Would he follow ?" He uncovered his head and entered, passing through several passages and chambers, richly hung and furnished; for the villa had been the "campagne" of an illustrious French personage, who had offered it to the Princesse Corona when, for some slight delicacy of health, the air of Algeria was advocated.

A singular sensation came on him, half of familiarity, half of strangeness, as he advanced along them; for twelve years he had seen nothing but the bare walls of barrack rooms, the goat-skin of douars, and the canvas of his own camp-tent.

To come once more, after so long an interval, amid the old things of luxury and grace that had been so long unseen wrought curiously on him.

He could not fairly disentangle past and present.

For the moment, as his feet fell once more on soft carpets, and his eyes glanced over gold and silver, malachite and bronze, white silk and violet damasks, he almost thought the Algerian years were a disordered dream of the night.
His spur caught in the yielding carpet, and his saber clashed slightly against it; as the rentree au caserne had done an hour before, the sound recalled the actual present to him.