ANTIOCHUS. Dieux! Quelle violence! Madame ! Encore un coup (!); vous louerez mon silence. BÉRÉNICE. Prince, dès ce moment contentez mes souhaits, Ou soyez de ma haine assuré pour jamais ! Driven into an impossible position, he is compelled to blurt out the truth, and, as he foresaw, gains the reward of middle-men: BÉRÉNICE. Vous le souhaitez trop pour me persuader. Non, je ne vous crois point. Mais quoiqu'il puisse être Here,' remarks Voltaire, 'is the character of passion. Bérénice has just flattered Antiochus to obtain his secret. She has threatened him with her hatred if he keeps silent, and as soon as he speaks she orders him never to appear again. These flatteries and rages are very interesting in the mouth of a woman. In a man they would be less interesting. All these symptoms of love are the privileges of female lovers. Nearly all Racine's heroines display sentiments of tenderness, jealousy, anger and fury, sometimes full of submission, sometimes desperate. Rightly has Racine been called the poet of women. It is not real tragedy. But it has enough beauty for the subject.' The act closes on a quieter note, Antiochus being left to his melancholy reflections, and Voltaire roundly rates the author for not ending with an epigram, as real tragedy requires. The fifth act is the weakest. Racine has so far shown enormous skill in postponing the climax. Now the skill is beginning to wear down, and the machinery becomes a little obvious. But the realism of the psychology reaches its extreme point. By Scene V. Titus can no longer avoid the inevitable interview, which he and the author have conspired to postpone, and we are treated to a raw exhibition of angry womanhood: BÉRÉNICE. Non, je n'écoute rien. Me voilà resolue, Je veux partir. Pourquoi vous montrer à ma vue ? TITUS. Mais de grâce écoutez ! TITUS. BÉRÉNICE. Dans quelle trouble elle jette mon âme ! We can almost see the stamping of her foot and the angry tossing of her head. It is true that after this the personages recover their temper, and at the close Titus, Bérénice and Antio chus all behave with becoming dignity. After all, there was no other course open. But Voltaire cannot let the matter rest without a parting shot. 'We cannot but be a little shocked,' he says, at the play finishing with a "hélas" (the last word of Antiochus). He must have been very sure of the heart of his spectators to dare finish so. This is, without fear of contradiction, the feeblest of those of Racine's tragedies which have held the stage. It is not a tragedy at all!' The journey through Bérénice is over, and we can now see more clearly what the critics thought of it and the reasons for their dislike. They considered it undignified and sentimental (though that particular word was happily unknown to them). Perhaps the most enlightening remark is that of Voltaire : 'Love, to be worthy of tragedy, must be not merely love, but a terrible and deadly passion.' Racine thought otherwise, for he was, as Voltaire acidly remarks, the poet of women, that is to say the poet of the human heart. Human beings were good enough themes for his tragedies. It was otherwise with Voltaire. In his whole. public and even private life the most generous, liberal and passionate of men, when writing tragedy he never for a moment shed his buskin. For him love was always' a terrible and deadly passion.' His characters lived upon honour and died upon an epigram; they were never contented with remaining human beings. In his notes to Bérénice, Voltaire has written his epitaph as a dramatist. The living generation may always be mistaken in its estimate of contemporaries, but those that come after will never be deluded by the insincerities of yesterday. Hence the plays of Racine are, for all who will take the trouble to get used to the conventions and the vocabulary, as warm and palpitating as on the morrow of their performance, while the tragedies of Voltaire, like last year's fashions, are of interest to no one save students of history. FRANCIS BIRRELL. 1923 BIRDS OF THE TUNISIAN SAHARA DAWN! The soft rippling notes of Tristram's chat (Saxicola masta) fall gently on my ear as I awake from a refreshing slumber, the well-merited reward of a hard day's journey across the semidesert wastes of the Tunisian Sahara. Oglet-Zellès is the name of the district where I am encamped, a delightful spot on the western inland plains, far from any human dwelling or beaten track. An ideal site, too, for an encampment, its level patches of bright greensward affording admirable camping ground, while the sandy' oued,' which threads its sinuous course below, provides a plenteous supply of good water, the desert traveller's greatest boon. In this land of peace and on these dry and healthy plains the tired wayfarer may freely camp and rest, fearing naught from man or beast; nor will his sleep even be disturbed by the fever-bearing mosquito, or other insect pests which make night horrible for man. Yes, that is certainly the sweet lovesong of Saxicola masta, and the little songster must be close by, or I should not hear it, for its notes are very low and soft. Possibly its mate and nest are not far off, the latter in one of the numerous holes of that sand-hillock, covered with sweet-scented genista, near which I sat and smoked my pipe last evening. The nest is generally placed deep down in the deserted burrow of some small rodent, and the eggs are of a delicate greenish-blue, slightly speckled with lake-coloured spots. The Arabs have a pretty little legend regarding this bird and its song, which, so far as I can recall it, runs as follows: An Arab chieftain of great renown had a beautiful wife, to whom he was deeply attached, and whom he loved almost as much as his sloughia, which is saying a good deal, for the sloughi, or native greyhound, is held in the highest esteem by the Arabs. This perhaps may appear strange, considering how Mahomedans despise dogs in general, the very word kelb, or dog, so often hurled at the unfortunate and unsuspecting giaour, being synonymous with opprobrium and reproach. War breaking out between his tribe and another, the