"I was rather taken aback, but I put an end to my promenade, went down to the Baroness, and had a conversation with her which gave me food for much reflection.
"'I beg your pardon. Miss Poles,' said Madame de Guéran, 'for having interrupted your nocturnal walk, but I thought you would not mind giving me a few moments of your time.'
"'Certainly, madame. I am entirely at your orders,' I hastened to reply. 'It was you, then, whose sleep I was disturbing?'
"'You would most assuredly have disturbed it,' said the Baroness, laughing, 'if I had had the slightest inclination that way; but I am very much preoccupied, and that has kept me awake. Tell me,' she continued brusquely, 'you, who, like myself, have been brought into contact with so many travellers, have you not noticed how very easily all sorts of rumours gain credence about them in Europe? Amongst other things, do you remember what was said about Edward Vogel?'
"'No,' I replied, 'for once my really marvellous memory is at fault.'
"'Well,' continued the Baroness, 'I have collected, on purpose to show them to you, a series of papers relating to that celebrated traveller, who was one of my father's firmest friends. I can only now, as you may imagine, give you the gist of them. On the 14th December, 1857, the English Vice-Consul at Khartoum, Mr. Green, gave his Government the following information.* Dr. Vögel, after reaching the Waday territory, was at first very well received by the Sultan. But in the outskirts of Warra there is a holy mountain, the ascent of which is forbidden to the whole world. This mountain Vögel attempted to ascend, and he was at once arrested and put to death.'
* Vögel, on arriving at Bomon, was anxious to secure the protection of somebody of influence, and he was recommended to apply to the Vizier Germa, a cousin of the Sultan. Scarcely had he been presented to this individual than the latter requested the gift of Vögel's horse, a very valuable animal. Vögel refused, and his death was at once resolved upon. He was accused of having entered the country for the purpose of bewitching it, and of writing with a pen without ink (a pencil, in reality), and on the fifth day after his arrival Germa made an appearance before his house, accompanied by an armed escort, Vögel was summoned to come out, under the pretext that the Sultan had asked for him, and he fell under the blows of these murderers.
"'You see,' said the Baroness, handing me an English newspaper, 'that the news is quite official, and Lord Clarendon informed his Queen of it. But, on the 29th of June, 1860, another account, equally official, was sent to the Humboldt Institution.'
"'What do you say to these two versions?' asked Madame le Guéran.
"'If they do not exactly coincide,' I replied, 'in all their details, they at all events both end after the same fashion.'