“I shall certainly not fail you there, sir,” said M. Le Mesge.  “I may tell you, too, that you are not the first to put to me that question.  Most of the explorers that I have seen enter here in the past ten years have been attracted in the same way, intrigued by this Greek work reproduced in Tifinar.  I have even arranged a fairly exact catalogue of these inscriptions and the caverns where they are to be met with.  All, or almost all, are accompanied by this legend:  Antinea.  Here commences her domain.  I myself have had repainted with ochre such as were beginning to be effaced.  But, to return to what I was telling you before, none of the Europeans who have followed this epigraphic mystery here, have kept their anxiety to solve this etymology once they found themselves in Antinea’s palace.  They all become otherwise preoccupied.  I might make many disclosures as to the little real importance which purely scientific interests possess even for scholars, and the quickness with which they sacrifice them to the most mundane considerations—­their own lives, for instance.”

“Let us take that up another time, sir, if it is satisfactory to you,” said Morhange, always admirably polite.

“This digression had only one point, sir:  to show you that I do not count you among these unworthy scholars.  You are really eager to know the origin of this name, Antinea, and that before knowing what kind of woman it belongs to and her motives for holding you and this gentleman as her prisoners.”

I stared hard at the little old man.  But he spoke with profound seriousness.

“So much the better for you, my boy,” I thought.  “Otherwise it wouldn’t have taken me long to send you through the window to air your ironies at your ease.  The law of gravity ought not to be topsy-turvy here at Ahaggar.”

“You, no doubt, formulated several hypotheses when you first encountered the name, Antinea,” continued M. Le Mesge, imperturbable under my fixed gaze, addressing himself to Morhange.  “Would you object to repeating them to me?”

“Not at all, sir,” said Morhange.

And, very composedly, he enumerated the etymological suggestions I have given previously.

The little man with the cherry-colored shirt front rubbed his hands.

“Very good,” he admitted with an accent of intense jubilation.  “Amazingly good, at least for one with only the modicum of Greek that you possess.  But it is all none the less false, super-false.”

“It is because I suspected as much that I put my question to you,” said Morhange blandly.

“I will not keep you longer in suspense,” said M. Le Mesge.  “The word, Antinea, is composed as follows:  ti is nothing but a Tifinar addition to an essentially Greek name. Ti is the Berber feminine article.  We have several examples of this combination.  Take Tipasa, the North African town.  The name means the whole, from ti and from [Greek:  nap].  So, tinea signifies the new, from ti and from [Greek:  ea].”