By two o'clock, we had bagged eleven noble birds, and returned to our encampment, sufficiently hungry to enjoy the refreshments which the Khansamah (butler), who was a great artist in his way, had prepared for us. Our repast concluded, we had our camp bedsteads brought into the open air, and threw ourselves down on them.
Holding his cigar between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, the Baron thus went off:--
"Who can explain the inscrutable mystery of presentiments? Who can fathom the secret inclinations of the human heart? Who can lift the veil of sympathy? Who can unravel the web of magnetic natures? Who can fully comprehend that link which unites the corporeal with the spiritual world? Who can explain that terrible symbol which pervades so many of our dreams? The sweet anxiety that seizes us when listening to some wonderful tale; the voluptuous shiver which agitates our frame, the indefinite yearning which fills the heart and the soul. All this is a guarantee that some invisible chain links our world with another. Let no one condemn as idle nonsense that which our shallow reason may refuse to accept. Can the most acute understanding explain, or even comprehend, its own growth; or even the growth and colouring of a mere flower? Is not Nature herself a perfect mystery unto the minds of thinking men?"
"What is the matter, Baron?" asked the Frenchman. "Have you a nightmare in this broad daylight?"
"No, no," returned the Baron, with good-natured impetuosity. "It is not so. I wish to tell you something--a little story, if you will listen."
"Pray go on," we (his three companions) cried out, simultaneously.