Pierre Benoît

“ Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh waved his hand impatiently.
"Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh knows that," he said. "He knows what the Tanezruft is. He who has traveled over all the Sahara knows that he would shudder at crossing the Tanezruft and the Tassili from the south. He knows that the camels that wander into that country either die or become wild, for no one will risk his life to go look for them. It is the terror that hangs over that region that may save you. For you have to choose: you must run the risk of dying of thirst on the tracks of the Tanezruft or have your throat cut along some other route. ”

“ Of a sudden I seized Morhange by the arm. The grayish thing was alive. A pitiful long neck emerged from it with the heartrending cry of a beast in despair.
"The fool," I cried, "he has let one of our beasts get loose, and the stream is carrying it away!"
"You are mistaken," said Morhange. "Our camels are all in the cave. The one Bou-Djema is running after is not ours. And the cry of anguish we just heard, that was not Bou-Djema either. Bou-Djema is a brave Chaamb who has at this moment only one idea, to appropriate the intestate capital represented by this camel in the stream." ”

“ When the train had crossed the Aller the country became more undulating. Foaming in its basaltic bed appeared the winding river Melna which joins the Aller some forty miles below Lautenburg. I was nearing my destination.
The sky was dull and grey. The town, clinging to the slopes of a hill in a bend of the Melna, had a certain resemblance to Pau, or, rather, Saint-Gaudens, thanks to its red-brick houses. Crowning all, in a distant clump of trees, I saw an old tower. The Castle, I thought.
Like a horse with its head for home the train put on steam. ”

“ And vengeance is due Antinea."
"Vengeance?" said Morhange, who had regained his self-possession. "For what, I beg to ask? What have the lieutenant and I done to Atlantis? How have we incurred her hatred?"
"It is an old quarrel, a very old quarrel," the Professor replied gravely. "A quarrel which long antedates you, M. Morhange."
"Explain yourself, I beg of you, Professor."
"You are Man. She is a Woman," said the dreamy voice of M. Le Mesge. "The whole matter lies there."
"Really, sir, I do not see ... we do not see." ”

“ There were lapwings, black and white, like magpies, which rise up swiftly with their croaking cry and then swoop wildly to earth to dodge your shot.
There were plovers, handsomest of birds, in their golden spring raiment.
And, last and best, there was snipe, queen of the marshes, and the finest and hardest of shots; the jack snipe, smaller than a lark, which has blue and green stripes; the common snipe, which is about the size of a quail, and amazingly timid, and the great snipe, rarest of all, which is as big as a partridge. ”

“ It is Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, our Targa guide, the man who in three days is to lead us across the unknown plateaus of the mysterious Imoschaoch, across the hamadas of black stones, the great dried oases, the stretches of silver salt, the tawny hillocks, the flat gold dunes that are crested over, when the "alizé" blows, with a shimmering haze of pale sand.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh! He is the man. There recurs to my mind Duveyrier's tragic phrase, "At the very moment the Colonel was putting his foot in the stirrup he was felled by a sabre blow." [2] Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh! ”

“ Two large panelled chambers on the first floor, in the northern wing of the castle, opposite the great court. The room in which I usually worked looked out on the terrace. Through the open window I could see the dark sea of foliage in a tawny sunlight. An overwhelming silence reigned.
The other, less melancholy, had two windows looking out on the ravine where the Melna plunged and roared, and beyond that the Königsplatz, the barracks of the 182nd Regiment and the Cathedral, a garish eyesore. A white trail of smoke floated on two shining bars—the Hanover express which had brought me. ”

“ She has never been obliged to regain her self-mastery, for she never has lost it. She is the only woman who has been able to disassociate those two inextricable things, love and voluptuousness."
M. Le Mesge paused a moment and then went on.
"Once every day, she comes to this vault. She stops before the niches; she meditates before the rigid statues; she touches the cold bosoms, so burning when she knew them. Then, after dreaming before the empty niche where the next victim soon will sleep his eternal sleep in a cold case of orichalch, she returns nonchalantly where he is waiting for her." ”

“ It was not yet five o'clock when I reached the La Meilleraie bridge. That hour's respite seemed to me an eternity of bliss. Never had earth seemed so fair and life so dear as in those moments which I thought might very well be my last.
I knew that Hagen was one of the finest swordsmen in the garrison. He was also a crack pistol shot, while I—well, my education had been confined to firing off two, perhaps three, dozen cartridges with a revolver during my training periods as an officer of the reserve. ”

