I took my way to this place, the last of the towns I desired to see—the tombstone, as it were, of the empire, the symbol or promise of the reconquest. I went partly by day and partly by night, partly by the railroad and partly on foot across the High Plateau southward till I should come to it. Upon my way I met many men who should, perhaps, have no part in such a little historical essay as is this, but for fear I should altogether forget them I will write them down.
The first was an ill-dressed fellow, young, and with very sad eyes such as men keep sometimes in early life but lose at last as they learn in time to prey upon others. He had been unfortunate. We went along together across a plain peculiarly lonely, and towards a large, bare, isolated rock as high as a Welsh mountain and, as it seemed, quite uninhabited. We were already in sight of the main range of Atlas, and in the far ravines was a darkness that might, perhaps, be made by cedar-trees, but all around us was nothing but bare land and now and then a glint from salt marshes far away.
|Story of the Lions|
I asked him from what part of France he had come. He answered that he was born in the colony. Then I asked him whether the colonists thought themselves prosperous or no. He said, as do all sad people, that luck was the difference. Those whom fortune loved, prospered; those whom she hated, failed. He was right; but when he came to examples he was startling. He showed me, high upon the rock before us, which I had thought quite lonely, a considerable building, made of the stones of the place and in colour similar to the mountain itself. “Beyond this hill,” he said, “is Batna, and beyond Batna is Lambèse. Since you are walking to Timgad you will pass both these places, and everywhere you will hear of the House of the Lions. Then you will learn, if ever you needed proof, that it is luck which governs all our efforts in this colony.” I looked curiously at the great house, and asked him to tell me the story. This he did; and I write here, as exactly as I can from memory, the story he told.
“In that very place upon the hillside where now stands so huge a house stood, when we were yet children, a little hut of stone such as the settlers build, with two rooms in it only, a bed, three chairs, a table, and a cooking-pot. And to this poverty nothing was added, for ill-luck pursued that roof.
“There lived under it a man and his wife who had two children. They had come here to rise with the country (as it is said), but, instead of so rising, first one evil and then another fell upon them till their little horde was eaten up and the field also, and the man had to work for others—a most miserable fate. He got work in the building of the prison of Lambèse, but, as he was not created by God to be a merchant or a mortar-mixer, nor even a carrier of stone, he earned very little and was always in dread of being sent away; and his companions jeered at him, for the unfortunate are ridiculous not only among the rich, but in every rank; and not only the rich jeer at poverty and shun it, but the poor also—indeed, all men.
“In a word, this man was in so miserable a way that at last he took to following his wife to church and to having recourse to shrines, as do many men when their afflictions are unendurable, and among other shrines he went to that called ‘St. Anthony of the Lion.’ Now, though it is ridiculous to believe that the Lion there helped him, (for it is not a saint,) yet good came to him through Lions.
“One day, when he had gone off to work with a heavy heart, leaving in the house but one five-franc piece, his wife, who was now all soured by misfortune and was wearied out with ceaseless work, heard a single knock at the door, and when she went to it she found a nomad boy of the desert from beyond Aurès, who held in his arms two little cubs with soft feet and peering eyes who were mewing for their mother: they were the cubs of Lions.
“The Arab boy, who was dark, erect, and strong, said, ‘God sends you these. They are five francs.’ She answered, ‘God be with you. I cannot pay.’ When, however, he made to go away silently, without bargaining, she said, ‘God forgive me, but I will buy them’; for she thought to herself, ‘perhaps I can sell them again for more,’ for Lions are rare and wonderful beasts. So she took her five-franc piece from beneath a leaden statue of St. Anthony in the window, and she paid the Arab boy from beyond Aurès, from the Sahara, and she said, ‘God save you, the lioness will follow the scent’; and he said, ‘God will overshadow me,’ and went gravely away, biting the five-franc piece to see if it was good.
“Now, when her husband came home they decided to go into Batna and sell the cubs, but their children, for whom they could afford no sort of toy, were already so fond of the little beasts that they had not the heart to sell them: they skimped and starved and ran into debt, but as the love of these Lions increased in their hearts the more determined were they to keep them; and they used to say, ‘God will provide,’ and other things of that sort.