CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“The View Is Most Magnificent!”

A POET HAD SELECTED the emir’s new residence, Alphonse de Lamartine, Poncey’s friend in the provisional government.

His literary fame and fiery oratory had won Lamartine a public following as an opposition deputy during Louis-Philippe’s reign. After the February Revolution, he became one of the five heads of that provisional Hydra in which Abd el-Kader had so little confidence. Charged with the portfolio for foreign affairs, Lamartine had been given the assignment of recommending a more suitable location for emir.

He recommended a place, “with a salubrious atmosphere, a pleasant climate and royal setting that would make the emir feel at home,” and urged his colleagues to treat Abd el-Kader as a temporary, but honored guest until the National Assembly decided his fate. Asked where such a place was, he described the chateau at Pau, in southwest France.

“The view of the Pyrenees is the most magnificent in France and will remind him of Algeria. The chateau is perched above the river Gave and is surrounded by lush semi-tropical vegetation,” the sensitive Lamartine told his committee.

Nestled in the foothills of the mountains shared by France and Spain, the chateau was the of Henry of Navarre, who became Henry IV. This first Bourbon king was a determined unifier and a devout warrior king who erred on the side of magnanimity. Born to the Protestant confession, he converted to Catholicism in order to appease the Catholics. “Paris is worth a Mass,” Henry announced upon his conversion in 1593, thus ending the religious warfare that was tearing apart France. Two hundred and fifty-five years later, a man of different lineage, but made of similar qualities, would be its last occupant.

Daumas told Abd el-Kader he would leave Fort Lamalgue on April 23, the very day a Constituent Assembly was being elected to draw up a new constitution. Pau would be more suitable for him and was only a temporary expedient, Daumas explained. But there was a catch. Limited space at the chateau required that only the emir’s immediate family could accompany him. The others would be transferred to Ste. Marguerite Island. Abd el-Kader was again thrown into a state of despair by the thought of being separated from his companions. “I will not leave except with all my people. You will not tear me from here except by force. Put ropes around our necks and drag us through the streets. I will give warning to all people everywhere that they may know what fate awaits those who trust the word of Frenchmen.”

Daumas and Lheureux tried to convince him that this was merely a temporary measure. There simply wasn’t enough space at Pau for 137 people. It was important, they argued, for him to avoid unfavorable publicity by not appearing to be an ingrate while his fate hung in the balance. His prison, after all, was a royal chateau and the residence of one of France’s greatest princes. Undeterred, Abd el-Kader stubbornly negotiated with Daumas to enlarge the list of family and servants.

“Don’t you understand, Daumas, they are all family. It is not the blood that is important; it is their loyalty, their friendship! These people have sacrificed everything to stay with me. I can’t choose. What if I asked you to choose between your best friend and your brother?” Each caliph was like a brother. And each one had his family and servants from which he too could not be separated, and the servants also had families. The whole entourage was a single tissue.

The approved number of “immediate family” finally reached seventy-seven.

On Easter Sunday, April 23, Abd el-Kader’s extended family, along with Daumas, boarded three packet boats that took the group west to the coastal town of Sète, at the mouth of an inland waterway. From there, they transferred to paddle-wheel barges that splashed up the Canal du Midi to the river Garonne and finally, to Toulouse. Waiting for the Arabs at Port St. Etienne the evening of April 26 was a large, curious crowd, as well as an infantry unit and mounted cavalry to escort the emir’s retinue through the winding streets of the ancient red-brick city to the Hotel Bibent. “The eyes of the crowds were searching for the famous emir who was dressed like a Trappist monk in his simple white burnoose. His thin face had the firm, expressionless gaze of a man who was tormented, but not beaten,” wrote Daumas to a friend.

