It was three years since Jean Peyral had first set foot in this land of Africa, and since his arrival he had undergone an extraordinary transformation. He had passed through several phases of moral development. Environment, climate, nature, had gradually exercised all their enervating influence upon his youthful personality. Slowly he had felt himself gliding down unknown slopes—and to-day he was the lover of Fatou-gaye, a young negro girl of KhassonkÉ race, who had cast upon him I know not what sensual and impure seduction, what talismanic enchantment.

The story of Jean’s early life was not a very complicated one.

At twenty the ballot had snatched him from his old mother, who wept. He had gone away like other lads of the village singing noisily to keep himself from bursting into tears.

His height marked him out for cavalry. The mysterious attraction of the unknown had induced him to choose the corps of spahis.

His childhood had been passed in the Cevennes, in an obscure village in the heart of the woods.

In the strong, pure mountain air he had shot up like a young oak tree.

The first impressions graven on his childish mind were wholesome and simple, the well-beloved forms of his father and mother, his home, a little old-fashioned house shaded by chestnut trees. These things were all imprinted ineffaceably upon his memory, and had their own sacred place deep down in his heart. And then there were the great woods, his wanderings at random along paths deep in moss—and there was freedom.

In the first years of his life he knew nothing of the rest of the world beyond the bounds of the obscure village where he was born. He was aware of no other neighbourhood, but the wild, open country where the shepherds dwelt, the mountain sorcerers.

In these woods, where he was wont to roam all day long, he nursed the dreams of a solitary child, the musings of a shepherd boy—and then suddenly he would be seized with a wild desire to run, to climb, to break branches from the trees, to catch birds.

One distasteful memory was that of the village school, a gloomy place, where one had to stay quietly cooped up within four walls. His parents gave up sending him there; he was always playing truant.

On Sunday he was given his fine mountaineer’s dress to wear, and he went to church with his mother, hand in hand with little Jeanne, whom they picked up as they passed Uncle MÉry’s house. After service, he used to play bowls on the common under the oak trees.

He was conscious that he was better looking and stronger than the other children, and at play he was always the one to be obeyed, and he was accustomed to meet with this submission wherever he went.

When he grew older his independence of spirit and his insatiable restlessness became more marked. He would go his own way. He was forever in mischief, untethering horses and galloping far away on them, forever poaching with an old gun that would not go off, and frequently getting into trouble with the rural constable, to the great despair of his Uncle MÉry, who had hoped to have him taught a trade, and to make of him a steady man.

It was true. He had really been “a bit of a scapegrace in his time,” and it was still remembered against him at home.

Nevertheless he was a general favourite even with those who had suffered most at his hands, because he had a frank and open disposition. No one could be seriously angry with him who saw his good-natured smile. Besides, if he were spoken to gently and taken the right way, he could be led like a docile child. Uncle MÉry, with his lectures and threats, had no influence over him. But when his mother reproved him, and he knew that he had grieved her, his heart was very heavy, and this big boy, who had already the air of a man, could be seen hanging his head, almost in tears.

He was undisciplined, but not dissolute. This big, strong, growing youth was of a proud, and somewhat uncouth, demeanour. In his village young men were safe from evil communications from the precocious depravity of sickly, town-bred creatures, so much so, that when he reached his twentieth year and had to begin his term of military service, Jean was as pure as a child, and almost as ignorant of the facts of life.

II

But then came a period full of all kinds of surprises for him.

He had followed his new comrades to places of debauch, where he had made the acquaintance of “love” in the most sordid and revolting conditions that a great town affords. His youthful understanding was confused, what between surprise and disgust, and also the devouring fascination of this new thing just revealed to him.

And then, after some days of riotous life, a ship had carried him far, far away over the calm, blue sea, and had landed him on the banks of the Senegal, a bewildered exile.

III

One day in November—the season when the great baobabs shed their last leaves on the sand—Jean Peyral had cast his first glance of curiosity on this corner of the earth, where the hazard of destiny had condemned him to pass five years of his life.

The strangeness of this land had in the first instance appealed strongly to his imagination and inexperience. Besides that, he had appreciated very keenly the joy of having a horse, of curling his rapidly growing moustache, of wearing an Arab fez, a red jacket, and a big sabre. He considered the ensemble very fine, and this gave him great pleasure.

