"No, my dear friend, you must not conclude just that. I should have no
taste for a lie which was based on fraud towards the estimable
constitutional bodies which have judged me worthy of their confidence
and their support. The ends that they have assigned to me I shall do
my best to attain. But I have no reason for hiding from you that there
is another, quite personal, which is far nearer to my heart. Let us
say, if you will, to use a terminology that is otherwise deplorable,
that this is the end while the others are the means."
"Would there be any indiscretion?...."
"None," replied my companion. "Shikh-Salah is only a few days distant.
He whose first steps you have guided with such solicitude in the
desert should have nothing hidden from you."
We had halted in the valley of a little dry well where a few sickly
plants were growing. A spring near by was circled by a crown of gray
verdure. The camels had been unsaddled for the night, and were seeking
vainly, at every stride, to nibble the spiny tufts of had. The black
and polished sides of the Tidifest Mountains rose, almost vertically,
above our heads. Already the blue smoke of the fire on which Bou-Djema
was cooking dinner rose through the motionless air.
Not a sound, not a breath. The smoke mounted straight, straight and
slowly up the pale steps of the firmament.
"Have you ever heard of the Atlas of Christianity?" asked Morhange.
"I think so. Isn't it a geographical work published by the
Benedictines under the direction of a certain Dom Granger?"
"Your memory is correct," said Morhange. "Even so let me explain a
little more fully some of the things you have not had as much reason
as I to interest yourself in. The Atlas of Christianity proposes to
establish the boundaries of that great tide of Christianity through
all the ages, and for all parts of the globe. An undertaking worthy of
the Benedictine learning, worthy of such a prodigy of erudition as
Dom Granger himself."
"And it is these boundaries that you have come to determine here, no
doubt," I murmured.
"Just so," replied my companion.
He was silent, and I respected his silence, prepared by now to be
astonished at nothing.
"It is not possible to give confidences by halves, without being
ridiculous," he continued after several minutes of meditation,
speaking gravely, in a voice which held no suggestion of that flashing
humor which had a month before enchanted the young officers at Wargla.
"I have begun on mine. I will tell you everything. Trust my
discretion, however, and do not insist upon certain events of my
private life. If, four years ago, at the close of these events, I
resolve to enter a monastery, it does not concern you to know my
reasons. I can marvel at it myself, that the passage in my life of a
being absolutely devoid of interest should have sufficed to change the
current of that life. I can marvel that a creature whose sole merit
was her beauty should have been permitted by the Creator to swing my
destiny to such an unforeseen direction. The monastery at whose doors
I knocked had the most valid reasons for doubting the stability of my
vocation. What the world loses in such fashion it often calls back as
readily. In short, I cannot blame the Father Abbot for having
forbidden me to apply for my army discharge. By his instructions, I
asked for, and obtained, permission to be placed on the inactive list
for three years. At the end of those three years of consecration it
would be seen whether the world was definitely dead to your servant.