Chapter 8

"I shall certainly not fail you there, sir," said M. Le Mesge. "I may tell you, too, that you are not the first to put to me that question. Most of the explorers that I have seen enter here in the past ten years have been attracted in the same way, intrigued by this Greek work reproduced in Tifinar. I have even arranged a fairly exact catalogue of these inscriptions and the caverns where they are to be met with. All, or almost all, are accompanied by this legend: _Antinea. Here commences her domain_. I myself have had repainted with ochre such as were beginning to be effaced. But, to return to what I was telling you before, none of the Europeans who have followed this epigraphic mystery here, have kept their anxiety to solve this etymology once they found themselves in Antinea's palace. They all become otherwise preoccupied. I might make many disclosures as to the little real importance which purely scientific interests possess even for scholars, and the quickness with which they sacrifice them to the most mundane considerations--their own lives, for instance."

"Let us take that up another time, sir, if it is satisfactory to you," said Morhange, always admirably polite.

"This digression had only one point, sir: to show you that I do not count you among these unworthy scholars. You are really eager to know the origin of this name, _Antinea_, and that before knowing what kind of woman it belongs to and her motives for holding you and this gentleman as her prisoners."

I stared hard at the little old man. But he spoke with profound seriousness.

"So much the better for you, my boy," I thought. "Otherwise it wouldn't have taken me long to send you through the window to air your ironies at your ease. The law of gravity ought not to be topsy-turvy here at Ahaggar."

"You, no doubt, formulated several hypotheses when you first encountered the name, Antinea," continued M. Le Mesge, imperturbable under my fixed gaze, addressing himself to Morhange. "Would you object to repeating them to me?"

"Not at all, sir," said Morhange.

And, very composedly, he enumerated the etymological suggestions I have given previously.

The little man with the cherry-colored shirt front rubbed his hands.

"Very good," he admitted with an accent of intense jubilation. "Amazingly good, at least for one with only the modicum of Greek that you possess. But it is all none the less false, super-false."

"It is because I suspected as much that I put my question to you," said Morhange blandly.

"I will not keep you longer in suspense," said M. Le Mesge. "The word, Antinea, is composed as follows: _ti_ is nothing but a Tifinar addition to an essentially Greek name. _Ti_ is the Berber feminine article. We have several examples of this combination. Take _Tipasa_, the North African town. The name means the whole, from _ti_ and from [Greek: nap]. So, _tinea_ signifies the new, from _ti_ and from [Greek: ea]."

"And the prefix, _an_?" queried Morhang.

"Is it possible, sir, that I have put myself to the trouble of talking to you for a solid hour about the Critias with such trifling effect? It is certain that the prefix _an_, alone, has no meaning. You will understand that it has one, when I tell you that we have here a very curious case of apocope. You must not read _an_; you must read _atlan_. _Atl_ has been lost, by apocope; _an_ has survived. To sum up, Antinea is composed in the following manner: [Greek: ti-nea--atl'An]. And its meaning, _the new Atlantis_, is dazzlingly apparent from this demonstration."

I looked at Morhange. His astonishment was without bounds. The Berber prefix _ti_ had literally stunned him.

"Have you had occasion, sir, to verify this very ingenious etymology?" he was finally able to gasp out.

"You have only to glance over these few books," said M. Le Mesge disdainfully.

He opened successively five, ten, twenty cupboards. An enormous library was spread out to our view.

"Everything, everything--it is all here," murmured Morhange, with an astonishing inflection of terror and admiration.

"Everything that is worth consulting, at any rate," said M. Le Mesge. "All the great books, whose loss the so-called learned world deplores to-day."

"And how has it happened?"

"Sir, you distress me. I thought you familiar with certain events. You are forgetting, then, the passage where Pliny the Elder speaks of the library of Carthage and the treasures which were accumulated there? In 146, when that city fell under the blows of the knave, Scipio, the incredible collection of illiterates who bore the name of the Roman Senate had only the profoundest contempt for these riches. They presented them to the native kings. This is how Mantabal received this priceless heritage; it was transmitted to his son and grandson, Hiempsal, Juba I, Juba II, the husband of the admirable Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of the great Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Cleopatra Selene had a daughter who married an Atlantide king. This is how Antinea, the daughter of Neptune, counts among her ancestors the immortal queen of Egypt. That is how, by following the laws of inheritance, the remains of the library of Carthage, enriched by the remnants of the library of Alexandria, are actually before your eyes.

