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Cousin Benedict was taciturn, frowning at the sight of Hercules, whom he had not forgiven for his intervention in the affair of the manticore. He dreamed of his lost collection, of his entomological notes, the value of which would not be appreciated by the natives of Kazounde.
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.
"Almighty God!" exclaimed Cousin Benedict, who could not repress a cry, "the tuberculous manticore." Now, he must not cry it out, he must only think it. But was it not too much to ask from the most enthusiastic of entomologists?
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.
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.
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.
To have on the end of his nose a tuberculous manticore, with large elytrums an insect of the cicendeletes tribe a very rare specimen in collections one that seems peculiar to those southern parts of Africa, and yet not utter a cry of admiration; that is beyond human strength.
Weldon, who hardly listened to him, "this is the country of the manticores, those coleopteres with long hairy feet, with welded and sharp wing-shells, with enormous mandibles, of which the most remarkable is the tuberculous manticore.
He knew that the tuberculous manticore only flutters about, so to say, that it walks rather than flies. He then knelt, and succeeded in perceiving, at less than ten inches from his eyes, the black point that was gliding rapidly in a ray of light. Evidently it was better to study it in this independent attitude. Only he must not lose sight of it.
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.
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