Department. What I had collected there in two days about the
disposition of our Senoussis enemies was of importance. I noticed that
Morhange let me proceed with my inquiries with complete indifference.

These two days he had passed in conversation with the old Negro
guardian of the turbet, which preserves, under its plaster dome, the
remains of the venerated Sidi-Moussa. The confidences they exchanged,
I am sorry to say that I have forgotten. But from the Negro's amazed
admiration, I realized the ignorance in which I stood to the mysteries
of the desert, and how familiar they were to my companion.

And if you want to get any idea of the extraordinary originality which
Morhange introduced into such surroundings, you who, after all, have a
certain familiarity with the tropics, listen to this. It was exactly
two hundred kilometers from here, in the vicinity of the Great Dune,
in that horrible stretch of six days without water. We had just enough
for two days before reaching the next well, and you know these wells;
as Flatters wrote to his wife, "you have to work for hours before you
can clean them out and succeed in watering beasts and men." By chance
we met a caravan there, which was going east towards Rhadamès, and had
come too far north. The camels' humps, shrunken and shaking, bespoke
the sufferings of the troop. Behind came a little gray ass, a pitiful
burrow, interfering at every step, and lightened of its pack because
the merchants knew that it was going to die. Instinctively, with its
last strength, it followed, knowing that when it could stagger no
longer, the end would come and the flutter of the bald vultures'
wings. I love animals, which I have solid reasons for preferring to
men. But never should I have thought of doing what Morhange did then.
I tell you that our water skins were almost dry, and that our own
camels, without which one is lost in the empty desert, had not been