. He cried aloud,
to measure the solitude. His voice, lost in the hollows of the hill,
sounded faintly, and aroused no echo--the echo was in his own heart. The
Provencal was twenty-two years old:--he loaded his carbine.

"There'll be time enough," he said to himself, laying on the ground the
weapon which alone could bring him deliverance.

Viewing alternately the dark expanse of the desert and the blue expanse
of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France--he smelled with delight the
gutters of Paris--he remembered the towns through which he had passed,
the faces of his comrades, the most minute details of his life. His
Southern fancy soon showed him the stones of his beloved Provence,
in the play of the heat which undulated above the wide expanse of the
desert. Realizing the danger of this cruel mirage, he went down the
opposite side of the hill to that by which he had come up the day
before. The remains of a rug showed that this place of refuge had at one
time been inhabited; at a short distance he saw some palm trees full
of dates. Then the instinct which binds us to life awoke again in
his heart. He hoped to live long enough to await the passing of some
Maugrabins, or perhaps he might hear the sound of cannon; for at this
time Bonaparte was traversing Egypt.

This thought gave him new life. The palm tree seemed to bend with the
weight of the ripe fruit. He shook some of it down. When he tasted this
unhoped-for manna, he felt sure that the palms had been cultivated by a
former inhabitant--the savory, fresh meat of the dates were proof of
the care of his predecessor. He passed suddenly from dark despair to an
almost insane joy. He went up again to the top of the hill, and spent
the rest of the day in cutting down one of the sterile palm trees, which
the night before had served him for shelter. A vague memory made him
think of the animals of the desert; and in case they might come to drink
at the spring, visible from the base of the rocks but lost further down,
he resolved to guard himself from their visits by placing a barrier at
the entrance of his hermitage.

In spite of his diligence, and the strength which the fear of being
devoured asleep gave him, he was unable to cut the palm in pieces,
though he succeeded in cutting it down. At eventide the king of the
desert fell; the sound of its fall resounded far and wide, like a sigh
in the solitude; the soldier shuddered as though he had heard some voice
predicting woe.