o practical value."

"You are also authorized by the Ministry of Commerce," I replied,
playing my next card. "By this chief you are instructed to study the
possibility of restoring the old trade route of the ninth century. But
on this point don't attempt to mislead me; with your knowledge of the
history and geography of the Sahara, your mind must have been made up
before you left Paris. The road from Djerid to the Niger is dead,
stone dead. You knew that no important traffic would pass by this
route before you undertook to study the possibility of restoring it."

Morhange looked me full in the face.

"And if that should be so," he said with the most charming attitude,
"if I had before leaving the conviction you say, what do you conclude
from that?"

"I should prefer to have you tell me."

"Simply, my dear boy, that I had less skill than you in finding the
pretext for my voyage, that I furnished less good reasons for the true
motives that brought me here."

"A pretext? I don't see...."

"Be sincere in your turn, if you please. I am sure that you have the
greatest desire to inform the Arabian Office about the practices of
the Senoussis. But admit that the information that you will obtain is
not the sole and innermost aim of your excursion. You are a geologist,
my friend. You have found a chance to gratify your taste in this trip.
No one would think of blaming you because you have known how to
reconcile what is useful to your country and agreeable to yourself.
But, for the love of God, don't deny it; I need no other proof than
your presence here on this side of the Tidifest, a very curious place
from a mineralogical point of view, but some hundred and fifty
kilometers south of your official route."

It was not possible to have countered me with a better grace. I
parried by attacking.

"Am I to conclude from all this that I do not know the real aims of
your trip, and that they have nothing to do with the official
motives?"

I had gone a bit too far. I felt it from the seriousness with which
Morhange's reply was delivered.

"No, my dear friend, you must not conclude just that. I should have no
taste for a lie which was based on fraud towards the estimable
constitutional bodies which have judged me worthy of their confidence
and their support. The ends that they have assigned to me I shall do
my best to attain. But I have no reason for hiding from you that there
is another, quite personal, which is far nearer t