After recuperating in Toulouse for a day, the emir and his entourage climbed into large four-in-hand diligences, forming a caravan that rolled south through the Midi toward the Pyrenees. From his coach, Abd el-Kader could see the rich French earth — its fields of grain, its vineyards and early blossoming orchards and, for the Arabs, unusual humped-back Charolais grazing in lush meadows. All day and night they traveled, stopping at local inns for fresh horses and food. Toward midnight of the second day their coaches pulled into the dark, cavernous courtyard of the chateau formed by crenellated three-story-high walls. The curious citizens who had lined the streets all afternoon to catch a glimpse of the new arrivals had long since gone home.

At first, the decision by the provisional government to send the emir to the chateau Pau had horrified the good burghers of the city. It was an insult, they said. The presence in the chateau of the cruel “monster of the desert,” as the local press called Abd el-Kader, would be a desecration of the memory of the great Henry IV. The citizens immediately asked their mayor to urge the authorities to find another location for him.

“The municipal council has asked me to bring to your attention,” the mayor wrote to the minister of the interior, “the fact that the chateau is Pau’s only important monument, and has been recently restored at great expense. The entire city wishes that it be maintained in its current condition and not be degraded by guests whose customs and habits are such that they would have not the least idea of what conservation means…You would surely not want to have that which is held most dear by the citizens of Pau to be sacrificed for a purpose so unworthy as the detention of a horde of savages who would be happy to wreck it.” The mayor proposed the chateau at Lourdes as a more suitable place.

Paris stood by its decision. It took two days for the emir’s retinue to get settled into their new accommodations that, by a decision of the municipal council, had been stripped of all historic tapestries and antique furnishings. Abd el-Kader, his three wives and five children occupied the rooms on the third floor during the day. The windows facing south offered a panoramic view of the snowcapped Pyrenees that had so impressed Lamartine. Yet, as he looked around, the emir could only have heard the sound of a jail door slamming shut.

The windows with the beautiful view were covered with newly installed bars. Worse, Abd el-Kader was informed that, as an added security precaution, he would have to spend his nights in the dank tower dungeon of Gaston Phoebus on the north side of the courtyard. Soldiers were stationed on every stairwell floor and by each door. The fact of the emir’s imprisonment was now incontestable. Any pretense that Pau was a temporary relocation was absurd.

Until now, Abd el-Kader had not revealed to his family and followers the contents of the letter from the minister of war, the Duke of Arago, which he had received during the last days in Toulon and which offered so little hope of freedom. Nor had he revealed fully his conversation with General Changarnier who, en route to Algeria, had bluntly told the emir that the new government considered him a prisoner. Rather than sharing fully his own disappointments, which he reserved only for Daumas, he had tried to keep their hopes alive. He had colored his family conversations with optimistic intimations of French goodwill, of progress toward resolving difficulties and of the need to endure what were surely only temporary setbacks caused by the passing political chaos. But it was now apparent there was nothing temporary about the new security arrangements. In spite of the grim facts, Abd el-Kader vowed to his companions to keep fighting for justice. He would do so by appealing to the noble side of the French character.

To make matters worse, Daumas would be leaving him. During the three months Daumas had spent with Abd el-Kader, a true friendship had grown between them. He had impressed the emir with his excellent Arabic, wide knowledge of Algeria and finely tuned sensibilities. Daumas was deeply touched by the sense of loss, even tender vulnerability, the emir expressed in a letter written to him on the eve of his departure.

“I learned that you are going to leave, but not abandon me. The pain I will feel by your separation will be without any doubt greater than what I have endured in the past. Who will console me when I am sad? Who will remove my tears with a smile? Who will be patient in my misfortune? The physicians heal the body with medications but you soothed my heart with your gentle words. The whole time I spent with you it seemed as if I never left my country…Once you leave me I will be a foreigner in a foreign country.”

Daumas had changed, too. Assigned a distasteful job by his minister, he had done his duty for his country. But doing it, he had also developed an immense admiration for the emir, and in the same measure had grown to despise his role of giving him false assurances. He wrote a friend: “I am relieved to be returning to my regiment. I know that Colonel Daumas can never again be a jailor for a man like Abd el-Kader.”