“ I could not restrain a cry of delight.
I was standing on a kind of balcony, cut into the flank of a mountain, overhanging an abyss. Above me, blue sky; below appeared a veritable earthly paradise hemmed in on all sides by mountains that formed a continuous and impassable wall about it. A garden lay spread out down there. The palm trees gently swayed their great fronds. At their feet was a tangle of the smaller trees which grow in an oasis under their protection: almonds, lemons, oranges, and many others which I could not distinguish from that height. ”

“ When I opened my eyes again the Grand Duchess was standing by me. In the light of the tall candles soft flickering shadows passed over her face. She put her hand on my forehead and murmured with a sweet, sad smile:
"You are tired out. Go to bed, dear friend, poor friend, whom I once doubted."
Oh, human frailty! Sleep swept me off that night, a night I could have spent entirely alone with her amidst the suggestive scent of funeral wreaths in the very presence of death, from which anything can be expected. I slept in Melusine von Graffenfried's room. ”

“ The heavy splendor of the Pharaohs weighted down her slender body. On her head was the great gold pschent of Egyptian gods and kings; emeralds, the national stone of the Tuareg, were set in it, tracing and retracing her name in Tifinar characters. A red satin schenti, embroidered in golden lotus, enveloped her like the casket of a jewel. At her feet, lay an ebony scepter, headed with a trident. Her bare arms were encircled by two serpents whose fangs touched her armpits as if to bury themselves there. From the ear pieces of the pschent streamed a necklace of emeralds ”

“ There had been a great storm on a certain July evening which Aurora's pleasure doomed me to spend alone. Through the window, open to the lowering night sky, I heard the trees dripping. I was working in an extremely half-hearted manner, my mind straying from the tragedy of the Herrenhausen to the lands whither the Tumene princess's story had wafted me. Indeed, it was a piece of pure luck that thrust before my eyes the supremely important document of which I must now speak. ”

“ Evil days may be in store for you, but what does that matter? For one day you will see Gâo gleaming on the horizon, no longer a servile Gâo reduced to the rank of a little Negro town, but the splendid Gâo of other days, the great capital of the country of the blacks, Gâo reborn, with its mosque of seven towers and fourteen cupolas of turquoise, with its houses with cool courts, its fountains, its watered gardens, all blooming with great red and white flowers.... ”

“ Why, the queen of your dreams is even further from you than from that little red Hussar with his elegant indolence, rank, and a coat-of-arms to back him....
I got to work and gradually found that the dust of the library chased away my envy, hatred and regret. I accustomed myself to the idea that I should never set foot in the left wing of the palace. I liked to think that she dawdled out life there with her Melusine, and that I was never made for such a place. I deliberately intended to take away from my visit to Lautenburg everything I thought could help or amuse me. ”

“ At the far end of the parade-ground the Royal Stand was all ready for the next day's review. The Hanover Strasse, the finest street in Lautenburg, was thronged with people, who were walking up and down on the pavements, as if impelled by some mechanical device. At a given moment the barracks poured out a stream of uniforms. The red tunics of the Lautenburg Hussars blended with the blue of the Detmold Dragoons and the dark jackets of the infantrymen. ”

“ And, furthermore, I may as well admit that I rather liked the turn that our trip was beginning to take. I had, at that instant, the sensation of journeying toward something incredible, toward some tremendous adventure. You do not live with impunity for months and years as the guest of the desert. Sooner or later, it has its way with you, annihilates the good officer, the timid executive, overthrows his solicitude for his responsibilities. What is there behind those mysterious rocks, those dim solitudes, which have held at bay the most illustrious pursuers of mystery? ”

“ I am fighting for my liberty, which is more to me than life. Besides, whatever happens, I am the Grand Duchess of Lautenburg, and, more than that, a Tumene Princess. Behind me there is the Czar and all the Russias. They would think twice in my case; but you, dear friend! Think of Cyrus Beck. Think of Melusine. Why, for what would you sacrifice yourself?"
There was such intensity of reproach in the look I gave her that proud and haughty sovereign though she was, she hung her head. ”

“ In no time at all, I was stretched out on an inclined marble table.
The Negro began to massage me vigorously.
"More gently there, fellow!"
My masseur did not reply, but laughed and rubbed still harder.
"Where do you come from? Kanem? Torkou? You laugh too much for a Targa."
Unbroken silence. The Negro was as speechless as he was hilarious.
"After all, I am making a fool of myself," I said, giving up the case. "Such as he is, he is more agreeable than Le Mesge with his nightmarish erudition. But, on my word, what a recruit he would be for Hamman on the rue des Mathurins!"
"Cigarette, sidi?" ”

