With this ruse, Seil-kor was sure to overcome an adversary half paralyzed by insidious fetters.

This task accomplished, Seil-kor placed at the foot of the cliff he was later to scale a certain mixture, rapidly composed, of chalkstones and water.

When evening fell, he went to hide not far from the snare he’d set.

Nair appeared and his foot was soon caught in the adroitly placed trap. A moment later, the imprudent one was bound and gagged by Seil-kor, who had leapt upon him in one bound.

Pleased with his discreet and silent victory, Seil-kor donned the victim’s hat and headed to the rendezvous.

From afar he spied Jizme, who was furtively watching for him while making conversation with the royal couple and Mossem.

Fooled by the newcomer’s silhouette and especially his hat, Jizme thought she recognized Nair and draped her arm beyond the balustrade in anticipation.

Reaching the foot of the slope, Seil-kor dipped his finger into the chalky mix and, in a mischievous spirit, traced in capital letters on the black hat the word “PINCHED,” which he already imagined the unfortunate Jizme to be. After this, he began hauling himself up the cliff, grasping laboriously at any branch that might bear his weight.

Reaching the level of the plateau, he stopped and touched the overhanging hand, which, after having brushed the stiff felt hat, dropped lower to receive the promised kiss.

Seil-kor silently pressed his lips against the suede glove that Jizme, on Mossem’s recommendation, had been all too happy to put on.

His task completed, he clambered back to earth without a sound.

On the plateau, Mossem had kept a constant eye on Jizme’s movements. He saw her pull her arm back and discovered at the same time as she a C clearly imprinted on the gray glove, which stretched from the roots of her fingers to the heel of her palm.

Jizme quickly hid her hand, while Mossem inwardly rejoiced at the success of his ruse.

One hour later, Mossem, now alone with Jizme, ripped the stained glove from her and took from the unfortunate’s wrap the damning letter, which he shoved before her eyes.

The next day, Nair and Jizme were arrested and kept under guard by fierce sentinels.

Talou having demanded an explanation for this harsh measure, Mossem seized the occasion to buttress the emperor’s trust, as he still feared suspicions about Rul and himself. He presented as a jealous lover’s vengeance what was really mere anger, due to a ruffling of his pride. He intentionally exaggerated the depth of his resentment and lengthily recounted to the sovereign every detail of the adventure, including specifics regarding the noose, the hat, and the glove. Meanwhile, he was able to keep secret his own affair with Rul by avoiding any mention of the compromising portraits that Nair had drawn at the top of his letter.

Talou approved the punishment that Mossem meted on the guilty pair, who remained in captivity.

 

 

Seventeen years had elapsed since Sirdah’s disappearance, and Talou still pined for his daughter as if it were yesterday.

Having kept in memory a very precise image of the child he so faithfully mourned, he tried to recreate in his imagination the young woman she would now have been had death not taken her away.

The features she’d had as a barely weaned girl-child, deeply etched in his mind, served as his basis. He accentuated them while changing nothing of their shape, tending to their gradual development year after year, and thus managed to create for himself alone an eighteen-year-old Sirdah whose clearly delineated ghost accompanied him at all times.

One day, during one of his customary campaigns, Talou came upon an enchanting child named Meisdehl, the sight of whom left him dumbstruck: before him was the living portrait of Sirdah as he pictured her at the age of seven, in the uninterrupted suite of images in his mind.

It was while passing in review several families of prisoners, who had escaped from the flames of a village he’d just put to the torch, that the emperor noticed Meisdehl. He took the girl under his wing and treated her as his own daughter after his return to Ejur.

Among her adoptive brothers, Meisdehl soon noticed a certain Kalj, seven years old like her, who seemed the ideal playmate to share her games.

