If chance a swelling brook his passage stay,
And foam impervious cross the wanderer’s way,
Confus’d he stops, a length of country past,
Eyes the rough waves, and, tired, returns at last.
It was a hot pull up the mountain, but having got to the top, I followed a path to the school-house of the Jesuit fathers, where a very cordial reception awaited me.
I had been told that there was a likely place for camping near their house. On inspection I found it was shadeless, and so retraced my steps for about a mile, to a piece of public ground I had already noticed, where I set to work to pitch the tent. The situation reminded me of Thililit. This done I called on the Kaïd, who chatted in French of his experiences during a visit to the International Exhibition of 1878, and showed me a workshop attached to his house, where jewellers were busy. On leaving, he sent a young man to get me fuel, a matter about which I had left Dominique anxious. On returning to the tent, I found a party of merry inquisitive schoolboys, whose leader, a bright lad, was the son of the Kaïd, and spoke French fluently; they accompanied me on a walk.
The following morning I began a sketch of the village under which I was encamped, houses peeping picturesquely through foliage. Dominique was in his worst humour; his wages had been paid before leaving the Aïth Ménguellath, and having now some notes sewn up in his coat, and seeing Fort National in the distance, he thought he could do as he liked. I had to explain that I proposed remaining master. The upshot was, that flying into a fury, he picked up that wonderful cardboard box and a cage with a tame blackbird he had amused himself with rearing, and walked off. I watched his receding back with feelings of relief, and then pounced on the breakfast which still simmered on the fire. Afterwards, upon lighting my pipe I considered my awkward situation; for the tent could not be left a moment unguarded. About the end of the third pipe, the young man who had gone for firewood luckily made his appearance; I left the tent in his charge, and went to see the Kaïd again. Explaining my case, I added that I should prefer a native to serve me, if a trustworthy one could be found; he said the Fathers would know of someone; so, after a cup of coffee, he most politely accompanied me to the school-house.
The walk was just in the greatest heat of the day, and I began to fear lest this by no means too solid flesh should thaw entirely away on the road. The Fathers promised to send for a young man, a carpenter, formerly a pupil of theirs, who had cooked for them, and understood French. I supped at the school-house that evening, met and engaged him, and wrote out an agreement, signed one copy, and handed Mohammed another to sign. He hesitated; he had forgotten how to write his name. ‘Well, put a cross,’ suggested the Father. He did so; an odd signature for a Mussulman.
It must always be a pleasure to praise the merits of an old pupil, but sometimes it is an imprudence, I reflected. However, Mohammed turned out gentle, obliging, and faithful, and he cooked sufficiently well for me, though he had not the ideal ‘Potages des Petits Menus’ of Dominique in his head. He filled up spare time by nicking a stick of wild-olive all over with ingenious patterns. If one should believe M. C. Souvestre, who has published a book entitled ‘Instructions Secrètes des Jésuites,’ it is a sign of little wisdom to apply to the Society of Jesus for a servant. I read that a certain worthy Père Valeze Reynald considers that, ‘Les domestiques peuvent prendre en cachette les biens de leurs maîtres par forme de compensation, sous prétexte que leurs gages sont trop modiques, et ils sont dispensés de la restitution.’ With such professors and a despised ‘cochon d’indigène’ for a pupil, I ought to have obtained something quite diabolical.
Night began to darken, the moon rose in splendour from behind the mountains, and a troop of merry boys walked with me along the narrow path among fields of ripe corn that led to my tent. I found four guards awaiting me, who rolled themselves up in their burnouses and passed the night as sentinels. I did not think them necessary, and the Kaïd told me that he apprehended no danger, but he was responsible for my safety, and that it was an old custom of the country, dating from before the French conquest, which he thought right to keep up. The guards spoke well of their Kaïd, as a man who kept things up to the mark; in their tribe they did things proper, not like the Aïth Ménguellath, poor creatures, who go on anyhow. The Aïth Ménguellath had said to me, ‘Thou forsakest friends to fall among thieves in the Beni Ienni.’