Was Cousin Benedict wrong?
However that may be, see him now on all fours, his nose to the ground like a dog that smells a scent, and following seven or eight inches behind the superb hexapode.
One moment after he was outside his hut, under the midday sun, and a few minutes later at the foot of the palisade that shut in Alvez's establishment. At this place was the manticore going to clear the enclosure with a bound, and put a wall between its adorer and itself?
No, that was not in its nature, and Cousin Benedict knew it well.
So he was always there, crawling like a snake, too far off to recognize the insect entomologically—besides, that was done—but near enough to perceive that large, moving point traveling over the ground.
The manticore, arrived near the palisade, had met the large entrance of a mole-hill that opened at the foot of the enclosure.
There, without hesitating, it entered this subterranean gallery, for it is in the habit of seeking those obscure passages.
Cousin Benedict believed that he was going to lose sight of it.
But, to his great surprise, the passage was at least two feet high, and the mole-hill formed a gallery where his long, thin body could enter.
Besides, he put the ardor of a ferret into his pursuit, and did not even perceive that in "earthing" himself thus, he was passing outside the palisade.
In fact, the mole-hill established a natural communication between the inside and the outside.
In half a minute Cousin Benedict was outside of the factory.
That did not trouble him. He was absorbed in admiration of the elegant insect that was leading him on.
But the latter, doubtless, had enough of this long walk.
Its elytrums turned aside, its wings spread out.
Cousin Benedict felt the danger, and, with his curved hand, he was going to make a provisional prison for the manticore, when—f-r-r-r-r!—it flew away!
What despair!
But the manticore could not go far.
Cousin Benedict rose; he looked, he darted forward, his two hands stretched out and open.
The insect flew above his head, and he only perceived a large black point, without appreciable form to him.
Would the manticore come to the ground again to rest, after having traced a few capricious circles around Cousin Benedict's bald head?
All the probabilities were in favor of its doing so.
Unfortunately for the unhappy savant, this part of Alvez's establishment, which was situated at the northern extremity of the town, bordered on a vast forest, which covered the territory of Kazounde for a space of several square miles.
If the manticore gained the cover of the trees, and if there, it should flutter from branch to branch, he must renounce all hope of making it figure in that famous tin box, in which it would be the most precious jewel.
Alas! that was what happened.
The manticore had rested again on the ground.
Cousin Benedict, having the unexpected hope of seeing it again, threw himself on the ground at once.
But the manticore no longer walked: it proceeded by little jumps.
Cousin Benedict, exhausted, his knees and hands bleeding, jumped also.
His two arms, his hands open, were extended to the right, to the left, according as the black point bounded here or there. It might be said that he was drawing his body over that burning soil, as a swimmer does on the surface of the water.
Useless trouble!
His two hands always closed on nothing.
The insect escaped him while playing with him, and soon, arrived under the fresh branches, it arose, after throwing into Cousin Benedict's ear, which it touched lightly, the most intense but also the most ironical buzzing of its coleopter wings.
"Malediction!" exclaimed Cousin Benedict, a second time.
"It escapes me.
Ungrateful hexapode!
Thou to whom I reserved a place of honor in my collection!
Well, no, I shall not give thee up!
I shall follow thee till I reach thee!"
He forgot, this discomfited cousin, that his nearsighted eyes would not enable him to perceive the manticore among the foliage.
But he was no longer master of himself.
Vexation, anger, made him a fool.
It was himself, and only himself, that he must blame for his loss.
If he had taken possession of the insect at first, instead of following it "in its independent ways," nothing of all that would have happened, and he would possess that admirable specimen of African manticores, the name of which is that of a fabulous animal, having a man's head and a lion's body.
Cousin Benedict had lost his head.
He little thought that the most unforeseen of circumstances had just restored him to liberty.
He did not dream that the ant-hill, into which he had just entered, had opened to him an escape, and that he had just left Alvez's establishment. The forest was there, and under the trees was his manticore, flying away! At any price, he wanted to see it again. See him, then, running across the thick forest, no longer conscious even of what he was doing, always imagining he saw the precious insect, beating the air with his long arms like a gigantic field-spider.
Where he was going, how he would return, and if he should return, he did not even ask himself, and for a good mile he made his way thus, at the risk of being met by some native, or attacked by some beast.
Suddenly, as he passed near a thicket, a gigantic being sprang out and threw himself on him. Then, as Cousin Benedict would have done with the manticore, that being seized him with one hand by the nape of the neck, with the other by the lower part of the back, and before he had time to know what was happening, he was carried across the forest.
Truly, Cousin Benedict had that day lost a fine occasion of being able to proclaim himself the happiest entomologist of the five parts of the world. * * * * *