IX
ATLANTIS
M. Le Mesge looked at Morhange triumphantly. It was evident that he addressed himself exclusively to Morhange, considering him alone worthy of his confidences.
"There have been many, sir," he said, "both French and foreign officers who have been brought here at the caprice of our sovereign, Antinea. You are the first to be honored by my disclosures. But you were the pupil of Berlioux, and I owe so much to the memory of that great man that it seems to me I may do him homage by imparting to one of his disciples the unique results of my private research."
He struck the bell. Ferradji appeared.
"Coffee for these gentlemen," ordered M. Le Mesge.
He handed us a box, gorgeously decorated in the most flaming colors, full of Egyptian cigarettes.
"I never smoke," he explained. "But Antinea sometimes comes here. These are her cigarettes. Help yourselves, gentlemen."
I have always had a horror of that pale tobacco which gives a barber of the Rue de la Michodière the illusion of oriental voluptuousness. But, in their way, these musk-scented cigarettes were not bad, and it was a long time since I had used up my stock of Caporal.
"Here are the back numbers of Le Vie Parisienne" said M. Le Mesge to me. "Amuse yourself with them, if you like, while I talk to your friend."
"Sir," I replied brusquely, "it is true that I never studied with Berlioux. Nevertheless, you must allow me to listen to your conversation: I shall hope to find something in it to amuse me."
"As you wish," said the little old man.
We settled ourselves comfortably. M. Le Mesge sat down before the desk, shot his cuffs, and commenced as follows:
"However much, gentlemen, I prize complete objectivity in matters of erudition, I cannot utterly detach my own history from that of the last descendant of Clito and Neptune.
"I am the creation of my own efforts. From my childhood, the prodigious impulse given to the science of history by the nineteenth century has affected me. I saw where my way led. I have followed it, in spite of everything.
"In spite of everything, everything—I mean it literally. With no other resources than my own work and merit, I was received as Fellow of History and Geography at the examination of 1880. A great examination! Among the thirteen who were accepted there were names which have since become illustrious: Julian, Bourgeois, Auerbach.... I do not envy my colleagues on the summits of their official honors; I read their works with commiseration; and the pitiful errors to which they are condemned by the insufficiency of their documents would amply counterbalance my chagrin and fill me with ironic joy, had I not been raised long since above the satisfaction of self-love.
"When I was Professor at the Lycée du Parc at Lyons. I knew Berlioux and followed eagerly his works on African History. I had, at that time, a very original idea for my doctor's thesis. I was going to establish a parallel between the Berber heroine of the seventh century, who struggled against the Arab invader, Kahena, and the French heroine, Joan of Arc, who struggled against the English invader. I proposed to the Faculté des Lettres at Paris this title for my thesis: Joan of Arc and the Tuareg. This simple announcement gave rise to a perfect outcry in learned circles, a furor of ridicule. My friends warned me discreetly. I refused to believe them. Finally I was forced to believe when my rector summoned me before him and, after manifesting an astonishing interest in my health, asked whether I should object to taking two years' leave on half pay. I refused indignantly. The rector did not insist; but fifteen days later, a ministerial decree, with no other legal procedure, assigned me to one of the most insignificant and remote Lycées of France, at Mont-de-Marsan.
"Realize my exasperation and you will excuse the excesses to which I delivered myself in that strange country. What is there to do in Landes, if you neither eat nor drink? I did both violently. My pay melted away in fois gras, in woodcocks, in fine wines. The result came quickly enough: in less than a year my joints began to crack like the over-oiled axle of a bicycle that has gone a long way upon a dusty track. A sharp attack of gout nailed me to my bed. Fortunately, in that blessed country, the cure is in reach of the suffering. So I departed to Dax, at vacation time, to try the waters.
"I rented a room on the bank of the Adour, overlooking the Promenade des Baignots. A charwoman took care of it for me. She worked also for an old gentleman, a retired Examining Magistrate, President of the Roger-Ducos Society, which was a vague scientific backwater, in which the scholars of the neighborhood applied themselves with prodigious incompetence to the most whimsical subjects. One afternoon I stayed in my room on account of a very heavy rain. The good woman was energetically polishing the copper latch of my door. She used a paste called Tripoli, which she spread upon a paper and rubbed and rubbed.... The peculiar appearance of the paper made me curious. I glanced at it. 'Great heavens! Where did you get this paper?' She was perturbed. 'At my master's; he has lots of it. I tore this out of a notebook.' 'Here are ten francs. Go and get me the notebook.'
