“Why the law of France,” said I.
This staggered him. The fact of there being decent laws in foreign parts has staggered many an honest Briton. He counselled a damnation of the law, and finally, in order to humour him, I allowed him to thrust the uncomfortable thing into my hip-pocket.
“Colonel,” said I, when I took leave of him an hour later, “I have armed myself out of pure altruism. I shan't be able to sit down in peace and comfort for the rest of the evening. Should I accidentally do so, my blood will be on your head.”
CHAPTER XII
The tram that passes the hotel gates took me into the town and dropped me at the Place du Gouvernement. With its strange fusion of East and West, its great white-domed mosque flanked by the tall minaret contrasting with its formal French colonnaded facades, its groupings of majestic white-robed forms and commonplace figures in caps and hard felt hats; the mystery of its palm trees, and the crudity of its flaring electric lights, it gave an impression of unreality, of a modern contractor's idea of Fairyland, where anything grotesque might assume an air of normality. The moon shone full in the heavens, and as I crossed the Place I saw the equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans silhouetted against the mosque. The port, to the east, was quiet at this hour, and the shipping lay dreamily in the moonlight. Far away one could see the dim outlines of the Kabyle Mountains, and the vague melting of sea and sky into a near horizon. The undefinable smell of the East was in the air.
The Cafe de Bordeaux, which forms an angle of the Place, blazed in front of me. A few hardy souls, a Zouave or two, an Arab, a bored Englishman and his wife, and some French inhabitants were sitting outside in the chilliness. I entered. The cafe was filled with a nondescript crowd, and the rattle of dominoes rose above the hum of talk. In a corner near the door I discovered the top of a silk hat projecting above a widely opened newspaper grasped by two pudgy hands, and I recognised the Professor.
“Monsieur,” said he, when I had taken a seat at his table, “if the unknown terrors which you are going to confront dismay you, I beg that you will not consider yourself bound to me.”
“My dear Professor,” I replied, “a brave man tastes of death but once.”
He was much delighted at the sentiment, which he took to be original.