He smiled.

“I don’t dislike such evidence of a good memory,” he said simply.

He was in excellent, too excellent spirits.

“Don’t blame me.  I set out for a short ride as usual.  Then, the moon rose.  And then, I recognized the country.  It is just where, twenty years ago next November, Flatters followed the way to his destiny in an exaltation which the certainty of not returning made keener and more intense.”

“Strange state of mind for a chief of an expedition,” I murmured.

“Say nothing against Flatters.  No man ever loved the desert as he did ... even to dying of it.”

“Palat and Douls, among many others, have loved it as much,” I answered.  “But they were alone when they exposed themselves to it.  Responsible only for their own lives, they were free.  Flatters, on the other hand, was responsible for sixty lives.  And you cannot deny that he allowed his whole party to be massacred.”

The words were hardly out of my lips before I regretted them, I thought of Chatelain’s story, of the officers’ club at Sfax, where they avoided like the plague any kind of conversation which might lead their thoughts toward a certain Morhange-Saint-Avit mission.

Happily I observed that my companion was not listening.  His brilliant eyes were far away.

“What was your first garrison?” he asked suddenly.

“Auxonne.”

He gave an unnatural laugh.

“Auxonne.  Province of the Cote d’Or.  District of Dijon.  Six thousand inhabitants.  P.L.M.  Railway.  Drill school and review.  The Colonel’s wife receives Thursdays, and the Major’s on Saturdays.  Leaves every Sunday,—­the first of the month to Paris, the three others to Dijon.  That explains your Judgment of Flatters.

“For my part, my dear fellow, my first garrison was at Boghar.  I arrived there one morning in October, a second lieutenant, aged twenty, of the First African Batallion, the white chevron on my black sleeve....  Sun stripe, as the bagnards say in speaking of their grades.  Boghar!  Two days before, from the bridge of the steamer, I had begun to see the shores of Africa.  I pity all those who, when they see those pale cliffs for the first time, do not feel a great leap at their hearts, at the thought that this land prolongs itself thousands and thousands of leagues....  I was little more than a child, I had plenty of money.  I was ahead of schedule.  I could have stopped three or four days at Algiers to amuse myself.  Instead I took the train that same evening for Berroughia.

“There, scarcely a hundred kilometers from Algiers, the railway stopped.  Going in a straight line you won’t find another until you get to the Cape.  The diligence travels at night on account of the heat.  When we came to the hills I got out and walked beside the carriage, straining for the sensation, in this new atmosphere, of the kiss of the outlying desert.