"A quarter of an hour later, she was back with it. By good luck it lacked only one page, the one with which she had been polishing my door. This manuscript, this notebook, have you any idea what it was? Merely the Voyage to Atlantis of the mythologist Denis de Milet, which is mentioned by Diodorus and the loss of which I had so often heard Berlioux deplore.[10]
"This inestimable document contained numerous quotations from the Critias. It gave an abstract of the illustrious dialogue, the sole existing copy of which you held in your hands a little while ago. It established past controversy the location of the stronghold of the Atlantides, and demonstrated that this site, which is denied by science, was not submerged by the waves, as is supposed by the rare and timorous defenders of the Atlantide hypothesis. He called it the 'central Mazycian range,' You know there is no longer any doubt as to the identification of the Mazyces of Herodotus with the people of Imoschaoch, the Tuareg. But the manuscript of Denys unquestionably identifies the historical Mazyces with the Atlantides of the supposed legend.
"I learned, therefore, from Denys, not only that the central part of Atlantis, the cradle and home of the dynasty of Neptune, had not sunk in the disaster described by Plato as engulfing the rest of the Atlantide isle, but also that it corresponded to the Tuareg Ahaggar, and that, in this Ahaggar, at least in his time, the noble dynasty of Neptune was supposed to be still existent.
"The historians of Atlantis put the date of the cataclysm which destroyed all or part of that famous country at nine thousand years before Christ. If Denis de Milet, who wrote scarcely three thousand years ago, believed that in his time, the dynastic issue of Neptune was still ruling its dominion, you will understand that I thought immediately—what has lasted nine thousand years may last eleven thousand. From that instant I had only one aim: to find the possible descendants of the Atlantides, and, since I had many reasons for supposing them to be debased and ignorant of their original splendor, to inform them of their illustrious descent.
"You will easily understand that I imparted none of my intentions to my superiors at the University. To solicit their approval or even their permission, considering the attitude they had taken toward me, would have been almost certainly to invite confinement in a cell. So I raised what I could on my own account, and departed without trumpet or drum for Oran. On the first of October I reached In-Salah. Stretched at my ease beneath a palm tree, at the oasis, I took infinite pleasure in considering how, that very day, the principal of Mont-de-Marsan, beside himself, struggling to control twenty horrible urchins howling before the door of an empty class room, would be telegraphing wildly in all directions in search of his lost history professor."
M. Le Mesge stopped and looked at us to mark his satisfaction.
I admit that I forgot my dignity and I forgot the affectation he had steadily assumed of talking only to Morhange.
"You will pardon me, sir, if your discourse interests me more than I had anticipated. But you know very well that I lack the fundamental instruction necessary to understand you. You speak of the dynasty of Neptune. What is this dynasty, from which, I believe, you trace the descent of Antinea? What is her rôle in the story of Atlantis?"
M. Le Mesge smiled with condescension, meantime winking at Morhange with the eye nearest to him. Morhange was listening without expression, without a word, chin in hand, elbow on knee.
"Plato will answer for me, sir," said the Professor.
And he added, with an accent of inexpressible pity:
"Is it really possible that you have never made the acquaintance of the introduction to the Critias?"
He placed on the table the book by which Morhange had been so strangely moved. He adjusted his spectacles and began to read. It seemed as if the magic of Plato vibrated through and transfigured this ridiculous little old man.
"'Having drawn by lot the different parts of the earth, the gods obtained, some a larger, and some, a smaller share. It was thus that Neptune, having received in the division the isle of Atlantis, came to place the children he had had by a mortal in one part of that isle. It was not far from the sea, a plain situated in the midst of the isle, the most beautiful, and, they say, the most fertile of plains. About fifty stades from that plain, in the middle of the isle, was a mountain. There dwelt one of those men who, in the very beginning, was born of the Earth, Evenor, with his wife, Leucippe. They had only one daughter, Clito. She was marriageable when her mother and father died, and Neptune, being enamored of her, married her. Neptune fortified the mountain where she dwelt by isolating it. He made alternate girdles of sea and land, the one smaller, the others greater, two of earth and three of water, and centered them round the isle in such a manner that they were at all parts equally distant!..."
M. Le Mesge broke off his reading.
"Does this arrangement recall nothing to you?" he queried.
"Morhange, Morhange!" I stammered. "You remember—our route yesterday, our abduction, the two corridors that we had to cross before arriving at this mountain?... The girdles of earth and of water?... Two tunnels, two enclosures of earth?"
"Ha! Ha!" chuckled M. Le Mesge.
He smiled as he looked at me. I understood that this smile meant: "Can he be less obtuse than I had supposed?"
As if with a mighty effort, Morhange broke the silence.
"I understand well enough, I understand.... The three girdles of water.... But then, you are supposing, sir,—an explanation the ingeniousness of which I do not contest—you are supposing the exact hypothesis of the Saharan sea!"
"I suppose it, and I can prove it," replied the irascible little old chap, banging his fist on the table. "I know well enough what Schirmer and the rest have advanced against it. I know it better than you do. I know all about it, sir. I can present all the proofs for your consideration. And in the meantime, this evening at dinner, you will no doubt enjoy some excellent fish. And you will tell me if these fish, caught in the lake that you can see from this window, seem to you fresh water fish.
