III
Late that night, when Dutrail was already sleeping the sound sleep of a wearied man, he was suddenly awakened by Bouverie. The old man had lighted a candle, and by its light he seemed still paler than usual. His hair was in disorder, his whole appearance indicated an extreme degree of terror.
“What is the matter, Bouverie?” asked Dutrail. “You’re ill?”
Though it was difficult to struggle against his desire to sleep, Dutrail made an effort to awake, remembering the serious illness of his old friend. But Bouverie did not answer the question; he asked, in a broken voice:
“Did you see him too?”
“Whom could I see?” objected Dutrail. “I’m so tired at the end of the day that I sleep without dreaming.”
“This was not a dream,” said Bouverie sadly, “and I saw him go from me towards you.”
“Whom?”
“The Phœnician whose tomb we dug out.”
“Your mind’s wandering, dear Bouverie,” said Dutrail. “You have fever: I’ll prepare a dose of quinine for you.”
“I’m not wandering,” objected the old man obstinately. “I saw this man quite clearly. He was shaven and beardless, with a wrinkled face, and he was dressed as a soldier. He stood by my bed and looked threateningly at me, and said....”
“Wait a moment,” interrupted Dutrail, trying to bring the old man to reason—“in what language did he speak to you?”
“In Phœnician. I don’t know if perhaps at another time I should have understood the Phœnician language, but at that moment I understood every word.”
“What did the apparition say to you?”
“He said to me: ‘I—am Eluli, son of Eluli, he whose peaceful repose you, strangers, have disturbed, not dreading my curse. Therefore I will have vengeance on thee, and what has befallen me shall come upon thee. Thy ashes shall not rest in thy native land, but shall be the prey of the hyena and jackal. I will torment thee both sleeping and waking, all thy life and after thy life, and until the end of time.’ When he had said this he went towards you, and I thought you would see him too.”
Dutrail felt convinced that his friend’s state was the result of illness, easily explained by the heat, by his continuous thinking about death, and by the agitation consequent on their remarkable discovery. Wishing to bring the old man into a reasonable frame of mind, Dutrail did not remind him that apparitions were a delusion of sight, but he tried to make clear all the implausibility of the vision.
“We did not excavate the tomb,” said he, “to insult the ashes lying there, or to profit by the things collected there; we had a disinterested scientific object. Eluli, son of Eluli, has no reason for being angered with us. Science resurrects the past, and we, in raising up Phœnician antiquities, have also raised up this Eluli. The old Phœnician ought rather to be grateful to us for calling him from oblivion. If it hadn’t been for us, who in our day would have known that a thousand years before Christ there once lived in Africa a certain Eluli, son of Eluli?”
Dutrail talked to the old man as to a sick child. At first Bouverie would not listen to any arguments and he demanded what was clearly impossible—that all the things should be taken back to the tomb at once, and the tomb itself buried anew. Little by little, however, he began to give way, and agreed to postpone the decision of the matter until the morning. Then Dutrail lifted the old man in his arms and laid him on his bed, covering him with quilts as he began to shiver, and sat down by his bedside until the sick man fell into a restless and disturbed sleep. “What havoc illness plays with even the clearest mind!” he thought sadly.