Gave him twelve strokes.
Julius gathered that he had got hold of a mere training book. The list of days soon stopped, however, and after a blank page, he read:
Sept. 20th. Left Algiers for the Aures.
The a few jottings of places and dates and finally this last entry:
Oct. 5th. Return to El Kantara—50 kilometres on horseback,[A] without stopping.
Julius turned over a few blank pages, but, a little further on, the entries began again. At the top of a page, the following words were written in larger and more carefully formed characters, arranged so as to look like a fresh title:
QUI INCOMMINCIA IL LIBRO
DELLA NOVA ESIGENZA
E
DELLA SUPREMA VIRTU.
And below this came the motto:
“Tanto quanto se ne taglia.”
—Boccaccio.
Any expression of moral ideas was quick to arouse the hunter’s instinct in Julius; here was game for him. But the very next page was a disappointment; it landed him in another batch of accounts. And yet these accounts were of a different kind. Without any indication of dates or places appeared the following entries: