IX
ATLANTIS
M. Le Mesge looked at Morhange triumphantly. It was evident that headdressed himself exclusively to Morhange, considering him aloneworthy of his confidences.
"There have been many, sir," he said, "both French and foreignofficers who have been brought here at the caprice of our sovereign,Antinea. You are the first to be honored by my disclosures. But youwere the pupil of Berlioux, and I owe so much to the memory of thatgreat man that it seems to me I may do him homage by imparting to oneof his disciples the unique results of my private research."
He struck the bell. Ferradji appeared.
"Coffee for these gentlemen," ordered M. Le Mesge.
He handed us a box, gorgeously decorated in the most flaming colors,full of Egyptian cigarettes.
"I never smoke," he explained. "But Antinea sometimes comes here.These are her cigarettes. Help yourselves, gentlemen."
I have always had a horror of that pale tobacco which gives a barberof the Rue de la Michodiere the illusion of oriental voluptuousness.But, in their way, these musk-scented cigarettes were not bad, and itwas a long time since I had used up my stock of Caporal.
"Here are the back numbers of _Le Vie Parisienne_" said M. Le Mesgeto me. "Amuse yourself with them, if you like, while I talk to yourfriend."
"Sir," I replied brusquely, "it is true that I never studied withBerlioux. Nevertheless, you must allow me to listen to yourconversation: I shall hope to find something in it to amuse me."
"As you wish," said the little old man.
We settled ourselves comfortably. M. Le Mesge sat down before thedesk, shot his cuffs, and commenced as follows:
"However much, gentlemen, I prize complete objectivity in matters oferudition, I cannot utterly detach my own history from that of thelast descendant of Clito and Neptune.
"I am the creation of my own efforts. From my childhood, theprodigious impulse given to the science of history by the nineteenthcentury has affected me. I saw where my way led. I have followed it,in spite of everything.
"In spite of everything, everything--I mean it literally. With noother resources than my own work and merit, I was received as Fellowof History and Geography at the examination of 1880. A greatexamination! Among the thirteen who were accepted there were nameswhich have since become illustrious: Julian, Bourgeois, Auerbach.... Ido not envy my colleagues on the summits of their official honors; Iread their works with commiseration; and the pitiful errors to whichthey are condemned by the insufficiency of their documents would amplycounterbalance my chagrin and fill me with ironic joy, had I not beenraised long since above the satisfaction of self-love.
"When I was Professor at the Lycee du Parc at Lyons. I knew Berliouxand followed eagerly his works on African History. I had, at thattime, a very original idea for my doctor's thesis. I was going toestablish a parallel between the Berber heroine of the seventhcentury, who struggled against the Arab invader, Kahena, and theFrench heroine, Joan of Arc, who struggled against the Englishinvader. I proposed to the _Faculte des Lettres_ at Paris this titlefor my thesis: _Joan of Arc and the Tuareg_. This simple announcementgave rise to a perfect outcry in learned circles, a furor ofridicule. My friends warned me discreetly. I refused to believe them.Finally I was forced to believe when my rector summoned me before himand, after manifesting an astonishing interest in my health, askedwhether I should object to taking two years' leave on half pay. Irefused indignantly. The rector did not insist; but fifteen dayslater, a ministerial decree, with no other legal procedure, assignedme to one of the most insignificant and remote Lycees of France, atMont-de-Marsan.
"Realize my exasperation and you will excuse the excesses to which Idelivered myself in that strange country. What is there to do inLandes, if you neither eat nor drink? I did both violently. My paymelted away in _fois gras_, in woodcocks, in fine wines. The resultcame quickly enough: in less than a year my joints began to crack likethe over-oiled axle of a bicycle that has gone a long way upon a dustytrack. A sharp attack of gout nailed me to my bed. Fortunately, inthat blessed country, the cure is in reach of the suffering. So Ideparted to Dax, at vacation time, to try the waters.
"I rented a room on the bank of the Adour, overlooking the _Promenadedes Baignots_. A charwoman took care of it for me. She worked also foran old gentleman, a retired Examining Magistrate, President of theRoger-Ducos Society, which was a vague scientific backwater, in whichthe scholars of the neighborhood applied themselves with prodigiousincompetence to the most whimsical subjects. One afternoon I stayed inmy room on account of a very heavy rain. The good woman wasenergetically polishing the copper latch of my door. She used a pastecalled Tripoli, which she spread upon a paper and rubbed andrubbed.... The peculiar appearance of the paper made me curious. Iglanced at it. 'Great heavens! Where did you get this paper?' She wasperturbed. 'At my master's; he has lots of it. I tore this out of anotebook.' 'Here are ten francs. Go and get me the notebook.'