Before leaving, Daumas spent several days briefing his successor, the young Baron Estève de Boissonnet. He told him about the emir’s mental and physical toughness, his sense of guilt over what had befallen his followers because of him and his need for someone to whom he could privately express his anguish. Daumas also sketched the important figures in the emir’s entourage.

In first place was Abd el-Kader’s mother, Lalla Zohra. She was the cornerstone of his family, known for her wisdom, strength and resilience. She was the person to whom he showed the utmost deference. Daumas told Boissonnet of the incident of the bed. When the emir moved into his new quarters at Pau and saw his ornate canopied daybed, he would not take it. It was better than his mother’s and he insisted that she have it. The emir had told Daumas repeatedly that it was his mother’s patience, courage and moral support that had maintained his will to carry on the fight. She stood by him throughout his crises, and she was the guardian of his treasury. Kheira was clearly his favorite wife. Like the emir, she was educated and wrote poetry.

Among the men in Abd el-Kader’s entourage, Daumas mentioned the ever-present Mustafa Ben Thami, the emir’s brother-in-law. He was a logician, learned in philosophy and theology, as well as a highly literate advisor and confidant who acted as the emir’s personal secretary. The former caliph of Mascara was known for his intense loyalty, but not for bravery. The few horses he lost in battle had earned him the nickname “Fatma” by other Arabs. Tension remained within the family, as it was Ben Thami’s desperate decision to kill the prisoners that fueled French mistrust of the emir. He was known to dislike the French intensely and Abd el-Kader rarely allowed him out in public.

Kara Mohammed was another stalwart. He was an agha of the cavalry who had commanded a thousand horsemen and embodied the fierce spirit of loyalty the emir inspired in his followers. Like most of the emir’s commanders, he was learned in religious matters, though finding men who were both learned in religious law and inspiring leaders in battle was not easy. Compromises were often made, usually on the side of favoring savants of the Law, but Kara Mohammed represented no compromise. He was a regular participant in the theological discussions that were part of the Arabs’ daily routine. Nor did he lack physical courage — he had lost twelve horses on the battlefield.

Like Daumas, Boissonnet was well chosen to play the double role of soul mate for the emir and informant to the war ministry. Boissonnet was an artillery captain, had served under the Duke of Aumale in Algeria and had been director of the Bureau of Arab Affairs for the region of Constantine in 1844. He had written several scholarly works in Arabic and was one of the first Frenchmen to work on deciphering the alphabet of the Touareg Berbers.

A nobleman, scholar and linguist, and known for his gentle personality, Boissonnet warmed Abd el-Kader’s heart by his solicitude for the emir and his family after the loss of their fifteen-month-old son, Ibrahim, who had fallen ill en route from Toulon. When the emir’s son succumbed to fever in the early morning of May first, it marked the second death within three days of the Arabs’ arrival. The previous day, a two-month-old daughter of one of Abd el-Kader’s servants also had died. Both were buried in a garden near the chateau.

Boissonnet intervened on the emir’s behalf to delay the official reception ceremonies by the municipal authorities, who were torn between distaste for their guest and duty to follow protocol. On the third of May, Pau’s outgoing mayor, local dignitaries and society women anxious to meet the “Noble Savage” visited him in his third floor suite directly above the room in which Henry of Narvarre came into the world. At one end was a large fireplace. The ceiling was decorated with delicately wooden inlaid tiles. From the south-facing windows, the emir could follow the sun each day as it traced its path over the mountains in the evening.

Abd el-Kader displayed his usual courtesy toward the mayor. He rose from his bed, greeted his guests in the traditional Arab manner. His hand over his heart, he made a slight bow as he asked his visitors to take a seat. They observed a man of forty with ink-black hair, whose body still had a lithe and vigorous quality that contrasted with his air of impassive melancholy.

Asked about his trip to Pau, Abd el-Kader replied by praising the French countryside. “You have a very rich and beautiful country. Trees are green everywhere, yet it seems that the green of your trees is brighter and more cheerful than ours.” When one of the ladies in the mayor’s company told the emir that a considerable crowd was outside pressing against the chateau gates to see him, Abd el-Kader asked if “the people” might be allowed into the courtyard. Then, like an Arab Pope, he stood at one of the windows looking down upon the multitude. Extending his arms, the palms of his hands turned heavenward in a gesture of submission, the emir said some words of appreciation that were translated by the still-present Daumas.

