tried to come and go, and accustomed her to his movements.  The panther left him free, as if contented to follow him with her eyes, seeming, however, less like a faithful dog watching his master’s movements with affection, than a huge Angora cat uneasy and suspicious of them.  A few steps brought him to the spring, where he saw the carcass of his horse, which the panther had evidently carried there.  Only two-thirds was eaten.  The sight reassured the Frenchman; for it explained the absence of his terrible companion and the forbearance which she had shown to him while asleep.

This first good luck encouraged the reckless soldier as he thought of the future.  The wild idea of making a home with the panther until some chance of escape occurred entered his mind, and he resolved to try every means of taming her and of turning her good-will to account.  With these thoughts he returned to her side, and noticed joyfully that she moved her tail with an almost imperceptible motion.  He sat down beside her fearlessly, and they began to play with each other.  He held her paws and her muzzle, twisted her ears, threw her over on her back, and stroked her soft warm flanks.  She allowed him to do so; and when he began to smooth the fur of her paws, she carefully drew in her murderous claws, which were sharp and curved like a Damascus blade.  The Frenchman kept one hand on his dagger, again watching his opportunity to plunge it into the belly of the too-confiding beast; but the fear that she might strangle him in her last convulsions once more stayed his hand.  Moreover, he felt in his heart a foreboding of a remorse which warned him not to destroy a hitherto inoffensive creature.  He even fancied that he had found a friend in the limitless desert.  His mind turned back, involuntarily, to his first mistress, whom he had named in derision “Mignonne,” because her jealousy was so furious that throughout the whole period of their intercourse he lived in dread of the knife with which she threatened him.  This recollection of his youth suggested the idea of teaching the young panther, whose soft agility and grace he now admired with less terror, to answer to the caressing name.  Towards evening he had grown so familiar with his perilous position that he was half in love with its dangers, and his companion was so far tamed that she had caught the habit of turning to him when he called, in falsetto tones, “Mignonne!”

As the sun went down Mignonne uttered at intervals a prolonged, deep, melancholy cry.

“She is well brought up,” thought the gay soldier.  “She says her prayers.”  But the jest only came into his mind as he watched the peaceful attitude of his comrade.

“Come, my pretty blonde, I will let you go to bed first,” he said, relying on the activity of his legs to get away as soon as she fell asleep, and trusting to find some other resting-place for the night.  He waited anxiously for the right moment, and when it came he started vigorously in the direction of the Nile.  But he had scarcely marched for half an hour through the sand before he heard the panther bounding after him, giving at intervals the saw-like cry which was more terrible to hear than the thud of her bounds.