"Science fled from man. While he was building those monstrous Babels of pseudo-science in Berlin, London, Paris, Science was taking refuge in this desert corner of Ahaggar. They may well forge their hypotheses back there, based on the loss of the mysterious works of antiquity: these works are not lost. They are here. They are here: the Hebrew, the Chaldean, the Assyrian books. Here, the great Egyptian traditions which inspired Solon, Herodotus and Plato. Here, the Greek mythologists, the magicians of Roman Africa, the Indian mystics, all the treasures, in a word, for the lack of which contemporary dissertations are poor laughable things. Believe me, he is well avenged, the little universitarian whom they took for a madman, whom they defied. I have lived, I live, I shall live in a perpetual burst of laughter at their false and garbled erudition. And when I shall be dead, Error,--thanks to the jealous precaution of Neptune taken to isolate his well-beloved Clito from the rest of the world,--Error, I say, will continue to reign as sovereign mistress over their pitiful compositions."

"Sir," said Morhange in grave voice, "you have just affirmed the influence of Egypt on the civilizations of the people here. For reasons which some day, perhaps, I shall have occasion to explain to you, I would like to have proof of that relationship."

"We need not wait for that, sir," said M. Le Mesge. Then, in my turn, I advanced.

"Two words, if you please, sir," I said brutally. "I will not hide from you that these historical discussions seem to me absolutely out of place. It is not my fault if you have had trouble with the University, and if you are not to-day at the College of France or elsewhere. For the moment, just one thing concerns me: to know just what this lady, Antinea, wants with us. My comrade would like to know her relation with ancient Egypt: very well. For my part, I desire above everything to know her relations with the government of Algeria and the Arabian Bureau."

M. Le Mesge gave a strident laugh.

"I am going to give you an answer that will satisfy you both," he replied.

And he added:

"Follow me. It is time that you should learn."

X

THE RED MARBLE HALL

We passed through an interminable series of stairs and corridors following M. Le Mesge.

"You lose all sense of direction in this labyrinth," I muttered to Morhange.

"Worse still, you will lose your head," answered my companion _sotto voce_. "This old fool is certainly very learned; but God knows what he is driving at. However, he has promised that we are soon to know."

M. Le Mesge had stopped before a heavy dark door, all incrusted with strange symbols. Turning the lock with difficulty, he opened it.

"Enter, gentlemen, I beg you," he said.

A gust of cold air struck us full in the face. The room we were entering was chill as a vault.

At first, the darkness allowed me to form no idea of its proportions. The lighting, purposely subdued, consisted of twelve enormous copper lamps, placed column-like upon the ground and burning with brilliant red flames. As we entered, the wind from the corridor made the flames flicker, momentarily casting about us our own enlarged and misshapen shadows. Then the gust died down, and the flames, no longer flurried, again licked up the darkness with their motionless red tongues.

These twelve giant lamps (each one about ten feet high) were arranged in a kind of crown, the diameter of which must have been about fifty feet. In the center of this circle was a dark mass, all streaked with trembling red reflections. When I drew nearer, I saw it was a bubbling fountain. It was the freshness of this water which had maintained the temperature of which I have spoken.

Huge seats were cut in the central rock from which gushed the murmuring, shadowy fountain. They were heaped with silky cushions. Twelve incense burners, within the circle of red lamps, formed a second crown, half as large in diameter. Their smoke mounted toward the vault, invisible in the darkness, but their perfume, combined with the coolness and sound of the water, banished from the soul all other desire than to remain there forever.

M. Le Mesge made us sit down in the center of the hall, on the Cyclopean seats. He seated himself between us.

"In a few minutes," he said, "your eyes will grow accustomed to the obscurity."

I noticed that he spoke in a hushed voice, as if he were in church.

