strongest presentiment that you'll find her without difficulty." "When _I_ say 'presentiment,' I mean creating a thing I want, making a picture of it happening, so it _has_ to happen by and by, as God made pictures of this world, and all the worlds, and they came true." "By Jove, I wish I could go to school to you!" Stephen said this laughing; but he meant every word. She had just given him two new ideas. He wondered if he could do anything with them. Yet no; his life was cut out on a certain plan. It must now follow that plan. "If you should have any trouble--not that you _will_--but just 'if,' you know," he went on, "and if I could help you, I want you to remember this, wherever you are and whatever the trouble may be; there's nothing I wouldn't do for you--nothing. There's no distance I wouldn't travel." "Why, you're the kindest man I ever met!" Victoria exclaimed, gratefully. "And I think you must be one of the best." "Good heavens, what a character to live up to!" laughed Stephen. Nevertheless he suddenly lost his sense of exaltation, and felt sad and tired, thinking of life with Margot, and how difficult it would be not to degenerate in her society. "Yes. It's a good character. And I'll promise to let you know, if I'm in any trouble and need help. If I can't write, I'll _call_, as I said yesterday." "Good. I shall hear you over the wireless telephone." They both laughed; and Nevill Caird, coming out of the house was pleased that Stephen should be happy. It had occurred to him while helping his aunt with the invitations, that something of interest to Miss Ray might be learned at the Governor's house. He knew the Governor more or less, in a social way. Now he asked Victoria if she would like him to make inquiries about Ben Halim's past as a Spahi? "I've already been to the Governor," replied Victoria. "I got a letter to him from the American Consul, and had a little audience with him--is that what I ought to call it?--this morning. He was kind, but could tell me nothing I didn't know--any way, he would tell nothing more. He wasn't in Algiers when Saidee came. It was in the day of his predecessor." Nevill admired her promptness and energy, and said so. He shared Stephen's chivalrous wish to do something for the girl, so alone, so courageous, working against difficulties she had not begun to understand. He was sorry that he had had no hand in helping Victoria to see the most important Frenchman in Algiers, a man of generous sympathy for Arabs; but as he had been forestalled, he hastened to think of something else which he might do. He knew the house Ben Halim had owned in Algiers, the place which must have been her sister's home. The people who lived there now were acquaintances of his. Would she like to see Djenan el Hadj? The suggestion pleased her so much that Stephen found himself envying Nevill her gratitude. And it was arranged that Mrs. Jewett should be asked to appoint an hour for a visit next day. XII While Victoria was still in the lily-garden with her host and his friend, the cab which she had ordered to return came back to fetch her. It was early, and Lady MacGregor had expected her to stop for tea, as most people did stop, who visited Djenan el Djouad for the first time, because every one wished to see the house; and to see the house took hours. But the dancing-girl, appearing slightly embarrassed as she expressed her regrets, said that she must go; she had to keep an engagement. She did not explain what the engagement was, and as she betrayed constraint in speaking of it, both Stephen and Nevill guessed that she did not wish to explain. They took it for granted that it was something to do with her sister's affairs, something which she considered of importance; otherwise, as she had no friends in Algiers, and Lady MacGregor was putting herself out to be kind, the girl would have been pleased to spend an afternoon with those to whom she could talk freely. No questions could be asked, though, as Lady MacGregor remarked when Victoria had gone (after christening the baby panther), it did seem ridiculous that a child should be allowed to make its own plans and carry them out alone in a place like Algiers, without having any advice from its elders. "I've been, and expect to go on being, what you might call a perpetual chaperon," said she resignedly; "and chaperoning is so ingrained in my nature that I hate to see a baby running about unprotected, doing what it chooses, as if it were a married woman, not to say a widow. But I suppose it can't be stopped." "She's been on the stage," said Nevill reassuringly, Miss Ray having already broken this hard fact to the Scotch lady at luncheon. "I tell you it's a baby! Even John Knox would see that," sharply replied Aunt Caroline. There was nothing better to do with the rest of the afternoon, Nevill thought, than to take a spin in the motor, which they did, the chauffeur at the wheel, as Nevill confessed himself of too lazy a turn of mind to care for driving his own car. While Stephen waited outside, he called at Djenan el Hadj (an old Arab house at a little distance from the town, buried deep in a beautiful garden), but the ladies were out. Nevill wrote a note on his card, explaining that his aunt would like to bring a friend, whose relatives had once lived in the house; and this done, they had a swift run about the beautiful country in the neighbourhood of Algiers. It was dinner-time when they returned, and meanwhile an answer had come from Mrs. Jewett. She would be delighted to see any friend of Lady MacGregor's, and hoped Miss Ray might be brought to tea the following afternoon. "Shall we send a note to her hotel, or shall we stroll down after dinner?" asked Nevill. "Suppose we stroll down," Stephen decided, trying to appear indifferent, though he was ridiculously pleased at the idea of having a few unexpected words with Victoria. "Good. We might take a look at the Kasbah afterward," said Nevill. "Night's the time when it's most mysterious, and we shall be close to the old town when we leave Miss Ray's hotel." Dinner seemed long to Stephen. He could have spared several courses. Nevertheless, though they sat down at eight, it was only nine when they started out. Up on the hill of Mustapha Supérieur, all was peaceful under the moonlight; but below, in the streets of French shops and cafés, the light-hearted people of the South were ready to begin enjoying themselves after a day of work. Streams of electric light poured from restaurant windows, and good smells of French cooking filtered out, as doors opened and shut. The native cafés were crowded with dark men smoking chibouques, eating kous-kous, playing dominoes, or sipping absinthe and golden liqueurs which, fortunately not having been invented in the Prophet's time, had not been forbidden by him. Curio shops and bazaars for native jewellery and brasswork were still open, lit up with pink and yellow lamps. The brilliant uniforms of young Spahis and Zouaves made spots of vivid colour among the dark clothes of Europeans, tourists, or employés in commercial houses out for amusement. Sailors of different nations swung along arm in arm, laughing and ogling the handsome Jewesses and painted ladies from the Levant or Marseilles. American girls just arrived on big ships took care of their chaperons and gazed with interest at the passing show, especially at the magnificent Arabs who appeared to float rather than walk, looking neither to right nor left, their white burnouses blowing behind them. The girls stared eagerly, too, at the few veiled and swathed figures of native women who mingled with the crowd, padding timidly with bare feet thrust into slippers. The foreigners mistook them no doubt for Arab ladies, not knowing that ladies never walk; and were but little interested in the old, unveiled women with chocolate-coloured faces, who begged, or tried to sell picture-postcards. The arcaded streets were full of light and laughter, noise of voices, clatter of horses' hoofs, carriage-wheels, and tramcars, bells of bicycles and horns of motors. The scene was as gay as any Paris boulevard, and far more picturesque because of the older, Eastern civilization in the midst of, though never part of, an imported European life--the flitting white and brown figures, like thronging ghosts outnumbering the guests at a banquet. Stephen and Nevill Caird went up the Rue Bab-el-Oued, leading to the old town, and so came to the Hotel de la Kasbah, where Victoria Ray was staying. It looked more attractive at night, with its blaze of electricity that threw out the Oriental colouring of some crude decorations in the entrance-hall, yet the place appeared less than ever suited to Victoria. An Arab porter stood at the door, smoking a cigarette. His fingers were stained with henna, and he wore an embroidered jacket which showed grease-spots and untidy creases. It was with the calmest indifference he eyed the Englishmen, as Nevill inquired in French for Miss Ray. The question whether she were "at home" was conventionally put, for it seemed practically certain that she must be in the hotel. Where could she, who had no other friends than they, and no chaperon, go at night? It was with blank surprise, therefore, that he and Stephen heard the man's answer. Mademoiselle was out. "I don't believe it," Stephen muttered in English, to Nevill. The porter understood, and looked sulky. "I tell ze troot," he persisted. "Ze gentlemens no believe, zay ask some ozzer." They took him at his word, and walked past the Arab into the hotel. A few Frenchmen and Spaniards of inferior type were in the hall, and at the back, near a stairway made of the cheapest marble, was a window labelled "Bureau." Behind this window, in a cagelike room, sat the proprietor at a desk, adding up figures in a large book. He was very fat, and his chins went all the way round his neck in grooves, as if his thick throat might pull out like an accordion. There was something curiously exotic about him, as there is in persons of mixed races; an olive pallor of skin, an oiliness of black hair, and a jetty brightness of eye under heavy lids. This time it was Stephen who asked for Miss Ray; but he was given the same answer. She had gone out. "You are sure?" "Mais, oui, monsieur." "Has she been gone long?" Stephen persisted, feeling perplexed and irritated, as if something underhand were going on. "Of that I cannot tell," returned the hotel proprietor, still in guttural French. "She left word she would not be at the dinner." "Did she say when she would be back?" "No, monsieur. She did not say." "Perhaps the American Consul's family took pity on her, and invited her to dine with them," suggested Nevill. "Yes," Stephen said, relieved. "That's the most likely thing, and would explain her engagement this afternoon." "We might explore the Kasbah for an hour, and call again, to inquire." "Let us," returned Stephen. "I should like to know that she's got in all right." Five minutes later they had left the noisy Twentieth Century behind them, and plunged into the shadowy silence of a thousand years ago. The change could not have been more sudden and complete if, from a gaily lighted modern street, full of hum and bustle, they had fallen down an oubliette into a dark, deserted fairyland. Just outside was the imported life of Paris, but this old town was Turkish, Arab, Moorish, Jewish and Spanish; and in Algeria old things do not change. After all, the alley was not deserted, though it was soundless as a tomb save for a dull drumming somewhere behind thick walls. They were in a narrow tunnel, rather than a street, between houses that bent towards each other, their upper stories supported by beams. There was no electric light, scarcely any light at all save a strip of moonshine, fine as a line of silver inlaid in ebony, along the cobbled way which ascended in steps, and a faint glimmer of a lamp here and there in the distance, a lamp small and greenish as the pale spark of a glow-worm. As they went up, treading carefully, forms white as spirits came down the street in heelless babouches that made no more noise than the wings of a bat. These forms loomed vague in the shadow, then took shape as Arab men, whose eyes gleamed under turbans or out from hoods. Moving aside to let a cloaked figure go by, Stephen brushed against the blank wall of a house, which was cold, sweating dampness like an underground vault. No sun, except a streak at midday, could ever penetrate this tunnel-street. So they went on from one alley into another, as if lost in a catacomb, or the troubling mazes of a nightmare. Always the walls were blank, save for a deep-set, nail-studded door, or a small window like a square dark hole. Yet in reality, Nevill Caird was not lost. He knew his way very well in the Kasbah, which he never tired of exploring, though he had spent eight winters in Algiers. By and by he guided his friend into a street not so narrow as the others they had climbed, though it was rather like the bed of a mountain torrent, underfoot. Because the moon could pour down a silver flood it was not dark, but the lamps were so dull that the moonlight seemed to put them out. Here the beating was as loud as a frightened heart. The walls resounded with it, and sent out an echo. More than one nailed door stood open, revealing a long straight passage, with painted walls faintly lighted from above, and a curtain like a shadow, hiding the end. In these passages hung the smoky perfume of incense; and from over tile-topped walls came the fragrance of roses and lemon blossoms, half choked with the melancholy scent of things old, musty and decayed. Beautiful pillars, brought perhaps from ruined Carthage, were set deeply in the whitewashed walls, looking sad and lumpy now that centuries of chalk-coats had thickened their graceful contours. But to compensate for loss of shape, they were dazzling white, marvellous as columns of carved pearl in the moonlight, they and their surrounding walls seeming to send out an eerie, bleached light of their own which struck at the eye. The uneven path ran floods of moonlight; and from tiny windows in the leaning snow-palaces--windows like little golden frames--looked out the faces of women, as if painted on backgrounds of dull yellow, emerald-green, or rose-coloured light. They were unveiled women, jewelled like idols, white and pink as wax-dolls, their brows drawn in black lines with herkous, their eyes glittering between bluish lines of kohl, their lips poppy-red with the tint of mesouak, their heads bound in sequined nets of silvered gauze, and crowned with tiaras of gold coins. The windows were so small that the women were hidden below their shoulders, but their huge hoop-earrings flashed, and their many necklaces sent out sparks as they nodded, smiling, at the passers; and one who seemed young and beautiful as a wicked fairy, against a purple light, threw a spray of orange blossoms at Stephen's feet. Then, out of that street of muffled music, open doors, and sequined idols, the two men passed to another where, in small open-air cafés, bright with flaring torches or electric light squatting men smoked, listening to story-tellers; and where, further on, Moorish baths belched out steam mingled with smells of perfume and heated humanity. So, back again to black tunnels, where the blind walls heard secrets they would never tell. The houses had no eyes, and the street doors drew back into shadow. "Do you wonder now," Nevill asked, "that it's difficult to find out what goes on in an Arab's household?" "No," said Stephen. "I feel half stifled. It's wonderful, but somehow terrible. Let's get out of this 'Arabian Nights' dream, into light and air, or something will happen to us, some such things as befell the Seven Calendars. We must have been here an hour. It's time to inquire for Miss Ray again. She's sure to have come in by now." Back they walked into the Twentieth Century. Some of the lights in the hotel had been put out. There was nobody in the hall but the porter, who had smoked his last cigarette, and as no one had given him another, he was trying to sleep in a chair by the door. Mademoiselle might have come in. He did not know. Yes, he could ask, if there were any one to ask, but the woman who looked after the bedrooms had an evening out. There was only one _femme de chambre_, but what would you? The high season was over. As for the key of Mademoiselle, very few of the clients ever left their keys in the bureau when they promenaded themselves. It was too much trouble. But certainly, he could knock at the door of Mademoiselle, if the gentlemen insisted, though it was now on the way to eleven o'clock, and it would be a pity to wake the young lady if she were sleeping. "Knock softly. If she's awake, she'll hear you," Stephen directed. "If she's asleep, she won't." The porter went lazily upstairs, appearing again in a few minutes to announce that he had obeyed instructions and the lady had not answered. "But," he added, "one would say that an all little light came through the keyhole." "Brute, to look!" mumbled Stephen. There was, however, nothing more to be done. It was late, and they must take it for granted that Miss Ray had come home and gone to bed. XIII That night Stephen dreamed troubled dreams about Victoria. All sorts of strange things were happening behind a locked door, he never quite knew what, though he seemed forever trying to find out. In the morning, before he was dressed, Mahommed brought a letter to his door; only one, on a small tray. It was the first letter he had received since leaving London--he, who had been used to sighing over the pile that heaped up with every new post, and must presently be answered. He recognized the handwriting at a glance, though he had seen it only once, in a note written to Lady MacGregor. The letter was from Victoria, and was addressed to "Mr. Stephen Knight," in American fashion--a fashion unattractive to English eyes. But because it was Victoria's way, it seemed to Stephen simple and unaffected, like herself. Besides, she was not aware that he had any kind of handle to his name. "Now I shall know where she was last night," he said to himself, and was about to tear open the envelope, when suddenly the thought that she had touched the paper made him tender in his usage of it. He found a paper-knife and with careful precision cut the envelope along the top. The slight delay whetted his eagerness to read what Victoria had to tell. She had probably heard of the visit which she had missed, and had written this letter before going to bed. It was a sweet thought of the girl's to be so prompt in explaining her absence, guessing that he must have suffered some anxiety. "DEAR MR. KNIGHT," he read, the blood slowly mounting to his face as his eyes travelled from line to line, "I don't know what you will think of me when I have told you about the thing I am going to do. But whatever you may think, don't think me ungrateful. Indeed, indeed I am not that. I hate to go away without seeing you again, yet I must; and I can't even tell you why, or where I am going--that is the worst. But if you could know why, I'm almost sure you would feel that I am doing the right thing, and the only thing possible. Before all and above all with me, must be my sister's good. Everything else has to be sacrificed to that, even things that I value very, very much. "Don't imagine though, from what I say, that I'm making a great sacrifice, so far as any danger to myself is concerned. The sacrifice is, to risk being thought unkind, ungrateful, by you, and of losing your friendship. This is the _only_ danger I am running, really; so don't fear for me, and please forgive me if you can. Just at the moment I must seem (as well as ungracious) a little mysterious, not because I want to be mysterious, but because it is forced on me by circumstances. I hate it, and soon I hope I shall be able to be as frank and open with you as I was at first, when I saw how good you were about taking an interest in my sister Saidee. I think, as far as I can see ahead, I may write to you in a fortnight. Then, I shall have news to tell, the _best of news_, I hope; and I won't need to keep anything back. By that time I may tell you all that has happened, since bidding you and Mr. Caird good-bye, at the door of his beautiful house, and all that will have happened by the time I can begin the letter. How I wish it were now! "There's just one more word I want to say, that I really can say without doing harm to anybody or to any plan. It's this. I did feel so guilty when you talked about your motoring with Mr. Caird to Tlemcen. It was splendid of you both to be willing to go, and you must have thought me cold and half-hearted about it. But I couldn't tell you what was in my mind, even then. I didn't know what was before me; but there was already a thing which I had to keep from you. It was only a small thing. But now it has grown to be a very big one. "Good-bye, my dear friend Mr. Knight. I like to call you my friend, and I shall always remember how good you were to me, if, for any reason, we should never see each other again. It is very likely we may not meet, for I don't know how long you are going to stay in Africa, or how long I shall stay, so it may be that you will go back to England soon. I don't suppose I shall go there. When I can leave this country it will be to sail for America with my sister--_never without her_. But I shall write, as I said, in a fortnight, if all is well--indeed, I shall write whatever happens. I shall be able to give you an address, too, I hope very much, because I should like to hear from you. And I shall pray that you may always be happy. "I meant this to be quite a short letter, but after all it is a long one! Good-bye again, and give my best remembrances to Lady MacGregor and Mr. Caird, if they are not disgusted with me for the way I am behaving. Gratefully your friend, "VICTORIA RAY." There was no room for any anger against the girl in Stephen's heart. He was furious, but not with her. And he did not know with whom to be angry. There was some one--there must be some one--who had persuaded her to take this step in the dark, and this secret person deserved all his anger and more. To persuade a young girl to turn from the only friends she had who could protect her, was a crime. Stephen could imagine no good purpose to be served by mystery, and he could imagine many bad ones. The very thought of the best among them made him physically sick. There was a throat somewhere in the world which his fingers were tingling to choke; and he did not know where, or whose it was. It made his head ache with a rush of beating blood not to know. And realizing suddenly, with a shock like a blow in the face, the violence of his desire to punish some person unknown, he saw how intimate a place the girl had in his heart. The longing to protect her, to save her from harm or treachery, was so intense as to give pain. He felt as if a lasso had been thrown round his body, pressing his lungs, roping his arms to his sides, holding him helpless; and for a moment the sensation was so powerful that he was conscious of a severe effort, as if to break away from the spell of a hypnotist. It was only for a moment that he stood still, though a thousand thoughts ran through his head, as in a dream--as in the dreams of last night, which had seemed so interminable. The thing to do was to find out at once what had become of Victoria, whom she had seen, who had enticed her to leave the hotel. It would not take long to find out these things. At most she could not have been gone more than thirteen or fourteen hours. At first, in his impatience, he forgot Nevill. In two or three minutes he had finished dressing, and was ready to start out alone when the thought of his friend flashed into his mind. He knew that Nevill Caird, acquainted as he was with Algiers, would be able to suggest things that he might not think of unaided. It would be better that they two should set to work together, even though it might mean a delay of a few minutes in the beginning. He put Victoria's letter in his pocket, meaning to show it to Nevill as the quickest way of explaining what had happened and what he wanted to do; but before he had got to his friend's door, he knew that he could not bear to show the letter. There was nothing in it which Nevill might not see, nothing which Victoria might not have wished him to see. Nevertheless it was now _his_ letter, and he could not have it read by any one. He knocked at the door, but Nevill did not answer. Then Stephen guessed that his friend must be in the garden. One of the under-gardeners, working near the house, had seen the master, and told the guest where to go. Monsieur Caird was giving medicine to the white peacock, who was not well, and in the stable-yard Nevill was found, in the act of pouring something down the peacock's throat with a spoon. When he heard what Stephen had to say, he looked very grave. "I wish Miss Ray hadn't stopped at that hotel," he said. "Why?" Stephen asked sharply. "You don't think the people there----" "I don't know what to think. But I have a sort of idea the brutes knew something last night and wouldn't tell." "They'll have to tell!" exclaimed Stephen. Nevill did not answer. "I shall go down at once," Stephen went on. "Of course I'll go with you," said his friend. They had forgotten about breakfast. Stopping only to get their hats, they started for the town. XIV "Don't begin by accusing the landlord of anything," Nevill advised, at the hotel door. "He's got too much Arab blood in him to stand that. You'd only make him tell you lies. We must seem to know things, and ask questions as if we expected him to confirm our knowledge. That may confuse him if he wants to lie. He won't be sure what ground to take." The Arab porter was not in his place, but the proprietor sat in his den behind the window. He was drinking a cup of thick, syrupy coffee, and soaking a rusk in it. Stephen thought this a disgusting sight, and could hardly bear to let his eyes rest on the thick rolls of fat that bulged over the man's low collar, all the way round his neck like a yellow ruff. Not trusting himself to speak just then, Stephen let Caird begin the conversation. The landlord bowed over his coffee and some letters he was reading, but did not trouble to do more than half rise from his chair and sink back again, solidly. These fine gentlemen would never be clients of his, would never be instrumental in sending any one to him. Why should he put himself out? "We've had a letter from Miss Ray this morning," Nevill announced, after a perfunctory exchange of "good days" in French. The two young men both looked steadily at the proprietor of the hotel, as Nevill said these words. The fat man did not show any sign of embarrassment, however, unless his expectant gaze became somewhat fixed, in an effort to prevent a blink. If this were so, the change was practically imperceptible. "She had left here before six o'clock last evening, hadn't she?" "I cannot tell you, Monsieur. It is as I answered yesterday. I do not know the time when she went out." "You must know what she said when she went." "On the contrary, Monsieur. The young lady did not speak with me herself. She sent a message." "And the message was that she was leaving your hotel?" "First of all, that she had the intention of dining out. With a lady." Stephen and Nevill looked at each other. With a lady? Could it be possible that Mademoiselle Soubise, interested in the story, had called and taken the girl away? "What then?" went on Caird. "She let you know eventually that she'd made up her mind to go altogether?" "The message was that she might come back in some days. But yes, Monsieur, she let me know that for the present she was leaving." "Yet you didn't tell us this when we called!" exclaimed Stephen. "You let us think she would be back later in the evening." "Pardon me, Monsieur, if you remember, you asked _when_ Mademoiselle would be back. I replied that I did not know. It was perfectly true. And desolated as I was to inconvenience you, I could not be as frank as my heart prompted. My regrettable reserve was the result of Mademoiselle's expressed wish. She did not desire to have it known that she was leaving the hotel, until she herself chose to inform her friends. As it seems you have had a letter, Monsieur, I can now speak freely. Yesterday evening I could not." He looked like the last man whose heart would naturally prompt him to frankness, but it seemed impossible to prove, at the moment, that he was lying. It was on the cards that Miss Ray might have requested silence as to her movements. Stephen bit his lip to keep back an angry reproach, nevertheless, and Caird reflected a moment before answering. Then he said slowly; "Look here: we are both friends of Miss Ray, the only ones she has in Algiers, except of course my aunt, Lady MacGregor, with whom she lunched yesterday. We are afraid she has been imprudently advised by some one, as she is young and inexperienced in travelling. Now, if you will find out from your servants, and also let us know from your own observation, exactly what she did yesterday, after returning from her visit to my aunt--what callers she had, if any; to whose house she went, and so on--we will make it worth your while. Lady MacGregor" (he made great play with his relative's name, as if he wished the landlord to understand that two young men were not the girl's only friends in Algiers) "is very anxious to see Miss Ray. To spare her anxiety, we offer a reward of a thousand francs for reliable information. But we must hear to-day, or to-morrow at latest." As he evolved this proposal, Nevill and Stephen kept their eyes upon the man's fat face. He looked politely interested, but not excited, though the offer of a thousand francs was large enough to rouse his cupidity, it would seem, if he saw his way to earning it. He shrugged his shoulders with a discouraged air when Nevill finished. "I can tell you now, Monsieur, all that I know of Mademoiselle's movements--all that anybody in the hotel knows, I think. No one came to see her, except yourselves. She was out all the morning of yesterday, and did not return here till sometime after the _déjeuner_. After that, she remained in her room until towards evening. It was the head-waiter who brought me the message of which I have told you, and requested the bill. At what hour the young lady actually went out, I do not know. The porter can probably tell you." "But her luggage," Stephen cut in quickly. "Where did it go? You can at least tell that?" "Mademoiselle's luggage is still in the hotel. She asked permission to store it, all but a dressing-bag of some sort, which, I believe she carried with her." "In a cab?" "That I do not know. It will be another question for the porter. But were I in the place of Monsieur and his friend, I should have no uneasiness about the young lady. She is certain to have found trustworthy acquaintances, for she appeared to be very sensible." "We shall be glad if you will let us have a short talk with several of your servants," said Nevill--"the _femme de chambre_ who took care of Miss Ray's room, and the waiter who served her, as well as the porter." "Certainly, Monsieur. They shall be brought here," the landlord assented. "I will help you by questioning them myself." "I think we'll do that without your help, thank you," replied Stephen drily. The fat man looked slightly less agreeable, but touched a bell in the wall by his desk. A boy answered and was sent to command Angéle and Ahmed to report at once. Also he was to summon the porter, whether that man had finished his breakfast or not. These orders given, Monsieur Constant looked at the two Englishmen as if to say, "You see! I put my whole staff at your disposition. Does not this prove my good faith? What would you have more?" Angéle was Algerian French, evidently of mixed parentage, like all those in the Hotel de la Kasbah who were not Arabs. She was middle-aged, with a weary, hatchet face, and eyes from which looked a crushed spirit. If Stephen and Nevill could have seen Madame Constant, they would hardly have wondered at that expression. Ahmed had negro blood in his veins, and tried to smooth out the frizziness of the thick black hair under his fez, with much pomatum, which smelled of cheap bergamot. These two, with the porter who soon appeared, brushing breadcrumbs from his jacket, stood in front of the bureau window, waiting to learn the purpose for which they had been torn from their various occupations. "It is these gentlemen who have something to ask you. They do not wish me to interfere," announced the master to his servants, with a gesture. He then turned ostentatiously to the sipping of his neglected coffee. Nevill undertook the cross-questionings, with occasional help from Stephen, but they learned no detail of importance. Angéle said that she had been out when the demoiselle Americaine had left the hotel; but that the luggage of Mademoiselle was still in her room. Ahmed had taken a message to Monsieur le Patron, about the bill, and had brought back Mademoiselle's change, when the note was paid. The porter had carried down a large dressing-bag, at what time he could not be sure, but it was long before dark. He had asked if Mademoiselle wished him to call a _voiture_, but she had said no. She was going out on foot, and would presently return in a carriage. This she did. The porter believed it was an ordinary cab in which Mademoiselle had driven back, but he had not thought much about it, being in a hurry as he took the bag. He was at least certain that Mademoiselle had been alone. She had received no callers while she was in the hotel, and had not been seen speaking to any one: but she had gone out a great deal. Why had he not mentioned in the evening that the young lady had driven away with luggage? For the sufficient reason that Mademoiselle had particularly requested him to say nothing of her movements, should any one come to inquire. It was for the same reason that he had been obliged to deceive Monsieur in the matter of knocking at her door. And as the porter made this answer, he looked far more impudent than he had looked last night, though he was smiling blandly. How much of this was lies and how much truth? Stephen wondered, when, having given up hope of learning more from landlord or servants, they left the hotel. Nevill had to confess that he was puzzled. "Their stories hold together well enough," he said, "but if they have anything to hide (mind, I don't say they have) they're the sort to get up their tale beforehand, so as to make it water-tight. We called last night, and that man Constant must have known we'd come again, whether we heard from Miss Ray or whether we didn't--still more, if we _didn't_. Easy as falling off a log to put the servants up to what he wanted them to say, and prepare them for questions, without giving them tips under our noses." "If they know anything that fat old swine doesn't want them to give away, we can bribe it out of them," said Stephen, savagely. "Surely these Arabs and half-breeds love money." "Yes, but there's something else they hold higher, most of them, I will say in their favour--loyalty to their own people. If this affair has to do with Arabs, like as not we might offer all we've got without inducing them to speak--except to tell plausible lies and send us farther along the wrong track. It's a point of pride with these brown faces. Their own above the Roumis, and I'm hanged if I can help respecting them for that, lies and all." "But why should they lie?" broke out Stephen. "What can it be to them?" "Nothing, in all probability," Nevill tried to soothe him. "The chances are, they've told us everything they know, in good faith, and that they're just as much in the dark about Miss Ray's movements as we are--without the clue we have, knowing as we do why she came to Algiers. It's mysterious enough anyhow, what's become of her; but it's more likely than not that she kept her own secret. You say she admitted in her letter having heard something which she didn't mention to us when she was at my house; so she must have got a clue, or what she thought was a clue, between the time when we took her from the boat to the Hotel de la Kasbah, and the time when she came to us for lunch." "It's simply hideous!" Stephen exclaimed. "The only way I can see now is to call in the police. They must find out where that cab came from and where it took Miss Ray. That's the important thing." "Yes, to get hold of the cabman is the principal thing," said Nevill, without any ring of confidence in his voice. "But till we learn the contrary, we may as well presume she's safe. As for the police, for her sake they must be a last resort." "Let's go at once and interview somebody. But there's one hope. She may have gone to Tlemcen to see that Kabyle maid of Mademoiselle Soubise, for herself. Perhaps that's why she didn't encourage us to motor there. She's jolly independent." Nevill's face brightened. "When we've done what we can in Algiers, we might run there ourselves in the car, just as I proposed before," he said eagerly. "If nothing came of it, we wouldn't be wasting time, you know. She warned you not to expect news for a fortnight, so there's no use hanging about here in hopes of a letter or telegram. We can go to Tlemcen and get back inside five days. What do you say?" What Stephen might have said was, that they could save the journey by telegraphing to Mademoiselle Soubise to ask whether Miss Ray had arrived in Tlemcen. But the brightness in Nevill's eyes and the hopefulness in his voice kept back the prosaic suggestion. "I say, by all means let's go to Tlemcen," he answered. "To-morrow, after we've found out what we can here about the cab, inquired at the railway stations and so on. Besides, we can at least apply to the police for information about Ben Halim. If we learn he's alive, and where he is living, it may be almost the same as knowing where Miss Ray has gone." XV Nothing could be heard of Victoria at any place of departure for ships, nor at the railway stations. Stephen agreed with Nevill that it would not be fair to lay the matter in the hands of the police, lest in some way the girl's mysterious "plan" should be defeated. But he could not put out of his head an insistent idea that the Arab on board the _Charles Quex_ might stand for something in this underhand business. Stephen could not rest until he had found out the name of this man, and what had become of him after arriving at Algiers. As for the name, having appeared on the passenger list, it was easily obtained without expert help. The Arab was a certain Sidi Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud; and when Jeanne Soubise was applied to for information concerning him, she was able to learn from her Arab friends that he was a young man of good family, the son of an Agha or desert chief, whose douar lay far south, in the neighbourhood of El-Aghouat. He was respected by the French authorities and esteemed by the Governor of Algiers. Known to be ambitious, he was anxious to stand well with the ruling power, and among the dissipated, sensuous young Arabs of his class and generation, he was looked upon as an example and a shining light. The only fault found in him by his own people was that he inclined to be too modern, too French in his political opinions; and his French friends found no fault with him at all. It seemed impossible that a person so highly placed would dare risk his future by kidnapping a European girl, and Jeanne Soubise advised Stephen to turn his suspicions in another direction. Still he would not be satisfied, until he had found and engaged a private detective, said to be clever, who had lately seceded from a Paris agency and set up for himself in Algiers. Through him, Stephen hoped to learn how Sidi Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud had occupied himself after landing from the _Charles Quex_; but all he did learn was that the Arab, accompanied by his servant and no one else, had, after calling on the Governor, left Algiers immediately for El-Aghouat. At least, he had taken train for Bogharie, and was known to have affairs of importance to settle between his father the Agha, and the French authorities. Secret inquiries at the Hotel de la Kasbah elicited answers, unvaryingly the same. Sidi Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud was not a patron of the house, and had never been seen there. No one answering at all to his description had stopped in, or even called at, the hotel. Of course, the value of such assurances was negatived by the fact that Arabs hold together against foreigners, and that if Si Maïeddine wished to be incognito among his own people, his wish would probably be respected, in spite of bribery. Besides, he was rich enough to offer bribes on his own part. Circumstantial evidence, however, being against the supposition that the man had followed Victoria after landing, Stephen abandoned it for the time, and urged the detective, Adolphe Roslin, to trace the cabman who had driven Miss Ray away from her hotel. Roslin was told nothing about Victoria's private interests, but she was accurately described to him, and he was instructed to begin his search by finding the squint-eyed cab-driver who had brought the girl to lunch at Djenan el Djouad. Only in the affair of Cassim ben Halim did Stephen and Nevill decide to act openly, Nevill using such influence as he had at the Governor's palace. They both hoped to learn something which in compassion or prudence had been kept from the girl; but they failed, as Victoria had failed. If a scandal had driven the Arab captain of Spahis from the army and from Algiers, the authorities were not ready to unearth it now in order to satisfy the curiosity, legitimate or illegitimate, of two Englishmen. Captain Cassim ben Halim el Cheik el Arab, had resigned from the army on account of ill-health, rather more than nine years ago, and having sold his house in Algiers had soon after left Algeria to travel abroad. He had never returned, and there was evidence that he had been burned to death in a great fire at Constantinople a year or two later. The few living relatives he had in Algeria believed him to be dead; and a house which Ben Halim had owned not far from Bou Saada, had passed into the hands of his uncle, Caïd of a desert-village in the district. As to Ben Halim's marriage with an American girl, nobody knew anything. The present Governor and his staff had come to Algiers after his supposed death; and if Nevill suspected a deliberate reticence behind certain answers to his questions, perhaps he was mistaken. Cassim ben Halim and his affairs could now be of little importance to French officials. It did not take Roslin an hour to produce the squinting cabman; but the old Arab was able to prove that he had been otherwise engaged than in driving Miss Ray on the evening when she left the Hotel de la Kasbah. His son had been ill, and the father had given up work in order to play nurse. A doctor corroborated this story, and nothing was to be gained in that direction. Then it was that Nevill almost timidly renewed his suggestion of a visit to Tlemcen. They could find out by telegraphing Josette, he admitted, whether or no Victoria Ray had arrived, but if she were not already in Tlemcen, she might come later, to see Mouni. And even if not, they might find out how to reach Saidee, by catechizing the Kabyle girl. Once they knew the way to Victoria's sister, it was next best to knowing the way to find Victoria herself. This last argument was not to be despised. It impressed Stephen, and he consented at once to "try their luck" at Tlemcen. Early in the morning of the second day after the coming of Victoria's letter, the two men started in Nevill's yellow car, the merry-eyed chauffeur charmed at the prospect of a journey worth doing. He was tired, he remarked to Stephen, "de tous ces petits voyages d'une demi-heure, comme les tristes promenades des enfants, sans une seule aventure." They had bidden good-bye to Lady MacGregor, and most of the family animals, overnight, and it was hardly eight o'clock when they left Djenan el Djouad, for the day's journey would be long. A magical light, like the light in a dream, gilded the hills of the Sahel; and beyond lay the vast plain of the Metidja, a golden bowl, heaped to its swelling rim of mountains with the fairest fruits of Algeria. The car rushed through a world of blossoms, fragrant open country full of flowers, and past towns that did their small utmost to bring France into the land which France had conquered. Boufarik, with its tall monument to a brave French soldier who fought against tremendous odds: Blidah, a walled and fortified mixture of garrison and orange-grove, with a market-place like a scene in the "Arabian Nights": Orleansville, modern and ostentatiously French, built upon ruins of vast antiquity, and hotter than all other towns in the dry cup of the Chelif Valley: Relizane, Perrégaux, and finally Oran (famed still for its old Spanish forts), which they reached by moonlight. Always there were fields embroidered round the edges with wild flowers of blue and gold, and rose. Always there were white, dusty roads, along which other motors sometimes raced, but oftener there were farm-carts, wagons pulled by strings of mules, and horses with horned harness like the harness in Provence or on the Spanish border. There were huge, two-storied diligences, too, drawn by six or eight black mules, crammed under their canvas roofs with white- or brown-robed Arabs, and going very fast. From Oran they might have gone on the same night, reaching the end of their journey after a few hours' spin, but Nevill explained that haste would be vain. They could not see Mademoiselle Soubise until past nine, so better sleep at Oran, start at dawn, and see something of the road,--a road more picturesque than any they had travelled. It was not for Stephen to offer objections, though he was in a mood which made him long to push on without stopping, even though there were no motive for haste. He was ashamed of the mood, however, and hardly understood what it meant, since he had come to Algeria in search of peace. When first he landed, and until the day of Victoria's letter, he had been enormously interested in the panorama of the East which passed before his eyes. He had eagerly noticed each detail of colour and strangeness, but now, though the London lethargy was gone, in its place had been born a disturbing restlessness which would not let him look impersonally at life as at a picture. Questioning himself as he lay awake in the Oran hotel, with windows open to the moonlight, Stephen was forced to admit that the picture was blurred because Victoria had gone out of it. Her figure had been in the foreground when first he had seen the moving panorama, and all the rest had been only a magical frame for her. The charm of her radiant youth, and the romance of the errand which had brought her knocking, when he knocked, at the door of the East, had turned the glamour into glory. Now she had vanished; and as her letter said, it might be that she would never come back. The centre of interest was transferred to the unknown place where she had gone, and Stephen began to see that his impatience to be moving was born of the wish not only to know that she was safe, but to see her again. He was angry with himself at this discovery, and almost he was angry with Victoria. If he had not her affairs to worry over, Africa would be giving him the rest cure he had expected. He would be calmly enjoying this run through beautiful country, instead of chafing to rush on to the end. Since, in all probability, he could do the girl no good, and certainly she could do him none, he half wished that one or the other had crossed from Marseilles to Algiers on a different ship. What he needed was peace, not any new and feverish personal interest in life. Yes, decidedly he wished that he had never known Victoria Ray. But the wish did not live long. Suddenly her face, her eyes, came before him in the night. He heard her say that she would give him "half her star," and his heart grew sick with longing. "I hope to Heaven I'm not going to love that girl," he said aloud to the darkness. If no other woman came into his life, he might be able to get through it well enough with Margot. He could hunt and shoot, and do other things that consoled men for lack of something better. But if--he knew he must not let there be an "if." He must go on thinking of Victoria Ray as a child, a charming little friend whom he wished to help. Any other thought of her would mean ruin. Before dawn they were called, and started as the sun showed over the horizon. So they ran into the western country, near to the Morocco border. Dull at first, save for its flooding flowers, soon the way wound among dark mountains, from whose helmeted heads trailed the long plumes of white cascades, and whose feet--like the stone feet of Egyptian kings in ruined temples--were bathed by lakes that glimmered in the depths of gorges. It was a land of legends and dreams round about Tlemcen, the "Key of the West," city of beautiful mosques. The mountains were honeycombed with onyx mines; and rising out of wide plains were crumbling brown fortresses, haunted by the ghosts of long-dead Arabs who had buried hoards of money in secret hiding-places, and died before they could unearth their treasure. Tombs of kings and princes, and koubbahs of renowned marabouts, Arab saints, gleamed white, or yellow as old gold, under the faded silver of ancient olive trees, in fields that ran red with blood of poppies. Minarets jewelled like peacocks' tails soared above the tops of blossoming chestnuts. On low trees or bushes, guarding the graves of saints, fluttered many-coloured rags, left there by faithful men and women who had prayed at the shrine for health or fortune; and for every foot of ground there was some wild tale of war or love, an echo from days so long ago that history had mingled inextricably with lore of fairies. Nevill was excited and talkative as they drove into the old town, once the light of western Algeria. They passed in by the gateway of Oran, and through streets that tried to be French, but contrived somehow to be Arab. Nevill told stories of the days when Tlemcen had queened it over the west, and coined her own money; of the marabouts after whom the most famous mosques were named: Sidi-el-Haloui, the confectioner-saint from Seville, who preached to the children and made them sweetmeats; of the lawyer-saint, Sidi Aboul Hassan from Arabia, and others. But he did not speak of Josette Soubise, until suddenly he touched Stephen's arm as they passed the high wall of a garden. "There, that's where _she_ teaches," he said; and it was not necessary to add a name. Stephen glanced at him quickly. Nevill looked very young. His eyes no longer seemed to gaze at far-away things which no one else could see. All his interests were centred near at hand. "Don't you mean to stop?" Stephen asked, surprised that the car went on. "No; school's begun. We'll have to wait till the noon interval, and even then we shan't be allowed indoors, for a good many of the girls are over twelve, the age for veiling--_hadjabah_, they call it--when they're shut up, and no man, except near relations, can see their faces. Several of the girls are already engaged. I believe there's one, not fourteen, who's been divorced twice, though she's still interested in dolls. Weird, isn't it? Josette will talk with us in the garden. But we'll have time now to take rooms at the hotel and wash off the dust. To eat something too, if you're hungry." But Stephen was no hungrier than Nevill, whose excitement, perhaps, was contagious. The hotel was in a wide _place_, so thickly planted with acacias and chestnut trees as to resemble a shabby park. An Arab servant showed them to adjoining rooms, plain but clean, and a half-breed girl brought tins of hot water and vases of syringas. As for roses, she said in hybrid French, no one troubled about them--there were too many in Tlemcen. Ah! but it was a land of plenty! The gentlemen would be happy, and wish to stay a long time. There was meat and good wine for almost nothing, and beggars need not ask twice for bread--fine, white bread, baked as the Moors baked, across the border. As they bathed and dressed more carefully than they had dressed for the early-morning start, strange sounds came up from the square below, which was full of people, laughing, quarrelling, playing games, striking bargains, singing songs. Arab bootblacks clamoured for custom at the hotel-door, pushing one another aside, fiercely. Little boys in embroidered green or crimson jackets sat on the hard, yellow earth, playing an intricate game like "jack stones," and disputed so violently that men and even women stopped to remonstrate, and separate them; now a grave, prosperous Jew dressed in red (Jewish mourning in the province of Oran); then an old Kabyle woman of the plains, in a short skirt of fiery orange scarcely hiding the thin sticks of legs that were stained with henna half-way up the calves, like painted stockings. Moors from across the frontier--fierce men with eagle faces and striped cloaks--grouped together, whispering and gesticulating, stared at with suspicion by the milder Arabs, who attributed all the crimes of Tlemcen to the wild men from over the border. Black giants from the Negro quarter kept together, somewhat humble, yet laughing and happy. Slender, coffee-coloured youths drove miniature cows from Morocco, or tiny black donkeys, heavily laden and raw with sores, colliding with well-dressed Turks, who had the air of merchants, and looked as if they could not forget that Tlemcen had long been theirs before the French dominion. Bored but handsome officers rode through the square on Arab horses graceful as deer, and did not even glance at passing women, closely veiled in long white haïcks. It was lively and amusing in the sunlight; but just as the two friends were ready to go out, the sky was swept with violet clouds. A storm threatened fiercely, but they started out despite its warning, turning deaf ears to the importunities of a Koulougli guide who wished to show them the mosques, "ver' cheap." He followed them, but they hurried on, pushing so sturdily through a flock of pink-headed sheep, which poured in a wave over the pavement, that they might have out-run the rain had they not been brought to a sudden standstill by a funeral procession. It was the strangest sight Stephen had seen yet, and he hardly noticed that, in a burst of sunlight, rain had begun to pelt down through the canopy of trees. The band of figures in brown burnouses marched quickly, with a sharp rustling of many slippered feet moving in unison, and golden spears of rain seemed to pierce the white turbans of the men who carried the bier. As they marched, fifty voices rose and fell wildly in a stirring chant, exciting and terrible as the beat-beat of a tom-tom, sometimes a shout of barbaric triumph, sometimes a mourning wail. Then, abruptly, a halt was made in the glittering rain, and the bearers were changed, because of the luck it brings Arab men to carry the corpse of a friend. Just in front of the two Englishmen the body rested for an instant, stretched out long and piteously flat, showing its thin shape through the mat of woven straw which wrapped it, only the head and feet being wound with linen. So, by and by, it would be laid, without a coffin, in its shallow grave in the Arab cemetery, out on the road to Sidi Bou-Medine. There were but a few seconds of delay. Then the new bearers lifted the bier by its long poles, and the procession moved swiftly, feverishly, on again, the wild chant trailing behind as it passed, like a torn war-banner. The thrill of the wailing crept through Stephen's veins, and roused an old, childish superstition which an Irish nurse had implanted in him when he was a little boy. According to Peggy Brian it was "a cruel bad omen" to meet a funeral, especially after coming into a new town. "Wait for a corpse," said she, "an' ye'll wait while yer luck goes by." "They're singing a song in praise of the dead man's good deeds, and of triumph for the joys he'll know in Paradise," explained Nevill. "It's only the women who weep and scratch their faces when those they love have died. The men rejoice, or try to. Soon, they are saying, this one who has gone will be in gardens fair as the gardens of Allah Himself, where sit beautiful houris, in robes woven of diamonds, sapphires, and rubies, each gem of which has an eye of its own that glitters through a vapour of smouldering ambergris, while fountains send up pearly spray in the shade of fragrant cedars." "No wonder the Mohammedan poor don't fear death, if they expect to exchange their hovels for such quarters," said Stephen. "I wish I understood Arabic." "It's a difficult language to keep in your mind, and I don't know it well," Nevill answered. "But Jeanne and Josette Soubise speak it like natives; and the other day when Miss Ray lunched with us, I thought her knowledge of Arabic wonderful for a person who'd picked it up from books." Stephen did not answer. He wished that Nevill had not brought the thought of Victoria into his mind at the moment when he was recalling his old nurse's silly superstition. Victoria laughed at superstitions, but he was not sure that he could laugh, in this barbaric land where it seemed that anything might happen. XVI Nevill had not sent word to Josette Soubise that he was coming to see her. He wished to make the experiment of a surprise, although he insisted that Stephen should be with him. At the door in the high white wall of the school-garden, he asked an unveiled crone of a porteress to say merely that two gentlemen had called. "She'll suspect, I'm afraid," he muttered to Stephen as they waited, "even if her sister hasn't written that I thought of turning up. But she won't have time to invent a valid excuse, if she disapproves of the visit." In three or four minutes the old woman hobbled back, shuffling slippered feet along the tiled path between the gate and the low whitewashed house. Mademoiselle requested that ces Messieurs would give themselves the pain of walking into the garden. She would descend almost at once. They obeyed, Nevill stricken dumb by the thought of his coming happiness. Stephen would have liked to ask a question or two about the school, but he refrained, sure that if Nevill were forced into speech he would give random answers. This was being in love--the real thing! And Stephen dimly envied his friend, even though Caird seemed to have small hope of winning the girl. It was far better to love a woman you could never marry, than to be obliged to marry one you could never love. He imagined himself waiting to welcome Margot, beautiful Margot, returning from Canada to him. He would have to go to Liverpool, of course. She would be handsomer than ever, probably, and he could picture their meeting, seven or eight weeks from now. Would his face wear such an expression as Nevill's wore at this moment? He knew well that it would not. "She is coming!" said Nevill, under his breath. The door of the schoolhouse was opening, and Nevill moved forward as a tall and charming young woman appeared, like a picture in a dark frame. She was slender, with a tiny waist, though her bust was full, and her figure had the intensely feminine curves which artists have caused to be associated with women of the Latin races; her eyes were like those of her elder sister, but larger and more brilliant. So big and splendid they were that they made the smooth oval of her olive face seem small. Quantities of heavy black hair rippled away from a forehead which would have been square if the hair had not grown down in a point like a Marie Stuart cap. Her chin was pointed, with a deep cleft in the middle, and the dimples Nevill had praised flashed suddenly into being, as if a ray of sunshine had touched her pale cheeks. "Mon bon ami!" she exclaimed, holding out both hands in token of comradeship, and putting emphasis on her last word. "She's determined the poor chap shan't forget they're only friends," thought Stephen, wishing that Caird had not insisted upon his presence at this first meeting. And in a moment he was being introduced to Mademoiselle Josette Soubise. "Did I surprise you?" asked Nevill, looking at her as if he could never tear his eyes away, though he spoke in an ordinary tone. "Ah, I know you want me to say 'yes'," she laughed. "I'd like to tell a white fib, to please you. But no, I am not quite surprised, for my sister wrote that you might come, and why. What a pity you had this long journey for nothing. My Kabyle maid, Mouni, has just gone to her home, far away in a little village near Michélet, in la Grande Kabylia. She is to be married to her cousin, the chief's son, whom she has always loved--but there were obstacles till now." "Obstacles can always be overcome," broke in Nevill. Josette would not understand any hidden meaning. "It is a great pity about Mouni," she went on. "Only four days ago she left. I gave her the price of the journey, for a wedding present. She is a good girl, and I shall miss her. But of course you can write to ask her questions. She reads a little French." "Perhaps we shall go ourselves," Nevill answered, glancing at Stephen's disappointed face. "For I know Miss Ray can't be here, or you would have said so." "No, she is not here," echoed Josette, looking astonished. "Jeanne wrote about the American young lady searching for her sister, but she did not say she might visit Tlemcen." "We hoped she would, that's all," explained Nevill. "She's left her hotel in Algiers in a mysterious way, not telling where she meant to go, although she assured us she'd be safe, and we needn't worry. However, naturally we do worry." "But of course. I see how it is." The dimples were gone, and the brightness of Josette's eyes was overcast. She looked at Nevill wistfully, and a flash of sympathetic understanding enlightened Stephen. No doubt she was generously solicitous for the fate of Victoria Ray, but there was something different from solicitude in her darkening eyes. "Good! she's jealous. She thinks Nevill's heart's been caught in the rebound," he told himself. But Nevill remained modestly unconscious. "Miss Ray may arrive yet," he suggested. "We'd better stop to-day, anyhow, on the chance; don't you think so, Stephen? and then, if there's no news of her when we get back to Algiers, go on to interview the bride in Grand Kabylia?" Stephen had not the heart to dispute the wisdom of this decision, though he was sure that, since Victoria was not in Tlemcen now, she would never come. "So you think we've made a long journey for nothing, Mademoiselle Josette?" said Nevill. "But yes. So it turns out." "Seeing an old friend doesn't count, then?" "Oh, well, that can seem but little--in comparison to what you hoped. Still, you can show Monsieur Knight the sights. He may not guess how beautiful they are. Have you told him there are things here as wonderful as in the Alhambra itself, things made by the Moors who were in Granada?" "I've told him about all I care most for in Tlemcen," returned Nevill, with that boyish demureness he affected sometimes. "But I'm not a competent cicerone. If you want Knight to do justice to the wonders of this place, you'll have to be our guide. We've got room for several large-sized chaperons in the car. Do come. Don't say you won't! I feel as if I couldn't stand it." His tone was so desperate that Josette laughed some of her brightness back again. "Then I suppose I mustn't refuse. And I should like going--after school hours. Madame de Vaux, who is the bride of a French officer, will join us, I think, for she and I are friends, and besides, she has had no chance to see things yet. She has been busy settling in her quarters--and I have helped her a little." "When can you start?" asked Nevill, enraptured at the prospect of a few happy hours snatched from fate. "Not till five." His face fell. "But that's cruel!" "It would be cruel to my children to desert them sooner. Don't forget I am malema--malema before all. And there will be time for seeing nearly everything. We can go to Sidi Bou-Medine, afterwards to the ruins of Mansourah by sunset. Meanwhile, show your friend the things near by, without me; the old town, with its different quarters for the Jews, the Arabs, and the Negroes. He will like the leather-workers and the bakers, and the weavers of haïcks. And you will not need me for the Grande Mosquée, or for the Mosquée of Aboul Hassan, where Monsieur Knight will see the most beautiful mihrab in all the world. When he has looked at that, he cannot be sorry he has come to Tlemcen; and if he has regrets, Sidi Bou-Medine will take them away." "Has Sidi Bou-Medine the power to cure all sorrows?" Stephen asked, smiling. "Indeed, yes. Why, Sidi Bou-Medine himself is one of the greatest marabouts. You have but to take a pinch of earth from his tomb, and make a wish upon it. Only one wish, but it is sure to be granted, whatever it may be, if you keep the packet of earth afterwards, and wear it near your heart." "What a shame you never told me that before. The time I've wasted!" exclaimed Nevill. "But I'll make up for it now. Thank Heaven I'm superstitious." They had forgotten Stephen, and laughing into each other's eyes, were perfectly happy for the moment. Stephen was glad, yet he felt vaguely resentful that they could forget the girl for whose sake the journey to Tlemcen had ostensibly been undertaken. They were ready to squander hours in a pretence of sightseeing, hours which might have been spent in getting back to Algiers and so hastening on the expedition to Grand Kabylia. How selfish people in love could be! And charming as Josette Soubise was, it seemed strange to Stephen that she should stand for perfection to a man who had seen Victoria Ray. Nevill was imploring Josette to lunch with them, chaperoned by Madame de Vaux, and Josette was firmly refusing. Then he begged that they might leave money as a gift for the malema's scholars, and this offer she accepted, only regretting that the young men could not be permitted to give the _cadeau_ with their own hands. "My girls are so pretty," she said, "and it is a picture to see them at their embroidery frames, or the carpet making, their fingers flying, their eyes always on the coloured designs, which are the same as their ancestresses used a century ago, before the industry declined. I love them all, the dear creatures, and they love me, though I am a Roumia and an unbeliever. I ought to be happy in their affection, helping them to success. And now I must run back to my flock, or the lambs will be getting into mischief. Au revoir--five o'clock. You will find me waiting with Madame de Vaux." At luncheon, in the bare, cool dining-room of the hotel, Nevill was like a man in a dream. He sat half smiling, not knowing what he ate, hardly conscious of the talk and laughter of the French officers at another table. Just at the last, however, he roused himself. "I can't help being happy. I see her so seldom. And I keep turning over in my mind what new arguments in favour of myself I can bring forward when I propose this afternoon--for of course I shall propose, if you and the bride will kindly give me the chance. I know she won't have me--but I always do propose, on the principle that much dropping may wear away a stone." "Suppose you break the habit just for once," ventured Stephen. Nevill looked anxious. "Why, do you think the case is hopeless?" "On the contrary. But--well, I can't help feeling it would do you more good to show an absorbing interest in Miss Ray's affairs, this time." "So I have an absorbing interest," Nevill protested, remorsefully. "I don't want you to suppose I mean to neglect them. I assure you----" Stephen laughed, though a little constrainedly. "Don't apologise, my dear fellow. Miss Ray's no more to me than to you, except that I happened to make her acquaintance a few days sooner." "I know," Nevill agreed, mildly. Then, after a pause, which he earnestly occupied in crumbling bread. "Only I'm head over ears in love with another woman, while you're free to think of her, or any other girl, every minute of the day." Stephen's face reddened. "I am not free," he said in a low voice. "I beg your pardon. I hoped you were. I still think--you ought to be." Nevill spoke quickly, and without giving Stephen time to reply, he hurried on; "Miss Ray may arrive here yet. Or she may have found out about Mouni in some other way, and have gone to see her in Grand Kabylia--who knows?" "If she were merely going there to inquire about her sister, why should she have to make a mystery of her movements?" "Well, it's on the cards that whatever she wanted to do, she didn't care to be bothered with our troublesome advice and offers of help. Our interest was, perhaps, too pressing." "Mademoiselle Soubise is of that opinion, anyhow--in regard to you," remarked Stephen. "What--that angel _jealous_? It's too good to be true! But I'll relieve her mind of any such idea." "If you'll take one more tip from me, I'd leave her mind alone for the present." "Why, you flinty-hearted reprobate?" "Well, I'm no authority. But all's fair in love and war. And sometimes an outsider sees features of the game which the players don't see." "That's true, anyhow," Nevill agreed. "Let's _both_ remember that--eh?" and he got up from the table abruptly, as if to keep Stephen from answering, or asking what he meant. They had several empty hours, between the time of finishing luncheon, and five o'clock, when they were to meet Mademoiselle Soubise and her chaperon, so they took Josette's advice and went sightseeing. Preoccupied as he was, Stephen could not be indifferent to the excursion, for Tlemcen is the shrine of gems in Arab architecture, only equalled at Granada itself. Though he was so ignorant still of eastern lore, that he hardly knew the meaning of the word mihrab, the arched recess looking towards Mecca, in the Mosque of the lawyer-saint Aboul Hassan, held him captive for many moments with its beauty. Its ornamentation was like the spread tail of Nevill's white peacock, or the spokes of a silver wheel incrusted with an intricate pattern in jewels. Not a mosque in town, or outside the gates, did they leave unvisited, lest, as Nevill said, Josette Soubise should ask embarrassing questions; and the last hour of probation they gave to the old town. There, as they stopped to look in at the workshops of the weavers, and the bakers, or stared at the hands of Fatma-Zora painted in henna on the doors of Jews and True Believers, crowds of ragged boys and girls followed them, laughing and begging as gaily as if begging were a game. Only this band of children, and heavily jewelled girls of Morocco or Spain, with unveiled, ivory faces and eyes like suns, looked at the Englishmen, as Stephen and Nevill passed the isolated blue and green houses, in front of which the women sat in a bath of sunshine. Arabs and Jews walked by proudly, and did not seem to see that there were strangers in their midst. When at last it was time to go back to the hotel, and motor to the École Indigène, Josette was ready, plainly dressed in black. She introduced her friends to the bride, Madame de Vaux, a merry young woman, blonde by nature and art, who laughed always, like the children in the Arab town. She admired Knight far more than Caird, because she liked tall, dark men, her own husband being red and stout. Therefore, she would have been delighted to play the tactful chaperon, if Josette had not continually broken in upon her duet with Stephen, ordering them both to look at this or that. The country through which they drove after passing out of the gate in the modern French wall, might have been the south of England in midsummer, had it not been peopled by the dignified Arab figures which never lost their strangeness and novelty for Stephen. Here, in the west country, they glittered in finery like gorgeous birds: sky-blue jacket, scarlet fez and sash glowing behind a lacework of green branches netted with flowers, where a man hoed his fields or planted his garden. Hung with a tapestry of roses, immense brown walls lay crumbling--ruined gateways, and shattered traces of the triple fortifications which defended Tlemcen when the Almohades were in power. By a clear rill of water gushing along the roadside, a group of delicate broken arches marked the tomb of the "flying saint," Sidi Abou Ishad el Taïyer, an early Wright or Blériot who could swim through the air; and though in his grave a chest of gold was said to be buried, no one--not even the lawless men from over the border--had ever dared dig for the treasure. Close by, under the running water, a Moor had found a huge lump of silver which must have lain for no one could tell how many years, looking like a grey stone under a sheet of glass; nevertheless, the neighbouring tomb had still remained inviolate, for Sidi Abou Ishad el Taïyer was a much respected saint, even more loved than the marabout who sent rain for the gift of a sacrificed fowl, or he who cured sore eyes in answer to prayer. Only Sidi Bou-Medine himself was more important; and presently (because the distance was short, though the car had travelled slowly) they came to the footpath in the hills which must be ascended on foot, to reach the shrine of the powerful saint, friend of great Sidi Abd el Kader. Already they could see the minaret of the mosque, high above the mean village which clustered round it, rising as a flame rises against a windless sky, while beneath this shining Giralda lay half-ruined houses rejuvenated with whitewash or coats of vivid blue. They passed up a narrow street redeemed from sordidness by a domed koubbah or two; and from the roofed balconies of cafés maures, Arabs looked down on them with large, dreamy eyes like clouded stars. All the glory and pride of the village was concentrated in the tomb and beautiful mosque of the saint whose name falls sweet on the ear as the music of a summer storm, the tinkle and boom of rain and thunder coming together: Sidi Bou-Medine. Toddling girls with henna-dyed hair, and miniature brown men, like blowing flower-petals in scarlet, yellow, and blue, who had swarmed up the street after the Roumis, stopped at the portals of the mosque and the sacred tomb. But there was a humming in the air like the song of bees, which floated rhythmically out from the zaouïa, the school in the mosque where many boys squatted cross-legged before the aged Taleb who taught the Koran; bowing, swaying towards him, droning out the words of the Prophet, some half asleep, nodding against the onyx pillars. In the shadow of the mosque it was cool, though the crown of the minaret, gemmed with priceless tiles from Fez, blazed in the sun's rays as if it were on fire. Into this coolness the four strangers passed, involuntarily hushing their voices in the portico of decorated walls and hanging honeycombs of stucco whence, through great doors of ancient, greenish bronze (doors said to have arrived miraculously from across the sea), they found their way into a courtyard open to the sky, where a fountain waved silver plumes over a marble basin. Two or three dignified Arab men bathed their feet in preparation for the afternoon prayer, and tired travellers from a distance slept upon mats of woven straw, spread on tiles like a pavement of precious stones, or dozed in the little cells made for the students who came in the grand old days. The sons of Islam were reverent, yet happy and at home on the threshold of Allah's house, and Stephen began to understand, as Nevill and Josette already understood, something of the vast influence of the Mohammedan religion. Only Madame de Vaux remained flippant. In the car, she had laughed at the women muffled in their haïcks, saying that as the men of Tlemcen were so tyrannical about hiding female faces, it was strange they did not veil the hens and cows. In the shadowy mosque, with its five naves, she giggled at the yellow babouches out of which her little high-heeled shoes slipped, and threatened to recite a French verse under the delicate arch of the pale blue mihrab. But Stephen was impressed with the serene beauty of the Moslem temple, where, between labyrinths of glimmering pillars like young ash trees in moonlight, across vistas of rainbow-coloured rugs like flower-beds, the worshippers looked out at God's blue sky instead of peering through thick, stained-glass windows; where the music was the murmur of running water, instead of sounding organ-pipes; and where the winds of heaven bore away the odours of incense before they staled. He wondered whether a place of prayer like this--white-walled, severely simple despite the veil-like adornment of arabesques--did not more tend to religious contemplation than a cathedral of Italy or Spain, with its bloodstained Christs, its Virgins, and its saints. Did this Arab art perhaps more truly express the fervour of faith which needs no extraneous elaborations, because it has no doubts? But presently calling up a vision of the high, dim aisles, the strong yet soaring columns, all the mysterious purity of gothic cathedrals, he convinced himself that, after all, the old monkish architects had the real secret of mystic aspirations in the human heart. When Josette and Nevill led the way out of the mosque, Stephen was in the right mood for the tomb of that ineffable saint of Islam, Shaoib ibn Husain el Andalousi, Sidi Bou-Medine. He was almost ready to believe in the extraordinary virtue of the earth which had the honour of covering the marabout's remains. It annoyed him that Madame de Vaux should laugh at the lowness of the doorway under which they had to stoop, and that she should make fun of the suspended ostrich eggs, the tinselled pictures and mirrors, the glass lustres and ancient lanterns, the spilt candle-wax of many colours, or the old, old flags which covered the walls and the high structure of carved wood which was the saint's last resting-place. A grave Arab who approved their air of respect, gave a pinch of earth each to Stephen and Nevill, wrapped in paper, repeating Josette's assurance that their wishes would be granted. It would be necessary, he added, to reflect long before selecting the one desire of the soul which was to be put above all others. But Nevill had no hesitation. He wished instantly, and tucked the tiny parcel away in the pocket nearest his heart. "And you, Monsieur?" asked Madame de Vaux, smiling at Stephen. "It does not appear easy to choose. Ah, now you have decided! Will you tell me what you wished?" "I think I mustn't do that. Saints favour those who can keep secrets," said Stephen, teasingly. Yet he made his wish in earnest, after turning over several in his mind. To ask for his own future happiness, in spite of obstacles which would prove the marabout's power, was the most intelligent thing to do; but somehow the desire clamouring loudest at the moment was for Victoria, and the rest might go ungranted. "I wish that I may find her safe and happy," he said over the pinch of earth before putting it into what Josette named his "poche du coeur." "As for me," remarked Madame de Vaux, "I will not derange any of their Moslem saints, thank you. I have more influential ones of my own, who might be annoyed. And it is stuffy in this tomb. I am sure it is full of microbes. Let us go and see the ruined palace of the Black Sultan who, Josette says, founded everything here that was worth founding. That there should be a Black Sultan sounds like a fairy tale. And I like fairy tales next to bon-bons and new hats." So they made their pilgrimage to the third treasure of the hill-village; and then away to where the crumbling walls of Mansourah, and that great tower, which is one of the noblest Moorish relics in all Algeria, rise out of a flowering plain. Cherry blossoms fell in scented snow over their heads as the car ran back to Tlemcen, and out once more, through the Moorish Porte de Fez, past the reservoir built by a king for an Arab beauty to sail her boats upon. Sunset was near, and the sky blazed red as if Mansourah burned with ten thousand torches. The way led through vast blue lakes which were fields of periwinkles, and along the road trotted pink-robed children, whose heads were wrapped in kerchiefs of royal purple. They led sheep with golden-gleaming fleece, and at the tombs of marabouts they paused to pray, among groups of kneeling figures in long white cloaks and turbans. All the atmosphere swam with changing colours, such as come and go in the heart of a fire-opal. Very beautiful must have been the city of Mansourah, named after murdered Sultan el Mansour, the Victorious, who built its vast fortifications, its mosques and vanished palaces, its caravanserais and baths, in the seven years when he was besieging Tlemcen. And still are its ruins beautiful, after more than five centuries of pillage and destruction. Josette Soubise loved the place, and often came to it when her day's work was done, therefore she was happy showing it to Nevill and--incidentally--to the others. The great brown wall pricked with holes like an enormous wasp's nest, the ruined watch-towers, and the soaring, honey-coloured minaret with its intricate carvings, its marble pillars, its tiles and inset enamels iridescent as a Brazilian beetle's wing, all gleamed with a splendour that was an enchantment, in the fire of sunset. The scent of aromatic herbs, such as Arabs love and use to cure their fevers, was bitter-sweet in the fall of the dew, and birds cried to each other from hidden nests among the ruins. "Mussulmans think that the spirits of their dead fly back to visit their own graves, or places they have loved, in the form of birds," said Josette, looking up at the minaret, large marguerites with orange centres embroidering her black dress, as she stood knee-deep in their waving gold. "I half believe that these birds among the lovely carvings of the tower are the priests who used to read the Koran in the mosque, and could not bear to leave it. The birds in the walls are the soldiers who defended the city." As she spoke there was a flight of wings, black against the rose and mauve of the sunset. "There!" she exclaimed. "Arabs would call that an omen! To see birds flying at sundown has a special meaning for them. If a man wanted something, he would know that he could get it only by going in the direction the birds take." "Which way are they flying?" asked Stephen. All four followed the flight of wings with their eyes. "They are going south-east," said Nevill. XVII If Victoria Ray had accepted Nevill Caird's invitation to be Lady MacGregor's guest and his, at Djenan el Djouad, many things might have been different. But she had wished to be independent, and had chosen to go to the Hotel de la Kasbah. When she went down to dinner in the _salle à manger_, shortly after seven o'clock on the evening of her arrival, only two other tables were occupied, for it was late in the season, and tourists were leaving Algiers. No one who had been on board the _Charles Quex_ was there, and Victoria saw that she was the only woman in the room. At one table sat a happy party of Germans, apparently dressed from head to foot by Dr. Jaeger, and at another were two middle-aged men who had the appearance of commercial travellers. By and by an elderly Jew came in, and dinner had reached the stage of peppery mutton ragout, when the door opened again. Victoria's place was almost opposite, and involuntarily, she glanced up. The handsome Arab who had crossed from Marseilles on the boat saluted her with grave courtesy as he met her look, and passed on, casting down his eyes. He was shown to a table at some distance, the manner of the Arab waiter who conducted him being so impressive, that Victoria was sure the newcomer must be a person of importance. He was beautifully dressed, as before, and the Germans stared at him frankly, but he did not seem to be aware of their existence. Special dishes arrived for him, and evidently he had been expected. There was but one waiter to serve the meal, and not only did he somewhat neglect the other diners for the sake of the latest arrival, but the landlord appeared, and stood talking with the Arab while he ate, with an air of respect and consideration. The Germans, who had nearly finished their dinner when Victoria came in, now left the table, using their toothpicks and staring with the open-eyed interest of children at the picturesque figure near the door. The commercial travellers and the Jew followed. Victoria also was ready to go, when the landlord came to her table, bowing. "Mademoiselle," he said, in French, "I am charged with a message from an Arab gentleman of distinction, who honours my house by his presence. Sidi Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud is the son of an Agha, and therefore he is a lord, and Mademoiselle need have no uneasiness that he would condescend to an indiscretion. He instructs me to present his respectful compliments to Mademoiselle, whom he saw on the ship which brought him home, after carrying through a mission in France. Seeing that Mademoiselle travelled alone, and intends perhaps to continue doing so, according to the custom of her courageous and intelligent countrywomen, Sidi Maïeddine wishes to say that, as a person who has influence in his own land, he would be pleased to serve Mademoiselle, if she would honour him by accepting his offer in the spirit in which it is made: that is, as the chivalrous service of a gentleman to a lady. He will not dream of addressing Mademoiselle, unless she graciously permits." As the landlord talked on, Victoria glanced across the room at the Arab, and though his eyes were bent upon his plate, he seemed to feel the girl's look, as if by a kind of telepathy, instantly meeting it with what seemed to her questioning eyes a sincere and disarming gaze. "Tell Sidi Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud that I thank him," she answered, rewarded for her industry in keeping up French, which she spoke fluently, with the Parisian accent she had caught as a child in Paris. "It is possible that he can help me, and I should be glad to talk with him." "In that case Si Maïeddine would suggest that Mademoiselle grant him a short interview in the private sitting-room of my wife, Madame Constant, who will be honoured," the fat man replied promptly. "It would not be wise for Mademoiselle to be seen by strangers talking with the distinguished gentleman, whose acquaintance she is to make. This, largely for her own sake; but also for his, or rather, for the sake of certain diplomatic interests which he is appointed to carry out. Officially, he is supposed to have left Algiers to-day. And it is by his permission that I mention the matter to Mademoiselle." "I will do whatever you think best," said Victoria, who was too glad of the opportunity to worry about conventionalities. She was so young, and inexperienced in the ways of society, that a small transgression against social laws appeared of little importance to a girl situated as she was. "Would the time immediately after dinner suit Mademoiselle, for Si Maïeddine to pay his respects?" Victoria answered that she would be pleased to talk with Si Maïeddine as soon as convenient to him, and Monsieur Constant hurried away to prepare his wife. While he was absent the Arab did not again look at Victoria, and she understood that this reserve arose from delicacy. Her heart began to beat, and she felt that the way to her sister might be opening at last. The fact that she did feel this, made her tell herself that it must be true. Instinct was not given for nothing! She thought, too, of Stephen Knight. He would be glad to-morrow, when meeting her at luncheon in his friend's house, to hear good news. Already she had been to see Jeanne Soubise, in the curiosity-shop, and had bought a string of amber prayer-beads. She had got an introduction to the Governor from the American Consul, whom she had visited before unpacking, lest the consular office should be closed for the day; and she had obtained an appointment at the palace for the next morning; but all that was not much to tell Mr. Knight. It seemed to her that even in a few hours she ought to have accomplished more. Now, however, the key of the door which opened into the golden silence might be waiting for her hand. In three or four minutes the landlord came back, and begged to show her his wife's _petit salon_. This time as she passed the Arab she bowed, and gave him a grateful smile. He rose, and stood with his head slightly bent until she had gone out, remaining in the dining-room until the landlord returned to say that he was expected by Mademoiselle. "Remember," Si Maïeddine said in Arabic to the fat man, "everybody is to be discreet, now and later. I shall see that all are rewarded for obedience." "Thou art considerate, even of the humblest," replied the half-breed, using the word "thou," as all Arabs use it. "Thy presence is an honour for my house, and all in it is thine." Si Maïeddine--who had never been in the Hotel de la Kasbah before, and would not have considered it worthy of his patronage if he had not had an object in coming--allowed himself to be shown the door of Madame Constant's salon. On the threshold, the landlord retired, and the young man was hardly surprised to find, on entering, that Madame was not in the room. Victoria was there alone; but free from self-consciousness as she always was, she received Si Maïeddine without embarrassment. She saw no reason to distrust him, just because he was an Arab. Now, how glad she was that she had learned Arabic! She began to speak diffidently at first, stammering and halting a little, because, though she could read the language well after nine years of constant study, only once had she spoken with an Arab;--a man in New York from whom she had had a few lessons. Having learned what she could of the accent from phrase-books, her way had been to talk to herself aloud. But the flash of surprised delight which lit up the dark face told her that Si Maïeddine understood. "Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "My best hope was that French might come easily to thy lips, as I have little English." "I have a sister married to one of thy countrymen," Victoria explained at once. "I do not know where she is living, and it is in finding out, that I need help. Even on the ship I wished to ask thee if thou hadst knowledge of her husband, but to speak then seemed impossible. It is a fortunate chance that thou shouldst have come to this hotel, for I think thou wilt do what thou canst for me." Then she went on and told him that her sister was the wife of Captain Cassim ben Halim, who had once lived in Algiers. Si Maïeddine who had dropped his eyes as she spoke of the fortunate chance which had brought him to the hotel, listened thoughtfully and with keen attention to her story, asking no questions, yet showing his interest so plainly that Victoria was encouraged to go on. "Didst thou ever hear the name of Cassim ben Halim?" she asked. "Yes, I have heard it," the Arab replied. "I have friends who knew him. And I myself have seen Cassim ben Halim." "Thou hast seen him!" Victoria cried, clasping her hands tightly together. She longed to press them over her heart, which was like a bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage. "Long ago. I am much younger than he." "Yes, I see that," Victoria answered. "But thou knewest him! That is something. And my sister. Didst thou ever hear of her?" "We of the Mussulman faith do not speak of the wives of our friends, even when our friends are absent. Yet--I have a relative in Algiers who might know something, a lady who is no longer young. I will go to her to-night, and all that is in her heart she will tell me. She has lived long in Algiers; and always when I come, I pay her my respects. But, there is a favour I would beg in return for any help I can give, and will give gladly. I am supposed to be already on my way south, to finish a diplomatic mission, and, for reasons connected with the French government, I have had to make it appear that I started to-day with my servant. There is also a reason, connected with Si Cassim, which makes it important that nothing I may do should be known to thy European friends. It is for his sake especially that I ask thy silence; and whatsoever might bring harm to him--if he be still upon the earth--would also harm thy sister. Wilt thou give me thy word, O White Rose of another land, that thou wilt keep thine own counsel?" "I give thee my word--and with it my trust," said the girl. "Then I swear that I will not fail thee. And though until I have seen my cousin I cannot speak positively, yet I think what I can do will be more than any other could. Wilt thou hold thyself free of engagements with thy European friends, until I bring news?" "I have promised to lunch to-morrow with people who have been kind, but rather than risk a delay in hearing from thee, I will send word that I am prevented from going." "Thou hast the right spirit, and I thank thee for thy good faith. But it may be well not to send that message. Thy friends might think it strange, and suspect thee of hiding something. It is better to give no cause for questionings. Go then, to their house, but say nothing of having met me, or of any new hope in thine heart. Yet let the hope remain, and be to thee like the young moon that riseth over the desert, to show the weary traveller a rill of sweet water in an oasis of date palms. And now I will bid thee farewell, with a night of dreams in which thy dearest desires shall be fulfilled before thine eyes. I go to my cousin, on thy business." "Good night, Sidi. Henceforth my hope is in thee." Victoria held out her hand, and Si Maïeddine clasped it, bowing with the courtesy of his race. He was nearer to her than he had been before, and she noticed a perfume which hung about his clothing, a perfume that seemed to her like the East, heavy and rich, suggestive of mystery and secret things. It brought to her mind what she had read about harems, and beautiful, languid women, yet it suited Si Maïeddine's personality, and somehow did not make him seem effeminate. "See," he said, in the poetic language which became him as his embroidered clothes and the haunting perfume became him; "see, how thine hand lies in mine like a pearl that has dropped into the hollow of an autumn leaf. But praise be to Allah, autumn and I are yet far apart. I am in my summer, as thou, lady, art in thine early spring. And I vow that thou shalt never regret confiding thy hand to my hand, thy trust to my loyalty." As he spoke, he released her fingers gently, and turning, went out of the room without another word or glance. When he had gone, Victoria stood still, looking at the door which Si Maïeddine had shut noiselessly. If she had not lived during all the years since Saidee's last letter, in the hope of some such moment as this, she would have felt that she had come into a world of romance, as she listened to the man of the East, speaking the language of the East. But she had read too many Arabic tales and poems to find his speech strange. At school, her studies of her sister's adopted tongue had been confined to dry lesson-books, but when she had been free to choose her own literature, in New York and London, she had read more widely. People whom she had told of her sister's marriage, and her own mission, had sent her several rare volumes,--among others a valuable old copy of the Koran, and she had devoured them all, delighting in the facility which grew with practice. Now, it seemed quite simple to be talking with Sidi Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud as she had talked. It was no more romantic or strange than all of life was romantic and strange. Rather did she feel that at last she was face to face with reality. "He _does_ know something about Cassim," she said, half aloud, and searching her instinct, she still thought that she could trust him to keep faith with her. He was not playing. She believed that there was sincerity in his eyes. The next morning, when Victoria called at the Governor's palace, and heard that Captain Cassim ben Halim was supposed to have died in Constantinople, years ago, she was not cast down. "I know Si Maïeddine doesn't think he's dead," she told herself. There was a note for her at the hotel, and though the writer had addressed the envelope to "Mademoiselle Ray," in an educated French handwriting, the letter inside was written in beautiful Arab lettering, an intentionally flattering tribute to her accomplishment. Si Maïeddine informed her that his hope had been justified, and that in conversation with his cousin his own surmises had been confirmed. A certain plan was suggested, which he wished to propose to Mademoiselle Ray, but as it would need some discussion, there was not time to bring it forward before the hour when she must go out to keep her engagement. On her return, however, he begged that she would see him, in the salon of Madame Constant, where she would find him waiting. Meanwhile, he ventured to remind her that for the present, secrecy was even more necessary than he had at first supposed; he would be able to explain why, fully and satisfactorily, when they met in the afternoon. With this appointment to look forward to, it was natural that Victoria should excuse herself to Lady MacGregor earlier than most people cared to leave Djenan el Djouad. The girl was more excited than she had ever been in her life, and it was only by the greatest self-control that she kept--or believed that she kept--her manner as usual, while with Stephen in the white garden of lilies. She was happy, because she saw her feet already upon the path which would lead through the golden silence to her sister; but there was a drawback to her happiness--a fly in the amber, as in one of the prayer-beads she had bought of Jeanne Soubise: her secret had to be kept from the man of whom she thought as a very staunch friend. She felt guilty in talking with Stephen Knight, and accepting his sympathy as if she were hiding nothing from him; but she must be true to her promise, and Si Maïeddine had the right to exact it, though of course Mr. Knight might have been excepted, if only Si Maïeddine knew how loyal he was. But Si Maïeddine did not know, and she could not explain. It was consoling to think of the time when Stephen might be told everything; and she wished almost unconsciously that it was his help which she had to rely upon now. XVIII True to his word, Si Maïeddine was waiting in Madame Constant's hideous sitting-room, when Victoria returned to the hotel from Djenan el Djouad. To-day he had changed his grey bournous for a white one, and all his clothing was white, embroidered with silver. "It is written," he began in Arabic, as he rose to welcome the girl, "that the messenger who brings good tidings shall come in white. Now thou art prepared for happiness. Thou also hast chosen white; but even in black, thy presence would bring a blessing, O Rose of the West." The colour of the rose stained Victoria's cheeks, and Si Maïeddine's eyes were warm as he looked at her. When she had given him her hand, he kissed his own, after touching it. "Be not alarmed, or think that I take a liberty, for it is but a custom of my people, in showing respect to man or woman," he explained. "Thou hast not forgotten thy promise of silence?" "No, I spoke not a word of thee, nor of the hope thou gavest me last night," Victoria answered. "It is well," he said. "Then I will keep nothing back from thee." They sat down, Victoria on a repulsive sofa of scarlet plush, the Arab on a chair equally offensive in design and colour. "Into the life of thy brother-in-law, there came a great trouble," he said. "It befell after the days when he was known by thee and thy sister in Paris. Do not ask what it was, for it would grieve me to refuse a request of thine. Shouldst thou ever hear this thing, it will not be from my lips. But this I will say--though I have friends among the French, and am loyal to their salt which I have eaten, and I think their country great--France was cruel to Ben Halim. Were not Allah above all, his life might have been broken, but it was written that, after a time of humiliation, a chance to win honour and glory such as he had never known, should be put in his way. In order to take this blessing and use it for his own profit and that of others, it was necessary that Ben Halim--son of a warrior of the old fighting days, when nomads of high birth were as kings in the Sahara, himself lately a captain of the Spahis, admired by women, envied of men--it was necessary that he should die to the world." "Then he is not really dead!" cried Victoria. The face of Si Maïeddine changed, and wore that look which already the girl had remarked in Arab men she had passed among French crowds: a look as if a door had shut behind the bright, open eyes; as if the soul were suddenly closed. "Thy brother-in-law was living when last I heard of him," Maïeddine answered, slowly. "And my sister?" "My cousin told me last night that Lella Saïda was in good health some months ago when news came of her from a friend." "They call her Saïda!" murmured the girl, half sadly; for that Saidee should tolerate such a change of name, seemed to signify some subtle alteration in her spirit. But she knew that "Lella" meant "Madame" in Arab society. "It is my cousin who spoke of the lady by that name. As for me, it is impossible that I should know anything of her. Thou wishest above all things to see thy sister?" "Above all things. For more than nine years it has been the one great wish of my life to go to her." "It is a long journey. Thou wouldst have to go far--very far." "What would it matter, if it were to the end of the world?" "As well try to reach the place where she is, as though it were beyond where the world ends, unless thou wert guided by one who knew the way." Victoria looked the Arab full in the face. "I have always been sure that God would lead me there, one day, soon or late," she said. "Thy God is my God, and Mohammed is his Prophet, as thy Christ was also among his Prophets. It is as thou sayest; Allah wills that thou shouldst make this journey, for He has sent me into thy life at the moment of thy need. I can take thee to thy sister's house, if thou wilt trust thyself to me. Not alone--I would not ask that. My cousin will take care of thee. She has her own reason for going on this great journey, a reason which in its way is as strong as thine, for it concerns her life or death. She is a noble lady of my race, who should be a Princess of Touggourt, for her grandfather was Sultan before the French conquered those warlike men of the desert, far south where Touggourt lies. Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab hears the voice of the Angel Azraïl in her ears, yet her spirit is strong, and she believes it is written in the Book that she shall reach the end of her journey. This is the plan she and I have made; that thou leave the hotel to-day, towards evening, and drive (in a carriage which she will send)--to her house, where thou wilt spend the night. Early in the morning of to-morrow she can be ready to go, taking thee with her. I shall guard thee, and we shall have an escort which she and I will provide. Dost thou consent? Because if the idea pleases thee, there are many arrangements which must be made quickly. And I myself will take all trouble from thy shoulders in the matter of leaving the hotel. I am known and well thought of in Algiers and even the landlord here, as thou hast seen, has me in consideration, because my name is not strange to him. Thou needst not fear misconstruction of thine actions, by any one who is here." Si Maïeddine added these arguments, seeing perhaps that Victoria hesitated before answering his question. "Thou art generous, and I have no fear," she said at last, with a faint emphasis which he could read as he chose. "But, since thou hast my word to be silent, surely thou wilt tell me where lies the end of the journey we must take?" "Even so, I cannot tell thee," Si Maïeddine replied with decision which Victoria felt to be unalterable. "It is not for lack of trust in thee, O Rose, but for a reason which is not mine to explain. All I can do is to pledge my honour, and the honour of a princess, to conduct thee loyally to the house of thy sister's husband. If thou goest, it must be in the dress of an Arab lady, veiled from eyes which might spy upon thee; and so thou wilt be safe under the protection of my cousin." "My thanks to thee and to her--I will go," Victoria said, after a moment's pause. She was sure that Stephen Knight and his friend would prevent her from leaving Algiers with strangers, above all, in the company of Arabs, if they could know what was in her mind. But they were unjustly prejudiced, she thought. Her brother-in-law was of Arab blood, therefore she could not afford to have such prejudices, even if she were so inclined; and she must not hesitate before such a chance as Si Maïeddine offered. The great difficulty she had experienced in learning anything about Ben Halim made it easy for her to believe that she could reach her sister's husband only through people of his own race, who knew his secrets. She was ready to agree with Si Maïeddine that his God and her God had sent him at the right moment, and she would not let that moment pass her by. Others might say that she was wildly imprudent, that she was deliberately walking into danger; but she was not afraid. Always she trusted to her star, and now it had brought her to Algiers, she would not weaken in that trust. Common sense, in which one side of the girl's nature was not lacking, told her that this Arab might be deceiving her, that he might know no more of Ben Halim than she herself had told him yesterday; but she felt that he had spoken the truth, and feelings were more to her than common sense. She would go to the house which Si Maïeddine said was the house of his cousin, and if there she found reason to doubt him, she had faith that even then no evil would be allowed to touch her. At seven o'clock, Si Maïeddine said, Lella M'Barka would send a carriage. It would then be twilight, and as most people were in their homes by that hour, nobody would be likely to see her leave the hotel. The shutters of the carriage would be closed, according to the custom of Arab ladies, and on entering the vehicle Victoria would find a negress, a servant of Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab. This woman would dress her in a gandourah and a haïck, while they were on their way to the house of Victoria's hostess, and on stepping out she would have the appearance of a lady of Algiers. Thus all trace of her would be lost, as one Arab carriage was exactly like another. Meanwhile, there would be time to pack, and write a letter which Victoria was determined to write. To satisfy Si Maïeddine that she would not be indiscreet in any admission or allusion, she suggested translating for him every word she wrote into French or Arabic; but he refused this offer with dignity. She trusted him. He trusted her also. But he himself would post the letter at an hour too late for it to be delivered while she was still in Algiers. It was arranged that she should carry only hand-bags, as it would be too conspicuous to load and unload boxes. Her large luggage could be stored at the hotel until she returned or sent, and as Lella M'Barka intended to offer her an outfit suitable to a young Arab girl of noble birth, she need take from the hotel only her toilet things. So it was that Victoria wrote to Stephen Knight, and was ready for the second stage of what seemed the one great adventure to which her whole life had been leading up. XIX Victoria did not wait in her room to be told that the carriage had come to take her away. It was better, Si Maïeddine had said, that only a few people should know the exact manner of her going. A few minutes before seven, therefore, she went down to the entrance-hall of the hotel, which was not yet lighted. Her appearance was a signal for the Arab porter, who was waiting, to run softly upstairs and return with her hand luggage. For some moments Victoria stood near the door, interesting herself in a map of Algeria which hung on the wall. A clock began to strike as her eyes wandered over the desert, and was on the last stroke of seven, when a carriage drove up. It was drawn by two handsome brown mules with leather and copper harness which matched the colour of their shining coats, and was driven by a heavy, smooth-faced Negro in a white turban and an embroidered cafetan of dark blue. The carriage windows were shuttered, and as the black coachman pulled up his mules, he looked neither to the right nor to the left. It was the hotel porter who opened the door, and as Victoria stepped in without delay, he thrust two hand-bags after her, snapping the door sharply. It was almost dark inside the carriage, but she could see a white figure, which in the dimness had neither face nor definite shape; and there was a perfume as of aromatic amulets grown warm on a human body. "Pardon, lady, I am Hsina, the servant of Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab, sent to wait upon thee," spoke a soft and guttural voice, in Arabic. "Blessings be upon thee!" "And upon thee blessings," Victoria responded in the Arab fashion which she had learned while many miles of land and sea lay between her and the country of Islam. "I was told to expect thee." "Eïhoua!" cried the woman, "The little pink rose has the gift of tongues!" As she grew accustomed to the twilight, Victoria made out a black face, and white teeth framed in a large smile. A pair of dark eyes glittered with delight as the Roumia answered in Arabic, although Arabic was not the language of the negress's own people. She chattered as she helped Victoria into a plain white gandourah. The white hat and hat-pins amused her, and when she had arranged the voluminous haïck in spite of the joltings of the carriage, she examined these European curiosities with interest. Whenever she moved, the warm perfume of amulets grew stronger, overpowering the faint mustiness of the cushions and upholstery. "Never have I held such things in my hands!" Hsina gurgled. "Yet often have I wished that I might touch them, when driving with my mistress and peeping at the passers by, and the strange finery of foreign women in the French bazaars." Victoria listened politely, answering if necessary; yet her interest was concentrated in peering through the slits in the wooden shutter of the nearest window. She did not know Algiers well enough to recognize landmarks; but after driving for what seemed like fifteen or twenty minutes through streets where lights began to turn the twilight blue, she caught a glint of the sea. Almost immediately the trotting mules stopped, and the negress Hsina, hiding Victoria's hat in the folds of her haïck, turned the handle of the door. Victoria looked out into azure dusk, and after the closeness of the shuttered carriage, thankfully drew in a breath of salt-laden air. One quick glance showed her a street near the sea, on a level not much above the gleaming water. There were high walls, evidently very old, hiding Arab mansions once important, and there were other ancient dwellings, which had been partly transformed for business or military uses by the French. The girl's hasty impression was of a melancholy neighbourhood which had been rich and stately long ago in old pirate days, perhaps. There was only time for a glance to right and left before a nailed door opened in the flatness of a whitewashed wall which was the front of an Arab house. No light shone out, but the opening of the door proved that some one had been listening for the sound of carriage wheels. "Descend, lady. I will follow with thy baggage," said Hsina. The girl obeyed, but she was suddenly conscious of a qualm as she had to turn from the blue twilight, to pass behind that half-open door into darkness, and the mystery of unknown things. Before she had time to put her foot to the ground the door was thrown wide open, and two stout Negroes dressed exactly alike in flowing white burnouses stepped out of the house to stand on either side the carriage door. Raising their arms as high as their heads they made two white walls of their long cloaks between which Victoria could pass, as if enclosed in a narrow aisle. Hsina came close upon her heels; and as they reached the threshold of the house the white-robed black servants dropped their arms, followed the two women, and shut the nailed door. Then, despite the dimness of the place, they bowed their heads turning aside as if humbly to make it evident that their unworthy eyes did not venture to rest upon the veiled form of their mistress's guest. As for Hsina, she, too, was veiled, though her age and ugliness would have permitted her face to be revealed without offence to Mussulman ideas of propriety. It was mere vanity on her part to preserve the mystery as dear to the heart of the Moslem woman as to the jealous prejudice of the man. A faint glittering of the walls told Victoria that the corridor she had entered was lined with tiles; and she could dimly see seats let in like low shelves along its length, on either side. It was but a short passage, with a turn into a second still shorter. At the end of this hung a dark curtain, which Hsina lifted for Victoria to pass on, round another turn into a wider hall, lit by an Arab lamp with glass panes framed in delicately carved copper. The chain which suspended it from cedar beams swayed slightly, causing the light to move from colour to colour of the old tiles, and to strike out gleams from the marble floor and ivory-like pillars set into the walls. The end of this corridor also was masked by a curtain of wool, dyed and woven by the hands of nomad tribes, tent-dwellers in the desert; and when Hsina had lifted it, Victoria saw a small square court with a fountain in the centre. It was not on a grand scale, like those in the palace owned by Nevill Caird; but the fountain was graceful and charming, ornamented with the carved, bursting pomegranates beloved by the Moors of Granada, and the marble columns which supported a projecting balcony were wreathed with red roses and honeysuckle. On each of the four sides of the quadrangle, paved with black and white marble, there were little windows, and large glass doors draped on the inside with curtains thin enough to show faint pink and golden lights. "O my mistress, Lella M'Barka, I have brought thy guest!" cried Hsina, in a loud, sing-song voice, as if she were chanting; whereupon one of the glass doors opened, letting out a rosy radiance, and a Bedouin woman-servant dressed in a striped foutah appeared on the threshold. She was old, with crinkled grey hair under a scarlet handkerchief, and a blue cross was tattooed between her eyes. "In the name of Lella M'Barka be thou welcome," she said. "My mistress has been suffering all day, and fears to rise, lest her strength fail for to-morrow's journey, or she would come forth to meet thee, O Flower of the West! As it is, she begs that thou wilt come to her. But first suffer me to remove thy haïck, that the eyes of Lella M'Barka may be refreshed by thy beauty." She would have unfastened the long drapery, but Hsina put down Victoria's luggage, and pushing away the two brown hands, tattooed with blue mittens, she herself unfastened the veil. "No, this is _my_ lady, and my work, Fafann," she objected. "But it is my duty to take her in," replied the Bedouin woman, jealously. "It is the wish of Lella M'Barka. Go thou and make ready the room of the guest." Hsina flounced away across the court, and Fafann held open both the door and the curtains. Victoria obeyed her gesture and went into the room beyond. It was long and narrow, with a ceiling of carved wood painted in colours which had once been violent, but were now faded. The walls were partly covered with hangings like the curtains that shaded the glass door; but, on one side, between gold-embroidered crimson draperies, were windows, and in the white stucco above, showed lace-like openings, patterned to represent peacocks, the tails jewelled with glass of different colours. On the opposite side opened doors of dark wood inlaid with mother-o'-pearl; and these stood ajar, revealing rows of shelves littered with little gilded bottles, or piled with beautiful brocades that were shot with gold in the pink light of an Arab lamp. There was little furniture; only a few low, round tables, or maidas, completely overlaid with the snow of mother-o'-pearl; two or three tabourets of the same material, and, at one end of the room a low divan, where something white and orange-yellow and purple lay half buried in cushions. Though the light was dim, Victoria could see as she went nearer a thin face the colour of pale amber, and a pair of immense dark eyes that glittered in deep hollows. A thin woman of more than middle age, with black hair, silver-streaked, moved slightly and held out an emaciated hand heavy with rings. Her head was tied round with a silk handkerchief or takrita of pansy purple; she wore seroual, full trousers of soft white silk, and under a gold-threaded orange-coloured jacket or rlila, a blouse of lilac gauze, covered with sequins and open at the neck. On the bony arm which she held out to Victoria hung many bracelets, golden serpents of Djebbel Amour, and pearls braided with gold wire and coral beads. Her great eyes, ringed with kohl, had a tortured look, and there were hollows under the high cheek-bones. If she had ever been handsome, all beauty of flesh had now been drained away by suffering; yet stricken as she was there remained an almost indefinable distinction, an air of supreme pride befitting a princess of the Sahara. Her scorching fingers pressed Victoria's hand, as she gazed up at the girl's face with hungry curiosity and interest such as the Spirit of Death might feel in looking at the Spirit of Life. "Thou art fresh and fair, O daughter, as a lily bud opening in the spray of a fountain, and radiant as sunrise shining on a desert lake," she said in a weary voice, slightly hoarse, yet with some flutelike notes. "My cousin spoke but truth of thee. Thou art worthy of a reward at the end of that long journey we shall take together, thou, and he, and I. I have never seen thy sister whom thou seekest, but I have friends, who knew her in other days. For her sake and thine own, kiss me on my cheeks, for with women of my race, it is the seal of friendship." Victoria bent and touched the faded face under each of the great burning eyes. The perfume of _ambre_, loved in the East, came up to her nostrils, and the invalid's breath was aflame. "Art thou strong enough for a journey, Lella M'Barka?" the girl asked. "Not in my own strength, but in that which Allah will give me, I shall be strong," the sick woman answered with controlled passion. "Ever since I knew that I could not hope to reach Mecca, and kiss the sacred black stone, or pray in the Mosque of the holy Lella Fatima, I have wished to visit a certain great marabout in the south. The pity of Allah for a daughter who is weak will permit the blessing of this marabout, who has inherited the inestimable gift of Baraka, to be the same to me, body and soul, as the pilgrimage to Mecca which is beyond the power of my flesh. Another must say for me the Fatakah there. I believe that I shall be healed, and have vowed to give a great feast if I return to Algiers, in celebration of the miracle. Had it not been for my cousin's wish that I should go with thee, I should not have felt that the hour had come when I might face the ordeal of such a journey to the far south. But the prayer of Si Maïeddine, who, after his father, is the last man left of his line, has kindled in my veins a fire which I thought had burnt out forever. Have no fear, daughter. I shall be ready to start at dawn to-morrow." "Does the marabout who has the gift of Baraka live near the place where I must go to find my sister?" Victoria inquired, rather timidly; for she did not know how far she might venture to question Si Maïeddine's cousin. Lella M'Barka looked at her suddenly and strangely. Then her face settled into a sphinx-like expression, as if she had been turned to stone. "I shall be thy companion to the end of thy journey," she answered in a dull, tired tone. "Wilt thou visit thy room now, or wilt thou remain with me until Fafann and Hsina bring thy evening meal? I hope that thou wilt sup here by my side: yet if it pains thee to take food near one in ill health, who does not eat, speak, and thou shalt be served in another place." Victoria hastened to protest that she would prefer to eat in the company of her hostess, which seemed to please Lella M'Barka. She began to ask the girl questions about herself, complimenting her upon her knowledge of Arabic; and Victoria answered, though only half her brain seemed to be listening. She was glad that she had trusted Si Maïeddine, and she felt safe in the house of his cousin; but now that she was removed from European influences, she could not see why the mystery concerning Ben Halim and the journey which would lead to his house, should be kept up. She had read enough books about Arab customs and superstitions to know that there are few saints believed to possess the gift of Baraka, the power given by Allah for the curing of all fleshly ills. Only the very greatest of the marabouts are supposed to have this power, receiving it direct from Allah, or inheriting it from a pious saint--father or more distant relative--who handed down the maraboutship. Therefore, if she had time and inclination, she could probably learn from any devout Mussulman the abiding places of all such famous saints as remained upon the earth. In that way, by setting her wits to work, she might guess the secret if Si Maïeddine still tried to make a mystery of their destination. But, somehow, she felt that it would not be fair to seek information which he did not want her to have. She must go on trusting him, and by and by he would tell her all she wanted to know. Lella M'Barka had invited her guest to sit on cushions beside the divan where she lay, and the interest in her feverish eyes, which seldom left Victoria's face, was so intense as to embarrass the girl. "Thou hast wondrous hair," she said, "and when it is unbound it must be a fountain of living gold. Is it some kind of henna grown in thy country, which dyes it that beautiful colour?" Victoria told her that Nature alone was the dyer. "Thou art not yet affianced; that is well," murmured the invalid. "Our young girls have their hair tinted with henna when they are betrothed, that they may be more fair in the eyes of their husbands. But thou couldst scarcely be lovelier than thou art; for thy skin is of pearl, though there is no paint upon it, and thy lips are pink as rose petals. Yet a little messouak to make them scarlet, like coral, and kohl to give thine eyes lustre would add to thy brilliancy. Also the hand of woman reddened with henna is as a brazier of rosy flame to kindle the heart of a lover. When thou seest thy sister, thou wilt surely find that she has made herself mistress of these arts, and many more." "Canst thou tell me nothing of her, Lella M'Barka?" "Nothing, save that I have a friend who has said she was fair. And it is not many moons since I heard that she was blessed with health." "Is she happy?" Victoria was tempted to persist. "She should be happy. She is a fortunate woman. Would I could tell thee more, but I live the life of a mole in these days, and have little knowledge. Thou wilt see her with thine own eyes before long, I have no doubt. And now comes food which my women have prepared for thee. In my house, all are people of the desert, and we keep the desert customs, since my husband has been gathered to his fathers--my husband, to whose house in Algiers I came as a bride from the Sahara. Such a meal as thou wilt eat to-night, mayst thou eat often with a blessing, in the country of the sun." Fafann, who had softly left the room when the guest had been introduced, now came back, with great tinkling of khal-khal, and mnaguach, the huge earrings which hung so low as to strike the silver beads twisted round her throat. She was smiling, and pleasantly excited at the presence of a visitor whose arrival broke the tiresome monotony of an invalid's household. When she had set one of the pearly maidas in front of Victoria's seat of cushions, she held back the curtains for Hsina to enter, carrying a copper tray. This the negress placed on the maida, and uncovered a china bowl balanced in a silver stand, like a giant coffee cup of Moorish fashion. It contained hot soup, called cheurba, in which Hsina had put so much fell-fell, the red pepper loved by Arabs, that Victoria's lips were burned. But it was good, and she would not wince though the tears stung her eyes as she drank, for Lella M'Barka and the two servants were watching her eagerly. Afterwards came a kouskous of chicken and farina, which she ate with a large spoon whose bowl was of tortoiseshell, the handle of ivory tipped with coral. Then, when the girl hoped there might be nothing more, appeared tadjine, a ragout of mutton with artichokes and peas, followed by a rich preserve of melon, and many elaborate cakes iced with pink and purple sugar, and powdered with little gold sequins that had to be picked off as the cake was eaten. At last, there was thick, sweet coffee, in a cup like a little egg-shell supported in filigree gold (for no Mussulman may touch lip to metal), and at the end Fafann poured rosewater over Victoria's fingers, wiping them on a napkin of fine damask. "Now thou hast eaten and drunk, thou must allow thyself to be dressed by my women in the garments of an Arab maiden of high birth, which I have ready for thee," said Lella M'Barka, brightening with the eagerness of a little child at the prospect of dressing a beautiful new doll. "Fafann shall bring everything here, and thou shalt be told how to robe thyself afterwards. I wish to see that all is right, for to-morrow morning thou must arise while it is still dark, that we may start with the first dawn." Fafann and Hsina had forgotten their jealousies in the delight of the new play. They moved about, laughing and chattering, and were not chidden for the noise they made. From shelves behind the inlaid doors in the wall, they took down exquisite boxes of mother-o'-pearl and red tortoiseshell. Also there were small bundles wrapped in gold brocade, and tied round with bright green cord. These were all laid on a dim-coloured Kairouan rug, at the side of the divan, and the two women squatted on the floor to open them, while their mistress leaned on her thin elbow among cushions, and skins of golden jackal from the Sahara. From one box came wide trousers of white silk, like Lella M'Barka's; from another, vests of satin and velvet of pale shades embroidered with gold or silver. A fat parcel contained delicately tinted stockings and high-heeled slippers of different sizes. A second bundle contained blouses of thin silk and gauze, and in a pearl box were pretty little chechias of sequined velvet, caps so small as to fit the head closely; and besides these, there were sashes and gandourahs, and haïcks white and fleecy, woven from the softest wool. When everything was well displayed, the Bedouin and the negress sprang up, lithe as leopards, and to Victoria's surprise began to undress her. "Please let me do it myself!" she protested, but they did not listen or understand, chattering her into silence, as if they had been lively though elderly monkeys. Giggling over the hooks and buttons which were comical to them, they turned and twisted her between their hands, fumbling at neck and waist with black fingers, and brown fingers tattooed blue, until she, too, began to laugh. She laughed herself into helplessness, and encouraged by her wild merriment, and Lella M'Barka's smiles and exclamations punctuated with fits of coughing, they set to work at pulling out hairpins, and the tortoise-shell combs that kept the Roumia's red gold waves in place. At last down tumbled the thick curly locks which Stephen Knight had thought so beautiful when they flowed round her shoulders in the Dance of the Shadow. The invalid made her kneel, just as she was in her petticoat, in order to pass long, ringed fingers through the soft masses, and lift them up for the pleasure of letting them fall. When the golden veil, as Lella M'Barka called it, had been praised and admired over and over again, the order was given to braid it in two long plaits, leaving the ends to curl as they would. Then, the game of dressing the doll could begin, but first the embroidered petticoat of batiste with blue ribbons at the top of its flounce, and the simple pretty little stays had to be examined with keen interest. Nothing like these things had ever been seen by mistress or servants, except in occasional peeps through shuttered carriage windows when passing French shops: for Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab, daughter of Princes of Touggourt, was what young Arabs call "vieux turban." She was old-fashioned in her ideas, would have no European furniture or decorations, and until to-night had never consented to know a Roumia, much less receive one into her house. She had felt that she was making a great concession in granting her cousin's request, but she had forgotten her sense of condescension in entertaining an unveiled girl, a Christian, now that she saw what the girl was like. She was too old and lonely to be jealous of Victoria's beauty; and as Si Maïeddine, her favourite cousin, deigned to admire this young foreigner, Lella M'Barka took an unselfish pride in each of the American girl's charms. When she was dressed to all outward appearances precisely like the daughter of a high-born Arab family, Fafann brought a mirror framed in mother-o'-pearl, and Victoria could not help admiring herself a little. She wished half unconsciously that Stephen Knight could see her, with hair looped in two great shining braids on either side her face, under the sequined chechia of sapphire velvet; and then she was ashamed of her own vanity. Having been dressed, she was obliged to prove, before the three women would be satisfied, that she understood how each garment ought to be arranged; and later she had to try on a new gandourah, with a white burnouse such as women wear, and the haïck she had worn in coming to the house. Hsina would help her in the morning, she was told, but it would be better that she should know how to do things properly for herself, since only Fafann would be with them on the journey, and she might sometimes be busy with Lella M'Barka when Victoria was dressing. The excitement of adorning the beautiful doll had tired the invalid. The dark lines under her eyes were very blue, and the flesh of her face seemed to hang loose, making her look piteously haggard. She offered but feeble objections when her guest proposed to say good night, and after a few more compliments and blessings, Victoria was able to slip away, escorted by the negress. The room where she was to sleep was on another side of the court from that of Lella M'Barka, but Hsina took great pains to assure her that there was nothing to fear. No one could come into this court; and she--Hsina--slept near by with Fafann. To clap the hands once would be to bring one of them instantly. And Hsina would wake her before dawn. Victoria's long, narrow sleeping room had the bed across one end, in Arab fashion. It was placed in an alcove and built into the wall, with pillars in front, of gilded wood, and yellow brocaded curtains of a curious, Oriental design. At the opposite end of the room stood a large cupboard, like a buffet, beautifully inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, and along the length of the room ran shelves neatly piled with bright-coloured bed-clothing, or ferrachiyas. Above these shelves texts from the Koran were exquisitely illuminated in red, blue and gold, like a frieze; and there were tinselled pictures of relatives of the Prophet, and of Mohammed's Angel-horse, Borak. The floor was covered with soft, dark-coloured rugs; and on a square of white linen was a huge copper basin full of water, with folded towels laid beside it. The bed was not uncomfortable, but Victoria could not sleep. She did not even wish to sleep. It was too wonderful to think that to-morrow she would be on her way to Saidee. XX Before morning light, Si Maïeddine was in his cousin's house. Hsina had not yet called Victoria, but Lella M'Barka was up and dressed, ready to receive Maïeddine in the room where she had entertained the Roumia girl last night. Being a near relation, Si Maïeddine was allowed to see Lella M'Barka unveiled; and even in the pink and gold light of the hanging lamps, she was ghastly under her paint. The young man was struck with her martyred look, and pitied her; but stronger than his pity was the fear that she might fail him--if not to-day, before the journey's end. She would have to undergo a strain terrible for an invalid, and he could spare her much of this if he chose; but he would not choose, though he was fond of his cousin, and grateful in a way. To spare her would mean the risk of failure for him. Each called down salutations and peace upon the head of the other, and Lella M'Barka asked Maïeddine if he would drink coffee. He thanked her, but had already taken coffee. And she? All her strength would be needed. She must not neglect to sustain herself now that everything depended upon her health. "My health!" she echoed, with a sigh, and a gesture of something like despair. "O my cousin, if thou knewest how I suffer, how I dread what lies before me, thou wouldst in mercy change thy plans even now. Thou wouldst go the short way to the end of our journey. Think of the difference to me! A week or eight days of travel at most, instead of three weeks, or more if I falter by the way, and thou art forced to wait." Maïeddine's face hardened under her imploring eyes, but he answered with gentleness, "Thou knowest, my kind friend and cousin, that I would give my blood to save thee suffering, but it is more than my blood that thou askest now. It is my heart, for my heart is in this journey and what I hope from it, as I told thee yesterday. We discussed it all, thou and I, between us. Thou hast loved, and I made thee understand something of what I feel for this girl, whose beauty, as thou hast seen, is that of the houris in Paradise. Never have I found her like; and it may be I care more because of the obstacles which stand high as a wall between me and her. Because of the man who is her sister's husband, I must not fail in respect, or even seem to fail. I cannot take her and ride away, as I might with a maiden humbly placed, trusting to make her happy after she was mine. My winning must be done first, as is the way of the Roumis, and she will be hard to win. Already she feels that one of my race has stolen and hidden her sister; for this, in her heart, she fears and half distrusts all Arabs. A week would give me no time to capture her love, and when the journey is over it will be too late. Then, at best, I can see little of her, even if she be allowed to keep something of her European freedom. It is from this journey together--the long, long journey--that I hope everything. No pains shall be spared. No luxury shall she lack even on the hardest stretches of the way. She shall know that she owes all to my thought and care. In three weeks I can pull down that high wall between us. She will have learned to depend on me, to need me, to long for me when I am out of her sight, as the gazelle longs for a fountain of sweet water." "Poet and dreamer thou hast become, Maïeddine," said Lella M'Barka with a tired smile. "I have become a lover. That means both and more. My heart is set on success with this girl: and yesterday thou didst promise to help. In return, I offered thee a present that is like the gift of new life to a woman, the amulet my father's dead brother rubbed on the sacred Black Stone at Mecca, touched by the foot of the Prophet. I assured thee that at the end of our journey I would persuade the marabout to make the amulet as potent for good to thee as the Black Stone itself, against which thou canst never cool the fever in thy forehead. Then, when he has used his power, and thou hast pressed the amulet on thy brows, thou mayst read the destiny of men and women written between their eyes, as a sand-diviner reads fate in the sands. Thou wilt become in thine own right a marabouta, and be sure of Heaven when thou diest. This blessing the marabout will give, not for thy sake, but for mine, because I will do for him certain things which he has long desired, and so far I have never consented to undertake. Thou wilt gain greatly through keeping thy word to me. Believing in thy courage and good faith, I have made all arrangements for the journey. Not once last night did I close my eyes in sleep. There was not a moment to rest, for I had many telegrams to send, and letters to write, asking my friends along the different stages of the way, after we have left the train, to lend me relays of mules or horses. I have had to collect supplies, to think of and plan out details for which most men would have needed a week's preparation, yet I have completed all in twelve hours. I believe nothing has been forgotten, nothing neglected. And can it be that my prop will fail me at the last moment?" "No, I will not fail thee, unless soul and body part," Lella M'Barka answered. "I but hoped that thou mightest feel differently, that in pity--but I see I was wrong to ask. I will pray that the amulet, and the hope of the divine benediction of the baraka may support me to the end." "I, too, will pray, dear cousin. Be brave, and remember, the journey is to be taken, in easy stages. All the comforts I am preparing are for thee, as well as for this white rose whose beauty has stolen the heart out of my breast." "It is true. Thou art kind, or I would not love thee even as I should have loved a son, had one been given me," said the haggard woman, meekly. "Does _she_ know that there will be three weeks or more of travelling?" "No. I told her vaguely that she could hardly hope to see her sister in less than a fortnight. I feared that, at first hearing, the thought of such distances, separating her from what she has known of life, might cause her to hesitate. But she will be willing to sacrifice herself and travel less rapidly than she hoped, when she sees that thou art weak and ailing. She has a heart with room in it for the welfare of others." "Most women have. It is expected of us." Lella M'Barka sighed again, faintly. "But she is all that thou describedst to me, of beauty and sweetness. When she has been converted to the True Faith, as thy wife, nothing will be lacking to make her perfect." Hsina appeared at the door. "Thy guest, O Lella M'Barka, is having her coffee, and is eating bread with it," she announced. "In a few minutes she will be ready. Shall I fetch her down while the gracious lord honours the house with his presence, or----" "My guest is a Roumia, and it is not forbidden that she show her face to men," answered Hsina's mistress. "She will travel veiled, because, for reasons that do not concern thee, it is wiser. But she is free to appear before the Lord Maïeddine. Bring her; and remember this, when I am gone. If to a living soul outside this house thou speakest of the Roumia maiden, or even of my journey, worse things will happen to thee than tearing thy tongue out by the roots." "So thou saidst last night to me, and to all the others," the negress answered, like a sulky child. "As we are faithful, it is not necessary to say it again." Without waiting to be scolded for her impudence, as she knew she deserved, she went out, to return five minutes later with Victoria. Maïeddine's eyes lighted when he saw the girl in Arab dress. It seemed to him that she was far more beautiful, because, like all Arabs, he detested the severe cut of a European woman's gowns. He loved bright colours and voluptuous outlines. It was only beginning to be daylight when they left the house and went out to the carriage in which Victoria had been driven the night before. She and Lella M'Barka were both veiled, though there was no eye to see them. Hsina and Fafann took out several bundles, wrapped in dark red woollen haïcks, and the Negro servants carried two curious trunks of wood painted bright green, with coloured flowers and scrolls of gold upon them, and shining, flat covers of brass. In these was contained the luggage from the house; Maïeddine's had already gone to the railway station. He wore a plain, dark blue burnous, with the hood up, and his chin and mouth were covered by the lower folds of the small veil which fell from his turban, as if he were riding in the desert against a wind storm. It would have been impossible even for a friend to recognize him, and the two women in their white veils were like all native women of wealth and breeding in Algiers. Hsina was crying, and Fafann, who expected to go with her mistress, was insufferably important. Victoria felt that she was living in a fairy story, and the wearing of the veil excited and amused her. She was happy, and looked forward to the journey itself as well as to the journey's end. There were few people in the railway station, and Victoria saw no European travellers. Maïeddine had taken the tickets already, but he did not tell her the name of the place to which they were going by rail. She would have liked to ask, but as neither Si Maïeddine nor Lella M'Barka encouraged questions, she reminded herself that she could easily read the names of the stations as they passed. Soon the train came in, and Maïeddine put them into a first-class compartment, which was labelled "reserved," though all other Arabs were going second or third. Fafann arranged cushions and haïcks for Lella M'Barka; and at six o'clock a feeble, sulky-sounding trumpet blew, signalling the train to move out of the station. Victoria was not sleepy, though she had lain awake thinking excitedly all night; but Lella M'Barka bade her rest, as the day would be tiring. No one talked, and presently Fafann began to snore. The girl's eyes met Si Maïeddine's, and they smiled at each other. This made him seem to her more like an ordinary human being than he had seemed before. After a while, she dropped into a doze, and was surprised when she waked up, to find that it was nearly nine o'clock. Fafann had roused her by moving about, collecting bundles. Soon they would be "there." And as the train slowed down, Victoria saw that "there" was Bouira. This place was the destination of a number of Arab travellers, but the instant they were out of the train, these passengers appeared to melt away unobtrusively. Only one carriage was waiting, and that was for Si Maïeddine and his party. It was a very different carriage from Lella M'Barka's, in Algiers; a vehicle for the country, Victoria thought it not unlike old-fashioned chaises in which farmers' families sometimes drove to Potterston, to church. It had side and back curtains of canvas, which were fastened down, and an Arab driver stood by the heads of two strong black mules. "This carriage belongs to a friend of mine, a Caïd," Maïeddine explained to Victoria. "He has lent it to me, with his driver and mules, to use as long as I wish. But we shall have to change the mules often, before we begin at last to travel in a different way." "How quickly thou hast arranged everything," exclaimed the girl. This was a welcome sign of appreciation, and Maïeddine was pleased. "I sent the Caïd a telegram," he said. "And there were many more telegrams to other places, far ahead. That is one good thing which the French have brought to our country. The telegraph goes to the most remote places in the Sahara. By and by, thou wilt see the poles striding away over desert dunes." "By and by! Dost thou mean to-day?" asked Victoria. "No, it will be many days before thou seest the great dunes. But thou wilt see them in the end, and I think thou wilt love them as I do. Meanwhile, there will be other things of interest. I shall not let thee tire of the way, though it be long." He helped them into the carriage, the invalid first, then Victoria, and got in after them; Fafann, muffled in her veil, sitting on the seat beside the driver. "By this time Mr. Knight has my letter, and has read it," the girl said to herself. "Oh, I do hope he won't be disgusted, and think me ungrateful. How glad I shall be when the day comes for me to explain." As it happened, the letter was in Maïeddine's thoughts at the same moment. It occurred to him, too, that it would have been read by now. He knew to whom it had been written, for he had got a friend of his to bring him a list of passengers on board the _Charles Quex_ on her last trip from Marseilles to Algiers. Also, he had learned at whose house Stephen Knight was staying. Maïeddine would gladly have forgotten to post the letter, and could have done so without hurting his conscience. But he had thought it might be better for Knight to know that Miss Ray was starting on a journey, and that there was no hope of hearing from her for a fortnight. Victoria had been ready to show him the letter, therefore she had not written any forbidden details; and Knight would probably feel that she must be left to manage her own affairs in her own way. No doubt he would be curious, and ask questions at the Hotel de la Kasbah, but Maïeddine believed that he had made it impossible for Europeans to find out anything there, or elsewhere. He knew that men of Western countries could be interested in a girl without being actually in love with her; and though it was almost impossible to imagine a man, even a European, so cold as not to fall in love with Victoria at first sight, he hoped that Knight was blind enough not to appreciate her, or that his affections were otherwise engaged. After all, the two had been strangers when they came on the boat, or had met only once before, therefore the Englishman had no right to take steps unauthorized by the girl. Altogether, Maïeddine thought he had reason to be satisfied with the present, and to hope in the future. XXI Stephen and Nevill Caird returned from Tlemcen to Algiers, hoping for news of Victoria, but there was none; and after two days they left for Grand Kabylia. The prophetic birds at Mansourah had flown in a south-easterly direction, but when Stephen and Nevill started in search of Josette's maid Mouni, they turned full east, their faces looking towards the dark heights of Kabylia. It was not Victoria they hoped to find there, however, or Saidee her sister, but only a hint as to their next move. Nevertheless, Nevill was superstitious about the birds, and said to Stephen when the car had run them out of Algiers, past Maison Carré, into open country: "Isn't it queer how the birds follow us? I never saw so many before. They're always with us. It's just as if they'd passed on word, the way chupatties are passed on in India, eh? Or maybe Josette has told her protegées to look after us." And Stephen smiled, for Nevill's superstitions were engaging, rather than repulsive; and his quaintnesses were endearing him more and more to the man who had just taken up the dropped thread of friendship after eight or nine years. What an odd fellow Nevill was! Stephen thought, indulgently. No wonder he was worshipped by his servants, and even his chauffeur. No wonder Lady MacGregor adored her nephew, though treating him as if he were a little boy! One of Nevill's idiosyncrasies, after arranging everything to fit a certain plan, was to rush off at the last minute and do something entirely different. Last night--the night before starting for Grand Kabylia--he had begged Stephen to be ready by eight, at which time the car was ordered. At nine--having sat up till three o'clock writing letters, and then having visited a lately imported gazelle in its quarters--Nevill was still in his bath. At length he arrived on the scene, beaming, with a sulky chameleon in his pocket, and flew about giving last directions, until he suddenly discovered that there was a violent hurry, whereupon he began to be boyishly peevish with the chauffeur for not getting off an hour ago. No sooner had the car started, however, than he fell into a serious mood, telling Stephen of many things which he had thought out in the night--things which might be helpful in finding Victoria. He had been lying awake, it seemed, brooding on this subject, and it had occurred to him that, if Mouni should prove a disappointment, they might later discover something really useful by going to the annual ball at the Governor's palace. This festivity had been put off, on account of illness in the chief official's family; but it would take place in a fortnight or so now. All the great Aghas and Caïds of the south would be there, and as Nevill knew many of them, he might be able to get definite information concerning Ben Halim. As for Saidee--to hear of Ben Halim was to hear of her. And then it was, in the midst of describing the ball, and the important men who would attend, that Nevill suddenly broke off to be superstitious about birds. It was true that the birds were everywhere! little greenish birds flitting among the trees; larger grey-brown birds flying low; fairy-like blue and yellow birds that circled round the car as it ran east towards the far, looming mountains of the Djurdjura; larks that spouted music like a fountain of jewels as they soared into the quivering blue; and great, stately storks, sitting in their nests on tall trees or tops of poles, silhouetted against the sky as they gazed indifferently down at the automobile. "Josette would tell us it's splendid luck to see storks on their nests," said Nevill. "Arabs think they bring good fortune to places. That's why people cut off the tops of the trees and make nests for them, so they can bless the neighbourhood and do good to the crops. Storks have no such menial work here as bringing babies. Arab babies have to come as best they can--sent into the world anyhow; for storks are men who didn't do their religious duties in the most approved style, so they have to revisit the world next time in the form of beneficent birds." But Nevill did not want to answer questions about storks and their habits. He had tired of them in a moment, and was passionately interested in mules. "There ought to be an epic written about the mules of North Africa!" he exclaimed. "I tell you, it's a great subject. Look at those poor brave chaps struggling to pull carts piled up with casks of beastly Algerian wine, through that sea of mud, which probably goes all the way through to China. Aren't they splendid? Wait till you've been in this country as long as I have, and you'll respect mules as I do, from army mules down to the lowest dregs of the mule kingdom. I don't ask you to love them--and neither do they. But how they work here in Africa--and never a groan! They go on till they drop. And I don't believe half of them ever get anything to eat. Some day I'm going to start a Rest Farm for tired mules. I shall pay well for them. A man I know did write a pæan of praise for mules. I believe I'll have it translated into Arabic, and handed about as a leaflet. These natives are good to their horses, because they believe they have souls, but they treat their mules like the dirt under their feet." And Nevill began quoting here and there a verse or a line he remembered of the "mule music," chanting in time to the throbbing of the motor. "Key A minor, measure common, One and two and three and four and-- Every hoof-beat half a second Every hoof-beat linked with heart-beat, Every heart-beat nearer bursting. Andantino sostenuto: In the downpour or the dryness, Hottest summer, coldest winter; Sick and sore and old and feeble, Hourly, hourly; daily, daily, From the sunrise to the setting; From the setting to the sunrise Scarce a break in all the circle For the rough and scanty eating, For the scant and muddy drinking, For the fitful, fearful resting, For the master haunted-sleeping. Dreams in dark of God's far heaven Tempo primo; tempo sempre." And so, through pools of wild flowers and the blood of poppies, their road led to wild mountain scenery, then into the embrace of the Djurdjura mountains themselves--evil, snow-splashed, sterile-seeming mountains, until the car had passed the fortified town of Tizi Ouzou, an overgrown village, whose name Stephen thought like a drunken term of endearment. It was market-day there, and the long street was so full of Kabyles dressed apparently in low-necked woollen bags, of soldiers in uniform, of bold-eyed, scantily-clad children, and of dyed sheep and goats, that the car had to pass at a walk. Nevill bought a good deal of Kabyle jewellery, necklaces and long earrings, or boxes enamelled in crude greens and reds, blues and yellows. Not that he had not already more than he knew what to do with; but he could not resist the handsome unveiled girls, the wretched old women, or pretty, half-naked children who offered the work of the neighbouring hill villages, or family heirlooms. Sometimes he saw eyes which made him think of Josette's; but then, all beautiful things that he saw reminded him of her. She was an obsession. But, for a wonder, he had taken Stephen's advice in Tlemcen and had not proposed again. He was still marvelling at his own strength of mind, and asking himself if, after all, he had been wise. After Tizi Ouzou the mountains were no longer sterile-seeming. The road coiled up and up snakily, between rows of leering cactus; and far below the densely wooded heights lay lovely plains through which a great river wandered. There was a homely smell of mint, and the country did not look to Stephen like the Africa he had imagined. All the hill-slopes were green with the bright green of fig trees and almonds, even at heights so great that the car wallowed among clouds. This steep road was the road to Fort National--the "thorn in the eye of Kabylia," which pierces so deeply that Kabylia may writhe, but revolt no more. Already it was almost as if the car had brought them into another world. The men who occasionally emerged from the woolly white blankets of the clouds, were men of a very different type from the mild Kabyles of the plains they had met trooping along towards Algiers in search of work. These were brave, upstanding men, worthy of their fathers who revolted against French rule and could not be conquered until that thorn, Fort National, was planted deeply in heart and eye. Some were fair, and even red-haired, which would have surprised Stephen if he had not heard from Nevill that in old days the Christian slaves used to escape from Algiers and seek refuge in Kabylia, where they were treated as free men, and no questions were asked. Without Fort National, it seemed to Stephen that this strange Berber people would never have been forced to yield; for looking down from mountain heights as the motor sped on, it was as if he looked into a vast and intricate maze of valleys, and on each curiously pointed peak clung a Kabyle village that seemed to be inlaid in the rock like separate bits of scarlet enamel. It was the low house-roofs which gave this effect, for unlike the Arabs, whom the ancient Berber lords of the soil regard with scorn, the Kabyles build their dwellings of stone, roofed with red tiles. This was a wild, tormented world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud, which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range, billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship's steep side. Such an extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a Japanese fan; and it struck him that the scene actually did resemble quaint prints picturing half-real, half-imaginary scenes in old Japan. "What a country for war! What a country for defence!" he said to himself, as Nevill's yellow car sped along the levels of narrow ridges that gave, on either hand, vertical views far down to fertile valleys, rushed into clouds of weeping rain, or out into regions of sunlight and rainbows. It was three o'clock when they reached Michélet, but they had not stopped for luncheon, as both were in haste to find Mouni: and Mouni's village was just beyond Michélet. Since Fort National, they had been in the heart of Grand Kabylia; and Michélet was even more characteristic of this strange mountain country, so different from transplanted Arabia below. Not an Arab lived here, in the long, straggling town, built on the crest of a high ridge. Not a minaret tower pointed skyward. The Kabyle place of worship had a roof of little more height or importance than those that clustered round it. The men were in striped brown gandourahs of camel's hair; the lovely unveiled women were wrapped in woollen foutahs dyed red or yellow, blue or purple, and from their little ears heavy rings dangled. The blue tattoo marks on their brown cheeks and foreheads, which in forgotten times had been Christian crosses, gave great value to their enormous, kohl-encircled eyes; and their teeth were very white as they smiled boldly, yet proudly, at Stephen and Nevill. There was a flight of steps to mount from the car to the hotel, and as the two men climbed the stairs they turned to look, across a profound chasm, to the immense mass of the Djurdjura opposite Michélet's thin ledge. From their point of view, it was like the Jungfrau, as Stephen had seen it from Mürren, on one of his few trips to Switzerland. Somehow, those little conventional potterings of his seemed pitiable now, they had been so easy to do, so exactly what other people did. It was long past ordinary luncheon time, and hunger constrained the two men to eat before starting out to find the village where Mouni and her people lived. It was so small a hamlet, that Nevill, who knew Kabylia well, had never heard of it until Josette Soubise wrote the name for him on one of her own cards. The landlord of the hotel at Michélet gave rapid and fluent directions how to go, saying that the distance was two miles, but as the way was a steep mountain path, les messieurs must go on foot. Immediately after lunching they started, armed with a present for the bride; a watch encrusted with tiny brilliants, which, following Josette's advice, they had chosen as the one thing of all others calculated to win the Kabyle girl's heart. "It will be like a fairy dream to her to have a watch of her own," Josette had said. "Her friends will be dying of envy, and she will enjoy that. Oh, she will search her soul and tell you everything she knows, if you but give her a watch!" For a little way the friends walked along the wild and beautiful road, which from Michélet plunges down the mountains toward Bougie and the sea; but soon they came to the narrow, ill-defined footpath described by the landlord. It led straight up a steep shoulder of rock which at its highest part became a ledge; and when they had climbed to the top, at a distance they could see a cluster of red roofs apparently falling down a precipice, at the far end. Here and there were patches of snow, white as fallen lily-petals on the pansy-coloured earth. Looking down was like looking from a high wave upon a vast sea of other waves, each wave carrying on its apex a few bits of broken red mosaic, which were Kabyle roofs; and the pale sky was streaked with ragged violet clouds exactly like the sky and clouds painted on screens by Japanese artists. They met not a soul as they walked, but while the village was still far away and unreal, the bark of guns, fired quickly one after the other, jarred their ears, and the mountain wind brought a crying of raïtas, African clarionettes, and the dull, yet fierce beat of tom-toms. "Now I know why we've met no one," said Nevill. "The wedding feast's still on, and everybody who is anybody at Yacoua, is there. You know, if you're an Arab, or even a Kabyle, it takes you a week to be married properly, and you have high jinks every day: music and dancing and eating, and if you've money enough, above all you make the powder speak. Mouni's people are doing her well. What a good thing we've got the watch! Even with Josette's introduction we mightn't have been able to come near the bride, unless we had something to offer worth her having." The mountain village of Yacoua had no suburbs, no outlying houses. The one-story mud huts with their pointed red roofs, utterly unlike Arab dwellings, were huddled together, with only enough distance between for a man and a mule or a donkey to pass. The best stood in pairs, with a walled yard between; and as Stephen and Nevill searched anxiously for some one to point out the home of Mouni, from over a wall which seemed to be running down the mountain-side, came a white puff of smoke and a strident bang, then more, one after the other. Again the wailing of the raïta began, and there was no longer any need to ask the way. "That's where the party is--in that yard," said Nevill, beginning to be excited. "Now, what sort of reception will they give us? That's the next question." "Can't we tell, the first thing, that we've come from Algiers with a present for the bride?" suggested Stephen. "We can if they understand Arabic," Nevill answered. "But the Kabyle lingo's quite different--Berber, or something racy of the soil. I ought to have brought Mohammed to interpret." So steeply did the yard between the low houses run downhill, that, standing at the top of a worn path like a seam in some old garment, the two Europeans could look over the mud wall. Squalid as were the mud huts and the cattle-yard connecting them, the picture framed in the square enclosure blazed with colour. It was barbaric, and beautiful in its savagery. Squatting on the ground, with the last rank against the house wall, were several rows of women, all unveiled, their uncovered arms jewelled to the elbows, embracing their knees. The afternoon sunlight shone on their ceremonial finery, setting fire to the red, blue and green enamel of their necklaces, their huge hoop earrings and the jewelled silver chains pinned to their scarlet or yellow head-wrappings, struck out strange gleams from the flat, round brooches which fastened their gaily striped robes on their shoulders, and turned their great dark eyes into brown topazes. Twenty or thirty men, dressed in their best burnouses, draped over new gandourahs, their heads swathed in clean white muslin turbans, sat on the opposite side of the court, watching the "powder play" furnished by two tall, handsome boys, who handled with delicate grace and skill old-fashioned, long-muzzled guns inlaid with coral and silver, heirlooms perhaps, and of some value even to antiquaries. While the powder spoke, nobody had a thought for anything else. All eyes were upon the boys with the guns, only travelling upward in ecstasy to watch the puffs of smoke that belched out round and white as fat snowballs. Then, when the music burst forth again, and a splendidly handsome young Kabyle woman ran forward to begin the wild dance of the body and of the hands--dear to the mountain men as to the nomads of the desert--every one was at first absorbed in admiration of her movements. But suddenly a child (one of a dozen in a row in front of all the women) tired of the show, less amusing to him than the powder play, and looking up, saw the two Roumis on the hill behind the wall. He nudged his neighbour, and the neighbour, who happened to be a little girl, followed with her eyes the upward nod of his head. So the news went round that strangers had come uninvited to the wedding-feast, and men began to frown and women to whisper, while the dancer lost interest in her own tinklings and genuflections. It was time for the intruders to make it known that business of some sort, not idle curiosity, had brought them on the scene, and Nevill stepped forward, holding out the visiting card given him by Josette, and the crimson velvet case containing the watch which Stephen had bought in Algiers. XXII An elderly man, with a reddish beard, got up from the row of men grouped behind the musicians, and muttered to one of the youths who had been making the powder speak. They argued for a moment, and then the boy, handing his gun to the elder man, walked with dignity to a closed gate, large enough to let in the goats and donkeys pertaining to the two houses. This gate he opened half-way, standing in the aperture and looking up sullenly as the Roumis came down the narrow, slippery track which led to it. "Cebah el-kheir, ia Sidi--Good day, sir," said Nevill, agreeably, in his best Arabic. "Ta' rafi el-a' riya?--Do you speak Arabic?" The young man bowed, not yet conciliated. "Ach men sebba jit lhena, ia Sidi?--Why have you come here, sir?" he asked suspiciously, in very guttural Arabic. Relieved to find that they would have no great difficulty in understanding each other, Nevill plunged into explanations, pointing to Josette's card. They had come recommended by the malema at Tlemcen. They brought good wishes and a present to the bride of the village, the virtuous and beautiful Mouni, from whom they would gladly receive information concerning a European lady. Was this the house of her father? Would they be permitted to speak with her, and give this little watch from Algiers? Nevill made his climax by opening the velvet case, and the brown eyes of the Kabyle boy flashed with uncontrollable admiration, though his face remained immobile. He answered that this was indeed the house of Mouni's father, and he himself was the brother of Mouni. This was the last day of her wedding-feast, and in an hour she would go to the home of her husband. The consent of the latter, as well as of her father, must be asked before strangers could hope to speak with her. Nevertheless, the Roumis were welcome to enter the yard and watch the entertainment while Mouni's brother consulted with those most concerned in this business. The boy stood aside, inviting them to pass through the gate, and the Englishmen availed themselves of his courtesy, waiting just inside until the red-bearded man came forward. He and his son consulted together, and then a dark young man in a white burnous was called to join the conclave. He was a handsome fellow, with a haughtily intelligent face, and an air of breeding superior to the others. "This is my sister's husband. He too speaks Arabic, but my father not so much." The boy introduced his brother-in-law. "Messaud-ben-Arzen is the son of our Caïd," (he spoke proudly). "Will you tell him and my father what your business is with Mouni?" Nevill broke into more explanations, and evidently they were satisfactory, for, while the dancing and the powder play were stopped, and the squatting ranks of guests stared silently, the two Roumis were conducted into the house. It was larger than most of the houses in the village, but apart from the stable of the animals through which the visitors passed, there was but one room, long and narrow, lighted by two small windows. The darkest corner was the bedroom, which had a platform of stone on which rugs were spread, and there was a lower mound of dried mud, roughly curtained off from the rest with two or three red and blue foutahs suspended on ropes made of twisted alfa, or dried grass. Toward the farther end, a hole in the floor was the family cooking-place, and behind it an elevation of beaten earth made a wide shelf for a long row of jars shaped like the Roman amphoræ of two thousand years ago. Pegs driven into one of the walls were hung with gandourahs and a foutah or two; and of furniture, worthy of that name in the eyes of Europeans, there was none. At the bedroom end of the room, several women were gathered round a central object of interest, and though the light was dim after the vivid sunshine outside, the visitors guessed that the object of interest was the bride. Decorously they paused near the door, while a great deal of arguing went on, in which the shriller voices of women mingled with the guttural tones of the men. Nevill could catch no word, for they were talking their own Kabyle tongue which had come down from their forefathers the Berbers, lords of the land long years before the Arabs drove them into the high mountains. But at last the group opened, and a young woman stepped out with half-shy eagerness. She was loaded with jewels, and her foutah was barbarically splendid in colour, but she was almost as fair as her father; a slim creature with grey eyes, and brown curly hair that showed under her orange foulard. Proud of her French, she began talking in that language, welcoming the guests, telling them how glad she was to see friends of her dear Mademoiselle Soubise. But soon she must be gone to her husband's house, and already the dark young bridegroom, son of the Caïd, was growing impatient. There was no time to be lost, if they were to learn anything of Ben Halim's wife. As a preface to what they wished to ask, Nevill made a presentation speech, placing the velvet watch-case in Mouni's hand, and she opened it with a kind of moan expressing intense rapture. Never had she seen anything so beautiful, and she would cheerfully have recalled every phase of her career from earliest babyhood, if by doing so she could have pleased the givers. "But yes," she answered to Nevill's first questions, "the beautiful lady whom I served was the wife of Sidi Cassim ben Halim. At first it was in Algiers that I lived with her, but soon we left, and went to the country, far, oh, very far away, going towards the south. The house was like a large farmhouse, and to me as a child--for I was but a child--it seemed fine and grand. Yet my lady was not pleased. She found it rough, and different from any place to which she was used. Poor, beautiful lady! She was not happy there. She cried a great deal, and each day I thought she grew paler than the day before." Mouni spoke in French, hesitating now and then for a word, or putting in two or three in Arabic, before she stopped to think, as she grew interested in her subject. Stephen understood almost all she said, and was too impatient to leave the catechizing to Nevill. "Whereabouts was this farmhouse?" he asked. "Can't you tell us how to find it?" Mouni searched her memory. "I was not yet thirteen," she said. "It is nine years since I left that place; and I travelled in a shut-up carriage, with a cousin, older than I, who had been already in the house of the lady when I came. She told her mistress of me, and I was sent for, because I was quick and lively in my ways, and white of face, almost as white as the beautiful lady herself. My work was to wait on the mistress, and help my cousin, who was her maid. Yamina--that was my cousin's name--could have told you more about the place in the country than I, for she was even then a woman. But she died a few months after we both left the beautiful lady. We left because the master thought my cousin carried a letter for her mistress, which he did not wish sent; and he gave orders that we should no longer live under his roof." "Surely you can remember where you went, and how you went, on leaving the farmhouse?" Stephen persisted. "Oh yes, we went back to Algiers. But it was a long distance, and took us many days, because we had only a little money, and Yamina would not spend it in buying tickets for the diligence, all the way. We walked many miles, and only took a diligence when I cried, and was too tired to move a step farther. At night we drove sometimes, I remember, and often we rested under the tents of nomads who were kind to us. "While I was with the lady, I never went outside the great courtyard. It is not strange that now, after all these years, I cannot tell you more clearly where the house was. But it was a great white house, on a hill, and round it was a high wall, with towers that overlooked the country beneath. And in those towers, which were on either side the big, wide gate, were little windows through which men could spy, or even shoot if they chose." "Did you never hear the name of any town that was near?" Stephen went on. "I do not think there was a town near; yet there was a village not far off to the south. I saw it from the hill-top, both as I went in at the gate with my cousin, and when, months later, I was sent away with her. We did not pass through it, because our road was to and from the north; and I do not even know the name of the village. But there was a cemetery outside it, where some of the master's ancestors and relations were buried. I heard my lady speak of it one day, when she cried because she feared to die and be laid there without ever again seeing her own country and her own people. Oh, and once I heard Yamina talk with another servant about an oasis called Bou-Saada. It was not near, yet I think it could be reached by diligence in a long day." "Good!" broke in Nevill. "There's our first real clue! Bou-Saada I know well. When people who come and visit me want a glimpse of the desert in a hurry, Bou-Saada is where I take them. One motors there from Algiers in seven or eight hours--through mountains at first, then on the fringe of the desert; but it's true, as Mouni says, going by diligence, and walking now and then, it would be a journey of days. Her description of the house on the hill, looking down over a village and cemetery, will be a big help. And Ben Halim's name is sure to be known in the country round, if he ever lived there." "He may have been gone for years," said Stephen. "And if there's a conspiracy of silence in Algiers, why not elsewhere?" "Well, at least we've got a clue, and will follow it up for all we know. By Jove, this is giving me a new interest in life!" And Nevill rubbed his hands in a boyish way he had. "Tell us what the beautiful lady was like," he went on to Mouni. "Her skin was like the snow on our mountain-tops when the sunrise paints the white with rose," answered Mouni. "Her hair was redder than the red of henna, and when it was unfastened it hung down below her waist. Her eyes were dark as a night without moon, and her teeth were little, little pearls. Yet for all her beauty she was not happy. She wasted the flower of her youth in sadness, and though the master was noble, and splendid as the sun to look upon, I think she had no love to give him, perhaps because he was grave and seldom smiled, or because she was a Roumia and could not suit herself to the ways of true believers." "Did she keep to her own religion?" asked Stephen. "That I cannot tell. I was too young to understand. She never talked of such things before me, but she kept to none of our customs, that I know. In the three months I served her, never did she leave the house, not even to visit the cemetery on a Friday, as perhaps the master would have allowed her to do, if she had wished." "Do you remember if she spoke of a sister?" "She had a photograph of a little girl, whose picture looked like herself. Once she told me it was her sister, but the next day the photograph was gone from its place, and I never saw it again. Yamina thought the master was jealous, because our lady looked at it a great deal." "Was there any other lady in that house," Nevill ventured, "or was yours the master's only wife?" "There was no other lady at that time," Mouni replied promptly. "So far, so good," said Nevill. "Well, Legs, I don't think there's any doubt we've got hold of the right end of the stick now. Mouni's beautiful lady and Miss Ray's sister Saidee are certainly one and the same. Ho for the white farmhouse on the hill!" "Must we go back to Algiers, or can we get to Bou-Saada from here?" Stephen asked. Nevill laughed. "You are in a hurry! Oh, we can get there from here all right. Would you like to start now?" Stephen's face reddened. "Why not, if we've found out all we can from this girl?" He tried to speak indifferently. Nevill laughed again. "Very well. There's nothing left then, except to say good-bye to the fair bride and her relations." He had expected to get back to Algiers that night, slipping away from the high passes of Grand Kabylia before dusk, and reaching home late, by lamplight. But now the plan was changed. They were not to see Algiers again until Stephen had made acquaintance with the desert. By setting off at once, they might arrive at Bou-Saada some time in the dark hours; and Nevill upset his old arrangements with good grace. Why should he mind? he asked, when Stephen apologized shame-facedly for his impatience. Bou-Saada was as good a place as any, except Tlemcen, and this adventure would give him an excuse for a letter, even two letters, to Josette Soubise. She would want to hear about Mouni's wedding, and the stately Kabyle home which they had visited. Besides she would be curious to know whether they found the white farmhouse on the hill, and if so, what they learned there of the beautiful lady and her mysterious fate. Oh yes, it would certainly mean two letters at least: one from Bou-Saada, one after the search for the farmhouse; and Nevill thought himself in luck, for he was not allowed to write often to Josette. After Michélet the road, a mere shelf projecting along a precipice, slants upward on its way to the Col de Tirouda, sharp as a knife aimed at the heart of the mountains. From far below clouds boil up as if the valleys smoked after a destroying fire, and through flying mists flush the ruddy earth, turning the white film to pinkish gauze. Crimson and purple stones shine like uncut jewels, and cascades of yellow gorse, under red-flowering trees, pour down over low-growing white flowers, which embroider the rose-coloured rocks. Then, suddenly, gone is the green Kabyle mountain-world, gone like a dream the tangle of ridges and chasms, the bright tapestry of fig trees and silver olives, dark karoubias (the wild locusts of John the Baptist) and climbing roses. Rough, coarse grass has eaten up the flowers, or winds sweeping down from the Col have killed them. Only a few stunted trees bend grotesquely to peer over the sheer sides of shadowed gorges as the road strains up and up, twisting like a scar left by a whip-lash, on the naked brown shoulders of a slave. So at last it flings a loop over the Col de Tirouda. Then, round a corner the wand of an invisible magician waves: darkness and winter cold become summer warmth and light. This light was the level golden glory of late afternoon when Stephen saw it from Nevill's car; and so green were the wide stretching meadows and shining rivers far below, that he seemed to be looking at them through an emerald, as Nero used to gaze at his gardens in Rome. Down the motor plunged towards the light, threading back and forth a network of zig-zags, until long before sunset they were in the warm lowlands, racing towards Bordj-bou Arreredj and Msila. Beyond Msila, they would follow the desert track which would bring them by and by to the oasis town of Bou-Saada. If Stephen had been a tourist, guide-book in hand, he would have delighted in the stony road among the mountains between Bordj-bou Arreredj and Msila; but it was the future, not the past, which held his thoughts to-day, and he had no more than a passing glance for ruined mosques and palaces. It was only after nightfall, far beyond the town of Msila, far beyond the vast plain of the Hodna, that his first dim glimpse of the desert thrilled him out of self-absorption. Even under the stars which crusted a moonless sky, the vast stretches of billowing sand glimmered faintly golden as a phosphorescent sea. And among the dimly gleaming waves of that endless waste the motor tossed, rocking on the rough track like a small boat in mid-ocean. Nowhere was there any sound except the throbbing of their machinery, and a fairy fiddling of unseen crickets, which seemed to make the silence more intense, under the great sparkling dome that hung over the gold. "Now I am in the place where she wished to be: the golden silence," Stephen said to himself. And he found himself listening, as if for the call Victoria had promised to give if she needed him. XXIII On the top of a pale golden hill, partly sand, partly rock, rises a white wall with square, squat towers which look north and south, east and west. The wall and the towers together are like an ivory crown set on the hill's brow, and from a distance the effect is very barbaric, very impressive, for all the country round about is wild and desolate. Along the southern horizon the desert goes billowing in waves of gold, and rose, and violet, that fade into the fainter violet of the sky; and nearer there are the strange little mountains which guard the oasis of Bou-Saada, like a wall reared to hide a treasure from some dreaded enemy; and even the sand is heaped in fantastic shapes, resembling a troop of tawny beasts crouched to drink from deep pools of purple shadow. Northward, the crumpled waste rolls away like prairie land or ocean, faint green over yellow brown, as if grass seed had been sprinkled sparsely on a stormy sea and by some miracle had sprouted. And in brown wastes, bright emerald patches gleam, vivid and fierce as serpents' eyes, ringed round with silver. Far away to the east floats the mirage of a lake, calm as a blue lagoon. Westward, where desert merges into sky, are high tablelands, and flat-topped mountains with carved sides, desert architecture, such as might have suggested Egyptian temples and colossal sphinxes. Along the rough desert track beneath the hill, where bald stones break through sandy earth, camels come and go, passing from south to north, from north to south, marching slowly with rhythmic gait, as if to the sound of music which only they can hear, glancing from side to side with unutterable superciliousness, looking wistfully here and there at some miniature oasis thrown like a dark prayer-carpet on the yellow sand. Two or three in a band they go, led by desert men in blowing white, or again in a long train of twelve or twenty, their legs a moving lattice, their heart-shaped feet making a soft, swishing "pad-pad," on the hard road. The little windows of the squat, domed towers on the hill are like eyes that spy upon this road,--small, dark and secret eyes, very weary of seeing nothing better than camels since old days when there were razzias, and wars, something worth shutting stout gates upon. When, after three days of travelling, Victoria came southward along this road, and looked between the flapping carriage curtains at the white wall that crowned the dull gold hill, her heart beat fast, for the thought of the golden silence sprang to her mind. The gold did not burn with the