"So I killed Captain Morhange," André de Saint-Avit said to me the
next day, at the same time, in the same place, with a calm that took
no account of the night, the frightful night I had just been through.
"Why do I tell you this? I don't know in the least. Because of the
desert, perhaps. Are you a man capable of enduring the weight of that
confidence, and further, if necessary, of assuming the consequences it
may bring? I don't know that, either. The future will decide. For the
present there is only one thing certain, the fact, I tell you again,
that I killed Captain Morhange.
"I killed him. And, since you want me to specify the reason, you
understand that I am not going to torture my brain to turn it into a
romance for you, or commence by recounting in the naturalistic manner
of what stuff my first trousers were made, or, as the neo-Catholics
would have it, how often I went as a child to confession, and how much
I liked doing it. I have no taste for useless exhibitions. You will
find that this recital begins strictly at the time when I met
Morhange.
"And first of all, I tell you, however much it has cost my peace of
mind and my reputation, I do not regret having known him. In a word,
apart from all question of false friendship, I am convicted of a black
ingratitude in having killed him. It is to him, it is to his knowledge
of rock inscriptions, that I owe the only thing that has raised my
life in interest above the miserable little lives dragged out by my
companions at Auxonne, and elsewhere.
"This being understood, here are the facts:"
[NOTE: From this point on begins an extended narrative;
indeed it may be most of the remaining book.
I was changing the quoting, until I reached the end
of the chapter and found that it continued on from there.] It was in the Arabian Office at Wargla, when I was a lieutenant, that
I first heard the name, Morhange. And I must add that it was for me
the occasion of an attack of bad humor. We were having difficult
times. The hostility of the Sultan of Morocco was latent. At Touat,
where the assassination of Flatters and of Frescaly had already been
concocted, connivance was being given to the plots of our enemies.
Touat was the center of conspiracies, of razzias, of defections, and
at the same time, the depot of supply for the insatiable nomads. The
Governors of Algeria, Tirman, Cambon, Laferriere, demanded its
occupation. The Ministers of War tacitly agreed.... But there was
Parliament, which did nothing at all, because of England, because of
Germany, and above all because of a certain Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen, which prescribed that insurrection is the
most sacred of duties, even when the insurgents are savages who cut
your head off. In short, the military authority could only, at its own
discretion, increase the southern garrisons, and establish new posts;
this one, Berresof, Hassi-el-Mia, Fort MacMahon, Fort Lallemand, Fort
Miribel.... But as Castries puts it, you don't hold the nomads with
bordjs, you hold them by the belt. The middle was the oasis of Touat.
Their honors, the lawyers of Paris, had to be convinced of the
necessity of taking possession of the oasis of Touat. The best way
would be to present them with a faithful picture of the plots that
were being woven there against us.