Kalj was in such delicate health that everyone feared for his life; he lived almost entirely in his head. Advanced for his age, he surpassed most of his brothers in intelligence and sensitivity, but his body was pitiably frail. Aware of his condition, too often he let himself wallow in a deep melancholy that Meisdehl made it her mission to overcome. Filled with mutual tenderness, the two children formed an inseparable couple; seeing the newcomer constantly at his son’s side, Talou, from the abyss of his grief, could sometimes enjoy the illusion that he really had a daughter again.

 

 

Not long after the adoption of Meisdehl, several natives arrived from Mihu, a village located near the Vorrh, to tell the citizens of Ejur that a lightning fire had been raging in the southern part of the vast primeval forest since the previous evening.

Talou, riding in a kind of palanquin borne by ten stout runners, traveled to the edge of the Vorrh to witness the dazzling spectacle, which appealed to his poetic soul.

He stepped onto the ground just as night was falling. A strong wind from the northeast scattered the flames nearest him, and he stood motionless, watching as the fire quickly spread.

The entire population of Mihu had gathered so as not to miss this grandiose spectacle.

Two hours after the emperor’s arrival, only about a dozen intact trees remained, forming a thick clump at which the flames began lapping.

Then they saw a young native of eighteen fleeing the thicket, accompanied by a French soldier wearing a Zouave’s uniform and armed with his rifle and cartridge belts.

By the light of the forest fire, Talou distinguished on the young woman’s brow a red birthmark with radiating yellow lines. There could be no mistake: it was his beloved Sirdah who stood before his eyes. She was very different from the imaginary portrait he’d so painstakingly crafted and that Meisdehl so perfectly incarnated, but this mattered little to the emperor who, mad with joy, ran up to his daughter to embrace her.

He then tried to talk to her, but Sirdah, recoiling in fear, did not understand his language.

During the happy father’s effusions, a tree consumed at the base suddenly toppled, violently striking the head of the Zouave, who fell unconscious. Sirdah immediately rushed to the soldier’s aid, her face contorted with anxiety.

Talou didn’t wish to abandon the injured stranger who seemed to inspire such pure affection in his daughter; plus, he was counting on the man’s eyewitness revelations to illuminate the longstanding mystery of Sirdah’s disappearance.

Several moments later, the palanquin, lifted by the runners, headed back to Ejur, carrying the emperor, Sirdah, and the unconscious Zouave.

Talou entered the capital the next day.

Brought before her daughter, Rul, terror-stricken and under threat of torture, made a complete confession to the emperor, who immediately ordered Mossem’s arrest.

While searching his minister’s hut for some proof of the abject felony, Talou discovered the love letter that Nair had written to Jizme several months before. Seeing himself ridiculed on the drawing that headed the sheet, the monarch flew into a rage, resolving to torture both Nair, for his brazenness, and Jizme, for the duplicity she’d committed by accepting such a document and not denouncing its author.

Lavished with care in a hut where they had laid him down, the Zouave came to his senses and recounted his odyssey to Seil-kor, who had been charged with learning his story.

Velbar—for so the patient was named—came from Marseille. His father, a decorative painter, had taught him his own trade early on, and the admirably talented youngster had improved his craft by taking free local classes in which he learned drawing and watercolor. At eighteen, Velbar had discovered he had a strong baritone; for days on end, while on his scaffolding painting some shop sign, he lustily belted out many fashionable romances, and passersby stopped to listen, marveling at the charm and purity of his generous voice.

When he reached the age for military service, Velbar was sent to Bougie to join the Fifth Zouaves. After a smooth crossing, the young man, delighted to see new lands, disembarked on African soil one beautiful November morning and was pointed to the military barracks amid a large detachment of conscripts.

The rookie Zouave’s beginnings were difficult and marked by a thousand daily vexations. Rotten luck had placed him under the command of one Lieutenant Lécurou, a ruthless and fastidious martinet who made a boast of his legendary harshness.

At the time, to satisfy the demands of a certain Flora Crinis, a demanding and profligate young woman who was his lover, Lécurou spent long hours in a secret gambling club where a tempting roulette wheel spun continually. As luck had so far smiled on the impetuous gambler, the richly kept Flora appeared in public dripping with jewels and strutted about in a carriage beside the lieutenant down the city’s elegant promenade.