"A quarter of an hour later, she was back with it. By good luck itlacked only one page, the one with which she had been polishing mydoor. This manuscript, this notebook, have you any idea what it was?Merely the _Voyage to Atlantis_ of the mythologist Denis de Milet,which is mentioned by Diodorus and the loss of which I had so oftenheard Berlioux deplore.[10]
[Footnote 10: How did the _Voyage to Atlantis_ arrive at Dax? I havefound, so far, only one credible hypothesis: it might have beendiscovered in Africa by the traveller, de Behagle, a member of theRoger-Ducos Society, who studied at the college of Dax, and later, onseveral occasions, visited the town. (Note by M. Leroux.)]
"This inestimable document contained numerous quotations from theCritias. It gave an abstract of the illustrious dialogue, the soleexisting copy of which you held in your hands a little while ago. Itestablished past controversy the location of the stronghold of theAtlantides, and demonstrated that this site, which is denied byscience, was not submerged by the waves, as is supposed by the rareand timorous defenders of the Atlantide hypothesis. He called it the'central Mazycian range,' You know there is no longer any doubt as tothe identification of the Mazyces of Herodotus with the people ofImoschaoch, the Tuareg. But the manuscript of Denys unquestionablyidentifies the historical Mazyces with the Atlantides of the supposedlegend.
"I learned, therefore, from Denys, not only that the central part ofAtlantis, the cradle and home of the dynasty of Neptune, had not sunkin the disaster described by Plato as engulfing the rest of theAtlantide isle, but also that it corresponded to the Tuareg Ahaggar,and that, in this Ahaggar, at least in his time, the noble dynasty ofNeptune was supposed to be still existent.
"The historians of Atlantis put the date of the cataclysm whichdestroyed all or part of that famous country at nine thousand yearsbefore Christ. If Denis de Milet, who wrote scarcely three thousandyears ago, believed that in his time, the dynastic issue of Neptunewas still ruling its dominion, you will understand that I thoughtimmediately--what has lasted nine thousand years may last eleventhousand. From that instant I had only one aim: to find the possibledescendants of the Atlantides, and, since I had many reasons forsupposing them to be debased and ignorant of their original splendor,to inform them of their illustrious descent.
"You will easily understand that I imparted none of my intentions tomy superiors at the University. To solicit their approval or eventheir permission, considering the attitude they had taken toward me,would have been almost certainly to invite confinement in a cell. So Iraised what I could on my own account, and departed without trumpet ordrum for Oran. On the first of October I reached In-Salah. Stretchedat my ease beneath a palm tree, at the oasis, I took infinite pleasurein considering how, that very day, the principal of Mont-de-Marsan,beside himself, struggling to control twenty horrible urchins howlingbefore the door of an empty class room, would be telegraphing wildlyin all directions in search of his lost history professor."
M. Le Mesge stopped and looked at us to mark his satisfaction.
I admit that I forgot my dignity and I forgot
the affectation he hadsteadily assumed of talking only to Morhange.
"You will pardon me, sir, if your discourse interests me more than Ihad anticipated. But you know very well that I lack the fundamentalinstruction necessary to understand you. You speak of the dynasty ofNeptune. What is this dynasty, from which, I believe, you trace thedescent of Antinea? What is her role in the story of Atlantis?"
M. Le Mesge smiled with condescension, meantime winking at Morhangewith the eye nearest to him. Morhange was listening withoutexpression, without a word, chin in hand, elbow on knee.
"Plato will answer for me, sir," said the Professor.
And he added, with an accent of inexpressible pity:
"Is it really possible that you have never made the acquaintance ofthe introduction to the Critias?"
He placed on the table the book by which Morhange had been sostrangely moved. He adjusted his spectacles and began to read. Itseemed as if the magic of Plato vibrated through and transfigured thisridiculous little old man.