Much of the local population was outraged at the profaning of the residence of the great Henry of Navarre by Arab barbarians, yet others thought differently, influenced by a mixture of curiosity and admiration for the emir. Madame la Maréchale de Grouchy, the widow of the general whose troops had failed to arrive on the battlefield in time to save Napoleon from defeat at Waterloo, appeared at Pau two days later for her own inspection of the captives. She left posterity a telling report of her impressions and disappointments.

Today, I was presented to Abd el-Kader. I found the emir sitting on his bed, his bare feet on the floor. He had a white woolen garment covering his head; his face is handsome and features regular, his beard black. His voice has an unusual, sonorous quality. He sat with a pained but intelligent air about him. He took my hand in greeting and answered my questions in a spirited manner. When he learned who I was, he said many flattering things about the marshal and his military career. One understands how easily he impresses the people who visit him. General Daumas explained that it was thanks to the modesty of his clothes that he often escaped French soldiers who mistook him for a simple Arab. Sitting in his room in a big armchair was his old uncle, a marabout, who watched us attentively while saying his rosary and coughing.

 

 

He ordered a black servant to prepare coffee and introduced to us his children — who are sickly, dirty and ugly. From his chambers I went to visit his wives, expecting to find the typical Arab beauties depicted in the paintings of Horace Vernet. I was certainly disappointed. In the first room was his mother, who was old and had a menacing look…I had been warned not to wear jewelry so as not to evoke any feelings of envy, so I brought Zohra a present of bonbons but she ignored completely the pretty box they were in.

In a third room were the emir’s wives. Kheira, his legitimate wife and mother of three of his children was squatting on a mattress on the floor enveloped in a white muslin gown with a design consisting of large squares. The cloth was very dirty and revealed nothing of the shape of her body. Her feet and arms were bare, her arms tattooed in blue ink and decorated with bracelets…All the women are ugly, though at first glance, their eyes look beautiful thanks to the black mascara they all wear. Their features are irregular — noses thick and short, mouths big and fat lips, their teeth crooked and broken. Abd el-Kader’s fifteen-year-old daughter looks thirty. The women all talk at once with great animation. Their voices are guttural and harsh…Many have pock marks on their faces and all are disgustingly dirty. Young, hideous children squat on the floor, practically naked. The slaves carry on their backs the infants who have the look of little monkeys.

Like some of the emir’s visitors, Madame la Maréchale came as a curiosity seeker and left confirmed in her unvarnished prejudices, prejudices not easily softened by the cramped, overcrowded living conditions and the sullenness of people kept in cold and unjust confinement.

To raise Abd el-Kader’s spirits, Boissonnet offered to take him for a carriage ride in the countryside to enjoy the early spring sunshine and also show him around the historic chateau. Abd el-Kader politely declined. He would not leave his apartments. He did not want anyone to get the impression that he was enjoying his forced stay in France. If he was to be unjustly imprisoned, then he would live as a prisoner. “The sun comes in my windows and I can travel with my eyes,” he told Boissonnet.

A great sympathy soon developed for the emir — a kind of conspiracy of benevolence — among Captain Zaragossa, the commander of the two-hundred-strong garrison, Captain Boissonnet and a growing lobby of admirers from near and far who were impressed by the emir’s gracious stoicism and generosity of spirit. Conversation in the homes of Pau now turned around two subjects: the ever-changing political constellations in Paris and their celebrity prisoner whose activities and words were grist for the social gossip mill.

