scholars. There were also the laborious theses of Berlioux[3] and of
Schirmer.[4]

[Footnote 3: Doctrina Ptolemaei ab injuria recentiorum vindicata, sive
Nilus Superior et Niger verus, hodiernus Eghiren, ab anitiquis
explorati. Paris, 8vo, 1874, with two maps. (Note by M. Leroux.)]

[Footnote 4: De nomine et genere popularum qui berberi vulgo dicuntur.
Paris, 8vo, 1892. (Note by M. Leroux.)]

While I proceeded to make piles of as similar dimensions as possible I
kept saying to myself:

"To think that I have been believing all this time that in his mission
with Morhange, Saint-Avit was particularly concerned in scientific
observations. Either my memory deceives me strangely or he is riding a
horse of another color. What is sure is that there is nothing for me
in the midst of all this chaos."

He must have read on my face the signs of too apparently expressed
surprise, for he said in a tone in which I divined a tinge of
defiance:

"The choice of these books surprises you a bit?"

"I can't say it surprises me," I replied, "since I don't know the
nature of the work for which you have collected them. In any case I
dare say, without fear of being contradicted, that never before has
officer of the Arabian Office possessed a library in which the
humanities were so, well represented."