"'Having drawn by lot the different parts of the earth, the godsobtained, some a larger, and some, a smaller share. It was thus thatNeptune, having received in the division the isle of Atlantis, came toplace the children he had had by a mortal in one part of that isle.It was not far from the sea, a plain situated in the midst of theisle, the most beautiful, and, they say, the most fertile of plains.About fifty stades from that plain, in the middle of the isle, was amountain. There dwelt one of those men who, in the very beginning, wasborn of the Earth, Evenor, with his wife, Leucippe. They had only onedaughter, Clito. She was marriageable when her mother and father died,and Neptune, being enamored of her, married her. Neptune fortified themountain where she dwelt by isolating it. He made alternate girdles ofsea and land, the one smaller, the others greater, two of earth andthree of water, and centered them round the isle in such a manner thatthey were at all parts equally distant!..."
M. Le Mesge broke off his reading.
"Does this arrangement recall nothing to you?" he queried.
"Morhange, Morhange!" I stammered. "You remember--our route yesterday,our abduction, the two corridors that we had to cross before arrivingat this mountain?... The girdles of earth and of water?... Twotunnels, two enclosures of earth?"
"Ha! Ha!" chuckled M. Le Mesge.
He smiled as he looked at me. I understood that this smile meant: "Canhe be less obtuse than I had supposed?"
As if with a mighty effort, Morhange broke the silence.
"I understand well enough, I understand.... The three girdles ofwater.... But then, you are supposing, sir,--an explanation theingeniousness of which I do not contest--you are supposing the exacthypothesis of the Saharan sea!"
"I suppose it, and I can prove it," replied the irascible little oldchap, banging his fist on the table. "I know well enough what Schirmerand the rest have advanced against it. I know it better than you do. Iknow all about it, sir. I can present all the proofs for yourconsideration. And in the meantime, this evening at dinner, you willno doubt enjoy some excellent fish. And you will tell me if thesefish, caught in the lake that you can see from this window, seem toyou fresh water fish.
"You must realize," he continued, "the mistake of those who, believingin Atlantis, have sought to explain the cataclysm in which theysuppose the island to have sunk. Without exception, they have thoughtthat it was swallowed up. Actually, there has not been an immersion.There has been an emersion. New lands have emerged from the Atlanticwave. The desert has replaced the sea, the _sebkhas_, the salt lakes,the Triton lakes, the sandy Syrtes are the desolate vestiges of thefree sea water over which, in former days, the fleets swept with afair wind towards the conquest of Attica. Sand swallows upcivilization better than water. To-day there remains nothing of thebeautiful isle that the sea and winds kept gay and verdant but thischalky mass. Nothing has endured in this rocky basin, cut off foreverfrom the living world, but the marvelous oasis that you have at yourfeet, these red fruits, this cascade, this blue lake, sacred witnessesto the golden age that is gone. Last evening, in coming here, you hadto cross the five enclosures: the three belts of water, dry forever;the two girdles of earth through which are hollowed the passages youtraversed on camel back, where, formerly, the triremes floated. Theonly thing that, in this immense catastrophe, has preserved itslikeness to its former state, is this mountain, the mountain whereNeptune shut up his well-beloved Clito, the daughter of Evenor andLeucippe, the mother of Atlas, and the ancestress of Antinea, thesovereign under whose dominion you are about to enter forever."
"Sir," Morhange with the most exquisite courtesy, "it would be only anatural anxiety which would urge us to inquire the reasons and the endof this dominion. But behold to what extent your revelation interestsme; I defer this question of private interest. Of late, in twocaverns, it has been my fortune to discover Tifinar inscriptions ofthis name, Antinea. My comrade is witness that I took it for a Greekname. I understand now, thanks to you and the divine Plato, that Ineed no longer feel surprised to hear a barbarian called by a Greekname. But I am no less perplexed as to the etymology of the word. Canyou enlighten me?"
"I shall certainly not fail you there, sir," said M. Le Mesge. "I maytell 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 tenyears have been attracted in the same way, intrigued by this Greekwork reproduced in Tifinar. I have even arranged a fairly exactcatalogue of these inscriptions and the caverns where they are to bemet with. All, or almost all, are accompanied by this legend:_Antinea. Here commences her domain_. I myself have had repainted withochre such as were beginning to be effaced. But, to return to what Iwas telling you before, none of the Europeans who have followed thisepigraphic mystery here, have kept their anxiety to solve thisetymology once they found themselves in Antinea's palace. They allbecome otherwise preoccupied. I might make many disclosures as to thelittle real importance which purely scientific interests possess evenfor scholars, and the quickness with which they sacrifice them to themost 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 notcount you among these unworthy scholars. You are really eager to knowthe origin of this name, _Antinea_, and that before knowing what kindof woman it belongs to and her motives for holding you and thisgentleman as her prisoners."