fierce orange flames she had seen in her dreams--it was a bleached and faded gold, melancholy and almost sinister in colour; yet it would pass for gold; and a great silence brooded where prairie blended with desert. She asked no questions of Maïeddine, for that was a rule she had laid upon herself; but when the carriage turned out of the rough road it had followed so long, and the horses began to climb a stony track which wound up the yellow hill to the white towers, she could hardly breathe, for the throbbing in her breast. Always she had only had to shut her eyes to see Saidee, standing on a high white place, gazing westward through a haze of gold. What if this were the high white place? What if already Si Maïeddine was bringing her to Saidee? They had been only three days on the way so far, it was true, and she had been told that the journey would be very, very long. Still, Arabs were subtle, and Si Maïeddine might have wanted to test her courage. Looking back upon those long hours, now, towards evening of the third day, it seemed to Victoria that she had been travelling for a week in the swaying, curtained carriage, with the slow-trotting mules. Just at first, there had been some fine scenery to hold her interest; far-off mountains of grim shapes, dark as iron, and spotted with snow as a leper is spotted with scales. Then had come low hills, following the mountains (nameless to her, because Maïeddine had not cared to name them), and blue lakes of iris flowing over wide plains. But by and by the plains flattened to dullness; a hot wind ceaselessly flapped the canvas curtains, and Lella M'Barka sighed and moaned with the fatigue of constant motion. There was nothing but plain, endless plain, and Victoria had been glad, for her own sake as well as the invalid's, when night followed the first day. They had stopped on the outskirts of a large town, partly French, partly Arab, passing through and on to the house of a caïd who was a friend of Si Maïeddine's. It was a primitively simple house, even humble, it seemed to the girl, who had as yet no conception of the bareness and lack of comfort--according to Western ideas--of Arab country-houses. Nevertheless, when, after another tedious day, they rested under the roof of a village adel, an official below a caïd, the first house seemed luxurious in contrast. During this last, third day, Victoria had been eager and excited, because of the desert, through one gate of which they had entered. She felt that once in the desert she was so close to Saidee in spirit that they might almost hear the beating of each other's hearts, but she had not expected to be near her sister in body for many such days to come: and the wave of joy that surged over her soul as the horses turned up the golden hill towards the white towers, was suffocating in its force. The nearer they came, the less impressive seemed the building. After all, it was not the great Arab stronghold it had looked from far away, but a fortified farmhouse a century old, at most. Climbing the hill, too, Victoria saw that the golden colour was partly due to a monstrous swarm of ochre-hued locusts, large as young canary birds, which had settled, thick as yellow snow, over the ground. They were resting after a long flight, and there were millions and millions of them, covering the earth in every direction as far as the eye could reach. Only a few were on the wing, but as the carriage stopped before the closed gates, fat yellow bodies came blundering against the canvas curtains, or fell plumply against the blinkers over the mules' eyes. Si Maïeddine got down from the carriage, and shouted, with a peculiar call. There was no answering sound, but after a wait of two or three minutes the double gates of thick, greyish palm-wood were pulled open from inside, with a loud creak. For a moment the brown face of an old man, wrinkled as a monkey's, looked out between the gates, which he held ajar; then, with a guttural cry, he threw both as far back as he could, and rushing out, bent his white turban over Maïeddine's hand. He kissed the Sidi's shoulder, and a fold of his burnous, half kneeling, and chattering Arabic, only a word of which Victoria could catch here and there. As he chattered, other men came running out, some of them Negroes, all very dark, and they vied with one another in humble kissing of the master's person, at any spot convenient to their lips. Politely, though not too eagerly, he made the gracious return of seeming to kiss the back of his own hand, or his fingers, where they had been touched by the welcoming mouths, but in reality he kissed air. With a gesture, he stopped the salutations at last, and asked for the Caïd, to whom, he said, he had written, sending his letter by the diligence. Then there were passionate jabberings of regret. The Caïd, was away, had been away for days, fighting the locusts on his other farm, west of Aumale, where there was grain to save. But the letter had arrived, and had been sent after him, immediately, by a man on horseback. This evening he would certainly return to welcome his honoured guest. The word was "guest," not "guests," and Victoria understood that she and Lella M'Barka would not see the master of the house. So it had been at the other two houses: so in all probability it would be at every house along their way unless, as she still hoped, they had already come to the end of the journey. The wide open gates showed a large, bare courtyard, the farmhouse, which was built round it, being itself the wall. On the outside, no windows were visible except those in the towers, and a few tiny square apertures for ventilation, but the yard was overlooked by a number of small glass eyes, all curtained. As the carriage was driven in, large yellow dogs gathered round it, barking; but the men kicked them away, and busied themselves in chasing the animals off to a shed, their white-clad backs all religiously turned as Si Maïeddine helped the ladies to descend. Behind a closed window a curtain was shaking; and M'Barka had not yet touched her feet to the ground when a negress ran out of a door that opened in the same distant corner of the house. She was unveiled, like Lella M'Barka's servants in Algiers, and, with Fafann, she almost carried the tired invalid towards the open door. Victoria followed, quivering with suspense. What waited for her behind that door? Would she see Saidee, after all these years of separation? "I think I'm dying," moaned Lella M'Barka. "They will never take me away from this house alive. White Rose, where art thou? I need thy hand under my arm." Victoria tried to think only of M'Barka, and to wait with patience for the supreme moment--if it were to come. Even if she had wished it, she could not have asked questions now. XXIV It was midnight when Nevill's car ran into the beautiful oasis town, guarded by the most curious mountains of the Algerian desert, and they were at their strangest, cut out clear as the painted mountains of stage scenery, in the light of the great acetylene lamps. Stephen thought them like a vast, half-burned Moorish city of mosques and palaces, over which sand-storms had raged for centuries, leaving only traces here and there of a ruined tower, a domed roof, or an ornamental frieze. Of the palms he could see nothing, except the long, dark shape of the oasis among the pale sand-billows; but early next morning he and Nevill were up and out on the roof of the little French hotel, while sunrise banners marched across the sky. Stephen had not known that desert dunes could be bright peach-pink, or that a river flowing over white stones could look like melted rubies, or that a few laughing Arab girls, ankle-deep in limpid water, could glitter in morning light like jewelled houris in celestial gardens. But now that he knew, he would never forget his first desert picture. The two men stood on the roof among the bubbly domes for a long time, looking over the umber-coloured town and the flowing oasis which swept to Bou-Saada's brown feet like a tidal wave. It was not yet time to go and ask questions of the Caïd, whom Nevill knew. Stephen was advised not to drink coffee in the hotel before starting on their quest. "We shall have to swallow at least three cups each of _café maure_ at the Caïd's house, and perhaps a dash of tea flavoured with mint, on top of all, if we don't want to begin by hurting our host's feelings," Nevill said. So they fasted, and fed their minds by walking through Bou-Saada in its first morning glory. Already the old part of the town was alive, for Arabs love the day when it is young, even as they love a young girl for a bride. The Englishmen strolled into the cool, dark mosque, where heavy Eastern scents of musk and benzoin had lain all night like fugitives in sanctuary, and where the roof was held up by cypress poles instead of marble pillars, as in the grand mosques of big cities. By the time they were ready to leave, dawn had become daylight, and coming out of the brown dusk, the town seemed flooded with golden wine, wonderful, bubbling, unbelievable gold, with scarlet and purple and green figures floating in it, brilliant as rainbow fish. The Caïd lived near the old town, in an adobe house, with a garden which was a tangle of roses and pomegranate blossoms, under orange trees and palms. And there were narrow paths of hard sand, the colour of old gold, which rounded up to the centre, and had little runnels of water on either side. The sunshine dripped between the long fingers of the palm leaves, to trail in a lacy pattern along the yellow paths, and the sound of the running water was sweet. It was in this garden that the Caïd gave his guests the three cups of coffee each, followed by the mint-flavoured tea which Nevill had prophesied. And when they had admired a tame gazelle which nibbled cakes of almond and honey from their hands, the Caïd insisted on presenting it to his good friend, Monsieur Caird. Over the cups of _café maure_, they talked of Captain Cassim ben Halim, but their host could or would tell them nothing beyond the fact that Ben Halim had once lived for a little while not far from Bou-Saada. He had inherited from his father a country house, about fifty kilometres distant, but he had never stayed there until after retiring from the army, and selling his place in Algiers. Then he had spent a few months in the country. The Caïd had met him long ago in Algiers, but had not seen him since. Ben Halim had been ill, and had led a retired life in the country, receiving no one. Afterward he had gone away, out of Algeria. It was said that he had died abroad a little later. Of that, the Caïd was not certain; but in any case the house on the hill was now in the possession of the Caïd of Ain Dehdra, Sidi Elaïd ben Sliman, a distant cousin of Ben Halim, said to be his only living relative. Then their host went on to describe the house with the white wall, which looked down upon a cemetery and a village. His description was almost precisely what Mouni's had been, and there was no doubt that the place where she had lived with the beautiful lady was the place of which he spoke. But of the lady herself they could learn nothing. The Caïd had no information to give concerning Ben Halim's family. He pressed them to stay, and see all the beauties of the oasis. He would introduce them to the marabout at El Hamel, and in the evening they should see a special dance of the Ouled Naïls. But they made excuses that they must get on, and bade the Caïd good-bye after an hour's talk. As for the _gazelle approvoisée_, Nevill named her Josette, and hired an Arab to take her to Algiers by the diligence, with explicit instructions as to food and milk. Swarms of locusts flew into their faces, and fell into the car, or were burned to death in the radiator, as they sped along the road towards the white house on the golden hill. They started from Bou-Saada at ten o'clock, and though the road was far from good, and they were not always sure of the way, the noon heat was scarcely at its height when Stephen said: "There it is! That must be the hill and the white wall with the towers." "Yes, there's the cemetery too," answered Nevill. "We're seeing it on our left side, as we go, I hope that doesn't mean we're in for bad luck." "Rot!" said Stephen, promptly. Yet for all his scorn of Nevill's grotesque superstitions, he was not in a confident mood. He did not expect much good from this visit to Ben Halim's old country house. And the worst was, that here seemed their last chance of finding out what had become of Saidee Ray, if not of her sister. The sound of the motor made a brown face flash over the top of the tall gate, like a Jack popping out of his box. "La Sidi, el Caïd?" asked Nevill. "Is he at home?" The face pretended not to understand; and having taken in every detail of the strangers' appearance and belongings, including the motor-car, it disappeared. "What's going to happen now?" Stephen wanted to know. Nevill looked puzzled. "The creature isn't too polite. Probably it's afraid of Roumis, and has never been spoken to by one before. But I hope it will promptly scuttle indoors and fetch its master, or some one with brains and manners." Several minutes passed, and the yellow motor-car continued to advertise its presence outside the Caïd's gate by panting strenuously. The face did not show itself again; and there was no evidence of life behind the white wall, except the peculiarly ominous yelping of Kabyle dogs. "Let's pound on the gate, and show them we mean to get in," said Stephen, angry-eyed. But Nevill counselled waiting. "Never be in a hurry when you have to do with Arabs. It's patience that pays." "Here come two chaps on horseback," Stephen said, looking down at the desert track that trailed near the distant cluster of mud houses, which were like square blocks of gold in the fierce sunshine. "They seem to be staring up at the car. I wonder if they're on their way here!" "It may be the Caïd, riding home with a friend, or a servant," Nevill suggested. "If so, I'll bet my hat there are other eyes than ours watching for him, peering out through some spy-hole in one of the gate-towers." His guess was right. It was the Caïd coming home, and Maïeddine was with him; for Lella M'Barka had been obliged to rest for three days at the farmhouse on the hill, and the Caïd's guest had accompanied him before sunrise this morning to see a favourite white mehari, or racing camel, belonging to Sidi Elaïd ben Sliman, which was very ill, in care of a wise man of the village. Now the mehari was dead, and as Maïeddine seemed impatient to get back, they were riding home, in spite of the noon heat. Maïeddine had left the house reluctantly this morning. Not that he could often see Victoria, who was nursing M'Barka, and looking so wistful that he guessed she had half hoped to find her sister waiting behind the white wall on the golden hill. Though he could expect little of the girl's society, and there was little reason to fear that harm would come to her, or that she would steal away in his absence, still he had hated to ride out of the gate and leave her. If the Caïd had not made a point of his coming, he would gladly have stayed behind. Now, when he looked up and saw a yellow motor-car at the gate, he believed that his feeling had been a presentiment, a warning of evil, which he ought so have heeded. He and the Caïd were a long way off when he caught sight of the car, and heard its pantings, carried by the clear desert air. He could not be certain of its identity, but he prided himself upon his keen sight and hearing, and where they failed, instinct stepped in. He was sure that it was the car which had waited for Stephen Knight when the _Charles Quex_ came in, the car of Nevill Caird, about whom he had made inquiries before leaving Algiers. Maïeddine knew, of course, that Victoria had been to the Djenan el Djouad, and he was intensely suspicious as well as jealous of Knight, because of the letter Victoria had written. He knew also that the two Englishmen had been asking questions at the Hotel de la Kasbah; and he was not surprised to see the yellow car in front of the Caïd's gates. Now that he saw it, he felt dully that he had always known it would follow him. If only he had been in the house, it would not have mattered. He would have been able to prevent Knight and Caird from seeing Victoria, or even from having the slightest suspicion that she was, or had been, there. It was the worst of luck that he should be outside the gates, for now he could not go back while the Englishmen were there. Knight would certainly recognize him, and guess everything that he did not know. Maïeddine thought very quickly. He dared not ride on, lest the men in the car should have a field-glass. The only thing was to let Ben Sliman go alone, so that, if eyes up there on the hill were watching, it might seem that the Caïd was parting from some friend who lived in the village. He would have to trust Elaïd's discretion and tact, as he knew already he might trust his loyalty. Only--the situation was desperate. Tact, and an instinct for the right word, the frank look, were worth even more than loyalty at this moment. And one never quite knew how far to trust another man's judgment. Besides, the mischief might have been done before Ben Sliman could arrive on the scene; and at the thought of what might happen, Maïeddine's heart seemed to turn in his breast. He had never known a sensation so painful to body and mind, and it was hideous to feel helpless, to know that he could do only harm, and not good, by riding up the hill. Nevertheless, he said to himself, if he should see Victoria come out to speak with these men, he would go. He would perhaps kill them, and the chauffeur too. Anything rather than give up the girl now; for the sharp stab of the thought that he might lose her, that Stephen Knight might have her, made him ten times more in love than he had been before. He wished that Allah might strike the men in the yellow car dead; although, ardent Mussulman as he was, he had no hope that such a glorious miracle would happen. "It is those men from Algiers of whom I told thee," he said to the Caïd. "I must stop below. They must not recognize me, or the dark one who was on the ship, will guess. Possibly he suspects already that I stand for something in this affair." "Who can have sent them to my house?" Ben Sliman wondered. The two drew in their horses and put on the manner of men about to bid each other good-bye. "I hope, I am almost sure, that they know nothing of _her_, or of me. Probably, when inquiring about Ben Halim, in order to hear of her sister, and so find out where she has gone, they learned only that Ben Halim once lived here. If thy servants are discreet, it may be that no harm will come from this visit." "They will be discreet. Have no fear," the Caïd assured him. Yet it was on his tongue to say; "the lady herself, when she hears the sound of the car, may do some unwise thing." But he did not finish the sentence. Even though the young girl--whom he had not seen--was a Roumia, obsessed with horrible, modern ideas, which at present it would be dangerous to try and correct, he could not discuss her with Maïeddine. If she showed herself to the men, it could not be helped. What was to be, would be. Mektûb! "Far be it from me to distrust my friend's servants," said Maïeddine; "but if in their zeal they go too far and give an impression of something to hide, it would be as bad as if they let drop a word too many." "I will ride on and break any such impression if it has been made," Ben Sliman consoled him. "Trust me. I will be as gracious to these Roumis as if they were true believers." "I do trust thee completely," answered the younger man. "While they are at thy gates, or within them, I must wait with patience. I cannot remain here in the open--yet I wish to be within sight, that I may see with my own eyes all that happens. What if I ride to one of the black tents, and ask for water to wash the mouth of my horse? If they have it not, it is no matter." "Thine is a good thought," said Ben Sliman, and rode on, putting his slim white Arab horse to a trot. To the left from the group of adobe houses, and at about the same distance from the rough track on which they had been riding, was a cluster of nomad tents, like giant bats with torpid wings spread out ink-black on the gold of the desert. A little farther off was another small encampment of a different tribe; and their tents were brown, striped with black and yellow. They looked like huge butterflies resting. But Maïeddine thought of no such similes. He was a child of the Sahara, and used to the tents and the tent-dwellers. His own father, the Agha, lived half the year in a great tent, when he was with his douar, and Maïeddine had been born under the roof of camel's hair. His own people and these people were not kin, and their lives lay far apart; yet a man of one nomad tribe understands all nomads, though he be a chief's son, and they as poor as their own ill-fed camels. His pride was his nomad blood, for all men of the Sahara, be they princes or camel-drivers, look with scorn upon the sedentary people, those of the great plain of the Tell, and fat eaters of ripe dates in the cities. The eight or ten black tents were gathered round one, a little higher, a little less ragged than the others--the tent of the Kebir, or headman; but it was humble enough. There would have been room and to spare for a dozen such under the _tente sultane_ of the Agha, at his douar south of El Aghouat. As Maïeddine rode up, a buzz of excitement rose in the hive. Some one ran to tell the Kebir that a great Sidi was arriving, and the headman came out from his tent, where he had been meditating or dozing after the chanting of the midday prayer--the prayer of noon. He was a thin, elderly man, with an eagle eye to awe his women-folk, and an old burnous of sheep's wool, which was of a deep cream colour because it had not been washed for many years. Yet he smelt good, with a smell that was like the desert, and there was no foul odour in the miniature douar, as in European dwellings of the very poor. There is never a smell of uncleanliness about Arabs, even those people who must perform most of the ablutions prescribed by their religion with sand instead of water. But the Saharian saying is that the desert purifies all things. The Kebir was polite though not servile to Maïeddine, and while the horse borrowed from the Caïd was having its face economically sprinkled with water from a brown goat-skin, black coffee was being hospitably prepared for the guest by the women of the household, unveiled of course, as are all women of the nomad tribes, except those of highest birth. Maïeddine did not want the coffee, but it would have been an insult to refuse, and he made laboured conversation with the Kebir, his eyes and thoughts fixed on the Caïd's gate and the yellow motor-car. He hardly saw the tents, beneath whose low-spread black wings eyes looked out at him, as the bright eyes of chickens look out from under the mother-hen's feathers. They were all much alike, though the Kebir's, as befitted his position, was the best, made of wide strips of black woollen material stitched together, spread tightly over stout poles, and pegged down into the hard sand. There was a partition dividing the tent in two, a partition made of one or two old haïcks, woven by hand, and if Maïeddine had been interested, he could have seen his host's bedding arranged for the day; a few coarse rugs and _frechias_ piled up carelessly, out of the way. There was a bale of camels' hair, ready for weaving, and on top of it a little boy was curled up asleep. From the tent-poles hung an animal's skin, drying, and a cradle of netted cords in which swung and slept a swaddled baby no bigger than a doll. It was a girl, therefore its eyes were blackened with kohl, and its eyebrows neatly sketched on with paint, as they had been since the unfortunate day of its birth, when the father grumbled because it was not a "child," but only a worthless female. The mother of the four weeks' old doll, a fine young woman tinkling with Arab silver, left her carpet-weaving to grind the coffee, while her withered mother-in-law brightened with brushwood the smouldering fire of camel-dung. The women worked silently, humbly, though they would have been chattering if the great Sidi stranger had not been there; but two or three little children in orange and scarlet rags played giggling among the rubbish outside the tent--a broken bassour-frame, or palanquin, waiting to be mended; date boxes, baskets, and wooden plates; old kous-kous bowls, bundles of alfa grass, chicken feathers, and an infant goat with its mother. The sound of children's shrill laughter, which passed unnoticed by the parents, who had it always in their ears, rasped Maïeddine's nerves, and he would have liked to strike or kick the babies into silence. Most Arabs worship children, even girls, and are invariably kind to them, but to-day Maïeddine hated anything that ran about disturbingly and made a noise. Now the Caïd had reached the gate, and was talking to the men in the motor-car. Would he send them away? No, the gate was being opened by a servant. Ben Sliman must have invited the Roumis in. Possibly it was a wise thing to do, yet how dangerous, how terribly dangerous, with Victoria perhaps peeping from one of the tiny windows at the women's corner of the house, which looked on the court! They could not see her there, but she could see them, and if she were tired of travelling and dancing attendance on a fidgety invalid--if she repented her promise to keep the secret of this journey? Maïeddine's experience of women inclined him to think that they always did forget their promises to a man the moment his back was turned. Victoria was different from the women of his race, or those he had met in Paris, yet she was, after all, a woman; and there was no truer saying than that you might more easily prophesy the direction of the wind than say what a woman was likely to do. The coffee which the Kebir handed him made him feel sick, as if he had had a touch of the sun. What was happening up there on the hill, behind the gates which stood half open? What would she do--his Rose of the West? XXV It was a relief to Stephen and Nevill to see one of the horsemen coming up the rough hill-track to the gate, and to think that they need no longer wait upon the fears or inhospitable whims of the Arab servants on the other side of the wall. As soon as the rider came near enough for his features to be sketched in clearly, Nevill remembered having noticed him at one or two of the Governor's balls, where all Arab dignitaries, even such lesser lights as caïds and adels show themselves. But they had never met. The man was not one of the southern chiefs whom Nevill Caird had entertained at his own house. Stephen thought that he had never seen a more personable man as the Caïd rode up to the car, saluting courteously though with no great warmth. His face was more tanned than very dark by nature, but it seemed brown in contrast to his light hazel eyes. His features were commanding, if not handsome, and he sat his horse well. Altogether he was a notable figure in his immensely tall white turban, wound with pale grey-brown camel's-hair rope, his grey cloth burnous, embroidered with gold, flung back over an inner white burnous, his high black boots, with wrinkled brown tops, and his wonderful Kairouan hat of light straw, embroidered with a leather appliqué of coloured flowers and silver leaves, steeple-crowned, and as big as a cart-wheel, hanging on his shoulders. He and Nevill politely wished the blessings of Allah and Mohammed his Prophet upon each other, and Nevill then explained the errand which had brought him and his friend to the Caïd's house. The Caïd's somewhat heavy though intelligent face did not easily show surprise. It changed not at all, though Stephen watched it closely. "Thou art welcome to hear all I can tell of my dead relation, Ben Halim," he said. "But I know little that everybody does not know." "It is certain, then, that Ben Halim is dead?" asked Nevill. "We had hoped that rumour lied." "He died on his way home after a pilgrimage to Mecca," gravely replied the Caïd. "Ah!" Nevill caught him up quickly. "We heard that it was in Constantinople." Ben Sliman's expression was slightly strained. He glanced from Nevill's boyish face to Stephen's dark, keen one, and perhaps fancied suspicion in both. If he had intended to let the Englishmen drive away in their motor-car without seeing the other side of his white wall, he now changed his mind. "If thou and thy friend care to honour this poor farm of mine by entering the gates, and drinking coffee with me," he said, "We will afterwards go down below the hill to the cemetery where my cousin's body lies buried. His tombstone will show that he was El Hadj, and that he had reached Mecca. When he was in Constantinople, he had just returned from there." Possibly, having given the invitation by way of proving that there was nothing to conceal, Ben Sliman hoped it would not be accepted; but he was disappointed. Before the Caïd had reached the top of the hill, Nevill had told his chauffeur to stop the motor, therefore the restless panting had long ago ceased, and when Ben Sliman looked doubtfully at the car, as if wondering how it was to be got in without doing damage to his wall, Nevill said that the automobile might stay where it was. Their visit would not be long. "But the longer the better," replied the Caïd. "When I have guests, it pains me to see them go." He shouted a word or two in Arabic, and instantly the gates were opened. The sketchily clad brown men inside had only been waiting for a signal. "I regret that I cannot ask my visitors into the house itself, as I have illness there," Ben Sliman announced; "but we have guest rooms here in the gate-towers. They are not what I could wish for such distinguished personages, but thou canst see, Sidi, thou and thy friend, that this is a simple farmhouse. We make no pretension to the luxury of towns, but we do what we can." As he spoke, the brown men were scuttling about, one unfastening the door of a little tower, which stuck as if it had not been opened for a long time, another darting into the house, which appeared silent and tenantless, a third and fourth running to a more distant part, and vanishing also through a dark doorway. The Caïd quickly ushered his guests into the tower room, but not so quickly that the eyes of a girl, looking through a screened window, did not see and recognize both. The servant who had gone ahead unbarred a pair of wooden shutters high up in the whitewashed walls of the tower, which was stiflingly close, with a musty, animal odour. As the opening of the shutters gave light, enormous black-beetles which seemed to Stephen as large as pigeon's eggs, crawled out from cracks between wall and floor, stumbling awkwardly about, and falling over each other. It was a disgusting sight, and did not increase the visitors' desire to accept the Caïd's hospitality for any length of time. It may be that he had thought of this. But even if he had, the servants were genuinely enthusiastic in their efforts to make the Roumis at home. The two who had run farthest returned soonest. They staggered under a load of large rugs wrapped in unbleached sheeting, and a great sack stuffed full of cushions which bulged out at the top. The sheeting they unfastened, and, taking no notice of the beetles, hurriedly spread on the rough floor several beautifully woven rugs of bright colours. Then, having laid four or five on top of one another, they clawed the cushions out of the sack, and placed them as if on a bed. Hardly had they finished, when the first servant who had disappeared came back, carrying over his arm a folding table, and dishes in his hands. The only furniture already in the tower consisted of two long, low wooden benches without backs; and as the servant from the house set up the folding table, he who had opened the windows placed the benches, one on either side. At the same moment, through the open door, a man could be seen running with a live lamb flung over his shoulder. "Good heavens, what is he going to do with that?" Stephen asked, stricken with a presentiment. "I'm afraid," Nevill answered quickly in English, "that it's going to be killed for our entertainment." His pink colour faded, and in Arabic he begged the Caïd to give orders that, if the lamb were for them, its life be spared, as they were under a vow never to touch meat. This was the first excuse he could think of; and when, to his joy, a message was sent after the slayer of innocence, he added that, very unfortunately, they had a pressing engagement which would tear them away from the Caïd's delightful house all too soon. Perhaps the Caïd's face expressed no oppressive regret, yet he said kindly that he hoped to keep his guests at least until next morning. In the cool of the day they would see the cemetery; they would return, and eat the evening meal. It would then be time to sleep. And with a gesture he indicated the rugs and cushions, under which the beetles were now buried like mountain-dwellers beneath an avalanche. Nevill, still pale, thanked his host earnestly, complimented the rugs, and assured the Caïd that, of course, they would be extraordinarily comfortable, but even such inducements did not make it possible for them to neglect their duty elsewhere. "In any case we shall now eat and drink together," said Ben Sliman, pointing to the table, and towards a servant now arriving from the house with a coffee-tray. The dishes had been set down on the bare board, and one contained the usual little almond cakes, the other, a conserve of some sort bathed in honey, where already many flies were revelling. The servant who had spread the table, quietly pulled the flies out by their wings, or killed them on the edge of the dish. Nevill, whiter than before, accepted cordially, and giving Stephen a glance of despair, which said: "Noblesse oblige," he thrust his fingers into the honey, where there were fewest flies, and took out a sweetmeat. Stephen did the same. All three ate, and drank sweet black _café maure_. Once the Caïd turned to glance at something outside the door, and his secretive, light grey eyes were troubled. As they ate and drank, they talked, Nevill tactfully catechizing, the Caïd answering with pleasant frankness. He did not inquire why they wished to have news of Ben Halim, who had once lived in the house for a short time, and had now long been dead. Perhaps he wished to give the Roumis a lesson in discretion; but as their friendliness increased over the dripping sweets, Nevill ventured to ask a crucial question. What had become of Ben Halim's American wife? Then, for the first time, the Caïd frowned, very slightly, but it was plain to see he thought a liberty had been taken which, as host, he was unable to resent. "I know nothing of my dead cousin's family," he said. "No doubt its members went with him, if not to Mecca, at least a part of the way, and if any such persons wished to return to Europe after his death, it is certain they would have been at liberty to do so. This house my cousin wished me to have, and I took possession of it in due time, finding it empty and in good order. If you search for any one, I should advise searching in France or, perhaps, in America. Unluckily, there I cannot help. But when it is cool, we will go to the cemetery. Let us go after the prayer, the prayer of _Moghreb_." But Nevill was reluctant. So was Stephen, when the proposal was explained. They wished to go while it was still hot, or not at all. It may be that even this eccentric proposal did not surprise or grieve the Caïd, though as a rule he was not fond of being out of doors in the glare of the sun. He agreed to the suggestion that the motor-car should take all three down the hill, but said that he would prefer to walk back. The "teuf-teuf" of the engine began once more outside the white gates; and for the second time Victoria flew to the window, pressing her face against the thick green moucharabia which excluded flies and prevented any one outside from seeing what went on within. "Calm thyself, O Rose," urged the feeble voice of Lella M'Barka. "Thou hast said these men are nothing to thee." "One is my friend," the girl pleaded, with a glance at the high couch of rugs on which M'Barka lay. "A young girl cannot have a man for a friend. He may be a lover or a husband, but never a friend. Thou knowest this in thy heart, O Rose, and thou hast sworn to me that never hast thou had a lover." Victoria did not care to argue. "I am sure he has come here to try and find me. He is anxious. That is very good of him--all the more, because we are nothing to each other. How can I let him go away without a word? It is too hard-hearted. I do think, if Si Maïeddine were here, he would say so too. He would let me see Mr. Knight and just tell him that I'm perfectly safe and on the way to my sister. That once she lived in this house, and I hoped to find her here, but----" "Maïeddine would not wish thee to tell the young man these things, or any other things, or show thyself to him at all," M'Barka persisted, lifting herself on the bed in growing excitement. "Dost thou not guess, he runs many dangers in guiding thee to the wife of a man who is as one dead? Dost thou wish to ruin him who risks his whole future to content thee?" "No, of course I would do nothing which could bring harm to Si Maïeddine," Victoria said, the eagerness dying out of her voice. "I have kept my word with him. I have let nobody know--nobody at all. But we could trust Mr. Knight and Mr. Caird. And to see them there, in the courtyard, and let them go--it is too much!" "Why shouldst thou consider me, whom thou hast known but a few days, when thou wouldst be hurrying on towards thy sister Saïda? Yet it will surely be my death if thou makest any sign to those men. My heart would cease to beat. It beats but weakly now." With a sigh, Victoria turned away from the moucharabia, and crossing the room to M'Barka, sat down on a rug by the side of her couch. "I do consider thee," she said. "If it were not for thee and Si Maïeddine, I might not be able to get to Saidee at all; so I must not mind being delayed a few days. It is worse for thee than for me, because thou art suffering." "When a true believer lies ill for more than three days, his sins are all forgiven him," M'Barka consoled herself. She put out a hot hand, and laid it on Victoria's head. "Thou art a good child. Thou hast given up thine own will to do what is right." "I'm not quite sure at this moment that I am doing what is right," murmured Victoria. "But I can't make thee more ill than thou art, so I must let Mr. Knight go. And probably I shall never see him, never hear of him again. He will look for me, and then he will grow tired, and perhaps go home to England before I can write to let him know I am safe with Saidee." Her voice broke a little. She bent down her head, and there were tears in her eyes. She heard the creaking of the gate as it shut. The motor-car had gone panting away. For a moment it seemed as if her heart would break. Just one glimpse had she caught of Stephen's face, and it had looked to her more than ever like the face of a knight who would fight to the death for a good cause. She had not quite realized how noble a face it was, or how hard it would be to let it pass out of her life. He would always hate her if he guessed she had sat there, knowing he had come so far for her sake?--she was sure it was for her sake--and had made no sign. But he would not guess. And it was true, as Lella M'Barka said, he was nothing to her. Saidee was everything. And she was going to Saidee. She must think only of Saidee, and the day of their meeting. * * * * * * * Stephen had never seen an Arab cemetery; and it seemed to him that this Mussulman burial-place, scattered over two low hills, in the midst of desert wastes, was beautiful and pathetic. The afternoon sunshine beat upon the koubbahs of marabouts, and the plastered graves or headstones of less important folk; but so pearly pale were they all that the golden quality of the light was blanched as if by some strange, white magic, and became like moonlight shining on a field of snow. There were no names on any of the tombs, even the grandest. Here and there on a woman's grave was a hand of Fatma, or a pair of the Prophet's slippers; and on those of a few men were turbans carved in marble, to tell that the dead had made pilgrimage to Mecca. All faces were turned towards the sacred city, as Mussulmans turn when they kneel to pray, in mosque or in desert; and the white slabs, narrow or broad, long or short, ornamental or plain, flat or roofed with fantastic maraboutic domes, were placed very close together. At one end of the cemetery, only bits of pottery marked the graves; yet each bit was a little different from the other, meaning as much to those who had placed them there as names and epitaphs in European burial grounds. On the snowy headstones and flat platforms, drops of rose-coloured wax from little candles, lay like tears of blood shed by the mourners, and there was a scattered spray of faded orange blossoms, brought by some loving hand from a far-away garden in an oasis. "Here lies my cousin, Cassim ben Halim," said the Caïd, pointing to a grave comparatively new, surmounted at the head with a carved turban. Nearer to it than any other tomb was that of a woman, beautified with the Prophet's slippers. "Is it possible that his wife lies beside him?" Stephen made Nevill ask. "It is a lady of his house. I can say no more. When his body was brought here, hers was brought also, in a coffin, which is permitted to the women of Islam, with the request that it should be placed near my cousin's tomb. This was done; and it is all I can tell, because it is all I know." The Arab looked the Englishman straight in the eyes as he answered; and Stephen felt that in this place, so simple, so peaceful, so near to nature's heart, it would be difficult for a man to lie to another, even though that man were a son of Islam, the other a "dog of a Christian." For the first time he began to believe that Cassim ben Halim had in truth died, and that Victoria Ray's sister was perhaps dead also. Her death alone could satisfactorily explain her long silence. And against the circumstantial evidence of this little grave, adorned with the slippers of the Prophet, there was only a girl's impression--Victoria's feeling that, if Saidee were dead, she "must have known." The two friends stood for a while by the white graves, where the sunshine lay like moonlight on snow; and then, because there was nothing more for them to do in that place, they thanked the Caïd, and made ready to go their way. Again he politely refused their offer to drive him up to his own gate, and bade them good-bye when they had got into the car. He stood and watched it go bumping away over the rough, desert road, pieces of which had been gnawed off by a late flood, as a cake is bitten round the edge by a greedy child. They had had enough of motor-cars for that day, up there on the hill! The Caïd was glad when the sound died. The machine was no more suited to his country, he thought, than were the men of Europe who tore about the world in it, trying to interfere in other people's business. "El hamdou-lillah! God be praised!" he whispered, as the yellow automobile vanished from sight and Maïeddine came out from the cluster of black tents in the yellow sand. XXVI Next day, Lella M'Barka was well enough to begin the march again. They started, in the same curtained carriage, at that moment before dawn while it is still dark, and a thin white cloth seems spread over the dead face of night. Then day came trembling along the horizon, and the shadows of horses and carriage grew long and grotesquely deformed. It was the time, M'Barka said, when Chitan the devil, and the evil Djenoun that possess people's minds and drive them insane, were most powerful; and she would hardly listen when Victoria answered that she did not believe in Djenoun. In a long day, they came to Bou-Saada, reaching the hidden oasis after nightfall, and staying in the house of the Caïd with whom Stephen and Nevill had talked of Ben Halim. Lella M'Barka was related to the Caïd's wife, and was so happy in meeting a cousin after years of separation, that the fever in her blood was cooled; and in the morning she was able to go on. Then came two days of driving to Djelfa, at first in a country strange enough to be Djinn-haunted, a country of gloomy mountains, and deep water-courses like badly healed wounds; passing through dry river-beds, and over broken roads with here and there a bordj where men brought water to the mules, in skins held together with ropes of straw. At last, after a night, not too comfortable, spent in a dismal bordj, they came to a wilderness which any fairytale-teller would have called the end of the world. The road had dwindled to a track across gloomy desert, all the more desolate, somehow, because of the dry asparto grass growing thinly among stones. Nothing seemed to live or move in this world, except a lizard that whisked its grey-green length across the road, a long-legged bird which hopped gloomily out of the way, or a few ragged black and white sheep with nobody to drive them. In the heat of the day nothing stirred, not even the air, though the distance shimmered and trembled with heat; but towards night jackals padded lithely from one rock shelter to another. The carriage drove through a vast plain, rimmed with far-away mountains, red as porphyry, but fading to purple at the horizon. Victoria felt that she would never come to the end of this plain, that it must finish only with eternity; and she wished in an occasional burst of impatience that she were travelling in Nevill Caird's motor-car. She could reach her sister in a third of the time! She told herself that these thoughts were ungrateful to Maïeddine, who was doing so much for her sake, and she kept up her spirits whether they dragged on tediously, or stopped by the way to eat, or to let M'Barka rest. She tried to control her restlessness, but feared that Maïeddine saw it, for he took pains to explain, more than once, how necessary was the detour they were making. Along this route he had friends who were glad to entertain them at night, and give them mules or horses, and besides, it was an advantage that the way should be unfrequented by Europeans. He cheered her by describing the interest of the journey when, by and by, she would ride a mehari, sitting in a bassour, made of branches heated and bent into shape like a great cage, lined and draped with soft haoulis of beautiful colours, and comfortably cushioned. It would not be long now before they should come to the douar of his father the Agha, beyond El Aghouat. She would have a wonderful experience there; and according to Maïeddine, all the rest of the journey would be an enchantment. Never for a moment would he let her tire. Oh, he would promise that she should be half sorry when the last day came! As for Lella M'Barka, the Rose of the West need not fear, for the bassour was easy as a cradle to a woman of the desert; and M'Barka, rightfully a princess of Touggourt, was desert-born and bred. Queer little patches of growing grain, or miniature orchards enlivened the dull plain round the ugly Saharian town of Djelfa, headquarters of the Ouled Naïls. The place looked unprepossessingly new and French, and obtrusively military; dismal, too, in the dusty sand which a wailing wind blew through the streets; but scarcely a Frenchman was to be seen, except the soldiers. Many Arabs worked with surprising briskness at the loading or unloading of great carts, men of the Ouled Naïls, with eyes more mysterious than the eyes of veiled women; tall fellows wearing high shoes of soft, pale brown leather made for walking long distances in heavy sand; and Maïeddine said that there was great traffic and commerce between Djelfa and the M'Zab country, where she and he and M'Barka would arrive presently, after passing his father's douar. Maïeddine was uneasy until they were out of Djelfa, for, though few Europeans travelled that way, and the road is hideous for motors, still it was not impossible that a certain yellow car had slipped in before them, to lie in wait. The Caïd's house, where they spent that night, was outside the town, and behind its closed doors and little windows there was no fear of intruders. It was good to be sure of shelter and security under a friend's roof; and so far, in spite of the adventure at Ben Sliman's, everything was going well enough. Only--Maïeddine was a little disappointed in Victoria's manner towards himself. She was sweet and friendly, and grateful for all he did, but she did not seem interested in him as a man. He felt that she was eager to get on, that she was counting the days, not because of any pleasure they might bring in his society, but to make them pass more quickly. Still, with the deep-rooted patience of the Arab, he went on hoping. His father, Agha of the Ouled-Serrin, reigned in the desert like a petty king. Maïeddine thought that the douar and the Agha's state must impress her; and the journey on from there would be a splendid experience, different indeed from this interminable jogging along, cramped up in a carriage, with M'Barka sighing, or leaning a heavy head on the girl's shoulder. Out in the open, Victoria in her bassour, he on the horse which he would take from his father's goum, travelling would be pure joy. And Maïeddine had been saving up many surprises for that time, things he meant to do for the girl, which must turn her heart towards him. Beyond Djelfa, on the low mountains that alone broke the monotony of the dismal plain, little watch-towers rose dark along the sky-line--watch-towers old as Roman days. Sometimes the travellers met a mounted man wearing a long, hooded cloak over his white burnous; a cavalier of the Bureau Arabe, or native policeman on his beat, under the authority of a civil organization more powerful in the Sahara than the army. These men, riding alone, saluted Si Maïeddine almost with reverence, and Lella M'Barka told Victoria, with pride, that her cousin was immensely respected by the French Government. He had done much for France in the far south, where his family influence was great, and he had adjusted difficulties between the desert men and their rulers. "He is more tolerant than I, to those through whom Allah has punished us for our sins," said the woman of the Sahara. "I was brought up in an older school; and though I may love one of the Roumis, as I have learned to love thee, oh White Rose, I cannot love whole Christian nations. Maïeddine is wiser than I, yet I would not change my opinions for his; unless, as I often think, he really----" she stopped suddenly, frowning at herself. "This dreariness is not _our_ desert," she explained eagerly to the girl, as the horses dragged the carriage over the sandy earth, through whose hard brown surface the harsh, colourless blades of _drinn_ pricked like a few sparse hairs on the head of a shrivelled old man. "In the Sahara, there are four kinds of desert, because Allah put four angels in charge, giving each his own portion. The Angel of the Chebka was cold of nature, with no kindness in his heart, and was jealous of the others; so the Chebka is desolate, sown with sharp rocks which were upheaved from under the earth before man came, and its dark ravines are still haunted by evil spirits. The Angel of the Hameda was careless, and forgot to pray for cool valleys and good water, so the Hameda hardened into a great plateau of rock. The Angel of the Gaci was loved by a houri, who appeared to him and danced on the firm sand of his desert. Vanishing, she scattered many jewels, and fruits from the celestial gardens which turned into beautifully coloured stones as they fell, and there they have lain from that day to this. But best of all was the Angel of the Erg, our desert--desert of the shifting dunes, never twice the same, yet always more beautiful to-day than yesterday; treacherous to strangers, but kind as the bosom of a mother to her children. The first three angels were men, but the fourth and best is the angel woman who sows the heaven with stars, for lamps to light her own desert, and all the world beside, even the world of infidels." M'Barka and Maïeddine both talked a great deal of El Aghouat, which M'Barka called the desert pearl, next in beauty to her own wild Touggourt, and Maïeddine laughingly likened the oasis-town to Paris. "It is the Paris of our Sahara," he said, "and all the desert men, from Caïds to camel-drivers, look forward to its pleasures." He planned to let the girl see El Aghouat for the first time at sunset. That was to be one of his surprises. By nature he was dramatic; and the birth of the sun and the death of the sun are the great dramas of the desert. He wished to be the hero of such a drama for Victoria, with El Aghouat for his background; for there, he was leading her in at the gate of his own country. When they had passed the strange rock-shape known as the Chapeau de Gendarme, and the line of mountains which is like the great wall of China, Maïeddine defied the danger he had never quite ceased to fear during the five long days since the adventure on the other side of Bou-Saada. He ordered the carriage curtains to be rolled up as tightly as they would go, and Victoria saw a place so beautiful that it was like the secret garden of some Eastern king. It was as if they had driven abruptly over the edge of a vast bowl half filled with gold dust, and ringed round its rim with quivering rosy flames. Perhaps the king of the garden had a dragon whose business it was to keep the fire always alight to prevent robbers from coming to steal the gold dust; and so ardently had it been blazing there for centuries, that all the sky up to the zenith had caught fire, burning with so dazzling an intensity of violet that Victoria thought she could warm her hands in its reflection on the sand. In the azure crucible diamonds were melting, boiling up in a radiant spray, but suddenly the violet splendour was cooled, and after a vague quivering of rainbow tints, the celestial rose tree of the Sahara sunset climbed blossoming over the whole blue dome, east, west, north and south. In the bottom of the golden bowl, there was a river bed to cross, on a bridge of planks, but among the burning stones trickled a mere runnel of water, bright as spilt mercury. And Maïeddine chose the moment when the minarets of El Aghouat rose from a sea of palms, to point out the strange, pale hills crowned by old koubbahs of marabouts and the military hospital. He told the story of the Arab revolt of fifty odd years ago; and while he praised the gallantry of the French, Victoria saw in his eyes, heard in the thrill of his voice, that his admiration was for his own people. This made her thoughtful, for though it was natural enough to sympathize with the Arabs who had stood the siege and been reconquered after desperate fighting, until now his point of view had seemed to be the modern, progressive, French point of view. Quickly the question flashed through her mind--"Is he letting himself go, showing me his real self, because I'm in the desert with him, and he thinks I'll never go back among Europeans?" She shivered a little at the thought, but she put it away with the doubt of Maïeddine that came with it. Never had he given her the least cause to fear him, and she would go on trusting in his good faith, as she had trusted from the first. Still, there was that creeping chill, in contrast to the warm glory of the sunset, which seemed to shame it by giving a glimpse of the desert's heart, which was Maïeddine's heart. She hurried to say how beautiful was El Aghouat; and that night, in the house of the Caïd, (an uncle of Maïeddine's on his mother's side), as the women grouped round her, hospitable and admiring, she reproached herself again for her suspicion. The wife of the Caïd was dignified and gentle. There were daughters growing up, and though they knew nothing, or seemed to know nothing, of Saidee, they were sure that, if Maïeddine knew, all was well. Because they were his cousins they had seen and been seen by him, and the young girls poured out all the untaught romance of their little dim souls in praise of Maïeddine. Once they were on the point of saying something which their mother seemed to think indiscreet, and checked them quickly. Then they stopped, laughing; and their laughter, like the laughter of little children, was so contagious that Victoria laughed too. There was some dreadful European furniture of sprawling, "nouveau art" design in the guest-room which she and Lella M'Barka shared; and as Victoria lay awake on the hard bed, of which the girls were proud, she said to herself that she had not been half grateful enough to Si Maïeddine. For ten years she had tried to find Saidee, and until the other day she had been little nearer her heart's desire than when she was a child, hoping and longing in the school garret. Now Maïeddine had made the way easy--almost too easy, for the road to the golden silence had become so wonderful that she was tempted to forget her haste to reach the end. XXVII "There is my father's douar," said Si Maïeddine; and Victoria's eyes followed his pointing finger. Into a stony and desolate waste had billowed one golden wave of sand, and on the fringe of this wave, the girl saw a village of tents, black and brown, lying closely together, as a fleet of dark fishing-boats lie in the water. There were many little tents, very flat and low, crouched around one which even at a distance was conspicuous for its enormous size. It looked like a squatting giant among an army of pigmies; and the level light of late afternoon gave extraordinary value to its colours, which were brighter and newer than those of the lesser tents. As their swaying carriage brought the travellers nearer, Victoria could see deep red and brown stripes, separated by narrow bands of white. For background, there was a knot of trees; for they had come south of El Aghouat to the strange region of dayas, where the stony desolation is broken by little emerald hollows, running with water, like big round bowls stuck full of delicate greenery and blossoms. Suddenly, as Victoria looked, figures began running about, and almost before she had time to speak, ten or a dozen men in white, mounted on horses, came speeding across the desert. A stain of red showed in Maïeddine's cheeks, and his eyes lighted up. "They have been watching, expecting us," he said. "Now my father is sending men to bid us welcome." "Perhaps he is coming himself," said Victoria, for there was one figure riding in the centre which seemed to her more splendidly dignified than the others, though all were magnificent horsemen. "No. It would not be right that the Agha himself should come to meet his son," Maïeddine explained. "Besides he would be wearing a scarlet burnous, embroidered with gold. He does me enough honour in sending out the pick of his goum, which is among the finest of the Sahara." Victoria had picked up a great deal of desert lore by this time, and knew that the "pick of the goum" would mean the best horses in the Agha's stables, the crack riders among his trained men--fighting men, such as he would give to the Government, if Arab soldiers were needed. The dozen cavaliers swept over the desert, making the sand fly up under the horses' hoofs in a yellow spray; and nearing the carriage they spread themselves in a semi-circle, the man Victoria had mistaken for the Agha riding forward to speak to Maïeddine. "It is my brother-in-law, Abderrhaman ben Douadi," exclaimed Maïeddine, waving his hand. M'Barka pulled her veil closer, and because she did so, Victoria hid her face also, rather than shock the Arab woman's prejudices. At a word from his master, the driver stopped his mules so quickly as to bring them on their haunches, and Maïeddine sprang out. He and his brother-in-law, a stately dark man with a short black beard under an eagle nose, exchanged courtesies which seemed elaborate to Victoria's European ideas, and Si Abderrhaman did not glance at the half-lowered curtains behind which the women sat. The men talked for a few minutes; then Maïeddine got into the carriage again; and surrounded by the riders, it was driven rapidly towards the tents, rocking wildly in the sand, because now it had left the desert road and was making straight for the zmala. The Arab men on their Arab horses shouted as they rode, as if giving a signal; and from the tents, reddened now by the declining sun, came suddenly a strange crying in women's voices, shrill yet sweet; a sound that was half a chant, half an eerie yodeling, note after note of "you-you!--you-you!" Out from behind the zeribas, rough hedges of dead boughs and brambles which protected each low tent, burst a tidal wave of children, some gay as little bright butterflies in gorgeous dresses, others wrapped in brilliant rags. From under the tents women appeared, unveiled, and beautiful in the sunset light, with their heavy looped braids and their dangling, clanking silver jewellery. "You-you! you-you!" they cried, dark eyes gleaming, white teeth flashing. It was to be a festival for the douar, this fortunate evening of the son and heir's arrival, with a great lady of his house, and her friend, a Roumia girl. There was joy for everyone, for the Agha's relatives, and for each man, woman and child in the zmala, mighty ones, or humble members of the tribe, the Ouled-Serrin. There would be feasting, and after dark, to give pleasure to the Roumia, the men would make the powder speak. It was like a wedding; and best of all, an exciting rumour had gone round the douar, concerning the foreign girl and the Agha's son, Si Maïeddine. The romance in Victoria's nature was stirred by her reception; by the white-clad riders on their slender horses, and the wild "you-yous" of the women and little girls. Maïeddine saw her excitement and thrilled to it. This was his great hour. All that had gone before had been leading up to this day, and to the days to come, when they would be in the fiery heart of the desert together, lost to all her friends whom he hated with a jealous hatred. He helped M'Barka to descend from the carriage: then, as she was received at the tent door by the Agha himself, Maïeddine forgot his self-restraint, and swung the girl down, with tingling hands that clasped her waist, as if at last she belonged to him. Half fearful of what he had done, lest she should take alarm at his sudden change of manner, he studied her face anxiously as he set her feet to the ground. But there was no cause for uneasiness. So far from resenting the liberty he had taken after so many days of almost ostentatious respect, Victoria was not even thinking of him, and her indifference would have been a blow, if he had not been too greatly relieved to be hurt by it. She was looking at his father, the Agha, who seemed to her the embodiment of some biblical patriarch. All through her long desert journey, she had felt as if she had wandered into a dream of the Old Testament. There was nothing there more modern than "Bible days," as she said to herself, simply, except the French quarters in the few Arab towns through which they had passed. Not yet, however, had she seen any figure as venerable as the Agha's, and she thought at once of Abraham at his tent door. Just such a man as this Abraham must have been in his old age. She could even imagine him ready to sacrifice a son, if he believed it to be the will of Allah; and Maïeddine became of more importance in her eyes because of his relationship to this kingly patriarch of the Sahara. Having greeted his niece, Lella M'Barka, and passed her hospitably into the tent where women were dimly visible, the Agha turned to Maïeddine and Victoria. "The blessing of Allah be upon thee, O my son," he said, "and upon thee, little daughter. My son's messenger brought word of thy coming, and thou art welcome as a silver shower of rain after a long drought in the desert. Be thou as a child of my house, while thou art in my tent." As she gave him her hand, her veil fell away from her face, and he saw its beauty with the benevolent admiration of an old man whose blood has cooled. He was so tall that the erect, thin figure reminded Victoria of a lonely desert palm. The young girl was no stern critic, and was more inclined to see good than evil in every one she met; therefore to her the long snowy beard, the large dreamy eyes under brows like Maïeddine's, and the slow, benevolent smile of the Agha meant nobility of character. Her heart was warm for the splendid old man, and he was not unaware of the impression he had made. As he bowed her into the tent where his wife and sister and daughter were crowding round M'Barka, he said in a low voice to Maïeddine: "It is well, my son. Being a man, and young, thou couldst not have withstood her. When the time is ripe, she will become a daughter of Islam, because for love of thee, she will wish to fulfil thine heart's desire." "She does not yet know that she loves me," Maïeddine answered. "But when thou hast given me the white stallion El Biod, and I ride beside the girl in her bassour through the long days and the long distances, I shall teach her, in the way the Roumi men teach their women to love." "But if thou shouldst not teach her?" "My life is in it, and I shall teach her," said Maïeddine. "But if Chitan stands between, and I fail--which I will not do--why, even so, it will come to the same thing in the end, because----" "Thou wouldst say----" "It is well to know one's own meaning, and to speak of--date stones. Yet with one's father, one can open one's heart. He to whom I go has need of my services, and what he has for twelve months vainly asked me to do, I will promise to do, for the girl's sake, if I cannot win her without." "Take care! Thou enterest a dangerous path," said the old man. "Yet often I have thought of entering there, before I saw this girl's face." "There might be a great reward in this life, and in the life beyond. Yet once the first step is taken, it is irrevocable. In any case, commit me to nothing with him to whom thou goest. He is eaten up with zeal. He is a devouring fire--and all is fuel for that fire." "I will commit thee to nothing without thy full permission, O my father." "And for thyself, think twice before thou killest the sheep. Remember our desert saying. 'Who kills a sheep, kills a bee. Who kills a bee, kills a palm, and who kills a palm, kills seventy prophets.'" "I would give my sword to the prophets to aid them in killing those who are not prophets." "Thou art faithful. Yet let the rain of reason fall on thy head and on thine heart, before thou givest thy sword into the hand of him who waits thine answer." "Thine advice is of the value of many dates, even of the _deglet nour_, the jewel date, which only the rich can eat." The old man laid his hand, still strong and firm, on his son's shoulder, and together they went into the great tent, that part of it where the women were, for all were closely related to them, excepting the Roumia, who had been received as a daughter of the house. * * * * * * * When it was evening, the douar feasted, in honour of the guests who had come to the _tente sultane_. The Agha had given orders that two sheep should be killed. One was for his own household; his relatives, his servants, many of whom lived under the one vast roof of red, and white, and brown. His daughter, and her husband who assisted him in many ways, and was his scribe, or secretary, had a tent of their own close by, next in size to the Agha's; but they were bidden to supper in the great tent that night, for the family reunion. And because there was a European girl present, the women ate with the men, which was not usual. The second sheep was for the humbler folk of the zmala, and they roasted it whole in an open space, over a fire of small, dry wood, and of dead palm branches brought on donkey back twenty miles across the desert, from the nearest oasis town, also under dominion of the Agha. He had a house and garden there; but he liked best to be in his douar, with only his tent roof between him and the sky. Also it made him popular with the tribe of which he was the head, to spend most of his time with them in the desert. And for some reasons of which he never spoke, the old man greatly valued this popularity, though he treasured also the respect of the French, who assured his position and revenues. The desert men had made a ring round the fire, far from the green _daya_, so that the blowing sparks might not reach the trees. They sat in a circle, on the sand, with a row of women on one side, who held the smallest children by their short skirts; and larger children, wild and dark, as the red light of the flames played over their faces, fed the fire with pale palm branches. There was no moon, but a fountain of sparks spouted towards the stars; and though it was night, the sky was blue with the fierce blue of steel. Some of the Agha's black Soudanese servants had made kous-kous of semolina with a little mutton and a great many red peppers. This they gave to the crowd, in huge wooden bowls; and the richer people boiled coffee which they drank themselves, and offered to those sitting nearest them. When everybody had eaten, the powder play began round the fire, and at each explosion the women shrilled out their "you-you, you-you!" But this was all for the entertainment of outsiders. Inside the Agha's tent, the family took their pleasure more quietly. Though a house of canvas, there were many divisions into rooms. The Agha's wife had hers, separated completely from her sister's, and there was space for guests, besides the Agha's own quarters, his reception room, his dining-room (invaded to-night by all his family) the kitchen, and sleeping place for a number of servants. There were many dishes besides the inevitable cheurba, or Arab soup, the kous-kous, the mechoui, lamb roasted over the fire. Victoria was almost sickened by the succession of sweet things, cakes and sugared preserves, made by the hands of the Agha's wife, Alonda, who in the Roumia's eyes was as like Sarah as the Agha was like Abraham. Yet everything was delicious; and after the meal, when the coffee came, lagmi the desert wine distilled from the heart of a palm tree, was pressed upon Victoria. All drank a little, for, said Lella Alonda, though strong drink was forbidden by the Prophet, the palms were dear to him, and besides, in the throats of good men and women, wine was turned to milk, as Sidi Aissa of the Christians turned water to wine at the marriage feast. When they had finished at last, a Soudanese woman poured rose-water over their hands, from a copper jug, and wiped them with a large damask napkin, embroidered by Aichouch, the pretty, somewhat coquettish married daughter of the house, Maïeddine's only sister. The rose-water had been distilled by Lella Fatma, the widowed sister of Alonda, who shared the hospitality of the Agha's roof, in village or douar. Every one questioned Victoria, and made much of her, even the Agha; but, though they asked her opinions of Africa, and talked of her journey across the sea, they did not speak of her past life or of her future. Not a word was said concerning her mission, or Ben Halim's wife, the sister for whom she searched. While they were still at supper, the black servants who had waited upon them went quietly away, but slightly raised the heavy red drapery which formed the partition between that room and another. They looped up the thick curtain only a little way, but there was a light on the other side, and Victoria, curious as to what would happen next, spied the servants' black legs moving about, watched a rough wooden bench placed on the blue and crimson rugs of Djebel Amour, and presently saw other black legs under a white burnous coil themselves upon the low seat. Then began strange music, the first sound of which made Victoria's heart leap. It was the first time she had heard the music of Africa, except a distant beating of tobols coming from a black tent across desert spaces, while she had lain at night in the house of Maïeddine's friends; or the faint, pure note of a henna-dyed flute in the hand of some boy keeper of goats--a note pure as the monotonous purling of water, heard in the dark. But this music was so close to her, that it was like the throbbing of her own heart. And it was no sweet, pure trickle of silver, but the cry of passion, passion as old and as burning as the desert sands outside the lighted tent. As she listened, struck into pulsing silence, she could see the colour of the music; a deep crimson, which flamed into scarlet as the tom-tom beat, or deepened to violent purple, wicked as belladonna flowers. The wailing of the raïta mingled with the heavy throbbing of the tom-tom, and filled the girl's heart with a vague foreboding, a yearning for something she had not known, and did not understand. Yet it seemed that she must have both known and understood long ago, before memory recorded anything--perhaps in some forgotten incarnation. For the music and what it said, monotonously yet fiercely, was old as the beginnings of the world, old and changeless as the patterns of the stars embroidered on the astrological scroll of the sky. The hoarse derbouka, and the languorous ghesbah joined in with the savage tobol and the strident raïta; and under all was the tired heart-beat of the bendir, dull yet resonant, and curiously exciting to the nerves. Victoria's head swam. She wondered if it were wholly the effect of the African music, or if the lagmi she had sipped was mounting to her brain. She grew painfully conscious of every physical sense, and it was hard to sit and listen. She longed to spring up and dance in time to the droning, and throbbing, and crying of the primitive instruments which the Negroes played behind the red curtain. She felt that she must dance, a new, strange dance the idea of which was growing in her mind, and becoming an obsession. She could see it as if she were looking at a picture; yet it was only her nerves and her blood that bade her dance. Her reason told her to sit still. Striving to control herself she shut her eyes, and would have shut her ears too, if she could. But the music was loud in them. It made her see desert rivers rising after floods, and water pounding against the walls of underground caverns. It made her hear the wild, fierce love-call of a desert bird to its mate. She could bear it no longer. She sprang up, her eyes shining, her cheeks red. "May I dance for you to that music, Lella Alonda?" she said to the Agha's wife. "I think I could. I long to try." Lella Alonda, who was old, and accustomed only to the dancing of the Almehs, which she thought shameful, was scandalized at the thought that the young girl would willingly dance before men. She was dumb, not knowing what answer to give, that need not offend a guest, but which might save the Roumia from indiscretion. The Agha, however, was enchanted. He was a man of the world still, though he was aged now, and he had been to Paris, as well as many times to Algiers. He knew that European ladies danced with men of their acquaintance, and he was curious to see what this beautiful child wished to do. He glanced at Maïeddine, and spoke to his wife: "Tell the little White Rose to dance; that it will give us pleasure." "Dance then, in thine own way, O daughter," Lella Alonda was forced to say; for it did not even occur to her that she might disobey her husband. Victoria smiled at them all; at M'Barka and Aichouch, and Aichouch's dignified husband, Si Abderrhaman: at Alonda and the Agha, and at Maïeddine, as, when a child, she would have smiled at her sister, when beginning a dance made up from one of Saidee's stories. She had told Stephen of an Eastern dance she knew, but this was something different, more thrilling and wonderful, which the wild music put into her heart. At first, she hardly knew what was the meaning she felt impelled to express by gesture and pose. The spirit of the desert sang to her, a song of love, a song old as the love-story of Eve; and though the secret of that song was partly hidden from her as yet, she must try to find it out for herself, and picture it to others, by dancing. Always before, when she danced, Victoria had called up the face of her sister, to keep before her eyes as an inspiration. But now, as she bent and swayed to catch the spirit's whispers, as wheat sways to the whisper of the wind, it was a man's face she saw. Stephen Knight seemed to stand in the tent, looking at her with a curiously wistful, longing look, over the heads of the Arab audience, who sat on their low divans and piled carpets. She thrilled to the look, and the desert spirit made her screen her face from it, with a sequined gauze scarf which she wore. For a few measures she danced behind the glittering veil, then with a sudden impulse which the music gave, she tossed it back, holding out her arms, and smiling up to Stephen's eyes, above the brown faces, with a sweet smile very mysterious to the watchers. Consciously she called to Stephen then, as she had promised she would call, if she should ever need him, for somehow she did need and want him;--not for his help in finding Saidee: she was satisfied with all that Maïeddine was doing--but for herself. The secret of the music which she had been trying to find out, was in his eyes, and learning it slowly, made her more beautiful, more womanly, than she had ever been before. As she danced on, the two long plaits of her red hair loosened and shook out into curls which played round her white figure like flames. Her hands fluttered on the air as they rose and fell like the little white wings of a dove; and she was dazzling as a brandished torch, in the ill-lit tent with its dark hangings. M'Barka had given her a necklace of black beads which the negresses had made of benzoin and rose leaves and spices, held in shape with pungent rezin. Worn on the warm flesh, the beads gave out a heady perfume, which was like the breath of the desert. It made the girl giddy, and it grew stronger and sweeter as she danced, seeming to mingle with the crying of the raïta and the sobbing of the ghesbah, so that she confused fragrance with music, music with fragrance. Maïeddine stared at her, like a man who dreams with his eyes open. If he had been alone, he could have watched her dance on for hours, and wished that she would never stop; but there were other men in the tent, and he had a maddening desire to snatch the girl in his arms, smothering her in his burnous, and rushing away with her into the desert. Her dancing astonished him. He did not know what to make of it, for she had told him nothing about herself, except what concerned her errand in Africa. Though he had been in Paris when she was there, he had been deeply absorbed in business vital to his career, and had not heard of Victoria Ray the dancer, or seen her name on the hoardings. Like his father, he knew that European women who danced were not as the African dancers, the Ouled Naïls and the girls of Djebel Amour. But an Arab may have learned to know many things with his mind which he cannot feel with his heart; and with his heart Maïeddine felt a wish to blind Abderrhaman, because his eyes had seen the intoxicating beauty of Victoria as she danced. He was ferociously angry, but not with the girl. Perhaps with himself, because he was powerless to hide her from others, and to order her life as he chose. Yet there was a kind of delicious pain in knowing himself at her mercy, as no Arab man could be at the mercy of an Arab woman. The sight of Victoria dancing, had shot new colours into his existence. He understood her less, and valued her more than before, a thousand times more, achingly, torturingly more. Since their first meeting on the boat, he had admired the American girl immensely. Her whiteness, the golden-red of her hair, the blueness of her eyes had meant perfection for him. He had wanted her because she was the most beautiful creature he had seen, because she was a Christian and difficult to win; also because the contrast between her childishness and brave independence was piquant. Apart from that contrast, he had not thought much about her nature. He had looked upon her simply as a beautiful girl, who could not be bought, but must be won. Now she had become a bewildering houri. Nothing which life could give him would make up for the loss of her. There was nothing he would not do to have her, or at least to put her beyond the reach of others. If necessary, he would even break his promise to the Agha. While she danced inside the great tent, outside in the open space round the fire, the dwellers in the little tents sat with their knees in their arms watching the dancing of two young Negroes from the Soudan. The blacks had torn their turbans from their shaven heads, and thrown aside their burnouses. Naked to their waists, with short, loose trousers, and sashes which other men seized, to swing the wearers round and round, their sweating skin had the gloss of ebony. It was a whirlwind of a dance, and an old wizard with a tom-tom, and a dark giant with metal castanets made music for the dancers, taking eccentric steps themselves as they played. The Soudanese fell into an ecstasy of giddiness, running about on their hands and feet like huge black tarantulas, or turning themselves into human wheels, to roll through the bed of the dying fire and out on the other side, sending up showers of sparks. All the while, they uttered a barking chant, in time to the wicked music, which seemed to shriek for war and bloodshed; and now and then they would dash after some toddling boy, catch him by the scalp-lock on his shaved head (left for the grasp of Azraïl the death-angel) and force him to join the dance. Mean-faced Kabyle dogs, guarding deserted tents, howled their hatred of the music, while far away, across desert spaces, jackals cried to one another. And the scintillating network of stars was dimmed by a thin veil of sand which the wind lifted and let fall, as Victoria lifted and let fall the spangled scarf that made her beauty more mysterious, more desirable, in the eyes of Maïeddine. XXVIII "In the name of the All-Merciful and Pitiful! We seek refuge with the Lord of the Day, against the sinfulness of beings created by Him; against all evil, and against the night, lest they overcome us suddenly." It was the Prayer of the Dawn, El Fejûr; and Victoria heard it cried in the voices of the old men of the zmala, early in the morning, as she dressed to continue her journey. Every one was astir in the _tente sultane_, behind the different curtain partitions, and outside were the noises of the douar, waking to a new day. The girl could not wait for the coffee that Fafann would bring her, for she was eager to see the caravan that Si Maïeddine was assembling. As soon as she was ready she stole out into the dim dawn, more mystic in the desert than moon-rise or moon-setting. The air was crisp and tingling, and smelled of wild thyme, the herb that nomad women love, and wear crushed in their bosoms, or thrust up their nostrils. The camels had not come yet, for the men of the douar had not finished their prayer. In the wide open space where they had watched the dance last night, now they were praying, sons of Ishmael, a crowd of prostrate white figures, their faces against the sand. Victoria stood waiting by the big tent, but she had not much need for patience. Soon the desert prayer was over, and the zmala was buzzing with excitement, as it had buzzed when the travellers arrived. The Soudanese Negroes who had danced the wild dance appeared leading two white meharis, running camels, aristocrats of the camel world. On the back of each rose a cage-like bassour, draped with haoulis, striped rose-colour and purple. The desert beasts moved delicately, on legs longer and more slender than those of pack-camels, their necks swaying like the necks of swans who swim with the tide. Victoria thought them like magnificent, four-legged cousins of ostriches, and the superciliousness of their expressions amused her; the look they had of elderly ladies, dissatisfied with every one but themselves, and conscious of being supremely "well-connected." "A camel cannot see its own hump, but it can see those of others," she had heard M'Barka say. As Victoria stood alone in the dawn, laughing at the ghostly meharis, and looking with interest at the heavily laden pack-camel and the mule piled up with tents and mattresses, Maïeddine came riding round from behind the great tent, all in white, on a white stallion. Seeing the girl, he tested her courage, and made a bid for her admiration by reining El Biod in suddenly, making him stand erect on his hind feet, pawing the air and dancing. But Roumia as she was, and unaccustomed to such manoeuvres, she neither ran back nor screamed. She was not ashamed to show her admiration of man and horse, and Maïeddine did not know that her thoughts were more of El Biod the white, "drinker of air," the saddle of crimson velvet and tafilet leather embroidered in gold, and the bridle from Figuig, encrusted with silver, than of the rider. "This is the horse of whom I told thee," Maïeddine said, letting El Biod come down again on all four feet. "He was blessed as a foal by having the magical words 'Bissem Allah' whispered over him as he drew the first draught of his mother's milk. But thou wilt endow him with new gifts if thou touchest his forehead with thy hand. Wilt thou do that, for his sake, and for mine?" Victoria patted the flesh-coloured star on the stallion's white face, not knowing that, if a girl's fingers lie between the eyes of an Arab's horse, it is as much as to say that she is ready to ride with him to the world's end. But Maïeddine knew, and the thought warmed his blood. He was superstitious, like all Arabs, and he had wanted a sign of success. Now he had it. He longed to kiss the little fingers as they rested on El Biod's forehead, but he said to himself, "Patience; it will not be long before I kiss her lips." "El Biod is my citadel," he smiled to her. "Thou knowest we have the same word for horse and citadel in Arabic? And that is because a brave stallion is a warrior's citadel, built on the wind, a rampart between him and the enemy. And we think the angels gave a horse the same heart as a man, that he might be our friend as well as servant, and carry us on his back to Paradise. Whether that is true or not, to-day El Biod and I are already on the threshold of Paradise, because we are thy guides, thy guardians through the desert which we love." As he made this speech, Maïeddine watched the girl's face anxiously, to see whether she would resent the implication, but she only smiled in her frank way, knowing the Arab language to be largely the language of compliment; and he was encouraged. Perhaps he had been over-cautious with her, he thought; for, after all, he had no reason to believe that she cared for any man, and as he had a record of great successes with women, why be so timid with an unsophisticated girl? Each day, he told himself, he would take another and longer step forward; but for the moment he must be content. He began to talk about the meharis and the Negroes who would go with them and the beasts of burden. When it was time for Victoria and M'Barka to be helped into their bassourahs, Maïeddine would not let the Soudanese touch the meharis. It was he who made the animals kneel, pulling gently on the bridle attached to a ring in the left nostril of each; and both subsided gracefully in haughty silence instead of uttering the hideous gobbling which common camels make when they get down and get up, or when they are loaded or unloaded. These beasts, Guelbi and Mansour, had been bought from Moors, across the border where Oran and Morocco run together, and had been trained since babyhood by smugglers for smuggling purposes. "If a man would have a silent camel," said Maïeddine, "he must get him from smugglers. For the best of reasons their animals are taught never to make a noise." M'Barka was to have Fafann in the same bassour, but Victoria would have her rose and purple cage to herself. Maïeddine told her how, as the camel rose, she must first bow forward, then bend back; and, obeying carefully, she laughed like a child as the tall mehari straightened the knees of his forelegs, bearing his weight upon them as if on his feet, then got to his hind feet, while his "front knees," as she called them, were still on the ground, and last of all swung himself on to all four of his heart-shaped feet. Oh, how high in the air she felt when Guelbi was up, ready to start! She had had no idea that he was such a tall, moving tower, under the bassour. "What a sky-scraping camel!" she exclaimed. And then had to explain to Maïeddine what she meant; for though he knew Paris, for him America might as well have been on another planet. He rode beside Victoria's mehari, when good-byes had been said, blessings exchanged, and the little caravan had started. Looking out between the haoulis which protected her from sun and wind, the handsome Arab on his Arab horse seemed far below her, as Romeo must have seemed to Juliet on her balcony; and to him the fair face, framed with dazzling hair was like a guiding star. "Thou canst rest in thy bassour?" he asked. "The motion of thy beast gives thee no discomfort?" "No. Truly it is a cradle," she answered. "I had read that to ride on a camel was misery, but this is like being rocked on the bough of a tree when the wind blows." "To sit in a bassour is very different from riding on a saddle, or even on a mattress, as the poor Bedouin women sometimes ride, or the dancers journeying from one place to another. I would not let thee travel with me unless I had been able to offer thee all the luxuries which a sultana might command. With nothing less would I have been content, because to me thou art a queen." "At least thou hast given me a beautiful moving throne," laughed Victoria; "and because thou art taking me on it to my sister, I'm happy to-day as a queen." "Then, if thou art happy, I also am happy," he said. "And when an Arab is happy, his lips would sing the song that is in his heart. Wilt thou be angry or pleased if I sing thee a love-song of the desert?" "I cannot be angry, because the song will not really be for me," Victoria answered with the simplicity which had often disarmed and disconcerted Maïeddine. "And I shall be pleased, because in the desert it is good to hear desert songs." This was not exactly the answer which he had wanted, but he made the best of it, telling himself that he had not much longer to wait. "Leaders of camels sing," he said, "to make the beasts' burdens weigh less heavily. But thy mehari has no burden. Thou in thy bassour art lighter on his back than a feather on the wing of a dove. My song is for my own heart, and for thine heart, if thou wilt have it, not for Guelbi, though the meaning of Guelbi is 'heart of mine.'" Then Maïeddine sang as he rode, his bridle lying loose, an old Arab song, wild and very sad, as all Arab music sounds, even when it is the cry of joy: "Truly, though I were to die, it would be naught, If I were near my love, for whom my bosom aches, For whom my heart is beating. "Yes, I am to die, but death is nothing O ye who pass and see me dying, For I have kissed the eyes, the mouth that I desired." "But that is a sad song," said Victoria, when Maïeddine ceased his tragic chant, after many verses. "Thou wouldst not say so, if thou hadst ever loved. Nothing is sad to a lover, except to lose his love, or not to have his love returned." "But an Arab girl has no chance to love," Victoria argued. "Her father gives her to a man when she is a child, and they have never even spoken to each other until after the wedding." "We of the younger generation do not like these child marriages," Maïeddine apologized, eagerly. "And, in any case, an Arab man, unless he be useless as a mule without an eye, knows how to make a girl love him in spite of herself. We are not like the men of Europe, bound down by a thousand conventions. Besides, we sometimes fall in love with women not of our own race. These we teach to love us before marriage." Victoria laughed again, for she felt light-hearted in the beautiful morning. "Do Arab men always succeed as teachers?" "What is written is written," he answered slowly. "Yet it is written that a strong man carves his own fate. And for thyself, wouldst thou know what awaits thee in the future?" "I trust in God and my star." "Thou wouldst not, then, that the desert speak to thee with its tongue of sand out of the wisdom of all ages?" "What dost thou mean?" "I mean that my cousin, Lella M'Barka, can divine the future from the sand of the Sahara, which gave her life, and life to her ancestors for a thousand years before her. It is a gift. Wilt thou that she exercise it for thee to-night, when we camp?" "There is hardly any real sand in this part of the desert," said Victoria, seeking some excuse not to hear M'Barka's prophecies, yet not to hurt M'Barka's feelings, or Maïeddine's. "It is all far away, where we see the hills which look golden as ripe grain. And we cannot reach those hills by evening." "My cousin always carries the sand for her divining. Every night she reads in the sand what will happen to her on the morrow, just as the women of Europe tell their fate by the cards. It is sand from the dunes round Touggourt; and mingled with it is a little from Mecca, which was brought to her by a holy man, a marabout. It would give her pleasure to read the sand for thee." "Then I will ask her to do it," Victoria promised. As the day grew, its first brightness faded. A wind blew up from the south, and slowly darkened the sky with a strange lilac haze, which seemed tangible as thin silk gauze. Behind it the sun glimmered like a great silver plate, and the desert turned pale, as in moonlight. Although the ground was hard under the camels' feet, the wind carried with it from far-away spaces a fine powder of sand which at last forced Victoria to let down the haoulis, and Maïeddine and the two Negroes to cover their faces with the veils of their turbans, up to the eyes. "It will rain this afternoon," M'Barka prophesied from between her curtains. "No," Maïeddine contradicted her. "There has been rain this month, and thou knowest better than I do that beyond El Aghouat it rains but once in five years. Else, why do the men of the M'Zab country break their hearts to dig deep wells? There will be no rain. It is but a sand-storm we have to fear." "Yet I feel in the roots of my hair and behind my eyes that the rain is coming." Maïeddine shrugged his shoulders, for an Arab does not twice contradict a woman, unless she be his wife. But the lilac haze became a pall of crape, and the noon meal was hurried. Maïeddine saved some of the surprises he had brought for a more favourable time. Hardly had they started on again, when rain began to fall, spreading over the desert in a quivering silver net whose threads broke and were constantly mended again. Then the rough road (to which the little caravan did not keep) and all the many diverging tracks became wide silver ribbons, lacing the plain broken with green dayas. A few minutes more--incredibly few, it seemed to Victoria--and the dayas were deep lakes, where the water swirled and bubbled round the trunks of young pistachio trees. A torrent poured from the mourning sky, and there was a wild sound of marching water, which Victoria could hear, under the haoulis which sheltered her. No water came through them, for the arching form of the bassour was like the roof of a tent, and the rain poured down on either side. She peeped out, enjoying her own comfort, while pitying Maïeddine and the Negroes; but all three had covered their thin burnouses with immensely thick, white, hooded cloaks, woven of sheep's wool, and they had no air of depression. By and by they came to an oued, which should have been a dry, stony bed without a trickle of water; but half an hour's downpour had created a river, as if by black magic; and Victoria could guess the force at which it was rushing, by the stout resistance she felt Guelbi had to make, as he waded through. "A little more, and we could not have crossed," said Maïeddine, when they had mounted up safely on the other side of the oued. "Art thou not very wet and miserable?" the girl asked sympathetically. "I--miserable?" he echoed. "I--who am privileged to feast upon the deglet nour, in my desert?" Victoria did not understand his metaphor, for the deglet nour is the finest of all dates, translucent as amber, sweet as honey, and so dear that only rich men or great marabouts ever taste it. "The deglet nour?" she repeated, puzzled. "Dost thou not know the saying that the smile of a beautiful maiden is the deglet nour of Paradise, and nourishes a man's soul, so that he can bear any discomfort without being conscious that he suffers?" "I did not know that Arab men set women so high," said Victoria, surprised; for now the rain had stopped, suddenly as it began, and she could look out again from between the curtains. Soon they would dry in the hot sun. "Thou hast much to learn then, about Arab men," Maïeddine answered, "and fortunate is thy teacher. It is little to say that we would sacrifice our lives for the women we love, because for us life is not that great treasure it is to the Roumis, who cling to it desperately. We would do far more than give our lives for the beloved woman, we Arabs. We would give our heads, which is the greatest sacrifice a man of Islam could make." "But is not that the same thing as giving life?" "It is a thousandfold more. It is giving up the joy of eternity. For we are taught to believe that if a man's head is severed from his body, it alone goes to Paradise. His soul is maimed. It is but a bodiless head, and all celestial joys are for ever denied to it." "How horrible!" the girl exclaimed. "Dost thou really believe such a thing?" He feared that he had made a mistake, and that she would look upon him as an alien, a pagan, with whom she could have no sympathy. "If I am more modern in my ideas than my forefathers," he said tactfully, "I must not confess it to a Roumia, must I, oh Rose of the West?