The emir was reading an Arabic translation of the Bible given him by Comte Albert de R__ and comparing the Koran with the Gospels… The emir’s mother was suffering from severe arthrititis…The Arabs don’t trust French medicine, preferring their amulets… He was writing his autobiography and a history of the Arabs…Abd el-Kader is studying algebra…The emir had served champagne in his quarters to local dignitaries who dined with him one night, pouring it himself…The rest of his followers, separated at Ste. Marguerite, had joined his family, they were sleeping in the stairwells, and befouling the chateau…The emir had been seen at the circus one night, or was that his brother in the red robe? And then there were reports of unexpected remarks, bons mots, observations and gracious replies to his visitors that circulated back to the local population.

When a colonel and veteran of the African wars had come with some junior officers to pay his respects, Abd el-Kader ended the interview with a note of irony. “I am touched by your visit. You fought me courageously and won. How I adore God’s ways. Your visit shows me that you think I too did my duty — but you are the best judges. After all, many officers in the French army are indebted to me. Without me many of your colonels would still be captains and many generals would still be colonels.”

He had a special way with women, and never failed to charm and flatter. “Why do you Arabs need to have four wives, and not one as in France?” asked a lady from Bordeaux. “We marry one for her eyes, another for her lips, still another for her body, and one for her good heart and spirit,” replied the emir. “But if we found all those qualities united in one woman, like you, Madame, we would not need others.” Abd el-Kader added that the Arab man merely does in the open what the European does in secret.

The demand by Frenchmen and women to see the emir became so great that he asked to have visits restricted to only two days a week so he would continue to have time to devote to study, meditation and writing. All petitioners were screened by Boissonnet. Toward the end of May, two of these petitioners succeeded in lifting the emir’s spirits.

A local high school teacher whose father was a veteran of the Napoleonic wars was given permission to visit the emir. Abd el-Kader had learned much about Napoleon, with whom he was sometimes compared by French soldiers. There were obvious parallels. Both had tried to create a new order, both incited fierce loyalty from their troops and were known for the rapidity of their movements, and both had been betrayed, Napoleon by the British in whose hands he had also voluntarily placed himself after Waterloo. So when the professor presented Abd el-Kader with his father’s ring in which was set a stone carved from a fragment of the emperor’s tomb on St. Helena, the emir was hesitant to accept it. He was unworthy of it, he said. The professor pressed the emir, saying he would be honored for him to have it.

“What you offer me is more than a precious stone. It is something priceless. There is neither pearl nor diamond in the world which has the value of a stone from this tomb.” The emir looked up at the professor as he put the ring on his finger. “Perhaps this will bring me good fortune.”

“I too wish it for you, with all my heart,” the professor replied.

A few days later, Abd el-Kader was informed of an unusual request. News of it circulated through the salons of Paris and Pau. A guard at the Tuileries had asked to be transferred to Pau. He wanted the honor of guarding the emir to repay the consideration with which he had been treated as a former prisoner. It was the legendary young trumpeter, Escoffier, who had distinguished himself by his gallantry in the bloody battle of Sidi Yussef. General Bugeaud had awarded him the Legion of Honor in absentia for giving his mount to his commanding officer, whose horse had been killed. Bugeaud had sent a letter to Abd el-Kader, along with the medal. The emir not only read the letter out loud before his own troops in a formal ceremony but personally pinned the medal on Escoffier’s tattered uniform and praised him for his bravery.

A cult of sorts began to form around the personality of the emir. People streamed from all over France to visit him. Everyone who met Abd el-Kader left admiring his outward serenity, his erudition and his spirited, often playful conversation. Combined with his aura of sanctity, determined endurance and unrelenting tactfulness, he was viewed by his growing legion of admirers as representing the bel ideal of physical and moral greatness, combining feminine grace and masculine hardiness of mind and body.

One such admirer was none other than General Daumas himself, who remained in correspondence with Abd el-Kader and others who sought the emir’s liberation. Upon learning that Monsignor Antoine-Adolphe Dupuch, the former bishop of Algiers, had returned to his native Bordeaux and intended to visit the emir, Daumas wrote him, describing the emir.

