ge the
current of that life. I can marvel that a creature whose sole merit
was her beauty should have been permitted by the Creator to swing my
destiny to such an unforeseen direction. The monastery at whose doors
I knocked had the most valid reasons for doubting the stability of my
vocation. What the world loses in such fashion it often calls back as
readily. In short, I cannot blame the Father Abbot for having
forbidden me to apply for my army discharge. By his instructions, I
asked for, and obtained, permission to be placed on the inactive list
for three years. At the end of those three years of consecration it
would be seen whether the world was definitely dead to your servant.

"The first day of my arrival at the cloister I was assigned to Dom
Granger, and placed by him at work on the _Atlas of Christianity_. A
brief examination decided him as to what kind of service I was best
fitted to render. This is how I came to enter the studio devoted to
the cartography of Northern Africa. I did not know one word of Arabic,
but it happened that in garrison at Lyon I had taken at the _Faculte
des Lettres,_ a course with Berlioux,--a very erudite geographer no
doubt, but obsessed by one idea, the influence the Greek and Roman
civilizations had exercised on Africa. This detail of my life was
enough for Dom Granger. He provided me straightway with Berber
vocabularies by Venture, by Delaporte, by Brosselard; with the
_Grammatical Sketch of the Temahaq_ by Stanley Fleeman, and the _Essai
de Grammaire de la langue Temachek_ by Major Hanoteau. At the end of
three months I was able to decipher any inscriptions in Tifinar. You
know that Tifinar is the national writing of the Tuareg, the
expression of this Temachek language which seems to us the most
curious protest of the Targui race against its Mohammedan enemies.

"Dom Granger, in fact, believed that the Tuareg are Christians, dating
from a period which it was necessary to ascertain, but which coincided
no doubt with the splendor of the church of Hippon. Even better than
I, you know that the cross is with them the symbol of fate in
decoration. Duveyrier has claimed that it figures in their alphabet,
on their arms, among the designs of their clothes. The only tattooing
that they wear on the forehead, on the back of the hand, is a cross
with four equal branches; the pummels of their saddles, the handles of
their sabres, of their poignards, are cross-shaped. And is it
necessary to re