"I bring my long harangue to a close, my dear fellow, with these words. On the score of health M. de Guéran is not now formidable, and he will never be so for the simple reason that his wife is disillusionized."
"He is none the less her husband," observed M. de Morin. "He has been found, he lives, and his widow, whom we wished to marry, is out of our reach. But you are not so calm as you would have me believe. Whilst I was giving way to-day to my bad temper, you remained quiet and all smiles, but you did not suffer any the less. Come, make a clean breast of it."
"I admit it," exclaimed M. Périères. "I feel precisely as you do. I suffer, and I am jealous, not of the husband, rescued by us this morning on the plain, but of the rival who fell upon us from the top of the mountain. He is about to benefit by the state of mind and heart in which he finds the Baroness, and which I have just explained. He will benefit also by the rivalry of both of us, by that equality between us which has allowed Madame de Guéran to remain undecided and wavering, and by the love we have displayed for her, a love which has not roused any corresponding feeling in her heart, but has nevertheless prepared it for the reception of somebody else.
"Finally, rely upon it, he will benefit by the unexpected fashion of his appearance amongst us. The imagination of women is always taken by the marvellous, especially when it does not come to pass by design, when he who appears surrounded by fireworks has not consciously produced the illumination, and especially when he is as modest as he is brilliant. For I will do Desrioux justice, it was not his fault that he did not arrive by rail with his carpet bag in his hand. If he blew up the mountain, it was simply because he was without the means of scaling it; if he appeared to me in a cloud, duly furnished with wings, it was merely because chance, that great scene-painter, was pleased on this occasion to furnish a fairy-like tableau. Madame de Guéran was none the less moved by the explosion and its attendant apotheosis; even we were surprised into admiration. In a word, my dear fellow, and to make a long story short—we have been pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for the past year, and now Desrioux is going to eat them."
"You take it very smilingly, at all events."
"I laugh to keep myself from crying."
"And you accept the situation?"
"Just as you will have to accept it. What can we do? Any display of jealousy would be out of place and futile. Shall we quarrel with Desrioux? Have we dared to quarrel with each other? No, we recoiled from such an act of injustice, and we shall recoil again. Moreover, as I have already said, Desrioux, thanks to his coup de theâtre, has saved our lives, and people as a rule do not fall foul of their saviours. Reflection must show us that we have only one thing to do— to get back to Paris as soon as possible, and console ourselves as best we may, and if we can."
Just as this conversation came to an end, the caravan emerged from the defile through which it had been wending its way. After a day so full of incident the moment for well-earned repose had arrived. Tents were pitched for the Europeans on a plateau of some extent, whilst the people of Khartoum and Zanzibar sought a sleeping place in the clefts of the mountain, or lay down on the rocks, huddling close together to keep out the cold. The centigrade thermometers registered eighteen degrees, but the natives of central and southern Africa shiver in anything under twenty. This lowering of the temperature was on the contrary beneficial to M. de Guéran, and Dr. Desrioux, before quitting his patient, ascertained that the fever had decreased sensibly.
The camp was soon buried in repose—Venus in ebony alone, with her large eyes wide open, looked fixedly at the tent wherein reposed her former prisoner.