"And how has it happened?"

"Sir, you distress me. I thought you familiar with certain events. You
are forgetting, then, the passage where Pliny the Elder speaks of the
library of Carthage and the treasures which were accumulated there? In
146, when that city fell under the blows of the knave, Scipio, the
incredible collection of illiterates who bore the name of the Roman
Senate had only the profoundest contempt for these riches. They
presented them to the native kings. This is how Mantabal received this
priceless heritage; it was transmitted to his son and grandson,
Hiempsal, Juba I, Juba II, the husband of the admirable Cleopatra
Selene, the daughter of the great Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Cleopatra
Selene had a daughter who married an Atlantide king. This is how
Antinea, the daughter of Neptune, counts among her ancestors the
immortal queen of Egypt. That is how, by following the laws of
inheritance, the remains of the library of Carthage, enriched by the
remnants of the library of Alexandria, are actually before your eyes.

"Science fled from man. While he was building those monstrous Babels
of pseudo-science in Berlin, London, Paris, Science was taking refuge
in this desert corner of Ahaggar. They may well forge their hypotheses
back there, based on the loss of the mysterious works of antiquity:
these works are not lost. They are here. They are here: the Hebrew,
the Chaldean, the Assyrian books. Here, the great Egyptian traditions
which inspired Solon, Herodotus and Plato. Here, the Greek
mythologists, the magicians of Roman Africa, the Indian mystics, all
the treasures, in a word, for the lack of which contemporary
dissertations are poor laughable things. Believe me, he is well
avenged, the little universitarian whom they took for a madman, whom
they defied. I have lived, I live, I shall live in a perpetual burst
of laughter at their false and garbled erudition. And when I shall be
dead, Error,--thanks to the jealous precaution of Neptune taken to
isolate his well-beloved Clito from the rest of the world,--Error, I
say, will continue to reign as sovereign mistress over their pitiful
compositions."

"Sir," said Morhange in grave voice, "you have just affirmed the
influence of Egypt on the civilizations of the people here. For
reasons which some day, perhaps, I shall have occasion to explain to
you, I would like to have proof of that relationship."

"We need not wait for that, sir," said M. Le Mesge. Then, in