I must have been
very sound asleep not to have noticed when they brought me back--for
they have brought me back."

I stopped trying to think it out. My head ached too much.

"I must have air," I murmured. "I am roasting here; it will drive me
mad."

I had to see someone, no matter whom. Mechanically, I walked toward
the library.

I found M. Le Mesge in a transport of delirious joy. The Professor was
engaged in opening an enormous bale, carefully sewed in a brown
blanket.

"You come at a good time, sir," he cried, on seeing me enter. "The
magazines have just arrived."

He dashed about in feverish haste. Presently a stream of pamphlets and
magazines, blue, green, yellow and salmon, was bursting from an
opening in the bale.

"Splendid, splendid!" he cried, dancing with joy. "Not too late,
either; here are the numbers for October fifteenth. We must give a
vote of thanks to good Ameur."

His good spirits were contagious.

"There is a good Turkish merchant who subscribes to all the
interesting magazines of the two continents. He sends them on by
Rhadames to a destination which he little suspects. Ah, here are the
French ones."

M. Le Mesge ran feverishly over, the tables of contents.

"Internal politics: articles by Francis Charmes, Anatole
Leroy-Beaulieu, d'Haussonville on the Czar's trip to Paris. Look, a
study by Avenel of wages in the Middle Ages. And verse, verses of the
young poets, Fernand Gregh, Edmond Haraucourt. Ah, the resume of a
book by Henry de Castries on Islam. That may be interesting.... Take
what you please."

Joy makes people amiable and M. Le Mesge was really delirious with it.

A puff of breeze came from the window. I went to the balustrade and,
resting my elbows on it, began to run through a number of the _Revue
des Deux Mondes_.

I did not read, but flipped over the pages, my eyes now on the lines
of swarming little black characters, now on the rocky basin which lay
shivering, pale pink, under the declining sun.

Suddenly my attention became fixed. There was a strange coincidence
between the text and the landscape.

"In the sky overhead were only light shreds of cloud, like bits of
white ash floating up from burnt-out logs. The sun fell over a circle
of rocky peaks, silhouetting their severe lines against the azure sky.
From on high, a great sadness and gentleness poured down into the
lonely enclosure, like a magic drink into a deep cup...."[17]

[Footnote 17: Gabrielle d'Annun