“So, you are going to see our illustrious prisoner in Pau. You will certainly not regret taking such a trip. You knew Abd el-Kader in prosperity, when practically all Algeria recognized his authority and now you will find him even greater in adversity than prosperity…

“He never complains for himself, though he is determined to hold France to its word. He forgives his enemies, even those who can still make him suffer and he will not allow anyone to speak ill of them in his presence. Whether they are Muslims or Christians who are the subject of his complaints, he has forgiven them. As to the former, he excuses their treachery by the force of circumstances. As to the latter, their conduct is explained by the flag under which they fought, for its safety and honor — though he considers nationalism yet another false idol. By going to comfort this noble character, you will be adding another charitable act to all the others that have already distinguished your life.”

Dupuch’s much-anticipated visit was delayed. Nevertheless, with Daumas’s help, the bishop established a correspondence with the man who had inspired him to initiate the first wholesale exchange of French and Arab prisoners in the dark year of 1841.

Hope once again sprang to life in the wake of new political turmoil in Paris. This time, the government came under attack from its own radicals. The Constituent Assembly that had been duly elected on April 4, the day of Abd el-Kader’s departure for Pau, had the task of drawing up a new constitution within nine months. A slim majority of the 900 delegates were moderate and conservative republicans, followed by monarchists, many of whom wanted to abolish republicanism, and finally, a handful of eighty radical republicans who wanted far-reaching social reforms for the working class. Particularly important to the radicals was the continuation of the National Workshops, established two months earlier in the heady, fraternal days following the February Revolution that had sparked democratic revolutions all over Europe. The workshops were a controversial experiment in public works to provide employment for farmers and others suffering from the worsening agricultural crisis that had taken hold already in 1847.

The provisional government was replaced by an executive committee of the Constituent Assembly while a new constitution was being drawn up. Rather than seeking unity, the moderate republicans decided to root out the radicals who had been in the provisional government and banish their presence on the committee. Lamartine, a left-leaning republican, wanted to avoid an open breach between the radical and moderate republicans. He used his popularity among voters to insist that, if he was to serve as a member of the executive committee, a radical republican must also be represented. His demand was begrudgingly accepted by the assembly, yet Lamartine still could not prevent the hated National Workshops from being abolished. The breach Lamartine had hoped to avoid through political maneuvering became open warfare.

The men who were employed in the National Workshops had been told to enlist in the army or to go to the provinces to drain pestilent swamps. Instead, they erected barricades in the streets of Paris. For three days in June 1848, Paris was soaked in blood. Abd el-Kader’s old adversary, General Cavaignac, had been charged with defending the city. He applied tactics learned in Algeria — letting the weakly armed rebels commit themselves and mass in strong positions, and then blasting them away with artillery. This method had been used effectively in Africa, but in Paris it was politically devastating. Some 3000 insurgents were killed in those three bloodiest days in the history of Paris. Another 12,000 were arrested, many of them were shipped off as colonists of compulsion to break Algeria’s dry, hard earth.

The after effects of the June riots brought a deepening class hostility that inspired Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. General Cavaignac was made interim dictator of the Second Republic, replacing the fractious executive committee. Workers retreated into sullen opposition to the new republic, while the middle classes and aristocracy acquired a deep hostility toward the “reds,” as the socialists were known. Out of this chaotic situation, hope emerged for Abd el-Kader in the form of Cavaignac’s new minister of war — none other than the man in whose word he had placed his trust, General Leon Christophe Juchault de Lamoricière.

After Abd el-Kader’s surrender, Lamoricière had returned to Paris and served briefly as minister of war before the fall of the monarchy. When the February Revolution broke out, he declared his republican sympathies. Two months later, in April, he was elected a delegate to the Constituent Assembly. The June Days, as the worker uprising came to be known, had brought Paris to a boil with intrigue and uncertainty as different forces jockeyed to influence the drafting of the new constitution. Public opinion still held the emir personally responsible for the massacre of the French prisoners in 1846. The French colonists in Algeria were stridently opposed to his liberation. But to Abd el-Kader, the complexity of Lamoricière’s new position was immaterial. He saw things simply: Lamoricière had given his word as a French soldier. He was expected to honor it and he now had the power to do so.