"You must realize," he continued, "the mistake of those who, believing in Atlantis, have sought to explain the cataclysm in which they suppose the island to have sunk. Without exception, they have thought that it was swallowed up. Actually, there has not been an immersion. There has been an emersion. New lands have emerged from the Atlantic wave. The desert has replaced the sea, the sebkhas, the salt lakes, the Triton lakes, the sandy Syrtes are the desolate vestiges of the free sea water over which, in former days, the fleets swept with a fair wind towards the conquest of Attica. Sand swallows up civilization better than water. To-day there remains nothing of the beautiful isle that the sea and winds kept gay and verdant but this chalky mass. Nothing has endured in this rocky basin, cut off forever from the living world, but the marvelous oasis that you have at your feet, these red fruits, this cascade, this blue lake, sacred witnesses to the golden age that is gone. Last evening, in coming here, you had to cross the five enclosures: the three belts of water, dry forever; the two girdles of earth through which are hollowed the passages you traversed on camel back, where, formerly, the triremes floated. The only thing that, in this immense catastrophe, has preserved its likeness to its former state, is this mountain, the mountain where Neptune shut up his well-beloved Clito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, the mother of Atlas, and the ancestress of Antinea, the sovereign under whose dominion you are about to enter forever."
"Sir," Morhange with the most exquisite courtesy, "it would be only a natural anxiety which would urge us to inquire the reasons and the end of this dominion. But behold to what extent your revelation interests me; I defer this question of private interest. Of late, in two caverns, it has been my fortune to discover Tifinar inscriptions of this name, Antinea. My comrade is witness that I took it for a Greek name. I understand now, thanks to you and the divine Plato, that I need no longer feel surprised to hear a barbarian called by a Greek name. But I am no less perplexed as to the etymology of the word. Can you enlighten me?"
"I shall certainly not fail you there, sir," said M. Le Mesge. "I may tell you, too, that you are not the first to put to me that question. Most of the explorers that I have seen enter here in the past ten years have been attracted in the same way, intrigued by this Greek work reproduced in Tifinar. I have even arranged a fairly exact catalogue of these inscriptions and the caverns where they are to be met with. All, or almost all, are accompanied by this legend: Antinea. Here commences her domain. I myself have had repainted with ochre such as were beginning to be effaced. But, to return to what I was telling you before, none of the Europeans who have followed this epigraphic mystery here, have kept their anxiety to solve this etymology once they found themselves in Antinea's palace. They all become otherwise preoccupied. I might make many disclosures as to the little real importance which purely scientific interests possess even for scholars, and the quickness with which they sacrifice them to the most mundane considerations—their own lives, for instance."
"Let us take that up another time, sir, if it is satisfactory to you," said Morhange, always admirably polite.
"This digression had only one point, sir: to show you that I do not count you among these unworthy scholars. You are really eager to know the origin of this name, Antinea, and that before knowing what kind of woman it belongs to and her motives for holding you and this gentleman as her prisoners."
I stared hard at the little old man. But he spoke with profound seriousness.
"So much the better for you, my boy," I thought. "Otherwise it wouldn't have taken me long to send you through the window to air your ironies at your ease. The law of gravity ought not to be topsy-turvy here at Ahaggar."
"You, no doubt, formulated several hypotheses when you first encountered the name, Antinea," continued M. Le Mesge, imperturbable under my fixed gaze, addressing himself to Morhange. "Would you object to repeating them to me?"
"Not at all, sir," said Morhange.
And, very composedly, he enumerated the etymological suggestions I have given previously.
The little man with the cherry-colored shirt front rubbed his hands.
"Very good," he admitted with an accent of intense jubilation. "Amazingly good, at least for one with only the modicum of Greek that you possess. But it is all none the less false, super-false."
"It is because I suspected as much that I put my question to you," said Morhange blandly.
"I will not keep you longer in suspense," said M. Le Mesge. "The word, Antinea, is composed as follows: ti is nothing but a Tifinar addition to an essentially Greek name. Ti is the Berber feminine article. We have several examples of this combination. Take Tipasa, the North African town. The name means the whole, from ti and from . So, tinea signifies the new, from ti and from ."
"And the prefix, an?" queried Morhang.
"Is it possible, sir, that I have put myself to the trouble of talking to you for a solid hour about the Critias with such trifling effect? It is certain that the prefix an, alone, has no meaning. You will understand that it has one, when I tell you that we have here a very curious case of apocope. You must not read an; you must read atlan. Atl has been lost, by apocope; an has survived. To sum up, Antinea is composed in the following manner: — . And its meaning, the new Atlantis, is dazzlingly apparent from this demonstration."
I looked at Morhange. His astonishment was without bounds. The Berber prefix ti had literally stunned him.
