"There I differ from you—we can go to bed. It is two o'clock in the morning already, and we have to start at five."
"You are right. Yon do not mind my having thought of the King's
Musketeers?"
"Mind it? The idea was capital, only, like many other excellent ideas, it was not practicable."
"I'll try to hit upon something else."
"And so will I. Good night."
"Good-bye—for three hours."
On the following day, before noon, the caravan, preceded by its band, set foot on the territory of the Niam-Niam.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Whilst, in the centre of equatorial Africa, about five hundred leagues from all the waters which lave the shores of the African continent and communicate with Europe, the French expedition was making ready to penetrate still farther into the interior of the country, and to pass limits hitherto considered to be impassable, the Parisians continued their usual manner of life, and, without caring one jot for the intrepid travellers, applied themselves to their business on a small, and their pleasures on a large scale.
The various Geographical Societies had, however, in their journals published a few notes despatched from Khartoum, in January, 1873, but, as these journals do not come under the head of ordinary current literature, they receive little or no notice at the hands of society. In the drawing-room of the Marquise de Genevray, the aunt of M. de Morin, after discussing the last new play, the latest cause célébre, and the coming fashions, a word or two might be said about Egypt and the Red Sea, but there everybody stopped, for fear of falling into some gross geographical blunder. One day, when Madame de Genevray, to give a fillip to conversation, mentioned having received news of her nephew from Souakim, everybody stared in astonishment, but nobody dared say a word except a lady of a certain age, who, nodding her head as if she knew all about it, hazarded the observation that it was some distance from Paris, on which there was a general chorus of—"Oh, yes, a considerable distance!"