"Of his own free will and accord General Noury told me that he was leading a miserable life in spite of the wealth that he possessed, the honors that crowned him in Morocco, and the leisure that was always at his command when the army was not in the field. As he summed it up himself, his vices had got the better of him. He could not respect himself. I could see that there was something left of him. I went to work on him. I am not an evangelist myself, and I did not take him on that tack.
"I have no doubt that I had saved his life; and no man was ever more grateful for the service I had rendered him. My wife was such a houri as he had never seen in a harem. We both talked with him about the beauty of a good and useful life. In a word, we redeemed him. My wife is a sincere Christian, and she did more of it than I did. He was absolutely penitent over his sins, his dissipation, the wrongs towards others he had committed, though he was still a Mohammedan; but a great deal of the prophet's creed would pass for Christianity. We both saw that it would be useless to attack his religion; for he was a Moslem to the marrow of his bones.
"More than anything else he was penitent over his relations with you and your party. The general was certainly infatuated over the beauty of Miss Blanche; but it was as an artist runs mad over a picture. He solemnly assured me he never had an unworthy thought in regard to her. He looked upon her as a beautiful child, whose image haunted him day and night. If you had permitted him to see her, that was all he wanted. No such thought had ever entered his head as that of putting her in his harem, even if he had succeeded through his agents in capturing her; though he was urged forward to this by the insults you heaped upon him.
"I mean that you spoke the truth to him, nothing more, as I did. He desires to beg your forgiveness, and he would cross the Atlantic for the purpose of doing so. We stayed at Messina three weeks, and at the end of that time General Noury was quite well again. He gave Dr. Henderson a hundred thousand francs, and wanted me to take five times that amount; but I positively refused to take a cent from him. To shorten up the story, we became fast friends, including my wife. He had sent the Fatty off, and I invited him to remain on board of the Viking. He was in a hurry to get to Gibraltar; and I soon found that he had a reason for going there.