CHAPTER V

At Zaguig, Colonel Levasseur was in his element, monarch of all he surveyed, and greatly he loved playing the monarch before the amused eyes of Mary, who enormously enjoyed the opportunity of “getting nearer to life” as she called it, and “seeing the Oriental on his native heath,” unoccidentalized and undefiled—or unpurified and unregenerate. Zaguig contained nothing European, and it intended to contain nothing European if it could help it. Unfortunately, its representatives had not even that moderate degree of str…