"Have you had occasion, sir, to verify this very ingenious etymology?" he was finally able to gasp out.
"You have only to glance over these few books," said M. Le Mesge disdainfully.
He opened successively five, ten, twenty cupboards. An enormous library was spread out to our view.
"Everything, everything—it is all here," murmured Morhange, with an astonishing inflection of terror and admiration.
"Everything that is worth consulting, at any rate," said M. Le Mesge. "All the great books, whose loss the so-called learned world deplores to-day."
"And how has it happened?"
"Sir, you distress me. I thought you familiar with certain events. You are forgetting, then, the passage where Pliny the Elder speaks of the library of Carthage and the treasures which were accumulated there? In 146, when that city fell under the blows of the knave, Scipio, the incredible collection of illiterates who bore the name of the Roman Senate had only the profoundest contempt for these riches. They presented them to the native kings. This is how Mantabal received this priceless heritage; it was transmitted to his son and grandson, Hiempsal, Juba I, Juba II, the husband of the admirable Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of the great Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Cleopatra Selene had a daughter who married an Atlantide king. This is how Antinea, the daughter of Neptune, counts among her ancestors the immortal queen of Egypt. That is how, by following the laws of inheritance, the remains of the library of Carthage, enriched by the remnants of the library of Alexandria, are actually before your eyes.
"Science fled from man. While he was building those monstrous Babels of pseudo-science in Berlin, London, Paris, Science was taking refuge in this desert corner of Ahaggar. They may well forge their hypotheses back there, based on the loss of the mysterious works of antiquity: these works are not lost. They are here. They are here: the Hebrew, the Chaldean, the Assyrian books. Here, the great Egyptian traditions which inspired Solon, Herodotus and Plato. Here, the Greek mythologists, the magicians of Roman Africa, the Indian mystics, all the treasures, in a word, for the lack of which contemporary dissertations are poor laughable things. Believe me, he is well avenged, the little universitarian whom they took for a madman, whom they defied. I have lived, I live, I shall live in a perpetual burst of laughter at their false and garbled erudition. And when I shall be dead, Error,—thanks to the jealous precaution of Neptune taken to isolate his well-beloved Clito from the rest of the world,—Error, I say, will continue to reign as sovereign mistress over their pitiful compositions."
"Sir," said Morhange in grave voice, "you have just affirmed the influence of Egypt on the civilizations of the people here. For reasons which some day, perhaps, I shall have occasion to explain to you, I would like to have proof of that relationship."
"We need not wait for that, sir," said M. Le Mesge. Then, in my turn, I advanced.
"Two words, if you please, sir," I said brutally. "I will not hide from you that these historical discussions seem to me absolutely out of place. It is not my fault if you have had trouble with the University, and if you are not to-day at the College of France or elsewhere. For the moment, just one thing concerns me: to know just what this lady, Antinea, wants with us. My comrade would like to know her relation with ancient Egypt: very well. For my part, I desire above everything to know her relations with the government of Algeria and the Arabian Bureau."
M. Le Mesge gave a strident laugh.
"I am going to give you an answer that will satisfy you both," he replied.
And he added:
"Follow me. It is time that you should learn."
X
THE RED MARBLE HALL
We passed through an interminable series of stairs and corridors following M. Le Mesge.
"You lose all sense of direction in this labyrinth," I muttered to Morhange.
"Worse still, you will lose your head," answered my companion sotto voce. "This old fool is certainly very learned; but God knows what he is driving at. However, he has promised that we are soon to know."
M. Le Mesge had stopped before a heavy dark door, all incrusted with strange symbols. Turning the lock with difficulty, he opened it.
"Enter, gentlemen, I beg you," he said.
A gust of cold air struck us full in the face. The room we were entering was chill as a vault.
At first, the darkness allowed me to form no idea of its proportions. The lighting, purposely subdued, consisted of twelve enormous copper lamps, placed column-like upon the ground and burning with brilliant red flames. As we entered, the wind from the corridor made the flames flicker, momentarily casting about us our own enlarged and misshapen shadows. Then the gust died down, and the flames, no longer flurried, again licked up the darkness with their motionless red tongues.
These twelve giant lamps (each one about ten feet high) were arranged in a kind of crown, the diameter of which must have been about fifty feet. In the center of this circle was a dark mass, all streaked with trembling red reflections. When I drew nearer, I saw it was a bubbling fountain. It was the freshness of this water which had maintained the temperature of which I have spoken.
Huge seats were cut in the central rock from which gushed the murmuring, shadowy fountain. They were heaped with silky cushions. Twelve incense burners, within the circle of red lamps, formed a second crown, half as large in diameter. Their smoke mounted toward the vault, invisible in the darkness, but their perfume, combined with the coolness and sound of the water, banished from the soul all other desire than to remain there forever.