I stared hard at the little old man. But he spoke with profoundseriousness.
"So much the better for you, my boy," I thought. "Otherwise itwouldn't have taken me long to send you through the window to air yourironies at your ease. The law of gravity ought not to be topsy-turvyhere at Ahaggar."
"You, no doubt, formulated several hypotheses when you firstencountered the name, Antinea," continued M. Le Mesge, imperturbableunder my fixed gaze, addressing himself to Morhange. "Would you objectto repeating them to me?"
"Not at all, sir," said Morhange.
And, very composedly, he enumerated the etymological suggestions Ihave 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 thatyou 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 Tifinaraddition to an essentially Greek name. _Ti_ is the Berber femininearticle. 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 talkingto yo
u for a solid hour about the Critias with such trifling effect?It is certain that the prefix _an_, alone, has no meaning. You willunderstand that it has one, when I tell you that we have here a verycurious case of apocope. You must not read _an_; you must read _atlan_._Atl_ has been lost, by apocope; _an_ has survived. To sum up, Antineais composed in the following manner: [Greek: ti-nea--atl'An]. And itsmeaning, _the new Atlantis_, is dazzlingly apparent from thisdemonstration."
I looked at Morhange. His astonishment was without bounds. The Berberprefix _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 Mesgedisdainfully.
He opened successively five, ten, twenty cupboards. An enormouslibrary was spread out to our view.
"Everything, everything--it is all here," murmured Morhange, with anastonishing 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 deploresto-day."
"And how has it happened?"
"Sir, you distress me. I thought you familiar with certain events. Youare forgetting, then, the passage where Pliny the Elder speaks of thelibrary of Carthage and the treasures which were accumulated there? In146, when that city fell under the blows of the knave, Scipio, theincredible collection of illiterates who bore the name of the RomanSenate had only the profoundest contempt for these riches. Theypresented them to the native kings. This is how Mantabal received thispriceless heritage; it was transmitted to his son and grandson,Hiempsal, Juba I, Juba II, the husband of the admirable CleopatraSelene, the daughter of the great Cleopatra and Mark Antony. CleopatraSelene had a daughter who married an Atlantide king. This is howAntinea, the daughter of Neptune, counts among her ancestors theimmortal queen of Egypt. That is how, by following the laws ofinheritance, the remains of the library of Carthage, enriched by theremnants of the library of Alexandria, are actually before your eyes.
"Science fled from man. While he was building those monstrous Babelsof pseudo-science in Berlin, London, Paris, Science was taking refugein this desert corner of Ahaggar. They may well forge their hypothesesback 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 traditionswhich inspired Solon, Herodotus and Plato. Here, the Greekmythologists, the magicians of Roman Africa, the Indian mystics, allthe treasures, in a word, for the lack of which contemporarydissertations are poor laughable things. Believe me, he is wellavenged, the little universitarian whom they took for a madman, whomthey defied. I have lived, I live, I shall live in a perpetual burstof laughter at their false and garbled erudition. And when I shall bedead, Error,--thanks to the jealous precaution of Neptune taken toisolate his well-beloved Clito from the rest of the world,--Error, Isay, will continue to reign as sovereign mistress over their pitifulcompositions."
"Sir," said Morhange in grave voice, "you have just affirmed theinfluence of Egypt on the civilizations of the people here. Forreasons which some day, perhaps, I shall have occasion to explain toyou, 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 hidefrom you that these historical discussions seem to me absolutely outof place. It is not my fault if you have had trouble with theUniversity, and if you are not to-day at the College of France orelsewhere. For the moment, just one thing concerns me: to know justwhat this lady, Antinea, wants with us. My comrade would like to knowher relation with ancient Egypt: very well. For my part, I desireabove everything to know her relations with the government of Algeriaand the Arabian Bureau."
M. Le Mesge gave a strident laugh.
"I am going to give you an answer that will satisfy you both," hereplied.
And he added:
"Follow me. It is time that you should learn."