eyes!  A woman was fleeing, pursued by a black mounted soldier.  She turned around and shot at him with a revolver.  The horse-soldier was furious, and struck her down with one stroke of his sabre.  I did not have the time to interfere.  I dismounted from my horse to take the woman up.  She was dead, and almost decapitated.  I uttered not one word of reproach to the Turkish soldier, who smiled fiercely, and turned back.

“I placed the poor body sadly on the sand, and was going to remount my horse, when I perceived, a few steps back, behind a thicket, a little girl five or six years old.  I recognized at once that she was a Touareg, of white race, notwithstanding her tawny color.  I approached her.  Perhaps she was not afraid of me, because I was white like herself.  I took her on the saddle with me, without resistance on her part, and returned slowly to the place where we were to camp for the night.  I expected to place her under the care of the women whom we had taken prisoners, and were carrying away with us.  But all refused, saying that she was a vile little Touareg, belonging to a race which carries misfortune with it and brings forth only traitors.

“I was greatly embarrassed.  I would not abandon the child....  I felt somewhat responsible for the crime, having been one of those who had directed the massacre.  I had made an orphan!  I must take her part.  One of the prisoners of the band had said to me (I understand a little of the gibberish of these people) that if I left the little one to these women they would kill her because she was the daughter of a Touareg, whom the chief had preferred to them, and that they hated the petted, spoiled child, whom he had given rich clothes and jewels.  What was to be done?

“I had a wide-awake orderly, a certain Michel of Batignolles.  I called him and said to him:  ‘Take care of the little one.’  ’Very well, Captain, I will take her in charge.’  He then petted the child, made her sociable, and led her away with him, and two hours later he had manufactured a little cradle for her out of biscuit boxes which are used on the march for making coffins.  In the evening Michel put her to bed in it.  He had christened her ‘Tonton,’ an abbreviation of Touareg.  In the morning the cradle was bound on an ass, and behold Tonton following the column with the baggage, in the convoy of the rear guard, under the indulgent eye of Michel.

“This lasted for days and weeks.  In the evening at the halting place, Tonton was brought into my tent, with the goat, which furnished her the greater part of her meals, and her inseparable friend, a large chameleon, captured by Michel, and responding or not responding to the name of Achilles.