“About midnight, at the Camp of the Zouaves, a humble post on the road embankment, overlooking a dry valley whence rose the feverish perfume of oleander, we changed horses.  They had there a troop of convicts and impressed laborers, under escort of riflemen and convoys to the quarries in the South.  In part, rogues in uniform, from the jails of Algiers and Douara,—­without arms, of course; the others civilians—­such civilians! this year’s recruits, the young bullies of the Chapelle and the Goutte-d’Or.

“They left before we did.  Then the diligence caught up with them.  From a distance I saw in a pool of moonlight on the yellow road the black irregular mass of the convoy.  Then I heard a weary dirge; the wretches were singing.  One, in a sad and gutteral voice, gave the couplet, which trailed dismally through the depths of the blue ravines: 

“’Maintenant qu’elle est grande,
  Elle fait le trottoir,
  Avec ceux de la bande
        A Richard-Lenoir.’

“And the others took up in chorus the horrible refrain: 

“’A la Bastille, a la Bastille,
  On aime bien, on aime bien
        Nini Peau d’Chien;
  Elle est si belle et si gentille
          A la Bastille’

“I saw them all in contrast to myself when the diligence passed them.  They were terrible.  Under the hideous searchlight their eyes shone with a sombre fire in their pale and shaven faces.  The burning dust strangled their raucous voices in their throats.  A frightful sadness took possession of me.

“When the diligence had left this fearful nightmare behind, I regained my self-control.

“‘Further, much further South,’ I exclaimed to myself, ’to the places untouched by this miserable bilgewater of civilization.’

“When I am weary, when I have a moment of anguish and longing to turn back on the road that I have chosen, I think of the prisoners of Berroughia, and then I am glad to continue on my way.

“But what a reward, when I am in one of those places where the poor animals never think of fleeing because they have never seen man, where the desert stretches out around me so widely that the old world could crumble, and never a single ripple on the dune, a single cloud in the white sky come to warn me.

“‘It is true,’ I murmured.  ’I, too, once, in the middle of the desert, at Tidi-Kelt, I felt that way.’”

Up to that time I had let him enjoy his exaltations without interruption.  I understood too late the error that I had made in pronouncing that unfortunate sentence.

His mocking nervous laughter began anew.

“Ah!  Indeed, at Tidi-Kelt?  I beg you, old man, in your own interest, if you don’t want to make an ass of yourself, avoid that species of reminiscence.  Honestly, you make me think of Fromentin, or that poor Maupassant, who talked of the desert because he had been to Djelfa, two days’ journey from the street of Bab-Azound and the Government buildings, four days from the Avenue de l’Opera;—­and who, because he saw a poor devil of a camel dying near Bou-Saada, believed himself in the heart of the desert, on the old route of the caravans....  Tidi-Kelt, the desert!”