Atlantida | Page 2

earth of the terrace of the fortification. A light shines in the
electric blackness. A man has just lighted a cigarette. He crouches, facing southwards. He
is smoking.
It is Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, our Targa guide, the man who in three days is to lead us across
the unknown plateaus of the mysterious Imoschaoch, across the hamadas of black stones,
the great dried oases, the stretches of silver salt, the tawny hillocks, the flat gold dunes
that are crested over, when the "alizé" blows, with a shimmering haze of pale sand.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh! He is the man. There recurs to my mind Duveyrier's tragic phrase,
"At the very moment the Colonel was putting his foot in the stirrup he was felled by a
sabre blow."[2] Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh! There he is, peacefully smoking his cigarette, a
cigarette from the package that I gave him.... May the Lord forgive me for it.
[Footnote 2: H. Duveyrier, "The Disaster of the Flatters Mission." Bull. Geol. Soc.,
1881.]
The lamp casts a yellow light on the paper. Strange fate, which, I never knew exactly
why, decided one day when I was a lad of sixteen that I should prepare myself for Saint
Cyr, and gave me there André de Saint-Avit as classmate. I might have studied law or
medicine. Then I should be today a respectable inhabitant of a town with a church and
running water, instead of this cotton-clad phantom, brooding with an unspeakable anxiety
over this desert which is about to swallow me.
A great insect has flown in through the window. It buzzes, strikes against the rough cast,
rebounds against the globe of the lamp, and then, helpless, its wings singed by the still
burning candle, drops on the white paper.
It is an African May bug, big, black, with spots of livid gray.
I think of others, its brothers in France, the golden-brown May bugs, which I have seen
on stormy summer evenings projecting themselves like little particles of the soil of my
native countryside. It was there that as a child I spent my vacations, and later on, my
leaves. On my last leave, through those same meadows, there wandered beside me a
slight form, wearing a thin scarf, because of the evening air, so cool back there. But now
this memory stirs me so slightly that I scarcely raise my eyes to that dark corner of my
room where the light is dimly reflected by the glass of an indistinct portrait. I realize of
how little consequence has become what had seemed at one time capable of filling all my
life. This plaintive mystery is of no more interest to me. If the strolling singers of Rolla
came to murmur their famous nostalgic airs under the window of this bordj I know that I

should not listen to them, and if they became insistent I should send them on their way.
What has been capable of causing this metamorphosis in me? A story, a legend, perhaps,
told, at any rate by one on whom rests the direst of suspicions.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh has finished his cigarette. I hear him returning with slow steps to his
mat, in barrack B, to the left of the guard post.
Our departure being scheduled for the tenth of November, the manuscript attached to this
letter was begun on Sunday, the first, and finished on Thursday, the fifth of November,
1903.
OLIVIER FERRIÈRES, Lt. 3rd Spahis.

I
A SOUTHERN ASSIGNMENT
Sunday, the sixth of June, 1903, broke the monotony of the life that we were leading at
the Post of Hassi-Inifel by two events of unequal importance, the arrival of a letter from
Mlle. de C----, and the latest numbers of the Official Journal of the French Republic.
"I have the Lieutenant's permission?" said Sergeant Chatelain, beginning to glance
through the magazines he had just removed from their wrappings.
I acquiesced with a nod, already completely absorbed in reading Mlle. de C----'s letter.
"When this reaches you," was the gist of this charming being's letter, "mama and I will
doubtless have left Paris for the country. If, in your distant parts, it might be a consolation
to imagine me as bored here as you possibly can be, make the most of it. The Grand Prix
is over. I played the horse you pointed out to me, and naturally, I lost. Last night we
dined with the Martials de la Touche. Elias Chatrian was there, always amazingly young.
I am sending you his last book, which has made quite a sensation. It seems that the
Martials de la Touche are depicted there without disguise. I will add to it Bourget's last,
and Loti's, and France's, and two or three of the latest music hall hits. In the political
word, they say the law about congregations will meet with strenuous opposition.