chief had to leave his home, but before doing so he called his wife, and commended his sloughia to her particular care and attention. Time passed, but no husband returned from the war, and finally came the news of his death on the battlefield. His widow, who had at first strictly complied with her lord's injunction respecting the dogs, now gradually relaxed her solicitude for their welfare, and eventually left her home and remarried! In course of time death came to her also, and on entering another world she was welcomed by her first husband, the Arab chief, who immediately inquired after his sloughia. Obliged to confess her fault, the beautiful wife was ordered to return to Mother Earth in the shape of a bird, and she has ever since been wandering over the desert plains under the form of Saxicola masta, bewailing her lot, and vainly whistling for the lost sloughia. The soft melody lulls me to sleep again; but hark! A louder, though yet far-off, sound is in the air. It is the cry of the coronetted sand-grouse (Pterocles coronatus), which visits this spot regularly of a morning in search of water, as I know from past experience. Leaping from my camp bed, and hastily throwing open the door flaps of my tent, I look up in the direction whence proceeds the unmistakable though still distant cry, plainly audible through the clear, still atmosphere. The sound comes nearer and nearer, and presently the birds themselves come into view, rapidly approaching their goal, the white, glistening' oued,' close by. Circling round once or twice to scan the underlying country and see that no danger is to be apprehended, they finally alight on the sandy bed and, running to the water, greedily quench their thirst. Flock after flock appears in rapid succession, and the air is soon filled with a chorus of many hundreds of clamorous bird voices, producing a babel of sound more curious than musical or pleasing to the ear, though none the less interesting owing to its novelty. Another species of sand-grouse, the larger and better known black-bellied sand-grouse (P. arenarius), is also present, though in lesser numbers, but I fail to distinguish two other members of the family, the pin-tailed (P. alchata) and the Senegal sand-grouse (P. senegallus), both of which are to be met in South Tunisia. The sun is now well up in the heavens, and the sand-grouse have nearly all departed, leaving the' oued' deserted, save by the few Arabs who come to water their flocks and herds. We ourselves have long ere this taken the precaution of filling our waterskins and other receptacles with the precious liquid, as the wells, which are mere holes scraped out of the sandy river bed, will for the remainder of the day contain more or less' troubled waters.' The hour is still early, however, and I have time before breakfast to take a short stroll and enjoy the delicious fresh air, bracing and crisp, almost as with a frost, and to admire the glorious view on every side. Far away before us, to the north, bordering the vast plain where we are camped, lies a fine chain of mountains, the southernmost range of the Eastern Atlas; behind us, to the south, are the lower hills overlooking the desert, with the oases of Tozer and Nefta in the far distance; while eastward and west ward the plain stretches away for miles as far as the eye can reach. The colouring of the landscape in the soft morning light is exquisite, the more distant mountains a violet-blue, the nearer hills a warm rosy-lilac, and the gently undulating country around us a delicate cream colour, relieved by patches of green here and there. A sense of peace and repose pervades the atmosphere; and a stillness, broken only by the occasional note of some bird or the humming of an insect, reigns supreme. Far from any town or village, no muezzin' here calls the faithful to prayers in chanting monotone, nor does the din of Arab 'fantasia' ever disturb the tranquil silence of this restful spot. No white domed building here stands out in bold relief, marking the tomb or last restingplace of some departed 'marabout,' nor does any sign of human habitation meet the eye save our own encampment and the darkcoloured camel-hair tents of a small party of nomad Arabs halting, like ourselves, by the 'oued' side. The aspect of the country is typical of the upper Saharan region, the Tunisian and Algerian Sahara, so called to distinguish it from the more sandy desert, the Great Sahara, further south. The rolling plains trending southwards from the Atlas, in terraces as it were, gradually decreasing in altitude as they approach the true desert, are slightly undulating and in places much broken, the soil chiefly gravel-sandy in some parts stony in others—and dotted over with patches of halfa-grass, dwarf shrubs, and lowgrowing herbage. Among the shrubs the white broom and wild jujube are most in evidence, the former now coming into flower, while the brilliant statices and other salsolaceous plants cover the ground in some spots. Numerous oueds,' or watercourses, dry throughout the greater portion of the year, intersect the country at intervals, and by their banks and in their sandy beds flourish straggling clumps of tamarisk and oleander bushes. Further south in this region are to be found the chotts and sebkas, or salt marshes, natural depressions in the land, some actually below the level of the sea, where water collects in winter after copious rains, but which are more or less dry at other seasons and covered with a coating of crystallised salt, white and glistening like sparkling water in the mirage-laden atmosphere. During my walk I meet with several birds of interest, among others the desert chat (S. deserti), the Western black-eared chat (S. caterina), and the Western black-throated chat (S. occidentalis), as well as the tiny desert wren-warbler (Scotocerca sahara), and the pretty little desert bullfinch (Erythrospiza githaginea), often called the trumpeter bullfinch on account of its trumpet-like note. The plumage of this little bird is a most delicate rose colour of varying shades. Sober-coloured crested larks of two species |