IV

It was November—the fine weather season corresponding to our French winter; the heat was less violent, and the dry wind of the desert had taken the place of the great storms of the summer.

When the fine weather begins in Senegal, one may safely camp out in the open without a roof to one’s tent. For six months not a drop of water will fall on the land; every day without respite, without remorse, it will be scorched by the consuming sun.

It is the season in which the lizards delight—but the water fails in the cisterns; the marshes dry up; the grass dies; even the cactuses, the thorny nopals, no longer open their melancholy yellow flowers. Yet the evenings are chill. At sunset a strong sea-breeze invariably springs up, rousing the breakers off the African coast to their everlasting moaning, pitilessly shaking the last autumn leaves.

It is a dreary autumn, bringing with it neither the long evenings of France, nor the charm of the first frosts, nor harvest, nor golden fruit. Never a fruit in this land disinherited of God! Even the dates of the desert are denied to it, nothing ripens there, except the ground nut and the bitter pistachio.

The sensation of winter, experienced in the midst of heat which is still extreme, has a curious effect upon the spirit.

Here and there upon the vast, hot plains, forlorn and desolate, covered with dead grass, side by side with slender palms, tower huge baobabs, mastodons, as it were, of the vegetable kingdom; their bare boughs are inhabited by families of vultures, lizards, and bats.

V

Poor Jean had soon fallen a victim to boredom. He suffered from a kind of vague, indefinable melancholy, such as he had never felt before, the beginning of home-sickness for his mountains, his village, for the cottage of the aged parents, so dear to him.

The spahis, his new companions, had already worn their big sabres in various Indian and Algerian garrisons. In the taverns of maritime towns, where they had spent their youth, they had caught the mocking and licentious turn of mind, peculiar to those who lead a roving life. They were masters of ready-made, cynical jests, in slang, in Sabir, and in Arabic, and with these jests they met every contingency. Good fellows at heart, gay companions as they were, they had none the less certain habits which Jean failed to understand, and certain pleasures that excited in him extreme repugnance.

Jean was a dreamer, like all mountaineers. Reverie is a thing unknown to the stupefied and corrupt faculties of the populace of great cities. But among those who have been brought up on the land, among sailors, among fishermen’s sons who have grown up in their father’s boat, amid the perils of the deep, there are men who really dream, true, but inarticulate poets, with a poet’s insight into all things. Only, they have not the faculty of putting their impression into form, and remain incapable of interpreting them.

Jean had plenty of leisure in barracks, and he spent it in observing and thinking.

Every evening he was wont to take a walk along the great stretch of beach, whose bluish sands were lighted up by sunsets of unimaginable beauty.

He would bathe in those great breakers of the African sea, amusing himself, like the child he still was, by letting himself be rolled over and over by these enormous waves, which covered him with sand.

Or he would take long walks, for the mere pleasure of movement, of breathing deeply the salt air that blew off the sea. At times this unending flatness vexed him, oppressed his imagination, accustomed to the contemplation of mountains. He felt, as it were, a need to go on and on forever, to widen his horizon, to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond.

At dusk, the beach was crowded with negroes returning to the villages, laden with sheaves of millet. Fishermen, too, were drawing in their nets, surrounded by clamorous swarms of women and children.

These hauls of fish in Senegal were always miraculous draughts; the nets would break under the weight of thousands of fish of every shape and form. The negresses carried away on their heads baskets full of them; the black babies returned home garlanded with big fish, still alive, strung together through the gills.

There were extraordinary-looking people, just-arrived from the interior; picturesque caravans of Moors and Peuhles, who had come down the Neck of Barbary; incredible scenes at every step, in the white glow of an unnatural radiance.

And then the blue summits of the sandhills turned pink; the last horizontal rays of light glided across this whole region of sand; the sun was quenched in blood-red vapour. And with one impulse all that black throng cast themselves face downwards on the ground to offer up the evening prayer.

It was Islam’s holy hour. From Mecca to the Sahara coast the name of Mahomet passed from mouth to mouth, wafted like a mysterious breath over Africa. Little by little it became fainter as it travelled over the Soudan, until it expired there on those black lips by the shore of the great, restless sea.

