Ah, what an honoured guest was the Commissary
entertaining! what suitable clothes he wore for the warm weather!
what beautiful maps, what an attractive work of history he carried
in his knapsack! You are to understand there was now but one point
of difference between them: what was to be done with the Arethusa?
the Cigarette demanding his release, the Commissary still claiming
him as the dungeon's own. Now it chanced that the Cigarette had
passed some years of his life in Egypt, where he had made
acquaintance with two very bad things, cholera morbus and pashas;
and in the eye of the Commissary, as he fingered the volume of
Michelet, it seemed to our traveller there was something Turkish.
I pass over this lightly; it is highly possible there was some
misunderstanding, highly possible that the Commissary (charmed with
his visitor) supposed the attraction to be mutual and took for an
act of growing friendship what the Cigarette himself regarded as a
bribe. And at any rate, was there ever a bribe more singular than
an odd volume of Michelet's history? The work was promised him for
the morrow, before our departure; and presently after, either
because he had his price, or to show that he was not the man to be
behind in friendly offices - "EH BIEN," he said, "JE SUPPOSE QU'IL
FAUT LAHER VOIRE CAMARADE." And he tore up that feast of humour,
the unfinished PROCES-VERBAL. Ah, if he had only torn up instead
the Arethusa's roundels! There were many works burnt at
Alexandria, there are many treasured in the British Museum, that I
could better spare than the PROCES-VERBAL of Chatillon.
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