In your last letter to me, you say: “When I know how people love in a country, I know that country well enough to describe it, although I may never have seen it.” Let me tell you, then, that here they love furiously. From the very first moment one feels a sort of trembling ardour, an excitement, a sudden tension of desire, a thrill running down to the very tips of the fingers, which overexcites one’s amorous powers and faculties of physical sensation, from the simple contact of the hands down to that unmentionable need which makes us commit so many follies.
Do not misunderstand me. I do not know whether what you call love of the heart, love of the soul, whether sentimental idealism, Platonic love, in a word, can exist on this earth; I doubt it, myself. But that other love, sensual love, which has something good, a great deal of good in it, is really terrible in this climate. The heat, the burning atmosphere which makes you feverish, the suffocating blasts of wind from the south, waves of fire from the desert which is so near us, that oppressive sirocco which is more destructive and withering than fire, a perpetual conflagration of an entire continent, burned even to its stones by a fierce and devouring sun, inflame the blood, excite the flesh, and make brutes of us.
But to come to my story. I shall not dwell on the beginning of my stay in Algeria. After visiting Bona, Constantine, Biskra, and Setif, I went to Bougie through the defiles of Chabet, by a wonderful road through Kabyle forests, which follows the sea at a height of six hundred feet above it and leads to that wonderful bay of Bougie, which is as beautiful as that of Naples, of Ajaccio, or of Douarnenez, which are the most lovely I know. I except from my comparison that incredible Bay of Oporto, enclosed with red granite, the dwelling place of those fantastic and sanguinary stone giants, called the Calanchas of Piana, on the western coast of Corsica.
Far away in the distance, before one rounds the large inlet where the water is perfectly calm, one sees Bougie. It is built on the steep sides of a high hill covered with trees, and forms a white spot on that green slope; it might almost be taken for the foam of a cascade falling into the sea.
I had no sooner set foot in that small, delightful town, than I knew that I should stay for a long time. In all directions the eye rests on rugged, strangely shaped hilltops, so close together that you can hardly see the open sea, so that the gulf looks like a lake. The milky blue water is wonderfully transparent, and the azure sky, a deep azure, as if it had received two coats of colour, expands its wonderful beauty above it. They seem to be looking at themselves in a glass, a veritable reflection of each other.
Bougie is a town of ruins, and on the quay is such a magnificent ruin that you might imagine you were at the opera. It is the old Saracen Gate, overgrown with ivy, and there are ruins in all directions on the hills round the town, fragments of Roman walls, bits of Saracen monuments, and remains of Arabic buildings.
I had taken a small, Moorish house, in the upper town. You know those dwellings, which have been described so often. They have no windows on the outside; but they are lighted from top to bottom by an inner court. On the first floor, they have a large, cool room, in which one spends the days, and terrace on the roof, on which one spends the nights.
I at once fell in with the custom of all hot countries, that is to say, of taking a siesta after lunch. That is the hottest time in Africa, the time when one can scarcely breathe; when the streets, the fields, and the long, dazzling, white roads are deserted, when everyone is asleep, or at any rate, trying to sleep, attired as scantily as possible.
In my drawing room, which had columns of Arabic architecture, I had placed a large, soft couch, covered with a carpet from Djebel Amour. There, very nearly in the costume of Assan, I sought to rest, but I could not sleep, as I was tortured by continence. There are two forms of torture on this earth which I hope you will never know: the want of water, and the want of women, and I do not know which is the worse. In the desert, men would commit any infamy for the sake of a glass of clean, cold water, and what would one not do in some of the towns of the littoral for a nice fresh, healthy, woman? There is no lack of girls in Africa; on the contrary, they abound, but, to continue my comparison, they are as unwholesome as the muddy water in the pools of Sahara.
Well, one day, when I was feeling more enervated than usual, I was trying in vain to close my eyes. My legs twitched as if they were being pricked, and I tossed about uneasily on my couch. At last, unable to bear it any longer, I got up and went out. It was a terribly hot day, in the middle of July, and the pavement was hot enough to bake bread on. My shirt, which immediately became soaked with perspiration, clung to my body; and all along the horizon there was a slight, white vapour, the burning mist of the sirocco which looked like palpable heat.
I went down to the sea, and circling the port, walked along the shore of the pretty bay where the baths are. The rugged mountain, covered with brushwood, with tall aromatic plants with a powerful perfume, encloses this creek, and all along the water’s edge rise huge brown rocks. There was nobody about, and
