usages of polite society. He objected to stuffy
drawing-rooms, and began to long for the free life of
the open desert, where be could make love to the
4 little queens,’ raid the Arab caravans to his heart’s
content, and hack his victims over the head if they
objected to his methods of amusement.
The man belonged to a race that prefers to 4 die
in its boots.’ He was by nature a fighter, a herdsman
and a hunter, and he seems during the pursuit
of these various occupations to have studied natural
history, and come to the conclusion that the society
‘ lion ’ and the common or society * tame cat ’ not
only belong to the same family, but that they very
frequently bear to each other a most striking family
resemblance.
He objected to being trotted out and put through
his paces at the receptions of the French officers’
wives. He became moody and restless, and eventually
took himself off to his native wilderness, where, no
doubt, he astonished his companions by his account
of the wonders of civilisation as understood by the
French.
While, however, his ordeal lasted he appears to
have played his part with sufficient dignity and
courtesy.
On one occasion he was taken by his cicerone to
an evening function at a French house in Algiers.
The daughter of the house—who rejoiced in
the extremely appropriate name of Angelina—was
possessed of one of those instruments of torture by
which a certain class of young lady is wont to vex
the souls of her male acquaintances. She had an
album. She requested—no doubt with the conventional
simper—her outlandish guest to inscribe in it
some ‘ appropriate sentiment ’ in his native tongue.
It was a request which must have been expected
to completely stagger her visitor.
But not a bit of i t ! He was quite equal to the
occasion and entered at once into the spirit of the
thing. The man was a poet, and this is.a translation
of the verse that that desert Byron wrote:
‘ Thy name, Angelina, has inspired my soul with a
love that will never be extinguished.
‘ For love of thee I would go even as far as France.
4 Thine eye kills by its brilliance and deprives
the heart of man of wisdom.
‘ If it were possible to assess thy value I would
give for thee six thousand pieces of gold.
4 For thee I would give my best camel.
‘Before this damsel attained to womanhood we
thought that the gazelle never took the human form,
but now we have seen this prodigy.
‘ If this young girl were to come to our country of
the plain, there is not a single man who would not
come from far or near to see her.’
It must have been a curious sight to see in that
salon, with its electric light, its European furniture,
and its little crowd of French men and women in
evening dress, that huge black-masked ‘ Saharan
brigand ’ inditing in the fair Angelina’s album his
little scrap of verse !