The railway
will take you within a hundred miles; the last hundred miles will be
accomplished on the back of a dromedary; I shall send you a fleet one
and an escort."
"Splendid," I answered. "I see myself arriving sitting high up on the
hump gathering dates--I suppose there are date palms where you are?
Yes?--and wearing a turban and a bournous."
"Would you like to see my bournous?" he said, and opening his valise
he showed me a splendid one which filled me with admiration, and only
shame forbade me to ask him to allow me to try it on. Ideas haunt one.
When I was a little child I insisted on wearing a turban and going out
for a ride on the pony, flourishing a Damascus blade which my father
had brought home from the East. Nothing else would have satisfied me;
my father led the pony, and I have always thought this fantasy
exceedingly characteristic; it must be so, for it awoke in me twenty
years afterwards; and fanciful and absurd as it may appear, I
certainly should have liked to have worn my travelling companion's
bournous in the train if only for a few minutes. All this is twelve
years ago, and I have not yet gone to visit him in his oasis, but how
many times have I done so in my imagination, seeing myself arriving on
the back of a dromedary crying out, "Allah! Allah! And Mohammed is his
prophet!" But though one can go on thinking year after year about a
bournous, one cannot talk for more than two or three hours about one;
and though I looked forward to spending at least a fortnight with my
friends, and making excursions in the desert, finding summer, as
Fromentin says, _chez lui_, I was glad to say good-bye to my
friends at Marseilles.
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