“We did not excavate the tomb,” said he, “to insult the ashes lying there, or to profit by the things collected there; we had a disinterested scientific object. Eluli, son of Eluli, has no reason for being angered with us. Science resurrects the past, and we, in raising up Phœnician antiquities, have also raised up this Eluli. The old Phœnician ought rather to be grateful to us for calling him from oblivion. If it hadn’t been for us, who in our day would have known that a thousand years before Christ there once lived in Africa a certain Eluli, son of Eluli?”
Dutrail talked to the old man as to a sick child. At first Bouverie would not listen to any arguments and he demanded what was clearly impossible—that all the things should be taken back to the tomb at once, and the tomb itself buried anew. Little by little, however, he began to give way, and agreed to postpone the decision of the matter until the morning. Then Dutrail lifted the old man in his arms and laid him on his bed, covering him with quilts as he began to shiver, and sat down by his bedside until the sick man fell into a restless and disturbed sleep. “What havoc illness plays with even the clearest mind!” he thought sadly.
IV
On the morrow, logic and the obviousness of Dutrail’s arguments gained the day. Bouverie agreed that his vision had been the result of a feverish delirium. He also agreed that it would be a crime against science and against humanity to fill up the excavations of the tomb. The work went on with the former enthusiasm. And in the tomb of Eluli and in others near it they found even more precious historical things. The friends only awaited the arrival of the steamer with the necessary tools and some European workmen to begin excavating the town.
But Bouverie’s health did not improve. The fever did not leave him; he often cried aloud at night and leapt from his bed in unreasoning terror. Once the old man confessed that he had seen the Phœnician Eluli once again. Dutrail thought it good to laugh at him, and after this the old man spoke no more of his visions. But, all the same, he seemed to fade daily, and he even began to manifest signs of mental disturbance: he was afraid of the darkness and of the night, he did not wish to go into the museum, and presently he absolutely abandoned the excavations. Dutrail shook his head and waited impatiently for the steamer, hoping that a sea-voyage and his return to France might do the old man good.
But in vain did the two friends await the steamer. When at length it arrived, in the place where the members of the expedition had established their little settlement nothing was found but a heap of ashes and charred wood. It was evident that the negro-workmen had mutinied, killed the Europeans and stolen their property and carried off all the things which had been arranged in the museum. The great discovery of Dutrail and Bouverie, which they had dreamed would enrich Phœnician lore, was lost to mankind.
IN THE TOWER
A RECORDED DREAM
THERE is no doubt that I dreamed all this, dreamed it last night. True, I never thought that a dream could be so circumstantial and so consecutive. But none of the events of this dream have any connection with what I am experiencing now or with anything that I can remember. Yet how otherwise can a dream be differentiated from reality except in this way—that it is divorced from the continuous chain of events which occur in our waking hours?
I dreamed of a knight’s castle, somewhere on the shore of the sea. Beyond it there was a field and a stunted yet ancient forest of pines. In front of it there stretched an expanse of grey northern billows. The castle had been roughly built with stone of a terrible thickness, and from the side it looked like a wild and fantastic cliff. Its deep, irregularly placed windows were like the nests of monstrous birds. Within the castle were high gloomy chambers with sounding passages between them.
As I now call to mind the furniture of the rooms, the dress of the people about me, and other trifling details, I clearly understand to what period my dream had taken me back. It was the life of the Middle Ages, dreadful, austere, still half-savage, still full of impulses not yet under control. But in the dream I had not at first this understanding of the time but only a dull feeling that I myself was foreign to that life into which I was plunged. I felt confusedly that I was some kind of new-comer into that world.