A Passion in the Desert | Page 4

sack of
dried dates, oats, and powder and shot, and to fasten a scimiter to his
waist, he leaped on to a horse, and spurred on vigorously in the
direction where he thought to find the French army. So impatient was
he to see a bivouac again that he pressed on the already tired courser at
such speed, that its flanks were lacerated with his spurs, and at last the
poor animal died, leaving the Frenchman alone in the desert. After
walking some time in the sand with all the courage of an escaped
convict, the soldier was obliged to stop, as the day had already ended.
In spite of the beauty of an Oriental sky at night, he felt he had not
strength enough to go on. Fortunately he had been able to find a small
hill, on the summit of which a few palm trees shot up into the air; it
was their verdure seen from afar which had brought hope and
consolation to his heart. His fatigue was so great that he lay down upon
a rock of granite, capriciously cut out like a camp-bed; there he fell
asleep without taking any precaution to defend himself while he slept.
He had made the sacrifice of his life. His last thought was one of regret.
He repented having left the Maugrabins, whose nomadic life seemed to
smile upon him now that he was far from them and without help. He
was awakened by the sun, whose pitiless rays fell with all their force on
the granite and produced an intolerable heat--for he had had the
stupidity to place himself adversely to the shadow thrown by the
verdant majestic heads of the palm trees. He looked at the solitary trees
and shuddered--they reminded him of the graceful shafts crowned with

foliage which characterize the Saracen columns in the cathedral of
Arles.
But when, after counting the palm trees, he cast his eyes around him,
the most horrible despair was infused into his soul. Before him
stretched an ocean without limit. The dark sand of the desert spread
further than eye could reach in every direction, and glittered like steel
struck with bright light. It might have been a sea of looking- glass, or
lakes melted together in a mirror. A fiery vapor carried up in surging
waves made a perpetual whirlwind over the quivering land. The sky
was lit with an Oriental splendor of insupportable purity, leaving
naught for the imagination to desire. Heaven and earth were on fire.
The silence was awful in its wild and terrible majesty. Infinity,
immensity, closed in upon the soul from every side. Not a cloud in the
sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand, ever
moving in diminutive waves; the horizon ended as at sea on a clear day,
with one line of light, definite as the cut of a sword.
The Provencal threw his arms round the trunk of one of the palm trees,
as though it were the body of a friend, and then, in the shelter of the
thin, straight shadow that the palm cast upon the granite, he wept. Then
sitting down he remained as he was, contemplating with profound
sadness the implacable scene, which was all he had to look upon. He
cried aloud, to measure the solitude. His voice, lost in the hollows of
the hill, sounded faintly, and aroused no echo--the echo was in his own
heart. The Provencal was twenty-two years old:--he loaded his carbine.
"There'll be time enough," he said to himself, laying on the ground the
weapon which alone could bring him deliverance.
Viewing alternately the dark expanse of the desert and the blue expanse
of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France--he smelled with delight the
gutters of Paris--he remembered the towns through which he had
passed, the faces of his comrades, the most minute details of his life.
His Southern fancy soon showed him the stones of his beloved
Provence, in the play of the heat which undulated above the wide
expanse of the desert. Realizing the danger of this cruel mirage, he
went down the opposite side of the hill to that by which he had come
up the day before. The remains of a rug showed that this place of refuge
had at one time been inhabited; at a short distance he saw some palm
trees full of dates. Then the instinct which binds us to life awoke again

in his heart. He hoped to live long enough to await the passing of some
Maugrabins, or perhaps he might hear the sound of cannon; for at this
time Bonaparte was traversing Egypt.
This thought gave him new life. The palm tree seemed to bend with the
weight of the ripe fruit.