Well, I have written to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs at Tlemcen, which is away down by the Morocco frontier.  I have also written to Lola Brandt.  I seem to miss her as much as any of the friends I have left behind me in England.  I cannot help the absurd fancy that her rich vitality helps me along.  I have not been feeling quite so robust as I did when I saw her daily.  And twinges are coming more frequently.  I don’t think that rolling about in the Mediterranean on board the Marechal Bugeaud is good for little pains inside.

CHAPTER XI

When I began this autobiographical sketch of the last few weeks of my existence, I had conceived, as I have already said, the notion of making it chiefly a guide to conduct for my young disciple, Dale Kynnersley.  Not only was it to explain to him clearly the motives which led to my taking any particular line of action with regard to his affairs, and so enable me to escape whatever blame he might, through misunderstanding, be disposed to cast on me, but also to elevate his mind, stimulate his ambitions, and improve his morals.  It was to be a Manual of Eumoiriety.  It was to be sweetened with philosophic reflections and adorned with allusions to the lives of the great masters of their destiny who have passed away.  It was to have been a pretty little work after the manner of Montaigne, with the exception that it ran of its own accord into narrative form.  But I am afraid Lola Brandt has interposed herself between me and my design.  She had brought me down from the serene philosophic plane where I could think and observe human happenings and analyse them and present them in their true aspect to my young friend.  She has set me down in the thick of events—­and not events such as the smiling philosopher is in the habit of dealing with, but lunatic, fantastic occurrences with which no system of philosophy invented by man is capable of grappling.  I can just keep my head, that is all, and note down what happens more or less day by day, so that when the doings of dwarfs and captains, and horse-tamers and youthful Members of Parliament concern me no more, Dale Kynnersley can have a bald but veracious statement of fact.  And as I have before mentioned, he loves facts, just as a bear loves honey.

I passed a quiet day or two in my hotel garden, among the sweet-peas, and the roses, and the geraniums.  There were little shady summer-houses where one could sit and dream, and watch the blue sky and the palms and the feathery pepper trees drooping with their coral berries, and the golden orange-trees and the wisteria and the great gorgeous splash of purple bougainvillea above the Moorish arches of the hotel.  There were mild little walks in the eucalyptus woods behind, where one went through acanthus and wild absinthe, and here and there as the path wound, the great blue bay came into view, and far away the snow-capped peaks of the Atlas.  There were warmth and sunshine, and the unexciting prattle of the retired Colonels and maiden ladies.  There was a hotel library filled with archaic fiction.  I took out Ainsworth’s “Tower of London,” and passed a happy morning in the sun renewing the thrills of my childhood.  I began to forget the outer world in my enchanted garden, like a knight in the Forest of Broceliande.