M. Le Mesge made us sit down in the center of the hall, on the Cyclopean seats. He seated himself between us.
"In a few minutes," he said, "your eyes will grow accustomed to the obscurity."
I noticed that he spoke in a hushed voice, as if he were in church.
Little by little, our eyes did indeed grow used to the red light. Only the lower part of the great hall was illuminated. The whole vault was drowned in shadow and its height was impossible to estimate. Vaguely, I could perceive overhead a great smooth gold chandelier, flecked, like everything else, with sombre red reflections. But there was no means of judging the length of the chain by which it hung from the dark ceiling.
The marble of the pavement was of so high a polish, that the great torches were reflected even there.
This room, I repeat, was round a perfect circle of which the fountain at our backs was the center.
We sat facing the curving walls. Before long, we began to be able to see them. They were of peculiar construction, divided into a series of niches, broken, ahead of us, by the door which had just opened to give us passage, behind us, by a second door, a still darker hole which I divined in the darkness when I turned around. From one door to the other, I counted sixty niches, making, in all, one hundred and twenty. Each was about ten feet high. Each contained a kind of case, larger above than below, closed only at the lower end. In all these cases, except two just opposite me, I thought I could discern a brilliant shape, a human shape certainly, something like a statue of very pale bronze. In the arc of the circle before me, I counted clearly thirty of these strange statues.
What were these statues? I wanted to see. I rose.
M. Le Mesge put his hand on my arm.
"In good time," he murmured in the same low voice, "all in good time."
The Professor was watching the door by which we had entered the hall, and from behind which we could hear the sound of footsteps becoming more and more distinct.
It opened quietly to admit three Tuareg slaves. Two of them were carrying a long package on their shoulders; the third seemed to be their chief.
At a sign from him, they placed the package on the ground and drew out from one of the niches the case which it contained.
"You may approach, gentlemen," said M. Le Mesge.
He motioned the three Tuareg to withdraw several paces.
"You asked me, not long since, for some proof of the Egyptian influence on this country," said M. Le Mesge. "What do you say to that case, to begin with?"
As he spoke, he pointed to the case that the servants had deposited upon the ground after they took it from its niche.
Morhange uttered a thick cry.
We had before us one of those cases designed for the preservation of mummies. The same shiny wood, the same bright decorations, the only difference being that here Tifinar writing replaced the hieroglyphics. The form, narrow at the base, broader above, ought to have been enough to enlighten us.
I have already said that the lower half of this large case was closed, giving the whole structure the appearance of a rectangular wooden shoe.
M. Le Mesge knelt and fastened on the lower part of the case, a square of white cardboard, a large label, that he had picked up from his desk, a few minutes before, on leaving the library.
"You may read," he said simply, but still in the same low tone.
I knelt also, for the light of the great candelabra was scarcely sufficient to read the label where, none the less, I recognized the Professor's handwriting.
It bore these few words, in a large round hand:
"Number 53. Major Sir Archibald Russell. Born at Richmond, July 5, 1860. Died at Ahaggar, December 3, 1896."
I leapt to my feet.
"Major Russell!" I exclaimed.
"Not so loud, not so loud," said M. Le Mesge. "No one speaks out loud here."
"The Major Russell," I repeated, obeying his injunction as if in spite of myself, "who left Khartoum last year, to explore Sokoto?"
"The same," replied the Professor.
"And ... where is Major Russell?"
"He is there," replied M. Le Mesge.
The Professor made a gesture. The Tuareg approached.
A poignant silence reigned in the mysterious hall, broken only by the fresh splashing of the fountain.
The three Negroes were occupied in undoing the package that they had put down near the painted case. Weighed down with wordless horror, Morhange and I stood watching.
Soon, a rigid form, a human form, appeared. A red gleam played over it. We had before us, stretched out upon the ground, a statue of pale bronze, wrapped in a kind of white veil, a statue like those all around us, upright in their niches. It seemed to fix us with an impenetrable gaze.
"Sir Archibald Russell," murmured M. Le Mesge slowly.
Morhange approached, speechless, but strong enough to lift up the white veil. For a long, long time he gazed at the sad bronze statue.
"A mummy, a mummy?" he said finally. "You deceive yourself, sir, this is no mummy."
"Accurately speaking, no," replied M. Le Mesge. "This is not a mummy. None the less, you have before you the mortal remains of Sir Archibald Russell. I must point out to you, here, my dear sir, that the processes of embalming used by Antinea differ from the processes employed in ancient Egypt. Here, there is no natron, nor bands, nor spices. The industry of Ahaggar, in a single effort, has achieved a result obtained by European science only after long experiments. Imagine my surprise, when I arrived here and found that they were employing a method I supposed known only to the civilized world."
M. Le Mesge struck a light tap with his finger on the forehead of Sir Archibald Russell. It rang like metal.
"It is bronze," I said. "That is not a human forehead: it is bronze."
