At last Dummkopf could stand it no longer. Convinced that life was not worth defending at such a cost, he resolved to throw himself from the top of the palm-tree in order to find repose in death. Full of this desperate idea he stood up, put aside the branches which might have kept him back at the edge of the precipice, and thrusting one foot resolutely forward kept the other firmly in its place. An honourable thought checked him on the very brink of the abyss. Dummkopf had no family, no wife, no children, no nephews; it was his duty then to remain in the world as the sole representative of the Dummkopfs. Man is ingenious, even in the midst of his despair. If he has a wife and children, he wants to live for their sake; if he is alone in the world, he will live for his own benefit.
Dummkopf was very grateful to himself after coming to this heroic resolution. He even called himself a coward for having entertained for an instant the idea of offering himself up as a sacrifice to the voracity of an amphibious monster.
As he was now determined not to die if he could by any means avoid it, the Professor began to consider whether it would be possible to enjoy, at the top of his palm-tree, that sort of happiness which a civilised man has a right to expect. The crocodile had expended all his force in vain. It was evident that the palm-tree was an impregnable fortress as far as his attacks were concerned. The climate was superb. At the foot of the house—that is to say, of the palm-tree—ran a magnificent river. Thanks to the hydraulic apparatus there could never be any want of water; and as for food, there were dates in abundance. The crocodile instead of being terrible was now only amusing, and as it was clearly proved that the palm-tree could suffer no injury from the monster’s wrath, the Professor, in his lively moments, sometimes went so far as to pelt him with date-stones.
Every morning when the sun rose, Dummkopf bent his ear towards the desert and listened to the cavatina of Memnon, the colossal tenor. Then after breakfast, if he was pleased with the crocodile, he threw him down a few rotten dates, and was amused to see how voraciously the monster devoured them. Between breakfast and dinner he read in the library of his memory, and studied the mysterious monuments by which he was surrounded. When a profound thought occurred to him, he took a stylus, formed out of a twig, and jotted it down on a leaf which served as papyrus. Then he read it over several times, and put it away in a place of safety.
There were no neighbours to watch his conduct, no journals to criticise his thoughts, no tax-gatherers to trouble him about overdue rates. He was as free as the air, and only wondered why the misanthropes of society did not imitate Simon Stylites or himself, and retire for the rest of their lives to the top of some column or palm-tree.
We must now leave our anchorite in his palm-tree, and proceed to the opposite bank of the Nile, where Herr von Thorigkeit, the celebrated botanist of Berlin, was engaged in a hopeless search after yellow lotuses. Herodotus, it is true, saw yellow lotuses, but then Herodotus possessed the peculiarity of seeing things that did not exist. At all events, since his time the yellow lotus has not been met with, and for that reason conscientious botanists are perpetually looking for it.
Herr von Thorigkeit, then, was searching for the yellow lotus, and he was accompanied by two Arabs armed with carbines.
There are some things, ordinary enough in themselves, which have an overpowering effect on the imagination when they are seen in the desert. What, for instance, would be the feelings of a traveller who should discover in the midst of the Sahara a neat little house with the words—“Reading room, admission one penny,” over the entrance? Von Thorigkeit was behaving naturally enough when he uttered a cry of dismay which resounded along the left bank of the Nile.
He had seen two boots, one proud and erect, the other bent down as if with fatigue. Dummkopf’s clothes had disappeared, carried away by the stream, or perhaps swallowed by some omnivorous crocodile, but there were the boots standing on a ledge of rock.
The legitimate dismay of the botanist will now be understood. He had seen two boots on the left bank of the Nile: one proud and erect, the other bent down as if with fatigue.