She was still laughing at me.
"King Hiram," she called.
I turned and saw my enemy.
On the capital of one of the columns, twenty feet above the floor, a
splendid leopard was crouched. He still looked surly from the blow I
had dealt him.
"King Hiram," Antinea repeated. "Come here."
The beast relaxed like a spring released. He fawned at his mistress's
feet. I saw his red tongue licking her bare little ankles.
"Ask the gentleman's pardon," she said.
The leopard looked at me spitefully. The yellow skin of his muzzle
puckered about his black moustache.
"Fftt," he grumbled like a great cat.
"Go," Antinea ordered imperiously.
The beast crawled reluctantly toward me. He laid his head humbly
between his paws and waited.
I stroked his beautiful spotted forehead.
"You must not be vexed," said Antinea. "He is always that way with
strangers."
"Then he must often be in bad humor," I said simply.
Those were my first words. They brought a smile to Antinea's lips.
She gave me a long, quiet look.
"Aguida," she said to one of the Targa women, "you will give
twenty-five pounds in gold to Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh."
"You are a lieutenant?" she asked, after a pause.
"Yes."
"Where do you come from?"
"From France."
"I might have guessed that," she said ironically, "but from what part
of France?"
"From what we call the Lot-et-Garonne."
"From what town?"
"From Duras."
She reflected a moment.
"Duras! There is a little river there, the Dropt, and a fine old
château."
"You know Duras?" I murmured, amazed.
"You go there from Bordeaux by a little branch railway," she went
on. "It is a shut-in road, with vine-covered hills crowned by
the feudal ruins. The villages have beautiful names: Monségur,
Sauve-terre-de-Guyenne, la Tresne, Créon, ... Créon, as in Antigone."
"You have been there?"
She looked at me.
"Don't speak so coldly," she said. "Sooner or later we will be
intimate, and you may as well lay aside formality now."
This threatening promise suddenly filled me with great happiness. I
thought of Le Mesge's words: "Don't talk until you have seen her. When
you have seen her, you will renounce everything for her."
"Have I been in Duras?" she went on with a burst of laughter. "You are
joking. Imagine Neptune's granddaughter in the first-class compartment
of a local train!"
She pointed to an enormous white rock which towered above the palm
trees of the garden.
"That is my horizon," she said gravely.
She picked up one of several books which lay scattered about her on
the lion's skin.
"The time table of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest," she said.
"Admirable reading for one who never budges! Here it is half-past five
in the afternoon. A train, a local, arrived three minutes ago at
Surgères in the Charente-Inférieure. It will start on in six minutes.
In two hours it will reach La Rochelle. How strange it seems to think
of such things here. So far away! So much commotion there! Here,
nothing changes."