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. Come, Captain Morhange, you whom I gave credit for a certain amount of knowledge, have you never heard of the method of Dr. Variot, by which a human body can be preserved without embalming? Have you never read the book of that practitioner?[11] He explains a method called electro-plating. The skin is coated with a very thin layer of silver salts, to make it a conductor. The body then is placed in a solution, of copper sulphate, and the polar currents do their work. The body of this estimable English major has been metalized in the same manner, except that a solution of orichalch sulphate, a very rare substance, has been substituted for that of copper sulphate. Thus, instead of the statue of a poor slave, a copper statue, you have before you a statue of metal more precious than silver or gold, in a word, a statue worthy of the granddaughter of Neptune."
M. Le Mesge waved his arm. The black slaves seized the body. In a few seconds, they slid the orichalch ghost into its painted wooden sheath. That was set on end and slid into its niche, beside the niche where an exactly similar sheath was labelled "Number 52."
Upon finishing their task, they retired without a word. A draught of cold air from the door again made the flames of the copper torches flicker and threw great shadows about us.
Morhange and I remained as motionless as the pale metal specters which surrounded us. Suddenly I pulled myself together and staggered forward to the niche beside that in which they just had laid the remains of the English major. I looked for the label.
Supporting myself against the red marble wall, I read:
"Number 52. Captain Laurent Deligne. Born at Paris, July 22, 1861. Died at Ahaggar, October 30, 1896."
"Captain Deligne!" murmured Morhange. "He left Colomb-Béchar in 1895 for Timmimoun and no more has been heard of him since then."
"Exactly," said M. Le Mesge, with a little nod of approval.
"Number 51," read Morhange with chattering teeth. "Colonel von Wittman, born at Jena in 1855. Died at Ahaggar, May 1, 1896.... Colonel Wittman, the explorer of Kanem, who disappeared off Agadès."
"Exactly," said M. Le Mesge again.
"Number 50," I read in my turn, steadying myself against the wall, so as not to fall. "Marquis Alonzo d'Oliveira, born at Cadiz, February 21, 1868. Died at Ahaggar, February 1, 1896. Oliveira, who was going to Araouan."
"Exactly," said M. Le Mesge again. "That Spaniard was one of the best educated. I used to have interesting discussions with him on the exact geographical position of the kingdom of Antée."
"Number 49," said Morhange in a tone scarcely more than a whisper. "Lieutenant Woodhouse, born at Liverpool, September 16, 1870. Died at Ahaggar, October 4, 1895."
"Hardly more than a child," said M. Le Mesge.
"Number 48," I said. "Lieutenant Louis de Maillefeu, born at Provins, the...."
I did not finish. My voice choked.
Louis de Maillefeu, my best friend, the friend of my childhood and of Saint-Cyr.... I looked at him and recognized him under the metallic coating. Louis de Maillefeu!
I laid my forehead against the cold wall and, with shaking shoulders, began to sob.
I heard the muffled voice of Morhange speaking to the Professor:
"Sir, this has lasted long enough. Let us make an end of it."
"He wanted to know," said M. Le Mesge. "What am I to do?"
I went up to him and seized his shoulders.
"What happened to him? What did he die of?"
"Just like the others," the Professor replied, "just like Lieutenant Woodhouse, like Captain Deligne, like Major Russell, like Colonel von Wittman, like the forty-seven of yesterday and all those of to-morrow."
"Of what did they die?" Morhange demanded imperatively in his turn.
The Professor looked at Morhange. I saw my comrade grow pale.
"Of what did they die, sir? They died of love."
And he added in a very low, very grave voice:
"Now you know."
Gently and with a tact which we should hardly have suspected in him, M. Le Mesge drew us away from the statues. A moment later, Morhange and I found ourselves again seated, or rather sunk among the cushions in the center of the room. The invisible fountain murmured its plaint at our feet.
Le Mesge sat between us.
"Now you know," he repeated. "You know, but you do not yet understand."
Then, very slowly, he said:
"You are, as they have been, the prisoners of Antinea. 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."
"You are going to understand. Have you really forgotten to what an extent the beautiful queens of antiquity had just cause to complain of the strangers whom fortune brought to their borders? The poet, Victor Hugo, pictured their detestable acts well enough in his colonial poem called la Fille d'O-Taiti. Wherever we look, we see similar examples of fraud and ingratitude. These gentlemen made free use of the beauty and the riches of the lady. Then, one fine morning, they disappeared. She was indeed lucky if her lover, having observed the position carefully, did not return with ships and troops of occupation."
"Your learning charms me," said Morhange. "Continue."