Meanwhile, Velbar pursued his arduous apprenticeship as a soldier.

One day, as the regiment, returning to Bougie after a long march, still found itself in the middle of the countryside, the Zouaves were ordered to strike up a spirited tune to help them forget their road-weariness.

Velbar, who by now was known for his splendid voice, was assigned to sing solo the verses of an interminable lament, to which the entire regiment answered in chorus with an eternally unvarying refrain.

At dusk they crossed through a small wood, in which a lone dreamer, sitting beneath a tree, was jotting onto music paper some melody born of his solitude and reflection.

Hearing Velbar’s voice, which alone carried more loudly than the huge chorus that periodically answered him, the inspired stroller suddenly jumped to his feet and followed the regiment back to town.

The stranger was none other than the composer Faucillon, whose celebrated opera Daedalus, after a brilliant run in France, had just been staged throughout the major cities of Algeria. Accompanied by the performers, Faucillon had only recently arrived in Bougie, the next stop in their triumphant tour.

But since the last performance, the baritone Ardonceau, overwhelmed by the difficult title role and suffering from a tenacious sore throat, had become unable to go on; Faucillon, completely at a loss, had nearly given up finding a replacement for his leading man, when his ear had been struck by the young Zouave singing on the road.

The next day, having made his inquiries, Faucillon went to find Velbar, who jumped at the chance to perform onstage. They easily obtained the colonel’s authorization and, after several days of intense rehearsal under the composer’s direction, the young debutant felt prepared.

The performance was held before a packed house; in the front row of a box, Flora Crinis sat enthroned with Lieutenant Lécurou.

Velbar, magnificent in the role of Daedalus, conveyed like a consummate actor the anxieties and hopes of an artist obsessed with the grandiose designs of his genius. The Greek toga flattered his superb physique, and the ideal timbre of his powerful voice ended each phrase with an abrupt surge of vigor.

Flora could not keep her eyes off of Velbar, training the lenses of her opera glasses on him and feeling within her an irresistible sensation that had begun the moment the young singer had appeared onstage.

In the third act, Velbar triumphed with the principal aria, a kind of hymn to joy and pride in which Daedalus, having completed the construction of the labyrinth and profoundly moved by the sight of his masterpiece, rapturously greeted the realization of his dream.

The admirable interpretation of this rousing passage made the turmoil in Flora’s heart overflow, and the very next day she hatched a subtle plan to get close to Velbar.

Before undertaking any project, the superstitious Flora always consulted Old Angélique, an overfamiliar and talkative busybody who read cards, palms, and horoscopes, loaned money, and, for the right fee, handled all sorts of dubious errands.

Summoned by an urgent missive, Angélique went to see Flora. The old crone looked every bit the fortuneteller, with her filthy gunnysack and large, shapeless cloak that for the past ten years had protected her against the often harsh Algerian winters.

Flora confessed her secret and asked, first and foremost, if her desire had been conceived under an auspicious sign. Angélique immediately took from her gunnysack a celestial planisphere that she pinned to the wall; then, using the previous day’s date as starting point for her horoscope, she sank into a deep meditation, seemingly absorbed in active and complex mental calculations. In the end, she pointed to the constellation Cancer, whose benign influence should preserve Flora’s future love affairs from misfortune.

Once that matter was settled, the main thing was to conduct the affair as secretly as possible, as the lieutenant, a suspicious and jealous man, kept a watchful eye over his mistress’s every movement.

Angélique put the planisphere back in her sack, then pulled from its depths a sheet of cardboard perforated by a certain number of irregularly spaced holes. This device, which cryptographers call a grille cipher, would permit the two lovers to communicate without fear of discovery. A sentence, written in the holes placed over a sheet of blank paper, could then be made unintelligible by filling in the spaces between them with random letters.