Another idea came to me, and a convulsive laugh bent me double.

“Antinea wants me to be at my best when I meet her.”

A mirror of orichalch formed one whole side of the room.  Glancing into it, I realized that in all decency there was nothing exaggerated in the demand.

My untrimmed beard, the frightful layer of dirt which lay about my eyes and furrowed my cheeks, my clothing, spotted by all the clay of the Sahara and torn by all the thorns of Ahaggar—­all this made me appear a pitiable enough suitor.

I lost no time in undressing and plunging into the porphry bath in the center of the room.  A delicious drowsiness came over me in that perfumed water.  A thousand little jars, spread on a costly carved wood dressing-table, danced before my eyes.  They were of all sizes and colors, carved in a very transparent kind of jade.  The warm humidity of the atmosphere hastened my relaxation.

I still had strength to think, “The devil take Atlantis and the vault and Le Mesge.”

Then I fell asleep in the bath.

When I opened my eyes again, the little hand of the clock had almost reached the sign of Taurus.  Before me, his black hands braced on the edge of the bath, stood a huge Negro, bare-faced and bare-armed, his forehead bound with an immense orange turban.

He looked at me and showed his white teeth in a silent laugh.

“Who is this fellow?”

The Negro laughed harder.  Without saying a word, he lifted me like a feather out of the perfumed water, now of a color on which I shall not dwell.

In no time at all, I was stretched out on an inclined marble table.

The Negro began to massage me vigorously.

“More gently there, fellow!”

My masseur did not reply, but laughed and rubbed still harder.

“Where do you come from?  Kanem?  Torkou?  You laugh too much for a Targa.”

Unbroken silence.  The Negro was as speechless as he was hilarious.

“After all, I am making a fool of myself,” I said, giving up the case.  “Such as he is, he is more agreeable than Le Mesge with his nightmarish erudition.  But, on my word, what a recruit he would be for Hamman on the rue des Mathurins!”

“Cigarette, sidi?”

Without awaiting my reply, he placed a cigarette between my lips and lighted it, and resumed his task of polishing every inch of me.

“He doesn’t talk much, but he is obliging,” I thought.

And I sent a puff of smoke into his face.

This pleasantry seemed to delight him immensely.  He showed his pleasure by giving me great slaps.

When he had dressed me down sufficiently, he took a little jar from the dressing-table and began to rub me with a rose-colored ointment.  Weariness seemed to fly away from my rejuvenated muscles.

A stroke on a copper gong.  My masseur disappeared.  A stunted old Negress entered, dressed in the most tawdry tinsel.  She was talkative as a magpie, but at first I did not understand a word in the interminable string she unwound, while she took first my hands, then my feet, and polished the nails with determined grimaces.