The old Yolof priests in their flowing robes, turned towards the sea, recited their prayers with their faces bowed upon the sand, and all the shores were covered with prostrate men. Then all was still, and night fell with the rapidity usual in those countries of the sun.

At nightfall, Jean returned to the spahi’s quarters in the south of St Louis.

In the great white barrack room, open to the evening breeze, all was still and quiet. The numbered beds of the spahis were ranged in rows along the bare walls; the tepid wind from the sea swayed their muslin mosquito curtains. The spahis were out. Jean returned home at a time when the other men were scattered about the deserted streets, hastening to their pleasures, to their loves.

It was at such times that the isolated barracks seemed to him dreary, and that he thought most of his mother.

VI

In the southern quarter of St Louis stood some old brick houses, Arab in appearance, which were lighted up at evening, and whose lamps continued to cast their red rays upon the sands at a time when all that dead-alive town lay asleep. Strange odours of negroes and alcohol, all blended and intensified by the torrid heat, issued thence. Here also at night broke forth an uproar as from hell itself. In that quarter the spahis reigned supreme. Thither betook themselves these unfortunate, red-jacketed warriors, to raise a racket and to forget their troubles; to absorb, actuated either by habit or bravado, incredible quantities of alcohol, and wantonly to spend the sap of their lusty youth.

A dishonouring intimacy with mulatto women lay in wait for them in these vile dens, and extravagant orgies were held, in a delirium caused by absinthe and the torrid heat of Africa.

But Jean avoided with horror these haunts of vice. He was very steady, and was already putting aside the little he could save out of his soldier’s pay, against the blissful moment of his home-coming.

He was very steady, and yet his comrades did not rally him on the subject.

Handsome Muller, a tall Alsatian, who set the tone in the spahis’ barracks by virtue of a past full of duels and adventure—handsome Muller thought a great deal of him, and every one was always of the same opinion as Fritz Muller. But Jean’s real friend was Nyaor-fall, the black spahi, a gigantic African, of the magnificent Fouta-DiallonkÉ tribe, a strange, imperturbable figure, with a delicate Arab profile, and a mysterious smile always hovering on his thin lips—a splendid statue in black marble.

This man was Jean’s friend; he used to take Jean home to his native dwelling in Guet n’dar; he would make him sit beside his wives on a white mat, and offer him negro hospitality: kouss-kouss and gourous.

VII

In the evenings at St Louis, social life followed the usual monotonous routine of small colonial towns. The fine weather brought a little animation to these dead-alive streets. After sunset, a few women who had escaped fever displayed their European frocks on the Place du Gouvernement, or in the avenue of yellow plains of Guet n’dar. This introduced a suggestion of Europe into that country of exile.

On that large Place du Gouvernement, surrounded by symmetrical, white buildings, one might have imagined oneself in some town of southern Europe had it not been for that immense stretch of sand, that interminable plain, which flung afar its uncompromising line.

These few persons who came to take the air were all acquaintances, and passed the time in staring at one another. Jean would look at these people, and they also would look at Jean. The handsome spahi, who walked alone with such a grave seriousness, roused the curiosity of St Louis society, who imagined that his life contained some romantic episode.

There was one woman, in especial, who looked at Jean, a woman better dressed and prettier than the rest.

She was said to be a mulatto, but so white, so very white, that she might have been taken for a Parisienne.

White and pale she was, of a Spanish pallor, with fair chestnut hair—the fairness of mulattos—with large, half-closed, dark-shadowed eyes, which she turned slowly with creole languor.

She was the wife of a rich farmer of revenue on the river. But at St Louis she was referred to by her Christian name, like a coloured woman. Cora they called her, in contempt.

She had just returned from Paris, as the other women could see from her gowns. Jean, however, was not yet sufficiently experienced to be able to define the difference. But he was well aware that her trailing gowns, even when they were simple, had something distinctive about them, a gracefulness, in which the other women’s gowns were lacking.

The point that he principally noticed was that she was very beautiful, and as she always flung her glances around him, he felt a sort of tremor when he met her.

“She’s in love with you, Peyral,” handsome Muller had declared, with the knowing air of a man who has had his successes in the pursuit of love affairs.

VIII

It was true that she was in love with him in her mulatto way, and one day she summoned him to her house to tell him so.