"Do you need examples? Alas! they abound. Think of the cavalier fashion in which Ulysses treated Calypso, Diomedes Callirhoë. What should I say of Theseus and Ariadne? Jason treated Medea with inconceivable lightness. The Romans continued the tradition with still greater brutality. Aenaeus, who has many characteristics in common with the Reverend Spardek, treated Dido in a most undeserved fashion. Caesar was a laurel-crowned blackguard in his relations with the divine Cleopatra. Titus, that hypocrite Titus, after having lived a whole year in Idummea at the expense of the plaintive Berenice, took her back to Rome only to make game of her. It is time that the sons of Japhet paid this formidable reckoning of injuries to the daughters of Shem.
"A woman has taken it upon herself to re-establish the great Hegelian law of equilibrium for the benefit of her sex. Separated from the Aryan world by the formidable precautions of Neptune, she draws the youngest and bravest to her. Her body is condescending, while her spirit is inexorable. She takes what these bold young men can give her. She lends them her body, while her soul dominates them. She is the first sovereign who has never been made the slave of passion, even for a moment. 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."
The Professor stopped speaking. The fountain again made itself heard in the midst of the shadow. My pulses beat, my head seemed on fire. A fever was consuming me.
"And all of them," I cried, regardless of the place, "all of them complied! They submitted! Well, she has only to come and she will see what will happen."
Morhange was silent.
"My dear sir," said M. Le Mesge in a very gentle voice, "you are speaking like a child. You do not know. You have not seen Antinea. Let me tell you one thing: that among those"—and with a sweeping gesture he indicated the silent circle of statues—"there were men as courageous as you and perhaps less excitable. I remember one of them especially well, a phlegmatic Englishman who now is resting under Number 32. When he first appeared before Antinea, he was smoking a cigar. And, like all the rest, he bent before the gaze of his sovereign.
"Do not speak until you have seen her. A university training hardly fits one to discourse upon matters of passion, and I feel scarcely qualified, myself, to tell you what Antinea is. I only affirm this, that when you have seen her, you will remember nothing else. Family, country, honor, you will renounce everything for her."
"Everything?" asked Morhange in a calm voice.
"Everything," Le Mesge insisted emphatically. "You will forget all, you will renounce all."
From outside, a faint sound came to us.
Le Mesge consulted his watch.
"In any case, you will see."
The door opened. A tall white Targa, the tallest we had yet seen in this remarkable abode, entered and came toward us.
He bowed and touched me lightly on the shoulder.
"Follow him," said M. Le Mesge.
Without a word, I obeyed.
XI
ANTINEA
My guide and I passed along another long corridor. My excitement increased. I was impatient for one thing only, to come face to face with that woman, to tell her.... So far as anything else was concerned, I already was done for.
I was mistaken in hoping that the adventure would take an heroic turn at once. In real life, these contrasts never are definitely marked out. I should have remembered from many past incidents that the burlesque was regularly mixed with the tragic in my life.
We reached a little transparent door. My guide stood aside to let me pass.
I found myself in the most luxurious of dressing-rooms. A ground glass ceiling diffused a gay rosy light over the marble floor. The first thing I noticed was a clock, fastened to the wall. In place of the figures for the hours, were the signs of the Zodiac. The small hand had not yet reached the sign of Capricorn.
Only three o'clock!
The day seemed to have lasted a century already.... And only a little more than half of it was gone.
Another idea came to me, and a convulsive laugh bent me double.
"Antinea wants me to be at my best when I meet her."
A mirror of orichalch formed one whole side of the room. Glancing into it, I realized that in all decency there was nothing exaggerated in the demand.
My untrimmed beard, the frightful layer of dirt which lay about my eyes and furrowed my cheeks, my clothing, spotted by all the clay of the Sahara and torn by all the thorns of Ahaggar—all this made me appear a pitiable enough suitor.
I lost no time in undressing and plunging into the porphry bath in the center of the room. A delicious drowsiness came over me in that perfumed water. A thousand little jars, spread on a costly carved wood dressing-table, danced before my eyes. They were of all sizes and colors, carved in a very transparent kind of jade. The warm humidity of the atmosphere hastened my relaxation.
I still had strength to think, "The devil take Atlantis and the vault and Le Mesge."
Then I fell asleep in the bath.
When I opened my eyes again, the little hand of the clock had almost reached the sign of Taurus. Before me, his black hands braced on the edge of the bath, stood a huge Negro, bare-faced and bare-armed, his forehead bound with an immense orange turban.
He looked at me and showed his white teeth in a silent laugh.
"Who is this fellow?"
The Negro laughed harder. Without saying a word, he lifted me like a feather out of the perfumed water, now of a color on which I shall not dwell.
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?"
Without awaiting my reply, he placed a cigarette between my lips and lighted it, and resumed his task of polishing every inch of me.
"He doesn't talk much, but he is obliging," I thought.
And I sent a puff of smoke into his face.
This pleasantry seemed to delight him immensely. He showed his pleasure by giving me great slaps.
When he had dressed me down sufficiently, he took a little jar from the dressing-table and began to rub me with a rose-colored ointment. Weariness seemed to fly away from my rejuvenated muscles.
