"And he motioned to the guards, saying—
"'Conduct him to the school, and place him in the lowest class.'
"Need I say that things were happening by no means as I had intended them to happen? Need I add that the word 'instruct' would never have appeared in my credentials had I surmised that it would be interpreted so literally? Yet it is clear, I think, that at the moment no useful alternative to doing as I was told was open to me. So I followed my guides.
"No violence was used to me; no harsh words were spoken; though I must have been a puzzle to the inhabitants, they were too well disciplined to show it—all of them, that is to say, except Bottled Bass, who grinned at me with gleaming teeth.
"They showed me to the room that I was to live in. It was close to the residence of the Senussi himself, who wished, I suppose, to keep an eye on me. And then they put me to school. I—moi qui vous parle—a man of much general knowledge and wide experience of life, was put to school—and in the lowest class! I had to sit, cross-legged, in the midst of a semicircle of negro boys, while a learned Arab, with a stick and a manuscript, sat in the centre and taught.
"'No matter,' I said to myself, 'my time will come, and I will bide my time, and earn my promised fee.'
"But I was curious to know the term of my probation; and I put the question to my teacher as politely as I could.
"'In view, sir,' I said, 'of the zeal for knowledge which I am demonstrating, would you mind informing me how long this interesting course of instruction is to last?'
"'You are as a little child,' he answered kindly, 'but it may, be, if Allah wills it, that in seven years you will have acquired the knowledge of a man.'
"Seven years of this tomfoolery! It was too terrible! My heart sank and my temper rose—the more so when I perceived that Bottled Bass, who was also a member of the lowest class, was grinning; and I retorted hotly—