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Page 2
"There'll be time enough," he said to himself, laying on the ground
the weapon which alone could bring him deliverance.
Viewing alternately the dark expanse of the desert and the blue
expanse of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France--he smelled with
delight the gutters of Paris--he remembered the towns through which he
had passed, the faces of his comrades, the most minute details of his
life. His Southern fancy soon showed him the stones of his beloved
Provence, in the play of the heat which undulated above the wide
expanse of the desert. Realizing the danger of this cruel mirage, he
went down the opposite side of the hill to that by which he had come
up the day before. The remains of a rug showed that this place of
refuge had at one time been inhabited; at a short distance he saw some
palm trees full of dates. Then the instinct which binds us to life
awoke again in his heart. He hoped to live long enough to await the
passing of some Maugrabins, or perhaps he might hear the sound of
cannon; for at this time Bonaparte was traversing Egypt.
This thought gave him new life. The palm tree seemed to bend with the
weight of the ripe fruit. He shook some of it down. When he tasted
this unhoped-for manna, he felt sure that the palms had been
cultivated by a former inhabitant--the savory, fresh meat of the dates
were proof of the care of his predecessor. He passed suddenly from
dark despair to an almost insane joy. He went up again to the top of
the hill, and spent the rest of the day in cutting down one of the
sterile palm trees, which the night before had served him for shelter.
A vague memory made him think of the animals of the desert; and in
case they might come to drink at the spring, visible from the base of
the rocks but lost further down, he resolved to guard himself from
their visits by placing a barrier at the entrance of his hermitage.
In spite of his diligence, and the strength which the fear of being
devoured asleep gave him, he was unable to cut the palm in pieces,
though he succeeded in cutting it down. At eventide the king of the
desert fell; the sound of its fall resounded far and wide, like a sigh
in the solitude; the soldier shuddered as though he had heard some
voice predicting woe.
But like an heir who does not long bewail a deceased relative, he tore
off from this beautiful tree the tall broad green leaves which are its
poetic adornment, and used them to mend the mat on which he was to
sleep.
Fatigued by the heat and his work, he fell asleep under the red
curtains of his wet cave.
In the middle of the night his sleep was troubled by an extraordinary
noise; he sat up, and the deep silence around allowed him to
distinguish the alternative accents of a respiration whose savage
energy could not belong to a human creature.
A profound terror, increased still further by the darkness, the
silence, and his waking images, froze his heart within him. He almost
felt his hair stand on end, when by straining his eyes to their utmost
he perceived through the shadow two faint yellow lights. At first he
attributed these lights to the reflections of his own pupils, but soon
the vivid brilliance of the night aided him gradually to distinguish
the objects around him in the cave, and he beheld a huge animal lying
but two steps from him. Was it a lion, a tiger, or a crocodile?
The Provencal was not sufficiently educated to know under what species
his enemy ought to be classed; but his fright was all the greater, as
his ignorance led him to imagine all terrors at once; he endured a
cruel torture, noting every variation of the breathing close to him
without daring to make the slightest movement. An odor, pungent like
that of a fox, but more penetrating, more profound,--so to speak,
--filled the cave, and when the Provencal became sensible of this, his
terror reached its height, for he could no longer doubt the proximity
of a terrible companion, whose royal dwelling served him for a
shelter.
Presently the reflection of the moon descending on the horizon lit up
the den, rendering gradually visible and resplendent the spotted skin
of a panther.
This lion of Egypt slept, curled up like a big dog, the peaceful
possessor of a sumptuous niche at the gate of an hotel; its eyes
opened for a moment and closed again; its face was turned towards the
man. A thousand confused thoughts passed through the Frenchman's mind;
first he thought of killing it with a bullet from his gun, but he saw
there was not enough distance between them for him to take proper aim
--the shot would miss the mark. And if it were to wake!--the thought
made his limbs rigid. He listened to his own heart beating in the
midst of the silence, and cursed the too violent pulsations which the
flow of blood brought on, fearing to disturb that sleep which allowed
him time to think of some means of escape.
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