"I am afraid," replied our friend, with some hesitation, "that if we remain passive, they will despise us also."
"Do you mean to say that you care about the contempt of the
Monbuttoos? Oh, M. de Morin!" said Miss Poles, with lofty disdain.
The grievance of Miss Beatrice against Munza made her unjust as regards his subjects; in her anger, hatred, and malice she tarred the King and his army with the same brush.
Without taking any notice of the remark of our eccentric companion, I observed to de Morin that we had no right to massacre these brave Domandoos, against whom we could not possibly have any ground of complaint.
"I never said a word about massacring them," replied de Morin. "But we ought to take the command of our Nubians. They are, as you see, behaving very prudently, and await our orders to fire; we could do what we liked with them."
"Nassar is quite capable of leading them," said Madame de Guéran. "Believe me," she added with a smile, "we shall be doing right by observing strict neutrality in this affair. You will have other opportunities, and very soon, perhaps, of fighting on your own account."
Unfortunately, the Baroness, after uttering this sage advice, strolled away with Miss Poles to seek shelter from the sun under a large sycamore tree.
Her presence had up to this time kept our friend's excitement within bounds; but as soon as he was no longer subject to this salutary influence, he lost his head completely, as he sometimes did, without showing the slightest symptom of the fact. The dear old donkey was never so clear in argument, so cool, or so collected as when he was meditating some act of downright folly.
This time he tried to make Delange his excuse. He knew very well that he was in no danger of reckoning without his host; the Doctor, wise and prudent at the commencement of the expedition, had now occasionally his moments of mild insanity, as if he had had a sunstroke.
"You will doubtless remember," said de Morin to him, "that one evening when I was tranquilly smoking my pipe in the hut with Périères, you compelled me to get up and follow you into the shed constructed for Munza's eighty wives."