he midst of a vociferating crowd, literally holding
the bridge that gave access to the _Marechal Bugeaud_.

"Thank Heaven, you've come, sir! You almost missed it. I couldn't have
held out another minute."

I, too, was thankful. If I had missed the boat I should have had to wait
till the next day and crossed in the embarrassing and unrestful company
of Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos. It is not that I dislike the
little man, or have the Briton's nervous shrinking from being seen
in eccentric society; but I wish to eliminate mediaevalism as far as
possible from my quest. In conjunction with this crazy-headed little
trainer of cats it would become too preposterous even for my light
sardonic humour. I resolved to dismiss him from my mind altogether.

Yet, in spite of my determination, and in spite of one of Monsieur
Lenotre's fascinating monographs on the French Revolution, on which
I had counted to beguile the tedium of the journey, I could not get
Anastasius Papadopoulos out of my head. He stayed with me the whole of
a storm-tossed night, and all the next morning. He has haunted my
brain ever since. I see him tossing his arms about in fury, while the
broken-nosed Saupiquet makes his monotonous claim for the payment
of sevenpence halfpenny; I hear him speak in broken whispers of the
disastrous quadruped on whose skin and hoofs Saupiquet got drunk. I
see him strutting about and boasting of his intellect. I see him taking
leave of Lola Brandt, and trotting magnificently out of the room bent on
finding Captain Vauvenarde. He haunts my slumbers. I hope to goodness he
will not take to haunting this delectable hotel.

I wonder, after all, whether there is any method in his madness--for mad
he is, as mad as can be. Why does he come backwards and forwards between
Algiers and Marseilles? What has Saupiquet to do with his quest? What
revelation was he about to make on the payment of his fifteen sous?
It is all so grotesque, so out of relation with ordinary life. I feel
inclined to go up to the retired Colonels and elderly maiden ladies, who
seem to form the majority of my fellow-guests, and pinch them and ask
them whether they are real, or, like Papadopoulos and Saupiquet, the
gentler creatures of a nightmare.

Well, I have written to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of
Chasseurs at Tlemcen, which is away down by the Morocco frontier. I have
also written to Lola Brandt. I seem to miss her as much as any of the
frien