A stroke on a copper gong. My masseur disappeared. A stunted old Negress entered, dressed in the most tawdry tinsel. She was talkative as a magpie, but at first I did not understand a word in the interminable string she unwound, while she took first my hands, then my feet, and polished the nails with determined grimaces.
Another stroke on the gong. The old woman gave place to another Negro, grave, this time, and dressed all in white with a knitted skull cap on his oblong head. It was the barber, and a remarkably dexterous one. He quickly trimmed my hair, and, on my word, it was well done. Then, without asking me what style I preferred, he shaved me clean.
I looked with pleasure at my face, once more visible.
"Antinea must like the American type," I thought. "What an affront to the memory of her worthy grandfather, Neptune!"
The gay Negro entered and placed a package on the divan. The barber disappeared. I was somewhat astonished to observe that the package, which my new valet opened carefully, contained a suit of white flannels exactly like those French officers wear in Algeria in summer.
The wide trousers seemed made to my measure. The tunic fitted without a wrinkle, and my astonishment was unbounded at observing that it even had two gilt galons, the insignia of my rank, braided on the cuffs. For shoes, there were slippers of red Morocco leather, with gold ornaments. The underwear, all of silk, seemed to have come straight from the rue de la Paix.
"Dinner was excellent," I murmured, looking at myself in the mirror with satisfaction. "The apartment is perfectly arranged. Yes, but...."
I could not repress a shudder when I suddenly recalled that room of red marble.
The clock struck half past four.
Someone rapped gently on the door. The tall white Targa, who had brought me, appeared in the doorway.
He stepped forward, touched me on the arm and signed for me to follow.
Again I followed him.
We passed through interminable corridors. I was disturbed, but the warm water had given me a certain feeling of detachment. And above all, more than I wished to admit, I had a growing sense of lively curiosity. If, at that moment, someone had offered to lead me back to the route across the white plain near Shikh-Salah, would I have accepted? Hardly.
I tried to feel ashamed of my curiosity. I thought of Maillefeu.
"He, too, followed this corridor. And now he is down there, in the red marble hall."
I had no time to linger over this reminiscence. I was suddenly bowled over, thrown to the ground, as if by a sort of meteor. The corridor was dark; I could see nothing. I heard only a mocking growl.
The white Targa had flattened himself back against the wall.
"Good," I mumbled, picking myself up, "the deviltries are beginning."
We continued on our way. A glow different from that of the rose night lights soon began to light up the corridor.
We reached a high bronze door, in which a strange lacy design had been cut in filigree. A clear gong sounded, and the double doors opened part way. The Targa remained in the corridor, closing the doors after me.
I took a few steps forward mechanically, then paused, rooted to the spot, and rubbed my eyes.
I was dazzled by the sight of the sky.
Several hours of shaded light had unaccustomed me to daylight. It poured in through one whole side of the huge room.
The room was in the lower part of this mountain, which was more honeycombed with corridors and passages than an Egyptian pyramid. It was on a level with the garden which I had seen in the morning from the balcony, and seemed to be a continuation of it; the carpet extended out under the great palm trees and the birds flew about the forest of pillars in the room.
By contrast, the half of the room untouched by direct light from the oasis seemed dark. The sun, setting behind the mountain, painted the garden paths with rose and flamed with red upon the traditional flamingo which stood with one foot raised at the edge of the sapphire lake.
Suddenly I was bowled over a second time.
I felt a warm, silky touch, a burning breath on my neck. Again the mocking growl which had so disturbed me in the corridor.
With a wrench, I pulled myself free and sent a chance blow at my assailant. The cry, this time of pain and rage, broke out again.
It was echoed by a long peal of laughter. Furious, I turned to look for the insolent onlooker, thinking to speak my mind. And then my glance stood still.
Antinea was before me.
In the dimmest part of the room, under a kind of arch lit by the mauve rays from a dozen incense-lamps, four women lay on a heap of many-colored cushions and rare white Persian rugs.
I recognized the first three as Tuareg women, of a splendid regular beauty, dressed in magnificent robes of white silk embroidered in gold. The fourth, very dark skinned, almost negroid, seemed younger. A tunic of red silk enhanced the dusk of her face, her arms and her bare feet. The four were grouped about a sort of throne of white rugs, covered with a gigantic lion's skin, on which, half raised on one elbow, lay Antinea.
Antinea! Whenever I saw her after that, I wondered if I had really looked at her before, so much more beautiful did I find her. More beautiful? Inadequate word. Inadequate language! But is it really the fault of the language or of those who abuse the word?
One could not stand before her without recalling the woman for whom Ephractoeus overcame Atlas, of her for whom Sapor usurped the scepter of Ozymandias, for whom Mamylos subjugated Susa and Tentyris, for whom Antony fled....