feet are furnished with thorns; of the sacred Egyptian ateuchus, that the Egyptians of Upper Egypt venerated as gods.  It is here that those sphinxes with heads of death, now spread over all Europe, belong, and also those ‘Idias Bigote,’ whose sting is particularly dreaded by the Senegalians of the coast.  Yes; there are superb things to be found here, and I shall find them, if these honest people will only let me.”

We know who those “honest people” were, of whom Cousin Benedict did not dream of complaining.  Besides, it has been stated, the entomologist had enjoyed a half liberty in Negoro’s and Harris’s company, a liberty of which Dick Sand had absolutely deprived him during the voyage from the coast to the Coanza.  The simple-hearted savant had been very much touched by that condescension.

Finally, Cousin Benedict would be the happiest of entomologists if he had not suffered a loss to which he was extremely sensitive.  He still possessed his tin box, but his glasses no longer rested on his nose, his magnifying glass no longer hung from his neck!  Now, a naturalist without his magnifying glass and his spectacles, no longer exists.  Cousin Benedict, however, was destined never to see those two optical attendants again, because they had been buried with the royal manikin.  So, when he found some insect, he was reduced to thrusting it into his eyes to distinguish its most prominent peculiarities.  Ah! it was a great loss to Cousin Benedict, and he would have paid a high price for a pair of spectacles, but that article was not current on the lakonis of Kazounde.  At all events, Cousin Benedict could go and come in Jose-Antonio Alvez’s establishment.  They knew he was incapable of seeking to flee.  Besides, a high palisade separated the factory from the other quarters of the city, and it would not be easy to get over it.

But, if it was well enclosed, this enclosure did not measure less than a mile in circumference.  Trees, bushes of a kind peculiar to Africa, great herbs, a few rivulets, the thatch of the barracks and the huts, were more than necessary to conceal the continent’s rarest insects, and to make Cousin Benedict’s happiness, at least, if not his fortune.  In fact, he discovered some hexapodes, and nearly lost his eyesight in trying to study them without spectacles.  But, at least, he added to his precious collection, and laid the foundation of a great work on African entomology.  If his lucky star would let him discover a new insect, to which he would attach his name, he would have nothing more to desire in this world!

If Alvez’s establishment was sufficiently large for Cousin Benedict’s scientific promenades, it seemed immense to little Jack, who could walk about there without restraint.  But the child took little interest in the pleasures so natural to his age.  He rarely quitted his mother, who did not like to leave him alone, and always dreaded some misfortune.