The tram that passes the hotel gates took me into the town and dropped me at the Place du Gouvernement.  With its strange fusion of East and West, its great white-domed mosque flanked by the tall minaret contrasting with its formal French colonnaded facades, its groupings of majestic white-robed forms and commonplace figures in caps and hard felt hats; the mystery of its palm trees, and the crudity of its flaring electric lights, it gave an impression of unreality, of a modern contractor’s idea of Fairyland, where anything grotesque might assume an air of normality.  The moon shone full in the heavens, and as I crossed the Place I saw the equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans silhouetted against the mosque.  The port, to the east, was quiet at this hour, and the shipping lay dreamily in the moonlight.  Far away one could see the dim outlines of the Kabyle Mountains, and the vague melting of sea and sky into a near horizon.  The undefinable smell of the East was in the air.

The Cafe de Bordeaux, which forms an angle of the Place, blazed in front of me.  A few hardy souls, a Zouave or two, an Arab, a bored Englishman and his wife, and some French inhabitants were sitting outside in the chilliness.  I entered.  The cafe was filled with a nondescript crowd, and the rattle of dominoes rose above the hum of talk.  In a corner near the door I discovered the top of a silk hat projecting above a widely opened newspaper grasped by two pudgy hands, and I recognised the Professor.

“Monsieur,” said he, when I had taken a seat at his table, “if the unknown terrors which you are going to confront dismay you, I beg that you will not consider yourself bound to me.”

“My dear Professor,” I replied, “a brave man tastes of death but once.”

He was much delighted at the sentiment, which he took to be original.

“I shall quote it,” said he, “whenever my honour or my courage is called into question.  It is not often that a man has the temerity to do so.  Can I have the honour of offering you a whisky and soda?”

“Have we time?” I asked.

“We have time,” he said, solemnly consulting his watch.  “Things will ripen.”

“Then,” said I, “I shall have much pleasure in drinking to their maturity.”

While we were drinking our whisky and soda he talked volubly of many things—­his travels, his cats, his own incredible importance in the cosmos.  And as he sat there vapouring about the pathetically insignificant he looked more like Napoleon III than ever.  His eyes had the same mournful depths, his features the same stamp of fatality.  Each man has his gigantic combinations—­perhaps equally important in the eyes of the High Gods.  I was filled with an immense pity for Napoleon III.

Of the object of the adventure he said nothing.  As secrecy seemed to be a vital element in his fifteen-cent scheme, I showed no embarrassing curiosity.  Indeed, I felt but little, though I was certain that the adventure was connected with the world-cracking revelations of Monsieur Saupiquet, and was undertaken in the interest of his beloved lady, Lola Brandt.  But it was like playing at pirates with a child, and my pity for Napoleon gave place to my pity for my valiant but childish little friend.