On July 9, Abd el-Kader decided to write Lamoricière. “I have given thanks to God that after having triumphed over those who made trouble, it is you to whom the welfare of France has been entrusted. Many Frenchmen come to me and say that I should consider myself virtually free because my friend who gave his word is now in a powerful position. I have rejoiced at the news of your nomination to the ministry certain that this will result in my liberation…”

Abd el-Kader reviewed the solemn commitments made by Lamoricière and the Duke of Aumale and by himself to not incite any trouble… “I have in my hands your written words saying that France accepts all my conditions…You must rescue me from oblivion, for I am like a man thrown into the sea whom only you can save…The majority of Frenchmen don’t understand what my position was and think that I was forced to surrender to you, yelping like a wounded dog. Tell them the truth; that if you had not made your promises, I would not have come to you. You must explain that you were far away when our emissaries met — a distance of at least ten-hours march separated us and that the negotiations took forty hours and that the south was open to me.

“Explain this affair to the French people whose honorableness is famous. It is not possible, that learning the whole truth, they will not grant me my freedom…If you do not honor your word, may shame fall upon you, and may no person have faith in your word and may no one, not even your wife, have respect for you.”

After several weeks waiting vainly for a reply, the emir came to understand that raison d’état trumped all other considerations. “I had hoped the minister would keep the promises of the general,” he dejectedly told Boissonnet when no response was forthcoming. Publicly, he kept a brave face, telling a visitor, “I know the situation in France now is like having your house on fire and the time is not opportune for me to insist too much on my liberty. I ask only that I not be forgotten for too long a time.”

The emir’s companions were less resigned after learning of the silence that followed the emir’s letter to Lamoricière. Angry and desperate, they hatched a suicidal plot to attack the guards barehanded — not to escape, but to die. “We wanted our blood to become an eternal source of shame for France, to be massacred for demanding that the promises made be honored,” they told Abd el-Kader when he learned of the conspiracy and intervened.

Lamoricière was also concerned. A scandal caused by the martyrdom of dozens of Arabs for their leader was not a welcome thought for the war minister, who was also concerned about the image of the new Second Republic among the skeptical European monarchies — above all, England. Abd el-Kader was a sensitive subject, but not central to Lamoricière’s many other pressing worries. A decision, he thought, could be deferred. Security continued to haunt the war ministry. Spain was within view of the chateau and the British were considered quite capable of plotting to rescue the emir. Lamoricière ordered the transfer of the emir and his immediate family to chateau Amboise on the Loire but allowed his followers to return to Algeria.

The announcement was greeted joylessly by the Arabs. The emir’s companions-in-arms rejected the offer of freedom. They told Boissonnet they were prepared to share their master’s suffering, and would never leave him in his misfortune.

And his misfortune continued. In August, during Ramadan, Abd el-Kader’s health deteriorated, but he insisted on fasting from sunup to sundown, saying to those who questioned the effect on his health, “when the body suffers, the spirit is strengthened.” His mother, mother-in-law and other women became seriously ill, they refused to see French doctors. Only the intervention of nurses from the Sisters of Charity succeeded in getting the women to accept their medical attention. The sisters not only healed the bodies, but helped mend the spirits of the Arab women through gentle kindness and their shared embrace of the Almighty. The women’s suffering was gradually alleviated, yet two more children died in August, adding to the emir’s sense of guilt for being so naïve and trusting of the French. The eight-month-old son of one of his servants died of pneumonia and a six-year-old daughter of his oldest brother, Mohammed Said, died of convulsions.

Throughout their tribulations, the disciplined routines of the Arabs’ collective lives never slackened. Like an iron lung, the daily rhythms of prayer, study, visits with family and companions sustained them in their fetid, overcrowded and unnatural confinement.

The emir’s piety and outward patience continued to win him allies among influential persons. Bishop Dupuch was one. Strong willed and authoritarian, yet capable of immense generosity, his experience with the emir in Algeria had already convinced him of the genuineness of this “Muslim Jesus.” In time, Dupuch would become a tireless advocate for the emir’s release.