Little by little, our eyes did indeed grow used to the red light. Only the lower part of the great hall was illuminated. The whole vault was drowned in shadow and its height was impossible to estimate. Vaguely, I could perceive overhead a great smooth gold chandelier, flecked, like everything else, with sombre red reflections. But there was no means of judging the length of the chain by which it hung from the dark ceiling.

The marble of the pavement was of so high a polish, that the great torches were reflected even there.

This room, I repeat, was round a perfect circle of which the fountain at our backs was the center.

We sat facing the curving walls. Before long, we began to be able to see them. They were of peculiar construction, divided into a series of niches, broken, ahead of us, by the door which had just opened to give us passage, behind us, by a second door, a still darker hole which I divined in the darkness when I turned around. From one door to the other, I counted sixty niches, making, in all, one hundred and twenty. Each was about ten feet high. Each contained a kind of case, larger above than below, closed only at the lower end. In all these cases, except two just opposite me, I thought I could discern a brilliant shape, a human shape certainly, something like a statue of very pale bronze. In the arc of the circle before me, I counted clearly thirty of these strange statues.

What were these statues? I wanted to see. I rose.

M. Le Mesge put his hand on my arm.

"In good time," he murmured in the same low voice, "all in good time."

The Professor was watching the door by which we had entered the hall, and from behind which we could hear the sound of footsteps becoming more and more distinct.

It opened quietly to admit three Tuareg slaves. Two of them were carrying a long package on their shoulders; the third seemed to be their chief.

At a sign from him, they placed the package on the ground and drew out from one of the niches the case which it contained.

"You may approach, gentlemen," said M. Le Mesge.

He motioned the three Tuareg to withdraw several paces.

"You asked me, not long since, for some proof of the Egyptian influence on this country," said M. Le Mesge. "What do you say to that case, to begin with?"

As he spoke, he pointed to the case that the servants had deposited upon the ground after they took it from its niche.

Morhange uttered a thick cry.

We had before us one of those cases designed for the preservation of mummies. The same shiny wood, the same bright decorations, the only difference being that here Tifinar writing replaced the hieroglyphics. The form, narrow at the base, broader above, ought to have been enough to enlighten us.

I have already said that the lower half of this large case was closed, giving the whole structure the appearance of a rectangular wooden shoe.

M. Le Mesge knelt and fastened on the lower part of the case, a square of white cardboard, a large label, that he had picked up from his desk, a few minutes before, on leaving the library.

"You may read," he said simply, but still in the same low tone.

I knelt also, for the light of the great candelabra was scarcely sufficient to read the label where, none the less, I recognized the Professor's handwriting.

It bore these few words, in a large round hand:

"Number 53. Major Sir Archibald Russell. Born at Richmond, July 5, 1860. Died at Ahaggar, December 3, 1896."

I leapt to my feet.

"Major Russell!" I exclaimed.

"Not so loud, not so loud," said M. Le Mesge. "No one speaks out loud here."

"The Major Russell," I repeated, obeying his injunction as if in spite of myself, "who left Khartoum last year, to explore Sokoto?"

"The same," replied the Professor.

"And ... where is Major Russell?"

"He is there," replied M. Le Mesge.

The Professor made a gesture. The Tuareg approached.

A poignant silence reigned in the mysterious hall, broken only by the fresh splashing of the fountain.

The three Negroes were occupied in undoing the package that they had put down near the painted case. Weighed down with wordless horror, Morhange and I stood watching.

Soon, a rigid form, a human form, appeared. A red gleam played over it. We had before us, stretched out upon the ground, a statue of pale bronze, wrapped in a kind of white veil, a statue like those all around us, upright in their niches. It seemed to fix us with an impenetrable gaze.

"Sir Archibald Russell," murmured M. Le Mesge slowly.

Morhange approached, speechless, but strong enough to lift up the white veil. For a long, long time he gazed at the sad bronze statue.

"A mummy, a mummy?" he said finally. "You deceive yourself, sir, this is no mummy."