--for that would be disloyal to Islam. Yet if I did believe, still would I give my head for the love of the one woman, the star of my destiny, she whose sweet look deserves that the word 'aïn' should stand for bright fountain, and for the ineffable light in a virgin's eyes." "I did not know until to-day, Si Maïeddine, that thou wert a poet," Victoria told him. "All true Arabs are poets. Our language--the literary, not the common Arabic--is the language of poets, as thou must have read in thy books. But I have now such inspiration as perhaps no man ever had; and thou wilt learn other things about me, while we journey together in the desert." As he said this he looked at her with a look which even her simplicity could not have mistaken if she had thought of it; but instantly the vision of Saidee came between her eyes and his. The current of her ideas was abruptly changed. "How many days now," she asked suddenly, "will the journey last?" His face fell. "Art thou tired already of this new way of travelling, that thou askest me a question thou hast not once asked since we started?" "Oh no, no," she reassured him. "I love it. I am not tired at all. But--I did not question thee at first because thou didst not desire me to know thy plans, while I was still within touch of Europeans. Thou didst not put this reason in such words, for thou wouldst not have let me feel I had not thy full trust. But it was natural thou shouldst not give it, when thou hadst so little acquaintance with me, and I did not complain. Now it is different. Even if I wished, I could neither speak nor write to any one I ever knew. Therefore I question thee." "Art thou impatient for the end?" he wanted to know, jealously. "Not impatient. I am happy. Yet I should like to count the days, and say each night, 'So many more times must the sun rise and set before I see my sister.'" "Many suns must rise and set," Maïeddine confessed doggedly. "But--when first thou planned the journey, thou saidst; 'In a fortnight thou canst send thy friends news, I hope.'" "If I had told thee then, that it must be longer, wouldst thou have come with me? I think not. For thou sayest I did not wholly trust thee. How much less didst thou trust me?" "Completely. Or I would not have put myself in thy charge." "Perhaps thou art convinced of that now, when thou knowest me and Lella M'Barka, and thou hast slept in the tent of my father, and in the houses of my friends. But I saw in thine eyes at that time a doubt thou didst not wish to let thyself feel, because through me alone was there a way to reach thy sister. I wished to bring thee to her, for thy sake, and for her sake, though I have never looked upon her face and never shall----" "Why dost thou say 'never shall'?" the girl broke in upon him suddenly. The blood mounted to his face. He had made a second mistake, and she was very quick to catch him up. "It was but a figure of speech," he corrected himself. "Thou dost not mean that she's shut up, and no man allowed to see her?" "I know nothing. Thou wilt find out all for thyself. But thou wert anxious to go to her, at no matter what cost, and I feared to dishearten thee, to break thy courage, while I was still a stranger, and could not justify myself in thine eyes. Now, wilt thou forgive me an evasion, which was to save thee anxiety, if I say frankly that, travel as we may, we cannot reach our journey's end for many days yet?" "I must forgive thee," said Victoria, with a sigh. "Yet I do not like evasions. They are unworthy." "I am sorry," Maïeddine returned, so humbly that he disarmed her. "It would be terrible to offend thee." "There can be no question of offence," she consoled him. "I am very, very grateful for all thou hast done for me. I often lie awake in the night, wondering how I can repay thee everything." "When we come to the end of the journey, I will tell thee of a thing thou canst do, for my happiness," Maïeddine said in a low voice, as if half to himself. "Wilt thou tell me now to what place we are going? I should like to know, and I should like to hear thee describe it." He did not speak for a moment. Then he said slowly; "It is a grief to deny thee anything, oh Rose, but the secret is not mine to tell, even to thee." "The secret!" she echoed. "Thou hast never called it a secret." "If I did not use that word, did I not give thee to understand the same thing?" "Thou meanest, the secret about Cassim, my sister's husband?" "Cassim ben Halim has ceased to live." Victoria gave a little cry. "Dead! But thou hast made me believe, in spite of the rumours, that he lived." "I cannot explain to thee," Maïeddine answered gloomily, as if hating to refuse her anything. "In the end, thou wilt know all, and why I had to be silent." "But my sister?" the girl pleaded. "There is no mystery about her? Thou hast concealed nothing which concerns Saidee?" "Thou hast my word that I will take thee to the place where she is. Thou gavest me thy trust. Give it me again." "I have not taken it away. It is thine," said Victoria. XXIX That night they spent in a caravanserai, because, after the brief deluge of rain, the ground was too damp for camping, when an invalid was of the party. When they reached the place after sunset, the low square of the building was a block of marble set in the dull gold of the desert, carved in dazzling white against a deep-blue evening sky. Like Ben Halim's house, it was roughly fortified, with many loopholes in the walls, for it had been built to serve the uses of less peaceful days than these. Within the strong gates, on one side were rooms for guests, each with its own door and window opening into the huge court. On another side of the square were the kitchens and dining-room, as well as living-place for the Arab landlord and his hidden family; and opposite was a roofed, open-fronted shelter for camels and other animals, the ground yellow with sand and spilt fodder. Water overflowed from a small well, making a pool in the courtyard, in which ducks and geese waddled, quacking, turkey-cocks fought in quiet corners, barked at impotently by Kabyle puppies. Tall, lean hounds or sloughis, kept to chase the desert gazelles, wandered near the kitchens, in the hope of bones, and camels gobbled dismally as their tired drivers forced them to their knees, or thrust handfuls of date stones down their throats. There were sheep, too, and goats; and even a cow, the "perpetual mother" loved and valued by Arabs. M'Barka refused to "read the sand" that night, when Maïeddine suggested it. The sand would yield up its secrets only under the stars, she said, and wished to wait until they should be in the tents. All night, outside Victoria's open but shuttered window, there was a stealthy stirring of animals in the dark, a gliding of ghostly ducks, a breathing of sheep and camels. And sometimes the wild braying of a donkey or the yelp of a dog tore the silence to pieces. The next day was hot; so that at noon, when they stopped to eat, the round blot of black shadow under one small tree was precious as a black pearl. And there were flies. Victoria could not understand how they lived in the desert, miles from any house, miles from the tents of nomads; where there was no vegetation, except an occasional scrubby tree, or a few of the desert gourds which the Arabs use to cure the bite of scorpions. But she had not seen the cages of bones, sometimes bleached like old ivory, sometimes of a dreadful red, which told of wayside tragedies. Always when they had come in sight of a skeleton, Maïeddine had found some excuse to make the girl look in another direction; for he wanted her to love the desert, not to feel horror of its relentlessness. Now for the first time he had full credit for his cleverness as an organizer. Never before had they been so remote from civilization. When travelling in the carriage, stopping each night at the house of some well-to-do caïd or adel, it had been comparatively easy to provide supplies; but to-day, when jellied chicken and cream-cheese, almond cakes and oranges appeared at luncheon, and some popular French mineral water (almost cool because the bottles had been wrapped in wet blanket) fizzed in the glasses, Victoria said that Si Maïeddine must have a tame djinn for a slave. "Wait till evening," he told her. "Then perhaps thou mayest see something to please thee." But he was delighted with her compliments, and made her drink water from the glass out of which he had drunk, that she might be sure of his good faith in all he had sworn to her yesterday. "They who drink water from the same cup have made an eternal pact together," he said. "I should not dare to be untrue, even if I would. And thou--I think that thou wilt be true to me." "Why, certainly I will," answered Victoria, with the pretty American accent which Stephen Knight had admired and smiled at the night he heard it first. "Thou art one of my very best friends." Maïeddine looked down into the glass and smiled, as if he were a crystal-gazer, and could see something under the bright surface, that no one else could see. Night folded down over the desert, hot and velvety, like the wings of a mother-bird covering her children; but before darkness fell, the tents glimmered under the stars. There were two only, a large one for the women, and one very small for Maïeddine. The Negroes would roll themselves in their burnouses, and lie beside the animals. But sleeping-time had not come yet; and it was the Soudanese who prepared the evening meal. One of them was a good cook, and for that reason Maïeddine had begged him from the Agha. He made desert bread, by mixing farina with salted water, and baking it on a flat tin supported by stones over a fire of dry twigs. When the thin loaf was crisply brown on top, the man took it off the fire, and covered it up, on the tin, because it was to be eaten hot. While Victoria waited for all to be got ready, she strolled a little away from the tents and the group of resting animals, having promised Maïeddine to avoid the tufts of alfa grass, for fear of vipers which sometimes lurked among them. He would have liked to go with her, but the unfailing tact of the Arab told him that she wished to be alone with her thoughts, and he could only hope that they might be of him. Here, it was no longer beautiful desert. They had passed the charming region of dayas, and were entering the grim world through which, long ago, the ever harried M'Zabites had fled to find a refuge beyond the reach of greedy pursuers. Nevertheless the enchantment of the Sahara, in all its phases, had taken hold of Victoria. She did not now feel that the desert was a place where a tired soul might find oblivion, though once she had imagined that it would be a land of forgetfulness. Arabs say, in talking idly to Europeans, that men forget their past in the desert, but she doubted if they really forgot, in these vast spaces where there was so much time to think. She herself began to feel that the illimitable skies, where flamed sunsets and sunrises whose miracles no eye saw, might teach her mysteries she had snatched at and lost, in dreams. The immensity of the desert sent her soul straining towards the immensity of the Beyond; and almost, in flashes elusive as the light on a bird's wing, she understood what eternity might mean. She felt that the last days of her childhood had been left behind, on the threshold of these mysterious spaces, this vastness into which she had plunged, as into an ocean. Yet she did not regret the loss, if it were a loss. Never, she thought, whatever might happen, would she wish not to have known this experience, not to have entered upon this great adventure, whose end Maïeddine still hid behind a veil of secrecy. It was true, as she had told him, that she was not impatient, though she would have liked to count the days like the beads of a rosary. She looked forward to each one, as to the discovery of a beautiful thing new to the world and to her; for though the spaces surrounding her were wide beyond thinking, they were not empty. As ships, great and small, sail the sea, so sailed the caravans of the nomad tribes in the desert which surges on unchecked to Egypt: nomads who come and go, north and south, east and west, under the burning sun and the throbbing stars, as Allah has written their comings and goings in His book: men in white, journeying with their women, their children, and their trains of beasts, singing as they pass, and at night under the black tents resting to the music of the tom-tom and raïta. Victoria's gaze waded through the shadows that flow over the desert at evening, deep and blue and transparent as water. She searched the distances for the lives that must be going on somewhere, perhaps not far away, though she would never meet them. They, and she, were floating spars in a great ocean; and it made the ocean more wonderful to know that the spars were there, each drifting according to its fate. The girl drew into her lungs the strong air of the desert, born of the winds which bring life or death to its children. The scent of the wild thyme, which she could never again disentangle from thoughts of the Sahara, was very sweet, even insistent. She knew that it was loved by nomad women; and she let pictures rise before her mind of gorgeous dark girls on camels, in plumed red bassourahs, going from one desert city to another, to dance--cities teeming with life, which she would never see among these spaces that seemed empty as the world before creation. She imagined the ghosts of these desert beauties crowding round her in the dusk, bringing their fragrance with them, the wild thyme they had loved in life, crushed in their bosoms; pathetic ghosts, who had not learned to rise beyond what they had once desired, therefore compelled to haunt the desert, the only world which they had known. In the wind that came sighing to her ears from the dark ravines of the terrible chebka, she seemed to hear battle-songs and groans of desert men who had fought and died ages ago, whose bones had crumbled under her feet, perhaps, and whose descendants had not changed one whit in religion, custom, or thought, or even in dress. Victoria was glad that Maïeddine had let her have these desert thoughts alone, for they made her feel at home in the strange world her fancy peopled; but the touch of the thyme-scented ghosts was cold. It was good to turn back at last towards the tents, and see how the camp-fire crimsoned the star-dusk. "Thou wert happy alone?" Maïeddine questioned her jealously. "I was not alone." He understood. "I know. The desert voices spoke to thee, of the desert mystery which they alone can tell; voices we can hear only by listening closely." "That was the thought in my mind. How odd thou shouldst put it into words." "Dost thou think it odd? But I am a man of the desert. I held back, for thee to go alone and hear the voices, knowing they would teach thee to understand me and my people. I knew, too, that the spirits would be kind, and say nothing to frighten thee. Besides, thou didst not go to them quite alone, for thine own white angel walked on thy right hand, as always." "Thou makest poetical speeches, Si Maïeddine." "It is no poetry to speak of thy white angel. We believe that each one of us has a white angel at his right hand, recording his good actions. But ordinary mortals have also their black angels, keeping to the left, writing down wicked thoughts and deeds. Hast thou not seen men spitting to the left, to show despite of their black angels? But because thy soul is never soiled by sinful thoughts, there was no need for a black angel, and whilst thou wert still a child, Allah discharged him of his mission." "And thou, Si Maïeddine, dost thou think, truly, that a black angel walks ever at thy left side?" "I fear so." Maïeddine glanced to the left, as if he could see a dark figure writing on a slate. Things concerning Victoria must have been written on that slate, plans he had made, of which neither his white angel nor hers would approve. But, he told himself, if they had to be carried out, she would be to blame, for driving him to extremes. "Whilst thou art near me," he said aloud, "my black angel lags behind, and if thou wert to be with me forever, I----" "Since that cannot be, thou must find a better way to keep him in the background," Victoria broke in lightly. But Si Maïeddine's compliments were oppressive. She wished it were not the Arab way to pay so many. He had been different at first; and feeling the change in him with a faint stirring of uneasiness, she hurried her steps to join M'Barka. The invalid reclined on a rug of golden jackal skins, and rested a thin elbow on cushions of dyed leather, braided in intricate strips by Touareg women. Victoria sat beside her, Maïeddine opposite, and Fafann waited upon them as they ate. After supper, while the Bedouin woman saw that everything was ready for her mistress and the Roumia, in their tent, M'Barka spread out her precious sand from Mecca and the dunes round her own Touggourt. She had it tied up in green silk, such as is used for the turbans of men who have visited Mecca, lined with a very old Arab brocade, purple and gold, like the banners that drape the tombs of marabouts. She opened the bag carefully, until it lay flat on the ground in front of her knees, the sand piled in the middle, as much perhaps as could have been heaped on a soup plate. For a moment she sat gazing at the sand, her lips moving. She looked wan as old ivory in the dying firelight, and in the hollows of her immense eyes seemed to dream the mysteries of all ages. "Take a handful of sand," she said to Victoria. "Hold it over thine heart. Now, wish with the whole force of thy soul." Victoria wished to find Saidee safe, and to be able to help her, if she needed help. "Put back the sand, sprinkling it over the rest." The girl, though not superstitious, could not help being interested, even fascinated. It seemed to her that the sand had a magical sparkle. M'Barka's eyes became introspective, as if she waited for a message, or saw a vision. She was as strange, as remote from modern womanhood as a Cassandra. Presently she started, and began trailing her brown fingers lightly over the sand, pressing them down suddenly now and then, until she had made three long, wavy lines, the lower ones rather like telegraphic dots and dashes. "Lay the forefinger of thy left hand on any figure in these lines," she commanded. "Now on another--yet again, for the third time. That is all thou hast to do. The rest is for me." She took from some hiding-place in her breast a little old note-book, bound in dark leather, glossy from constant use. With it came a perfume of sandalwood. Turning the yellow leaves of the book, covered with fine Arab lettering, she read in a murmuring, indistinct voice, that sounded to Victoria like one of those desert voices of which Maïeddine had spoken. Also she measured spaces between the figures the girl had touched, and counted monotonously. "Thy wish lies a long way from thee," she said at last. "A long way! Thou couldst never reach it of thyself--never, not till the end of the world. I see thee--alone, very helpless. Thou prayest. Allah sends thee a man--a strong man, whose brain and heart and arm are at thy service. Allah is great!" "Tell her what the man is like, cousin," Maïeddine prompted, eagerly. "He is dark, and young. He is not of thy country, oh Rose of the West, but trust him, rely upon him, or thou art undone. In thy future, just where thou hast ceased to look for them, I see troubles and disappointments, even dangers. That is the time, above all others, to let thyself be guided by the man Allah has sent to be thy prop. He has ready wit and courage. His love for thee is great. It grows and grows. He tells thee of it; and thou--thou seest between him and thee a barrier, high and fearful as a wall with sharp knives on top. For thine eyes it is impassable. Thine heart is sad; and thy words to him will pierce his soul with despair. But think again. Be true to thyself and to thy star. Speak another word, and throw down that high barrier, as the wall of Jericho was thrown down. Thou canst do it. All will depend on the decision of a moment--thy whole future, the future of the man, and of a woman whose face I cannot see." M'Barka smoothed away the tracings in the sand. "What--is there no more?" asked Maïeddine. "No, it is dark before my eyes now. The light has gone from the sand. I can still tell her a few little things, perhaps. Such things as the luckiest colours to wear, the best days to choose for journeys. But she is different from most girls. I do not think she would care for such hints." "All colours are lucky. All days are good," said Victoria. "I thank thee for what thou hast told me, Lella M'Barka." She did not wish to hear more. What she had heard was more than enough. Not that she really believed that M'Barka could see into the future; but because of the "dark man." Any fortune-teller might introduce a dark man into the picture of a fair girl's destiny; but the allusions were so marked that Victoria's vague unrestfulness became distress. She tried to encourage herself by thinking of Maïeddine's dignified attitude, from the beginning of their acquaintance until now. And even now, he had changed only a little. He was too complimentary, that was all; and the difference in his manner might arise from knowing her more intimately. Probably Lella M'Barka, like many elderly women of other and newer civilizations, was over-romantic; and the best thing was to prevent her from putting ridiculous ideas into Maïeddine's head. Such ideas would spoil the rest of the journey for both. "Remember all I have told thee, when the time comes," M'Barka warned her. "Yes--oh yes, I will remember." "Now it is my turn. Read the sand for me," said Maïeddine. M'Barka made as if she would wrap the sand in its bag. "I can tell thy future better another time. Not now. It would not be wise. Besides, I have done enough. I am tired." "Look but a little way along the future, then, and say what thou seest. I feel that it will bring good fortune to touch the sand where the hand of Ourïeda has touched it." Always now, he spoke of Victoria, or to her, as "Rose" (Ourïeda in Arabic); but as M'Barka gave her that name also, the girl could hardly object. "I tell thee, instead it may bring thee evil." "For good or evil, I will have the fortune now," Maïeddine insisted. "Be it upon thy head, oh cousin, not mine. Take thy handful of sand, and make thy wish." Maïeddine took it from the place Victoria had touched, and his wish was that, as the grains of sand mingled, so their destinies might mingle inseparably, his and hers. M'Barka traced the three rows of mystic signs, and read her notebook, mumbling. But suddenly she let it drop into her lap, covering the signs with both thin hands. "What ails thee?" Maïeddine asked, frowning. "I saw thee stand still and let an opportunity slip by." "I shall not do that." "The sand has said it. Shall I stop, or go on?" "Go on." "I see another chance to grasp thy wish. This time thou stretchest out thine hand. I see thee, in a great house--the house of one thou knowest, whose name I may not speak. Thou stretchest out thine hand. The chance is given thee----" "What then?" "Then--I cannot tell thee, what then. Thou must not ask. My eyes are clouded with sleep. Come Ourïeda, it is late. Let us go to our tent." "No," said Maïeddine. "Ourïeda may go, but not thou." Victoria rose quickly and lightly from among the jackal skins and Touareg cushions which Maïeddine had provided for her comfort. She bade him good night, and with all his old calm courtesy he kissed his hand after it had pressed hers. But there was a fire of anger or impatience in his eyes. Fafann was in the tent, waiting to put her mistress to bed, and to help the Roumia if necessary. The mattresses which had come rolled up on the brown mule's back, had been made into luxurious looking beds, covered with bright-coloured, Arab-woven blankets, beautiful embroidered sheets of linen, and cushions slipped into fine pillow-cases. Folding frames draped with new mosquito nettings had been arranged to protect the sleepers' hands and faces; and there was a folding table on which stood French gilt candlesticks and a glass basin and water-jug, ornamented with gilded flowers; just such a basin and jug as Victoria had seen in the curiosity-shop of Mademoiselle Soubise. There were folded towels, too, of silvery damask. "What wonderful things we have!" the girl exclaimed. "I don't see how we manage to carry them all. It is like a story of the 'Arabian Nights,' where one has but to rub a lamp, and a powerful djinn brings everything one wants." "The Lord Maïeddine is the powerful djinn who has brought all thou couldst possibly desire, without giving thee even the trouble to wish for things," said Fafann, showing her white teeth, and glancing sidelong at the Roumia. "These are not all. Many of these things thou hast seen already. Yet there are more." Eagerly she lifted from the ground, which was covered with rugs, a large green earthern jar. "It is full of rosewater to bathe thy face, for the water of the desert here is brackish, and harsh to the skin, because of saltpetre. The Sidi ordered enough rosewater to last till Ghardaia, in the M'Zab country. Then he will get thee more." "But it is for us both--for Lella M'Barka more than for me," protested Victoria. Fafann laughed. "My mistress no longer spends time in thinking of her skin. She prays much instead; and the Sidi has given her an amulet which touched the sacred Black Stone at Mecca. To her, that is worth all the rest; and it is worth this great journey, which she takes with so much pain. The rosewater, and the perfumes from Tunis, and the softening creams made in the tent of the Sidi's mother, are all offered to thee." "No, no," the girl persisted, "I am sure they are meant more for Lella M'Barka than for me. She is his cousin." "Hast thou never noticed the caravans, when they have passed us in the desert, how it is always the young and beautiful women who rest in the bassourahs, while the old ones trot after the camels?" "I have noticed that, and it is very cruel." "Why cruel, oh Roumia? They have had their day. And when a man has but one camel, he puts upon its back his treasure, the joy of his heart. A man must be a man, so say even the women. And the Sidi is a man, as well as a great lord. He is praised by all as a hunter, and for the straightness of his aim with a gun. He rides, thou seest, as if he were one with his horse, and as he gallops in the desert, so would he gallop to battle if need be, for he is brave as the Libyan lion, and strong as the heroes of old legends. Yet there is nothing too small for him to bend his mind upon, if it be for thy pleasure and comfort. Thou shouldst be proud, instead of denying that all the Sidi does is for thee. My mistress would tell thee so, and many women would be dying of envy, daughters of Aghas and even of Bach Aghas. But perhaps, as thou art a Roumia, thou hast different feelings." "Perhaps," answered Victoria humbly, for she was crushed by Fafann's fierce eloquence. And for a moment her heart was heavy; but she would not let herself feel a presentiment of trouble. "What harm can happen to me?" she asked. "I haven't been guided so far for nothing. Si Maïeddine is an Arab, and his ways aren't like the ways of men I've known, that's all. My sister's husband was his friend--a great friend, whom he loved. What he does is more for Cassim's sake than mine." Her cheeks were burning after the long day of sun, and because of her thoughts; yet she was not glad to bathe them with Si Maïeddine's fragrant offering of rosewater, some of which Fafann poured into the glass basin. Not far away Maïeddine was still sitting by the fire with M'Barka. "Tell me now," he said. "What didst thou see?" "Nothing clearly. Another time, cousin. Let me have my mind fresh. I am like a squeezed orange." "Yet I must know, or I shall not sleep. Thou art hiding something." "All was vague--confused. I saw as through a torn cloud. There was the great house. Thou wert there, a guest. Thou wert happy, thy desire granted, and then--by Allah, Maïeddine, I could not see what happened; but the voice of the sand was like a storm in my ears, and the knowledge came to me suddenly that thou must not wait too long for thy wish--the wish made with the sand against thine heart." "Thou couldst not see my wish. Thou art but a woman." "I saw, because I am a woman, and I have the gift. Thou knowest I have the gift. Do not wait too long, or thou mayest wait for ever." "What wouldst thou have me do?" "It is not for me to advise. As thou saidst, I am but a woman. Only--_act_! That is the message of the sand. And now, unless thou wouldst have my dead body finish the journey in the bassour, take me to my tent." Maïeddine took her to the tent. And he asked no more questions. But all night he thought of what M'Barka had said, and the message of the sand. It was a dangerous message, yet the counsel was after his own heart. XXX In the morning he was still brooding over the message; and as they travelled through the black desert on the way to Ghardaia and the hidden cities of the M'Zab, he fell into long silences. Then, abruptly, he would rouse himself to gaiety and animation, telling old legends or new tales, strange dramas of the desert, very seldom comedies; for there are few comedies in the Sahara, except for the children. Sometimes he was in danger of speaking out words which said themselves over and over in his head. "If I 'wait too long, I may wait for ever.' Then, by Allah, I will not wait." But he kept his tongue in control, though his brain was hot as if he wore no turban, under the blaze of the sun. "I will leave things as they are while we are in this black Gehenna," he determined. "What is written is written. Yet who has seen the book of the writing? And there is a curse on all this country, till the M'Zab is passed." After Bou-Saada, he had gradually forgotten, or almost forgotten, his fears. He had been happy in the consciousness of power that came to him from the desert, where he was at home, and Europeans were helpless strangers. But now, M'Barka's warnings had brought the fears back, like flapping ravens. He had planned the little play of the sand-divining, and at first it had pleased him. M'Barka's vision of the dark man who was not of Victoria's country could not have been better; and because he knew that his cousin believed in the sand, he was superstitiously impressed by her prophecy and advice. In the end, he had forced her to go on when she would have stopped, yet he was angry with her for putting doubts into his mind, doubts of his own wisdom and the way to succeed. With a girl of his own people, or indeed with any girl, if he had not loved too much, he would have had no doubts. But he did not know how it was best to treat Victoria. His love for her was so strong, that it was like fear, and in trying to understand her, he changed his mind a dozen times a day. He was not used to this uncertainty, and hated to think that he could be weak. Would she turn from him, if he broke the tacit compact of loyal friendship which had made her trust him as a guide? He could not tell; though an Arab girl would scorn him for keeping it. "Perhaps at heart all women are alike," he thought. "And if, now that I am warned, I should risk waiting, I would be no man." At last, the only question left in his mind was, "When?" For two days they journeyed through desolation, in a burnt-out world where nothing had colour except the sad violet sky which at evening flamed with terrible sunsets, cruelly beautiful as funeral pyres. The fierce glow set fire to the black rocks which pointed up like dragons' teeth, and turned them to glittering copper; polishing the dead white chalk of the chebka to the dull gleam of dirty silver. Far away there were always purple hills, behind which it seemed that hope and beauty might come to life again; but travelling from morning to night they never appeared any nearer. The evil magic of the black desert, which Maïeddine called accursed because of the M'Zabites, made the beautiful hills recede always, leaving only the ugly brown waves of hardened earth, which were disheartening to climb, painful to descend. At last, in the midst of black squalor, they came to an oasis like a bright jewel fallen in the trough of swine. It was Berryan, the first town of the M'Zabites, people older than the Arabs, and hated by them with a hatred more bitter than their loathing for Jews. Maïeddine would not pass through the town, since it could be avoided, because in his eyes the Beni-M'Zab were dogs, and in their eyes he, though heir to an agha, would be as carrion. Sons of ancient Phoenicians, merchants of Tyre and Carthage, there never had been, never would be, any lust for battle in the hearts of the M'Zabites. Their warfare had been waged by cunning, and through mercenaries. They had fled before Arab warriors, driven from place to place by brave, scornful enemies, and now, safely established in their seven holy cities, protected by vast distances and the barrier of the black desert, they revenged their wrongs with their wits, being rich, and great usurers. Though Mussulmans in these days, the schisms with which they desecrated the true religion were worse in the eyes of Maïeddine than the foolish faith of Christians, who, at least, were not backsliders. He would not even point out to Victoria the strange minaret of the Abadite mosque at Berryan, which tapered like a brown obelisk against the shimmering sky, for to him its very existence was a disgrace. "Do not speak of it; do not even look at it," he said to her, when she exclaimed at the great Cleopatra Needle. But she did look, having none of his prejudices, and he dared not bid her let down the curtains of her bassour, as he would if she had been a girl of his own blood. The extraordinary city, whose crowded, queerly-built houses were blocks of gold in the sunlight, seemed beautiful to Victoria, coming in sight of it suddenly after days in the black desert. The other six cities, called holy by the Beni-M'Zab, were far away still. She knew this, because Maïeddine had told her they would not descend into the Wady M'Zab till next day. Berryan and Guerrara were on the upper plateau; and Victoria could hardly bear to pass by, for Berryan was by far the most Eastern-seeming place she had seen. She wondered if, should she ask him as a favour, Maïeddine would rest there that night, instead of camping somewhere farther on, in the hideous desert; for already it was late afternoon. But she would ask nothing of him now, for he was no longer quite the trusty friend she had persuaded herself to think him. One night, since the sand-divining, she had had a fearful dream concerning Maïeddine. Outside her tent she had heard a soft padding sound, and peeping from under the flap, she had seen a splendid, tawny tiger, who looked at her with brilliant topaz eyes which fascinated her so that she could not turn away. But she knew that the animal was Maïeddine; that each night he changed himself into a tiger; and that as a tiger he was more his real self than when by day he appeared as a man. They filed past Berryan; the meharis, the white stallion, the pack-camel, and the mule, in slow procession, along a rough road which wound close to the green oasis. And from among the palm trees men and women and little children, gorgeous as great tropical birds, in their robes of scarlet, ochre-yellow, and emerald, peered at the little caravan with cynical curiosity. Victoria looked back longingly, for she knew that the way from Berryan to the Wady M'Zab would be grim and toilsome under the burning sun. Hill after hill, they mounted and descended; hills stony yet sandy, always the same dull colour, and so shapeless as to daze the brain with their monotony. But towards evening, when the animals had climbed to the crest of a hill like a dingy wave, suddenly a white obelisk shot up, pale and stiff as a dead man's finger. Tops of tall palms were like the dark plumes on the heads of ten thousand dancing women of the Sahara, and as a steep descent began, there glittered the five hidden cities, like a strange fairyland lost in the desert. The whole Wady M'Zab lay under the eyes of the travellers, as if they looked down over the rim of an immense cup. Here, some who were left of the sons of Tyre and Carthage dwelt safe and snug, crouching in the protection of the valley they had found and reclaimed from the abomination of desolation. It seemed to Victoria that she looked on one of the great sights of the world: the five cities, gleaming white, and glowing bronze, closely built on their five conical hills, which rose steeply from the flat bottom of the gold-lined cup--Ghardaia, Beni-Isguen, Bou-Noura, Melika, and El-Ateuf. The top of each hill was prolonged to a point by the tapering minaret of one of those Abadite mosques which the girl thought the most Eastern of all things imported from the East. The oasis which gave wealth to the M'Zabites surged round the towns like a green sea at ebb tide, sucked back from a strand of gold; and as the caravan wound down the wonderful road with which the Beni-M'Zab had traced the sheer side of their enchanted cup, the groaning of hundreds of well-chains came plaintively up on the wind. The well-stones had the obelisk shape of the minarets, in miniature; and Negroes--freed slaves of the rich M'Zabites--running back and forth in pairs, to draw the water, were mere struggling black ants, seen from the cup's rim. The houses of the five towns were like bleached skeletons, and the arches that spanned the dark, narrow streets were their ribs. Arrived at the bottom of the cup, it was necessary to pass through the longest and only modern street of Ghardaia, the capital of the M'Zab. A wind had sprung up, to lift the sand which sprinkled the hard-trodden ground with thick powder of gold dust, and whirl it westward against the fire of sunset, red as a blowing spray of blood. "It is a sign of trouble when the sand of the desert turns to blood," muttered Fafann to her mistress, quoting a Bedouin proverb. The men of the M'Zab do not willingly give lodging to strangers, least of all to Arabs; and at Beni-Isguen, holy city and scene of strange mysteries, no stranger may rest for the night. But Maïeddine, respected by the ruling power, as by his own people, had a friend or two at every Bureau Arabe and military station. A French officer stationed at Ghardaia had married a beautiful Arab girl of good family distantly related to the Agha of the Ouled-Serrin, and being at Algiers on official business, his wife away at her father's tent, he had promised to lend his house, a few miles out of the town, to Si Maïeddine. It was a long, low building of toub, the sun-dried sand-blocks of which most houses are made in the ksour, or Sahara villages, but it had been whitewashed, and named the Pearl. There they slept, in the cool shadow of the oasis, and early next morning went on. As soon as they had passed out of this hidden valley, where a whole race of men had gathered for refuge and wealth-building, Victoria felt, rather than saw, a change in Maïeddine. She hardly knew how to express it to herself, unless it was that he had become more Arab. His courtesies suggested less the modern polish learned from the French (in which he could excel when he chose) than the almost royal hospitality of some young Bey escorting a foreign princess through his dominions. Always "_très-mâle_," as Frenchwomen pronounced him admiringly, Si Maïeddine began to seem masculine in an untamed, tigerish way. He was restless, and would not always be contented to ride El Biod, beside the tall, white mehari, but would gallop far ahead, and then race back to rejoin the little caravan, rushing straight at the animals as if he must collide with them, then, at the last instant, when Victoria's heart bounded, reining in his horse, so that El Biod's forefeet--shod Arab-fashion--pawed the air, and the animal sat upon his haunches, muscles straining and rippling under the creamlike skin. Or, sometimes, Maïeddine would spring from the white stallion's back, letting El Biod go free, while his master marched beside Guelbi, with that panther walk that the older races, untrammelled by the civilization of towns, have kept unspoiled. The Arab's eyes were more brilliant, never dreamy now, and he looked at Victoria often, with disconcerting steadiness, instead of lowering his eyelids as men of Islam, accustomed to the mystery of the veil, unconsciously do with European women whom they respect, though they do not understand. So they went on, travelling the immeasurable desert; and Victoria had not asked again, since Maïeddine's refusal, the name of the place to which they were bound. M'Barka seemed brighter, as if she looked forward to something, each day closer at hand; and her courage would have given Victoria confidence, even if the girl had been inclined to forebodings. They were going somewhere, Lella M'Barka knew where, and looked forward joyously to arriving. The girl fancied that their destination was the same, though at first she had not thought so. Words that M'Barka let drop inadvertently now and then, built up this impression in her mind. The "habitude du Sud," as Maïeddine called it, when occasionally they talked French together, was gradually taking hold of the girl. Sometimes she resented it, fearing that by this time it must have altogether enslaved Saidee, and dreading the insidious fascination for herself; sometimes she found pleasure and peace in it; but in every mood the influence was hard to throw off. "The desert has taken hold of thee," Maïeddine said one day, when he had watched her in silence for a while, and seen the rapt look in her eyes. "I knew the time would come, sooner or later. It has come now." "No," Victoria answered. "I do not belong to the desert." "If not to-day, then to-morrow," he finished, as if he had not heard. They were going on towards Ouargla. So much he had told her, though he had quickly added, "But we shall not stop there." He was waiting still, though they were out of the black desert and the accursed land of the renegades. He was not afraid of anything or anyone here, in this vastness, where a European did not pass once a year, and few Arabs, only the Spahis, carrying mails from one Bureau Arabe to another, or tired soldiers changing stations. The beautiful country of the golden dunes, with its horizon like a stormy sea, was the place of which he said in his thoughts, "It shall happen there." On the other side of Ghardaia, even when Victoria had ceased to be actually impatient for her meeting with Saidee, she had longed to know the number of days, that she might count them. But now she had drunk so deep of the colour and the silence that, in spite of herself, she was passing beyond that phase. What were a few days more, after so many years? She wondered how she could have longed to go flying across the desert in Nevill Caird's big motor-car; nevertheless, she never ceased to wish for Stephen Knight. Her thoughts of him and of the desert were inextricably and inexplicably mingled, more than ever since the night when she had danced in the Agha's tent, and Stephen's face had come before her eyes, as if in answer to her call. Constantly she called him now. When there was some fleeting, beautiful effect of light or shadow, she said, "How I wish he were here to see that!" She never named him in her mind. He was "he": that was name enough. Yet it did not occur to her that she was "in love" with Knight. She had never had time to think about falling in love. There had always been Saidee, and dancing; and to Victoria, the desire to make money enough to start out and find her sister, had taken the place which ideas of love and marriage fill in most girls' heads. Therefore she did not know what to make of her feeling for Stephen. But when a question floated into her brain, she answered it simply by explaining that he was different from any other man she had met; and that, though she had known him only a few days, from the first he had seemed more a friend than Si Maïeddine, or any one else whom she knew much better than Stephen. As they travelled, she had many thoughts which pleased her--thoughts which could have come to her nowhere else except in the desert, and often she talked to herself, because M'Barka could not understand her feelings, and she did not wish to make Maïeddine understand. "Burning, burning," was the adjective which she repeated oftenest, in an almost awestruck whisper, as her eyes travelled over immense spaces; for she thought that the desert might have dropped out of the sun. The colour of sand and sky was colour on fire, blazing. The whole Sahara throbbed with the unimaginable fire of creative cosmic force, deep, vital orange, needed by the primitive peoples of the earth who had not risen high enough yet to deserve or desire the finer vibrations. As she leaned out of the bassour, the heat of the sun pressed on her lightly veiled head, like the golden lid of a golden box. She could feel it as an actual weight; and invisible behind it a living power which could crush her in an instant, as the paw of a lion might crush a flower petal. Africa itself was this savage power, fierce as fire, ever smouldering, sometimes flaming with the revolt of Islam against other creeds; but the heart of the fire was the desert. Only the shady seguias in the oasis towns cooled it, like children's fingers on a madman's forehead; or the sound of a boy's flute in a river bed, playing the music of Pan, changeless, monotonous yet thrilling, as the music of earth and all Nature. There were tracts in the desert which colour-blind people might have hated; but Victoria grew to think the dreariest stretches beautiful; and even the occasional plagues of flies which irritated M'Barka beyond endurance, only made Victoria laugh. Sometimes came caravans, in this billowing immensity between the M'Zab and Ouargla--city of Solomon, whither the Queen of Sheba rode on her mehari: caravans blazing red and yellow, which swept like slow lines of flame across the desert, going east towards the sunrise, or west where the sunset spreads over the sky like a purple fan opening, or the tail of a celestial peacock. What Victoria had once imagined the desert to be of vast emptiness, and what she found it to be of teeming life, was like the difference between a gold-bright autumn leaf seen by the naked eye, and the same leaf swarming under a powerful microscope. The girl never tired of following with her eyes the vague tracks of caravans that she could see dimly sketched upon the sand, vanishing in the distance, like lines traced on the water by a ship. She would be gazing at an empty horizon when suddenly from over the waves of the dunes would appear a dark fleet; a procession of laden camels like a flotilla of boats in a desolate sea. They were very effective, as they approached across the desert, these silent, solemn beasts, but Victoria pitied them, because they were made to work till they fell, and left to die in the shifting sand, when no longer useful to their unloving masters. "My poor dears, this is only one phase," she would say to them as they plodded past, their feet splashing softly down on the sand like big wet sponges, leaving heart-shaped marks behind, which looked like violets as the hollows filled up with shadow. "Wait till your next chance on earth. I'm sure it will make up for everything." But Maïeddine told her there was no need to be sorry for the sufferings of camels, since all were deserved. Once, he said, they had been men--a haughty tribe who believed themselves better than the rest of the world. They broke off from the true religion, and lest their schism spread, Allah turned the renegades into camels. He compelled them to bear the weight of their sins in the shape of humps, and also to carry on their backs the goods of the Faithful, whose beliefs they had trampled under foot. While keeping their stubbornness of spirit they must kneel to receive their loads, and rise at the word of command. Remembering their past, they never failed to protest with roarings, against these indignities, nor did their faces ever lose the old look of sullen pride. But, in common with the once human storks, they had one consolation. Their sins expiated, they would reincarnate as men; and some other rebellious tribe would take their place as camels. Five days' journeying from Ghardaia brought the travellers to a desert world full of movement and interest. There were many caravans going northward. Pretty girls smiled at them from swaying red bassourahs, sitting among pots and pans, and bundles of finery. Little children in nests of scarlet rags, on loaded camels, clasped squawking cocks and hens, tied by the leg. Splendid Negroes with bare throats like columns of black marble sang strange, chanting songs as they strode along. White-clad Arabs whose green turbans told that they had been to Mecca, walked beside their young wives' camels. Withered crones in yellow smocks trudged after the procession, driving donkeys weighed down with sheepskins full of oil. Baby camels with waggling, tufted humps followed their mothers. Slim grey sloughis and Kabyle dogs quarrelled with each other, among flocks of black and white goats; and at night, the sky pulsed with the fires of desert encampments, rosy as northern lights. Just before the walled city of Ouargla, Victoria saw her first mirage, clear as a dream between waking and sleeping. It was a salt lake, in which Guelbi and the other animals appeared to wade knee-deep in azure waves, though there was no water; and the vast, distant oasis hovered so close that the girl almost believed she had only to stretch out her hand and touch the trunks of the crowding palm trees. M'Barka was tired, and they rested for two days in the strange Ghuâra town, the "City of Roses," founded (according to legend), by Solomon, King of Jerusalem, and built for him by djenoum and angels in a single night. They lived as usual in the house of the Caïd, whose beautiful twin daughters told Victoria many things about the customs of the Ghuâra people, descendants of the ancient Garamantes. How much happier and freer they were than Arab girls, how much purer though gayer was the life at Ouargla, Queen of the Oases, than at any other less enlightened desert city; how marvellous was the moulet-el-rass, the dance cure for headache and diseases of the brain; how wonderful were the women soothsayers; and what a splendid thing it was to see the bridal processions passing through the streets, on the one day of the year when there is marrying and giving in marriage in Ouargla. The name of the prettier twin was Zorah, and she had black curls which fell straight down over her brilliant eyes, under a scarlet head-dress. "Dost thou love Si Maïeddine?" she asked the Roumia, with a kind of innocent boldness. "As a friend who has been very kind," Victoria answered. "Not as a lover, oh Roumia?" Zorah, like all girls of Ouargla, was proud of her knowledge of Arabic. "No. Not as a lover." "Is there then one of thine own people whom thou lovest as a lover, Rose of the West?" "I have no lover, little white moon." "Si Maïeddine will be thy lover, whether thou desirest him or not." "Thou mistakest, oh Zorah." "I do not mistake. If thou dost not yet know I am right, thou wilt know before many days. When thou findest out all that is in his heart for thee, remember our talk to-day, in the court of oranges." "I will tell thee thou wert wrong in this same court of oranges when I pass this way again without Si Maïeddine." The Ghuâra girl shook her head, until her curls seemed to ring like bells of jet. "Something whispers to my spirit that thou wilt never again pass this way, oh Roumia; that never again will we talk together in this court of oranges." XXXI If it had not been for Zorah and her twin sister Khadijah, Maïeddine would have said to himself at Ouargla, "Now my hour has come." But though his eyes saw not even the shadow of a woman in the Caïd's house, his ears heard the laughter of young girls, in which Victoria's voice mingled; and besides, he knew, as Arabs contrive to know everything which concerns others, that his host had daughters. He was well aware of the freemasonry existing among the wearers of veils, the dwellers behind shut doors; and though Victoria was only a Roumia, the Caïd's daughters would joyfully scheme to help her against a man, if she asked their help. So he put the hour-hand of his patience a little ahead; and Victoria and he were outwardly on the same terms as before when they left Ouargla, and passed on to the region of the low dunes, shaped like the tents of nomads buried under sand, the region of beautiful jewelled stones of all colours, and the region of the chotts, the desert lakes, like sad, wide-open eyes in a dead face. As they drew near to the Zaouïa of Temacin, and the great oasis city of Touggourt, the dunes increased in size, surging along the horizon in turbulent golden billows. M'Barka knew that she was close to her old home, the ancient stronghold of her royal ancestors, those sultans who had owned no master under Allah; for though it was many years since she had come this way, she remembered every land-mark which would have meant nothing to a stranger. She was excited, and longed to point out historic spots to Victoria, of whom she had grown fond; but Maïeddine had forbidden her to speak. He had something to say to the girl before telling her that they were approaching another city of the desert. Therefore M'Barka kept her thoughts to herself, not chatting even with Fafann; for though she loved Victoria, she loved Maïeddine better. She had forgiven him for bringing her the long way round, sacrificing her to his wish for the girl's society, because the journey was four-fifths finished, and instead of being worse, her health was better. Besides, whatever Maïeddine wanted was for the Roumia's good, or would be eventually. When they were only a short march from Touggourt, and could have reached there by dark, Maïeddine nevertheless ordered an early halt. The tents were set up by the Negroes among the dunes, where not even the tall spire of Temacin's mosque was visible. And he led the little caravan somewhat out of the track, where no camels were likely to pass within sight, to a place where there were no groups of black tents in the yellow sand, and where the desert, in all its beauty, appeared lonelier than it was in reality. By early twilight the camp was made, and the Soudanese were preparing dinner. Never once in all the Sahara journey had there been a sunset of such magical loveliness, it seemed to Maïeddine, and he took it as a good omen. "If thou wilt walk a little way with me, Ourïeda," he said, "I will show thee something thou hast never seen yet. When my cousin is rested, and it is time for supper, I will bring thee back." Together they mounted and descended the dunes, until they could no longer see the camp or the friendly smoke of the fire, which rose straight up, a scarf of black gauze, against a sky of green and lilac shot with crimson and gold. It was not the first time that Victoria had strolled away from the tents at sunset with Maïeddine, and she could not refuse, yet this evening she would gladly have stayed with Lella M'Barka. The sand was curiously crisp under their feet as they walked, and the crystallized surface crackled as if they were stepping on thin, dry toast. By and by they stood still on the summit of a dune, and Maïeddine took from the hood of his burnous a pair of field-glasses of the most modern make. "Look round thee," he said. "I have had these with me since our start, but I saved them for to-day, to give thee a surprise." Victoria adjusted the glasses, which were very powerful, and cried out at what she saw. The turmoil of the dunes became a battle of giants. Sand waves as high as the sky rushed suddenly towards her, towering far above her head, as if she were a fly in the midst of a stormy ocean. The monstrous yellow shapes came closing in from all sides, threatening to engulf her. She felt like a butterfly in a cage of angry lions. "It is terrible!" she exclaimed, letting the glasses fall from her eyes. The cageful of lions sat down, calmed, but now that the butterfly had seen them roused, never could they look the same again. The effect upon the girl was exactly what Maïeddine had wanted. For once Victoria acted as he expected her to do in given circumstances. "She is only a woman after all," he thought. "If thou wert alone in this sea of gold, abandoned, to find thine own way, with no guide but the stars, then indeed thou mightst say 'it is terrible,'" he answered. "For these waves roll between thee and the north, whence thou hast come, and still higher between thee and the desired end of thy journey. So high are they, that to go up and down is like climbing and descending mountains, one after another, all day, day after day. And beyond, where thou must soon go if thou art to find thy sister, there are no tracks such as those we have followed thus far. In these shifting sands, not only men and camels, but great caravans, and even whole armies have been lost and swallowed up for ever. For gravestones, they have only the dunes, and no man will know where they lie till the world is rolled up as a scroll in the hand of Allah." Victoria grew pale. "Always before thou hast tried to make me love the desert," she said, slowly. "If there were anything ugly to see, thou hast bidden me turn my head the other way, or if I saw something dreadful thou wouldst at once begin to chant a song of happiness, to make me forget. Why dost thou wish to frighten me now?" "It is not that I mean to give thee pain, Ourïeda." Maïeddine's voice changed to a tone that was gentle and pleading. "It is only that I would have thee see how powerless thou wouldst be alone among the dunes, where for days thou mightst wander, meeting no man. Or if thou hadst any encounter, it might be with a Touareg, masked in blue, with a long knife at his belt, and in his breast a heart colder than steel." "I see well enough that I would be powerless alone," Victoria repeated. "Dost thou need to tell me that?" "It may be not," said Maïeddine. "But there is a thing I need to tell thee. My need is very sore. Because I have kept back the words I have burned to speak, my soul is on fire, oh Rose! I love thee. I die for thee. I must have thee for mine!" He snatched both her hands in his, and crushed them against his lips. Then, carried away by the flower-like touch of her flesh, he let her hands go, and caught her to his heart, folding her in his burnous as if he would hide her even from the eye of the sun in the west. But she threw herself back, and pushed him away, with her palms pressed against his breast. She could feel under her hands a great pounding as of a hammer that would beat down a yielding wall. "Thou art no true Arab!" she cried at him. The words struck Maïeddine in a vulnerable place; perhaps the only one. He had expected her to exclaim, to protest, to struggle, and to beg that he would let her go. But what she said was a sharp, unlooked for stab. Above all things except his manhood, he prided himself on being a true Arab. Involuntarily he loosened his clasp of her waist, and she seized the chance to wrench herself free, panting a little, her eyes dilated. But as she twisted herself out of his arms, he caught her by the wrist. He did not grasp it tightly enough to hurt, yet the grip of his slim brown hand was like a bracelet of iron. She knew that she could not escape from it by measuring her strength against his, or even by surprising him with some quick movement; for she had surprised him once, and he would be on guard not to let it happen again. Now she did not even try to struggle, but stood still, looking up at him steadily. Yet her heart also was like a hammer that beat against a wall; and she thought of the endless dunes in whose turmoil she was swallowed up. If Stephen Knight were here--but he was far away; and Maïeddine, whom she had trusted, was a man who served another God than hers. His thoughts of women were not as Stephen's thoughts. "Think of thy white angel," she said. "He stands between thee and me." "Nay, he gives thee to me," Maïeddine answered. "I mean no harm to thee, but only good, as long as we both shall live. My white angel wills that thou shalt be my wife. Thou shalt not say I am no true Arab. I am true to Allah and my own manhood when I tell thee I can wait no longer." "But thou art not true to me when thou wouldst force me against my will to be thy wife. We have drunk from the same cup. Thou art pledged to loyalty." "Is it disloyal to love?" "Thy love is not true love, or thou wouldst think of me before thyself." "I think of thee before all the world. Thou art my world. I had meant to wait till thou wert in thy sister's arms; but since the night when I saw thee dance, my love grew as a fire grows that feeds upon rezin. If I offend thee, thou alone art to blame. Thou wert too beautiful that night. I have been mad since then. And now thou must give me thy word that thou wilt marry me according to the law of Islam. Afterwards, when we can find a priest of thine own religion, we will stand before him." "Let my hand go, Si Maïeddine, if thou wishest me to talk further with thee," Victoria said. He smiled at her and obeyed; for he knew that she could not escape from him, therefore he would humour her a little. In a few more moments he meant to have her in his arms again. His smile gave the girl no hope. She thought of Zorah and the court of the oranges. "What wilt thou do if I say I will not be thy wife?" she asked, in a quiet voice; but there was a fluttering in her throat. A spark lit in his eyes. The moon was rising now, as the sun set, and the two lights, silver and rose, touched his face, giving it an unreal look, as if he were a statue of bronze which had "come alive," Victoria thought, just as she had "come alive" in her statue-dance. He had never been so handsome, but his dark splendour was dreadful to her, for he did not seem like a human man whose heart could be moved to mercy. For an instant he gave her no answer, but his eyes did not leave hers. "Since thou askest me that question, I would make thee change thy 'no' into 'yes.' But do not force me to be harsh with thee, oh core of my heart, oh soul of my soul! I tell thee fate has spoken. The sand has spoken--sand gathered from among these dunes. It is for that reason in part that I brought thee here." "The sand-divining!" Victoria exclaimed. "Lella M'Barka told thee----" "She told me not to wait. And her counsel was the counsel of my own heart. Look, oh Rose, where the moon glitters on the sand--the sand that twined thy life with mine. See how the crystals shape themselves like little hands of Fatma; and they point from thee to me, from me to thee. The desert has brought us together. The desert gives us to one another. The desert will never let us part." Victoria's eyes followed his pointing gesture. The sand-crystals sparkled in the sunset and moonrise, like myriads of earthbound fireflies. Their bright facets seemed to twinkle at her with cold, fairy eyes, waiting to see what she would do, and she did not know. She did not know at all what she would do. XXXII "Dost thou wish me to hate thee, Si Maïeddine?" she asked. "I do not fear thy hate. When thou belongest to me, I will know how to turn it into love." "Perhaps if I were a girl of thine own people thou wouldst know, but I see now that thy soul and my soul are far apart. If thou art so wicked, so treacherous, they will never be nearer together." "The Koran does not teach us to believe that the souls of women are as ours." "I have read. And if there were no other reason than that, it would be enough to put a high wall between me and a man of thy race." For the first time Maïeddine felt anger against the girl. But it did not make him love or want her the less. "Thy sister did not feel that," he said, almost menacingly. "Then the more do I feel it. Is it wise to use her as an argument?" "I need no argument," he answered, sullenly. "I have told thee what is in my mind. Give me thy love, and thou canst bend me as thou wilt. Refuse it, and I will break thee. No! do not try to run from me. In an instant I should have thee in my arms. Even if thou couldst reach M'Barka, of what use to grasp her dress and cry to her for help against me? She would not give it. My will is law to her, as it must be to thee if thou wilt not learn wisdom, and how to hold me by a thread of silk, a thread of thy silky hair. No one would listen to thee. Not Fafann, not the men of the Soudan. It is as if we two were alone in the desert. Dost thou understand?" "Thou hast made me understand. I will not try to run. Thou hast the power to take me, since thou hast forgotten thy bond of honour, and thou art stronger than I. Yet will I not live to be thy wife, Si Maïeddine. Wouldst thou hold a dead girl in thine arms?" "I would hold thee dead or living. Thou wouldst be living at first; and a moment with thine heart beating against mine would be worth a lifetime--perhaps worth eternity." "Wouldst thou take me if--if I love another man?" He caught her by the shoulders, and his hands were hard as steel. "Darest thou to tell me that thou lovest a man?" "Yes, I dare," she said. "Kill me if thou wilt. Since I have no earthly help against thee, kill my body, and let God take my spirit where thou canst never come. I love another man." "Tell me his name, that I may find him." "I will not. Nothing thou canst do will make me tell thee." "It is that man who was with thee on the boat." "I said I would not tell thee." He shook her between his hands, so that the looped-up braids of her hair fell down, as they had fallen when she danced, and the ends loosened into curls. She looked like a pale child, and suddenly a great tenderness for her melted his heart. He had never known that feeling before, and it was very strange to him; for when he had loved, it had been with passion, not with tenderness. "Little white star," he said, "thou art but a babe, and I will not believe that any man has ever touched thy mouth with his lips. Am I right?" "Yes, because he does not love me. It is I who love him, that is all," she answered naïvely. "I only knew how I really felt when thou saidst thou wouldst make me love thee, for I was so sure that never, never couldst thou do that. And I shall love the other man all my life, even though I do not see him again." "Thou shalt never see him again. For a moment, oh Rose, I hated thee, and I saw thy face through a mist red as thy blood and his, which I wished to shed. But thou art so young--so white--so beautiful. Thou hast come so far with me, and thou hast been so sweet. There is a strange pity for thee in my breast, such as I have never known for any living thing. I think it must be that thou hast magic in thine eyes. It is as if thy soul looked out at me through two blue windows, and I could fall down and worship, Allah forgive me! I knew no man had kissed thee. And the man thou sayest thou lovest is but a man in a dream. This is my hour. I must not let my chance slip by, M'Barka told me. Yet promise me but one thing and I will hold thee sacred--I swear on the head of my father." "What is the one thing?" "That if thy sister Lella Saïda puts thine hand in mine, thou wilt be my wife." The girl's face brightened, and the great golden dunes, silvering now in moonlight, looked no longer like terrible waves ready to overwhelm her. She was sure of Saidee, as she was sure of herself. "That I will promise thee," she said. He looked at her thoughtfully. "Thou hast great confidence in thy sister." "Perfect confidence." "And I----" he did not finish his sentence. "I am glad I did not wait longer," he went on instead. "Thou knowest now that I love thee, that thou hast by thy side a man and not a statue. And I have not let my chance slip by, because I have gained thy promise." "If Saidee puts my hand in thine." "It is the same thing." "Thou dost not know my sister." "But I know----" Again he broke off abruptly. There were things it were better not to say, even in the presence of one who would never be able to tell of an indiscretion. "It is a truce between us?" he asked. "Yes." "Forget, then, that I frightened thee." "Thou didst not frighten me. I did not know what to do, and I thought I might have to die without seeing Saidee. Yet I was not afraid, I think--I hope--I was not afraid." "Thou wilt not have to die without seeing thy sister. Now, more than before, I shall be in haste to put thee in her charge. But thou wilt die without seeing again the face of that man whose name, which thou wouldst not speak, shall be as smoke blown before the wind. Never shalt thou see him on earth, and if he and I meet I will kill him." Victoria shut her eyes, and pressed her hands over them. She felt very desolate, alone with Maïeddine among the dunes. She would not dare to call Stephen now, lest he should hear and come. Nevertheless she could not be wholly unhappy, for it was wonderful to have learned what love was. She loved Stephen Knight. "Thou wilt let me go back to M'Barka?" she said to Maïeddine. "I will take thee back," he amended. "Because I have thy promise." XXXIII On a flat white roof, which bubbled up here and there in rounded domes, a woman stood looking out over interminable waves of yellow sand, a vast golden silence which had no end on her side of the horizon, east, west, north, or south. No veil hid her face, but folds of thin woollen stuff beautifully woven, and dyed blue, almost as dark as indigo, fell from her head nearly to her feet, over a loose robe of orange-red, cut low in the neck, with sleeves hiding the elbows. She looked towards the west, shading her eyes with her hand: and the sun near its setting streamed over her face and hair, chiselling her features in marble, brightening her auburn hair to fiery gold, giving her brown eyes the yellow tints of a topaz, or of the amber beads which hung in a long chain, as far down as her knees. From the white roof many things could be seen besides the immense monotonous dunes along whose ridges orange fire seemed to play unceasingly against the sky. There was the roof of the Zaouïa mosque, with its low, white domes grouped round the minaret, as somewhere below the youngest boys of the school grouped round the taleb, or teacher. On the roof of the mosque bassourah frames were in the making, splendid bassourahs, which, when finished, would be the property of the great marabout, greatest of all living marabouts, lord of the Zaouïa, lord of the desert and its people, as far as the eye could reach, and farther. There were other roofs, too, bubbling among the labyrinth of square open courts and long, tunnel-like, covered and uncovered corridors which formed the immense, rambling Zaouïa, or sacred school of Oued Tolga. Things happened on these roofs which would have interested a stranger, for there was spinning of sheep's wool, making of men's burnouses, fashioning of robes for women, and embroidering of saddles; but the woman who looked towards the west with the sun in her eyes was tired of the life on sun-baked roofs and in shadowed courts. The scent of orange blossoms in her own little high-walled garden came up to her; yet she had forgotten that it was sweet, for she had never loved it. The hum of the students' voices, faintly heard through the open-work of wrought-iron windows, rasped her nerves, for she had heard it too often; and she knew that the mysterious lessons, the lessons which puzzled her, and constantly aroused her curiosity, were never repeated aloud by the classes, as were these everlasting chapters of the Koran. Men sleeping on benches in the court of the mosque, under arches in the wall, waked and drank water out of bulging goatskins, hanging from huge hooks. Pilgrims washed their feet in the black marble basin of the trickling fountain, for soon it would be time for moghreb, the prayer of the evening. Far away, eighteen miles distant across the sands, she could see the twenty thousand domes of Oued Tolga, the desert city which had taken its name from the older Zaouïa, and the oued or river which ran between the sacred edifice on its golden hill, and the ugly toub-built village, raised above danger of floods on a foundation of palm trunks. Far away the domes of the desert city shimmered like white fire in the strange light that hovers over the Sahara before the hour of sunset. Behind those distant, dazzling bubbles of unearthly whiteness, the valley-like oases of the southern desert, El Souf, dimpled the yellow dunes here and there with basins of dark green. Near by, a little to the left of the Zaouïa hill, such an oasis lay, and the woman on the white roof could look across a short stretch of sand, down into its green depths. She could watch the marabout's men repairing the sloping sand-walls with palm trunks, which kept them from caving in, and saved the precious date-palms from being engulfed in a yellow tide. It was the marabout's own private oasis, and brought him in a large income every year. But everything was the marabout's. The woman on the roof was sick to death of his riches, his honours, his importance, for she was the marabout's wife; and in these days she loved him as little as she loved the orange garden he had given her, and all the things that were hers because she was his. It was very still in the Zaouïa of Oued Tolga. The only sound was the droning of the boys' voices, which came faintly from behind iron window-gratings below, and that monotonous murmur emphasized the silence, as the humming of bees in a hive makes the stillness of a garden in summer more heavy and hot. No noises came from the courts of the women's quarters, or those of the marabout's guests, and attendants, and servants; not a voice was raised in that more distant part of the Zaouïa where the students lived, and where the poor were lodged and fed for charity's sake. No doubt the village, across the narrow river in its wide bed, was buzzing with life at this time of day; but seldom any sound there was loud enough to break the slumberous silence of the great Zaouïa. And the singing of the men in the near oasis who fought the sand, the groaning of the well-cords woven of palm fibre which raised the buckets of hollowed palm-trunks, was as monotonous as the recitation of the Koran. The woman had heard it so often that she had long ago ceased to hear it at all. She looked westward, across the river to the ugly village with the dried palm-leaves on its roofs, and far away to the white-domed city, the dimpling oases and the mountainous dunes that towered against a flaming sky; then eastward, towards the two vast desert lakes, or chotts, one of blue water, the other of saltpetre, which looked bluer than water, and had pale edges that met the sand like snow on gold. Above the lake of water suddenly appeared a soaring line of white, spreading and mounting higher, then turning from white to vivid rose. It was the flamingoes rising and flying over the chott, the one daily phenomenon of the desert which the woman on the roof still loved to watch. But her love for the rosy line against the blue was not entirely because of its beauty, though it was startlingly beautiful. It meant something for which she waited each evening with a passionate beating of her heart under the orange-coloured robe and the chain of amber beads. It meant sunset and the coming of a message. But the doves on the green tiled minaret of the Zaouïa mosque had not begun yet to dip and wheel. They would not stir from their repose until the muezzin climbed the steps to call the hour of evening prayer, and until they flew against the sunset the message could not come. She must wait yet awhile. There was nothing to do till the time of hope for the message. There was never anything else that she cared to do through the long days from sunrise to sunset, unless the message gave her an incentive when it came. In the river-bed, the women and young girls had not finished their washing, which was to them not so much labour as pleasure, since it gave them their opportunity for an outing and a gossip. In the bed of shining sand lay coloured stones like jewels, and the women knelt on them, beating wet bundles of scarlet and puce with palm branches. The watcher on the roof knew that they were laughing and chattering together though she could not hear them. She wondered dimly how many years it was since she had laughed, and said to herself that probably she would never laugh again, although she was still young, only twenty-eight. But that was almost old for a woman of the East. Those girls over there, wading knee-deep in the bright water to fill their goatskins and curious white clay jugs, would think her old. But they hardly knew of her existence. She had married the great marabout, therefore she was a marabouta, or woman saint, merely because she was fortunate enough to be his wife, and too highly placed for them to think of as an earthly woman like themselves. What could it matter whether such a radiantly happy being were young or old? And she smiled a little as she imagined those poor creatures picturing her happiness. She passed near them sometimes going to the Moorish baths, but the long blue drapery covered her face then, and she was guarded by veiled negresses and eunuchs. They looked her way reverently, but had never seen her face, perhaps did not know who she was, though no doubt they had all heard and gossipped about the romantic history of the new wife, the beautiful Ouled Naïl, to whom the marabout had condescended because of her far-famed, her marvellous, almost incredible loveliness, which made her a consort worthy of a saint. The river was a mirror this evening, reflecting the sunset of crimson and gold, and the young crescent moon fought for and devoured, then vomited forth again by strange black cloud-monsters. The old brown palm-trunks, on which the village was built, were repeated in the still water, and seemed to go down and down, as if their roots might reach to the other side of the world. Over the crumbling doorways of the miserable houses bleached skulls and bones of animals were nailed for luck. The red light of the setting sun stained them as if with blood, and they were more than ever disgusting to the watcher on the white roof. They were the symbols of superstitions the most Eastern and barbaric, ideas which she hated, as she was beginning to hate all Eastern things and people. The streak of rose which meant a flock of flying flamingoes had faded out of the sky. The birds seemed to have vanished into the sunset, and hardly had they gone when the loud crystalline voice of the muezzin began calling the faithful to prayer. Work stopped for the day. The men and youths of the Zaouïa climbed the worn stairs to the roof of the mosque, where, in their white turbans and burnouses, they prostrated themselves before Allah, going down on their faces as one man. The doves of the minaret--called Imams, because they never leave the mosque or cease to prostrate themselves, flying head downwards--began to wheel and cry plaintively. The moment when the message might come was here at last. The white roof had a wall, which was low in places, in others very high, so high that no one standing behind it could be seen. This screen of whitewashed toub was arranged to hide persons on the roof from those on the roof of the mosque; but window-like openings had been made in it, filled in with mashrabeyah work of lace-like pattern; an art brought to Africa long ago by the Moors, after perfecting it in Granada. And this roof was not the only one thus screened and latticed. There was another, where watchers could also look down into the court of the fountain, at the carved doors taken from the Romans, and up to the roof of the mosque with all its little domes. From behind those other lace-like windows in the roof-wall, sparkled such eyes as only Ouled Naïl girls can have; but the first watcher hated to think of those eyes and their wonderful fringe of black lashes. It was an insult to her that they should beautify this house, and she ignored their existence, though she had heard her negresses whispering about them. While the faithful prayed, a few of the wheeling doves flew across from the mosque to the roof where the woman waited for a message. At her feet lay a small covered basket, from which she took a handful of grain. The dove Imams forgot their saintly manners in an unseemly scramble as the white hand scattered the seeds, and while they disputed with one another, complaining mournfully, another bird, flying straight to the roof from a distance, suddenly joined them. It was white, with feet like tiny branches of coral, whereas the doves from the mosque were grey, or burnished purple. The woman had been pale, but when the bird fluttered down to rest on the open basket of grain, colour rushed to her face, as if she had been struck on each cheek with a rose. None of the doves of the mosque were tame enough to sit on the basket, which was close to her feet, though they sidled round it wistfully; but the white bird let her stroke its back with her fingers as it daintily pecked the yellow grains. Very cautiously she untied a silk thread fastened to a feather under the bird's wing. As she did so it fluttered both wings as if stretching them in relief, and a tiny folded paper attached to the cord fell into the basket. Instantly the woman laid her hand over it. Then she looked quickly, without moving her head, towards the square opening at a corner of the roof where the stairway came up. No one was there. Nobody could see her from the roof of the mosque, and her roof was higher than any of the others, except that which covered the private rooms of the marabout. But the marabout was away, and no one ever came out on his roof when he was absent. She opened the folded bit of white paper, which was little more than two inches square, and was covered on one side with writing almost microscopically small. The other side was blank, but the woman had no doubt that the letter was for her. As she read, the carrier-pigeon went on pecking at the seeds in the basket, and the doves of the mosque watched it enviously. The writing was in French, and no name was at the beginning or the end. "Be brave, my beautiful one, and dare to do as your heart prompts. Remember, I worship you. Ever since that wonderful day when the wind blew aside your veil for an instant at the door of the Moorish bath, the whole world has been changed for me. I would die a thousand deaths if need be for the joy of rescuing you from your prison. Yet I do not wish to die. I wish to live, to take you far away and make you so happy that you will forget the wretchedness and failure of the past. A new life will begin for both of us, if you will only trust me, and forget the scruples of which you write--false scruples, believe me. As he had a wife living when he married you, and has taken another since, surely you cannot consider that you are bound by the law of God or man? Let me save you from the dragon, as fairy princesses were saved in days of old. If I might speak with you, tell you all the arguments that constantly suggest themselves to my mind, you could not refuse. I have thought of more than one way, but dare not put my ideas on paper, lest some unlucky chance befall our little messenger. Soon I shall have perfected the cypher. Then there will not be the same danger. Perhaps to-morrow night I shall be able to send it. But meanwhile, for the sake of my love, give me a little hope. If you will try to arrange a meeting, to be settled definitely when the cypher is ready, twist three of those glorious threads of gold which you have for hair round the cord when you send the messenger back." All the rosy colour had died away from the woman's face by the time she had finished reading the letter. She folded it again into a tiny square even smaller than before, and put it into one of the three or four little engraved silver boxes, made to hold texts from the Koran, which hung from her long amber necklace. Her eyes were very wide open, but she seemed to see nothing except some thought printed on her brain like a picture. On the mosque roof a hundred men of the desert knelt praying in the sunset, their faces turned towards Mecca. Down in the fountain-court, the marabout's lazy tame lion rose from sleep and stretched himself, yawning as the clear voice of the muezzin chanted from the minaret the prayer of evening, "Allah Akbar, Allah il Allah, Mohammed r'soul Allah." The woman did not know that she heard the prayer, for as her eyes saw a picture, so did her ears listen to a voice which she had heard only once, but desired beyond all things to hear again. To her it was the voice of a saviour-knight; the face she saw was glorious with the strength of manhood, and the light of love. Only to think of the voice and face made her feel that she was coming to life again, after lying dead and forgotten in a tomb for many years of silence. Yes, she was alive now, for he had waked her from a sleep like death; but she was still in the tomb, and it seemed impossible to escape from it, even with the help of a saviour-knight. If she said "yes" to what he asked, as she was trying to make herself believe she had a moral and legal right to do, they would be found out and killed, that was all. She was not brave. The lassitude which is a kind of spurious resignation poisons courage, or quenches it as water quenches fire. Although she hated her life, if it could be called life, had no pleasure in it, and had almost forgotten how to hope, still she was afraid of being violently struck down. Not long ago a woman in the village had tried to leave her husband with a man she loved. The husband found out, and having shot the man before her eyes, stabbed her with many wounds, one for each traitorous kiss, according to the custom of the desert; not one knife-thrust deep enough to kill; but by and by she had died from the shock of horror, and loss of blood. Nobody blamed the husband. He had done the thing which was right and just. And stories like this came often to the ears of the woman on the roof through her negresses, or from the attendants at the Moorish bath. The man she loved would not be shot like the wretched Bedouin, who was of no importance except to her for whom his life was given; but something would happen. He would be taken ill with a strange disease, of which he would die after dreadful suffering; or at best his career would be ruined; for the greatest of all marabouts was a man of immense influence. Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always like a Touareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the marabout's features, yet his power was known far and wide--in Morocco; all along the caravan route to Tombouctou; in the capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; and even in Paris itself. She reminded herself of these things, and at one moment her heart was like ice in her breast; but at the next, it was like a ball of fire; and pulling out three long bright hairs from her head, she twisted them round the cord which the carrier-pigeon had brought. Before tying it under his wing again, she scattered more yellow seeds for the dove Imams, because she did not want them to fly away until she was ready to let her messenger go. Thus there was the less danger that the carrier-pigeon would be noticed. Only Noura, her negress, knew of him. Noura had smuggled him into the Zaouïa, and she herself had trained him by giving him food that he liked, though his home was at Oued Tolga, the town. The birds from the mosque had waited for their second supply, for the same programme had been carried out many times before, and they had learned to expect it. When they finished scrambling for the grain which the white pigeon could afford to scorn, they fluttered back to the minaret, following a leader. But the carrier flew away straight and far, his little body vanishing at last as if swallowed up in the gold of the sunset. For he went west, towards the white domes of Oued Tolga. XXXIV Still the woman stood looking after the bird, but the sun had dropped behind the dunes, and she no longer needed to shade her eyes with her hand. There was nothing more to expect till sunset to-morrow, when something might or might not happen. If no message came, then there would be only dullness and stagnation until the day when the Moorish bath was sacredly kept for the great ladies of the marabout's household. There were but two of these, yet they never went to the bath together, nor had they ever met or spoken to one another. They were escorted to the bath by their attendants at different hours of the same day; and later their female servants were allowed to go, for no one but the women of the saintly house might use the baths that day. The woman on the white roof in the midst of the golden silence gazed towards the west, though she looked for no event of interest; and her eyes fixed themselves mechanically upon a little caravan which moved along the yellow sand like a procession of black insects. She was so accustomed to search the desert since the days, long ago, when she had actually hoped for friends to come and take her away, that she could differentiate objects at greater distances than one less trained to observation. Hardly thinking of the caravan, she made out, nevertheless, that it consisted of two camels, carrying bassourahs, a horse and Arab rider, a brown pack camel, and a loaded mule, driven by two men who walked. They had evidently come from Oued Tolga, or at least from that direction, therefore it was probable that their destination was the Zaouïa; otherwise, as it was already late, they would have stopped in the city all night. Of course, it was possible that they were on their way to the village, but it was a poor place, inhabited by very poor people, many of them freed Negroes, who worked in the oases and lived mostly upon dates. No caravans ever went out from there, because no man, even the richest, owned more than one camel or donkey; and nobody came to stay, unless some son of the miserable hamlet, who had made a little money elsewhere, and returned to see his relatives. But on the other hand, numerous caravans arrived at the Zaouïa of Oued Tolga, and hundreds of pilgrims from all parts of Islam were entertained as the marabout's guests, or as recipients of charity. Dimly, as she detached her mind from the message she had sent, the woman began to wonder about this caravan, because of the bassourahs, which meant that there were women among the travellers. There were comparatively few women pilgrims to the Zaouïa, except invalids from the town of Oued Tolga, or some Sahara encampment, who crawled on foot, or rode decrepit donkeys, hoping to be cured of ailments by the magic power of the marabout, the power of the Baraka. The woman who watched had learned by this time not to expect European tourists. She had lived for eight years in the Zaouïa, and not once had she seen from her roof a European, except a French government-official or two, and a few--a very few--French officers. Never had any European women come. Tourists were usually satisfied with Touggourt, three or four days nearer civilisation. Women did not care to undertake an immense and fatiguing journey among the most formidable dunes of the desert, where there was nothing but ascending and descending, day after day; where camels sometimes broke their legs in the deep sand, winding along the fallen side of a mountainous dune, and where a horse often had to sit on his haunches, and slide with his rider down a sand precipice. She herself had experienced all these difficulties, so long ago now that she had half forgotten how she had hated them, and the fate to which they were leading her. But she did not blame other women for not coming to Oued Tolga. Occasionally some caïd or agha of the far south would bring his wife who was ill or childless to be blessed by the marabout; and in old days they had been introduced to the marabouta, but it was years now since she had been asked, or even allowed, to entertain strangers. She thought, without any active interest, as she looked at the nodding bassourahs, growing larger and larger, that a chief was coming with his women, and that he would be disappointed to learn that the marabout was away from home. It was rather odd that the stranger had not been told in the city, for every one knew that the great man had gone a fortnight ago to the province of Oran. Several days must pass before he could return, even if, for any reason, he came sooner than he was expected. But it did not matter much to her, if there were to be visitors who would have the pain of waiting. There was plenty of accommodation for guests, and there were many servants whose special duty it was to care for strangers. She would not see the women in the bassourahs, nor hear of them unless some gossip reached her through the talk of the negresses. Still, as there was nothing else which she wished to do, she continued to watch the caravan. By and by it passed out of sight, behind the rising ground on which the village huddled, with its crowding brown house-walls that narrowed towards the roofs. The woman almost forgot it, until it appeared again, to the left of the village, where palm logs had been laid in the river bed, making a kind of rough bridge, only covered when the river was in flood. It was certain now that the travellers were coming to the Zaouïa. The flame of the sunset had died, though clouds purple as pansies flowered in the west. The gold of the dunes paled to silver, and the desert grew sad, as if it mourned for a day that would never live again. Far away, near Oued Tolga, where the white domes of the city and the green domes of the oasis palms all blended together in shadow, fires sprang up in the camps of nomads, like signals of danger. The woman on the roof shivered. The chill of the coming night cooled her excitement. She was afraid of the future, and the sadness which had fallen upon the desert was cold in her heart. The caravan was not far from the gate of the Zaouïa, but she was tired of watching it. She turned and went down the narrow stairs that led to her rooms, and to the little garden where the fragrance of orange blossoms was too sweet. XXXV The caravan stopped in front of the Zaouïa gate. There were great iron doors in a high wall of toub, which was not much darker in colour than the deep gold of the desert sand; and because it was after sunset the doors were closed. One of the Negroes knocked, and called out something inarticulate and guttural in a loud voice. Almost at once the gate opened, and a shadowy figure hovered inside. A name was announced, which was instantly shouted to a person unseen, and a great chattering began in the dusk. Men ran out, and one or two kissed the hand of the rider on the white horse. They explained volubly that the lord was away, but the newcomer checked them as soon as he could, saying that he had heard the news in the city. He had with him ladies, one a relative of his own, another who was connected with the great lord himself, and they must be entertained as the lord would wish, were he not absent. The gates, or doors, of iron were thrown wide open, and the little procession entered a huge open court. On one side was accommodation for many animals, as in a caravanserai, with a narrow roof sheltering thirty or forty stalls; and here the two white meharis were made to kneel, that the women might descend from their bassourahs. There were three, all veiled, but the arms of one were bare and very brown. She moved stiffly, as if cramped by sitting for a long time in one position; nevertheless, she supported her companion, whose bassour she had shared. The two Soudanese Negroes remained in this court with their animals, which the servants of the Zaouïa, began helping them to unload; but the master of the expedition, with the two ladies of his party and Fafann, was now obliged to walk. Several men of the Zaouïa acted as their guides, gesticulating with great respect, but lowering their eyelids, and appearing not to see the women. They passed through another court, very large, though not so immense as the first, for no animals were kept there. Instead of stalls for camels and horses, there were roughly built rooms for pilgrims of the poorer class, with little, roofless, open-sided kitchens, where they could cook their own food. Beyond was the third court, with lodging for more important persons, and then the travellers were led through a labyrinth of corridors, some roofed with palm branches, others open to the air, and still more covered in with the toub blocks of which the walls were built. Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which old men lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door of rotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dim court, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. From behind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells of burning wood and boiling peppers. It was like passing through a subterranean village; and little dark children, squatting in doorways, or flattening their bodies against palm trunks which supported palm roofs, or flitting ahead of the strangers, in the thick, musky scented twilight, were like shadowy gnomes. By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysterious labyrinth of the vast Zaouïa, the corridors and courts became less ruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doors were roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seen by the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-like passage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered one which was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron. Through the rich network they could see into a court where everything glimmered white in moonlight. They had come to the court of the mosque, which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout, the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader. * * * * * * * "Lella Saïda, oh light of the young moon, if it please thee, thou hast two guests come from very far off," announced an old negress to the woman who had been looking out over the golden silence of the desert. It was an hour since she had come down from the roof, and having eaten a little bread, with soup, she lay on a divan writing in a small book. Several tall copper lamps with open-work copper shades, jewelled and fringed with coloured glass, gave a soft and beautiful light to the room. It had pure white walls, round which, close to the ceiling, ran a frieze of Arab lettering, red, and black, and gold. The doors and window-blinds and little cupboards were of cedar, so thickly inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, that only dark lines of the wood defined the white patterning of leaves and flowers. The woman had thrown off the blue drapery that had covered her head, and her auburn hair glittered in the light of the lamp by which she wrote. She looked up, vexed. "Thou knowest, Noura, that for years I have received no guests," she said, in a dialect of the Soudan, in which most Saharian mistresses of Negro servants learn to talk. "I can see no one. The master would not permit me to do so, even if I wished it, which I do not." "Pardon, loveliest lady. But this is another matter. A friend of our lord brings these visitors to thee. One is kin of his. She seeks to be healed of a malady, by the power of the Baraka. But the other is a Roumia." The wife of the great marabout shut the book in which she had been writing, and her mind travelled quickly to the sender of the carrier-pigeon. A European woman, the first who had ever come to the Zaouïa in eight years! It must be that she had a message from him. Somehow he had contrived this visit. She dared ask no more questions. "I will see these ladies," she said. "Let them come to me here." "Already the old one is resting in the guest-house," answered the negress. "She has her own servant, and she asks to see thee no earlier than to-morrow, when she has rested, and is able to pay thee her respects. It is the other, the young Roumia, who begs to speak with thee to-night." The wife of the marabout was more certain than ever that her visitor must come from the sender of the pigeon. She was glad of an excuse to talk with his messenger alone, without waiting. "Go fetch her," she directed. "And when thou hast brought her to the door I shall no longer need thee, Noura." Her heart was beating fast. She dreaded some final decision, or the need to make a decision, yet she knew that she would be bitterly disappointed if, after all, the European woman were not what she thought. She shut up the diary in which she wrote each night, and opening one of the wall cupboards near her divan, she put it away on a shelf, where there were many other small volumes, a dozen perhaps. They contained the history of her life during the last nine years, since unhappiness had isolated her, and made it necessary to her peace of mind, almost to her sanity, to have a confidant. She closed the inlaid doors of the cupboard, and locked them with a key which hung from a ribbon inside her dress. Such a precaution was hardly needed, since the writing was all in English, and she had recorded the events of the last few weeks cautiously and cryptically. Not a soul in the marabout's house could read English, except the marabout himself; and it was seldom he honoured her with a visit. Nevertheless, it had become a habit to lock up the books, and she found a secretive pleasure in it. She had only time to slip the ribbon back into her breast, and sit down stiffly on the divan, when the door was opened again by Noura. "O Lella Saïda, I have brought the Roumia," the negress announced. A slim figure in Arab dress came into the room, unfastening a white veil with fingers that trembled with impatience. The door shut softly. Noura had obeyed instructions. XXXVI For ten years Victoria had been waiting for this moment, dreaming of it at night, picturing it by day. Now it had come. There was Saidee standing before her, found at last. Saidee, well and safe, and lovely as ever, hardly changed in feature, and yet--there was something strange about her, something which stopped the joyous beating of the girl's heart. It was almost as if she had died and come to Heaven, to find that Heaven was not Heaven at all, but a cold place of fear. She was shocked at the impression, blaming herself. Surely Saidee did not know her yet, that was all; or the surprise was too great. She wished she had sent word by the negress. Though that would have seemed banal, it would have been better than to see the blank look on Saidee's face, a look which froze her into a marble statue. But it was too late now. The only thing left was to make the best of a bad beginning. "Oh, darling!" Victoria cried. "Have I frightened you? Dearest--my beautiful one, it's your little sister. All these years I've been waiting--waiting to find a way. You knew I would come some day, didn't you?" Tears poured down her face. She tried to believe they were tears of joy, such as she had often thought to shed at sight of Saidee. She had been sure that she could not keep them back, and that she would not try. They should have been sweet as summer rain, but they burned her eyes and her cheeks as they fell. Saidee was silent. The girl held out her arms, running a step or two, then, faltering, she let her arms fall. They felt heavy and stiff, as if they had been turned to wood. Saidee did not move. There was an expression of dismay, even of fear on her face. "You don't know me!" Victoria said chokingly. "I've grown up, and I must seem like a different person--but I'm just the same, truly. I've loved you so, always. You'll get used to seeing me changed. You--you don't think I'm somebody else pretending to be Victoria, do you? I can tell you all the things we used to do and say. I haven't forgotten one. Oh, Saidee, dearest, I've come such a long way to find you. Do be glad to see me--do!" Her voice broke. She put out her hands pleadingly--the childish hands that had seemed pathetically pretty to Stephen Knight. A look of intense concentration darkened Saidee's eyes. She appeared to question herself, to ask her intelligence what was best to do. Then the tense lines of her face softened. She forced herself to smile, and leaning towards Victoria, clasped the slim white figure in her arms, holding it tightly, in silence. But over the girl's shoulder, her eyes still seemed to search an answer to their question. When she had had time to control her voice and expression, she spoke, releasing her sister, taking the wistful face between her hands, and gazing at it earnestly. Then she kissed lips and cheeks. "Victoria!" she murmured. "Victoria! I'm not dreaming you?" "No, no, darling," the girl answered, more hopefully. "No wonder you're dazed. This--finding you, I mean--has been the object of my life, ever since your letters stopped coming, and I began to feel I'd lost you. That's why I can't realize your being struck dumb with the surprise of it. Somehow, I've always felt you'd be expecting me. Weren't you? Didn't you know I'd come when I could?" Saidee shook her head, looking with extraordinary, almost feverish, interest at the younger girl, taking in every detail of feature and complexion, all the exquisite outlines of extreme youth, which she had lost. "No," she said slowly. "I thought I was dead to the world. I didn't think it would be possible for anyone to find me, even you." "But--you are glad--now I'm here?" Victoria faltered. "Of course," Saidee answered unhesitatingly. "I'm delighted--enchanted--for my own sake. If I'm frightened, if you think me strange--_farouche_--it's because I'm so surprised, and because--can you believe it?--this is the first time I've spoken English with any human being for nine years--perhaps more. I almost forget--it seems a century. I talk to myself--so as not to forget. And every night I write down what has happened, or rather what I've thought, because things hardly ever do happen here. The words don't come easily. They sound so odd in my own ears. And then--there's another reason why I'm afraid. It's on your account. I'd better tell you. It wouldn't be fair not to tell. I--how are you going to get away again?" She almost whispered the last words, and spoke them as if she were ashamed. But she watched the girl's face anxiously. Victoria slipped a protecting arm round her waist. "We are going away together, dearest," she said. "Unless you're too happy and contented. But, my Saidee--you don't look contented." Saidee flushed faintly. "You mean--I look old--haggard?" "No--no!" the girl protested. "Not that. You've hardly changed at all, except--oh, I hardly know how to put it in words. It's your expression. You look sad--tired of the things around you." "I am tired of the things around me," Saidee said. "Often I've felt like a dead body in a grave with no hope of even a resurrection. What were those lines of Christina Rossetti's I used to say over to myself at first, while it still seemed worth while to revolt? Some one was buried, had been buried for years, yet could think and feel, and cry out against the doom of lying 'under this marble stone, forgotten, alone.' Doesn't it sound agonizing--desperate? It just suited me. But now--now----" "Are things better? Are you happier?" Victoria clasped her sister passionately. "No. Only I'm past caring so much. If you've come here, Babe, to take me away, it's no use. I may as well tell you now. This is prison. And you must escape, yourself, before the gaoler comes back, or it will be a life-sentence for you, too." It warmed Victoria's heart that her sister should call her "Babe"--the old pet name which brought the past back so vividly, that her eyes filled again with tears. "You shall not be kept in prison!" she exclaimed. "It's monstrous--horrible! I was afraid it would be like this. That's why I had to wait and make plenty of money. Dearest, I'm rich. Everything's for you. You taught me to dance, and it's by dancing I've earned such a lot--almost a fortune. So you see, it's yours. I've got enough to bribe Cassim to let you go, if he likes money, and isn't kind to you. Because, if he isn't kind, it must be a sign he doesn't love you, really." Saidee laughed, a very bitter laugh. "He does like money. And he doesn't like me at all--any more." "Then--" Victoria's face brightened--"then he will take the ten thousand dollars I've brought, and he'll let you go away with me." "Ten thousand dollars!" Saidee laughed again. "Do you know who Cassim--as you call him--is?" The girl looked puzzled. "Who he is?" "I see you don't know. The secret's been kept from you, somehow, by his friend who brought you here. You'll tell me how you came; but first I'll answer your question. The Cassim ben Halim you knew, has been dead for eight years." "They told me so in Algiers. But--do you mean--have you married again?" "I said the Cassim ben Halim you knew, is dead. The Cassim _I_ knew, and know now, is alive--and one of the most important men in Africa, though we live like this, buried among the desert dunes, out of the world--or what you'd think the world." "My world is where you are," Victoria said. "Dear little Babe! Mine is a terrible world. You must get out of it as soon as you can, or you'll never get out at all." "Never till I take you with me." "Don't say that! I must send you away. I _must_--no matter how hard it may be to part from you," Saidee insisted. "You don't know what you're talking about. How should you? I suppose you must have heard _something_. You must anyhow suspect there's a secret?" "Yes, Si Maïeddine told me that. He said, when I talked of my sister, and how I was trying to find her, that he'd once known Cassim. I had to agree not to ask questions,--and he would never say for certain whether Cassim was dead or not, but he promised sacredly to bring me to the place where my sister lived. His cousin Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab was with us,--very ill and suffering, but brave. We started from Algiers, and he made a mystery even of the way we came, though I found out the names of some places we passed, like El Aghouat and Ghardaia----" Saidee's eyes widened with a sudden flash. "What, you came here by El Aghouat and Ghardaia?" "Yes. Isn't that the best way?" "The best, if the longest is the best. I don't know much about North Africa geographically. They've taken care I shouldn't know! But I--I've lately found out from--a person who's made the journey, that one can get here from Algiers in a week or eight days. Seventeen hours by train to Biskra: Biskra to Touggourt two long days in a diligence, or carriage with plenty of horses; Touggourt to Oued Tolga on camel or horse, or mule, in three or four days going up and down among the great dunes. You must have been weeks travelling." "We have. I----" "How very queer! What could Si Maïeddine's reason have been? Rich Arabs love going by train whenever they can. Men who come from far off to see the marabout always do as much of the journey as possible by rail. I hear things about all important pilgrims. Then why did Si Maïeddine bring you by El Aghouat and Ghardaia--especially when his cousin's an invalid? It couldn't have been just because he didn't want you to be seen, because, as you're dressed like an Arab girl no one could guess he was travelling with a European." "His father lives near El Aghouat," Victoria reminded her sister. And Maïeddine had used this fact as one excuse, when he admitted that they might have taken a shorter road. But in her heart the girl had guessed why the longest way had been chosen. She did not wish to hide from Saidee things which concerned herself, yet Maïeddine's love was his secret, not hers, therefore she had not meant to tell of it, and she was angry with herself for blushing. She blushed more and more deeply, and Saidee understood. "I see! He's in love with you. That's why he brought you here. How _clever_ of him! How like an Arab!" For a moment Saidee was silent, thinking intently. It could not be possible, Victoria told herself, that the idea pleased her sister. Yet for an instant the white face lighted up, as if Saidee were relieved of heavy anxiety. She drew Victoria closer, with an arm round her waist. "Tell me about it," she said. "How you met him, and everything." The girl knew she would have to tell, since her sister had guessed, but there were many other things which it seemed more important to say and hear first. She longed to hear all, all about Saidee's existence, ever since the letters had stopped; why they had stopped; and whether the reason had anything to do with the mystery about Cassim. Saidee seemed willing to wait, apparently, for details of Victoria's life, since she wanted to begin with the time only a few weeks ago, when Maïeddine had come into it. But the girl would not believe that this meant indifference. They must begin somewhere. Why should not Saidee be curious to hear the end part first, and go back gradually? Saidee's silence had been a torturing mystery for years, whereas about her, her simple past, there was no mystery to clear up. "Yes," she agreed. "But you promised to tell me about yourself and--and----" "I know. Oh, you shall hear the whole story. It will seem like a romance to you, I suppose, because you haven't had to live it, day by day, year by year. It's sordid reality to me--oh, _how_ sordid!--most of it. But this about Maïeddine changes everything. I must hear what's happened--quickly--because I shall have to make a plan. It's very important--dreadfully important. I'll explain, when you've told me more. But there's time to order something for you to eat and drink, first, if you're tired and hungry. You must be both, poor child--poor, pretty child! You _are_ pretty--lovely. No wonder Maïeddine--but what will you have. Which among our horrid Eastern foods do you hate least?" "I don't hate any of them. But don't make me eat or drink now, please, dearest. I couldn't. By and by. We rested and lunched this side of the city. I don't feel as if I should ever be hungry again. I'm so----" Victoria stopped. She could not say: "I am so happy," though she ought to have been able to say that. What was she, then, if not happy? "I'm so excited," she finished. Saidee stroked the girl's hand, softly. On hers she wore no ring, not even a wedding ring, though Cassim had put one on her finger, European fashion, when she was a bride. Victoria remembered it very well, among the other rings he had given during the short engagement. Now all were gone. But on the third finger of the left hand was the unmistakable mark a ring leaves if worn for many years. The thought passed through Victoria's mind that it could not be long since Saidee had ceased to wear her wedding ring. "I don't want to be cruel, or frighten you, my poor Babe," she said, "but--you've walked into a trap in coming here, and I've got to try and save you. Thank heaven my husband's away, but we've no time to lose. Tell me quickly about Maïeddine. I've heard a good deal of him, from Cassim, in old days; but tell me all that concerns him and you. Don't skip anything, or I can't judge." Saidee's manner was feverishly emphatic, but she did not look at Victoria. She watched her own hand moving back and forth, restlessly, from the girl's finger-tips, up the slender, bare wrist, and down again. Victoria told how she had seen Maïeddine on the boat, coming to Algiers; how he had appeared later at the hotel, and offered to help her, hinting, rather than saying, that he had been a friend of Cassim's, and knew where to find Cassim's wife. Then she went on to the story of the journey through the desert, praising Maïeddine, and hesitating only when she came to the evening of his confession and threat. But Saidee questioned her, and she answered. "It came out all right, you see," she finished at last. "I knew it must, even in those few minutes when I couldn't help feeling a little afraid, because I seemed to be in his power. But of course I wasn't really. God's power was over his, and he felt it. Things always _do_ come out right, if you just _know_ they will." Saidee shivered a little, though her hand on Victoria's was hot. "I wish I could think like that," she half whispered. "If I could, I----" "What, dearest?" "I should be brave, that's all. I've lost my spirit--lost faith, too--as I've lost everything else. I used to be quite a good sort of girl; but what can you expect after ten years shut up in a Mussulman harem? It's something in my favour that they never succeeded in 'converting' me, as they almost always do with a European woman when they've shut her up--just by tiring her out. But they only made me sullen and stupid. I don't believe in anything now. You talk about 'God's power.' He's never helped me. I should think 'things came right' more because Maïeddine felt you couldn't get away from him, then and later, and because he didn't want to offend the marabout, than because God troubled to interfere. Besides, things _haven't_ come right. If it weren't for Maïeddine, I might smuggle you away somehow, before the marabout arrives. But now, Maïeddine will be watching us like a lynx--or like an Arab. It's the same thing where women are concerned." "Why should the marabout care what I do?" asked Victoria. "He's nothing to us, is he?--except that I suppose Cassim must have some high position in his Zaouïa." "A high position! I forgot, you couldn't know--since Maïeddine hid everything from you. An Arab man never trusts a woman to keep a secret, no matter how much in love he may be. He was evidently afraid you'd tell some one the great secret on the way. But now you're here, he won't care what you find out, because he knows perfectly well that you can never get away." Victoria started, and turned fully round to stare at her sister with wide, bright eyes. "I can and I will get away!" she exclaimed. "With you. Never without you, of course. That's why I came, as I said. To take you away if you are unhappy. Not all the marabouts in Islam can keep you, dearest, because they have no right over you--and this is the twentieth century, not hundreds of years ago, in the dark ages." "Hundreds of years in the future, it will still be the dark ages in Islam. And this marabout thinks he _has_ a right over me." "But if you know he hasn't?" "I'm beginning to know it--beginning to feel it, anyhow. To feel that legally and morally I'm free. But law and morals can't break down walls." "I believe they can. And if Cassim----" "My poor child, when Cassim ben Halim died--at a very convenient time for himself--Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kadr appeared to claim this maraboutship, left vacant by the third marabout in the line, an old, old man whose death happened a few weeks before Cassim's. This present marabout was his next of kin--or so everybody believes. And that's the way saintships pass on in Islam, just as titles and estates do in other countries. Now do you begin to understand the mystery?" "Not quite. I----" "You heard in Algiers that Cassim had died in Constantinople?" "Yes. The Governor himself said so." "The Governor believes so. Every one believes--except a wretched hump-backed idiot in Morocco, who sold his inheritance to save himself trouble, because he didn't want to leave his home, or bother to be a marabout. Perhaps he's dead by this time, in one way or another. I shouldn't be surprised. If he is, Maïeddine and Maïeddine's father, and a few other powerful friends of Cassim's, are the only ones left who know the truth, even a part of it. And the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed himself." "Oh, Saidee--Cassim is the marabout!" "Sh! Now you know the secret that's kept me a prisoner in his house long, long after he'd tired of me, and would have got rid of me if he'd dared--and if he hadn't been afraid in his cruel, jealous way, that I might find a little happiness in my own country. And worse still, it's the secret that will keep you a prisoner, too, unless you make up your mind to do the one thing which can possibly help you." "What thing?" Victoria could not believe that the answer which darted into her mind was the one Saidee really meant to give. Saidee's lips opened, but with the girl's eyes gazing straight into hers, it was harder to speak than she had thought. Out of them looked a highly sensitive yet brave spirit, so true, so loving and loyal, that disloyalty to it was a crime--even though another love demanded it. "I--I hate to tell you," she stammered. "Only, what can I do? If Maïeddine hadn't loved you--but if he hadn't, you wouldn't be here. And being here, we--we must just face the facts. The man who calls himself my husband--I can't think of him as being that any more--is like a king in this country. He has even more power than most kings have nowadays. He'll give you to Maïeddine when he comes home, if Maïeddine asks him, as of course he will. Maïeddine wouldn't have given you up, there in the desert, if he hadn't been sure he could bribe the marabout to do exactly what he wanted." "But why can't I bribe him?" Victoria persisted, hopefully. "If he's truly tired of you, my money----" "He'd laugh at you for offering it, and say you might keep it for a _dot_. He's too rich to be tempted with money, unless it was far more than you or I have ever seen. From his oasis alone he has an income of thousands and thousands of dollars; and presents--large ones and small ones--come to him from all over North Africa--from France, even. All the Faithful in the desert, for hundreds of miles around, give him their first and best dates of the year, their first-born camels, their first foals, and lambs, and mules, in return for his blessing on their palms and flocks. He has wonderful rugs, and gold plate, and jewels, more than he knows what to do with, though he's very charitable. He's obliged to be, to keep up his reputation and the reputation of the Zaouïa. Everything depends on that--all his ambitions, which he thinks I hardly know. But I do know. And that's why I know that Maïeddine will be able to bribe him. Not with money: with something Cassim wants and values far more than money. You wouldn't understand what I mean unless I explained a good many things, and it's hardly the time for explaining more now. You must just take what I say for granted, until I can tell you everything by and by. But there are enormous interests mixed up with the marabout's ambitions--things which concern all Africa. Is it likely he'll let you and me go free to tell secrets that would ruin him and his hopes for ever?" "We wouldn't tell." "Didn't I say that an Arab never trusts a woman? He'd kill us sooner than let us go. And you've learned nothing about Arab men if you think Maïeddine will give you up and see you walk out of his life after all the trouble he's taken to get you tangled up in it. That's why we've got to look facts in the face. You meant to help me, dear, but you can't. You can only make me miserable, because you've spoiled your happiness for my sake. Poor little Babe, you've wandered far, far out of the zone of happiness, and you can never get back. All you can do is to make the best of a bad bargain." "I asked you to explain that, but you haven't yet." "You must--promise Maïeddine what he asks, before Cassim comes back from South Oran." This was the thing Victoria had feared, but could not believe Saidee would propose. She shrank a little, and Saidee saw it. "Don't misunderstand," the elder woman pleaded in the soft voice which pronounced English almost like a foreign language. "I tell you, we can't choose what we _want_ to do, you and I. If you wait for Cassim to be here, it will come to the same thing, but it will be fifty times worse, because then you'll have the humiliation of being forced to do what you might seem to do now of your own free will." "I can't be forced to marry Maïeddine. Nothing could make me do it. He knows that already, unless----" "Unless what? Why do you look horrified?" "There's one thing I forgot to tell you about our talk in the desert. I promised him I would say 'yes' in case something happened--something I thought then couldn't happen." "But you find now it could?" "Oh, no--no, I don't believe it could." "You'd better tell me what it is." "That you--I said, I would promise to marry him if _you wished_ it. He asked me to promise that, and I did, at once." A slow colour crept over Saidee's face, up to her forehead. "You trusted me," she murmured. "And I do now--with all my heart. Only you've lived here, out of the world, alone and sad for so long, that you're afraid of things I'm not afraid of." "I'm afraid because I know what cause there is for fear. But you're right. My life has made me a coward. I can't help it." "Yes, you can--I've come to help you help it." "How little you understand! They'll use you against me, me against you. If you knew I were being tortured, and you could save me by marrying Maïeddine, what would you do?" Victoria's hand trembled in her sister's, which closed on it nervously. "I would marry him that very minute, of course. But such things don't happen." "They do. That's exactly what will happen, unless you tell Maïeddine you've made up your mind to say 'yes'. You can explain that it's by my advice. He'll understand. But he'll respect you, and won't be furious at your resistance, and want to revenge himself on you in future, as he will if you wait to be forced into consenting." Victoria sprang up and walked away, covering her face with her hands. Her sister watched her as if fascinated, and felt sick as she saw how the girl shuddered. It was like watching a trapped bird bleeding to death. But she too was in the trap, she reminded herself. Really, there was no way out, except through Maïeddine. She said this over and over in her mind. There was no other way out. It was not that she was cruel or selfish. She was thinking of her sister's good. There was no doubt of that, she told herself: no doubt whatever. XXXVII Victoria felt as if all her blood were beating in her brain. She could not think, and dimly she was glad that Saidee did not speak again. She could not have borne more of those hatefully specious arguments. For a moment she stood still, pressing her hands over her eyes, and against her temples. Then, without turning, she walked almost blindly to a window that opened upon Saidee's garden. The little court was a silver cube of moonlight, so bright that everything white looked alive with a strange, spiritual intelligence. The scent of the orange blossoms was lusciously sweet. She shrank back, remembering the orange-court at the Caïd's house in Ouargla. It was there that Zorah had prophesied: "Never wilt thou come this way again." "I'm tired, after all," the girl said dully, turning to Saidee, but leaning against the window frame. "I didn't realize it before. The perfume--won't let me think." "You look dreadfully white!" exclaimed Saidee. "Are you going to faint? Lie down here on this divan. I'll send for something." "No, no. Don't send. And I won't faint. But I want to think. Can I go out into the air--not where the orange blossoms are?" "I'll take you on to the roof," Saidee said. "It's my favourite place--looking over the desert." She put her arm round Victoria, leading her to the stairway, and so to the roof. "Are you better?" she asked, miserably. "What can I do for you?" "Let's not speak for a little while, please. I can think now. Soon I shall be well. Don't be anxious about me, darling." Very gently she slipped away from Saidee's arm that clasped her waist; and the softness of the young voice, which had been sharp with pain, touched the elder woman. She knew that the girl was thinking more of her, Saidee, than of herself. Victoria leaned on the white parapet, and looked down over the desert, where the sand rippled in silvery lines and waves, like water in moonlight. "The golden silence!" she thought. It was silver now, not golden; but she knew that this was the place of her dream. On a white roof like this, she had seen Saidee stand with eyes shaded from the sun in the west; waiting for her, calling for her, or so she had believed. Poor Saidee! Poor, beautiful Saidee; changed in soul, though so little changed in face! Could it be that she had never called in spirit to her sister? Victoria bowed her head, and tears fell from her eyes upon her cold bare arms, crossed on the white wall. Saidee did not want her. Saidee was sorry that she had come. Her coming had only made things worse. "I wish--" the girl was on the point of saying to herself--"I wish I'd never been born." But before the words shaped themselves fully in her mind--terrible words, because she had felt the beauty and sacred meaning of life--the desert spoke to her. "Saidee does want you," the spirit of the wind and the glimmering sands seemed to say. "If she had not wanted you, do you think you would have been shown this picture, with your sister in it, the picture which brought you half across the world? She called once, long ago, and you heard the call. You were allowed to hear it. Are you so weak as to believe, just because you're hurt and suffering, that such messages between hearts mean nothing? Saidee may not know that she wants you, but she does, and needs you more than ever before. This is your hour of temptation. You thought everything was going to be wonderfully easy, almost too easy, and instead, it is difficult, that's all. But be brave for Saidee and yourself, now and in days to come, for you are here only just in time." The pure, strong wind blowing over the dunes was a tonic to Victoria's soul, and she breathed it eagerly. Catching at the robe of faith, she held the spirit fast, and it stayed with her. Suddenly she felt at peace, sure as a child that she would be taught what to do next. There was her star, floating in the blue lake of the sky, like a water lily, where millions of lesser lilies blossomed. "Dear star," she whispered, "thank you for coming. I needed you just then." "Are you better?" asked Saidee in a choked voice. Victoria turned away from sky and desert to the drooping figure of the woman, standing in a pool of shadow, dark as fear and treachery. "Yes, dearest one, I am well again, and I won't have to worry you any more." The girl gently wound two protecting arms round her sister. "What have you decided to do?" Victoria could feel Saidee's heart beating against her own. "I've decided to pray about deciding, and then to decide. Whatever's best for you, I will do, I promise." "And for yourself. Don't forget that I'm thinking of you. Don't believe it's _all_ cowardice." "I don't believe anything but good of my Saidee." "I envy you, because you think you've got Someone to pray to. I've nothing. I'm--alone in the dark." Victoria made her look up at the moon which flooded the night with a sea of radiance. "There is no dark," she said. "We're together--in the light." "How hopeful you are!" Saidee murmured. "I've left hope so far behind, I've almost forgotten what it's like." "Maybe it's always been hovering just over your shoulder, only you forgot to turn and see. It can't be gone, because I feel sure that truth and knowledge and hope are all one." "I wonder if you'll still feel so when you've married a man of another race--as I have?" Victoria did not answer. She had to conquer the little cold thrill of superstitious fear which crept through her veins, as Saidee's words reminded her of M'Barka's sand-divining. She had to find courage again from "her star," before she could speak. "Forgive me, Babe!" said Saidee, stricken by the look in the lifted eyes. "I wish I needn't remind you of anything horrid to-night--your first night with me after all these years. But we have so little time. What else can I do?" "I shall know by to-morrow what we are to do," Victoria said cheerfully. "Because I shall take counsel of the night." "You're a very odd girl," the woman reflected aloud. "When you were a tiny thing, you used to have the weirdest thoughts, and do the quaintest things. I was sure you'd grow up to be absolutely different from any other human being. And so you have, I think. Only an extraordinary sort of girl could ever have made her way without help from Potterston, Indiana, to Oued Tolga in North Africa." "I _had_ help--every minute. Saidee--did you think of me sometimes, when you were standing here on this roof?" "Yes, of course I thought of you often--only not so often lately as at first, because for a long time now I've been numb. I haven't thought much or cared much about anything, or--or any one except----" "Except----" "Except--except myself, I'm afraid." Saidee's face was turned away from Victoria's. She looked toward Oued Tolga, the city, whither the carrier-pigeon had flown. "I wondered," she went on hastily, "what had become of you, and if you were happy, and whether by this time you'd nearly forgotten me. You were such a baby child when I left you!" "I won't believe you really wondered if I could forget. You, and thoughts of you, have made my whole life. I was just living for the time when I could earn money enough to search for you--and preparing for it, of course, so as to be ready when it came." Saidee still looked toward Oued Tolga, where the white domes shimmered, far away in the moonlight, like a mirage. Was love a mirage, too?--the love that called for her over there, the love whose voice made the strings of her heart vibrate, though she had thought them broken and silent for ever. Victoria's arms round her felt strong and warm, yet they were a barrier. She was afraid of the barrier, and afraid of the girl's passionate loyalty. She did not deserve it, she knew, and she would be more at ease--she could not say happier, because there was no such word as happiness for her--without it. Somehow she could not bear to talk of Victoria's struggle to come to her rescue. The thought of all the girl had done made her feel unable to live up to it, or be grateful. She did not want to be called upon to live up to any standard. She wanted--if she wanted anything--simply to go on blindly, as fate led. But she felt that near her fate hovered, like the carrier-pigeon; and some terrible force within herself, which frightened her, seemed ready to push away or destroy anything that might come between her and that fate. She knew that she ought to question Victoria about the past years of their separation, one side of her nature was eager to hear the story. But the other side, which had gained strength lately, forced her to dwell upon less intimate things. "I suppose Mrs. Ray managed to keep most of poor father's money?" she said. "Mrs. Ray died when I was fourteen, and after that Mr. Potter lost everything in speculation," the girl answered. "Everything of yours, too?" "Yes. But it didn't matter, except for the delay. My dancing--_your_ dancing really, dearest, because if it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have put my heart into it so--earned me all I needed." "I said you were extraordinary! But how queer it seems to hear those names again. Mrs. Ray. Mr. Potter. They're like names in a dream. How wretched I used to think myself, with Mrs. Ray in Paris, when she was so jealous and cross! But a thousand times since, I've wished myself back in those days. I was happy, really. I was free. Life was all before me." "Dearest! But surely you weren't miserable from the very first, with--with Cassim?" "No-o. I suppose I wasn't. I was in love with him. It seemed very interesting to be the wife of such a man. Even when I found that he meant to make me lead the life of an Arab woman, shut up and veiled, I liked him too well to mind much. He put it in such a romantic way, telling me how he worshipped me, how mad with jealousy he was even to think of other men seeing my face, and falling in love with it. He thought every one must fall in love! All girls like men to be jealous--till they find out how sordid jealousy can be. And I was so young--a child. I felt as if I were living in a wonderful Eastern poem. Cassim used to give me the most gorgeous presents, and our house in Algiers was beautiful. My garden was a dream--and how he made love to me in it! Besides, I was allowed to go out, veiled. It was rather fun being veiled--in those days, I thought so. It made me feel mysterious, as if life were a masquerade ball. And the Arab women Cassim let me know--a very few, wives and sisters of his friends--envied me immensely. I loved that--I was so silly. And they flattered me, asking about my life in Europe. I was like a fairy princess among them, until--one day--a woman told me a thing about Cassim. She told me because she was spiteful and wanted to make me miserable, of course, for I found out afterwards she'd been expressly forbidden to speak, on account of my 'prejudices'--they'd all been forbidden. I wouldn't believe at first,--but it was true--the others couldn't deny it. And to prove what she said, the woman took me to see the boy, who was with his grandmother--an aunt of Maïeddine's, dead now." "The boy?" "Oh, I forgot. I haven't explained. The thing she told was, that Cassim had a wife living when he married me." "Saidee!--how horrible! How horrible!" "Yes, it was horrible. It broke my heart." Saidee was tingling with excitement now. Her stiff, miserable restraint was gone in the feverish satisfaction of speaking out those things which for years had corroded her mind, like verdigris. She had never been able to talk to anyone in this way, and her only relief had been in putting her thoughts on paper. Some of the books in her locked cupboard she had given to a friend, the writer of to-day's letter, because she had seen him only for a few minutes at a time, and had been able to say very little, on the one occasion when they had spoken a few words to each other. She had wanted him to know what a martyrdom her life had been. Involuntarily she talked to her sister, now, as she would have talked to him, and his face rose clearly before her eyes, more clearly almost than Victoria's, which her own shadow darkened, and screened from the light of the moon as they stood together, clasped in one another's arms. "Cassim thought it all right, of course," she went on. "A Mussulman may have four wives at a time if he likes--though men of his rank don't, as a rule, take more than one, because they must marry women of high birth, who hate rivals in their own house. But he was too clever to give me a hint of his real opinions in Paris. He knew I wouldn't have looked at him again, if he had--even if he hadn't told me about the wife herself. She had had this boy, and gone out of her mind afterwards, so she wasn't living with Cassim--that was the excuse he made when I taxed him with deceiving me. Her father and mother had taken her back. I don't know surely whether she's living or dead, but I believe she's dead, and her body buried beside the grave supposed to be Cassim's. Anyhow, the boy's living, and he's the one thing on earth Cassim loves better than himself." "When did you find out about--about all this?" Victoria asked, almost whispering. "Eight months after we were married I heard about his wife. I think Cassim was true to me, in his way, till that time. But we had an awful scene. I told him I'd never live with him again as his wife, and I never have. After that day, everything was different. No more happiness--not even an Arab woman's idea of happiness. Cassim began to hate me, but with the kind of hate that holds and won't let go. He wouldn't listen when I begged him to set me free. Instead, he wouldn't let me go out at all, or see anyone, or receive or send letters. He punished me by flirting outrageously with a pretty woman, the wife of a French officer. He took pains that I should hear everything, through my servants. But his cruelty was visited on his own head, for soon there came a dreadful scandal. The woman died suddenly of chloral poisoning, after a quarrel with her husband on Cassim's account, and it was thought she'd taken too much of the drug on purpose. The day after his wife's death, the officer shot himself. I think he was a colonel; and every one knew that Cassim was mixed up in the affair. He had to leave the army, and it seemed--he thought so himself--that his career was ruined. He sold his place in Algiers, and took me to a farm-house in the country where we lived for a while, and he was so lonely and miserable he would have been glad to make up, but how could I forgive him? He'd deceived me too horribly--and besides, in my own eyes I wasn't his wife. Surely our marriage wouldn't be considered legal in any country outside Islam, would it? Even you, a child like you, must see that?" "I suppose so," Victoria answered, sadly. "But----" "There's no 'but.' I thought so then. I think so a hundred times more now. My life's been a martyrdom. No one could blame me if--but I was telling you about what happened after Algiers. There was a kind of armed truce between us in the country, though we lived only like two acquaintances under the same roof. For months he had nobody else to talk to, so he used to talk with me--quite freely sometimes, about a plan some powerful Arabs, friends of his--Maïeddine and his father among others--were making for him. It sounded like a fairy story, and I used to think he must be going mad. But he wasn't. It was all true about the plot that was being worked. He knew I couldn't betray him, so it was a relief to his mind, in his nervous excitement, to confide in me." "Was it a plot against the French?" "Indirectly. That was one reason it appealed to Cassim. He'd been proud of his position in the army, and being turned out, or forced to go--much the same thing--made him hate France and everything French. He'd have given his life for revenge, I'm sure. Probably that's why his friends were so anxious to put him in a place of power, for they were men whose watchword was 'Islam for Islam.' Their hope was--and is--to turn France out of North Africa. You wouldn't believe how many there are who hope and band themselves together for that. These friends of Cassim's persuaded and bribed a wretched cripple--who was next of kin to the last marabout, and ought to have inherited--to let Cassim take his place. Secretly, of course. It was a very elaborate plot--it had to be. Three or four rich, important men were in it, and it would have meant ruin if they'd been found out. "Cassim would really have come next in succession if it hadn't been for the hunchback, who lived in Morocco, just over the border. If he had any conscience, I suppose that thought soothed it. He told me that the real heir--the cripple--had epileptic fits, and couldn't live long, anyhow. The way they worked their plan out was by Cassim's starting for a pilgrimage to Mecca. I had to go away with him, because he was afraid to leave me. I knew too much. And it was simpler to take me than to put me out of the way." "Saidee--he would never have murdered you?" Victoria whispered. "He would if necessary--I'm sure of it. But it was safer not. Besides, I'd often told him I wanted to die, so that was an incentive to keep me alive. I didn't go to Mecca. I left the farm-house with Cassim, and he took me to South Oran, where he is now. I had to stay in the care of a marabouta, a terrible old woman, a bigot and a tyrant, a cousin of Cassim's, on his mother's side, and a sister of the man who invented the whole plot. The idea was that Cassim should seem to be drowned in the Bosphorus, while staying at Constantinople with friends, after his pilgrimage to Mecca. But luckily for him there was a big fire in the hotel where he went to stop for the first night, so he just disappeared, and a lot of trouble was saved. He told me about the adventure, when he came to Oran. The next move was to Morocco. And from Morocco he travelled here, in place of the cripple, when the last marabout died, and the heir was called to his inheritance. That was nearly eight years ago." "And he's never been found out?" "No. And he never will be. He's far too clever. Outwardly he's hand in glove with the French. High officials and officers come here to consult with him, because he's known to have immense influence all over the South, and in the West, even in Morocco. He's masked, like a Touareg, and the French believe it's because of a vow he made in Mecca. No one but his most intimate friends, or his own people, have ever seen the face of Sidi Mohammed since he inherited the maraboutship, and came to Oued Tolga. He must hate wearing his mask, for he's as handsome as he ever was, and just as vain. But it's worth the sacrifice. Not only is he a great man, with everything--or nearly everything--he wants in the world, but he looks forward to a glorious revenge against the French, whose interests he pretends to serve." "How can he revenge himself? What power has he to do that?" the girl asked. She had a strange impression that Saidee had forgotten her, that all this talk of the past, and of the marabout, was for some one else of whom her sister was thinking. "He has tremendous power," Saidee answered, almost angrily, as if she resented the doubt. "All Islam is at his back. The French humour him, and let him do whatever he likes, no matter how eccentric his ways may be, because he's got them to believe he is trying to help the Government in the wildest part of Algeria, the province of Oran--and with the Touaregs in the farthest South; and that he promotes French interests in Morocco. Really, he's at the head of every religious secret society in North Africa, banded together to turn Christians out of Mussulman countries. The French have no idea how many such secret societies exist, and how rich and powerful they are. Their dear friend, the good, wise, polite marabout assures them that rumours of that sort are nonsense. But some day, when everything's ready--when Morocco and Oran and Algeria and Tunisia will obey the signal, all together, then they'll have a surprise--and Cassim ben Halim will be revenged." "It sounds like the weavings of a brain in a dream," Victoria said. "It will be a nightmare-dream, no matter how it ends;--maybe a nightmare of blood, and war, and massacre. Haven't you ever heard, or read, how the Mussulman people expect a saviour, the Moul Saa, as they call him--the Man of the Hour, who will preach a Holy War, and lead it himself, to victory?" "Yes, I've read that----" "Well, Cassim hopes to be the Moul Saa, and deliver Islam by the sword. I suppose you wonder how I know such secrets, or whether I do really know them at all. But I do. Some things Cassim told me himself, because he was bursting with vanity, and simply had to speak. Other things I've seen in writing--he would kill me if he found out. And still other things I've guessed. Why, the boys here in the Zaouïa are being brought up for the 'great work,' as they call it. Not all of them--but the most important ones among the older boys. They have separate classes. Something secret and mysterious is taught them. There are boys from Morocco and Oran, and sons of Touareg chiefs--all those who most hate Christians. No other zaouïa is like this. The place seethes with hidden treachery and sedition. Now you can see where Si Maïeddine's power over Cassim comes in. The Agha, his father, is one of the few who helped make Cassim what he is, but he's a cautious old man, the kind who wants to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Si Maïeddine's cautious too, Cassim has said. He approves the doctrines of the secret societies, but he's so ambitious that without a very strong incentive to turn against them, in act he'd be true to the French. Well, now he has the incentive. You." "I don't understand," said Victoria. Yet even as she spoke, she began to understand. "He'll offer to give himself, and to influence the Agha and the Agha's people--the Ouled-Sirren--if Cassim will grant his wish. And it's no use saying that Cassim can't force you to marry any man. You told me yourself, a little while ago, that if you saw harm coming to me----" "Oh don't--don't speak of that again, Saidee!" the girl cried, sharply. "I've told you--yes--that I'll do anything--anything on earth to save you pain, or more sorrow. But let's hope--let's pray." "There is no hope. I've forgotten how to pray," Saidee answered, "and God has forgotten me." XXXVIII There was no place for a guest in that part of the marabout's house which had been allotted to Saidee. She had her bedroom and reception-room, her roof terrace, and her garden court. On the ground floor her negresses lived, and cooked for their mistress and themselves. She did not wish to have Victoria with her, night and day, and so she had quietly directed Noura to make up a bed in the room which would have been her boudoir, if she had lived in Europe. When the sisters came down from the roof, the bed was ready. In the old time Victoria had slept with her sister; and her greatest happiness as a child had been the "bed-talks," when Saidee had whispered her secret joys or troubles, and confided in the little girl as if she had been a "grown-up." Hardly a night had passed since their parting, that Victoria had not thought of those talks, and imagined herself again lying with her head on Saidee's arm, listening to stories of Saidee's life. She had taken it for granted that she would be put in her sister's room, and seeing the bed made up, and her luggage unpacked in the room adjoining, was a blow. She knew that Saidee must have given orders, or these arrangements would not have been made, and again she felt the dreadful sinking of the heart which had crushed her an hour ago. Saidee did not want her. Saidee was sorry she had come, and meant to keep her as far off as possible. But the girl encouraged herself once more. Saidee might think now that she would rather have been left alone. But she was mistaken. By and by she would find out the truth, and know that they needed each other. "I thought you'd be more comfortable here, than crowded in with me," Saidee explained, blushing faintly. "Yes, thank you, dear," said Victoria quietly. She did not show her disappointment, and seemed to take the matter for granted, as if she had expected nothing else; but the talk on the roof had brought back something into Saidee's heart which she could not keep out, though she did not wish to admit it there. She was sorry for Victoria, sorry for herself, and more miserable than ever. Her nerves were rasped by an intolerable irritation as she looked at the girl, and felt that her thoughts were being read. She had a hideous feeling, almost an impression, that her face had been lifted off like a mask, and that the workings of her brain were open to her sister's eyes, like the exposed mechanism of a clock. "Noura has brought some food for you," she went on hastily. "You must eat a little, before you go to bed--to please me." "I will," Victoria assured her. "You mustn't worry about me at all." "You'll go to sleep, won't you?--or would you rather talk--while you're eating, perhaps?" The girl looked at the woman, and saw that her nerves were racked; that she wanted to go, but did not wish her sister to guess. "You've talked too much already," Victoria said. "The surprise of my coming gave you a shock. Now you must rest and get over it, so you can be strong for to-morrow. Then we'll make up our minds about everything." "There's only one way to make up our minds," Saidee insisted, dully. Victoria did not protest. She kissed her sister good-night, and gently refused help from Noura. Then Saidee went away, followed by the negress, who softly closed the door between the two rooms. Her mistress had not told her to do this, but when it was done, she did not say, "Open the door." Saidee was glad that it was shut, because she felt that she could think more freely. She could not bear the idea that her thoughts and life were open to the criticism of those young, blue eyes, which the years since childhood had not clouded. Nevertheless, when Noura had undressed her, and she was alone, she saw Victoria's eyes looking at her sweetly, sadly, with yearning, yet with no reproach. She saw them as clearly as she had seen a man's face, a few hours earlier; and now his was dim, as Victoria's face had been dim when his was clear. It was dark in the room, except for the moon-rays which streamed through the lacelike open-work of stucco, above the shuttered windows, making jewelled patterns on the wall--pink, green, and golden, according to the different colours of the glass. There was just enough light to reflect these patterns faintly in the mirrors set in the closed door, opposite which Saidee lay in bed; and to her imagination it was as if she could see through the door, into a lighted place beyond. She wondered if Victoria had gone to bed; if she were sleeping, or if she were crying softly--crying her heart out with bitter grief and disappointment she would never confess. Victoria had always been like that, even as a little girl. If Saidee did anything to hurt her, she made no moan. Sometimes Saidee had teased her on purpose, or tried to make her jealous, just for fun. As memories came crowding back, the woman buried her face in the pillow, striving with all her might to shut them out. What was the use of making herself wretched? Victoria ought to have come long, long ago, or not at all. But the blue eyes would look at her, even when her own were shut; and always there was the faint light in the mirror, which seemed to come through the door. At last Saidee could not longer lie still. She had to get up and open the door, to see what her sister was really doing. Very softly she turned the handle, for she hoped that by this time Victoria was asleep; but as she pulled the door noiselessly towards her, and peeped into the next room, she saw that one of the lamps was burning. Victoria had not yet gone to bed. She was kneeling beside it, saying her prayers, with her back towards the door. So absorbed was she in praying, and so little noise had Saidee made, that the girl heard nothing. She remained motionless on her knees, not knowing that Saidee was looking at her. A sharp pain shot through the woman's heart. How many times had she softly opened their bedroom door, coming home late after a dance, to find her little sister praying, a small, childish form in a long white nightgown, with quantities of curly red hair pouring over its shoulders! Sometimes Victoria had gone to sleep on her knees, and Saidee had waked her up with a kiss. Just as she had looked then, so she looked now, except that the form in the long, white nightgown was that of a young girl, not a child. But the thick waves of falling hair made it seem childish. "She is praying for me," Saidee thought; and dared not close the door tightly, lest Victoria should hear. By and by it could be done, when the light was out, and the girl dropped asleep. Meanwhile, she tiptoed back to her bed, and sat on the edge of it, to wait. At last the thread of light, fine as a red-gold hair, vanished from the door; but as it disappeared a line of moonlight was drawn in silver along the crack. Victoria must have left her windows wide open, or there would not have been light enough to paint this gleaming streak. Saidee sat on her bed for nearly half an hour, trying to concentrate her thoughts on the present and future, yet unable to keep them from flying back to the past, the long-ago past, which lately had seemed unreal, as if she had dreamed it; the past when she and Victoria had been all the world to each other. There was no sound in the next room, and when Saidee was weary of her strained position, she crossed the floor on tiptoe again, to shut the door. But she could not resist a temptation to peep in. It was as she had expected. Victoria had left the inlaid cedar-wood shutters wide open, and through the lattice of old wrought-iron, moonlight streamed. The room was bright with a silvery twilight, like a mysterious dawn; but because the bed-linen and the embroidered silk coverlet were white, the pale radiance focused round the girl, who lay asleep in a halo of moonbeams. "She looks like an angel," Saidee thought, and with a curious mingling of reluctance and eagerness, moved softly toward the bed, her little velvet slippers from Tunis making no sound on the thick rugs. Very well the older woman remembered an engaging trick of the child's, a way of sleeping with her cheek in her hand, and her hair spread out like a golden coverlet for the pillow. Just so she was lying now; and in the moonlight her face was a child's face, the face of the dear, little, loving child of ten years ago. Like this Victoria had lain when her sister crept into their bedroom in the Paris flat, the night before the wedding, and Saidee had waked her by crying on her eyelids. Cassim's unhappy wife recalled the clean, sweet, warm smell of the child's hair when she had buried her face in it that last night together. It had smelled like grape-leaves in the hot sun. "If you don't come back to me, I'll follow you all across the world," the little girl had said. Now, she had kept her promise. Here she was--and the sister to whom she had come, after a thousand sacrifices, was wishing her back again at the other end of the world, was planning to get rid of her. Suddenly, it was as if the beating of Saidee's heart broke a tight band of ice which had compressed it. A fountain of tears sprang from her eyes. She fell on her knees beside the bed, crying bitterly. "Childie, childie, comfort me, forgive me!" she sobbed. Victoria woke instantly. She opened her eyes, and Saidee's wet face was close to hers. The girl said not a word, but wrapped her arms round her sister, drawing the bowed head on to her breast, and then she crooned lovingly over it, with little foolish mumblings, as she used to do in Paris when Mrs. Ray's unkindness had made Saidee cry. "Can you forgive me?" the woman faltered, between sobs. "Darling, as if there were anything to forgive!" The clasp of the girl's arms tightened. "Now we're truly together again. How I love you! How happy I am!" "Don't--I don't deserve it," Saidee stammered. "Poor little Babe! I was cruel to you. And you'd come so far." "You weren't cruel!" Victoria contradicted her, almost fiercely. "I was. I was jealous--jealous of you. You're so young and beautiful--just what I was ten years ago, only better and prettier. You're what I can never be again--what I'd give the next ten years to be. Everything's over with me. I'm old--old!" "You're not to say such things," cried Victoria, horrified. "You weren't jealous. You----" "I was. I am now. But I want to confess. You must let me confess, if you're to help me." "Dearest, tell me anything--everything you choose, but nothing you don't choose. And nothing you say can make me love you less--only more." "There's a great deal to tell," Saidee said, heavily "And I'm tired--sick at heart. But I can't rest now, till I've told you." "Wouldn't you come into bed?" pleaded Victoria humbly. "Then we could talk, the way we used to talk." Saidee staggered up from her knees, and the girl almost lifted her on to the bed. Then she covered her with the thyme-scented linen sheet, and the silk coverlet under which she herself lay. For a moment they were quite still, Saidee lying with her head on Victoria's arm. But at last she said, in a whisper, as if her lips were dry: "Did you know I was sorry you'd come?" "I knew you thought you were sorry," the girl answered. "Yet I hoped that you'd find out you weren't, really. I prayed for you to find out--soon." "Did you guess why I was sorry?" "Not--quite." "I told you I--that it was for your sake." "Yes." "Didn't you believe it?" "I--felt there was something else, beside." "There was!" Saidee confessed. "You know now--at least you know part. I was jealous. I am still--but I'm ashamed of myself. I'm sick with shame. And I do love you!" "Of course--of course you do, darling." "But--there's somebody else I love. A man. And I couldn't bear to think he might see you, because you're so much younger and fresher than I." "You mean--Cassim?" "No. Not Cassim." Silence fell between the two. Victoria did not speak; and suddenly Saidee was angry with her for not speaking. "If you're shocked, I won't go on," she said. "You can't help me by preaching." "I'm not shocked," the girl protested. "Only sorry--so sorry. And even if I wanted to preach, I don't know how." "There's nothing to be shocked about," Saidee said, her tears dry, her voice hard as it had been at first. "I've seen him three times. I've talked with him just once. But we love each other. It's the first and only real love of my life. I was too young to know, when I met Cassim. That was a fascination. I was in love with romance. He carried me off my feet, in spite of myself." "Then, dearest Saidee, don't let yourself be carried off your feet a second time." "Why not?" Saidee asked, sharply. "What incentive have I to be true to Cassim?" "I'm not thinking about Cassim. I'm thinking of you. All one's world goes to pieces so, if one isn't true to oneself." "_He_ says I can't be true to myself if I stay here. He doesn't consider that I'm Cassim's wife. I _thought_ myself married, but was I, when he had a wife already? Would any lawyer, or even clergyman, say it was a legal marriage?" "Perhaps not," Victoria admitted. "But----" "Just wait, before you go on arguing," Saidee broke in hotly, "until I've told you something you haven't heard yet. Cassim has another wife now--a lawful wife, according to his views, and the views of his people. He's had her for a year. She's a girl of the Ouled Naïl tribe, brought up to be a dancer. But Cassim saw her at Touggourt, where he'd gone on one of his mysterious visits. He doesn't dream that I know the whole history of the affair, but I do, and have known, since a few days after the creature was brought here as his bride. She's as ignorant and silly as a kitten, and only a child in years. She told her 'love story' to one of her negresses, who told Noura--who repeated it to me. Perhaps I oughtn't to have listened, but why not?" Victoria did not answer. The clouds round Saidee and herself were dark, but she was trying to see the blue beyond, and find the way into it, with her sister. "She's barely sixteen now, and she's been here a year," Saidee went on. "She hadn't begun to dance yet, when Cassim saw her, and took her away from Touggourt. Being a great saint is very convenient. A marabout can do what he likes, you know. Mussulmans are forbidden to touch alcohol, but if a marabout drinks wine, it turns to milk in his throat. He can fly, if he wants to. He can even make French cannon useless, and withdraw the bullets from French guns, in case of war, if the spirit of Allah is with him. So by marrying a girl brought up for a dancer, daughter of generations of dancing women, he washes all disgrace from her blood, and makes her a female saint, worthy to live eternally. The beautiful Miluda's a marabouta, if you please, and when her baby is taken out by the negress who nurses it, silly, bigoted people kneel and kiss its clothing." "She has a baby!" murmured Victoria. "Yes, only a girl, but better than nothing--and she hopes to be more fortunate next time. She isn't jealous of me, because I've no children, not even a girl, and because for that reason Cassim could repudiate me if he chose. She little knows how desperately I wish he would. She believes--Noura says--that he keeps me here only because I have no people to go to, and he's too kind-hearted to turn me out alone in the world, when my youth's past. You see--she thinks me already old--at twenty-eight! Of course the real reason that Cassim shuts me up and won't let me go, is because he knows I could ruin not only him, but the hopes of his people. Miluda doesn't dream that I'm of so much importance in his eyes. The only thing she's jealous of is the boy, Mohammed, who's at school in the town of Oued Tolga, in charge of an uncle. Cassim guesses how Miluda hates the child, and I believe that's the reason he daren't have him here. He's afraid something might happen, although the excuse he makes is, that he wants his boy to learn French, and know something of French ways. That pleases the Government--and as for the Arabs, no doubt he tells them it's only a trick to keep French eyes shut to what's really going on, and to his secret plans. Now, do you still say I ought to consider myself married to Cassim, and refuse to take any happiness if I can get it?" "The thing is, what would make you happy?" Victoria said, as if thinking aloud. "Love, and life. All that women in Europe have, and take for granted," Saidee answered passionately. "How could it come to you?" the girl asked. "I would go to it, and find it with the man who's ready to risk his life to save me from this hateful prison, and carry me far away. Now, I've told you everything, exactly as it stands. That's why I was sorry you came, just when I was almost ready to risk the step. I was sure you'd be horrified if you found out, and want to stop me. Besides, if he should see you--but I won't say that again. I know you wouldn't try to take him away from me, even if you tried to take me from him. I don't know why I've told you, instead of keeping the whole thing secret as I made up my mind to do at first. Nothing's changed. I can't save you from Maïeddine, but--there's one difference. I _would_ save you if I could. Just at first, I was so anxious for you to be out of the way of my happiness--the chance of it--that the only thing I longed for was that you should be gone." Victoria choked back a sob that rose in her throat, but Saidee felt, rather than heard it, as she lay with her burning head on the girl's arm. "I don't feel like that now," she said. "I peeped in and saw you praying--perhaps for me--and you looked just as you used, when you were a little girl. Then, when I came in, and you were asleep, I--I couldn't stand it. I broke down. I love you, dear little Babe. The ice is gone out of my heart. You've melted it. I'm a woman again; but just because I'm a woman, I won't give up my other love to please you or any one. I tell you that, honestly." Victoria made no reply for a moment, though Saidee waited defiantly, expecting a protest or an argument. Then, at last, the girl said: "Will you tell me something about this man?" Saidee was surprised to receive encouragement. It was a joy to speak of the subject that occupied all her thoughts, and wonderful to have a confidante. "He's a captain in the Chasseurs d'Afrique," she said. "But he's not with his regiment. He's an expert in making desert wells, and draining marshes. That's the business which has brought him to the far South, now. He's living at Oued Tolga--the town, I mean; not the Zaouïa. A well had to be sunk in the village, and he was superintending. I watched him from my roof, though it was too far off to see his face. I don't know exactly what made me do it--I suppose it was Fate, for Cassim says we all have our fate hung round our necks--but when I went to the Moorish bath, between here and the village, I let my veil blow away from my face as I passed close to him and his party of workers. No one else saw, except he. It was only for a second or two, but we looked straight into each other's eyes; and there was something in his that seemed to draw my soul out of me. It was as if, in that instant, I told him with a look the whole tragedy of my life. And his soul sprang to mine. There was never anything like it. You can't imagine what I felt, Babe." "Yes. I--think I can," Victoria whispered, but Saidee hardly heard, so deeply was she absorbed in the one sweet memory of many years. "It was in the morning," the elder woman went on, "but it was hot, and the sun was fierce as it beat down on the sand. He had been working, and his face was pale from the heat. It had a haggard look under brown sunburn. But when our eyes met, a flush like a girl's rushed up to his forehead. You never saw such a light in human eyes! They were illuminated as if a fire from his heart was lit behind them. I knew he had fallen in love with me--that something would happen: that my life would never be the same again. "The next time I went to the bath, he was there; and though I held my veil, he looked at me with the same wonderful look, as if he could see through it. I felt that he longed to speak, but of course he could not. It would have meant my ruin. "In the baths, there's an old woman named Bakta--an attendant. She always comes to me when I go there. She's a great character--knows everything that happens in every house, as if by magic; and loves to talk. But she can keep secrets. She is a match-maker for all the neighbourhood. When there's a young man of Oued Tolga, or of any village round about, who wants a wife, she lets him know which girl who comes to the baths is the youngest and most beautiful. Or if a wife is in love with some one, Bakta contrives to bring letters from him, and smuggle them to the young woman while she's at the Moorish bath. Well, that day she gave me a letter--a beautiful letter. "I didn't answer it; but next time I passed, I opened my veil and smiled to show that I thanked him. Because he had laid his life at my feet. If there was anything he could do for me, he would do it, without hope of reward, even if it meant death. Then Bakta gave me another letter. I couldn't resist answering, and so it's gone on, until I seem to know this man, Honoré Sabine, better than any one in the world; though we've only spoken together once." "How did you manage it?" Victoria asked the question mechanically, for she felt that Saidee expected it of her. "Bakta managed, and Noura helped. He came dressed like an Arab woman, and pretended to be old and lame, so that he could crouch down and use a stick as he walked, to disguise his height. Bakta waited--and we had no more than ten minutes to say everything. Ten hours wouldn't have been enough!