“ It was an orichalch ring, exactly like that which Antinea had given me the previous day and the one which she herself wore.
Morhange smiled.
"Well?" I said.
"Well?"
"You have seen her?"
"I have indeed," Morhange replied.
"She is beautiful, is she not?"
"It would be difficult to dispute that," my comrade answered. "I even believe that I can say that she is as intelligent as she is beautiful."
There was a pause. Morhange was calmly fingering the orichalch ring.
"You know what our fate is to be?"
"I know. Le Mesge explained it to us yesterday in polite mythological terms. ”

“ These fashionable women and young men of the world who flittered round me under the lights reminded me of the cold passages of the Sorbonne and Henri Martin's fresco of Anatole France, dressed as an explorer in a landscape dotted with flowers, explaining to a dozen ill-dressed young graduates his personal conception of human destiny.
There is the true conception of life, I thought, gazing admiringly at Clotilde, who was pinning the mauve and green bouquet to her white fur. ”

“ I was filled with emotion at this last moment; I went to the Targa and took his hand.
"Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh," I asked in a low voice, "why are you doing this?"
He stepped back and I saw his dark eyes gleam.
"Why?" he said.
"Yes, why?"
He replied with dignity:
"The Prophet permits every just man, once in his lifetime, to let pity take the place of duty. Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh is turning this permission to the advantage of one who saved his life."
"And you are not afraid," I asked, "that I will disclose the secret of Antinea if I return among Frenchmen?" He shook his head. ”

“ The Court of the Elector was a den of debauch, a garbage-heap on which Sophie-Dorothea, fair lily, was slowly fading. Betrayed by a husband whom she had ever despised, compelled to tolerate, as gracefully as she could, the virago Countess von Platen, the abject favourite of Ernest-Augustus, she spent her weary life in solitude, preoccupied solely with the education of her two children—a son who was destined for the throne of England, and a daughter who was one day to be Queen of Prussia.
Then Königsmark arrived at Hanover and the drama opened. ”

“ False witnesses to a freedom of spirit, one in face of the other. What more accessible in appearance than the immense Sahara, open to all those who are willing to be engulfed by it? Yet what is more secret? After six months of companionship, of communion of life such as only a Post in the South offers, I ask myself if the most extraordinary of my adventures is not to be leaving to-morrow, toward unsounded solitudes, with a man whose real thoughts are as unknown to me as these same solitudes, for which he has succeeded in making me long. ”

“ I was rather late for lunch, and found Professor Cyrus Beck in the thick of a dispute with Kessel. The latter obviously enjoyed teasing the old savant, who had a poor sense of humour and was purple with indignation.
My mind was far too full to pay any attention to what they were saying. I had a vague idea that the professor was explaining that chemistry in the next war would play a more important part than any other arm, and that he, Cyrus Beck, was on the high road to a discovery which would enable an ordinary laboratory and a few retorts to annihilate a whole army corps. ”

“ It cost us a pint of water to help her digestion. We gave it with good grace, for we were happy. Tanit-Zerga did not say so, but her joy at knowing that I was thinking no more of the woman in the gold diadem and the emeralds was apparent. And really, during those days, I hardly thought of her. I thought only of the torrid heat to be avoided, of the water skins which, if you wished to drink fresh water, had to be left for an hour in a cleft in the rocks; of the intense joy which seized you when you raised to your lips a leather goblet brimming with that life-saving water.... ”

“ Long have I hesitated to give back to Life the legacy left me by Death. But at last, reflecting that Lieutenant Vignerte and She whom he loved have vanished into the eternal shades, I have decided that there is no longer any reason to keep silence about the tragic events staged in the German court of Lautenburg-Detmold in the months immediately preceding the Great War. ”

“ M. Le Mesge shrugged his shoulders.
"It is a human forehead," he affirmed curtly, "and not bronze. Bronze is darker, sir. This is the great unknown metal of which Plato speaks in the Critias, and which is something between gold and silver: it is the special metal of the mountains of the Atlantides. It is orichalch."
Bending again, I satisfied myself that this metal was the same as that with which the walls of the library were overcast.
"It is orichalch," continued M. Le Mesge. "You look as if you had no idea how a human body can look like a statue of orichalch. ”

“ I told you that at Lautenburg you will have a magnificent library at your disposal. The librarian, Professor Cyrus Beck—whom I have met occasionally at various conferences—is a jealous guardian, but he is also a man of learning. I have no doubt that you will be allowed the use of the books and manuscripts which do not bear directly on the great work—the history of the theories of the transmutation of metals—on which he is engaged. You may know, perhaps, that I am myself writing a book on manners and customs at the Court of Hanover at the end of the seventeenth century. ”

