ll send you, having nothing else to do in a little cabin of dried
mud which serves me as a habitation, a kind of journal of my life, day
by day, and hour by hour. It will be a little lively at times, more is
the pity, but you are not obliged to show it to your lady friends.'"

She paused to re-light her cigarette, which had gone out, and the faint
creaking of the quill on the paper stopped, too.

"Let us continue," said she.

"Algeria is a great French country on the frontiers of the great unknown
countries called the Desert, the Sahara, central Africa, etc., etc.

"Algiers is the door, the pretty white door of this strange continent.

"But it is first necessary to get to it, which is not a rosy job for
everyone. I am, you know, an excellent horseman, since I break in the
colonel's horses; but a man may be a very good rider and a very bad
sailor. That is my case.

"You remember Surgeon-Major Simbretras, whom we used to call Old
Ipecacuanha, and how, when we thought ourselves ripe for a twenty-four
hours' stay in the infirmary, that blessed sojourning place, we used to
go up before him.

"How he used to sit in his chair, with his fat legs in his red trousers,
wide apart, his hands on his knees, and his elbows stuck, rolling his
great eyes and gnawing his white moustache.

"You remember his favorite mode of treatment: 'This man's stomach is
out of order. Give him a dose of emetic number three, according to my
prescription, and then twelve hours off duty, and he will be all right.'

"It was a sovereign remedy that emetic--sovereign and irresistible. One
swallowed it because one had to. Then when one had undergone the effects
of Old Ipecacuanha's prescription, one enjoyed twelve well-earned hours'
rest.

"Well, my dear fellow, to reach Africa, it is necessary to undergo for
forty hours the effects of another kind of irresistible emetic,
according to the prescription of the Compagnie Transatlantique."

She rubbed her hands, delighted with the idea.

She got up and walked about, after having lit another cigarette, and
dictated as she puffed out little whiffs of smoke, which, issuing at
first through a little round hole in the midst of her compressed lips,
slowly evaporated, leaving in the air faint gray lines, a kind of
transparent mist, like a spider's web. Sometimes with her open hand she
would brush these light traces aside; at others she would cut them
asunder with her forefinger, and then watch with serious