--but we were in danger every instant, and he was afraid of what might happen to me, if we were spied upon. He begged me to go with him then, but I dared not. I couldn't decide. Now he writes to me, and he's making a cypher, so that if the letters should be intercepted, no one could read them. Then he hopes to arrange a way of escape if--if I say I'll do what he asks." "Which, of course, you won't," broke in Victoria. "You couldn't, even though it were only for his sake alone, if you really love him. You'd be too unhappy afterwards, knowing that you'd ruined his career in the army." "I'm more to him than a thousand careers!" Saidee flung herself away from the girl's arm. "I see now," she went on angrily, "what you were leading up to, when you pretended to sympathize. You were waiting for a chance to try and persuade me that I'm a selfish wretch. I may be selfish, but--it's as much for his happiness as mine. It's just as I thought it would be. You're puritanical. You'd rather see me die, or go mad in this prison, than have me do a thing that's unconventional, according to your schoolgirl ideas." "I came to take you out of prison," said Victoria. "And you fell into it yourself!" Saidee retorted quickly. "You broke the spring of the door, and it will be harder than ever to open. But"--her voice changed from reproach to persuasion--"Honoré might save us both. If only you wouldn't try to stop my going with him, you might go too. Then you wouldn't have to marry Maïeddine. There's a chance--just a chance. For heaven's sake do all you can to help, not to hinder. Don't you see, now that you're here, there are a hundred more reasons why I must say 'yes' to Captain Sabine?" "If I did see that, I'd want to die now, this minute," Victoria answered. "How cruel you are! How cruel a girl can be to a woman. You pretend that you came to help me, and the one only thing you can do, you refuse to do. You say you want to get me away. I tell you that you can't--and you can't get yourself away. Perhaps Honoré can do what you can't, but you'll try to prevent him." "If I _could_ get you away, would you give him up--until you were free to go to him without spoiling both your lives?" "What do you mean?" Saidee asked. "Please answer my question." Saidee thought for a moment. "Yes. I would do that. But what's the use of talking about it? You! A poor little mouse caught in a trap!" "A mouse once gnawed a net, and set free a whole lion," said Victoria. "Give me a chance to think, that's all I ask, except--except--that you love me meanwhile. Oh, darling, don't be angry, will you? I can't bear it, if you are." Saidee laid her head on the girl's arm once more, and they kissed each other. XXXIX Maïeddine did not try to see Victoria, or send her any message. In spite of M'Barka's vision in the sand, and his own superstition, he was sure now that nothing could come between him and his wish. The girl was safe in the marabout's house, to which he had brought her, and it was impossible for her to get away without his help, even if she were willing to go, and leave the sister whom she had come so far to find. Maïeddine knew what he could offer the marabout, and knew that the marabout would willingly pay even a higher price than he meant to ask. He lived in the guest-house, and had news sometimes from his cousin Lella M'Barka in her distant quarters. She was tired, but not ill, and the two sisters were very kind to her. So three days passed, and the doves circled and moaned round the minaret of the Zaouïa mosque, and were fed at sunset on the white roof, by hands hidden from all eyes save eyes of birds. On the third day there was great excitement at Oued Tolga. The marabout, Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd el Kadr, came home, and was met on the way by many people from the town and the Zaouïa. His procession was watched by women on many roofs--with reverent interest by some; with joy by one woman who was his wife; with fear and despair by another, who had counted on his absence for a few days longer. And Victoria stood beside her sister, looking out over the golden silence towards the desert city of Oued Tolga, with a pair of modern field-glasses sent to her by Si Maïeddine. Maïeddine himself went out to meet the marabout, riding El Biod, and conscious of unseen eyes that must be upon him. He was a notable figure among the hundreds which poured out of town, and villages, and Zaouïa, in honour of the great man's return; the noblest of all the desert men in floating white burnouses, who rode or walked, with the sun turning their dark faces to bronze, their eyes to gleaming jewels. But even Maïeddine himself became insignificant as the procession from the Zaouïa was joined by that from the city,--the glittering line in the midst of which Sidi El Hadj Mohammed sat high on the back of a grey mehari. From very far off Victoria saw the meeting, looking through the glasses sent by Maïeddine, those which he had given her once before, bidding her see how the distant dunes leaped forward. Then as she watched, and the procession came nearer, rising and falling among the golden sand-billows, she could plainly make out the majestic form of the marabout. The sun blazed on the silver cross of his saddle, and the spear-heads of the banners which waved around him; but he was dressed with severe simplicity, in a mantle of green silk, with the green turban to which he had earned the right by visiting Mecca. The long white veil of many folds, which can be worn only by a descendant of the Prophet, flowed over the green cloak; and the face below the eyes was hidden completely by a mask of thin black woollen stuff, such as has been named "nun's veiling" in Europe. He was tall, and no longer slender, as Victoria remembered Cassim ben Halim to have been ten years ago; but all the more because of his increasing bulk, was his bearing majestic as he rode on the grey mehari, towering above the crowd. Even the Agha, Si Maïeddine's father, had less dignity than that of this great saint of the southern desert, returning like a king to his people, after carrying through a triumphant mission. "If only he had been a few days later!" Saidee thought. And Victoria felt an oppressive sense of the man's power, wrapping round her and her sister like a heavy cloak. But she looked above and beyond him, into the gold, and with all the strength of her spirit she sent out a call to Stephen Knight. "I love you. Come to me. Save my sister and me. God, send him to us. He said he would come, no matter how far. Now is the time. Let him come." The silence of the golden sea was broken by cries of welcome to the marabout, praises of Allah and the Prophet who had brought him safely back, shouts of men, and wailing "you-yous" of women, shrill voices of children, and neighing of horses. Up the side of the Zaouïa hill, lame beggars crawled out of the river bed, each hurrying to pass the others--hideous deformities, legless, noseless, humpbacked, twisted into strange shapes like brown pots rejected by the potter, groaning, whining, eager for the marabout's blessing, a supper, and a few coins. Those who could afford a copper or two were carried through the shallow water on the backs of half-naked, sweating Negroes from the village; but those who had nothing except their faith to support them, hobbled or crept over the stones, wetting their scanty rags; laughed at by black and brown children who feared to follow, because of the djinn who lived in a cave of evil yellow stones, guarding a hidden spring which gushed into the river. On Miluda's roof there was music, which could be heard from another roof, nearer the minaret where the doves wheeled and moaned; and perhaps the marabout himself could hear it, as he approached the Zaouïa; but though it called him with a song of love and welcome, he did not answer the call at once. First he took Maïeddine into his private reception room, where he received only the guests whom he most delighted to honour. There, though the ceiling and walls were decorated in Arab fashion, with the words, El Afia el Bakia, "eternal health," inscribed in lettering of gold and red, opposite the door, all the furniture was French, gilded, and covered with brocade of scarlet and gold. The curtains draped over the inlaid cedar-wood shutters of the windows were of the same brocade, and the beautiful old rugs from Turkey and Persia could not soften its crudeness. The larger reception room from which this opened had still more violent decorations, for there the scarlet mingled with vivid blue, and there were curiosities enough to stock a museum--presents sent to the marabout from friends and admirers all over the world. There were first editions of rare books, illuminated missals, dinner services of silver and gold, Dresden and Sèvres, and even Royal Worcester; splendid crystal cases of spoons and jewellery; watches old and new; weapons of many countries, and an astonishing array of clocks, all ticking, and pointing to different hours. But the inner room, which only the intimate friends of Sidi Mohammed ever saw, was littered with no such incongruous collection. On the walls were a few fine pictures by well-known French artists of the most modern school, mostly representing nude women; for though the Prophet forbade the fashioning of graven images, he made no mention of painting. There were comfortable divans, and little tables, on which were displayed boxes of cigars and cigarettes, and egg-shell coffee-cups in filigree gold standards. In this room, behind shut doors, Maïeddine told his errand, not forgetting to enumerate in detail the great things he could do for the Cause, if his wish were granted. He did not speak much of Victoria, or his love for her, but he knew that the marabout must reckon her beauty by the price he was prepared to pay; and he gave the saint little time to picture her fascinations. Nor did Sidi Mohammed talk of the girl, or of her relationship to one placed near him; and his face (which he unmasked with a sigh of relief when he and his friend were alone) did not change as he listened, or asked questions about the services Maïeddine would render the Cause. At first he seemed to doubt the possibility of keeping such promises, some of which depended upon the Agha; but Maïeddine's enthusiasm inspired him with increasing confidence. He spoke freely of the great work that was being done by the important societies of which he was the head; of what he had accomplished in Oran, and had still to accomplish; of the arms and ammunition smuggled into the Zaouïa and many other places, from France and Morocco, brought by the "silent camels" in rolls of carpets and boxes of dates. But, he added, this was only a beginning. Years must pass before all was ready, and many more men, working heart and soul, night and day, were needed. If Maïeddine could help, well and good. But would the Agha yield to his influence? "Not the Agha," Maïeddine answered, "but the Agha's people. They are my people, too, and they look to me as their future head. My father is old. There is nothing I cannot make the Ouled-Sirren do, nowhere I cannot bid them go, if I lead." "And wilt thou lead in the right way? If I give thee thy desire, wilt thou not forget, when it is already thine?" the marabout asked. "When a man wears a jewel on his finger, it does not always glitter so brightly as when he saw and coveted it first." "Not always. But in each man's life there is one jewel, supreme above others, to possess which he eats the heart, and which, when it is his, becomes the star of his life, to be worshipped forever. Once he has seen the jewel, the man knows that there is nothing more glorious for him this side heaven; that it is for him the All of joy, though to others, perhaps, it might not seem as bright. And there is nothing he would not do to have and to keep it." The marabout looked intently at Maïeddine, searching his mind to the depths; and the face of each man was lit by an inner flame, which gave nobility to his expression. Each was passionately sincere in his way, though the way of one was not the way of the other. In his love Maïeddine was true, according to the light his religion and the unchanging customs of his race had given him. He intended no wrong to Victoria, and as he was sure that his love was an honour for her, he saw no shame in taking her against what she mistakenly believed to be her wish. Her confession of love for another man had shocked him at first, but now he had come to feel that it had been but a stroke of diplomacy on her part, and he valued her more than ever for her subtlety. Though he realized dimly that with years his passion for her might cool, it burned so hotly now that the world was only a frame for the picture of her beauty. And he was sure that never in time to come could he forget the thrill of this great passion, or grudge the price he now offered and meant to pay. Cassim ben Halim had begun his crusade under the name and banner of the marabout, in the fierce hope of revenge against the power which broke him, and with an entirely selfish wish for personal aggrandizement. But as the years went on, he had converted himself to the fanaticism he professed. Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd el Kadr had created an ideal and was true to it. Still a selfish sensualist on one side of his nature, there was another side capable of high courage and self-sacrifice for the one cause which now seemed worth a sacrifice. To the triumph of Islam over usurpers he was ready to devote his life, or give his life; but having no mercy upon himself if it came to a question between self and the Cause, he had still less mercy upon others, with one exception; his son. Unconsciously, he put the little boy above all things, all aims, all people. But as for Saidee's sister, the child he remembered, who had been foolish enough and irritating enough to find her way to Oued Tolga, he felt towards her, in listening to the story of her coming, as an ardent student might feel towards a persistent midge which disturbed his studies. If the girl could be used as a pawn in his great game, she had a certain importance, otherwise none--except that her midge-like buzzings must not annoy him, or reach ears at a distance. Both men were naturally schemers, and loved scheming for its own sake, but never had either pitted his wits against the other with less intention of hiding his real mind. Each was in earnest, utterly sincere, therefore not ignoble; and the bargain was struck between the two with no deliberate villainy on either side. The marabout promised his wife's sister to Maïeddine with as little hesitation as a patriarch of Israel, three thousand years ago, would have promised a lamb for the sacrificial altar. He stipulated only that before the marriage Maïeddine should prove, not his willingness, but his ability to bring his father's people into the field. "Go to the douar," he said, "and talk with the chief men. Then bring back letters from them, or send if thou wilt, and the girl shall be thy wife. I shall indeed be gratified by the connection between thine illustrious family and mine." Maïeddine had expected this, though he had hoped that his eloquence might persuade the marabout to a more impulsive agreement. "I will do what thou askest," he answered, "though it means delay, and delay is hard to bear. When I passed through the douar, my father's chief caïds were on the point of leaving for Algiers, to do honour to the Governor by showing themselves at the yearly ball. They will have started before I can reach the douar again, by the fastest travelling, for as thou knowest, I should be some days on the way." "Go then to Algiers, and meet them. That is best, and will be quicker, since journeying alone, thou canst easily arrive at Touggourt in three days from here. In two more, by taking a carriage and relays of horses, thou canst be at Biskra; and after that, there remains but the seventeen hours of train travelling." "How well thou keepest track of all progress, though things were different when thou wast last in the north," Maïeddine said. "It is my business to know all that goes on in my own country, north, south, east, and west. When wilt thou start?" "To-night." "Thou art indeed in earnest! Thou wilt of course pay thine own respects to the Governor? I will send him a gift by thee, since there is no reason he should not know that we have met. The mission on which thou wert ostensibly travelling brought thee to the south." "I will take thy gift and messages with pleasure." Maïeddine said. "It was expected that I should return for the ball, and present myself in place of my father, who is too old now for such long journeys; but I intended to make my health an excuse for absence. I should have pleaded a touch of the sun, and a fever caught in the marshes while carrying out the mission. Indeed, it is true that I am subject to fever. However, I will go, since thou desirest. The ball, which was delayed, is now fixed for a week from to-morrow. I will show myself for some moments, and the rest of the night I can devote to a talk with the caïds. I know what the result will be. And a fortnight from to-morrow thou wilt see me here again with the letters." "I believe thou wilt not fail," the marabout answered. "And neither will I fail thee." XL On the night of the Governor's ball, it was four weeks to the day since Stephen Knight and Nevill Caird had inquired for Victoria Ray at the Hotel de la Kasbah, and found her gone. For rather more than a fortnight, they had searched for her quietly without applying to the police; but when at the end of that time, no letter had come, or news of any kind, the police were called into consultation. Several supposed clues had been followed, and had led to nothing; but Nevill persuaded Stephen to hope something from the ball. If any caïds of the south knew that Roumis had a secret reason for questioning them, they would pretend to know nothing, or give misleading answers; but if they were drawn on to describe their own part of the country, and the facilities for travelling through it, news of those who had lately passed that way might be inadvertently given. Stephen was no longer in doubt about his feelings for Victoria. He knew that he had loved her ever since the day when she came to Nevill's house, and they talked together in the lily garden. He knew that the one thing worth living for was to find her; but he expected no happiness from seeing her again, rather the contrary. Margot would soon be coming back to England from Canada, and he planned to meet her, and keep all his promises. Only, he must be sure first that Victoria Ray was safe. He had made up his mind by this time that, if necessary, Margot would have to wait for him. He would not leave Algeria until Victoria had been found. It did not matter whether this decision were right or wrong, he would stick to it. Then, he would atone by doing as well as he could by Margot. She should have no cause of complaint against him in the future, so far as his love for Victoria was concerned; but he did not mean to try and kill it. Love for such a girl was too sacred to kill, even though it meant unhappiness for him. Stephen meant to guard it always in his heart, like a lamp to light him over the dark places; and there would be many dark places he knew in a life lived with Margot. Through many anxious days he looked forward to the Governor's ball, pinning his faith to Nevill's predictions; but when the moment came, his excitement fell like the wind at sunset. It did not seem possible that, after weeks of suspense, he should have news now, or ever. He went with Nevill to the summer palace, feeling dull and depressed. But perhaps the depression was partly the effect of a letter from Margot Lorenzi in Canada, received that morning. She said that she was longing to see him, and "hurrying all she knew," to escape from her friends, and get back to "dear London, and her darling White Knight." "I'm an ass to expect anything from coming here," he thought, as he saw the entrance gates of the palace park blazing with green lights in a trellis of verdure. The drive and all the paths that wound through the park were bordered with tiny lamps, and Chinese lanterns hung from the trees. There was sure to be a crush, and it seemed absurd to hope that even Nevill's cajoleries could draw serious information from Arab guests in such a scene as this. The two young men went into the palace, passing through a big veranda where French officers were playing bridge, and on into a charming court, where Turkish coffee was being served. Up from this court a staircase led to the room where the Governor was receiving, and at each turn of the stairs stood a Spahi in full dress uniform, with a long white haïck. Nevill was going on ahead, meaning to introduce Stephen to the Governor before beginning his search for acquaintances among the Arab chiefs who grouped together over the coffee cups. But, turning to speak to Stephen, who had been close behind at starting, he found that somehow they had been swept apart. He stepped aside to wait for his friend, and let the crowd troop past him up the wide staircase. Among the first to go by was an extremely handsome Arab wearing a scarlet cloak heavy with gold embroidery, thrown over a velvet coat so thickly encrusted with gold that its pale-blue colour showed only here and there. He held his turbaned head proudly, and, glancing at Caird as he passed, seemed not to see him, but rather to see through him something more interesting beyond. Nevill still waited for his friend, but fully two minutes had gone before Stephen appeared. "Did you see that fellow in the red cloak?" he asked. "That was the Arab of the ship." "Si Maïeddine----" "Yes. Did you notice a queer brooch that held his cloak together? A wheel-like thing, set with jewels?" "No. He hadn't it on. His cloak was hanging open." "By Jove! You're sure?" "Certain. I saw the whole breast of his coat." "That settles it, then. He did recognize me. Hang it, I wish he hadn't." "I don't know what's in your mind exactly. But I suppose you'll tell me." "Rather. But no time now. We mustn't lose sight of him if we can help it. I wanted to follow him up, on the instant, but didn't dare, for I hoped he'd think I hadn't spotted him. He can't be sure, anyhow, for I had the presence of mind not to stare. Let's go up now. He was on his way to pay his respects to the Governor, I suppose. He can't have slipped away yet." "It would seem not," Nevill assented, thoughtfully. But a few minutes later, it seemed that he had. And Nevill was not surprised, for in the last nine years he had learned never to wonder at the quick-witted diplomacy of Arabs. Si Maïeddine had made short work of his compliments to the Governor, and had passed out of sight by the time that Stephen Knight and Nevill Caird escaped from the line of Europeans and gorgeous Arabs pressing towards their host. It was not certain, however, that he had left the palace. His haste to get on might be only a coincidence, Nevill pointed out. "Frenchified Arabs" like Si Maïeddine, he said, were passionately fond of dancing with European women, and very likely Maïeddine was anxious to secure a waltz with some Frenchwomen of his acquaintance. The two Englishmen went on as quickly as they could, without seeming to hurry, and looked for Maïeddine in the gaily decorated ball-room where a great number of Europeans and a few Arabs were dancing. Maïeddine would have been easy to find there, for his high-held head in its white turban must have towered above most other heads, even those of the tallest French officers; but he was not to be seen, and Nevill guided Stephen out of the ball-room into a great court decorated with palms and banners, and jewelled with hundreds of coloured lights that turned the fountain into a spouting rainbow. Pretty women sat talking with officers in uniforms, and watching the dancers as they strolled out arm in arm, to walk slowly round the flower-decked fountain. Behind the chatting Europeans stood many Arab chiefs of different degree, bach aghas, aghas, caïds and adels, looking on silently, or talking together in low voices; and compared with these stately, dark men in their magnificent costumes blazing with jewels and medals, the smartest French officers were reduced to insignificance. There were many handsome men, but Si Maïeddine was not among them. "We've been told that he's _persona grata_ here," Nevill reminded Stephen, "and there are lots of places where he may be in the palace, that we can't get to. He's perhaps hob-nobbing with some pal, having a private confab, and maybe he'll turn up at supper." "He doesn't look like a man to care about food, I will say that for him," answered Stephen. "He's taken the alarm, and sneaked off without giving me time to track him. I'll bet anything that's the fact. Hiding the brooch is a proof he saw me, I'm afraid. Smart of him! He thought my friend would be somewhere about, and he'd better get rid of damaging evidence." "You haven't explained the brooch, yet." "I forgot. It's one _she_ wore on the boat--and that day at your house--Miss Ray, I mean. She told me about it; said it had been a present from Ben Halim to her sister, who gave it to her." "Sure you couldn't mistake it? There's a strong family likeness in Arab jewellery." "I'm sure. And even if I hadn't been at first, I should be now, from that chap's whisking it off the instant he set eyes on me. His having it proves a lot. As she wore the thing at your house, he must have got it somehow after we saw her. Jove, Nevill, I'd like to choke him!" "If you did, he couldn't tell what he knows." "I'm going to find out somehow. Come along, no use wasting time here now, trying to get vague information out of Arab chiefs. We can learn more by seeing where this brute lives, than by catechizing a hundred caïds." "It's too late for him to get away from Algiers to-night by train, anyhow," said Nevill. "Nothing goes anywhere in particular. And look here, Legs, if he's really onto us, he won't have made himself scarce without leaving some pal he can trust, to see what we're up to." "There were two men close behind who might have been with him," Stephen remembered aloud. "Would you recognize them?" "I--think so. One of the two, anyhow. Very dark, hook-nosed, middle-aged chap, pitted with smallpox." "Then you may be sure he's chosen the less noticeable one. No good our trying to find Maïeddine himself, if he's left the palace; though I hope, by putting our heads and Roslin's together, that among the three of us we shall pick him up later. But if he's left somebody here to keep an eye on us, our best course is to keep an eye on that somebody. They'll have to communicate." "You're right," Stephen admitted. "I'm vague about the face, but I'll force myself to recognize it. That's the sort of thing Miss Ray would do. She's got some quaint theory about controlling your subconscious self. Now I'll take a leaf out of her book. By Jove--there's one of the men now. Don't look yet. He doesn't seem to notice us, but who knows? He's standing by the door, under a palm. Let's go back into the ball-room, and see if he follows." But to "see if he followed" was more easily said than done. The Arab, a melancholy and grizzled but dignified caïd of the south, contrived to lose himself in a crowd of returning dancers, and it was not until later that the friends saw him in the ball-room, talking to a French officer and having not at all the air of one who spied or followed. Whether he remained because they remained was hard to say, for the scene was amusing and many Arabs watched it; but he showed no sign of restlessness, and it began to seem laughable to Nevill that, if he waited for them, they would be forced to wait for him. Eventually they made a pretence of eating supper. The caïd was at the buffet with an Arab acquaintance. The Englishmen lingered so long, that in the end he walked away; yet they were at his beck and call. They must go after him, if he went before them, and it was irritating to see that, when he had taken respectful leave of his host, the sad-faced caïd proceeded quietly out of the palace as if he had nothing to conceal. Perhaps he had nothing or else, suspecting the game, he was forcing the hand of the enemy. Stephen and Nevill had to follow, if they would keep him in sight; and though they walked as far behind as possible, passing out of the brilliantly lighted park, they could not be sure that he did not guess they were after him. They had walked the short distance from Djenan el Djouad to the Governor's summer palace; and now, outside the gates, the caïd turned to the left, which was their way home also. This was lucky, because, if the man were on the alert, and knew where Nevill lived, he would have no reason to suppose they took this direction on his account. But he had not gone a quarter of a mile when he stopped, and rang at a gate in a high white wall. "Djenan el Taleb," mumbled Nevill. "Perhaps Si Maïeddine's visiting there--or else this old beggar is." "Is it an Arab's house?" Stephen wanted to know. "Was once--long ago as pirate days. Now a Frenchman owns it--Monsieur de Mora--friend of the Governor's. Always puts up several chiefs at the time of the ball." The gate opened to let the caïd in and was shut again. "Hurrah!--just thought of a plan," exclaimed Nevill. "I don't think De Mora can have got home yet from the palace. I saw him having supper. Suppose I dart back, flutter gracefully round him, babble 'tile talk' a bit--he's a tile expert after my own heart--then casually ask what Arabs he's got staying with him. If Maïeddine's in his house it can't be a secret--incidentally I may find out where the fellow comes from and where he's going." "Good!" said Stephen. "I'll hang about in the shadow of some tree and glue my eye to this gate. Is there any other way out?" "There is; but not one a visitor would be likely to take, especially if he didn't want to be seen. It opens into a street where a lot of people might be standing to peer into the palace grounds and hear the music. Now run along, Legs, and find a comfortable shadow. I'm off." He was gone three-quarters of an hour, but nothing happened meanwhile. Nobody went in at the gate, or came out, and the time dragged for Stephen. He thought of a hundred dangers that might be threatening Victoria, and it seemed that Caird would never come. But at last he saw the boyish figure, hurrying along under the light of a street-lamp. "Couldn't find De Mora at first--then had to work slowly up to the subject," Nevill panted. "But it's all right. Maïeddine _is_ stopping with him--leaves to-morrow or day after; supposed to have come from El Aghouat, and to be going back there. But that isn't to say either supposition's true." "We must find out where he's going--have him watched," said Stephen. "Yes. Only, the trouble is, if he's on to the game, it's just what he'll expect. But I've been thinking how we may be able to bluff--make him think it was his guilty conscience tricked him to imagine our interest in his movements. You know I'm giving a dinner to-morrow night to a few people?" "Yes. Lady MacGregor told me." "Well, a Mademoiselle Vizet, a niece of De Mora's, is coming, so that gave me a chance to mention the dinner to her uncle. Maïeddine can easily hear about it, if he chooses to inquire what's going on at my house. And I said something else to De Mora, for the benefit of the same gentleman. I hope you'll approve." "Sure to. What was it?" "That I was sorry my friend, Mr. Knight, had got news which would call him away from Algiers before the dinner. I said you'd be going on board the _Charles Quex_ to-morrow when she leaves for Marseilles." "But Maïeddine can find out----" "That's just what we want. He can find out that your ticket's taken, if we do take it. He can see you go on board if he likes to watch or send a spy. But he mustn't see you sneaking off again with the Arab porters who carry luggage. If you think anything of the plan, you'll have to stand the price of a berth, and let some luggage you can do without, go to Marseilles. I'll see you off, and stop on board till the last minute. You'll be in your cabin, putting on the clothes I wear sometimes when I want some fun in the old town--striped wool burnous, hood over your head, full white trousers--good 'props,' look a lot the worse for wear--white stockings like my Kabyle servants have; and you can rub a bit of brown grease-paint on your legs where the socks leave off. That's what I do. Scheme sounds complicated; but so is an Arab's brain. You've got to match it. What do you say?" "I say 'done!'" Stephen answered. "Thought you would. Some fellows'd think it too sensational; but you can't be too sensational with Arabs, if you want to beat 'em. This ought to put Maïeddine off the scent. If he's watching, and sees you--as he thinks--steam calmly out of Algiers harbour, and if he knows I'm entertaining people at my house, he won't see why he need go on bothering himself with extra precautions." "Right. But suppose he's off to-morrow morning--or even to-night." "Then we needn't bother about the boat business. For we shall know if he goes. Either you or I must now look up Roslin. Perhaps it had better be I, because I can run into Djenan el Djouad first, and send my man Saunders to watch De Mora's other gate, and make assurance doubly sure." "You're a brick, Wings," said Stephen. XLI Lady MacGregor had sat up in order to hear the news, and was delighted with Nevill's plan, especially the part which concerned Stephen, and his proposed adventure on the _Charles Quex_. Even to hear about it, made her feel young again, she said. Nothing ever happened to her or to Nevill when they were alone, and they ought to be thankful to Stephen for stirring them up. Not one of the three had more than two hours' sleep that night, but according to her nephew, Lady MacGregor looked sweet sixteen when she appeared at an unusually early hour next morning. "No breakfast in bed for me to-day, or for days to come," said she. "I'll have my hands full every instant getting through what I've got to do, I can tell you. Hamish and Angus are worried about my health, but I say to them they needn't grudge me a new interest in life. It's very good for me." "Why, what have you got to do?" ventured Nevill, who was ready to go with Stephen and buy a berth on board the _Charles Quex_ the moment the office opened. Lady MacGregor looked at him mysteriously. "Being men, I suppose neither of you _would_ guess," she replied. "But you shall both know after Stephen's adventure is over. I hope you'll like the idea. But if you don't I'm sorry to say it won't make any difference." The so-called "adventure" had less of excitement in it than had been in the planning. It was faithfully carried out according to Nevill's first suggestion, with a few added details, but Stephen felt incredibly foolish, rather like a Guy Fawkes mummer, or a masked and bedizened guest arriving by mistake the night after the ball. So far as he could see, no one was watching. All his trouble seemed to be for nothing, and he felt that he had made a fool of himself, even when it was over, and he had changed into civilized clothing, in a room in the old town, taken by Adolphe Roslin, the detective. It was arranged for Stephen to wait there, until Roslin could give him news of Si Maïeddine's movements, lest the Arab should be subtle enough to suspect a trick, after all. Toward evening the news came. Maïeddine had taken a ticket for Biskra, and a sleeping berth in the train which would leave at nine o'clock. Nevertheless, Roslin had a man watching Monsieur de Mora's house, in case the buying of the ticket were a "bluff," or Si Maïeddine should change his plans at the last minute. Nevill had come in, all excitement, having bought cheap "antique" jewellery in a shop downstairs, by way of an excuse to enter the house. He was with Stephen when Roslin arrived, and they consulted together as to what should be done next. "Roslin must buy me a ticket for Biskra, of course," said Stephen. "I'll hang about the station in an overcoat with my collar turned up and a cap over my eyes. If Maïeddine gets into the train I'll get in too, at a respectful distance of course, and keep an eye open to see what he does at each stop." "There's a change of trains, to-morrow morning," remarked Nevill. "There'll be your difficulty, because after you're out of one train you have to wait for the other. Easy to hide in Algiers station, and make a dash for the end of the train when you're sure of your man. But in a little open, road-side halting-place, in broad daylight, you'll have to be sharp if you don't want him to spot you. Naturally he'll keep his eyes as wide open, all along the line, as you will, even though he does think you're on the way to Marseilles." "If you're working up to a burnous and painted legs for me again, my dear chap, it's no good," Stephen returned with the calmness of desperation. "I've done with that sort of nonsense; but I won't trust myself out of the train till I see the Arab's back. Then I'll make a bolt for it and dodge him, till the new train's run along the platform and he's safely in it." "Monsieur has confidence in himself as a detective," smiled Roslin. Knight could have given a sarcastic answer, since the young man from Marseilles had not made much progress with the seemingly simple case put into his hands a month ago. But both he and Nevill had come to think that the case was not simple, and they were lenient with Roslin. "I hope I'm not conceited," Stephen defended himself, "but I do feel that I can at least keep my end up against this nigger, anyhow till the game's played out so far that he can't stop it." "And till I'm in it with you," Nevill finished. "By the way, that reminds me. Some one else intends to play the game with us, whether we like or not." "Who?" asked Stephen, surprised and half defiant. "My aunt. That's the mystery she was hinting at. You know how unnaturally quiet she was while we arranged that you should look after Maïeddine, on your own, till the dinner-party was over, anyhow, and I could get off, on a wire from you--wherever you might be?" "Yes. She seemed interested." "And busy. Her 'great work' was getting herself ready to follow you with me, in the car." "Magnificent!" said Stephen. "And like her. Hurrah for Lady MacGregor!" "I'm glad you take it that way. I wasn't sure you would, which might have made things awkward for me; because when my aunt wants to do a thing, you know by this time as well as I do, it's as good as done." "But it's splendid--if she can stand the racket. Of course her idea is, that if we find Miss Ray she oughtn't to come back alone with us, perhaps a long way, from some outlandish hole." "You've got it. That's her argument. Or rather, her mandate. And I believe she's quite able to stand the racket. Her state of mind is such, that if she looked sixteen in the morning, this afternoon she's gone back to fifteen." "Wonderful old lady! But she's so fragile--and has nervous headaches----" "She won't have any in my motor car." "But Hamish and Angus. Can she get on without them?" "She intends to have them follow her by train, with luggage. She says she has a 'feeling in her bones' that they'll come in handy, either for cooking or fighting. And by Jove, she may be right. She often is. If you go to Biskra and wire when you get there, I'll start at once--_we'll_ start, I mean. And if Maïeddine goes on anywhere else, and you follow to keep him in sight, I'll probably catch you up with the car, because the railway line ends at Biskra, you know; and beyond, there are only horses or camels." "Can motors go farther?" "They can to Touggourt--with 'deeficulty,' as the noble twins would say." "Maïeddine may take a car." "Not likely. Though there's just a chance he might get some European friend with a motor to give him a lift. In that case, you'd be rather stuck." "Motor cars leave tracks," said Stephen. "Especially in the desert, where they are quite conspicuous," Nevill agreed. "My aunt will be enchanted with your opinion of her and her plan--but not surprised. She thinks you've twice my sense and knowledge of the world." Nevill usually enjoyed his own dinner-parties, for he was a born host, and knew that guests were happy in his house. That night, however, was an exception. He was absent-minded, and pulled his moustache, and saw beautiful things in the air over people's heads, so often that not only Lady MacGregor but Angus and Hamish glared at him threateningly. He then did his best to atone; nevertheless, for once he was delighted when every one had gone. At last he was able to read for the second time a letter from Roslin, sent in while dinner was in progress. There had been only time for a glance at it, by begging his friends' indulgence for an instant, while he bolted the news that Stephen had followed Maïeddine to Biskra. Now, Nevill and Lady MacGregor both hugely enjoyed the details given by Roslin from the report of an employé; how cleverly Monsieur had kept out of sight, though the Arab had walked up and down the platform, with two friends, looking about keenly. How, when Maïeddine was safely housed in his compartment, his companions looking up to his window for a last word, Monsieur Knight had whisked himself into a second-class compartment at the other end of the train. Next day, about four o'clock, a telegram was brought to Djenan el Djouad. It came from Biskra, and said: "Arrived here. Not spotted. He went house of French commandant with no attempt at concealment. Am waiting. Will wire again soon as have news. Perhaps better not start till you hear." An hour and a half later a second blue envelope was put into Nevill's hand. "He and an officer leave for Touggourt in private carriage three horses relays ordered. Have interviewed livery stable. They start at five will travel all night. I follow." "Probably some officer was going on military business, and Maïeddine's asked for a lift," Nevill said to Lady MacGregor. "Well, it's too late for us to get away now; but we'll be off as early as you like to-morrow morning." "If I weren't going, would you start to-day?" his aunt inquired. "Yes, I suppose so. But----" "Then please give orders for the car. I'm ready to leave at five minutes' notice, and I can go on as long as you can. I'm looking forward to the trip." "But I've often offered to take you to Biskra." "That's different. Now I've got an incentive." XLII Just as he came in sight of the great chott between Biskra and Touggourt, Stephen heard a sound which struck him strangely in the silence of the desert. It was the distant teuf-teuf of a powerful motor car, labouring heavily through deep sand. Stephen was travelling in a carriage, which he had hired in Biskra, and was keeping as close as he dared to the vehicle in front, shared by Maïeddine and a French officer. But he never let himself come within sight or sound of it. Now, as he began to hear the far-off panting of a motor, he saw nothing ahead but the vast saltpetre lake, which, viewed from the hill his three horses had just climbed, shimmered blue and silver, like a magic sea, reaching to the end of the world. There were white lines like long ruffles of foam on the edges of azure waves, struck still by enchantment while breaking on an unseen shore; and far off, along a mystic horizon, little islands floated on the gleaming flood. Stephen could hardly believe that there was no water, and that his horses could travel the blue depths without wetting their feet. It was just as he was thinking thus, and wondering if Victoria had passed this way, when the strange sound came to his ears, out of the distance. "Stop," he said in French to his Arab driver. "I think friends of mine will be in that car." He was right. A few minutes later Nevill and Lady MacGregor waved to him, as he stood on the top of a low sand-dune. Lady MacGregor was more fairylike than ever in a little motoring bonnet made for a young girl, but singularly becoming to her. They had had a glorious journey, she said. She supposed some people would consider that she had endured hardships, but they were not worth speaking of. She had been rather bumped about on the ghastly desert tracks since Biskra, but though she was not quite sure if all her bones were whole, she did not feel in the least tired; and even if she did, the memory of the Gorge of El Kantara would alone be enough to make up for it. "Anything new?" asked Nevill. "Nothing," Stephen answered, "except that the driver of the carriage ahead let drop at the last bordj that he'd been hired by the French officer, who was taking Maïeddine with him." "Just what we thought," Lady MacGregor broke in. "And the carriage will bring the Frenchman back, later. Maïeddine's going on. But I haven't found out where." "H'm! I was in hopes we were close to our journey's end at Touggourt," said Nevill. "The car can't get farther, I'm afraid. The big dunes begin there." "Whatever Maïeddine does, we can follow his example. I mean, I can," Stephen amended. "So can Nevill. I'm no spoil-sport," snapped the old lady, in her childlike voice. "I know what I can do and what I can't. I draw the line at camels! Angus and Hamish will take care of me, and I'll wait for you at Touggourt. I can amuse myself in the market-place, and looking at the Ouled Naïls, till you find Miss Ray, or----" "There won't be an 'or,' Lady MacGregor. We must find her. And we must bring her to you," said Stephen. He had slept in the carriage the night before, a little on the Biskra side of Chegga, because Maïeddine and the French officer had rested at Chegga. Nevill and Lady MacGregor had started from Biskra at five o'clock that morning, having arrived there the evening before. It was now ten, and they could make Touggourt that night. But they wished Maïeddine to reach there first, so they stopped by the chott, and lunched from a smartly fitted picnic-basket Lady MacGregor had brought. Stephen paid his Arab coachman, told him he might go back, and transferred a small suitcase--his only luggage--from the carriage to the car. They gave Maïeddine two hours' grace, and having started on, always slowed up whenever Nevill's field-glasses showed a slowly trotting vehicle on the far horizon. The road, which was hardly a road, far exceeded in roughness the desert track Stephen had wondered at on the way from Msila to Bou-Saada; but Lady MacGregor had the courage, he told her, of a Joan of Arc. They bumped steadily along, through the heat of the day, protected from the blazing sun by the raised hood, but they were thankful when, after the dinner-halt, darkness began to fall. Talking over ways and means, they decided not to drive into Touggourt, where an automobile would be a conspicuous object since few motors risked springs and tyres by coming so far into the desert. The chauffeur should be sent into the town while the passengers sat in the car a mile away. Eventually Paul was instructed to demand oil for his small lamps, by way of an excuse for having tramped into town. He was to find out what had become of the two men who must have arrived about an hour before, in a carriage. While the chauffeur was gone, Lady MacGregor played Patience and insisted on teaching Stephen and Nevill two new games. She said that it would be good discipline for their souls; and so perhaps it was. But Stephen never ceased calculating how long Paul ought to be away. Twenty minutes to walk a mile--or thirty minutes in desert sand; forty minutes to make inquiries; surely it needn't take longer! And thirty minutes back. But an hour and a half dragged on, before there was any sign of the absentee; then at last, Stephen's eye, roving wistfully from the cards, saw a moving spark at about the right height above the ground to be a cigarette. A few yards away from the car, the spark vanished decorously, and Paul was recognizable, in the light of the inside electric lamp, the only illumination they allowed themselves, lest the stranded car prove attractive to neighbouring nomads. The French officer was at the hotel for the night; the Arab was dining with him, but instead of resting, would go on with his horse and a Negro servant who, it seemed, had been waiting for several days, since their master had passed through Touggourt on the way to Algiers. "Then he didn't come from El Aghouat," said Nevill. "Where is he going? Did you find out that?" "Not for certain. But an Arab servant who talks French, says he believes they're bound for a place called Oued Tolga," Paul replied, delighted with the confidence reposed in him, and with the whole adventure. "That means three days in the dunes for us!" said Nevill. "Aunt Charlotte, you can practice Patience, in Touggourt." "I shall invent a new game, and call it Hope," returned Lady MacGregor. "Or if it's a good one, I'll name it Victoria Ray, which is better than Miss Millikens. It will just be done in time to teach that poor child when you bring her back to me." "Hope wouldn't be a bad name for the game we've all been playing, and have got to go on playing," mumbled Nevill. "We'll give Maïeddine just time to turn his back on Touggourt, before we show our noses there. Then you and I, Legs, will engage horses and a guide." "You deserve your name, Wings," said Stephen. And he wondered how Josette Soubise could hold out against Caird. He wondered also what she thought of this quest; for her sister Jeanne was in the secret. No doubt she had written Josette more fully than Nevill had, even if he had dared to write at all. And if, as long ago as the visit to Tlemcen, she had been slightly depressed by her friend's interest in another girl, she must by this time see the affair in a more serious light. Stephen was cruel enough to hope that she was unhappy. He had heard women say that no cure for a woman's obstinacy was as sure as jealousy. When they arrived at the hotel, and ordered all in the same breath, a room for a lady, two horses and a guide, only the first demand could be granted. It would be impossible, said the landlady and her son, to produce horses on the instant. There were some to be had, it was true, but they had come in after a hard day's work, and must have several hours' rest. The gentlemen might get off at dawn, if they wished, but not before. "After all, it doesn't much matter," Nevill said to Stephen. "Even an Arab must have some sleep. We'll have ours now, and catch up with Maïeddine while he's taking his. Don't worry. Suppose the worst--that he isn't really going to Oued Tolga. We shall get on his track, with an Arab guide to pilot us. There are several stopping places where we can inquire. He'll be seen passing them, even if he goes by." "But you say Arabs never betray each other to white men." "This won't be a question of betrayal. Watch and see how ingenuous, as well as ingenious, I'll be in all my inquiries." "I never heard of Oued Tolga," Stephen said, half to himself. "Don't confess that to an Arab. It would be like telling a Frenchman you'd never heard of Bordeaux. It's a desert city, bigger than Touggourt, I believe, and--by Jove, yes, there's a tremendously important Zaouïa of the same name. Great marabout hangs out there--kind of Mussulman pope of the desert. I hope to goodness----" "What?" Stephen asked, as Nevill broke off suddenly. "Oh, nothing to fash yourself about, as the twins would say. Only--it would be awkward if she's there. Harder to get her out. However--time to cross the stile when we come to it." But Stephen crossed a great many stiles with his mind before that darkest hour before the dawn, when he was called to get ready for the last stage of the journey. Lady MacGregor was up to see them off, and never had her cap been more elaborate, or her hair been dressed more daintily. "You'll wire me from the end of the world, won't you?" she asked briskly. "Paul and I (and Hamish and Angus if necessary) will be ready to rush you all three back to civilization the instant you arrive with Miss Ray. Give her my love. Tell her I've brought clothes for her. They mayn't be what she'd choose, but I dare say she won't be sorry to see them. And by the way, if there are telegrams--you know I told the servants to send them on from home--shall I wire them on to Oued Tolga?" "No. We're tramps, with no address," laughed Nevill. "Anything that comes can wait till we get back." Stephen could not have told why, for he was not thinking of Margot, but suddenly he was convinced that a telegram from her was on the way, fixing the exact date when she might be expected in England. XLIII Since the day when Victoria had called Stephen to her help, always she had expected him. She had great faith, for, in her favourite way, she had "made a picture of him," riding up and down among the dunes, with the "knightly" look on his face which had first drawn her thoughts to him. Always her pictures had materialized sooner or later, since she was a little girl, and had first begun painting them with her mind, on a golden background. She spent hours on the roof, with Saidee or alone, looking out over the desert, through the field-glasses which Maïeddine had sent to her. Very often Saidee would remain below, for Victoria's prayers were not her prayers, nor were Victoria's wishes her wishes. But invariably the older woman would come up to the roof just before sunset, to feed the doves that lived in the minaret. At first Victoria had not known that her sister had any special reason for liking to feed the doves, but she was an observant, though not a sophisticated girl; and when she had lived with Saidee for a few days, she saw birds of a different colour among the doves. It was to those birds, she could not help noticing, that Saidee devoted herself. The first that appeared, arrived suddenly, while Victoria looked in another direction. But when the girl saw one alight, she guessed it had come from a distance. It fluttered down heavily on the roof, as if tired, and Saidee hid it from Victoria by spreading out her skirt as she scattered its food. Then it was easy to understand how Saidee and Captain Sabine had managed to exchange letters; but she could not bear to let her sister know by word or even look that she suspected the secret. If Saidee wished to hide something from her she had a right to hide it. Only--it was very sad. For days neither of the sisters spoke of the pigeons, though they came often, and the girl could not tell what plans might be in the making, unknown to her. She feared that, if she had not come to Oued Tolga, by this time Saidee would have gone away, or tried to go away, with Captain Sabine; and though, since the night of her arrival, when Saidee had opened her heart, they had been on terms of closest affection, there was a dreadful doubt in Victoria's mind that the confidences were half repented. But when the girl had been rather more than a week in the Zaouïa, Saidee spoke out. "I suppose you've guessed why I come up on the roof at sunset," she said. "Yes," Victoria answered. "I thought so, by your face. Babe, if you'd accused me of anything, or reproached me, I'd have brazened it out with you. But you've never said a word, and your eyes--I don't know what they've been like, unless violets after rain. They made me feel a beast--a thousand times worse than I would if you'd put on an injured air. Last night I dreamed that you died of grief, and I buried you under the sand. But I was sorry, and tore all the sand away with my fingers till I found you again--and you were alive after all. It seemed like an allegory. I'm going to dig you up again, you little loving thing!" "That means you'll give me back your confidence, doesn't it?" Victoria asked, smiling in a way that would have bewitched a man who loved her. "Yes; and something else. I'm going to tell you a thing you'll like to hear. I've written to _him_ about you--our cypher's ready now--and said that you'd had the most curious effect on me. I'd tried to resist you, but I couldn't, not even to please him--or myself. I told him I'd promised to wait for you to help me; and though I didn't see what you could possibly do, still, your faith was contagious. I said that in spite of myself I felt some vague stirrings of hope now and then. There! does that please you?" "Oh Saidee, I _am_ so happy!" cried the girl, flinging both arms round her sister. "Then I did come at the right time, after all." "The right time to keep me from happiness in this world, perhaps. That's the way I feel about it sometimes. But I can't be sorry you're here, Babe, as I was at first. You're too sweet--too like the child who used to be my one comfort." "I could almost die of happiness, when you say that!" Victoria answered, with tears in her voice. "What a baby you are! I'm sure you haven't much more than I have, to be happy about. Cassim has promised Maïeddine that you shall marry him, whether you say 'yes' or 'no'. And it's horrible when an Arab girl won't consent to marry the man to whom her people have promised her. I know what they do. She----" "Don't tell me about it. I'd hate to hear!" Victoria broke in, and covered her ears with her hands. So Saidee said no more. But in black hours of the night, when the girl could not sleep, dreadful imaginings crept into her mind, and it was almost more than she could do to chase them away by making her "good pictures." "I won't be afraid--I won't, I won't!" she would repeat to herself. "I've called him, and my thoughts are stronger than the carrier pigeons. They fly faster and farther. They travel like the light, so they must have got to him long ago; and he _said_ he'd come, no matter when or where. By this time he is on the way." So she looked for Stephen, searching the desert; and at last, one afternoon long before sunset, she saw a man riding toward the Zaouïa from the direction of the city, far away. She could not see his face, but he seemed to be tall and slim; and his clothes were European. "Thank God!" she said to herself. For she did not doubt that it was Stephen Knight. Soon she would call Saidee; but she must have a little time to herself, for silent rejoicing, before she tried to explain. There was no great hurry. He was far off, still. She kept her eyes to Maïeddine's glasses, and felt it a strange thing that they should have come to her from him. It was almost as if he gave her to Stephen, against his will. She was so happy that she seemed to hear the world singing. "I knew--I knew, through it all!" she told herself, with a sob of joy in her throat. "It had to come right." And she thought that she could hear a voice saying: "It is love that has brought him. He loves you, as much as you love him." To her mind, especially in this mood, it was not extraordinary that each should love the other after so short an acquaintance. She was even ready to believe of herself that, unconsciously, she had fallen in love with Stephen the first time she met him on the Channel boat. He had interested her. She had remembered his face, and had been sorry to think that she would never see it again. On the ship, going out from Marseilles, she had been so glad when he came on deck that her heart had begun to beat quickly. She had scolded herself at the time, for being silly, and school-girlishly romantic; but now she realized that her soul had known its mate. It could scarcely be real love, she fancied, that was not born in the first moment, when spirit spoke to spirit. And her love could not have drawn a man hundreds of miles across the desert, if it had not met and clasped hands with his love for her. "Oh, how happy I am!" she thought. "And the glory of it is, that it's _not_ strange--only wonderful. The most wonderful thing that ever happened or could happen." Then she remembered the sand-divining, and how M'Barka had said that "her wish was far from her, but that Allah would send a strong man, young and dark, of another country than her own; a man whose brain, and heart, and arm would be at her service, and in whom she might trust." Victoria recalled these words, and did not try to bring back to her mind what remained of the prophecy. Almost, she had been foolish enough to be superstitious, and afraid of Maïeddine's influence upon her life, since that night; and of course she had known that it was of Maïeddine M'Barka had thought, whether she sincerely believed in her own predictions or no. Now, it pleased Victoria to feel that, not only had she been foolish, but stupid. She might have been happy in her childish superstition, instead of unhappy, because the description of the man applied to Stephen as well as to Maïeddine. For the moment, she did not ask herself how Stephen Knight was going to take her and Saidee away from Maïeddine and Cassim, for she was so sure he had not come across miles of desert in vain, that she took the rest for granted in her first joy. She was certain that Saidee's troubles and hers were over, and that by and by, like the prince and princess in the fairy stories, she and Stephen would be married and "live happily ever after." In these magic moments of rapture, while his face and figure grew more clear to her eyes, it seemed to the girl that love and happiness were one, and that all obstacles had fallen down in the path of her lover, like the walls of Jericho that crumbled at the blast of the trumpet. When she had looked through the glass until she could distinctly see Stephen, and an Arab who rode at a short distance behind him, she called her sister. Saidee came up to the roof, almost at once, for there was a thrill of excitement in Victoria's voice that roused her curiosity. She thought of Captain Sabine, and wondered if he were riding toward the Zaouïa. He had come, before his first encounter with her, to pay his respects to the marabout. That was long ago now, yet there might be a reason, connected with her, for a second visit. But the moment she saw Victoria's face, even before she took the glasses the girl held out, she guessed that, though there was news, it was not of Captain Sabine. "You might have been to heaven and back since I saw you; you're so radiant!" she said. "I have been to heaven. But I haven't come back. I'm there now," Victoria answered. "Look--and tell me what you see." Saidee put the glasses to her eyes. "I see a man in European clothes," she said. "I can see that he's young. I should think he's a gentleman, and good looking----" "Oh, he is!" broke in Victoria, childishly. "Do you know him?" "I've been praying and longing for him to find me, and save us. He's an Englishman. His name is Stephen Knight. He promised to come if I called, and I have. Oh, _how_ I've called, day and night, night and day!" "You never told me." "I waited. Somehow I--couldn't speak of him, even to you." "I've told _you_ everything." "But I had nothing to tell, really--nothing I could have put into words. And you might only have laughed if I'd said 'There's a man I know in Algiers who hasn't any idea where I am, but I think he'll come here, and take us both away.'" "Are you engaged to each other?" Saidee asked, curiously, even enviously. "Oh no! But--but----" "But what? Do you mean you will be--if you ever get away from this place?" "I hope so," the girl answered bravely, with a deep blush. "He has never asked me. We haven't known each other long--a very little while, only since the night I left London for Paris. Yet he's the first man I ever cared about, and I think of him all the time. Perhaps he thinks of me in the same way." "Of course he must, Babe, if he's really come to search for you," Saidee said, looking at her young sister affectionately. "Thank you a hundred times for saying that, dearest! I do _hope_ so!" Victoria exclaimed, hugging the elder woman impulsively, as she used when she was a little child. But Saidee's joy, caught from her sister's, died down suddenly, like a flame quenched with salt. "What good will it do you--or us--that he is coming?" she asked bitterly. "He can ask for the marabout, and perhaps see him. Any traveller can do that. But he will be no nearer to us, than if we were dead and in our graves. Does Maïeddine know about him?" "They saw each other on the ship, coming to Algiers--and again just as we landed." "But has Maïeddine any idea that you care about each other?" "I had to tell him one day in the desert (the day Si Maïeddine said he loved me, and I promised to consent if _you_ put my hand in his) that--that there was a man I loved. But I didn't say who. Perhaps he suspects, though I don't see why he should. I might have meant some one in America." "You may be pretty sure he suspects. People of the old, old races, like the Arabs, have the most wonderful intuitions. They seem to _know_ things without being told. I suppose they've kept nearer nature than more civilized peoples." "If he does suspect, I can't help it." "No. Only it's still more sure that your Englishman won't be able to do us any good. Not that he could, anyhow." "But Si Maïeddine's been very ill since he came back, M'Barka says. Mr. Knight will ask for the marabout." "Maïeddine will hear of him. Not five Europeans in five years come to Oued Tolga. If only Maïeddine hadn't got back! This man may have been following him, from Algiers. It looks like it, as Maïeddine arrived only yesterday. Now, here's this Englishman! Could he have found out in any way, that you were acquainted with Maïeddine?" "I don't know, but he might have guessed," said Victoria. "I wonder----" "What? Have you thought of something?" "It's just an idea. You know, I told you that on the journey, when Si Maïeddine was being very kind to me--before I knew he cared--I made him a present of the African brooch you gave me in Paris. I hated to take so many favours of him, and give nothing in return; so I thought, as I was on my way to you and would soon see you, I might part with that brooch, which he admired. If Si Maïeddine wore it in Algiers, and Mr. Knight saw----" "Would he be likely to recognize it, do you think?" "He noticed it on the boat, and I told him you gave it to me." "If he would come all the way from Algiers on the strength of a brooch which might have been yours, and you _might_ have given to Maïeddine, then he's a man who knows what he wants, and deserves to get it," Saidee said. "If he _could_ help us! I should feel rewarded for telling Honoré I wouldn't go with him; because some day I may be free, and then perhaps I shall be glad I waited----" "You will be glad. Whatever happens, you'll be glad," Victoria insisted. "Maybe. But now--what are we to do? We can see him, and you can recognize him with the field-glass, but unless he has a glass too, he can't see who you are--he can't see at all, because by the time he rides near enough, the ground dips down so that even our heads will be hidden from him by the wall round the roof. And he'll be hidden from us, too. If he asks for you, he'll be answered only by stares of surprise. Cassim will pretend not to know what he's talking about. And presently he'll have to go away without finding out anything." "He'll come back," said Victoria, firmly. But her eyes were not as bright with the certainty of happiness as they had been. "What if he does? Or it may be that he'll try to come back, and an accident will happen to him. I hate to frighten you. But Arabs are jealous--and Maïeddine's a true Arab. He looks upon you almost as his wife now. In a week or two you will be, unless----" "Yes. Unless--_unless_!" echoed Victoria. "Don't lose hope, Saidee, for I shan't. Let's think of something to do. He's near enough now, maybe, to notice if we wave our handkerchiefs." "Many women on roofs in Africa wave to men who will never see their faces. He won't know who waves." "He will _feel_. Besides, he's searching for me. At this very minute, perhaps, he's thinking of the golden silence I talked about, and looking up to the white roofs." Instantly they began to wave their handkerchiefs of embroidered silk, such as Arab ladies use. But there came no answering signal. Evidently, if the rider were looking at a white roof, he had chosen one which was not theirs. And soon he would be descending the slope of the Zaouïa hill. After that they would lose sight of each other, more and more surely, the closer he came to the gates. "If only you had something to throw him!" Saidee sighed. "What a pity you gave the brooch to Maïeddine. He might have recognized that." "It isn't a pity if he traced me by it," said Victoria. "But wait. I'll think of something." "He's riding down the dip. In a minute it will be too late," Saidee warned her. The girl lifted over her head the long string of amber beads she had bought in the curiosity shop of Jeanne Soubise. Wrapping it in her handkerchief, she began to tie the silken ends together. Stephen was so close to the Zaouïa now that they could no longer see him. "Throw--throw! He'll be at the gates." Victoria threw the small but heavy parcel over the wall which hid the dwellers on the roof. Where it fell, they could not see, and no sound came up from the sand-dune far below. Some beggar or servant of the Zaouïa might have found and snatched the packet, for all that they could tell. For a time which seemed long, they waited, hoping that something would happen. They did not speak at all. Each heard her own heart beating, and imagined that she could hear the heart of the other. At last there were steps on the stairs which led from Saidee's rooms to the roof. Noura came up. "O twin stars, forgive me for darkening the brightness of thy sky," she said, "but I have here a letter, given to me to put into the hands of Lella Saïda." She held out a folded bit of paper, that had no envelope. Saidee, pale and large-eyed, took it in silence. She read, and then handed the paper to Victoria. A few lines were scrawled on it in English, in a very foreign handwriting. The language, known to none in this house except the marabout, Maïeddine, Saidee and Victoria, was as safe as a cypher, therefore no envelope had been needed. "Descend into thy garden immediately, and bring with thee thy sister," the letter said. And it was signed "Thy husband, Mohammed." "What can it mean?" asked Victoria, giving back the paper to Saidee. "I don't know. But we shall soon see--for we must obey. If we didn't go down of our own accord, we'd soon be forced to go." "Perhaps Cassim will let me talk to Mr. Knight," said the girl. "He is more likely to throw you to his lion, in the court," Saidee answered, with a laugh. They went down into the garden, and remained there alone. Nothing happened except that, after a while, they heard a noise of pounding. It seemed to come from above, in Saidee's rooms. Listening intently, her eyes flashed, and a bright colour rushed to her cheeks. "Now I know why we were told to come into the garden!" she exclaimed, her voice quivering with anger. "They're nailing up the door of my room that leads to the roof!" "Saidee!" To Victoria the thing seemed too monstrous to believe. "Cassim threatened to do it once before--a long time ago--but he didn't. Now he has. That's his answer to your Mr. Knight." "Perhaps you're wrong. How could any one have got into your rooms without our seeing them pass through the garden?" "I've always thought there was a sliding door at the back of one of my wall cupboards. There generally is one leading into the harem rooms in old houses like this. Thank goodness I've hidden my diaries in a new place lately!" "Let's go up and make sure," whispered Victoria. Still the pounding went on. "They'll have locked us out." "We can try." Victoria went ahead, running quickly up the steep, narrow flight of steps that led to the upper rooms which she and Saidee shared. Saidee had been right. The door of the outer room was locked. Standing at the top of the stairs, the pounding sounded much louder than before. Saidee laughed faintly and bitterly. "They're determined to make a good job of it," she said. XLIV Stephen rode back with his Arab companion, to the desert city where Nevill waited. He had gone to the Zaouïa alone with the guide, because Nevill had thought it well, in case of emergencies, that he should be able to say: "I have a friend in Oued Tolga who knows where I am, and is expecting me." Now he was coming away, thwarted for the moment, but far from hopeless. It is a four hours' ride among the dunes, between the Zaouïa and the town, for the sand is heavy and the distance is about seventeen miles. The red wine of sunset was drained from the cups of the sand-hollows, and the shadows were cool when Stephen saw the minaret of the town mosque and the crown of an old watch-tower, pointing up like a thumb and finger of a buried hand. Soon after, he passed through the belt of black tents which at all seasons encircles Oued Tolga as a girdle encircles the waist of an Ouled Naïl, and so he rode into the strange city. The houses were crowded together, two with one wall between, like Siamese twins, and they had the pale yellow-brown colour of honeycomb, in the evening light. The roughness of the old, old bricks, made of baked sand, gave an effect of many little cells; so that the honeycomb effect was intensified; and the sand which flowed in small rippling waves round the city, and through streets narrow and broad, was of the same honey-yellow as the houses, except that it glittered with gypsum under the kindling stars. Among the bubbly domes, and low square towers, vague in the dimming light, bunches of palms in hidden gardens nodded over crumbling walls, like dark plumes on the crowns of the dancing-women. In the market-place was the little hotel, newly built; the only French thing in Oued Tolga, except the military barracks, the Bureau Arabe, and a gurgling artesian well which a French officer had lately completed. But before Stephen could reach the market-place and the hotel, he had to pass through the quarter of the dancing-girls. It was a narrow street, which had low houses on either side, with a balcony for every mean window. Dark women leaned their elbows on the palm-wood railings, and looked down, smoking cigarettes, and calling across to each other. Other girls sat in lighted doorways below, each with a candle guttering on a steep step of her bare staircase; and in the street walked silent men with black or brown faces, whose white burnouses flowed round their tall figures like blowing clouds. Among them were a few soldiers, whose uniforms glowed red in the twilight, like the cigarette ends pulsing between the painted lips of the Ouled Naïls. All that quarter reeked with the sweet, wicked smell of the East; and in the Moorish café at the far end, the dancing-music had begun to throb and whine, mingling cries of love and death, with the passion of both. But there was no dancing yet, for the audience was not large enough. The brilliant spiders crouched in their webs, awaiting more flies; for caravans were coming in across that desert sea which poured its yellow billows into the narrow street; and in the market-place, camel-drivers only just arrived were cooking their suppers. They would all come a little later into this quarter to drink many cups of coffee, and to spend their money on the dancers. As Stephen went by on horseback, the girls on the balconies and in the doorways looked at him steadily without smiling, but their eyes sparkled under their golden crowns, or scarlet headkerchiefs and glittering veils. Behind him and his guide, followed a procession of boys and old men, with donkeys loaded with dead palm-branches from the neighbouring oasis, and the dry fronds made a loud swishing sound; but the dancers paid no attention, and appeared to look through the old men and children as if they did not exist. In the market-place were the tired camels, kneeling down, looking gloomily at their masters busy cooking supper on the sand. Negro sellers of fruit and fly-embroidered lumps of meat, or brilliant-coloured pottery, and cheap, bright stuffs, were rolling up their wares for the night, in red and purple rags or tattered matting. Beggars lingered, hoping for a stray dried date, or a coin before crawling off to secret dens; and two deformed dwarfs in enormous turbans and blue coats, claimed power as marabouts, chanting their own praises and the praises of Allah, in high, cracked voices. As Stephen rode to the hotel, and stopped in front of the arcade which shaded the ground floor, Nevill and another man sprang up from chairs pushed back against the white house-wall. "By Jove, Legs, I'm glad to see you!" Nevill exclaimed, heartily, "What news?" "Nothing very great so far, I'm sorry to say. Much as we expected," Stephen answered. And as he spoke, he glanced at the stranger, as if surprised that Nevill should speak out before him. The man wore the smart uniform of the Chasseurs d'Afrique. He was quite young, not over thirty-four, and had a keen, brave face, as Stephen could see by the crude light of a lamp that was fixed in the wall. But the large grey eyes, somewhat pale in contrast with deep sunburn, were the eyes of a poet rather than those of a born soldier. "I must introduce you and Captain Sabine to each other," Nevill went on, in French, as Stephen got off his horse and it was led away by the Arab. "He's staying at the hotel. He and I've been talking about the Zaouïa and--the marabout. The upshot of our conversation will astonish you. I feel sure, when you hear it, you will think we can talk freely about our business to Captain Sabine." Stephen said something polite and vague. He was interested, of course, but would have preferred to tell his adventure to Nevill alone. "Monsieur Caird and I made acquaintance, and have been chatting all the afternoon," volunteered Sabine. "To begin with, we find we have many friends in common, in Algiers. Also he knows relations of mine, who have spoken of me to him, so it is almost as if we had known each other longer. He tells me that you and he are searching for a young lady who has disappeared. That you have followed here a man who must know where she is; that in the city, you lost track of the man but heard he had gone on to the Zaouïa; that this made you hope the young lady was there with her sister, whose husband might perhaps have some position under the marabout." "I told him these things, because I thought, as Captain Sabine's been sinking an artesian well near the Zaouïa, he might have seen Miss Ray, if she were there. No such luck. He hasn't seen her; however, he's given me a piece of information which makes it just about as sure she _is_ there, as if he had. You shall have it from him. But first let me ask you one question. Did you get any news of her?" "No. I heard nothing." "Does that mean you saw----" "No. I'll tell you later. But anyhow, I went into the Zaouïa, almost certain she was there, and that she'd seen me coming. That was a good start, because of course I'd had very little to go on. There was only a vague hope. I asked for the marabout, and they made me send a visiting-card--quaint in the desert. Then they kept me moving about a while, and insisted on showing me the mosque. At last they took me to a hideous reception room, with a lot of good and vile things in it, mixed up together. The marabout came in, wearing the black mask we'd heard about--a fellow with a splendid bearing, and fine eyes that looked at me very hard over the mask. They were never off my face. We complimented each other in French. Then I said I was looking for a Miss Ray, an American girl who had disappeared from Algiers, and had been traced to the Zaouïa, where I had reason to believe she was staying with a relative from her own country, a lady married to some member of his staff. I couldn't give him the best reason I had for being sure she _was_ there, as you'll see when I tell you what it was. But he said gravely that no European lady was married to any one in the Zaouïa; that no American or any other foreign person, male or female, was there. In the guest-house were one or two Arab ladies, he admitted, who had come to be cured of maladies by virtue of his power; but no one else. His denial showed me that he was in the plot to hide Miss Ray. That was one thing I wanted to know; so I saw that the best thing for her, would be for me to pretend to be satisfied. If it hadn't been for what happened before I got to the Zaouïa gates, I should almost have been taken in by him, perhaps, he had such an air of noble, impeccable sincerity. But just as I dipped down into a kind of hollow, on the Zaouïa side of the river, something was thrown from somewhere. Unluckily I couldn't be sure where. I'd been looking up at the roofs behind the walls, but I must have had my eyes on the wrong one, if this thing fell from a roof, as I believe it did. It was a little bundle, done up in a handkerchief, and I saw it only as it touched the ground, about a dozen yards in front. Then I hurried on, you may be sure, hoping it was meant for me, to grab the thing before any one else could appear and lay hands on it." "Well?" "Luckily I'd outridden the guide. I made him think afterward that I'd jumped off my horse to pick up the whip, which I dropped for a blind, in case of spying eyes. Tied up in the silk handkerchief--an Arab-looking handkerchief--was a string of amber beads. Do you remember the beads Miss Ray bought of Miss Soubise, and wore to your house?" "I remember she had a handsome string of old prayer-beads." "Is this the one?" Stephen took the handkerchief and its contents from his pocket, and Nevill examined the large, round lumps of gleaming amber, which were somewhat irregular in shape. Captain Sabine looked on with interest. "I can't be sure," Nevill said reluctantly. "Well, I can," Stephen answered with confidence. "She showed it to me, in your garden. I remember a fly in the biggest bead, which was clear, with a brown spot, and a clouded bead on either side of it. I had the necklace in my hand. Besides, even if I weren't as certain as I am, who would throw a string of amber beads at my feet, if it weren't some one trying to attract my attention, in the only way possible? It was as much as to say, 'I know you've come looking for me. If you're told I'm not here, it's false.' I was a good long way from the gates; but much nearer to a lot of white roofs grouped behind the high wall of the Zaouïa, than I would have been in riding on, closer to the gates. Unfortunately there are high parapets to screen any one standing on the roofs. And anyhow, by the time the beads were thrown, I was too low down in the hollow to see even a waved hand or handkerchief. Still, with that necklace in my pocket, I knew pretty well what I was about, in talking with the marabout." "You thought you did," said Nevill. "But you'd have known a lot more if only you could have made Captain Sabine's acquaintance before you started." Stephen looked questioningly at the Frenchman. "Perhaps it would be better to speak in English," suggested Sabine. "I have not much, but I get on. And the kitchen windows are not far away. Our good landlord and his wife do not cook with their ears. I was telling your friend that the marabout himself has a European wife--who is said to be a great beauty. These things get out. I have heard that she has red hair and skin as white as cream. That is also the description which Mr. Caird gave me of the young lady seeking a sister. It makes one put two and two together, does it not?" "By Jove!" exclaimed Stephen. He and Nevill looked at each other, but Nevill raised his eyebrows slightly. He had not thought it best, at present, to give the mystery of Cassim ben Halim, as he now deciphered it, into a French officer's keeping. It was a secret in which France would be deeply, perhaps inconveniently, interested. A little later, the interference of the French might be welcome, but it would be just as well not to bring it in prematurely, or separately from their own personal interests. "I wish to heaven," Stephen went on, "I'd known this when I was talking to the fellow! And yet--I'm not sure it would have made much difference. We were deadly polite to each other, but I hinted in a veiled way that, if he were concealing any secret from me, the French authorities might have something to say to him. I was obsequious about the great power of Islam in general, and his in particular, but I suggested that France was the upper dog just now. Maybe his guilty conscience made him think I knew more than I did. I hope he expects to have the whole power of France down on him, as well as the United States, which I waved over his head, Miss Ray being an American. Of course I remembered your advice, Nevill, and was tactful--for her sake, for fear anything should be visited on her. I didn't say I thought he was hiding her in the Zaouïa. I put it as if I wanted his help in finding her. But naturally he expects me back again; and we must make our plans to storm the fortress and reduce it to subjection. There isn't an hour to waste, either, since this necklace, and Captain Sabine's knowledge, have proved to us that she's there. Too bad we didn't know it earlier, as we might have done something decisive in the beginning. But now we do know, with Captain Sabine's good will and introduction we may get the military element here to lend a hand in the negotiations. A European girl can't be shut up with impunity, I should think, even in this part of the world. And the marabout has every reason not to get in the bad books of the French." "He is in their very best books at present," said Sabine. "He is thought much of. The peace of the southern desert is largely in his hands. My country would not be easily persuaded to offend him. It might be said in his defence that he is not compelled to tell strangers if he has a European wife, and her sister arrives to pay her a visit. Arab ideas are peculiar; and we have to respect them." "I think my friend and I must talk the whole matter over," said Stephen, "and then, perhaps, we can make up our minds to a plan of action we couldn't have taken if it weren't for what you've told us--about the marabout and his European wife." "I am glad if I have helped," Sabine answered. "And"--rather wistfully--"I should like to help further." XLV "Oh Lella Saïda, there is a message, of which I hardly dare to speak," whispered Noura to her mistress, when she brought supper for the two sisters, the night when the way to the roof had been closed up. "Tell me what it is, and do not be foolish," Saidee said sharply. Her nerves were keyed to the breaking point, and she had no patience left. It was almost a pleasure to visit her misery upon some one else. She hated everybody and everything, because all hope was gone now. The door to the roof was nailed shut; and she and Victoria were buried alive. "But one sends the message who must not be named; and it is not even for thee, lady. It is for the Little Rose, thy sister." "If thou dost not speak out instantly, I will strike thee!" Saidee exclaimed, on the verge of hysterical tears. "And if I speak, still thou wilt strike! Be this upon thine own head, my mistress. The Ouled Naïl has dared send her woman, saying that if the Little Rose will visit her house after supper, it will be for the good of all concerned, since she has a thing to tell of great importance. At first I would have refused even to take the message, but her woman, Hadda, is my cousin, and she feared to go back without some answer. The Ouled Naïl is a demon when in a temper, and she would thrust pins into Hadda's arms and thighs." Saidee blushed with anger, disgustful words tingling on her tongue; but she remained silent, her lips parted. "Of course I won't go," said Victoria, shocked. The very existence of Miluda was to her a dreadful mystery upon which she could not bear to let her mind dwell. "I'm not sure," Saidee murmured. "Let me think. This means something very curious, I can't think what. But I should like to know. It can't make things worse for us if you accept her invitation. It may make them better. Will you go and see what the creature wants?" "Oh, Saidee, how can I?" "Because I ask it," Saidee answered, the girl's opposition deciding her doubts. "She can't eat you." "It isn't that I'm afraid----" "I know! It's because of your loyalty to me. But if I send you, Babe, you needn't mind. It will be for my sake." "Hadda is waiting for an answer," Noura hinted. "My sister will go. Is the woman ready to take her?" "I will find out, lady." In a moment the negress came back. "Hadda will lead the Little Rose to her mistress. She is glad that it is to be now, and not later." "Be very careful what you say, and forget nothing that _she_ says," was Saidee's last advice. And it sounded very Eastern to Victoria. She hated her errand, but undertook it without further protest, since it was for Saidee's sake. Hadda was old and ugly. She and Noura had been born in the quarter of the freed Negroes, in the village across the river, and knew nothing of any world beyond; yet all the wiliness and wisdom of female things, since Eve--woman, cat and snake--glittered under their slanting eyelids. Victoria had not been out of her sister's rooms and garden, except to visit M'Barka in the women's guest-house, since the night when Maïeddine brought her to the Zaouïa; and when she had time to think of her bodily needs, she realized that she longed desperately for exercise. Physically it was a relief to walk even the short distance between Saidee's house and Miluda's; but her cheeks tingled with some emotion she could hardly understand when she saw that the Ouled Naïl's garden-court was larger and more beautiful than Saidee's. Miluda, however, was not waiting for her in the garden. The girl was escorted upstairs, perhaps to show her how much more important was the favourite wife of the marabout than a mere Roumia, an unmarried maiden. A meal had been cleared away, in a room larger and better furnished than Saidee's and on the floor stood a large copper incense-burner, a thin blue smoke filtering through the perforations, clouding the atmosphere and loading it with heavy perfume. Behind the mist Victoria saw a divan, spread with trailing folds of purple velvet, stamped with gold; and something lay curled up on a huge tiger-skin, flung over pillows. As the blue incense wreaths floated aside the curled thing on the tiger skin moved, and the light from a copper lamp like Saidee's, streamed through huge coloured lumps of glass, into a pair of brilliant eyes. A delicate brown hand, ringed on each finger, waved away the smoke of a cigarette it held, and Victoria saw a small face, which was like the face of a perfectly beautiful doll. Never had she imagined anything so utterly pagan; yet the creature was childlike, even innocent in its expression, as a baby tigress might be innocent. Having sat up, the little heathen goddess squatted in her shrine, only bestirring herself to show the Roumia how beautiful she was, and what wonderful jewellery she had. She thought, that without doubt, the girl would run back jealously to the sister (whom Miluda despised) to pour out floods of description. She herself had heard much of Lella Saïda, and supposed that unfortunate woman had as eagerly collected information about her; but it was especially piquant that further details of enviable magnificence should be carried back by the forlorn wife's sister. The Ouled Naïl tinkled at the slightest movement, even with the heaving of her bosom, as she breathed, making music with many necklaces, and long earrings that clinked against them. Dozens of old silver cases, tubes, and little jewelled boxes containing holy relics; hairs of Mohammed's beard; a bit of web spun by the sacred spider which saved his life; moles' feet blessed by marabouts, and texts from the Koran; all these hung over Miluda's breast, on chains of turquoise and amber beads. They rattled metallically, and her bracelets and anklets tinkled. Some luscious perfume hung about her, intoxicatingly sweet. A thick, braided clump of hair was looped on each side of the small face painted white as ivory, and her eyes, under lashes half an inch long, were bright and unhuman as those of an untamed gazelle. "Wilt thou sit down?" she asked, waving the hand with the cigarette towards a French chair, upholstered in red brocade. "The Sidi gave me that seat because I asked for it. He gives me all I ask for." "I will stand," answered Victoria. "Oh, it is true, then, thou speakest Arab! I had heard so. I have heard much of thee and of thy youth and beauty. I see that my women did not lie. But perhaps thou art not as young as I am, though I have been a wife for a year, and have borne a beautiful babe. I am not yet sixteen." Victoria did not answer, and the Ouled Naïl gazed at her unwinkingly, as a child gazes. "Thou hast travelled much, even more than the marabout himself, hast thou not?" she inquired, graciously. "I have heard that thou hast been to England. Are there many Arab villages there, and is it true that the King was deposed when the Sultan, the head of our faith, lost his throne?" "There are no Arab villages, and the King still reigns," said Victoria. "But I think thou didst not send for me to ask these questions?" "Thou art right. Yet there is no harm in asking them. I sent for thee, for three reasons. One is, that I wished to see thee, to know if indeed thou wert as beautiful as I; another is, that I had a thing to give thee, and before I tell thee my third reason, thou shalt have the gift." She fumbled in the tawny folds of the tiger-skin on which she lay, and presently held out a bracelet, made of flexible squares of gold, like scales, jewelled with different stones. "It is thy wedding present from me," she said. "I wish to give it, because it is not long since I myself was married, and because we are both young. Besides, Si Maïeddine is a good friend of the marabout. I have heard that he is brave and handsome, all that a young girl can most desire in a husband." "I am not going to marry Si Maïeddine," said Victoria. "I thank thee; but thou must keep thy gift for his bride when he finds one." "He has found her in thee. The marriage will be a week from to-morrow, if Allah wills, and he will take thee away to his home. The marabout himself has told me this, though he does not know that I have sent for thee, and that thou art with me now." "Allah does not will," said the girl. "Perhaps not, since thy bridegroom-to-be lies ill with marsh fever, so Hadda has told me. He came back from Algiers with the sickness heavy upon him, caught in the saltpetre marshes that stretch between Biskra and Touggourt. I know those marshes, for I was in Biskra with my mother when she danced there; but she was careful, and we did not lie at night in the dangerous regions where the great mosquitoes are. Men are never careful, though they do not like to be ill, and thy bridegroom is fretting. But he will be better in a few days if he takes the draughts which the marabout has blessed for him; and if the wedding is not in a week, it will be a few days later. It is in Allah's hands." "I tell thee, it will be never," Victoria persisted. "And I believe thou but sayest these things to torture me." "Dost thou not love Si Maïeddine?" Miluda asked innocently. "Not at all." "Then it must be that thou lovest some other man. Dost thou, Roumia?" "Thou hast no right to ask such questions." "Be not angry, Roumia, for we are coming now to the great reason why I sent for thee. It is to help thee. I wish to know whether there is a man of thine own people thou preferest to Si Maïeddine." "Why shouldst thou wish to help me? Thou hast never seen me till now." "I will speak the truth with thee," said Miluda, "because thy face pleases me, though I prefer my own. Thine is pure and good, like the face of the white angel that is ever at our right hand; and even if I should speak falsely, I think thou wouldst not be deceived. Before I saw thee, I did not care whether thou wert happy or sad. It was nothing to me; but I saw a way of getting thee and thy sister out of my husband's house, and for a long time I have wished thy sister gone. Not that I am jealous of her. I have not seen her face, but I know she is already old, and if she were not friendless in our land, the Sidi would have put her away at the time of my marriage to him, since long ago he has ceased to care whether she lives or dies. But his heart is great, and he has kept her under his roof for kindness' sake, though she has given him no child, and is no longer a wife to him. I alone fill his life." She paused, hoping perhaps that Victoria would answer; but the girl was silent, biting her lip, her eyes cast down. So Miluda talked on, more quietly. "There is a wise woman in the city, who brings me perfumes and silks which have come to Oued Tolga by caravan from Tunis. She has told me that thy sister has ill-wished me, and that I shall never have a boy--a real child--while Lella Saïda breathes the same air with me. That is the reason I want her to be gone. I will not help thee to go, unless thou takest her with thee." "I will never, never leave this place unless we go together," Victoria answered, deeply interested and excited now. "That is well. And if she loves thee also, she would not go alone; so my wish is to do what I can for both." "What canst thou do?" the girl asked. "I will tell thee. But first there is something to make clear. I was on my roof to-day, when a young Roumi rode up to the Zaouïa on the road from Oued Tolga. He looked towards the roofs, and I wondered. From mine, I cannot see much of thy sister's roof, but I watched, and I saw an arm outstretched, to throw a packet. Then I said to myself that he had come for thee. And later I was sure, because my women told me that while he talked with the marabout, the door which leads to thy sister's roof was nailed up hastily, by command of the master. Some order must have gone from him, unknown to the Roumi, while the two men were together. I could coax nothing of the story from the Sidi when he came to me, but he was vexed, and his brows drew together over eyes which for the first time did not seem to look at me with pleasure." "Thou hast guessed aright," Victoria admitted, thankful that Miluda's suspicions concerned her affairs only, and not Saidee's. "The man who came here was my friend. I care for him more than for any one in the world, except my sister; and if I cannot marry him, I will die rather than marry Si Maïeddine or any other." "Then, unless I help thee, thou wilt have to die, for nothing which thou alone, or thy sister can do, will open the gates for thee to go out, except as Si Maïeddine's wife." "Then help me," said Victoria, boldly, "and thou wilt be rid of us both forever." "It is with our wits we must work, not with our hands," replied the Ouled Naïl. "The power of the marabout is great. He has many men to serve him, and the gates are strong, while women are very, very weak. Yet I have seen into the master's heart, and I can give thee a key which will unlock the gates. Only it had better be done soon, for when Si Maïeddine is well, he will fight for thee; and if thou goest forth free, he will follow, and take thee in the dunes." Victoria shivered, for the picture was vivid before her eyes, as Miluda painted it. "Give me the key," she said in a low voice. "The key of the master's heart is his son," the other answered, in a tone that kept down anger and humiliation. "Even me he would sacrifice to his boy. I know it well, and I hate the child. I pray for one of my own, for because the Sidi loves me, and did not love the boy's mother, he would care ten thousand times more for a child of mine. The wise woman says so, and I believe it. When thy sister is gone, I shall have a boy, and nothing left to wish for on earth. Send a message to thy lover, saying that the marabout's only son is at school in Oued Tolga, the city. Tell him to steal the child and hide it, making a bargain with the marabout that he shall have it safely back, if he will let thee and thy sister go; otherwise he shall never see it again." "That would be a cruel thing to do, and my sister could not consent," said Victoria, "even if we were able to send a message." "Hadda would send the message. A friend from the village is coming to see her, and the master has no suspicion of me at present, as he has of thee. We could send a letter, and Hadda would manage everything. But there is not much time, for now while my husband is with Si Maïeddine, treating him for his fever, is our only chance, to-night. We have perhaps an hour in which to decide and arrange everything. After that, his coming may be announced to me. And no harm would happen to the child. The master would suffer in his mind for a short time, till he decided to make terms, that is all. As for me, have no fear of my betraying thee. Thou needst but revenge thyself by letting the master know how I plotted for the stealing of his boy, for him to put me out of his heart and house forever. Then I should have to kill myself with a knife, or with poison; and I am young and happy, and do not desire to die yet. Go now, and tell thy sister what I have said. Let her answer for thee, for she knows this land and the people of it, and she is wiser than thou." Without another word or look at the beautiful pagan face, Victoria went out of the room, and found Hadda waiting to hurry her away. XLVI It was after one o'clock when Stephen and Nevill bade each other good night, after a stroll out of the town into the desert. They had built up plans and torn them down again, and no satisfactory decision had been reached, for both feared that, if they attempted to threaten the marabout with their knowledge of his past, he would defy them to do their worst. Without Saidee and Victoria, they could bring forward no definite and visible proof that the great marabout, Sidi El Hadj Mohammed Abd el Kadr, and the disgraced Captain Cassim ben Halim were one. And the supreme difficulty was to produce Saidee and Victoria as witnesses. It was not even certain, if the marabout were threatened and thought himself in danger, that he might not cause the sisters to disappear. That thought prevented the two men from coming easily to any decision. Sabine had not told them that he knew Saidee, or that he had actually heard of the girl's arrival in the Zaouïa. He longed to tell and join with them in their quest; but it would have seemed a disloyalty to the woman he loved. It needed a still greater incentive to make him speak out; while as for the Englishmen, though they would gladly have taken his advice, they hesitated to give away the secret of Saidee Ray's husband to a representative of Ben Halim's stern judge, France. Various plans for action had been discussed, yet Stephen and Nevill both felt that all were subject to modification. Each had the hope that the silent hours would bring inspiration, and so they parted at last. But Stephen had not been in his room ten minutes when there came a gentle tap at his door. He thought that it must be Nevill, returning to announce the birth of a new idea; but in the dark corridor stood a shadowy Arab, he who did most of the work in the hotel outside the kitchen. "A person has come with a letter for Monsieur," the man mumbled in bad French, his voice so sleepy as to be almost inarticulate. "He would not give it to me, the foolish one. He insists on putting it into the hand of Monsieur. No doubt it is a pourboire he wants. He has followed me to the head of the stairs, and he has no French." "Where does he come from?" asked Stephen. "He will not say. But he is a Negro whom I have never seen in the city." "Call him," Stephen said. And in a moment a thin young Negro, dusted all over with sand, came into the square of light made by the open door. His legs were bare, and over his body he appeared to have no other garment but a ragged, striped gandourah. In a purple-black hand he held a folded piece of paper, and Stephen's heart jumped at sight of his own name written in a clear handwriting. It was not unlike Victoria's but it was not hers. "The man says he cannot take a letter back," explained the Arab servant. "But if Monsieur will choose a word to answer, he will repeat it over and over until he has it by heart. Then he will pass it on in the same way." Stephen was reading his letter and scarcely heard. It was Victoria's sister who wrote. She signed herself at the bottom of the bit of paper--a leaf torn from a copy book--"Saidee Ray," as though she had never been married. She had evidently written in great haste, but the thing she proposed was clearly set forth, as if in desperation. Victoria did not approve, she said, and hoped some other plan might be found; but in Saidee's opinion there was no other plan which offered any real chance of success. In their situation, they could not afford to stick at trifles, and neither could Mr. Knight, if he wished to save Victoria from being married against her will to an Arab. There was no time to lose if anything were to be done; and if Mr. Knight were willing to take the way suggested, would he say the word "yes," very distinctly, to the messenger, as it would not be safe to try and smuggle a letter into the Zaouïa. It was a strange, even a detestable plot, which Saidee suggested; yet when Stephen had turned it over in his mind for a moment he said the word "yes" with the utmost distinctness. The sand-covered Negro imitated him several times, and having achieved success, was given more money than he had ever seen in his life. He would not tell the Arab, who escorted him downstairs again, whence he had come, but it was a long distance and he had walked. He must return on foot, and if he were to be back by early morning, he ought to get off at once. Stephen made no effort to keep him, though he would have liked Saidee's messenger to be seen by Caird. Nevill had not begun to undress, when Stephen knocked at his door. He was about to begin one of his occasional letters to Josette, with his writing materials arranged abjectly round one tallow candle, on a washhand stand. "That beast of a Cassim! He's going to try and marry the poor child off to his friend Maïeddine!" Nevill growled, reading the letter. "Stick at trifles indeed! I should think not. This is Providential--just when we couldn't quite make up our minds what to do next." "You're not complimentary to Providence," said Stephen. "Seems to me a horrid sort of thing to do, though I'm not prepared to say I won't do it. _She_ doesn't approve, her sister says, you see----" "Who knows the man better, his wife or the girl?" "That goes without saying. Well, I'm swallowing my scruples as fast as I can get them down, though they're a lump in my throat. However, we wouldn't hurt the little chap, and if the father adores him, as she says, we'd have Ben Halim pretty well under our thumbs, to squeeze him as we chose. Knowing his secret as we do, he wouldn't dare apply to the French for help, for fear we'd give him away. We must make it clear that we well know who he is, and that if he squeals, the fat's in the fire!" "That's the right spirit. We'll make him shake in his boots for fear we give not only the secret, but the boy, over to the tender mercies of the authorities. For it's perfectly true that if the Government knew what a trick had been played on them, they'd oust the false marabout in favour of the rightful man, whoever he may be, clap the usurper into prison, and make the child a kind of--er--ward in chancery, or whatever the equivalent is in France. Oh, I can tell you, my boy, this idea is the inspiration of a genius! The man will see we're making no idle threat, that we can't carry out. He'll have to hand over the ladies, or he'll spend some of his best years in prison, and never see his beloved boy again." "First we've got to catch our hare. But there Sabine could help us, if we called him in." "Yes. And we couldn't do better than have him with us, I think, Legs, now we've come to this turn in the road." "I agree so far. Still, let's keep Ben Halim's secret to ourselves. We must have it to play with. I believe Sabine's a man to trust; but he's a French officer; and a plot of that sort he might feel it his duty to make known." "All right. We'll keep back that part of the business. It isn't necessary to give it away. But otherwise Sabine's the man for us. He's a romantic sort of chap, not unlike me in that; it's what appealed to me in him the minute we began to draw each other out. He'll snap at an adventure to help a pretty girl even though he's never seen her; and he knows the marabout's boy and the guardian-uncle. He was talking to me about them this afternoon. Let's go and rout him out. I bet he'll have a plan to propose." "Rather cheek, to rouse him up in the middle of the night. We might wait till morning, since I don't see that we can do anything useful before." "He only got in from seeing some friend in barracks, about one. He doesn't look like a sleepy-head. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, I smell his cigarettes. He's probably lying on his bed, reading a novel." But Sabine was reading something to him far more interesting than any novel written by the greatest genius of all ages; a collection of Saidee's letters, which he invariably read through, from first to last, every night before even trying to sleep. The chance to be in the game of rescue was new life to him. He grudged Saidee's handwriting to another man, even though he felt that, somehow, she had hoped that he would see it, and that he would work with the others. He laughed at the idea that the adventure would be more dangerous for him as a French officer, if anything leaked out, than for two travelling Englishmen. "I would give my soul to be in this!" he exclaimed, before he knew what he was saying, or what meaning might be read into his words. But both faces spoke surprise. He was abashed, yet eager. The impulse of his excitement led him on, and he began stammering out the story he had not meant to tell. "I can't say the things you ought to know, without the things that no one ought to know," he explained in his halting English, plunging back now and then inadvertently into fluent French. "It is wrong not to confess that all the time I know that young lady is there--in the Zaouïa. But there is a reason I feel it not right to confess. Now it will be different because of this letter that has come. You must hear all and you can judge me." So the story was poured out: the romance of that wonderful day when, while he worked at the desert well in the hot sun, a lady went by, with her servants, to the Moorish baths. How her veil had fallen aside, and he had seen her face--oh, but the face of a houri, an angel. Yet so sad--tragedy in the beautiful eyes. In all his life he had not seen such beauty or felt his heart so stirred. Through an attendant at the baths he had found out that the lovely lady was the wife of the marabout, a Roumia, said not to be happy. From that moment he would have sacrificed his hopes of heaven to set her free. He had written--he had laid his life at her feet. She had answered. He had written again. Then the sister had arrived. He had been told in a letter of her coming. At first he had thought it impossible to confide a secret concerning another--that other a woman--even to her sister's friends. But now there was no other way. They must all work together. Some day he hoped that the dear prisoner would be free to give herself to him as his wife. Till then, she was sacred, even in his thoughts. Even her sister could find no fault with his love. And would the new friends shake his hand wishing him joy in future. So all three shook hands with great heartiness; and perhaps Sabine would have become still more expansive had he not been brought up to credit Englishmen stolid fellows at best with a favourite motto: "Deeds, not words." As Sabine told his story, Stephen's brain had been busily weaving. He did not like the thing they had to do, but if it must be done, the only hope lay in doing it well and thoroughly. Sabine's acquaintance with the boy and his guardian would be a great help. "I've been thinking how we can best carry out this business," he said, when the pact of friendship had been sealed by clasp of hands. "We can't afford to have any row or scandal. It must somehow be managed without noise, for the sake of--the ladies, most of all, and next, for the sake of Captain Sabine. As a Frenchman and an officer, it would certainly be a lot worse for him than for us, if we landed him in any mess with the authorities." "I care nothing for myself." Sabine broke in, hotly. "All the more reason for us to keep our heads cool if we can, and look after you. We must get the boy to go away of his own accord." "That is more easy to propose than to do," said Sabine, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Well, an idea has come into my head. There may be something in it--if you can help us work it. We couldn't do it without you. Do you know the child and his uncle so well that it wouldn't seem queer to invite them to the hotel for a meal--say luncheon to-morrow, or rather to-day--for it's morning now?" "Yes, I could do that. And they would come. It would be an amusement for them. Life is dull here," Sabine eagerly replied. "Good. Does the child speak French?" "A little. He is learning in the school." "That's lucky, for I don't know a dozen words of Arab, and even my friend Caird can't be eloquent in it. Wings, do you think you could work up the boy to a wild desire for a tour in a motor-car?" "I would bet on myself to do that. I could make him a motor fiend, between the _hors d'oeuvres_ and fruit." "Our great stumbling block, then, is the uncle. I suppose he's a sort of watch-dog, who couldn't be persuaded to leave the boy alone a minute?" "I am not sure of that," said Sabine. "It is true he is a watch-dog; but I could throw him a bone I think would tempt him to desert his post--if he had no suspicion of a trap. What you want, I begin to see, is to get him out of the way, so that Monsieur Caird could induce the little Mohammed to go away willingly?" "Yes." "_Eh bien!_ It is as good as done. I see the way. Hassan ben Saad, the respectable uncle, has a secret weakness which I have found out. He has lost his head for the prettiest and youngest dancer in the quarter of the Ouled Naïls. She is a great favourite, Nedjma, and she will not look at him. He is too old and dry. Besides, he has no money except what the marabout gives him as guardian to the boy at school. Hassan sends Nedjma such presents as he can afford, and she laughs at them with the other girls, though she keeps them, of course. To please me, she will write a letter to Ben Saad, telling him that if he comes to her at once, without waiting a moment, he may find her heart soft for him. This letter shall be brought to our table, at the hotel, while Hassan finishes his _déjeuner_ with us. He will make a thousand apologies and tell a thousand lies, saying it is a call of business. Probably he will pretend that it concerns the marabout, of whom he boasts always as his relative. Then he will go, in a great hurry, leaving the child, because we will kindly invite him to do so; and he will promise to return soon for his nephew. But Nedjma will be so sweet that he will not return soon. He will be a long time away--hours. He will forget the boy, and everything but his hope that at last Nedjma will love him. Does that plan of mine fit in with yours, Monsieur?" "Perfectly," said Knight. "What do you think, Wings?" "As you do. You're both geniuses. And I'll try to keep my end up by fascinating the child. He shall be mine, body and soul, by the end of lunch. When he finds that we're leaving Oued Tolga, instantly, and that he must be sent ignominiously home, he shall be ready to howl with grief. Then I'll ask him suddenly, how he'd like to go on a little trip, just far enough to meet my motor-car, and have a ride in it. He'll say yes, like a shot, if he's a normal boy. And if the uncle's away, it will be nobody's business even if they see the marabout's son having a ride behind me on my horse, as he might with his own father. Trust me to lure the imp on with us afterward, step by step, in a dream of happiness. I was always a born lurer--except when I wanted a thing or person for myself." "You say, lure him on with 'us'" Stephen cut in. "But it will have to be you alone. I must stay at this end of the line, and when the time comes, give the marabout our ultimatum. The delay will be almost intolerable, but of course the only thing is to lie low until you're so far on the way to Touggourt with the child, that a rescue scheme would be no good. Touggourt's a bit on the outskirts of the marabout's zone of influence, let's hope. Besides, he wouldn't dare attack you there, in the shadow of the French barracks. It's his business to help keep peace in the desert, and knowing what we know of his past, I think with the child out of his reach he'll be pretty well at our mercy." "When Hassan ben Saad finds the boy gone, he will be very sick," said Sabine. "But I shall be polite and sympathetic, and will give him good advice. He is in deadly awe of the marabout, and I will say that, if the child's father hears what has happened, there will be no forgiveness--nothing but ruin. Waiting is the game to play, I will counsel Hassan. I shall remind him that, being Friday, no questions will be asked at school till Monday, and I shall raise his hopes that little Mohammed will be back soon after that, if not before. At worst, I will say, he can pretend the child is shut up in the house with a cough. I shall assure him that Monsieur Caird is a man of honour and great riches; that no harm can come to little Mohammed in his care. I will explain how the boy pleaded to go, and make Hassan happy with the expectation that in a few days Monsieur Caird is coming back to fetch his friend; that certainly Mohammed will be with him, safe and sound; and that, if he would not lose his position, he must say nothing of what has happened to any one who might tell the marabout." "Do you think you can persuade him to keep a still tongue in his head till it suits us to have him speak, or write a letter for me to take?" asked Stephen. "I am sure of it. Hassan is a coward, and you have but to look him in the face to see he has no self-reliance. He must lean on some one else. He shall lean on me. And Nedjma shall console him, so that time will pass, and he shall hardly know how it is going. He will speak when we want him to speak or write, not before." The three men talked on in Stephen's room till dawn, deciding details which cropped up for instant settlement. At last it was arranged--taking the success of their plan for granted--that Stephen should wait a day and a half after the departure of Nevill's little caravan. By that time, it should have got half-way to Touggourt; but there was one bordj where it would come in touch with the telegraph. Stephen would then start for the Zaouïa, for an interview with the marabout, who, no doubt, was already wondering why he did not follow up his first attempt by a second. He would hire or buy in the city a racing camel fitted with a bassour large enough for two, and this he would take with him to the Zaouïa, ready to bring away both sisters. No allusion to Saidee would be made in words. The "ultimatum" would concern Victoria only, as the elder sister was wife to the marabout, and no outsider could assume to have jurisdiction over her. But as it was certain that Victoria would not stir without Saidee, a demand for one was equivalent to a demand for the other. This part of the plan was to be subject to modification, in case Stephen saw Victoria, and she proposed any course of action concerning her sister. As for Sabine, having helped to make the plot he was to hold himself ready at Oued Tolga, the city, for Stephen's return from the Zaouïa. And the rest was on the knees of the gods. XLVII For the second time Stephen entered by the great gates of the Zaouïa. The lounging Negro, who had let him in before, stared at the grey mehari with the red-curtained bassour, whose imposing height dwarfed the Roumi's horse. No doubt the man wondered why it was there, since only women or invalids travelled in a bassour;--and his eyes dwelt with interest on the two Arabs from the town of Oued Tolga. Perhaps he thought that they would satisfy his curiosity, when the visitor had gone inside. But Stephen thought differently. The Arabs would tell nothing, because they knew nothing which could explain the mystery. The Negro had no French, and either did not understand or pretended not to understand the Roumi's request to see the marabout. This looked ominous, because Stephen had been let in without difficulty the first time; and the Negro seemed intelligent enough to be stupid in accordance with instructions. Great insistance, however, and the production of documents (ordinary letters, but effective to impress the uneducated intelligence) persuaded the big gate-keeper to send for an interpreter. Stephen waited with outward patience, though a loud voice seemed crying in his ears, "What will happen next? What will the end be--success, or a sudden fluke that will mean failure?" He barred his mind against misgivings, but he had hoped for some sign of life when he rode in sight of the white roofs; and there had been no sign. For many minutes he waited; and then came an old man who had showed him to the marabout's reception room on his first visit. Stephen was glad to see this person, because he could speak a little French, and because he had a mild air, as if he might easily be browbeaten. "I must see Sidi Mohammed on important business," Stephen said. The old man was greatly grieved, but Sidi Mohammed was indisposed and not able to speak with any one. Would Monsieur care to visit the mosque again, and would he drink coffee? So this was the game! Stephen was not surprised. His face flushed and his jaw squared. He would not drink coffee, and he would not give himself the pleasure of seeing the mosque; but would trouble the interpreter with a message to the marabout; and would await an answer. Then Stephen wrote on one of his visiting cards, in English. "I have important news of your son, which you would regret not hearing. And it can be told to no one but yourself." In less than ten minutes the messenger came back. The marabout, though not well, would receive Monsieur. Stephen was led through the remembered labyrinth of covered passages, dim and cool, though outside the desert sand flamed under the afternoon sun; and as he walked he was aware of softly padding footsteps behind him. Once, he turned his head quickly, and saw that he was followed by a group of three tall Negroes. They looked away when they met his eyes, as if they were on his heels by accident; but he guessed that they had been told to watch him, and took the caution as a compliment. Yet he realized that he ran some risk in coming to this place on such an errand as his. Already the marabout looked upon him as an enemy, no doubt; and it was not impossible that news of the boy's disappearance had by this time reached the Zaouïa, in spite of his guardian's selfish cowardice. If so, and if the father connected the kidnapping of his son with to-day's visitor, he might let his desire for revenge overcome prudence. To prove his power by murdering an Englishman, his guest, would do the desert potentate more harm than good in the end; yet men of mighty passions do not always stop to think of consequences, and Stephen was not blind to his own danger. If the marabout lost his temper, not a man in the Zaouïa but would be ready to obey a word or gesture, and short work might be made of Victoria Ray's only champion. However, Stephen counted a good deal on Ben Halim's caution, and on the fact that his presence in the Zaouïa was known outside. He meant to acquaint his host with that fact as a preface to their conversation. "The marabout will come presently," the mild interpreter announced, when he had brought Stephen once more to the reception room adjoining the mosque. So saying, he bowed himself away, and shut the door; but Stephen opened it almost instantly, to look out. It was as he expected. The tall Negroes stood lazily on guard. They scarcely showed surprise at being caught, yet their fixed stare was somewhat strained. "I wonder if there's to be a signal?" thought Stephen. It was very still in the reception-room of Sidi Mohammed. The young man sat down opposite the door of that inner room from which the marabout had come to greet him the other day, but he did not turn his back fully upon the door behind which were the watchers. Minutes passed on. Nothing happened, and there was no sound. Stephen grew impatient. He knew, from what he had heard of the great Zaouïa, that manifold and strenuous lives were being lived all around him in this enormous hive, which was university, hospice, mosque, and walled village in one. Yet there was no hum of men talking, of women chatting over their work, or children laughing at play. The silence was so profound that it was emphasized to his ears by the droning of a fly in one of the high, iron-barred windows; and in spite of himself he started when it was suddenly and ferociously broken by a melancholy roar like the thunderous yawn of a bored lion. But still the marabout did not appear. Evidently he intended to show the persistent Roumi that he was not to be intimidated or browbeaten, or else he did not really mean to come at all. The thought that perhaps, while he waited, he had been quietly made a prisoner, brought Stephen to his feet. He was on the point of trying the inner door, when it opened, and the masked marabout stood looking at him, with keen eyes which the black veil seemed to darken and make sinister. Without speaking, the Arab closed, but did not latch, the door behind him; and standing still he spoke in the deep voice that was slightly muffled by the thin band of woollen stuff over the lower part of his face. "Thou hast sent me an urgent summons to hear tidings of my son," he said in his correct, measured French. "What canst thou know, which I do not know already?" "I began to think you were not very desirous to hear my news," replied Stephen, "as I have been compelled to wait so long that my friends in Oued Tolga will be wondering what detains me in the Zaouïa, or whether any accident has befallen me." "As thou wert doubtless informed, I am not well, and was not prepared to receive guests. I have made an exception in thy favour, because of the message thou sent. Pray, do not keep me in suspense, if harm has come to my son." Sidi Mohammed did not invite his guest to sit down. "No harm has come to the boy," Stephen reassured him. "He is in good hands." "In charge of his uncle, whom I have appointed his guardian," the marabout broke in. "He doesn't know anything yet," Stephen said to himself, quickly. Then, aloud: "At present, he is not in charge of his uncle, but is with a friend of mine. He will be sent back safe and well to Oued Tolga, when you have discovered the whereabouts of Miss Ray--the young lady of whom you knew nothing the other day--and when you have produced her. I know now, with absolute certainty, that she is here in the Zaouïa. When she leaves it, with me and the escort I have brought, to join her friends, you will see your son again, but not before; and never unless Miss Ray is given up." The marabout's dark hands clenched themselves, and he took a step forward, but stopped and stood still, tall and rigid, within arm's-length of the Englishman. "Thou darest to come here and threaten me!" he said. "Thou art a fool. If thou and thy friends have stolen my child, all will be punished, not by me, but by the power which is set above me to rule this land--France." "We have no fear of such punishment, or any other," Stephen answered. "We have 'dared' to take the boy; and I have dared, as you say, to come here and threaten, but not idly. We have not only your son, but your secret, in our possession; and if Miss Ray is not allowed to go, or if anything happens to me, you will never see your boy again, because France herself will come between you and him. You will be sent to prison as a fraudulent pretender, and the boy will become a ward of the nation. He will no longer have a father." The dark eyes blazed above the mask, though still the marabout did not move. "Thou art a liar and a madman," he said. "I do not understand thy ravings, for they have no meaning." "They will have a fatal meaning for Cassim ben Halim if they reach the ears of the French authorities, who believe him dead," said Stephen, quietly. "Ben Halim was only a disgraced officer, not a criminal, until he conspired against the Government, and stole a great position which belonged to another man. Since then, prison doors are open for him if his plottings are found out." Unwittingly Stephen chose words which were as daggers in the breast of the Arab. Although made without knowledge of the secret work to which the marabout had vowed himself and all that was his, the young man's threat sounded like a hint so terrible in its meaning that Ben Halim's heart turned suddenly to water. He saw himself exposed, defeated, hand and foot in the enemy's power. How this Roumi had wormed out the hidden truth he could not conceive; but he realized on the instant that the situation was desperate, and his brain seemed to him to become a delicate and intricate piece of mechanism, moving with oiled wheels. All the genius of a great soldier and a great diplomat were needed at one and the same time, and if he could not call such inspiration to his aid he was lost. He had been tempted for one volcanic second to stab Stephen with the dagger which he always carried under his burnous and embroidered vest, but a lightning-flash of reason bade him hold his hand. There were other ways--there must be other ways. Fortunately Maïeddine had not been told of the Roumi's presence in the Zaouïa, and need not learn anything concerning him or his proposals until the time came when a friend could be of use and not a hindrance. Even in this moment, when he saw before his eyes a fiery picture of ruin, Ben Halim realized that Maïeddine's passion for Victoria Ray might be utilized by and by, for the second time. Not once did the dark eyes falter or turn from the enemy's, and Stephen could not help admiring the Arab's splendid self-control. It was impossible to feel contempt for Ben Halim, even for Ben Halim trapped. Stephen had talked with an air of cool indifference, his hands in his pockets, but in one pocket was a revolver, and he kept his fingers on it as the marabout stood facing him silently after the ultimatum. "I have listened to the end," the Arab said at last, "because I wished to hear what strange folly thou hadst got in thy brain. But now, when thou hast finished apparently, I cannot make head or tail of thy accusations. Of a man named Cassim ben Halim I may have heard, but he is dead. Thou canst hardly believe in truth that he and I are one; but even if thou dost believe it, I care little, for if thou wert unwise enough to go with such a story to my masters and friends the French, they could bring a hundred proofs that thy tale was false, and they would laugh thee to scorn. I have no fear of anything thou canst do against me; but if it is true that thou and thy friend have stolen my son, rather than harm should come to him who is my all on earth, I may be weak enough to treat with thee." "I have brought proof that the boy is gone," returned Stephen. For the moment, he tacitly accepted the attitude which the marabout chose to take up. "Let the fellow save his face by pretending to yield entirely for the boy's sake," he said to himself. "What can it matter so long as he does yield?" In the pocket with the revolver was a letter which Sabine had induced Hassan ben Saad to write, and now Stephen produced it. The writing was in Arabic, of course; but Sabine, who knew the language well, had translated every word for him before he started from Oued Tolga. Stephen knew, therefore, that the boy's uncle, without confessing how he had strayed from duty, admitted that, "by an incredible misfortune," the young Mohammed had been enticed away from him. He feared, Hassan ben Saad added, to make a disturbance, as an influential friend--Captain Sabine--advised him to inform the marabout of what had happened before taking public action which the child's father might disapprove. The Arab frowned as he read on, not wholly because of his anger with the boy's guardian, though that burned in his heart, hot as a new-kindled fire, and could be extinguished only by revenge. "This Captain Sabine," he said slowly, "I know slightly. He called upon me at a time when he made a well in the neighbourhood. Was it he who put into thine head these ridiculous notions concerning a dead man? I warn thee to answer truly if thou wouldst gain anything from me." "My countrymen don't, as a rule, transact business by telling diplomatic lies," said Stephen smiling, as he felt that he could now afford to smile. "Captain Sabine did not put the notion into my head." "Hast thou spoken of it to him?" Stephen shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I do not see that I'm called upon to answer that question. All I will say is, you need have no fear of Captain Sabine or of any one else, once Miss Ray is safely out of this place." The marabout turned this answer over quickly in his mind. He knew that, if Sabine or any Frenchman suspected his identity and his plans for the future, he was irretrievably lost. No private consideration would induce a French officer to spare him, if aware that he hoped eventually to overthrow the rule of France in North Africa. This being the case (and believing that Knight had learned of the plot), he reflected that Sabine could not have been taken into the secret, otherwise the Englishman dare not make promises. He saw too, that it would have been impolitic for Knight to take Sabine into his confidence. A Frenchman in the secret would have ruined this _coup d'état_; and, beginning to respect Stephen as an enemy, he decided that he was too clever to be in real partnership with the officer. Ben Halim's growing conviction was that his wife, Saidee, had told Victoria all she knew and all she suspected, and that the girl had somehow contrived to smuggle a letter out of the Zaouïa to her English lover. The distrust and dislike he had long felt for Saidee suddenly burst into a flame of hatred. He longed to crush under his foot the face he had once loved, to grind out its beauty with a spurred heel. And he hated the girl, too, though he could not punish her as he could punish Saidee, for he must have Maïeddine's help presently, and Maïeddine would insist that she should be protected, whatever might happen to others. But he was beginning to see light ahead, if he might take it for granted that his secret was suspected by no more than four persons--Saidee, Victoria, and the two Englishmen who were acting for the girl. "I see by this letter from my brother-in-law that it is even as thou sayest; thou and thy friend together have committed the cruel wrong of which thou boastest," Ben Halim said at last. "A father robbed of his one son is as a stag pinned to earth with a spear through his heart. He is in the hands of the hunter, his courage ebbing with his life-blood. Had this thing been done when thou wert here before, I should have been powerless to pay the tribute, for the lady over whom thou claimst a right was not within my gates. Now, I admit, she has come. If she wish to go with thee, she is free to do so. But I will send with her men of my own, to travel by her side, and refuse to surrender her until my child is given into their hands." "That is easy to arrange," Stephen agreed. "I will telegraph to my friend, who is by this time--as you can see by your letter--two days' journey away or more. He will return with your son, and an escort, but only a certain distance. I will meet him at some place appointed, and we will hand the boy over to your men." "It will be better that the exchange should be made here," said the marabout. "I can see why it might be so from your point of view, but that view is not ours. You have too much power here, and frankly, I don't trust you. You'll admit that I'd be a fool if I did! The meeting must be at some distance from your Zaouïa." The marabout raised his eyebrows superciliously. They said--"So thou art afraid!" But Stephen was not to be taunted into an imprudence where Victoria's safety was at stake. "Those are our terms," he repeated. "Very well, I accept," said the Arab. "Thou mayest send a message to the lady, inviting her to leave my house with thee; and I assure thee, that in any case I would have no wish to keep her, other than the desire of hospitality. Thou canst take her at once, if she will go; and passing through the city, with her and my men, thou canst send thy telegram. Appoint as a meeting place the Bordj of Toudja, one day's march from the town of Oued Tolga. When my men have the child in their keeping, thou wilt be free to go in peace with the girl and thy friend." "I should be glad if thou wouldst send for her, and let me talk with her here," Stephen suggested. "No, that cannot be," the marabout answered decidedly. "When she is out of my house, I wash my hands of her; but while she is under my roof it would be shameful that she should speak, even in my presence, with a strange man." Stephen was ready to concede a point, if he could get his wish in another way. "Give me paper, then, and I will write to the lady," he said. "There will be an answer, and it must be brought to me quickly, for already I have stopped longer than I expected, and Captain Sabine, who knows I have come to call upon you and fetch a friend, may be anxious." He spoke his last words with a certain emphasis, knowing that Ben Halim would understand the scarcely veiled threat. The marabout went into the next room, and got some French writing paper. Stephen wrote a hasty note, begging Victoria to leave the Zaouïa under his care. He would take her, he said, to Lady MacGregor, who had come to Touggourt on purpose to be at hand if wanted. He wrote in English, but because he was sure that Ben Halim knew the language, he said nothing to Victoria about her sister. Only he mentioned, as if carelessly, that he had brought a good camel with a comfortable bassour large enough for two. When the letter was in an envelope, addressed to Miss Ray, the marabout took it from Stephen and handed it to somebody outside the door, no doubt one of the three watchers. There were mumbled instructions in Arabic, and ten minutes later an answer came back. Stephen could have shouted for joy at sight of Victoria's handwriting. There were only a few lines, in pencil, but he knew that he would keep them always, with her first letter. "Oh, how glad I am that you're here!" she wrote. "By and by I hope to thank you--but of course I can't come without my sister. She is wretched, and wants to leave the man who seems to her no longer a husband, but she thinks he will not want to let her go. Tell him that it must be both of us, or neither. Or if you feel it would be better, give him this to read, and ask him to send an answer." Stephen guessed why the girl had written in French. She had fancied that the marabout would not choose to admit his knowledge of English, and he admired the quickness of her wit in a sudden emergency. As he handed the letter to the Arab, Stephen would have given a great deal to see the face under the black mask. He could read nothing of the man's mind through the downcast eyelids, with their long black fringe of close-set lashes. And he knew that Ben Halim must have finished the short letter at least sixty seconds before he chose to look up from the paper. "It is best," the marabout said slowly, "that the two sisters go together. A man of Islam has the right to repudiate a woman who gives him no children, but I have been merciful. Now an opportunity has come to rid myself of a burden, without turning adrift one who is helpless and friendless. For my son's sake I have granted thy request; for my own sake I grant the girl's request: but both, only on one condition--that thou swearest in the name of thy God, and upon the head of thy father, never to breathe with thy lips, or put with thy hand upon paper, the malicious story about me, at which thou hast to-day hinted; that thou enforce upon the two sisters the same silence, which, before going, they must promise me to guard for ever. Though there is no foundation for the wicked fabrication, and no persons of intelligence who know me would believe it, even if I had no proof, still for a man who holds a place of spiritual eminence, evil gossip is a disgrace." "I promise for myself, for my friend, and for both the ladies, silence on that subject, so long as we may live. I swear before my God, and on the head of my dead father, that I will keep my word, if you keep yours to me," said Stephen, who knew only half the secret. Yet he was astonished at gaining his point so easily. He had expected more trouble. Nevertheless, he did not see how the marabout could manage to play him false, if he wanted to get his boy and hide the truth about himself. "I am content," said the Arab. "And thou shouldst be content, since thou hast driven a successful bargain, and it is as if the contract between us were signed in my heart's blood. Now, I will leave thee. When the ladies are ready, thou shalt be called by one of the men who will be of their escort. It is not necessary that thou and I meet again, since we have, I hope, finished our business together, once and for ever." * * * * * * * "Why is it that he lets me go, without even trying to make me swear never to tell what I know?" Saidee asked Victoria, while all in haste and in confusion they put together a few things for the long journey. Saidee packed the little volumes of her diary, with trembling fingers, and looked a frightened question at her sister. "I'm thankful that he doesn't ask us," Victoria answered, "for we couldn't promise not to tell, unless he would vow never to do the dreadful things you say he plans--lead a great rising, and massacre the French. Even to escape, one couldn't make a promise which might cost thousands of lives." "We could perhaps evade a promise, yet seem to do what he asked," said Saidee, who had learned subtle ways in a school of subtlety. "I'm terrified that he _doesn't_ ask. Why isn't he afraid to let us go, without any assurances?" "He knows that because you've been his wife, we wouldn't betray him unless we were forced to, in order to prevent massacres," Victoria tried to reassure her sister. "And perhaps for the sake of getting his boy back, he's willing to renounce all his horrible plans." "Perhaps--since he worships the child," Saidee half agreed. "Yet--it doesn't seem like Cassim to be so easily cowed, and to give up the whole ambition of his life, with scarcely a struggle, even for his child." "You said, when you told me how you had written to Mr. Knight, that Cassim would be forced to yield, if they took the boy, and so the end would justify the means." "Yes. It was a great card to play. But--but I expected him to make me take a solemn oath never to tell what I know." "Don't let's think of it," said Victoria. "Let's just be thankful that we're going, and get ready as quickly as we can, lest he should change his mind at the last moment." "Or lest Maïeddine should find out," Saidee added. "But, if Cassim really means us to go, he won't let Maïeddine find out. He will thank Allah and the Prophet for sending the fever that keeps Maïeddine in his bedroom." "Poor Maïeddine!" Victoria half whispered. In her heart lurked kindness for the man who had so desperately loved her, even though love had driven him to the verge of treachery. "I hope he'll forget all about me and be happy," she said. And then, because she was happy herself, and the future seemed bright, she forgot Maïeddine, and thought only of another. XLVIII "That must be the bordj of Toudja, at last," Victoria said, looking out between the curtains of her bassour. "Aren't you thankful, Saidee? You'll feel happier and freer, when Cassim's men have gone back to the Zaouïa, and our ransom has been paid by the return of the little boy. That volume of your life will be closed for ever and ever, and you can begin the next." Saidee was silent. She did not want to think that the volume was closed for ever, because in it there was one chapter which, unless it could be added to the new volume, would leave the rest of the book without interest for her. Half involuntarily she touched the basket which Honoré Sabine had given her when they parted in the desert city of Oued Tolga early that morning. In the basket were two carrier pigeons. She had promised to send one from the Bordj of Toudja, and another at the end of the next day's journey. After that she would be within reach of the telegraph. Her reason told her it was well that Sabine was not with her now, yet she wished for him, and could not be glad of his absence. Perhaps she would never see him again. Who could tell? It would have been unwise for Sabine, as an officer and as a man, to leave his duty to travel with her: she could see that, yet she was secretly angry with Victoria, because Victoria, happy herself, seemed to have little sympathy with her sister's hopes. The girl did not like to talk about Sabine, or discuss any connection he might possibly have with Saidee's future; and because Victoria was silent on that subject, Saidee revenged herself by being reticent on others. Victoria guessed the reason, and her heart yearned over Saidee; but this was something of which they could not talk. Some day, perhaps, Saidee would understand, and they would be drawn together again more closely than before. "There's Toudja," Stephen said, as the girl looked out again from the bassour. Whenever he saw her face, framed thus by the dark red curtains, his heart beat, as if her beauty were new to him, seen that instant for the first time. This was the flood-tide of his life, now when they travelled through the desert together, he and she, and she depended upon his help and protection. For to-day, and the few more days until the desert journey should come to an end at Biskra, the tide would be at flood: then it would ebb, never to rise again, because at Algiers they must part, she to go her way, he to go his; and his way would lead him to Margot Lorenzi. After Algiers there would be no more happiness for him, and he did not hope for it; but, right or wrong, he was living passionately in every moment now. Victoria smiled down from the high bassour at the dark, sunburnt face of the rider. How different it was from the dark face of another rider who had looked up at her, between her curtains, when she had passed that way before! There was only one point of resemblance between the two: the light of love in the eyes. Victoria could not help recognizing that likeness. She could not help being sure that Stephen loved her, and the thought made her feel safe, as well as happy. There had been a sense of danger in the knowledge of Maïeddine's love. "The tower in the bordj is ruined," she said, looking across the waving sea of dunes to a tall black object like the crooked finger of a giant pointing up out of the gold into the blue. "It wasn't so when I passed before." "No," Stephen answered, welcoming any excuse for talk with her. "But it was when we came from Touggourt. Sabine told me there'd been a tremendous storm in the south just before we left Algiers, and the heliograph tower at Toudja was struck by lightning. They'll build it up again soon, for all these heliograph stations are supposed to be kept in order, in case of any revolt; for the first thing a rebellious tribe does is to cut the telegraph wires. If that happened, the only way of communication would be by heliograph; and Sabine says that from Touggourt to Tombouctou this chain of towers has been arranged always on elevations, so that signals can be seen across great stretches of desert; and inside the walls of a bordj whenever possible, for defence. But the South is so contented and peaceful now, I don't suppose the Government will get out of breath in its hurry to restore the damage here." At the sound of Sabine's name Saidee had instantly roused to attention, and as Stephen spoke calmly of the peace and content in the South, she smiled. Then suddenly her face grew eager. "Did the marabout appoint Toudja as the place to make the exchange, or was it you?" she asked, over Victoria's shoulder. "The marabout," said Stephen. "I fell in with the idea because I'd already made objections to several, and I could see none to Toudja. It's a day's journey farther north than the Zaouïa, and I remembered the bordj being kept by two Frenchmen, who would be of use if----" He checked himself, not wishing to hint that it might be necessary to guard against treason. "If we had to stop for the night," he amended, "no doubt the bordj would be better kept than some others. And we shall have to stop, you know, because my friend, Caird, can't arrive from Touggourt with the boy till late, at best." "Did--the marabout seem bent on making this bordj the rendezvous?" Saidee asked. Stephen's eyes met hers in a quick, involuntary glance, then turned to the ruined tower. He saw it against the northern sky as they came from the south, and, blackened by the lightning, it accentuated the desolation of the dunes. In itself, it looked sinister as a broken gibbet. "If the marabout had a strong preference for the place, he didn't betray it," was the only answer he could make. "Have you a special reason for asking?" "No," Saidee echoed. "No special reason." But Stephen and Victoria both guessed what was in her mind. As they looked at the tower all three thought of the Arabs who formed their caravan. There were six, sent out from the Zaouïa to take back the little Mohammed. They belonged body and soul to the marabout. At the town of Oued Tolga, Stephen had added a third to his escort of two; but though they were good guides, brave, upstanding fellows, he knew they would turn from him if there were any question between Roumis and men of their own religion. If an accident had happened to the child on the way back from Touggourt, or if any other difficulty arose, in which their interest clashed with his, he would have nine Arabs against him. He and Caird, with the two Highlanders, if they came, would be alone, no matter how large might be Nevill's Arab escort. Stephen hardly knew why these thoughts pressed upon him suddenly, with new insistence, as he saw the tower rise dark against the sky, jagged as if it had been hacked with a huge, dull knife. He had known from the first what risks they ran. Nevill and he and Sabine had talked them all over, and decided that, on the whole, there was no great danger of treachery from the marabout, who stood to lose too much, to gain too little, by breaking faith. As for Maïeddine, he was ill with fever, so the sisters said, and Saidee and Victoria believed that he had been kept in ignorance of the marabout's bargain. Altogether, circumstances seemed to have combined in their favour. Ben Halim's wife was naturally suspicious and fearful, after her long martyrdom, but there was no new reason for uneasiness. Only, Stephen reminded himself, he must not neglect the slightest wavering of the weather-vane. And in every shadow he must look for a sign. They had not made a hurried march from the desert city, for Stephen and Sabine had calculated the hour at which Nevill might have received the summons, and the time he would take on the return journey. It was possible, Lady MacGregor being what she was, that she might have rewired the telegram to a certain bordj, the only telegraph station between Touggourt and Oued Tolga. If she had done this, and the message had caught Nevill, many hours would be saved. Instead of getting to the bordj about midnight, tired out with a long, quick march, he might be expected before dark. Even so, Stephen would be well ahead, for, as the caravan came to the gate of the bordj, it was only six o'clock, blazing afternoon still, and hot as midday, with the fierce, golden heat of the desert towards the end of May. The big iron gates were wide open, and nothing stirred in the quadrangle inside; but as Stephen rode in, one of the Frenchmen he remembered slouched out of a room where the wooden shutters of the window were closed for coolness. His face was red, and he yawned as he came forward, rubbing his eyes as if he had been asleep. But he welcomed Stephen politely, and seeing that a good profit might be expected from so large a party, he roused himself to look pleased. "I must have a room for two ladies," said Stephen, "and I am expecting a friend with a small caravan, to arrive from the north. However, six of my Arabs will go back when he comes. You must do the best you can for us, but nothing is of any importance compared to the ladies' comfort." "Certainly, I will do my best," the keeper of the bordj assured him. "But as you see, our accommodation is humble. It is strained when we have four or five officers for the night, and though I and my brother have been in this God-forsaken place--worse luck!--for nine years, we have never yet had to put up ladies. Unfortunately, too, my brother is away, gone to Touggourt to buy stores, and I have only one Arab to help me. Still, though I have forgotten many useful things in this banishment, I have not forgotten how to cook, as more than one French officer could tell you." "One has told me," said Stephen. "Captain Sabine, of the Chasseurs d'Afrique." "Ah, ce beau sabreur! He stopped with me on his way to Oued Tolga, for the well-making. If he has recommended me, I shall be on my mettle, Monsieur." The heavy face brightened; but there were bags under the bloodshot eyes, and the man's breath reeked of alcohol. Stephen was sorry the brother was away. He had been the more alert and prepossessing of the two. As they talked, the quadrangle of the bordj--which was but an inferior caravanserai--had waked to animation. The landlord's one Arab servant had appeared, like a rat out of a hole, to help the new arrivals with their horses and camels. The caravans had filed in, and the marabout's men and Stephen's guides had dismounted. None of these had seen the place since the visitation of the storm, and one or two from the Zaouïa had perhaps never been so far north before, yet they looked at the broken tower with grave interest rather than curiosity. Stephen wondered whether they had been primed with knowledge before starting, or if their lack of emotion were but Arab stoicism. As usual in a caravanserai or large bordj, all round the square courtyard were series of rooms: a few along one wall for the accommodation of French officers and rich Arabs, furnished with elementary European comforts; opposite, a dining-room and kitchen; to the left, the quarters of the two landlords and their servants; along the fourth wall, on either side of the great iron gate, sheds for animals, untidily littered with straw and refuse, infested with flies. Further disorder was added by the débris from the broken heliograph-tower which had been only partially cleared away since the storm. Other towers there were, also; three of them, all very low and squat, jutting out from each corner of the high, flat-topped wall, and loopholed as usual, so that men stationed inside could defend against an escalade. These small towers were intact, though the roof of one was covered with rubbish from the ruined shell rising above; and looking up at this, Stephen saw that much had fallen away since he passed with Nevill, going to Oued Tolga. One entire wall had been sliced off, leaving the inside of the tower, with the upper chamber, visible from below. It was like looking into a half-dissected body, and the effect was depressing. "If we should be raided by Arabs now," said the landlord, laughing, as he saw Stephen glance at the tower, "we should have to pray for help: there would be no other means of getting it." "You don't seem to worry much," replied Stephen. "No, for the Arabs in these parts are sheep nowadays," said the Frenchman. "Like sheep, they might follow a leader; but where is the leader? It is different among the Touaregs, where I spent some time before I came here. They are warriors by nature, but even they are quiet of late." "Do you ever see any here?" Stephen asked. "A few occasionally, going to Touggourt, but seldom. They are formidable-looking fellows, in their indigo-coloured masks, which stain their skin blue, but they are tractable enough if one does not offend them." There was only one room which could be made passably habitable for Saidee and Victoria, and they went into it, out of the hot sun, as soon as it could be prepared. The little luggage they had brought went with them, and the basket containing the two carrier pigeons. Saidee fed the birds, and scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper, to tell Sabine that they had arrived safely at Toudja. On second thoughts, she added a postscript, while Victoria unpacked what they needed for the night. "_He_ chose the rendezvous," Saidee wrote. "I suppose I'm too superstitious, but I can't help wondering if his choice had anything to do with the ruined tower? Don't be anxious, though. You will probably receive another line to-morrow night, to say that we've reached the next stage, and all's well." "I suppose you think I'm doing wrong to write to him?" she said to Victoria, as she took one of the pigeons out of its basket. "No," the girl answered. "Why shouldn't you write to say you're safe? He's your friend, and you're going far away." Saidee almost wished that Victoria had scolded her. Without speaking again, she began to fasten her letter under the bird's wing, but gave a little cry, for there was blood on her fingers. "Oh, he's hurt himself somehow!" she exclaimed. "He won't be able to fly, I'm afraid. What shall I do? I must send the other one. And yet--if I do, there'll be nothing for to-morrow." "Won't you wait until after Mr. Caird has come, and you can tell about the little boy?" Victoria suggested. "He mayn't arrive till very late, and--I promised Captain Sabine that he should hear to-night." "But think how quickly a pigeon flies! Surely it can go in less than half the time we would take, riding up and down among the dunes." "Oh, much less than half! Captain Sabine said that from the bordj of Toudja the pigeon would come to him in an hour and a half, or two at most." "Then wait a little longer. Somehow I feel you'll be glad if you do." Saidee looked quickly at the girl. "You make me superstitious," she said. "Why?" "With your 'feelings' about things. They're almost always right. I'm afraid of them. I shouldn't dare send the pigeon now, for fear----" "For fear of what?" "I hardly know. I told you that you made me superstitious." Stephen stood between the open gates of the bordj, looking north, whence Nevill should come. The desert was empty, a great, waving stretch of gold, but a caravan might be engulfed among the dunes. Any moment horses or camels might come in sight; and he was not anxious about Nevill or the boy. It was impossible that they could have been cut off by an attacking party from the Zaouïa. Captain Sabine and he, Stephen, had kept too keen a watch for that to happen, for the Zaouïa lay south of Oued Tolga the city. Others besides himself were searching the sea of sand. One of his own guides was standing outside the gates, talking with two of the marabout's men, and looking into the distance. But rather oddly, it seemed to him, their faces were turned southward, until the guide said something to the others. Then, slowly, they faced towards the north. Stephen remembered how he had told himself to neglect no sign. Had he just seen a sign? For some moments he did not look at the Arabs. Then, glancing quickly at the group, he saw that the head man sent by the marabout was talking emphatically to the guide from Oued Tolga, the city. Again, their eyes flashed to the Roumi, before he had time to turn away, and without hesitation the head man from the Zaouïa came a few steps towards him. "Sidi, we see horses," he said, in broken French. "The caravan thou dost expect is there," and he pointed. Stephen had very good eyesight, but he saw nothing, and said so. "We Arabs are used to looking across great distances," the man answered. "Keep thy gaze steadily upon the spot where I point, and presently thou wilt see." It was as he prophesied. Out of a blot of shadow among the tawny dunes crawled some dark specks, which might have been particles of the shadow itself. They moved, and gradually increased in size. By and by Stephen could count seven separate specks. It must be Nevill and the boy, and Stephen wondered if he had added two more Arabs to the pair who had gone back with him from Oued Tolga, towards Touggourt. "Hurrah for Lady MacGregor!" the watcher said under his breath. "She wired on my telegram, and caught him before he'd passed the last station. I might have known she would, the glorious old darling!" He hurried inside the bordj to knock at the ladies' door, and tell the news. "They're in sight!" he cried. "Would you like to come outside the gate and look?" Instantly the door opened, and the sisters appeared. Victoria looked flushed and happy, but Saidee was pale, almost haggard in comparison with the younger girl. Both were in Arab dress still, having nothing else, even if they had wished to change; and as she came out, Saidee mechanically drew the long blue folds of her veil closely over her face. Custom had made this a habit which it would be hard to break. All three went out together, and the Arabs, standing in a group, turned at the sound of their voices. Again they had been looking southward. Stephen looked also, but the dazzle of the declining sun was in his eyes. "Don't seem to notice anything," said Saidee in a low voice. "What is there to notice?" he asked in the same tone. "A big caravan coming from the south. Can't you see it?" "No. I see nothing." "You haven't stared at the desert for eight years, as I have. There must be eighteen or twenty men." "Do you think they're from the Zaouïa?" asked Victoria. "Who can tell? We can't know till they're very close, and then----" "Nevill Caird will get here first," Stephen said, half to himself. "You can see five horses and two camels plainly now. They're travelling fast." "Those Arabs have seen the others," Saidee murmured. "But they don't want us to know they're thinking about them." "Even if men are coming from the Zaouïa," said Stephen, "it may easily be that they've only been sent as an extra escort for the boy, owing to his father's anxiety." "Yes, it may be only that," Saidee admitted. "Still, I'm glad----" She did not finish her sentence. But she was thinking about the carrier pigeon, and Victoria's advice. All three looked northward, watching the seven figures on horseback, in the far distance; but now and then, when they could hope to do so without being noticed by the Arabs, they stole a hasty glance in the other direction. "The caravan has stopped," Saidee declared at last. "In the shadow of a big dune." "I see, now," said Stephen. "And I," added Victoria. "Perhaps after all, it's just an ordinary caravan," Saidee said more hopefully. "Many nomads come north at this time of year. They may be making their camp now. Anyway, its certain they haven't moved for some time." And still they had not moved, when Nevill Caird was close enough to the bordj for a shout of greeting to be heard. "There are two of the strangest-looking creatures with him!" cried Saidee. "What can they be--on camels!" "Why," exclaimed Victoria, "it's those men in kilts, who waited on the table at Mr. Caird's house!" "Hurrah for Lady MacGregor again!" laughed Stephen. "It's the twins, Angus and Hamish." He pulled off his panama hat and waved it, shouting to his friend in joy. "We're a regiment!" he exclaimed gaily. XLIX The boy Mohammed was proud and very happy. He had not been in a motor-car, for he had not got to Touggourt; but it was glorious to have travelled far north, almost out of the dunes, and not only to have seen giant women in short skirts with bare legs, but not to be afraid of them, as the grown-up Arabs were. The giant women were Hamish and Angus, and it was a great thing to know them, and to be able to explain them to his father's men from the Zaouïa. He was a handsome little fellow, with a face no darker than old ivory, and heavily lashed, expressive eyes, like those which looked over the marabout's mask. His dress was that of a miniature man; a white silk burnous, embroidered with gold, over a pale blue vest, stitched in many colours; a splendid red cloak, whose embroidery of stiff gold stood out like a bas-relief; a turban and chechia of thin white muslin; and red-legged boots finer than those of the Spahis. Though he was but eleven years old, and had travelled hard for days, he sat his horse with a princely air, worthy the son of a desert potentate; and like a prince he received the homage of the marabout's men who rushed to him with guttural cries, kissing the toes of his boots, in their short stirrups, and fighting for an end of his cloak to touch with their lips. He did not know that he had been "kidnapped." His impression was that he had deigned to favour a rather agreeable Roumi with his company. Now he was returning to his own people, and would bid his Roumi friend good-bye with the cordiality of one gentleman to another, though with a certain royal condescension fitted to the difference in their positions. Nevill was in wild spirits, though pale with heat and fatigue. He had nothing to say of himself, but much of his aunt and of the boy Mohammed. "Ripping little chap," he exclaimed, when Saidee had gone indoors. "You never saw such pluck. He'd die sooner than admit he was tired. I shall be quite sorry to part from him. He was jolly good company, a sort of living book of Arab history. And what do you say to our surprise,--the twins? My aunt sent them off at the same time with the telegram, but of course they put in an appearance much later. They caught me up this morning, riding like devils on racing camels, with one guide. No horses could be got big enough for them. They've frightened every Arab they've met--but they're used to that and vain of it. They've got rifles--and bagpipes too, for all I know. They're capable of them." "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you, Wings," said Stephen, "and only a little less glad to see those big fellows with their brave faces." Then he mentioned to Nevill the apparition of that mysterious caravan which had appeared, and vanished. Also he described the behaviour of the Zaouïa men when they had looked south, instead of north. "Oh, that's all right, I'll bet," exclaimed Nevill, exuberant with the joy of success, and in the hope of coolness, food and rest. "Might have been any old caravan, on its own business--nothing to do with us. That's the most likely thing. But if the marabout's mixed up with it, I should say it's only because he couldn't bear to stop at home and wait in suspense, and I don't blame him, now I've made acquaintance with the kid. He'd be too proud to parade his anxiety under our noses, but would lurk in the distance, out of our sight, he probably flatters himself, to welcome his son, and take him back to Oued Tolga. Not unnatural--and in spite of all, I can't help being a little sorry for the man. We've humiliated and got the better of him, because we happen to have his secret. It's a bit like draining a chap's blood, and then challenging him to fight. He's got all he can expect now, in receiving the child back and if I can judge him by myself, he'll be so happy, that he'll be only too thankful to see our backs for the last time." "He might feel safer to stick a knife in them." "Oh, lord, I'm too hot to worry!" laughed Nevill. "Let's bid the boy Godspeed, or the Mussulman equivalent, which is a lot more elaborate, and then turn our thoughts to a bath of sorts and a dinner of sorts. I think Providence has been good to us so far, and we can afford to trust It. I'm sure Miss Ray would agree with me there." And Nevill glanced with kind blue eyes toward the shut door behind which Victoria had disappeared with her sister. When at last the little Mohammed had been despatched with great ceremony of politeness, as well as a present of Stephen's gold watch, the two Englishmen watched him fade out of sight with his cavalcade of men from the Zaouïa, and saw that nothing moved in the southern distance. "All's right with the world, and now for a wash and food!" cried Nevill, turning in with a sigh of relief at the gate of the bordj. "But oh, by the way--Hamish has got a letter for you--or is it Angus? Anyhow, it's from my fairy aunt, which I would envy you, if she hadn't sent me on something better--a post-card from Tlemcen. My tyrant goddess thinks letters likely to give undue encouragement, but once in a while she sheds the light of a post-card on me. Small favours thankfully received--from that source!" Inside the courtyard, the Highlanders were watching the three Arabs who had travelled with them and their master, attending to the horses and camels. These newcomers were being shown the ropes by the one servant of the bordj, Stephen's men helping with grave good-nature. They all seemed very friendly together, as is the way of Arabs, unless they inhabit rival districts. Hamish had the letter, and gave it to Stephen, who retired a few steps to read it, and Nevill, seeing that the twins left all work to the Arabs, ordered them to put his luggage into the musty-smelling room which he was to share with Stephen, and to get him some kind of bath, if it were only a tin pan. Stephen did not listen to these directions, nor did he hear or see anything that went on in the courtyard, for the next ten minutes. There was, indeed, a short and characteristic letter from Lady MacGregor, but it was only to say that she had finished and named the new game of Patience for Victoria Ray, and that, after all, she enclosed him a telegram, forwarded from Algiers to Touggourt. "I know Nevill told me that everything could wait till you got back," she explained, "but as I am sending the twins, they might as well take this. It may be of importance; and I'm afraid by the time you get it, the news will be several days old already." He guessed, before he looked, whence the telegram came; and he dreaded to make sure. For an instant, he was tempted to put the folded bit of paper in his pocket, unread until Touggourt, or even Biskra. "Why shouldn't I keep these few days unspoiled by thoughts of what's to come, since they're the only happy days I shall ever have?" he asked himself. But it would be weak to put off the evil moment, and he would not yield. He opened the telegram. "Sailing on Virginian. Hope you can meet me Liverpool May 22nd. Love and longing. Margot." To-day was the 25th. * * * * * * * When he looked up, the courtyard was empty, and quiet, save for the quacking of two or three forlorn ducks. Nevill had gone inside, and the Highlanders were waiting upon him, no doubt--for Nevill liked a good deal of waiting upon. The Arabs had left the animals peacefully feeding, and had disappeared into the kitchen, or perhaps to have a last look at the vanishing escort of the marabout's sacred son. Stephen was suddenly conscious of fatigue, and a depression as of great weariness. He envied Nevill, whose boyish laugh he heard. The girl Nevill loved had refused to marry him, but she smiled when she saw him, and sent him post-cards when he was absent. There was hope for Nevill. For him there was none; although--and it was as if a fierce hand seized and wrenched his heart--sometimes it had seemed, in the last few hours, that in Victoria Ray's smile for him there was the same lovely, mysterious light which made the eyes of Josette Soubise wonderful when she looked at Nevill. If it were not for Margot--but there was no use thinking of that. He could not ask Margot to set him free, after all that had passed, and even if he should ask, she would refuse. Shuddering disgustfully, the thought of a new family scandal shot through his mind: a breach-of-promise case begun by Margot against him, if he tried to escape. It was the sort of thing she would do, he could not help recognizing. Another _cause célèbre_, more vulgar than the fight for his brother's title! How Victoria would turn in shocked revulsion from the hero of such a coarse tragi-comedy. But he would never be that hero. He would keep his word and stick to Margot. When he should come to the desert telegraph station between Toudja and Touggourt, he would wire to the Carlton, where she thought of returning, and explain as well as he could that, not expecting her quite yet, he had stayed on in Africa, but would see her as soon as possible. "Better hurry up and get ready for dinner!" shouted Nevill, through a crack of their bedroom door. "I warn you, I'm starving!" By this time the Highlanders were out in the courtyard again--two gigantic figures, grotesque and even fearful in the eyes of Arabs; but there were no Arabs to stare at them now. All had gone about their business in one direction or other. Stephen said nothing to his friend about the enclosure in Lady MacGregor's letter, mentioning merely the new game of cards named in honour of Miss Ray, at which they both laughed. And it seemed rather odd to Stephen just then, to hear himself laugh. The quick-falling twilight had now given sudden coolness and peace to the desert. The flies had ceased their persecutions. The whole air was blue as the light seen through a pale star-sapphire, for the western sky was veiled with a film of cloud floating up out of the sunset like the smoke of its fire, and there was no glow of red. As the two friends made themselves ready for dinner, and talked of such adventures as each had just passed through, they heard the voice of the landlord, impatiently calling, "Abdallah! Abdallah!" There was no reply, and again he roared the name of his servant, from the kitchen and from the courtyard, into which he rushed with a huge ladle in his hand; then from farther off, outside the gate, which remained wide open. Still there came no answer; and presently Stephen, looking from his bedroom, saw the Frenchman, hot and red-faced, slowly crossing the courtyard, mumbling to himself. Nevill had not quite finished his toilet, for he had a kind of boyish vanity, and wished to show how well and smart he could look after the long, tiresome journey. But Stephen was ready, and he stepped out, closing the door behind him. "Can't you find your servant?" he asked the keeper of the bordj. "No," said the man, adding some epithets singularly unflattering to the absent one and his ancestors. "He has vanished as if his father, the devil, had dragged him down to hell." "Where are the others?" inquired Stephen. "My men and my friend's men? Are they still standing outside the gates, watching the boy and his caravan?" "I saw them nowhere," returned the Frenchman. "It is bad enough to keep one Arab in order. I do not run after others. Would that the whole nation might die like flies in a frost! I hate them. What am I to do for my dinner, and ladies in the bordj for the first time? It is just my luck. I cannot leave the kitchen, and that brute Abdallah has not laid the table! When I catch him I will wring his neck as if he were a hen." He trotted back to the kitchen, swearing, and an instant later he was visible through the open door, drinking something out of a bottle. Stephen went to the door of the third and last guest-room of the bordj. It was larger than the others, and had no furniture except a number of thick blue and red rugs spread one on top of the other, on the floor. This was the place where those who paid least were accommodated, eight or ten at a time if necessary; and it was expected that Hamish and Angus would have to share the room with the Arab guides of both parties. Stephen looked in at the twins, as they scornfully inspected their quarters. "Where are the Arabs?" he asked, as he had asked the landlord. "We dinna ken whaur they've ta'en theirsel's," replied Angus. "All we ken is, we wull not lie in the hoose wi' 'em. Her leddyship wadna expect it, whateffer. We prefair t' sleep in th' open." Stephen retired from the argument, and mounted a steep, rough stairway, close to the gate, which led to the flat top of the wall, and had formerly been connected by a platform with the ruined heliograph tower. The wall was perhaps two feet thick, and though the top was rough and somewhat broken, it was easy to walk upon it. Once it had been defended by a row of nails and bits of glass, but most of these were gone. It was an ancient bordj, and many years of peace had passed since it was built in the old days of raids and razzias. Stephen looked out over the desert, through the blue veil of twilight, but could see no sign of life anywhere. Then, coming down, he mounted into each squat tower in turn, and peered out, so that he might spy in all directions, but there was nothing to spy save the shadowy dunes, more than ever like waves of the sea, in this violet light. He was not reassured, however, by the appearance of a vast peace and emptiness. Behind those billowing dunes that surged away toward the horizon, north, south, east, and west, there was hiding-place for an army. As he came down from the last of the four towers, his friend sauntered out from his bedroom. "I hope the missing Abdallah's turned up, and dinner's ready," said Nevill gaily. Then Stephen told him what had happened, and Nevill's cheerful face settled into gravity. "Looks as if they'd got a tip from the marabout's men," he said slowly. "It can be nothing else," Stephen agreed. "I blame myself for calling the twins inside to help me," said Nevill. "If I'd left them to moon about the courtyard, they'd have seen those sneaks creeping away, and reported." "They wouldn't have thought it strange that the Arabs stood outside, watching the boy go. You're not to blame, because you didn't see the sly look in my fellows' faces. I had the sign, and neglected it, in spite of my resolutions. But after all, if we're in for trouble, I don't know that it isn't as well those cowards have taken French leave. If they'd stayed, we'd only have had an enemy inside the gates, as well as out. And that reminds me, we must have the gates shut at once. Thank heaven we brought those French army rifles and plenty of cartridges from Algiers, when we didn't know what we might be in for. Now we _do_ know; and all are likely to come handy. Also our revolvers." "Thank heaven and my aunt for the twins, too," said Nevill. "They might be better servants, but I'll bet on them as fighters. And perhaps you noticed the rifles her 'leddyship' provided them with at Touggourt?" "I saw the muzzles glitter as they rode along on camel-back," Stephen answered. "I was glad even then, but now----" He did not need to finish the sentence. "We'd better have a word with our host," he said. To reach the dining-room, where the landlord was busy, furiously clattering dishes, they had to pass the door of the room occupied by the sisters. It was half open, and as they went by, Victoria came out. "Please tell me things," she said. "I'm sure you're anxious. When we heard the landlord call his servant and nobody answered, Saidee was afraid there was something wrong. You know, from the first she thought that her--that Cassim didn't mean to keep his word. Have the Arabs all gone?" Nevill was silent, to let Stephen take the responsibility. He was not sure whether or no his friend meant to try and hide their anxiety from the women. But Stephen answered frankly. "Yes, they've gone. It may be that nothing will happen, but we're going to shut the gates at once, and make every possible preparation." "In case of an attack?" "Yes. But we have a good place for defence here. It would be something to worry about if we were out in the open desert." "There are five men, counting your Highlanders," said Victoria, turning to Nevill. "I think they are brave, and I know well already what you both are." Her eyes flashed to Stephen's with a beautiful look, all for him. "And Saidee and I aren't cowards. Our greatest grief is that we've brought you into this danger. It's for our sakes. If it weren't for us, you'd be safe and happy in Algiers." Both men laughed. "We'd rather be here, thank you," said Stephen. "If you're not frightened, that's all we want. We're as safe as in a fort, and shall enjoy the adventure, if we have any." "It's like you to say that," Victoria answered. "But there's no use pretending, is there? Cassim will bring a good many men, and Si Maïeddine will be with them, I think. They couldn't afford to try, and fail. If they come, they'll have to--make thorough work." "Yet, on the other hand, they wouldn't want to take too many into their secret," Stephen tried to reassure her. "Well, we may soon know," she said. "But what I came out to say, is this. My sister has two carrier pigeons with her. One has hurt its wing and is no use. But the other is well, and--he comes from Oued Tolga. Not the Zaouïa, but the city. We've been thinking, she and I, since the Arab servant didn't answer, that it would be a good thing to send a letter to--to Captain Sabine, telling him we expected an attack." "It would be rather a sell if he got the message, and acted on it--and then nothing happened after all," suggested Nevill. "I think we'll send the message," said Stephen. "It would be different if we were all men here, but----" Victoria turned, and ran back to the open door. "The pigeon shall go in five minutes," she called over her shoulder. Stephen and Nevill went to the dining-room. The landlord was there, drunk, talking to himself. He had broken a dish, and was kicking the fragments under the table. He laughed at first when the two Englishmen tried to impress upon him the gravity of the situation; at last, however, they made him understand that this was no joke, but deadly earnest. They helped him close and bar the heavy iron gates; and as they looked about for material with which to build up a barrier if necessary, they saw the sisters come to the door. Saidee had a pigeon in her hands, and opening them suddenly, she let it go. It rose, fluttered, circling in the air, and flew southward. Victoria ran up the dilapidated stairway by the gate, to see it go, but already the tiny form was muffled from sight in the blue folds of the twilight. "In less than two hours it will be at Oued Tolga," the girl cried, coming down the steep steps. At that instant, far away, there was the dry bark of a gun. They looked at each other, and said nothing, but the same doubt was in the minds of all. It might be that the message would never reach Oued Tolga. Then another thought flashed into Stephen's brain. He asked himself whether it would be possible to climb up into the broken tower. If he could reach the top, he might be able to call for help if they should be hard-pressed; for some years before he had, more for amusement than anything else, taken a commission in a volunteer battalion and among many other things which he considered more or less useless, had learned signalling. He had not entirely forgotten the accomplishment, and it might serve him very well now, only--and he looked up critically at the jagged wall--it would be difficult to get into that upper chamber, a shell of which remained. In any case, he would not think of so extreme a measure, until he was sure that, if he gave an alarm, it would not be a false one. "Let's have dinner," said Nevill. "If we have fighting to do, I vote we start with ammunition in our stomachs as well as in our pockets." Saidee had gone part way up the steps, and was looking over the wall. "I see something dark, that moves," she said. "It's far away, but I am sure. My eyes haven't been trained in the desert for nothing. It's a caravan--quite a big caravan, and it's coming this way. That's where the shot came from. If they killed the pigeon, or winged it, we're all lost. It would only be childish to hope. We must look our fate in the face. The men will be killed, and I, too. Victoria will be saved, but I think she'd rather die with the rest of us, for Maïeddine will take her." "It's never childish to hope, it seems to me," said Nevill. "This little fort of ours isn't to be conquered in an hour, or many hours, I assure you." "And we have no intention of letting you be killed, or Miss Ray carried off, or of dying ourselves, at the hands of a few Arabs," Knight added. "Have confidence." "In our star," Victoria half whispered, looking at Stephen. They both remembered, and their eyes spoke, in a language they had never used before. In England, Margot Lorenzi was wondering why Stephen Knight had not come to meet her, and angrily making up her mind that she would find out the reason. L Somehow, they all contrived to take a little food, three watching from the wall-towers while the others ate; and Saidee prepared strong, delicious coffee, such as had never been tasted in the bordj of Toudja. When they had dined after a fashion, each making a five-minute meal, there was still time to arrange the defence, for the attacking party--if such it were--could not reach the bordj in less than an hour, marching as fast as horses and camels could travel among the dunes. The landlord was drunk. There was no disguising that, but though he was past planning, he was not past fighting. He had a French army rifle and bayonet. Each of the five men had a revolver, and there was another in the bordj, belonging to the absent brother. This Saidee asked for, and it was given her. There were plenty of cartridges for each weapon, enough at all events to last out a hot fight of several hours. After that--but it was best not to send thoughts too far ahead. The Frenchman had served long ago in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and had risen, he said, to the rank of sergeant; but the fumes of absinthe clouded his brain, and he could only swagger and boast of old exploits as a soldier, crying from time to time "Vive l'entente cordiale," and assuring the Englishmen that they could trust him to the death. It was Stephen who, by virtue of his amateur soldiering experience, had to take the lead. He posted the Highlanders in opposite watch-towers, placing Nevill in one which commanded the two rear walls of the bordj. The next step was the building of bonfires, one at each corner of the roof, so that when the time for fighting came, the defenders might confound the enemy by lighting the surrounding desert, making a surprise impossible. Old barrels were broken up, therefore, and saturated with oil. The spiked double gates of iron, though apparently strong, Stephen judged incapable of holding out long against battering rams, but he knew heavy baulks of wood to be rare in the desert, far from the palms of the oases. What he feared most was gunpowder; and though he was ignorant of the marabout's secret ambitions and warlike preparations, he thought it not improbable that a store of gunpowder might be kept in the Zaouïa. True, the French Government forbade Arabs to have more than a small supply in their possession; but the marabout was greatly trusted, and was perhaps allowed to deal out a certain amount of the coveted treasure for "powder play" on religious fête days. To prevent the bordj falling into the hands of the Arabs if the gate were blown down, Stephen and his small force built up at the further corner of the yard, in front of the dining-room door, a barrier of mangers, barrels, wooden troughs, iron bedsteads and mattresses from the guest-rooms. Also they reinforced the gates against pressure from the outside, using the shafts of an old cart to make struts, which they secured against the side walls or frame of the gateway. These formed buttresses of considerable strength; and the landlord, instead of grumbling at the damage which might be done to his bordj, and the danger which threatened himself, was maudlin with delight at the prospect of killing a few detested Arabs. "I don't know what your quarrel's about, unless it's the ladies," he said, breathing vengeance and absinthe, "but whatever it is, I'll make it mine, whether you compensate me or not. Depend upon me, _mon capitaine_. Depend on an old soldier." But Stephen dared not depend upon him to man one of the watch-towers. Eye and hand