Je ne m'en défends plus et je ne veux qu' aller
Reconnaître la place où je dois l'immoler.
(Andromaque.)
It was this sort of a night when what I am going to tell you now
happened. Toward five o'clock the sky clouded over and a sense of the
coming storm trembled in the stifling air.
I shall always remember it. It was the fifth of January, 1897.
King Hiram and Galé lay heavily on the matting of my room. Leaning on
my elbows beside Tanit-Zerga in the rock-hewn window, I spied the
advance tremors of lightning.
One by one they rose, streaking the now total darkness with their
bluish stripes. But no burst of thunder followed. The storm did not
attain the peaks of Ahaggar. It passed without breaking, leaving us in
our gloomy bath of sweat.
"I am going to bed," said Tanit-Zerga.
I have said that her room was above mine. Its bay window was some
thirty feet above that before which I lay.
She took Galé in her arms. But King Hiram would have none of it.
Digging his four paws into the matting, he whined in anger and
uneasiness.
"Leave him," I finally said to Tanit-Zerga. "For once he may sleep
here."
So it was that this little beast incurred his large share of
responsibility in the events which followed.
Left alone, I became lost in my reflections. The night was black. The
whole mountain was shrouded in silence.
It took the louder and louder growls of the leopard to rouse me from
my meditation.
King Hiram was braced against the door, digging at it with his drawn
claws. He, who had refused to follow Tanit-Zerga a while ago, now
wanted to go out. He was determined to go out.
"Be still," I said to him. "Enough of that. Lie down!"
I tried to pull him away from the door.
I succeeded only in getting a staggering blow from his paw.
Then I sat down on the divan.
My quiet was short. "Be honest with yourself," I said. "Since Morhange
abandoned you, since the day when you saw Antinea, you have had only
one idea. What good is it to beguile yourself with the stories of
Tanit-Zerga, charming as they are? This leopard is a pretext, perhaps
a guide. Oh, you know that mysterious things are going to happen
tonight. How have you been able to keep from doing anything as long as
this?"
Immediately I made a resolve.
"If I open the door," I thought, "King Hiram will leap down the
corridor and I shall have great difficulty in following him. I must
find some other way."