[Footnote 10:  How did the Voyage to Atlantis arrive at Dax?  I have found, so far, only one credible hypothesis:  it might have been discovered in Africa by the traveller, de Behagle, a member of the Roger-Ducos Society, who studied at the college of Dax, and later, on several occasions, visited the town. (Note by M. Leroux.)]

“This inestimable document contained numerous quotations from the Critias.  It gave an abstract of the illustrious dialogue, the sole existing copy of which you held in your hands a little while ago.  It established past controversy the location of the stronghold of the Atlantides, and demonstrated that this site, which is denied by science, was not submerged by the waves, as is supposed by the rare and timorous defenders of the Atlantide hypothesis.  He called it the ‘central Mazycian range,’ You know there is no longer any doubt as to the identification of the Mazyces of Herodotus with the people of Imoschaoch, the Tuareg.  But the manuscript of Denys unquestionably identifies the historical Mazyces with the Atlantides of the supposed legend.

“I learned, therefore, from Denys, not only that the central part of Atlantis, the cradle and home of the dynasty of Neptune, had not sunk in the disaster described by Plato as engulfing the rest of the Atlantide isle, but also that it corresponded to the Tuareg Ahaggar, and that, in this Ahaggar, at least in his time, the noble dynasty of Neptune was supposed to be still existent.

“The historians of Atlantis put the date of the cataclysm which destroyed all or part of that famous country at nine thousand years before Christ.  If Denis de Milet, who wrote scarcely three thousand years ago, believed that in his time, the dynastic issue of Neptune was still ruling its dominion, you will understand that I thought immediately—­what has lasted nine thousand years may last eleven thousand.  From that instant I had only one aim:  to find the possible descendants of the Atlantides, and, since I had many reasons for supposing them to be debased and ignorant of their original splendor, to inform them of their illustrious descent.

“You will easily understand that I imparted none of my intentions to my superiors at the University.  To solicit their approval or even their permission, considering the attitude they had taken toward me, would have been almost certainly to invite confinement in a cell.  So I raised what I could on my own account, and departed without trumpet or drum for Oran.  On the first of October I reached In-Salah.  Stretched at my ease beneath a palm tree, at the oasis, I took infinite pleasure in considering how, that very day, the principal of Mont-de-Marsan, beside himself, struggling to control twenty horrible urchins howling before the door of an empty class room, would be telegraphing wildly in all directions in search of his lost history professor.”

M. Le Mesge stopped and looked at us to mark his satisfaction.