“As for the Europeans, I did not care to question these sinister puppets.  Besides, all three were difficult of approach.  The Hetman of Jitomir was sinking deeper and deeper into alcohol.  What intelligence remained to him, he seemed to have dissolved the evening when he had invoked his youth for me.  I met him from time to time in the corridors that had become all at once too narrow for him, humming in a thick voice a couplet from the music of La Reine Hortense.

De ma fille Isabelle
Sois l’epoux a l’instant,
Car elle est la plus belle
Et toi, le plus vaillant.

“As for Pastor Spardek, I would cheerfully have killed the old skinflint.  And the hideous little man with the decorations, the placid printer of labels for the red marble hall,—­how could I meet him without wanting to cry out in his face:  ’Eh! eh!  Sir Professor, a very curious case of apocope:  [Greek:  Atlantinea].  Suppression of alpha, of tau and of lambda!  I would like to direct your attention to another case as curious:  [Greek:  klementinea], Clementine.  Apocope of kappa, of lamba, of epsilon and of mu.  If Morhange were with us, he would tell you many charming erudite things about it.  But, alas!  Morhange does not deign to come among us any more.  We never see Morhange.’

“My fever for information found a little more favorable reception from Rosita, the old Negress manicure.  Never have I had my nails polished so often as during those days of waiting!  Now—­after six years—­she must be dead.  I shall not wrong her memory by recording that she was very partial to the bottle.  The poor old soul was defenseless against those that I brought her and that I emptied with her, through politeness.

“Unlike the other slaves, who are brought from the South toward Turkey by the merchants of Rhat, she was born in Constantinople and had been brought into Africa by her master when he became kaimakam of Rhadames....  But don’t let me complicate this already wandering history by the incantations of this manicure.

“‘Antinea,’ she said to me, ’is the daughter of El-Hadj-Ahmed-ben-Guemama, Sultan of Ahaggar, and Sheik of the great and noble tribe of Kel-Rhela.  She was born in the year twelve hundred and eighty-one of the Hegira.  She has never wished to marry any one.  Her wish has been respected for the will of women is sovereign in this Ahaggar where she rules to-day.  She is a cousin of Sidi-el-Senoussi, and, if she speaks the word, Christian blood will flow from Djerid to Touat, and from Tchad to Senegal.  If she had wished it, she might have lived beautiful and respected in the land of the Christians.  But she prefers to have them come to her.’

“‘Cegheir-ben-Cheikh,’ I said, ’do you know him?  He is entirely devoted to her?’