On the 26th October, 1872, M. de Pommerelle, on reaching his rooms at 3 a.m., found on his bedroom mantel-piece a letter, with the Cairo post-mark. "Those dear boys!" he exclaimed, gleefully. "They have not forgotten me." And in spite of the late, or rather, early hour, and the fact that he was tired, he lighted a couple of candles so that he might more readily peruse his precious letter without losing a word of it. He very soon saw, from the variations in the handwriting, that the three travellers had worked together in his behalf. M. de Morin opened the ball. "Ah! my dear de Pommerelle," commenced this epistle, "what a voyage! what an ecstatic voyage!" M. de Pommerelle put the letter down and rubbed his hands. His imagination went far ahead of his eyesight, and he revelled beforehand in the landscapes about to be unfolded to his view, and the descriptions of manners and customs into which he was to be initiated. He took the letter up again, and found that it went on in the following strain— "Yes, a delicious voyage! Madame de Guéran is simply adorable. You cannot have an idea of how quickly the time passes in her society. It is now ten days since I left Paris, and it seems but yesterday. Her charm! her exquisite refinement! her gaiety, tempered with an irresistible shade of melancholy! her even temperament! her conversation, at once full of wit and wisdom!" "When will he have done with all this?" exclaimed M. de Pommerelle, who was becoming impatient over this rhapsody. "The least possible description of Africa would please me far more than any portrait of Madame de Guéran. However, let us see, perhaps he has nearly done, and will continue in another strain." M. de Morin's letter went on thus— "And how she exacts obedience from all! If you could only see her ordering about these people whom we have already got together for the expedition!" "The expedition! Bravo!" said M. de Pommerelle. "Now we have it. It was just about time, I think; but oh! these lovers!"