Jean’s son was a delightful baby, but very solemn, and was seldom seen to smile. He was dressed in a blue bou-bou and a necklace, like a Yolof child, but his head was not shaved or ornamented with little tails of hair, as is usual with children of the country. As he was a little “white” boy, his mother had let his curly hair grow, and one lock fell across his forehead, as with Jean. Jean remained there a long time, seated at the door of the blockhouse, playing with his son. The last rays of daylight fell upon this singular picture; the child with his angel face, the spahi with his soldierly beauty, playing together alongside of those sinister dark minstrels. Fatou-gaye was seated at their feet contemplating the pair with adoring eyes, crouching on the ground before them like a dog at its master’s feet. Poor Jean had remained very much of a child, as is commonly the case with young men who have led a hard life, and whose precocious physical development has endowed them early with a mature and serious manner. He dandled his son on his knees with soldierly awkwardness, constantly bursting into peals of fresh, youthful laughter. But the child, the spahi’s son, did not laugh much; he put his chubby arms round his father’s neck and nestled close to his breast, looking about him with a very solemn air.... When night fell, Jean disposed of them both safely in the interior of the blockhouse; then he gave Fatou all the money he had left, three _khâliss_ (fifteen francs).... “See,” he said, “to-morrow you will buy _kouss-kouss_ for yourself and good milk for him.” * * * * * XX Then he made his way towards the camp, so that he, too, might lie down and sleep. To reach the French tents, he had to pass through the camp of the allied Bambaras. The night was of a luminous transparency, and everywhere the whirring noises of insects were audible; one grew aware that there were thousands and thousands of crickets and cicadas under every blade of grass, in each little hole in the sand. Sometimes the concerted effect of all these whirring sounds was strident and deafening, as if the whole vast country were covered with an infinite number of tiny bells and rattles, and then momentarily the whole din would seem to die down, as if all these crickets had passed the word for silence, and there was a sudden hush. Lost in thought, Jean went his way. He was very dreamy this evening.... And as he mused, without looking where he was going, he found himself engulfed suddenly in a great circle of men, who kept revolving around him in the rhythm of a dance. (The circular dance is the form specially favoured by the Bambaras.) The dancers were men of lofty stature, wearing long white robes and high turbans, likewise white, with two black horns.