Part 12

Whether it was that his will, magnetically strong, had changed his companion's disposition, or that she found abundant food, because of the constant battles which were taking place in those deserts, she spared the Frenchman's life, and he finally ceased to distrust her when he found that she had become so tame. He employed most of his time in sleeping; but he was obliged to watch at times, like a spider in the midst of its web, in order not to allow the moment of his deliverance to escape, if any human being should pass through the circle described by the horizon. He had sacrificed his shirt to make a flag, which he had hoisted to the top of a leafless palm-tree. Advised by necessity, he invented a way to keep it unfolded by the use of sticks, for the wind might not have stirred it at the moment when the expected traveller should look across the desert.

But it was during the long hours when hope abandoned him that he played with the panther. He had ended by learning the different inflections of her voice, the different expressions of her eyes; he had studied all the gradations of colour of her golden coat. Mignonne no longer even growled when he seized the tuft of hair at the end of her redoubtable tail, to count the black and white rings--a graceful ornament, which shone in the sunlight like precious stones. He took pleasure in gazing at the graceful and voluptuous lines of her figure, and the whiteness of her stomach, as well as the shapeliness of her head. But it was especially when she was playing that he delighted in watching her, and the youthful agility of her movements always surprised him. He admired her suppleness when she bounded, crept, glided, crouched, clung, rolled over and over, darted hither and thither. However swift her bound, however slippery the bowlder, she always stopped short at the word "Mignonne."

One day, in the dazzling sunlight, an enormous bird hovered in the sky. The Provençal left his panther to scrutinise that new guest; but after waiting a moment, his neglected sultana uttered a low growl.

"God forgive me, I believe that she is jealous!" he cried, seeing that her eyes had become steely once more. "Surely Virginie's soul has passed into that body!"

The eagle disappeared while the soldier was admiring the panther's rounded flank. There was so much youthful grace in her outlines! She was as pretty as a woman. The light fur of her coat blended by delicate shades with the dead-white of her thighs. The vivid sunshine caused that living gold, those brown spots, to gleam in such wise as to make them indescribably charming. The Provençal and his panther gazed at each other with an air of comprehension; the coquette started when she felt her friend's nails scratching her head; her eyes shone like flashes of lightning, then she closed them tight.

"She has a soul!" he cried, as he studied the tranquil repose of that queen of the sands, white as their pulsing light, solitary and burning as they.

* * * * *

"Well," she said to me, "I have read your argument in favour of wild beasts; but how did two persons so well fitted to understand each other finally come out?"

"Ah! there you are! It ended as all great passions do, by a misunderstanding. Each believes in some treachery; one refrains from explaining from pride, the other quarrels from obstinacy."

"And sometimes, at the happiest moment," she said; "a glance, an exclamation is enough--well, finish your story."

"It is very difficult, but you will understand what the old veteran had already confided to me, when, as he finished his bottle of champagne, he exclaimed:

"'I don't know how I hurt her, but she turned as if she had gone mad, and wounded my thigh with her sharp teeth--a slight wound. I, thinking that she meant to devour me, plunged my dagger into her throat. She rolled over with a cry which tore my soul; I saw her struggle, gazing at me without a trace of anger. I would have given anything in the world, even my cross, which I had not then earned, to restore her to life again. It was as if I had murdered a human being; and the soldiers who had seen my flag and who hurried to my rescue found me weeping. Well, monsieur,' he continued, after a moment's silence, 'since then I have fought in Germany, Spain, Russia, and France; I have marched my poor old bones about, but I have seen nothing comparable to the desert. Ah, that is magnificent, I tell you!'

"'What were your feelings there?' I asked.

"'Oh, they cannot be told, young man. Besides, I do not always regret my panther and my palm-tree oasis: I must be very sad for that. But I will tell you this: in the desert there is all--and yet nothing.'

"'Stay!--explain that.'

"'Well, then,' he said, with a gesture of impatience, 'God is there, and man is not.'"

1830.

End of Project Gutenberg's Little French Masterpieces, by Honoré de Balzac