“And have you not been intolerably dull and miserable?”

“No, one gets used to this country, and ends by liking it.  You cannot imagine how it lays hold on people by those small, animal instincts that we are ignorant of ourselves.  We first become attached to it by our organs, to which it affords secret gratifications which we do not inquire into.  The air and the climate overcome our flesh, in spite of ourselves, and the bright light with which it is inundated keeps the mind clear and fresh, at but little cost.  It penetrates us continually by our eyes, and one might really say that it cleanses the somber nooks of the soul.”

“But what about women?”

“Ah...!  There is rather a dearth of them!”

“Only rather?”

“Well, yes ... rather.  For one can always, even among the Arabs, find some complaisant, native women, who think of the nights of Roumi.”

He turned to the Arab, who was waiting on me, who was a tall, dark fellow, with bright, black eyes, that flashed beneath his turban, and said to him: 

“I will call you when I want you, Mohammed.”  And then, turning to me, he said: 

“He understands French, and I am going to tell you a story in which he plays a leading part.”

As soon as the man had left the room, he began: 

“I had been here about four years, and scarcely felt quite settled yet in this country, whose language I was beginning to speak, and forced, in order not to break altogether with those passions that had been fatal to me in other places, to go to Algiers for a few days, from time to time.

“I had bought this farm, this bordj, which had been a fortified post, and was within a few hundred yards from the native encampment, whose man I employ to cultivate my land.  Among the tribe that had settled here, and which formed a portion of the Oulad-Taadja, I chose, as soon as I arrived here, that tall fellow whom you have just seen, Mohammed ben Lam’har, who soon became greatly attached to me.  As he would not sleep in a house, not being accustomed to it, he pitched his tent a few yards from my house, so that I might be able to call him from my window.

“You can guess what my life was, I dare say?  Every day I was busy with cleanings and plantations; I hunted a little, I used to go and dine with the officers of the neighboring fortified posts, or else they came and dined with me.  As for pleasures ...  I have told you what they consisted in.  Algiers offered me some which were rather more refined, and from time to time a complaisant and compassionate Arab would stop me when I was out for a walk, and offer to bring one of the women of his tribe to my house at night.  Sometimes I accepted, but more frequently I refused, from fear of the disagreeable consequences and troubles it might entail upon me.