"Accurately speaking, no," replied M. Le Mesge. "This is not a mummy. None the less, you have before you the mortal remains of Sir Archibald Russell. I must point out to you, here, my dear sir, that the processes of embalming used by Antinea differ from the processes employed in ancient Egypt. Here, there is no natron, nor bands, nor spices. The industry of Ahaggar, in a single effort, has achieved a result obtained by European science only after long experiments. Imagine my surprise, when I arrived here and found that they were employing a method I supposed known only to the civilized world."

M. Le Mesge struck a light tap with his finger on the forehead of Sir Archibald Russell. It rang like metal.

"It is bronze," I said. "That is not a human forehead: it is bronze."

M. Le Mesge shrugged his shoulders.

"It is a human forehead," he affirmed curtly, "and not bronze. Bronze is darker, sir. This is the great unknown metal of which Plato speaks in the Critias, and which is something between gold and silver: it is the special metal of the mountains of the Atlantides. It is _orichalch_."

Bending again, I satisfied myself that this metal was the same as that with which the walls of the library were overcast.

"It is orichalch," continued M. Le Mesge. "You look as if you had no idea how a human body can look like a statue of orichalch. Come, Captain Morhange, you whom I gave credit for a certain amount of knowledge, have you never heard of the method of Dr. Variot, by which a human body can be preserved without embalming? Have you never read the book of that practitioner?[11] He explains a method called electro-plating. The skin is coated with a very thin layer of silver salts, to make it a conductor. The body then is placed in a solution, of copper sulphate, and the polar currents do their work. The body of this estimable English major has been metalized in the same manner, except that a solution of orichalch sulphate, a very rare substance, has been substituted for that of copper sulphate. Thus, instead of the statue of a poor slave, a copper statue, you have before you a statue of metal more precious than silver or gold, in a word, a statue worthy of the granddaughter of Neptune."

[Footnote 11: Variot: _L'anthropologie galvanique_. Paris, 1890. (Note by M. Leroux.)]

M. Le Mesge waved his arm. The black slaves seized the body. In a few seconds, they slid the orichalch ghost into its painted wooden sheath. That was set on end and slid into its niche, beside the niche where an exactly similar sheath was labelled "Number 52."

Upon finishing their task, they retired without a word. A draught of cold air from the door again made the flames of the copper torches flicker and threw great shadows about us.

Morhange and I remained as motionless as the pale metal specters which surrounded us. Suddenly I pulled myself together and staggered forward to the niche beside that in which they just had laid the remains of the English major. I looked for the label.

Supporting myself against the red marble wall, I read:

"Number 52. Captain Laurent Deligne. Born at Paris, July 22, 1861. Died at Ahaggar, October 30, 1896."

"Captain Deligne!" murmured Morhange. "He left Colomb-Béchar in 1895 for Timmimoun and no more has been heard of him since then."

"Exactly," said M. Le Mesge, with a little nod of approval.

"Number 51," read Morhange with chattering teeth. "Colonel von Wittman, born at Jena in 1855. Died at Ahaggar, May 1, 1896.... Colonel Wittman, the explorer of Kanem, who disappeared off Agadès."

"Exactly," said M. Le Mesge again.

"Number 50," I read in my turn, steadying myself against the wall, so as not to fall. "Marquis Alonzo d'Oliveira, born at Cadiz, February 21, 1868. Died at Ahaggar, February 1, 1896. Oliveira, who was going to Araouan."

"Exactly," said M. Le Mesge again. "That Spaniard was one of the best educated. I used to have interesting discussions with him on the exact geographical position of the kingdom of Antée."

"Number 49," said Morhange in a tone scarcely more than a whisper. "Lieutenant Woodhouse, born at Liverpool, September 16, 1870. Died at Ahaggar, October 4, 1895."

"Hardly more than a child," said M. Le Mesge.

"Number 48," I said. "Lieutenant Louis de Maillefeu, born at Provins, the...."

I did not finish. My voice choked.

Louis de Maillefeu, my best friend, the friend of my childhood and of Saint-Cyr.... I looked at him and recognized him under the metallic coating. Louis de Maillefeu!

I laid my forehead against the cold wall and, with shaking shoulders, began to sob.

