own reputation, I cared
but little for these insinuations. I wrote such letters to my sisters
and to Dale as I felt sure would be believed, and let the long-eared,
gaping world go hang. Besides, I had other things to think of. Physical
pain is insistent, and I have suffered damnable torture. The pettiness
of the legal inquiry has been also a maddening irritation. Nothing has
been too minute for the attention of the French judiciary. It seemed as
though the whole of the evil gang of the Cercle Africain were called as
witnesses. They testified as to Captain Vauvenarde's part proprietorship
of the hell--as to wrong practices that occurred there--as to the crazy
conduct of both Anastasius and myself on the occasion of my insane
visit. Officers of the Chasseurs d'Afrique were compelled further to
blacken the character of the dead man--he had been a notorious plucker
of pigeons during most of his military career, and when at last he was
caught red-handed palming the king at _ecarte_, he was forced to resign
his commission. Arabs came from the slums with appalling stories. Even
the stolid Saupiquet, dragged from Toulon, gave evidence as to the
five-franc bribe and the debt of fifteen sous, and identified the horse
Sultan by the crumpled photograph. Lola and I have been racked day
after day with questions--some, indeed, prompted by the suspicion that
Vauvenarde might have met his death directly by our hand instead of that
of Anastasius. It was the Procureur-general who said: "It can be argued
that you would benefit by the decease of the defunct." I replied that
we could not benefit in any way. My sole object was to effect a
reconciliation between husband and wife. "Will you explain why you gave
yourself that trouble?" I never have smiled so grimly as I did then.
How could I explain my precious pursuit of the eumoirous to a French
Procureur-general? How could I put before him the point of view of a
semi-disembodied spirit? I replied with lame lack of originality that
my actions proceeded from disinterested friendship. "You are a pure
altruist then?" said he. "Very pure," said I. . . . It was only the
facts of the scabbard of the knife having been found attached to the
dwarf's person beneath his clothes, and of certain rambling menaces
occurring in his Sultan papers that saved us from the indignity of being
arrested and put into the dock. . . .

During all this time I remained at the hotel at Mustapha Superieur. Lola
moved to a