“ Stay if you wish, if you are afraid. I am going. I want to see Gâo once again, Gâo with its blue gum-trees and its green water."
I felt myself blushing.
"I will go, Tanit-Zerga. I would rather die of thirst in the midst of the desert than stay here. Let us start."
"Tut!" she said. "Not yet."
She showed me that the dizzy descent was in brilliant moonlight.
"Not yet. We must wait. They would see us. In an hour, the moon will have circled behind the mountain. That will be the time."
She sat silent, her haik wrapped completely about her dark little figure. Was she praying? Perhaps. ”

“ He's a strong man, a very strong man!"
"What is it?" I asked in terror.
To our right a huge red glare lit up the night sky. Half the castle was on fire.
Against that background of flame the yews of the park stood out like black cones. The water in the Persephone fountain gleamed black and red.
"But who could have told him that we should come tonight?" said the Grand Duchess. "Only three of us knew: I, you and ... she."
For a few seconds we gazed at the tragic scene. Then noises began to be heard in the palace, startled from its first sleep.
"Come," said Aurora, "let's go and see." ”

“ When we had come up even with it we saw that it was a man in the long dark blue robes of the Tuareg.
"Give me your hand," said Morhange, "and brace yourself against a rock, hard."
He was very, very strong. In an instant, as if it were child's play, he had brought the body ashore.
"He is still alive," he pronounced with satisfaction. "Now it is a question of getting him to the grotto. This is no place to resuscitate a drowned man."
He raised the body in his powerful arms.
"It is astonishing how little he weighs for a man of his height." ”

“ I have already spoken of Major Count Albert von Kessel, of the 11th Prussian Artillery Regiment, stationed at Königsberg. He passed out top of the Kriegs Academie at Berlin, and is undoubtedly one of the best officers in the German Army. He's an officer to his finger-tips, and although devoted body and soul to his profession, displays only the inevitable minimum of that impossible Prussian arrogance. He always treated me with the most perfect courtesy, and I have nothing but praise for the advice he gave me and the influence he had over Duke Joachim. ”

“ Tanit-Zerga paused.
"That was the last night of Gâo. While I was sleeping and the moon was still high above the forest, a dog yelped, but only for an instant. Then came the cry of men, then of women, the kind of cry that you can never forget if you have once heard it. When the sun rose, it found me, quite naked, running and stumbling towards the north with my little companions, beside the swiftly moving camels of the Tuareg who escorted us. Behind, followed the women of the tribe, my mother among them, two by two, the yoke upon their necks. There were not many men. ”

“ There was so much sorrowful dignity in his voice that I was utterly overcome.
"Sir," I murmured, "I promise you ..."
He held out his hand.
"I don't need promises, monsieur. I know you now, and am certain that you will do everything you can to help the Grand Duchess. There is no better way of justifying my confidence in you. The task will not be always easy, I fear. A woman, especially when she has been stricken by the death of a man she loves, does not preserve that balance of mind of which we men are so proud. ”

“ They did not hear me, but, turning in my saddle, I saw that they had lost no distance, Morhange following me, and Bou-Djema in the rear driving the two baggage camels masterfully before him.
A blinding streak of lightning rent the obscurity. A peal of thunder, re-echoed to infinity by the rocky wall, rang out, and immediately great tepid drops began to fall. In an instant, our burnouses, which had been blown out behind by the speed with which we were traveling, were stuck tight to our streaming bodies. ”

“ When an orderly officer had informed General von Offenburg of the Grand Duchess's presence he came forward at once. He was a fine figure of a man, in his long grey cloak with the scarlet collar. He bowed to Aurora and reminded her that he had once had the honour of dancing with her in Berlin. But with all his efforts he could barely conceal his astonishment at our presence at that hour and in such a guise.
"Don't be too much surprised, General," said Aurora, with a smile. "As soon as I heard of the great events in prospect in this quarter I felt I could not remain at Lautenburg. ”

“ The night ends, but then comes the most terrible hour of all. You are perishing of thirst and shaking with cold. All the fatigue comes back at once. The horrible breeze which precedes the dawn is no comfort. Quite the contrary. Every time you stumble, you say, "The next misstep will be the last."
That is what people feel and say even when they know that in a few hours they will have a good rest with food and water.
I was suffering terribly. Every step jolted my poor shoulder. At one time, I wanted to stop, to sit down. Then I looked at Tanit-Zerga. ”