were too unsteady to do good service in picking off escaladers. The ex-soldier was brave enough for any feat, however, and was delighted when the Englishman suggested, rather than gave orders, that his should be the duty of lighting the bonfires. That done, he was to take his stand in the courtyard, and shoot any man who escaped the rifles in the wall-towers. It was agreed among all five men that the gate was to be held as long as possible; that if it fell, a second stand should be made behind the crescent-shaped barricade outside the dining-room door; that, should this defence fall also, all must retreat into the dining-room, where the two sisters must remain throughout the attack; and this would be the last stand. Everything being settled, and the watch-towers well supplied with food for the rifles, Stephen went to call Saidee and Victoria, who were in their almost dismantled room. The bedstead, washstand, chairs and table had ceased to be furniture, and had become part of the barricade. "Let me carry your things into the dining-room now," he said. "And your bed covering. We can make up a sort of couch there, for you may as well be comfortable if you can. And you know, it's on the cards that all our fuss is in vain. Nothing whatever may happen." They obeyed, without objection; but Saidee's look as she laid a pair of Arab blankets over Stephen's arm, told how little rest she expected. She gathered up a few things of her own, however, to take from the bedroom to the dining-room, and as she walked ahead, Stephen asked Victoria if, in the handbag she had brought from the Zaouïa there was a mirror. "Yes," she answered. "There's quite a good-sized one, which I used to have on my dressing-table in the theatre. How far away that time seems now!" "Will you lend the mirror to me--or do you value it too much to risk having it smashed?" "Of course I'll lend it. But----" she looked up at him anxiously, in the blue star-dusk. "What are you going to do?" "Nothing particular, unless we've reason to believe that an attack will be made; that is, if a lot of Arabs come near the bordj. In that case, I want to try and get up into the tower, and do some signalling--for fear the shot we heard hit your sister's messenger. I used to be rather a nailer at that sort of thing, when I played at soldiering a few years ago." "But no one could climb the tower now!" the girl exclaimed. "I don't know. I almost flatter myself that I could. I've done the Dent Blanche twice, and a Welsh mountain or two. To be sure, I must be my own guide now, but I think I can bring it off all right. I've been searching about for a mirror and reflector, in case I try the experiment; for the heliographing apparatus was spoilt in the general wreckage of things by the storm. I've got a reflector off a lamp in the kitchen, but couldn't find a looking-glass anywhere, and I saw there was only a broken bit in your room. My one hope was in you." As he said this, he felt that the words meant a great deal more than he wished her to understand. "I hate being afraid of things," said Victoria. "But I am afraid to have you go up in the tower. It's only a shell, that looks as if it might blow down in another storm. It could fall with you, even if you got up safely to the signalling place. And besides, if Cassim's men were near, they might see you and shoot. Oh, I don't think I could bear to have you go!" "You care--a little--what becomes of me?" Stephen had stammered before he had time to forbid himself the question. "I care a great deal--what becomes of you." "Thank you for telling me that," he said, warmly. "I--" but he knew he must not go on. "I shan't be in danger," he finished. "I'll be up and back before any one gets near enough to see what I'm at, and pot at me." As he spoke, the sound of a strange, wild singing came to them, with the desert wind that blew from the south. "That's a Touareg song," exclaimed Saidee, turning. "It isn't Arab. I've heard Touaregs sing it, coming to the Zaouïa." "Madame is right," said the landlord. "I, too, have heard Touaregs sing it, in their own country, and also when they have passed here, in small bands. Perhaps we have deceived ourselves. Perhaps we are not to enjoy the pleasure of a fight. I feared it was too good to be true." "I can see a caravan," cried Nevill, from his cell in a wall-tower. "There seem to be a lot of men." "Would they come like that, if they wanted to fight?" asked the girl. "Wouldn't they spread out, and hope to surprise us?" "They'll either try to rush the gate, or else they'll pretend to be a peaceful caravan," said Stephen. "I see! Get the landlord to let their leaders in, and then.... That's why they sing the Touareg song, perhaps, to put us off our guard." "Into the dining-room, both of you, and have courage! Whatever happens, don't come out. Will you give me the mirror?" "Must you go?" "Yes. Be quick, please." On the threshold of the dining-room Victoria opened her bag, and gave him a mirror framed in silver. It had been a present from an enthusiastic millionairess in New York, who admired her dancing. That seemed very odd now. The girl's hand trembled as for an instant it touched Stephen's. He pressed her fingers, and was gone. "Babe, I think this will be the last night of my life," said Saidee, standing behind the girl, in the doorway, and pressing against her. "Cassim will kill me, when he kills the men, because I know his secret and because he hates me. If I could only have had a little happiness! I don't want to die. I'm afraid. And it's horrible to be killed." "I love being alive, but I want to know what happens next," said Victoria. "Sometimes I want it so much, that I almost long to die. And probably one feels brave when the minute comes. One always does, when the great things arrive. Besides, we're sure it must be glorious as soon as we're out of our bodies. Don't you know, when you're going to jump into a cold bath, you shiver and hesitate a little, though you know perfectly well it will be splendid in an instant. Thinking of death's rather like that." "You haven't got to think of it for yourself to-night. Maïeddine will----" "No," the girl broke in. "I won't go with Maïeddine." "If they take this place--as they must, if they've brought many men, you'll have to go, unless----" "Yes; 'unless.' That's what I mean. But don't ask me any more. I--I can't think of ourselves now." "You're thinking of some one you love better than you do me." "Oh, no, not better. Only----" Victoria's voice broke. The two clung to each other. Saidee could feel how the girl's heart was beating, and how the sobs rose in her throat, and were choked back. Victoria watched the tower, that looked like a jagged black tear in the star-strewn blue fabric of the sky. And she listened. It seemed as if her very soul were listening. The wild Touareg chant was louder now, but she hardly heard it, because her ears strained for some sound which the singing might cover: the sound of rubble crumbling under a foot that climbed and sought a holding-place. From far away came the barking of Kabyle dogs, in distant camps of nomads. In stalls of the bordj, where the animals rested, a horse stamped now and then, or a camel grunted. Each slightest noise made Victoria start and tremble. She could be brave for herself, but it was harder to be brave for one she loved, in great danger. "They'll be here in ten minutes," shouted Nevill. "Legs, where are you?" There was no answer; but Victoria thought she heard the patter of falling sand. At least, the ruin stood firm so far. By this time Stephen might have nearly reached the top. He had told her not to leave the dining-room, and she had not meant to disobey; but she had made no promise, and she could bear her suspense no longer. Where she stood, she could not see into the shell of the broken tower. She must see! Running out, she darted across the courtyard, pausing near the Frenchman, Pierre Rostafel, who wandered unsteadily up and down the quadrangle, his torch of alfa grass ready in his hand. He did not know that one of the Englishmen was trying to climb the tower, and would not for an instant have believed that any human being could reach the upper chamber, if suddenly a light had not flashed out, at the top, seventy feet above his head. Dazed already with absinthe, fantastic ideas beat stupidly upon his brain, like bats that blunder against a lamp and extinguish it with foolish, flapping wings. He thought that somehow the enemy must have stolen a march upon the defenders: that the hated Arabs had got into the tower, from a ladder raised outside the wall, and that soon they would be pouring down in a swarm. Before he knew what he was doing, he had stumbled up the stairs on to the flat wall by the gate. Scrambling along with his torch, he got on to the bordj roof, and lit bonfire after bonfire, though Victoria called on him to stop, crying that it was too soon--that the men outside would shoot and kill him who would save them all. The sweet silence of the starry evening was crashed upon with lights and jarring sounds. Stephen, who had climbed the tower with a lantern and a kitchen lamp-reflector slung in a table-cover, on his back, had just got his makeshift apparatus in order, and standing on a narrow shelf of floor which overhung a well-like abyss, had begun his signalling to the northward. Too late he realized that, for all the need of haste, he ought to have waited long enough to warn the drunken Frenchman what he meant to do. If he had, this contretemps would not have happened. His telegraphic flashes, long and short, must have told the enemy what was going on in the tower, but they could not have seen him standing there, exposed like a target to their fire, if Rostafel had not lit the bonfires. Suddenly a chorus of yells broke out, strange yells that sprang from savage hearts; and one sidewise glance down showed Stephen the desert illuminated with red fire. He went on with his work, not stopping to count the men on horses and camels who rode fast towards the bordj, though not yet at the foot of that swelling sand hill on which it stood. But a picture--of uplifted dark faces and pointing rifles--was stamped upon his brain in that one swift look, clear as an impression of a seal in hot wax. He had even time to see that those faces were half enveloped in masks such as he had noticed in photographs of Touaregs, yet he was sure that the twenty or thirty men were not Touaregs. When close to the bordj all flung themselves from their animals, which were led away, while the riders took cover by throwing themselves flat on the sand. Then they began shooting, but he looked no more. He was determined to keep on signalling till he got an answer or was shot dead. There were others, however, who looked and saw the faces, and the rifles aimed at the broken tower. The bonfires which showed the figure in the ruined heliographing-room, to the enemy, also showed the enemy to the watchers in the wall-towers, on opposite sides of the gates. The Highlanders open fire. Their skill as marksmen, gained in the glens and mountains of Sutherlandshire, was equally effective on different game, in the desert of the Sahara. One shot brought a white mehari to its knees. Another caused a masked man in a striped gandourah to wring his hand and squeal. The whole order of things was changed by the sudden flashes from the height of the dark ruin, and the lighting of the bonfires on the bordj roof. Two of the masked men riding on a little in advance of the other twenty had planned, as Stephen guessed, to demand admittance to the bordj, declaring themselves leaders of a Touareg caravan on its way to Touggourt. If they could have induced an unsuspecting landlord to open the gates, so much the better for them. If not, a parley would have given the band time to act upon instructions already understood. But Cassim ben Halim, an old soldier, and Maïeddine, whose soul was in this venture, were not the men to meet an emergency unprepared. They had calculated on a check, and were ready for surprises. It was Maïeddine's camel that went down, shot in the neck. He had been keeping El Biod in reserve, when the splendid stallion might be needed for two to ride away in haste--his master and a woman. As the mehari fell, Maïeddine escaped from the saddle and alighted on his feet, his blue Touareg veil disarranged by the shock. His face uncovered, he bounded up the slope with the bullets of Angus and Hamish pattering around him in the sand. "She's bewitched, whateffer!" the twins mumbled, each in his watch-tower, as the tall figure sailed on like a war-cloud, untouched. And they wished for silver bullets, to break the charm woven round the "fanatic" by a wicked spirit. Over Maïeddine's head his leader was shooting at Stephen in the tower, while Hamish returned his fire, leaving the running man to Angus. But suddenly Angus wheeled after a shot, to yell through the tower door into the courtyard. "Oot o' the way, wimmen! He's putten gunpowder to the gate if I canna stop him." Then, he wheeled into place, and was entranced to see that the next bullet found its billet under the Arab's turban. In the orange light of the bonfires, Angus could see a spout of crimson gush down the bronze forehead and over the glittering eyes. But the wounded Arab did not fall back an inch or drop a burden which he carried carefully. Now he was sheltering behind the high, jutting gate-post. In another minute it would be too late to save the gate. But Angus did not think of Victoria. Nor did Victoria stop to think of herself. Something seemed to say in her heart, "Maïeddine won't let them blow up the gate, if it means your death, and so, maybe, you can save them all." This was not a thought, since she had no time for thought. It was but a murmur in her brain, as she ran up the steep stairway close to the gate, and climbed on to the wall. Maïeddine, streaming with blood, was sheltering in the narrow angle of the gate-post where the firing from the towers struck the wall instead of his body. He had suspended a cylinder of gunpowder against the gate, and, his hands full of powder to sprinkle a trail, he was ready to make a dash for life when a voice cried his name. Victoria stood on the high white wall of the bordj, just above the gate, on the side where he had hung the gunpowder. A few seconds more--his soul sickened at the thought. He forgot his own danger, in thinking of hers, and how he might have destroyed her, blotting out the light of his own life. "Maïeddine!" she called, before she knew who had been ready to lay the fuse, and that, instead of crying to a man in the distance, she spoke to one at her feet. He stared up at her through a haze of blood. In the red light of the fire, she was more beautiful even than when she had danced in his father's tent, and he had told himself that if need be he would throw away the world for her. She recognized him as she looked down, and started back with an impulse to escape, he seemed so near and so formidable. But she feared that, if the gate were blown up, the ruined tower might be shaken down by the explosion. She must stay, and save the gate, until Stephen had reached the ground. "Thou!" exclaimed Maïeddine. "Come to me, heart of my life, thou who art mine forever, and thy friends shall be spared, I promise thee." "I am not thine, nor ever can be," Victoria answered him. "Go thou, or thou wilt be shot with many bullets. They fire at thee and I cannot stop them. I do not wish to see thee die." "Thou knowest that while thou art on the wall I cannot do what I came to do," Maïeddine said. "If they kill me here, my death will be on thy head, for I will not go without thee. Yet if thou hidest from me, I will blow up the gate." Victoria did not answer, but looked at the ruined tower. One of its walls and part of another stood firm, and she could not see Stephen in the heliographing-chamber at the top. But through a crack between the adobe bricks she caught a gleam of light, which moved. It was Stephen's lantern, she knew. He was still there. Farther down, the crack widened. On his way back, he would see her, if she were still on the wall above the gate. She wished that he need not learn she was there, lest he lose his nerve in making that terrible descent. But every one else knew that she was trying to save the gate, and that while she remained, the fuse would not be lighted. Saidee, who had come out from the dining-room into the courtyard, could see her on the wall, and Rostafel was babbling that she was "une petite lionne, une merveille de courage et de finesse." The Highlanders knew, too, and were doing their best to rid her of Maïeddine, but, perhaps because of the superstition which made them doubt the power of their bullets against a charmed life, they could not kill him, though his cloak was pierced, and his face burned by a bullet which had grazed his cheek. Suddenly, however, to the girl's surprise and joy, Maïeddine turned and ran like a deer toward the firing line of the Arabs. Then, as the bullets of Hamish and Angus spattered round him, he wheeled again abruptly and came back towards the bordj as if borne on by a whirlwind. With a run, he threw himself towards the gate, and leaping up caught at the spikes for handhold. He grasped them firmly, though his fingers bled, got a knee on the wall, and freeing a hand snatched at Victoria's dress. LI Saidee, down in the courtyard, shrieked as she saw her sister's danger. "Fire!--wound him--make him fall!" she screamed to Rostafel. But to fire would be at risk of the girl's life, and the Frenchman danced about aimlessly, yelling to the men in the watch-towers. In the tower, Stephen heard a woman's cry and thought the voice was Victoria's. His work was done. He had signalled for help, and, though this apparatus was a battered stable lantern, a kitchen-lamp reflector, and a hand-mirror, he had got an answer. Away to the north, a man whom perhaps he would never see, had flashed him back a message. He could not understand all, for it is easier to send than to receive signals; but there was something about soldiers at Bordj Azzouz, changing garrison, and Stephen believed that they meant marching to the rescue. Now, his left arm wounded, his head cut, and eyes half blinded with a rain of rubble brought down by an Arab bullet, he had made part of the descent when Saidee screamed her high-pitched scream of terror. He was still far above the remnant of stairway, broken off thirty feet above ground level. But, knowing that the descent would be more difficult than the climb, he had torn into strips the stout tablecloth which had wrapped his heliographing apparatus. Knotting the lengths together, he had fastened one end round a horn of shattered adobe, and tied the other in a slip-noose under his arms. Now, he was thankful for this precaution. Instead of picking his way, from foothold to foothold, at the sound of the cry he lowered himself rapidly, like a man who goes down a well on the chain of a bucket, and dropped on a pile of bricks which blocked the corkscrew steps. In a second he was free of the stretched rope, and, half running, half falling down the rubbish-blocked stairway, he found himself, giddy and panting, at the bottom. A rush took him across the courtyard to the gate; snatching Rostafel's rifle and springing up the wall stairway, a bullet from Maïeddine's revolver struck him in the shoulder. For the space of a heart-beat his brain was in confusion. He knew that the Arab had a knee on the wall, and that he had pulled Victoria to him by her dress, which was smeared with blood. But he did not know whether the blood was the girl's or Maïeddine's, and the doubt, and her danger, and the rage of his wound drove him mad. It was not a sane man who crashed down Rostafel's rifle on Maïeddine's head, and laughed as he struck. The Arab dropped over the wall and fell on the ground outside the gate, like a dead man, his body rolling a little way down the slope. There it lay still, in a crumpled heap, but the marabout and two of his men made a dash to the rescue, dragging the limp form out of rifle range. It was a heroic act, and the Highlanders admired it while they fired at the heroes. One fell, to rise no more, and already two masked corpses had fallen from the wall into the courtyard, daring climbers shot by Rostafel as they tried to drop. Sickened by the sight of blood, dazed by shots and the sharp "ping" of bullets, frenzied with horror at the sight of Victoria struggling in the grasp of Maïeddine, Saidee sank down unconscious as Stephen beat the Arab off the wall. "Darling, precious one, for God's sake say you're not hurt!" he stammered, as he caught Victoria in his arms, holding her against his heart, as he carried her down. He was still a madman, mad with fear for her, and love for her--love made terrible by the dread of loss. It was new life to hold her so, to know that she was safe, to bow his forehead on her hair. There was no Margot or any other woman in existence. Only this girl and he, created for each other, alone in the world. Victoria clung to him thankfully, sure of his love already, and glad of his words. "No, my dearest, I'm not hurt," she answered. "But you--you are wounded!" "I don't know. If I am, I don't feel it," said Stephen. "Nothing matters except you." "I saw him shoot you. I--I thought you were killed. Put me down. I want to look at you." She struggled in his arms, as they reached the foot of the stairs, and gently he put her down. But her nerves had suffered more than she knew. Strength failed her, and she reached out to him for help. Then he put his arm round her again, supporting her against his wounded shoulder. So they looked at each other, in the light of the bonfires, their hearts in their eyes. "There's blood in your hair and on your face," she said. "Oh, and on your coat. Maïeddine shot you." "It's nothing," he said. "I feel no pain. Nothing but rapture that you're safe. I thought the blood on your dress might be----" "It was his, not mine. His hands were bleeding. Oh, poor Maïeddine--I can't help pitying him. What if he is killed?" "Don't think of him. If he's dead, I killed him, not you, and I don't repent. I'd do it again. He deserved to die." "He tried to kill you!" "I don't mean for that reason. But come, darling. You must go into the house, I have to take my turn in the fighting now----" "You've done more than any one else!" she cried, proudly. "No, it was little enough. And there's the wall to defend. I--but look, your sister's fainting." "My Saidee! And I didn't see her lying there!" The girl fell on her knees beside the white bundle on the ground. "Oh, help me get her into the house." "I'll carry her." But Victoria would help him. Together they lifted Saidee, and Stephen carried her across the courtyard, making a détour to avoid passing the two dead Arabs. But Victoria saw, and, shuddering, was speechless. "This time you'll promise to stay indoors!" Stephen said, when he had laid Saidee on the pile of blankets in a corner of the room. "Yes--yes--I promise!" The girl gave him both hands. He kissed them, and then, without turning, went out and shut the door. It was only at this moment that he remembered Margot, remembered her with anguish, because of the echo of Victoria's voice in his ears as she named him her "dearest." As Stephen came from behind the barricade which screened the dining-room from the courtyard, he found Rostafel shooting right and left at men who tried to climb the rear wall, having been missed by Nevill's fire. Rostafel had recovered the rifle snatched by Stephen in his stampede to the stairway, and, sobered by the fight, was making good use of it. Stephen had now armed himself with his own, left for safety behind the barrier while he signalled in the tower; and together the two men had hot work in the quadrangle. Here and there an escalader escaped the fire from the watch-towers, and hung half over the wall, but dropped alive into the courtyard, only to be bayoneted by the Frenchman. The signalling-tower gave little shelter against the enemy, as most of the outer wall had fallen above the height of twenty feet from the ground; but, as without it only three sides of the quadrangle could be fully defended, once again Stephen scrambled up the choked and broken stairway. Screening himself as best he could behind a jagged ledge of adobe, he fired through a crack at three or four Arabs who made a human ladder for a comrade to mount the wall. The man at the top fell. The next mounted, to be shot by Nevill from a watch-tower. The bullet pierced the fellow's leg, which was what Nevill wished, for he, who hated to rob even an insect of its life, aimed now invariably at arms or legs, never at any vital part. "All we want," he thought half guiltily, "is to disable the poor brutes. They must obey the marabout. We've no spite against 'em!" But every one knew that it was a question of moments only before some Arab, quicker or luckier than the rest, would succeed in firing the trail of gunpowder already laid. The gate would be blown up. Then would follow a rush of the enemy and the second stand of the defenders behind the barricade. Last of all, the retreat to the dining-room. Among the first precautions Stephen had taken was that of locking the doors of all rooms except the dining-room, and pulling out the keys, so that, when the enemy got into the quadrangle, they would find themselves forced to stay in the open, or take shelter in the watch-towers vacated by the defenders. From the doorways of these, they could not do much harm to the men behind the barricade. But there was one thing they might do, against which Stephen had not guarded. The idea flashed into his head now, too late. There were the stalls where the animals were tied. The Arabs could use the beasts for a living barricade, firing over their backs. Stephen grudged this advantage, and was puzzling his brain how to prevent the enemy from taking it, when a great light blazed into the sky, followed by the roar of an explosion. The tower shook, and Stephen was thrown off his feet. For half a second he was dazed, but came to himself in the act of tumbling down stairs, still grasping his rifle. A huge hole yawned where the gate had stood. The iron had shrivelled and curled like so much cardboard, and the gap was filled with circling wreaths of smoke and a crowd of Arabs. Mad with fear, the camels and horses tethered in the stables of the bordj broke their halters and plunged wildly about the courtyard, looming like strange monsters in the red light and belching smoke. As if to serve the defenders, they galloped toward the gate, cannoning against each other in the struggle to escape, and thus checked the first rush of the enemy. Nearly all were shot down by the Arabs, but a few moments were gained for the Europeans. Firing as he ran, Stephen made a dash for the barricade, where he found Rostafel, and as the enemy swarmed into the quadrangle, pouring over dead and dying camels, the two Highlanders burst with yells like the slogans of their fighting ancestors, out from the watch-towers nearest the gateway. The sudden apparition of these gigantic twin figures, bare-legged, dressed in kilts, appalled the Arabs. Some, who had got farthest into the courtyard, were taken in the rear by Angus and Hamish; and as the Highlanders laid about them with clubbed rifles, the superstitious Easterners wavered. Imagining themselves assailed by giant women with the strength of devils, they fell back dismayed, and for some wild seconds the twins were masters of the quadrangle. They broke heads with crushing blows, and smashed ribs with trampling feet, yelling their fearsome yells which seemed the cries of death and war. But it was the triumph of a moment only, and then the Arabs--save those who would fight no more--rallied round their leader, a tall, stout man with a majestic presence. Once he had got his men in hand--thirteen or fourteen he had left--the open courtyard was too hot a place even for the Highland men. They retreated, shoulder to shoulder, towards the barricade, and soon were firing viciously from behind its shelter. If they lived through this night, never again, it would seem, could they be satisfied with the daily round of preparing an old lady's bath, and pressing upon her dishes which she did not want. And yet--their mistress was an exceptional old lady. Now, all the towers were vacant, except the one defended by Nevill, and it had been agreed from the first that he was to stick to his post until time for the last stand. The reason of this was that the door of his tower was screened by the barricade, and the two rear walls of the bordj (meeting in a triangle at this corner) must be defended while the barricade was held. These walls unguarded, the enemy could climb them from outside and fire down on the backs of the Europeans, behind the barrier. Those who attempted to climb from the courtyard (the gate-stairway being destroyed by the explosion) must face the fire of the defenders, who could also see and protect themselves against any one mounting the wall to pass over the scattered débris of the ruined signal-tower. Thus every contingency was provided for, as well as might be by five men, against three times their number; and the Europeans meant to make a stubborn fight before that last resort--the dining-room. Nevertheless, it occurred to Stephen that perhaps, after all, he need not greatly repent the confession of love he had made to Victoria. He had had no right to speak, but if there were to be no future for either in this world, fate need not grudge him an hour's happiness. And he was conscious of a sudden lightness of spirit, as of an exile nearing home. The Arabs, sheltering behind the camels and horses they had shot, fired continuously in the hope of destroying a weak part of the barricade or killing some one behind it. Gradually they formed of the dead animals a barricade of their own, and now that the bonfires were dying it was difficult for the Europeans to touch the enemy behind cover. Consulting together, however, and calculating how many dead each might put to his credit, the defenders agreed that they must have killed or disabled more than a dozen. The marabout, whose figure in one flashing glimpse Stephen fancied he recognized, was still apparently unhurt. It was he who seemed to be conducting operations, but of Si Maïeddine nothing had been seen since his unconscious or dead body was dragged down the slope by his friends. Precisely how many Arabs remained to fight, the Europeans were not sure, but they believed that over a dozen were left, counting the leader. By and by the dying fires flickered out, leaving only a dull red glow on the roofs. The pale light of the stars seemed dim after the blaze which had lit the quadrangle, and in the semi-darkness, when each side watched the other as a cat spies at a rat-hole, the siege grew wearisome. Yet the Europeans felt that each moment's respite meant sixty seconds of new hope for them. Ammunition was running low, and soon they must fall back upon the small supply kept by Rostafel, which had already been placed in the dining-room; but matters were not quite desperate, since each minute brought the soldiers from Bordj Azzouz nearer, even if the carrier pigeon had failed. "Why do they not blow us up?" asked the Frenchman, sober now, and extremely pessimistic. "They could do it. Or is it the women they are after?" Stephen was not inclined to be confidential. "No doubt they have their own reasons," he answered. "What they are, can't matter to us." "It matters that they are concocting some plan, and that we do not know what it is," said Rostafel. "To get on to the roof over our heads is what they'd like best, no doubt," said Stephen. "But my friend in the tower here is saving us from that at the back, and they can't do much in front of our noses." "I am not sure they cannot. They will think of something," grumbled the landlord. "We are in a bad situation. I do not believe any of us will see to-morrow. I only hope my brother will have the spirit to revenge me. But even that is not my luck." He was right. The Arabs had thought of something--"a something" which they must have prepared before their start. Suddenly, behind the mound of dead animals arose a fitful light, and while the Europeans wondered at its meaning, a shower of burning projectiles flew through the air at the barricade. All four fired a volley in answer, hoping to wing the throwers, but the Arab scheme was a success. Tins of blazing pitch were rolling about the courtyard, close to the barrier, but before falling they had struck the piled mattresses and furniture, splashing fire and trickles of flame poured over the old bedticking, and upholstered chairs from the dining-room. At the same instant Nevill called from the door of his tower: "More cartridges, quick! I'm all out, and there are two chaps trying to shin up the wall. Maïeddine's not dead. He's there, directing 'em." Stephen gave Nevill his own rifle, just reloaded. "Fetch the cartridges stored in the dining-room," he said to Rostafel, "while we beat the fire out with our coats." But there was no need for the Frenchman to leave his post. "Here are the cartridges," said Victoria's voice, surprising them. She had been at the door, which she held ajar, and behind this screen had heard and seen all that passed. As Stephen took the box of cartridges, she caught up the large pail of water which early in the evening had been placed in the dining-room in case of need. "Take this and put out the fire," she cried to Hamish, who snatched the bucket without a word, and dashed its contents over the barricade. Then she went back to Saidee, who sat on the blankets in a far corner, shivering with cold, though the night was hot, and the room, with its barred wooden shutters, close almost beyond bearing. They had kept but one tallow candle lighted, that Victoria might more safely peep out from time to time, to see how the fight was going. "What if our men are all killed," Saidee whispered, as the girl stole back to her, "and nobody's left to defend us? Cassim and Maïeddine will open the door, over their dead bodies, and then--then----" "You have a revolver," said Victoria, almost angrily. "Not for them, I don't mean that. Only--they mustn't take us. But I'm not afraid. Our men are brave, and splendid. They have no thought of giving up. And if Captain Sabine got our message, he'll be here by dawn." "Don't forget the shot we heard." "No. But the pigeon isn't our only hope. The signals!" "Who knows if an answer came?" "I know, because I know Stephen. He wouldn't have come down alive unless he'd got an answer." Saidee said no more, and they sat together in silence, Victoria holding her sister's icy hand in hers, which was scarcely warmer, though it tingled with the throbbing of many tiny pulses. So they listened to the firing outside, until suddenly it sounded different to Victoria's ears. She straightened herself with a start, listening even more intensely. "What's the matter? What do you hear?" Saidee stammered, dry-lipped. "I'm not sure. But--I think they've used up all the cartridges I took them. And there are no more." "But they're firing still." "With their revolvers." "God help us, then! It can't last long," the older woman whispered, and covered her face with her hands. Victoria did not stop for words of comfort. She jumped up from the couch of blankets and ran to the door, which Stephen had shut. It must be kept wide open, now, in case the defenders were obliged to rush in for the last stand. She pressed close to it, convulsively grasping the handle with her cold fingers. Then the end came soon, for the enemy had not been slow to detect the difference between rifle and revolver shots. They knew, even before Victoria guessed, exactly what had happened. It was the event they had been awaiting. With a rush, the dozen men dashed over the mound of carcasses and charged the burning barricade. "Quick, Wings," shouted Stephen, defending the way his friend must take. The distance was short from the door of the watch-tower to the door of the dining-room, but it was just too long for safety. As Nevill ran across, an Arab close to the barricade shot him in the side, and he would have fallen if Stephen had not caught him round the waist, and flung him to Hamish, who carried him to shelter. A second more, and they were all in the dining-room. Stephen and Angus had barred the heavy door, and already Hamish and Rostafel were firing through the two round ventilating holes in the window shutters. There were two more such holes in the door, and Stephen took one, Angus the other. But the enemy had already sheltered on the other side of the barricade, which would now serve them as well as it had served the Europeans. The water dashed on to the flames had not extinguished all, but the wet mattresses and furniture burned slowly, and the Arabs began beating out the fire with their gandourahs. Again there was a deadlock. For the moment neither side could harm the other: but there was little doubt in the minds of the besieged as to the next move of the besiegers. The Arabs were at last free to climb the wall, beyond reach of the loopholes in door or window, and could make a hole in the roof of the dining-room. It would take them some time, but they could do it, and meanwhile the seven prisoners were almost as helpless as trapped rats. Of the five men, not one was unwounded, and Stephen began to fear that Nevill was badly hurt. He could not breathe without pain, and though he tried to laugh, he was deadly pale in the wan candlelight. "Don't mind me. I'm all right," he said when Victoria and Saidee began tearing up their Arab veils for bandages. "Not worth the bother!" But the sisters would not listen, and Victoria told him with pretended cheerfulness what a good nurse she was; how she had learned "first aid" at the school at Potterston, and taken a prize for efficiency. In spite of his protest, Nevill was made to lie down on the blankets in the corner, while the two sisters played doctor; and as the firing of the Arabs slackened, Stephen left the twins to guard door and window, while he and Rostafel built a screen to serve when the breaking of the roof should begin. The only furniture left in the dining-room consisted of one large table (which Stephen had not added to the barricade because he had thought of this contingency) and in addition a rough unpainted cupboard, fastened to the wall. They tore off the doors of this cupboard, and with them and the table made a kind of penthouse to protect the corner where Nevill lay. "Now," said Stephen, "if they dig a hole in the roof they'll find----" "Flag o' truce, sir," announced Hamish at the door. And Stephen remembered that for three minutes at least there had been no firing. As he worked at the screen, he had hardly noticed the silence. He hurried to join Hamish at the door, and, peeping out, saw a tall man, with a bloodstained bandage wrapped round his head, advancing from the other side of the barricade, with a white handkerchief hanging from the barrel of his rifle. It was Maïeddine, and somehow Stephen was glad that the Arab's death did not lie at his door. His anger had cooled, now, and he wondered at the murderous rage which had passed. As Maïeddine came forward, fearlessly, he limped in spite of an effort to hide the fact that he was almost disabled. "I have to say that, if the ladies are given up to us, no harm shall come to them or to the others," he announced in French, in a clear, loud voice. "We will take the women with us, and leave the men to go their own way. We will even provide them with animals in place of those we have killed, that they may ride to the north." "Do not believe him!" cried Saidee. "Traitors once, they'll be traitors again. If Victoria and I should consent to go with them, to save all your lives, they wouldn't spare you really. As soon as we were in their hands, they'd burn the house or blow it up." "There can be no question of our allowing you to go, in any case," said Stephen. "Our answer is," he replied to Maïeddine, "that the ladies prefer to remain with us, and we expect to be able to protect them." "Then all will die together, except one, who is my promised wife," returned the Arab. "Tell that one that by coming with me she can save her sister, whom she once seemed to love more than herself, more than all the world. If she stays, not only will her eyes behold the death of the men who failed to guard her, but the death of her sister. One who has a right to decide the lady's fate, has decided that she must die in punishment of her obstinacy, unless she gives herself up." "Tell Si Maïeddine that before he or the marabout can come near us, we shall be dead," Victoria said, in a low voice. "I know Saidee and I can trust you," she went on, "to shoot us both straight through the heart rather than they should take us. That's what you wish, too, isn't it, Saidee?" "Yes--yes, if I have courage or heart enough to wish anything," her sister faltered. But Stephen could not or would not give that message to Maïeddine. "Go," he said, the fire of his old rage flaming again. "Go, you Arab dog!" Forgetting the flag of truce in his fury at the insult, Maïeddine lifted his rifle and fired; then, remembering that he had sinned against a code of honour he respected, he stood still, waiting for an answering shot, as if he and his rival were engaged in a strange duel. But Stephen did not shoot, and with a quick word forbade the others to fire. Then Maïeddine moved away slowly and was lost to sight behind the barricade. As he disappeared, a candle which Victoria had placed near Nevill's couch on the floor, flickered and dropped its wick in a pool of grease. There was only one other left, and the lamp had been forgotten in the kitchen: but already the early dawn was drinking the starlight. It was three o'clock, and soon it would be day. For some minutes there was no more firing. Stillness had fallen in the quadrangle. There was no sound except the faint moaning of some wounded animal that lived and suffered. Then came a pounding on the roof, not in one, but in two or three places. It was as if men worked furiously, with pickaxes; and somehow Stephen was sure that Maïeddine, despite his wounds, was among them. He would wish to be the first to see Victoria's face, to save her from death, perhaps, and keep her for himself. Still, Stephen was glad he had not killed the Arab, and he felt, though they said nothing of it to each other, that Victoria, too, was glad. They must have help soon now, if it were to come in time. The knocking on the roof was loud. "How long before they can break through?" Victoria asked, leaving Nevill to come to Stephen, who guarded the door. "Well, there are several layers of thick adobe," he said, cheerfully. "Will it be ten minutes?" "Oh, more than that. Much more than that," Stephen assured her. "Please tell me what you truly think. I have a reason for asking. Will it be half an hour?" "At least that," he said, with a tone of grave sincerity which she no longer doubted. "Half an hour. And then----" "Even then we can keep you safe for a little while, behind the screen. And help may come." "Have you given up hope, in your heart?" "No. One doesn't give up hope." "I feel the same. I never give up hope. And yet--we may have to die, all of us, and for myself, I'm not afraid, only very solemn, for death must be wonderful. But for you--to have you give your life for ours----" "I would give it joyfully, a hundred times for you." "I know. And I for you. That's one thing I wanted to tell you, in case--we never have a chance to speak to each other again. That, and just this beside: one reason I'm not afraid, is because I'm with you. If I die, or live, I shall be with you. And whichever it's to be, I shall find it sweet. One will be the same as the other, really, for death's only a new life." "And I have something to tell you," Stephen said. "I worship you, and to have known you, has made it worth while to have existed, though I haven't always been happy. Why, just this moment alone is worth all the rest of my life. So come what may, I have lived." The pounding on the roof grew louder. The sound of the picks with which the men worked could be heard more clearly. They were rapidly getting through those layers of adobe, of whose thickness Stephen had spoken. "It won't be half an hour now," Victoria murmured, looking up. "No. Promise me you'll go to your sister and Nevill Caird behind the screen, when I tell you." "I promise, if----" The pounding ceased. In the courtyard there was a certain confusion--the sound of running feet, and murmur of excited voices, though eyes that looked through the holes in the door and window could not see past the barricade. Then, suddenly, the pounding began again, more furiously than ever. It was as if demons had taken the place of men. "It is Maïeddine, I'm sure!" cried Victoria. "I seem to know what is in his mind. Something has made him desperate." "There's a chance for us," said Stephen. "What I believe has happened, is this. They must have stationed a sentinel or two outside the bordj in case of surprise. The raised voices we heard, and the stopping of the work on the roof for a minute, may have meant that a sentinel ran in with news--good news for us, bad news for the Arabs." "But--would they have begun to work again, if soldiers were coming?" "Yes, if help were so far off that the Arabs might hope to reach us before it came, and get away in time. Ben Halim's one hope is to make an end of--some of us. It was well enough to disguise the whole band as Touaregs, in case they were seen by nomads, or the landlord here should escape, and tell of the attack. But he'd risk anything to silence us men, and----" "He cares nothing for Saidee's life or mine. It's only Maïeddine who cares," the girl broke in. "I suppose they've horses and meharis waiting for them outside the bordj?" "Yes. Probably they're being got ready now. The animals have had a night's rest." As he spoke, the first bit of ceiling fell in, rough plaster dropping with a patter like rain on the hard clay floor. Saidee cried out faintly in her corner, where Nevill had fallen into semi-unconsciousness behind the screen. Rostafel grumbled a "sapriste!" under his breath, but the Highlanders were silent. Down poured more plaster, and put out the last candle. Though a faint dawn-light stole through the holes in door and window, the room was dim, almost dark, and with the smell of gunpowder mingled the stench of hot tallow. "Go now, dearest, to your sister," Stephen said to the girl, in a low voice that was for her alone. "You will come?" "Yes. Soon. But the door and window must be guarded. We can't have them breaking in two ways at once." "Give me your hand," she said. He took one of hers, instead, but she raised his to her lips and kissed it. Then she went back to her sister, and the two clung together in silence, listening to the patter of broken adobe on the floor. At first it was but as a heavy shower of rain; then it increased in violence like the rattle of hail. They could hear men speaking on the roof, and a gleam of daylight silvered a crack, as Stephen looked up, a finger on the trigger of his revolver. "Five minutes more," were the words which repeated themselves in his mind, like the ticking of a watch. "Four minutes. Three. Can I keep my promise to her, when the time comes!" A shout broke the question short, like a snapped thread. He remembered the voice of the marabout, and knew that the sisters must recognize it also. "What does he say?" Stephen called across the room to Victoria, speaking loudly to be heard over voices which answered the summons, whatever it might be. "He's ordering Maïeddine to come down from the roof. He says five seconds' delay and it will be too late--they'll both be ruined. I can't hear what Maïeddine answers. But he goes on working still--he won't obey." "Fool--traitor! For thy sentimental folly wilt thou sacrifice thy people's future and ruin my son and me?" Cassim shouted, as the girl stood still to listen. "Thou canst never have her now. Stay, and thou canst do naught but kill thyself. Come, and we may all be saved. I command thee, in the name of Allah and His Prophet, that thou obey me." The pounding stopped. There was a rushing, sliding sound on the roof. Then all was quiet above and in the courtyard. Saidee broke into hysterical sobbing, crying that they were rescued, that Honoré Sabine was on his way to save them. And Victoria thought that Stephen would come to her, but he did not. They were to live, not to die, and the barrier that had been broken down was raised again. * * * * * * * "What if it's only a trap?" Saidee asked, as Stephen opened the door. "What if they're behind the barricade, watching?" "Listen! Don't you hear shots?" Victoria cried. "Yes. There are shots--far away," Stephen answered. "That settles it. There's no ambush. Either Sabine or the soldiers marching from Azzouz are after them. They didn't go an instant too soon to save their skins." "And ours," murmured Nevill, roused from his stupor. "Queer, how natural it seems that we should be all right after all." Then his mind wandered a little, leading him back to a feverish dream. "Ask Sabine, when he comes--if he's got a letter for me--from Josette." Stephen opened the door, and let in the fresh air and morning light, but the sight in the quadrangle was too ugly for the eyes of women. "Don't come out!" he called sharply over his shoulder as he turned past the barricade, with Rostafel at his back. The courtyard was hideous as a slaughter-house. Only the sky of rose and gold reminded him of the world's beauty and the glory of morning, after that dark nightmare which wrapped his spirit like the choking folds of a black snake. Outside the broken gate, in the desert, there were more traces of the night's work; blood-stains in the sand, and in a shadowy hollow here and there a huddled form which seemed a denser shadow. But it would not move when other shadows crept away before the sun. Far in the distance, as Stephen strained his eyes through the brightening dawn, he saw flying figures of men on camels and horses; and sounds of shooting came faintly to his ears. At last it ceased altogether. Some of the figures had vanished. Others halted. Then it seemed to Stephen that these last were coming back, towards the bordj. They were riding fast, and all together, as if under discipline. Soldiers, certainly: but were they from the north or south? Stephen could not tell; but as his eyes searched the horizon, the doubt was solved. Another party of men were riding southward, toward Toudja, from the north. "It's Sabine who has chased the Arabs. The others are just too late," he thought. And he saw that the rescuers from Oued Tolga must reach the bordj half an hour in advance of the men from Azzouz. He was anxious to know what news Sabine had, and the eagerness he felt to hear details soothed the pain and shame which weighed upon his heart. "How am I to explain--to beg her forgiveness?" was the question that asked itself in his mind; but he had no answer to give. Only this he could see: after last night, he was hers, if she would take him. But he believed that she would send him away, that she would despise him when she had heard the whole story of his entanglement. She would say that he belonged to the other woman, not to her. And though he was sure she would not reproach him, he thought there were some words, some looks which, if she could not forget, it would be hard for even her sweet nature to forgive. He went back to the dining-room with the news of what he had seen. And as there was no longer any need of protection for the women, the Highlanders came out with him and Rostafel. All four stood at the gate of the bordj as the party of twelve soldiers rode up, on tired horses; but Stephen was in advance, and it was he who answered Sabine's first breathless question. "She's safe. They're both safe, thank God. So are we all, except poor Caird, who's damaged a good deal worse than any of us. But not dangerously, I hope." "I brought our surgeon," said Sabine, eagerly. "He wanted to be in this with me. I had to ask for the command, because you know I'm on special duty at Tolga. But I had no trouble with Major Duprez when I told him how friends of mine were attacked by Arab robbers, and how I had got the message." "So that's what you told him?" "Yes. I didn't want a scandal in the Zaouïa, for _her_ sake. Nobody knows that the marabout is for anything in this business. But, of course, if you've killed him----" "We haven't. He's got clear away. Unless your men have nabbed him and his friend Maïeddine." "Not we. I'm not sure I cared to--unless we could kill him. But we did honestly try--to do both. There were six we chased----" "Only six. Then we must have polished off more than we thought." "We can find out later how many. But the last six didn't get off without a scratch, I assure you. They must have had a sentinel watching. We saw no one, but as we were hoping to surprise the bordj these six men, who looked from a distance like Touaregs, rushed out, mounted horses and camels and dashed away, striking westward." "They dared not go north. I'd been signalling----" "From the broken tower?" "Yes. As you came, you must have sighted the men from Azzouz. But tell me the rest." "There's little to tell, and I want your news more than you can want mine. The Arabs' animals were fresh, and ours tired, for I'd given them no rest. The brutes had a good start of us and made the best of it, but at first I thought we were gaining. We got within gunshot, and fired after them. Two at least were hit. We came on traces of fresh blood afterward, but the birds themselves were flown. In any case, it was to bring help I came, not to make captures. Do you think _she_ would like me to see her now?" "Come with me and try, before the other rescue party arrives. I'm glad the surgeon's with you. I'm worried about Caird, and we're all a bit dilapidated. How we're to get him and the ladies away from this place, I don't know. Our animals are dead or dying." "You will probably find that the enemy has been generous in spite of himself and left you some--all that couldn't be taken away. Strange how those men looked like Touaregs! You are sure of what they really were?" "Sure. But since no one else knows, why should the secret leak out? Better for the ladies if the Touareg disguise should hide the truth, as it was meant to do." "Why not indeed? Since we weren't lucky enough to rid his wife--and the world of the marabout." "Then we're agreed: unless something happens to change our minds, we were attacked by Touaregs." Sabine smiled grimly. "Duprez bet," he answered, "that I should find they were not Arabs, but Touaregs. He will enjoy saying 'I told you so.'" * * * * * * * That night, and for many nights to come, there was wailing in the Zaouïa. The marabout had gone out to meet his son, who had been away from school on a pilgrimage, and returning at dark, to avoid the great heat of the day, had been bitten by a viper. Thus, at least, pronounced the learned Arab physician. It was of the viper bite he died, so it was said, and no one outside the Zaouïa knew of the great man's death until days afterwards, when he was already buried. Even in the Zaouïa it was not known by many that he had gone away or returned from a journey, or that he lay ill. In spite of this secrecy and mystery, however, there was no gossip, but only wild wailing, of mourners who refused to be comforted. And if certain persons, to the number of twenty or more, were missing from their places in the Zaouïa, nothing was said, after Si Maïeddine had talked with the holy men of the mosque. If these missing ones were away, and even if they should never come back, it was because they were needed to carry out the marabout's wishes, at a vast distance. But now, the dearest wishes of Sidi Mohammed would never be fulfilled. That poignant knowledge was a knife in every man's heart; for men of ripe age or wisdom in the Zaouïa knew what these wishes were, and how some day they were to have come true through blood and fire. All were sad, though no tongue spoke of any other reason for sadness, except the inestimable loss of the Saint. And sadder than the saddest was Si Maïeddine, who seemed to have lost his youth. LII It is a long cry from the bordj of Toudja among the dunes of the southern desert, to Algiers, yet Nevill begged that he might be taken home. "You know why," he said to Stephen, and his eyes explained, if Stephen needed explanations. Nevill thought there might be some chance of seeing Josette in Algiers, if he were dying. But the army surgeon from Oued Tolga pronounced it unsafe to take him so far. Yet away from Toudja he must go, since it was impossible to care for him properly there, and the bullet which had wounded him was still in his side. Fortunately the enemy had left plenty of camels. They had untethered all, hoping that the animals might wander away, too far to be caught by the Europeans, but more than were needed remained in the neighbourhood of Toudja, and Rostafel took possession of half a dozen good meharis, which would help recoup him for his losses in the bordj. Not one animal had any mark upon it which could identify the attackers, and saddles and accoutrements were of Touareg make. The dead men, too, were impossible to identify, and it was not likely that much trouble would be taken in prosecuting inquiries. Among those whose duty it is to govern Algeria, there is a proverb which, for various good reasons, has come to be much esteemed: "Let sleeping dogs lie." Not a man of the five who defended the bordj but had at least one wound to show for his night's work. Always, however, it is those who attack, in a short siege, who suffer most; and the Europeans were not proud of the many corpses they had to their credit. There was some patching for the surgeon to do for all, but Nevill's was the only serious case. The French doctor, De Vigne, did not try to hide the truth from the wounded man's friend; there was danger. The best thing would have been to get Nevill to Algiers, but since that was impossible, he must travel in a bassour, by easy stages, to Touggourt. Instead of two days' journey they must make it three, or more if necessary, and he--De Vigne--would go with them to put his patient into the hands of the army surgeon at Touggourt. They had only the one bassour; that in which Saidee and Victoria had come to Toudja from Oued Tolga, but Nevill was delirious more often than not, and had no idea that a sacrifice was being made for him. Blankets, and two of the mattresses least damaged by fire in the barricade, were fastened on to camels for the ladies, after the fashion in use for Bedouin women of the poorest class, or Ouled Naïls who have not yet made their fortune as dancers; and so the journey began again. There was never a time during the three days it lasted, for Stephen to confess to Victoria. Possibly she did not wish him to take advantage of a situation created as if by accident at Toudja. Or perhaps she thought, now that the common danger which had drawn them together, was over, it would be best to wait until anxiety for Nevill had passed, before talking of their own affairs. At Azzouz, where they passed a night full of suffering for Nevill, they had news of the marabout's death. It came by telegraph to the operator, just before the party was ready to start on; yet Saidee was sure that Sabine had caused it to be sent just at that time. He had been obliged to march back with his men--the penalty of commanding the force for which he had asked; but a letter would surely come to Touggourt, and Saidee could imagine all that it would say. She had no regrets for Ben Halim, and said frankly to Victoria that it was difficult not to be indecently glad of her freedom. At last she had waked up from a black dream of horror, and now that it was over, it hardly seemed real. "I shall forget," she said. "I shall put my whole soul to forgetting everything that's happened to me in the last ten years, and every one I've known in the south--except one. But to have met him and to have him love me, I'd live it all over again--all." She kept Victoria with her continually, and in the physical weakness and nervous excitement which followed the strain she had gone through, she seemed to have forgotten her interest in Victoria's affairs. She did not know that her sister and Stephen had talked of love, for at Toudja after the fight began she had thought of nothing but the danger they shared. Altogether, everything combined to delay explanations between Stephen and Victoria. He tried to regret this, yet could not be as sorry as he was repentant. It was not quite heaven, but it was almost paradise to have her near him, though they had a chance for only a few words occasionally, within earshot of Saidee, or De Vigne, or the twins, who watched over Nevill like two well-trained nurses. She loved him, since a word from her meant more than vows from other women. Nothing had happened yet to disturb her love, so these few days belonged to Stephen. He could not feel that he had stolen them. At Touggourt he would find a time and place to speak, and then it would be over forever. But one joy he had, which never could have come to him, if it had not been for the peril at Toudja. They knew each other's hearts. Nothing could change that. One day, no doubt, she would learn to care for some other man, but perhaps never quite in the same way she had cared for him, because Stephen was sure that this was her first love. And though she might be happy in another love--he tried to hope it, but did not succeed sincerely--he would always have it to remember, until the day of his death, that once she had loved him. As far out from Touggourt as Temacin, Lady MacGregor came to meet them, in a ramshackle carriage, filled with rugs and pillows in case Nevill wished to change. But he was not in a state to wish for anything, and De Vigne decided for him. He was to go on in the bassour, to the villa which had been let to Lady MacGregor by an officer of the garrison. It was there the little Mohammed was to have been kept and guarded by the Highlanders, if the great scheme had not been suddenly changed in some of its details. Now, the child had inherited his father's high place. Already the news had reached the marabout of Temacin, and flashed on to Touggourt. But no one suspected that the viper which had bitten the Saint had taken the form of a French bullet. Perhaps, had all been known to the Government, it would have seemed poetical justice that the arch plotter had met his death thus. But his plots had died with him; and if Islam mourned because the Moul Saa they hoped for had been snatched from them, they mourned in secret. For above other sects and nations, Islam knows how to be silent. When they were settled in the villa near the oasis (Saidee and Victoria too, for they needed no urging to wait till it was known whether Nevill Caird would live or die) Lady MacGregor said with her usual briskness to Stephen: "Of course I've telegraphed to that _creature_." Stephen looked at her blankly. "That hard-hearted little beast, Josette Soubise," the fairy aunt explained. Stephen could hardly help laughing, though he had seldom felt less merry. But that the tiny Lady MacGregor should refer to tall Josette, who was nearly twice her height, as a "little beast," struck him as somewhat funny. Besides, her toy-terrier snappishness was comic. "I've nothing _against_ the girl," Lady MacGregor felt it right to go on, "except that she's an idiot to bite off her nose to spite her own face--and Nevill's too. I don't approve of her at all as a wife for him, you must understand. Nevill could marry a _princess_, and she's nothing but a little school-teacher with a dimple or two, whose mother and father were less than _nobody_. Still, as Nevill wants her, she might have the grace to show appreciation of the honour, by not spoiling his life. He's never been the same since he went and fell in love with her, and she refused him." "You've telegraphed to Tlemcen that Nevill is ill?" Stephen ventured. "I've telegraphed to the creature that she'd better come here at once, if she wants to see him alive," replied Lady MacGregor. "I suppose she loves him in her French-Algerian way, and she must have saved up enough money for the fare. Anyhow, if Nevill doesn't live, I happen to know he's left her nearly everything, except what the poor boy imagines I ought to have. That's pouring coals of fire on her head!" "Don't think of his not living!" exclaimed Stephen. "Honestly I believe he won't live unless that idiot of a girl comes and purrs and promises to marry him, deathbed or no deathbed." Again Stephen smiled faintly. "You're a matchmaker, Lady MacGregor," he said. "You are one of the most subtle persons I ever saw." The old lady took this as a compliment. "I haven't lived among Arabs, goodness knows how many years, for nothing," she retorted. "I telegraphed for her about five minutes after you wired from Azzouz. In fact, my telegram went back by the boy who brought yours." "She may be here day after to-morrow, if she started at once," Stephen reflected aloud. "She did, and she will," said Lady MacGregor, drily. "You've heard?" "The day I wired." "You have quite a nice way of breaking things to people, you dear little ladyship," said Stephen. And for some reason which he could not in the least understand, this speech caused Nevill's aunt to break into tears. That evening, the two surgeons extracted the bullet from Nevill's side. Afterwards, he was extremely weak, and took as little interest as possible in things, until Stephen was allowed to speak to him for a moment. Most men, if told that they had just sixty seconds to spend at the bedside of a dear friend, would have been at a loss what to say in a space of time so small yet valuable. But Stephen knew what he wished to say, and said it, as soon as Nevill let him speak; but Nevill began first. "Maybe--going to--deserve name of Wings," he muttered. "Shouldn't wonder. Don't care much." "Is there any one thing in this world you want above everything else?" asked Stephen. "Yes. Sight of--Josette. One thing I--can't have." "Yes, you can," said Stephen quietly. "She's coming. She started the minute she heard you were ill, and she'll be in Touggourt day after to-morrow." "You're not--pulling my leg?" "To do that would be very injurious. But I thought good news would be better than medicine." "Thank you, Legs. You're a great doctor," was all that Nevill answered. But his temperature began to go down within the hour. "He'll get the girl, of course," remarked Lady MacGregor, when Stephen told her. "That is, if he lives." "He will live, with this hope to buoy him up," said Stephen. "And she can't hold out against him for a minute when she sees him as he is. Indeed, I rather fancy she's been in a mood to change her mind this last month." "Why this last month?" "Oh, I think she misunderstood Nevill's interest in Miss Ray, and that helped her to understand herself. When she finds out that it's for her he still cares, not some one else, she'll do anything he asks." Afterwards it proved that he was right. The day after the arrival at Touggourt, the house in its garden near the oasis was very quiet. The Arab servants, whom Lady MacGregor had taken with the place, moved silently, and for Nevill's sake voices were lowered. There was a brooding stillness of summer heat over the one little patch of flowery peace and perfumed shade in the midst of the fierce golden desert. Yet to the five members of the oddly assembled family it was as if the atmosphere tingled with electricity. There was a curious, even oppressive sense of suspense, of waiting for something to happen. They did not speak of this feeling, yet they could see it in each other's eyes, if they dare to look. It was with them as with people who wait to hear a clock begin striking an hour which will bring news of some great change in their lives, for good or evil. The tension increased as the day went on; still, no one had said to another, "What is there so strange about to-day? Do you feel it? Is it only our imagination--a reaction after strain, or is it that a presentiment of something to happen hangs over us?" Stephen had not yet had any talk with Victoria. They had seen each other alone for scarcely more than a moment since the night at Toudja; but now that Nevill was better, and the surgeons said that if all went well, danger was past, it seemed to Stephen that the hour had come. After they had lunched in the dim, cool dining-room, and Lady MacGregor had proposed a siesta for all sensible people, Stephen stopped the girl on her way upstairs as she followed her sister. "May I talk to you for a little while this afternoon?" he asked. Voice and eyes were wistful, and Victoria wondered why, because she was so happy that she felt as if life had been set to music. She had hoped that he would be happy too, when Nevill's danger was over, and he had time to think of himself--perhaps, too, of her. "Yes," she said, "let's talk in the garden, when it's cooler. I love being in gardens, don't you? Everything that happens seems more beautiful." Stephen remembered how lovely he had thought her in the lily garden at Algiers. He was almost glad that they were not to have this talk there; for the memory of it was too perfect to mar with sadness. "I'm going to put Saidee to sleep," she went on. "You may laugh, but truly I can. When I was a little girl, she used to like me to stroke her hair if her head ached, and she would always fall asleep. And once she's asleep I shan't dare move, or she'll wake up. She has such happy dreams now, and they're sure to come true. Shall I come to you about half-past five?" "I'll be waiting," said Stephen. It was the usual garden of a villa in the neighbourhood of a desert town, but Stephen had never seen one like it, except that of the Caïd, in Bou-Saada. There were the rounded paths of hard sand, the colour of pinkish gold in the dappling shadows of date palms and magnolias, and there were rills of running water that whispered and gurgled as they bathed the dark roots of the trees. No grass grew in the garden, and the flowers were not planted in beds or borders. Plants and trees sprang out of the sand, and such flowers as there were--roses, and pomegranate blossoms, hibiscus, and passion flowers--climbed, and rambled, and pushed, and hung in heavy drapery, as best they could without attention or guidance. But one of the principal paths led to a kind of arbour, or temple, where long ago palms had been planted in a ring, and had formed a high green dome, through which, even at noon, the light filtered as if through a dome of emerald. Underneath, the pavement of gold was hard and smooth, and in the centre whispered a tiny fountain ornamented with old Algerian tiles. It trickled rather than played, but its delicate music was soothing and sweet as a murmured lullaby; and from the shaded seat beside it there was a glimpse between tree trunks of the burning desert gold. On this wooden seat by the fountain Stephen waited for Victoria, and saw her coming to him, along the straight path that led to the round point. She wore a white dress which Lady MacGregor had brought her, and as she walked, the embroidery of light and shadow made it look like lace of a lovely pattern. She stopped on the way, and, gathering a red rose with a long stem, slipped it into her belt. It looked like a spot of blood over her heart, as if a sword had been driven in and drawn out. Stephen could not bear to see it there. It was like a symbol of the wound that he was waiting to inflict. She came to him smiling, looking very young, like a child who expects happiness. "Have I kept you waiting long?" she asked. Her blue eyes, with the shadow of the trees darkening them, had a wonderful colour, almost purple. A desperate longing to take her in his arms swept over Stephen like a wave. He drew in his breath sharply and shut his teeth. He could not answer. Hardly knowing what he did, he held out his hands, and very quietly and sweetly she laid hers in them. "Don't trust me--don't be kind to me," he said, crushing her hands for an instant, then putting them away. She looked up in surprise, as he stood by the fountain, very tall and pale, and suddenly rather grim, it seemed to her, his expression out of tune with the peace of the garden and the mood in which she had come. "What is the matter?" she asked, simply. "Everything. I hardly know how to begin to tell you. Yet I must. Perhaps you'll think I shouldn't have waited till now. But there's been no chance--at least, I----" "No, there's been no chance for us to talk, or even to think very much about ourselves," Victoria tried to reassure him. "Begin just as you like. Whatever you say, whatever you have to tell, I won't misunderstand." "First of all, then," Stephen said, "you know I love you. Only you don't know how much. I couldn't tell you that, any more than I could tell how much water there is in the ocean. I didn't know myself that it was possible to love like this, and such a love might turn the world into heaven. But because I am what I am, and because I've done what I have done, it's making mine hell. Wait--you said you wouldn't misunderstand! The man who loves you ought to offer some sort of spiritual gold and diamonds, but I've got only a life half spoiled to offer you, if you'll take it. And before I can even ask you to take it, I'll have to explain how it's spoiled." Victoria did not speak, but still looked at him with that look of an expectant, anxious child, which made him long to snatch her up and turn his back forever on the world where there was a Margot Lorenzi, and gossiping people, and newspapers. But he had to go on. "There's a woman," he said, "who--perhaps she cares for me--I don't know. Anyhow, she'd suffered through our family. I felt sorry for her. I--I suppose I admired her. She's handsome--or people think so. I can hardly tell how it came about, but I--asked her to marry me, and she said yes. That was--late last winter--or the beginning of spring. Then she had to go to Canada, where she'd been brought up--her father died in England, a few months ago, and her mother, when she was a child; but she had friends she wanted to see, before--before she married. So she went, and I came to Algiers, to visit Nevill. Good heavens, how banal it sounds! How--how different from the way I feel! There aren't words--I don't see how to make you understand, without being a cad. But I must tell you that I didn't love her, even at first. It was a wish--a foolish, mistaken wish, I see now--and I saw long ago, the moment it was too late--to make up for things. She was unhappy, and--no, I give it up! I can't explain. But it doesn't change things between us--you and me. I'm yours, body and soul. If you can forgive me for--for trying to make you care, when I had no right--if, after knowing the truth, you'll take me as I am, I----" "Do you mean, you'd break off your engagement?" Perhaps it was partly the effect of the green shadows, but the girl looked very pale. Except for her eyes and hair, and the red rose that was like a wound over her heart, there was no colour about her. "Yes, I would. And I believe it would be right to break it," Stephen said, forcefully. "It's abominable to marry some one you don't love, and a crime if you love some one else." "But you must have cared for her once," said Victoria. "Oh, cared! I cared in a way, as a man cares for a pretty woman who's had very hard luck. You see--her father made a fight for a title that's in our family, and claimed the right to it. He lost his case, and his money was spent. Then he killed himself, and his daughter was left alone, without a penny and hardly any friends----" "Poor, poor girl! I don't wonder you were sorry for her--so sorry that you thought your pity was love. You couldn't throw her over now, you know in your heart you couldn't. It would be cruel." "I thought I couldn't, till I met you," Stephen answered frankly. "Since then, I've thought--no, I haven't exactly thought. I've only felt. That night at Toudja, I knew it would be worse than death to have to keep my word to her. I wouldn't have been sorry if they'd killed me then, after you said--that is, after I had the memory of a moment or two of happiness to take to the next world." "Ah, that's because I let you see I loved you," Victoria explained softly, and a little shyly. "I told you I wouldn't misunderstand, and I don't. Just for a minute I was hurt--my heart felt sick, because I couldn't bear to think--to think less highly of you. But it was only for a minute. Then I began to understand--so well! And I think you are even better than I thought before--more generous, and chivalrous. You were sorry for _her_ in those days of her trouble, and then you were engaged, and you meant to marry her and make her happy. But at Toudja I showed you what was in my heart--even now I'm not ashamed that I did, because I knew you cared for me." "I worshipped you, only less than I do now," Stephen broke in. "Every day I love you more--and will to the end of my life. You can't send me away. You can't send me to another woman." "I can, for my sake and yours both, because if I kept you, feeling that I was wronging some one, neither of us could be happy. But I want you to know I understand that you have _me_ to be sorry for now, as well as her, and that you're torn between us both, hardly seeing which way honour lies. I'm sure you would have kept true to her, if you hadn't hated to make me unhappy. And instead of needing to forgive you, I will ask you to forgive me, for making things harder." "You've given me the only real happiness I've ever known since I was a boy," Stephen said. "If that's true--and it must be, since you say it--neither of us is to be pitied. I shall be happy always because you loved me enough to be made happy by my love. And you must be happy because you've done right, and made me love you more. I don't think there'll be any harm in our not trying to forget, do you?" "I could as easily forget to breathe." "So could I. Ever since the first night I met you, you have seemed different to me from any other man I ever knew, except an ideal man who used to live in the back of my mind. Soon, that man and you grew to be one. You wouldn't have me separate you from him, would you?" "If you mean that you'll separate me from your ideal unless I marry Margot Lorenzi, then divide me from that cold perfection forever. I'm not cold, and I'm far from perfect. But I can't feel it a decent thing for a man to marry one woman, promising to love and cherish her, if his whole being belongs to another. Even you can't----" "I used to believe it wrong to marry a person one didn't love," Victoria broke in, quickly. "But it's so different when one talks of an imaginary case. This poor girl loves you?" "I suppose she thinks she does." "She's poor?" "Yes." "And she depends upon you." "Of course she counts on me. I always expected to keep my word." "And now you'd break it--for me! Oh, no, I couldn't let you do it. Were you--does she expect to be married soon?" Stephen's face grew red, as if it had been struck. "Yes," he answered, in a low voice. "Would you mind--telling me how soon?" "As soon as she gets back from Canada." Victoria's bosom rose and fell quickly. "Oh!--and when----" "At once. Almost at once." "She's coming back immediately?" "Yes. I--I'm afraid she's in England now." "How dreadful! Poor girl, hoping to see you--to have you meet her, maybe, and--you're here. You're planning to break her heart. It breaks mine to think of it. I _couldn't_ have you fail." "For God's sake don't send me away from you. I can't go. I won't." "Yes, if I beg you to go. And I do. You must stand by this poor girl, alone in the world except for you. I see from what you tell me, that she needs you and appeals to your chivalry by lacking everything except what comes from you. It can't be wrong to protect her, after giving your promise, even though you mayn't love her in the way you once thought you did: but it _would_ be wrong to abandon her now----" A rustling in the long path made Stephen turn. Some one was coming. It was Margot Lorenzi. He could not believe that it was really she, and stared stupidly, thinking the figure he saw an optical illusion. She had on a grey travelling dress, and a grey hat trimmed with black ribbon, which, Stephen noted idly, was powdered with dust. Her black hair was dusty, too, and her face slightly flushed with heat, nevertheless she was beautiful, with the luscious beauty of those women who make a strong physical appeal to men. Behind her was an Arab servant, whom she had passed in her eagerness. He looked somewhat troubled, but seeing Stephen he threw up his hands in apology, throwing off all responsibility. Then he turned and went back towards the house. Margot, too, had seen Stephen. Her eyes flashed from him to the figure of the girl, which she saw in profile. She did not speak, but walked faster; and Victoria, realizing that their talk was to be interrupted by somebody, looked round, expecting Lady MacGregor or Saidee. "It is Miss Lorenzi," Stephen said, in a low voice. "I don't know how--or why--she has come here. But for your sake--it will be better if you go now, at once, and let me talk to her." There was another path by which Victoria could reach the house. She might have gone, thinking that Stephen knew best, and that she had no more right than wish to stay, but the tall young woman in grey began to walk very fast, when she saw that the girl with Stephen was going. "Be kind enough to stop where you are, Miss Ray. I know you must be Miss Ray," Margot called out in a loud, sharp voice. She spoke as if Victoria were an inferior, whom she had a right to command. Surprised and hurt by the tone, the girl hesitated, looking from the newcomer to Stephen. At first glance and at a little distance, she had thought the young woman perfectly beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful creature she had ever seen--even more glorious than Saidee. But when Miss Lorenzi came nearer, undisguisedly angry and excited, the best part of her beauty was gone, wiped away, as a face in a picture may be smeared before the paint is dry. Her features were faultless, her hair and eyes magnificent. Her dress was pretty, and exquisitely made, if too elaborate for desert travelling; her figure charming, though some day it would be too stout; yet in spite of all she looked common and cruel. The thought that Stephen Knight had doomed himself to marry this woman made Victoria shiver, as if she had heard him condemned to imprisonment for life. She had thought before seeing Miss Lorenzi that she understood the situation, and how it had come about. She had said to Stephen, "I understand." Now, it seemed to her that she had boasted in a silly, childish way. She had not understood. She had not begun to understand. Suddenly the girl felt very old and experienced, and miserably wise in the ways of the world. It was as if in some other incarnation she had known women like this, and their influence over men: how, if they tried, they could beguile chivalrous men into being sorry for them, and doing almost anything which they wished to be done. A little while ago Victoria had been thinking and speaking of Margot Lorenzi as "poor girl," and urging Stephen to be true to her for his own sake as well as hers. But now, in a moment, everything had changed. A strange flash of soul-lightning had shown her the real Margot, unworthy of Stephen at her best, crushing to his individuality and aspirations at her worst. Victoria did not know what to think, what to do. In place of the sad and lonely girl she had pictured, here stood a woman already selfish and heartless, who might become cruel and terrible. No one had ever looked at Victoria Ray as Miss Lorenzi was looking now, not even Miluda, the Ouled Naïl, who had stared her out of countenance, curiously and maliciously at the same time. "I have heard a great deal about Miss Ray in Algiers," Margot went on. "And I think--you will _both_ understand why I made this long, tiresome journey to Touggourt." "There is no reason why Miss Ray should understand," said Stephen quickly. "It can't concern her in the least. On your own account it would have been better if you had waited for me in London. But it's too late to think of that now. I will go with you into the house." "No," Margot answered. "Not yet. And you're not to put on such a tone with me--as if I'd done something wrong. I haven't! We're engaged, and I have a perfect right to come here, and find out what you've been doing while I was at the other side of the world. You promised to meet me at Liverpool--and instead, you were here--with _her_. You never even sent me word. Yet you're surprised that I came on to Algiers. Of course, when I was _there_, I heard everything--or what I didn't hear, I guessed. You hadn't bothered to hide your tracks. I don't suppose you so much as thought of me--poor me, who went to Canada for your sake really. Yes! I'll tell you why I went now. I was afraid if I didn't go, a man who was in love with me there--he's in love with me now and always will be, for that matter!--would come and kill you. He used to threaten that he'd shoot any one I might marry, if I dared throw him over; and he's the kind who keeps his word. So I didn't want to throw him over. I went myself, and stayed in his mother's house, and argued and pleaded with him, till he'd promised to be good and let me be happy. So you see--the journey was for you--to save you. I didn't want to see him again for myself, though _his_ is real love. You're cold as ice. I don't believe you know what love is. But all the same I can't be jilted by you--for another woman. I won't have it, Stephen--after all I've gone through. If you try to break your solemn word to me, I'll sue you. There'll be another case that will drag your name before the public again, and not only yours----" "Be still, Margot," said Stephen. She grew deadly pale. "I will not be still," she panted. "I _will_ have justice. No one shall take you away from me." "No one wishes to take me away," Stephen flung at her hotly. "Miss Ray has just refused me. You've spared me the trouble of taking her advice----" "What was it?" Margot looked suddenly anxious, and at the same time self-assertive. "That I should go at once to England--and to you." Victoria took a step forward, then paused, pale and trembling. "Oh, Stephen!" she cried. "I take back that advice. I--I've changed my mind. You can't--you can't do it. You would be so miserable that she'd be wretched, too. I see now, it's not right to urge people to do things, especially when--one only _thinks_ one understands. She doesn't love you really. I feel almost sure she cares more for some one else, if--if it were not for things you have, which she wants. If you're rich, as I suppose you must be, don't make this sacrifice, which would crush your soul, but give her half of all you have in the world, so that she can be happy in her own way, and set you free gladly." As Victoria said these things, she remembered M'Barka, and the prophecy of the sand; a sudden decision to be made in an instant, which would change her whole life. "I'll gladly give Miss Lorenzi more than half my money," said Stephen. "I should be happy to think she had it. But even if you begged me to marry her, Victoria, I would not now. It's gone beyond that. Her ways and mine must be separate forever." Margot's face grew eager, and her eyes flamed. "What I want and insist on," she said, "is that I must have my rights. After all I've hoped for and expected, I _won't_ be thrown over, and go back to the old, dull life of turning and twisting every shilling. If you'll settle thirty thousand pounds on me, you are free, so far as I care. I wouldn't marry a man who hated me, when there's one who adores me as if I were a saint--and I like him better than ever I did you--a lot better. I realize that more than I did before." The suggestion of Margot Lorenzi as a saint might have made a looker-on smile, but Victoria and Stephen passed it by, scarcely hearing. "If I give you thirty thousand pounds, it will leave me a poor man," he said. "Oh, _do_ give her the money and be a poor man," Victoria implored. "I shall be so happy if we are poor--a thousand times happier than she could be with millions." Stephen caught the hand that half unconsciously the girl held out to him, and pressed it hard. "If you will go back to your hotel now," he said to Margot, in a quiet voice, "I will call on you there almost at once, and we can settle our business affairs. I promise that you shall be satisfied." Margot looked at them both for a few seconds, without speaking. "I'll go, and send a telegram to Montreal which will make somebody there happier than any other man in Canada," she answered. "And I'll expect you in an hour." When she had gone, they forgot her. "Do you really mean, when you say we--_we_ shall be happy poor, that you'll marry me in spite of all?" Stephen asked. "Oh, yes, if you want me still," Victoria said. "Does a man want Heaven!" He took her in his arms and held her close, closer than he had held her the night at Toudja, when he had thought that death might soon part them. "You've brought me up out of the depths." "Not I," the girl said. "Your star." "Your star. You gave me half yours." "Now I give it to you all," she told him. "And all myself, too. Oh, isn't it wonderful to be so happy--in the light of our star--and to know that the others we love will be happy, too--my Saidee, and your Mr. Caird----" "Yes," Stephen answered. "But just at this moment I can't think much about any one except ourselves, not even your sister and my best friend. You fill the universe for me." "It's filled with love--and it _is_ love," said Victoria. "The music is sweeter for us, though, because we know it's sweet for others. I _couldn't_ let her spoil your life, Stephen." "My life!" he echoed. "I didn't know what life was or might be till this moment. Now I know." "Now we both know," she finished. THE END TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Page and line numbers in these notes refer to the original printed text. Obvious punctuation corrections have been applied silently where applicable. As much as possible, the original spelling in the book has been preserved. The authors commonly use different hyphenation for several words throughout (for example, "note-book" on page 283, line 9, as opposed to "notebook" on page 285, line 16). There are mixes of English, American, and French spelling. The spelling of some names that appear only once or twice is ambiguous (for example, "Cheikh" on page 55, line 27, and "Cheik" on page 143, line 5). In cases like these, the text has been left as in the printed version. The following appear to be typographical errors and have been corrected in this text. Page 40, line 20: "Christo" (Cristo). Page 62, line 1: "dribge" (bridge). Page 77, line 4: "hautes" (hauts). Page 92, line 20: "filagree" (filigree). Page 99, line 9: "ècole" (école). Page 184, line 8: "khol" (kohl). Page 217, line 1: "Michèlet" (Michélet). Page 235, line 16: "Neville's" (Nevill's). Page 235, line 34: "Neville" (Nevill). Page 425, line 26: "massage" (message). Page 430, line 11: "usuper" (usurper).