What despair!  But the manticore could not go far.  Cousin Benedict rose; he looked, he darted forward, his two hands stretched out and open.  The insect flew above his head, and he only perceived a large black point, without appreciable form to him.

Would the manticore come to the ground again to rest, after having traced a few capricious circles around Cousin Benedict’s bald head?  All the probabilities were in favor of its doing so.

Unfortunately for the unhappy savant, this part of Alvez’s establishment, which was situated at the northern extremity of the town, bordered on a vast forest, which covered the territory of Kazounde for a space of several square miles.  If the manticore gained the cover of the trees, and if there, it should flutter from branch to branch, he must renounce all hope of making it figure in that famous tin box, in which it would be the most precious jewel.

Alas! that was what happened.  The manticore had rested again on the ground.  Cousin Benedict, having the unexpected hope of seeing it again, threw himself on the ground at once.  But the manticore no longer walked:  it proceeded by little jumps.

Cousin Benedict, exhausted, his knees and hands bleeding, jumped also.  His two arms, his hands open, were extended to the right, to the left, according as the black point bounded here or there.  It might be said that he was drawing his body over that burning soil, as a swimmer does on the surface of the water.

Useless trouble!  His two hands always closed on nothing.  The insect escaped him while playing with him, and soon, arrived under the fresh branches, it arose, after throwing into Cousin Benedict’s ear, which it touched lightly, the most intense but also the most ironical buzzing of its coleopter wings.

“Malediction!” exclaimed Cousin Benedict, a second time.  “It escapes me.  Ungrateful hexapode!  Thou to whom I reserved a place of honor in my collection!  Well, no, I shall not give thee up!  I shall follow thee till I reach thee!”

He forgot, this discomfited cousin, that his nearsighted eyes would not enable him to perceive the manticore among the foliage.  But he was no longer master of himself.  Vexation, anger, made him a fool.  It was himself, and only himself, that he must blame for his loss.  If he had taken possession of the insect at first, instead of following it “in its independent ways,” nothing of all that would have happened, and he would possess that admirable specimen of African manticores, the name of which is that of a fabulous animal, having a man’s head and a lion’s body.

Cousin Benedict had lost his head.  He little thought that the most unforeseen of circumstances had just restored him to liberty.  He did not dream that the ant-hill, into which he had just entered, had opened to him an escape, and that he had just left Alvez’s establishment.  The forest was there, and under the trees was his manticore, flying away!  At any price, he wanted to see it again.