"Why on earth does not she marry her dear doctor?" said M. de Morin one day to M. Delange. "They adore each other! That, alas! is easily seen, and I know the Baroness. She is just as incapable of shortening the term of her widowhood as she would be of breaking her marriage vows. But I wish she would put an end to this state of things, and betake herself, as soon as possible, to the priest and the mayor."
"My dear fellow," replied Delange, "Périères last week said almost the same thing in the same words, but they were, like yours, so full of bitterness that I dared not repeat them to Madame de Guéran. If she were to hear either of you, so far from making up her mind, as you want her to do, she would wait still longer."
"According to you, her scruples and her delicacy as regards us are the real causes of the delay?"
"Yes, she wants to let time heal your wounds; she has so sincere a friendship for both of you that she would not wound you for the world."
"Then tell her, please, that we shall not have the sorrow of knowing even the date of her wedding. Our first journey has whetted our appetites; the feverish longing for discovery has taken possession of Périères, de Pommerelle, and myself, and in a few weeks we shall start for western Africa. Following the example of the brothers Lander, we shall follow the course of the Congo, and proceed, in a north-easterly direction, towards Lake Tanganyika. We are in earnest, you see, and Madame de Guéran may resume her freedom of action. We are going to travel without her, and consequently she has a right to marry without us."
* * * * * *
Two months after this conversation Laura de Guéran became Madame Desrioux. The newly-married couple have retired to a villa on the borders of Lake Como, whose picturesque shores recall to their minds the Albert-Nyanza, near which they refound each other.
M. Delange and Joseph alone of all our heroes remain in Paris. The former is devoting himself to his profession, which does not prevent him, at midnight when his work is over, playing a rubber of whist, or making one at a baccarat table in his club. He it is, so report says, whom Gondinet and Felix Cohen have hit off in the second act of their capital play "Le Club." The doctor still dreams occasionally of the women of Africa, but he makes no secret of his opinion that several of his Parisian patients are their superiors.
Joseph betrayed a certain amount of indifference when the question of again setting out for Africa was mooted before him, and it is, moreover, quite possible that M. de Morin, with good reason for it, did not make a point of his accompanying him. The trusty valet is a valet no longer. He is a gentleman of independent means, thanks to the generosity of his master, and the sale of thirty elephant's tusks.
As for ourselves, our task is ended, and with it this lengthy history, which has only one merit—that of being entirely exact from a geographical point of view, and with regard to African customs. We have thought that our readers might be interested in being taken far away from Paris, and in having brought before them, in a possibly attractive guise, laborious researches, interesting discoveries, and the mysteries of a new world.