I heard the muffled voice of Morhange speaking to the Professor:

"Sir, this has lasted long enough. Let us make an end of it."

"He wanted to know," said M. Le Mesge. "What am I to do?"

I went up to him and seized his shoulders.

"What happened to him? What did he die of?"

"Just like the others," the Professor replied, "just like Lieutenant Woodhouse, like Captain Deligne, like Major Russell, like Colonel von Wittman, like the forty-seven of yesterday and all those of to-morrow."

"Of what did they die?" Morhange demanded imperatively in his turn.

The Professor looked at Morhange. I saw my comrade grow pale.

"Of what did they die, sir? _They died of love_."

And he added in a very low, very grave voice:

"Now you know."

Gently and with a tact which we should hardly have suspected in him, M. Le Mesge drew us away from the statues. A moment later, Morhange and I found ourselves again seated, or rather sunk among the cushions in the center of the room. The invisible fountain murmured its plaint at our feet.

Le Mesge sat between us.

"Now you know," he repeated. "You know, but you do not yet understand."

Then, very slowly, he said:

"You are, as they have been, the prisoners of Antinea. And vengeance is due Antinea."

"Vengeance?" said Morhange, who had regained his self-possession. "For what, I beg to ask? What have the lieutenant and I done to Atlantis? How have we incurred her hatred?"

"It is an old quarrel, a very old quarrel," the Professor replied gravely. "A quarrel which long antedates you, M. Morhange."

"Explain yourself, I beg of you, Professor."

"You are Man. She is a Woman," said the dreamy voice of M. Le Mesge. "The whole matter lies there."

"Really, sir, I do not see ... we do not see."

"You are going to understand. Have you really forgotten to what an extent the beautiful queens of antiquity had just cause to complain of the strangers whom fortune brought to their borders? The poet, Victor Hugo, pictured their detestable acts well enough in his colonial poem called _la Fille d'O-Taiti_. Wherever we look, we see similar examples of fraud and ingratitude. These gentlemen made free use of the beauty and the riches of the lady. Then, one fine morning, they disappeared. She was indeed lucky if her lover, having observed the position carefully, did not return with ships and troops of occupation."

"Your learning charms me," said Morhange. "Continue."

"Do you need examples? Alas! they abound. Think of the cavalier fashion in which Ulysses treated Calypso, Diomedes Callirhoë. What should I say of Theseus and Ariadne? Jason treated Medea with inconceivable lightness. The Romans continued the tradition with still greater brutality. Aenaeus, who has many characteristics in common with the Reverend Spardek, treated Dido in a most undeserved fashion. Caesar was a laurel-crowned blackguard in his relations with the divine Cleopatra. Titus, that hypocrite Titus, after having lived a whole year in Idummea at the expense of the plaintive Berenice, took her back to Rome only to make game of her. It is time that the sons of Japhet paid this formidable reckoning of injuries to the daughters of Shem.

"A woman has taken it upon herself to re-establish the great Hegelian law of equilibrium for the benefit of her sex. Separated from the Aryan world by the formidable precautions of Neptune, she draws the youngest and bravest to her. Her body is condescending, while her spirit is inexorable. She takes what these bold young men can give her. She lends them her body, while her soul dominates them. She is the first sovereign who has never been made the slave of passion, even for a moment. She has never been obliged to regain her self-mastery, for she never has lost it. She is the only woman who has been able to disassociate those two inextricable things, love and voluptuousness."

M. Le Mesge paused a moment and then went on.

"Once every day, she comes to this vault. She stops before the niches; she meditates before the rigid statues; she touches the cold bosoms, so burning when she knew them. Then, after dreaming before the empty niche where the next victim soon will sleep his eternal sleep in a cold case of orichalch, she returns nonchalantly where he is waiting for her."

The Professor stopped speaking. The fountain again made itself heard in the midst of the shadow. My pulses beat, my head seemed on fire. A fever was consuming me.

"And all of them," I cried, regardless of the place, "all of them complied! They submitted! Well, she has only to come and she will see what will happen."

Morhange was silent.