The two men had never met. Yet, they felt bound together by the good fruit born of their common humanitarian efforts back in 1841 and the goodwill they had developed for each other. The bishop’s arrival on September third was announced just after the emir’s midday prayers.

Dupuch had experienced a kind of exile of his own in Italy since his resignation as bishop of Algiers in 1845. The bishop’s authoritarian manner, profligate generosity toward Arabs and understanding of the Muslims’ inherent respect for all sincere believers had made him enemies among the French authorities. Civilian administrators feared he was proselytizing, or offending Muslim sensibilities by displaying crucifixes and holding Mass in the hospitals run by his Sisters of Charity. The military authorities were continually draining away his meager budget for their own needs.

In the end, Dupuch’s entrepreneurial zeal to do good works had been his downfall. He had, with little governmental support, succeeded in reproducing many of the accomplishments he had achieved in Bordeaux: setting up orphanages and halfway houses for juvenile delinquents and women in trouble, building and running hospitals for civilian and military personnel alike. All this was accomplished by raising money from his parishioners or by borrowing money to speculate in land he believed would appreciate as conditions became more peaceful and more colonists arrived. But that didn’t happen, for the reasons Bugeaud had predicted. There was too little security.

Facing a growing flock of angry local creditors and constant opposition to his energetic charity from his own government, Dupuch had finally handed in his resignation in 1845. He landed in Toulon a year later to be met by still more creditors, one of whom threatened to throw him into jail if he did not pay 10,000 francs immediately. Dupuch fled to Turin where a friend, an Italian priest, gave him a post and refuge from his pursuers. But when the ripple effects of the February Revolution came to Turin, anticlerical democrats chased Dupuch and his patron out of town.

All this was unknown to the emir as he left his room and went down the wide, vaulted staircase, past the guards on each landing, to meet Dupuch in the great courtyard. The emir, followed by Boissonnet, moved forward swiftly as the bishop stepped out of his carriage. Abd el-Kader seized his hand the Arab way, interlacing his fingers with Dupuch’s as a sign of undying friendship and pressing it against his heart. The bishop embraced the emir, and Abd el-Kader, putting his hand on Dupuch’s shoulders, kissed him on his forehead.

“I hope the blessing of God will enter with you into this house.”

“From the depths of my heart, I ask it of God,” replied the bishop.

“I feel a great good will come from your visit and our knowing each other.”

“Of what good do you speak? I have come with hands as empty as my heart is full.”

“How much better than with full hands and an empty heart,” Abd el-Kader replied, taking him by the hand upstairs to his reception room. He seated the bishop in a high-backed armchair near the window where they could look out at the still snowcapped Pyrenees. “Speak to me like a brother, or perhaps I should say a father,” said the emir eagerly, as he pulled up a chair beside the bishop.

Dupuch stayed in Pau for three days. As a sign of respect not shown ordinary guests, Abd el-Kader put on socks before Dupuch entered his room. They talked about the Bible, which the emir had read in translation, and about Rome, the Christian Mecca that he wanted to visit. Abd el-Kader enjoyed speaking freely, knowing he was understood by another man of God. He summed up his reading of the Bible as many a Christian had in the past: “Parts of the Old Testament seem harsh, even terrible to me. But the religion of Christ is the very goodness, grace and mercy of God.” The emir felt there was much about himself he needed to explain to Dupuch. “As you can see from our conversations, I was not born to be a soldier…It seems I should not have been one for a single day. By the mysterious designs of Providence, I was diverted from the path for which I was intended by birth, education, and natural inclination. I pray continuously to be allowed to return to it.”

Several times during their conversation, Dupuch had observed the emir glancing at his bishop’s ring. “The stone is shiny but not of great value,” he explained.

“Yes, I noticed it because of its great luster, but I realized that a man of your faith would not wear on his finger the price of bread for so many of the poor.”

The emir thanked Dupuch for arranging to have the Sisters of Charity visit the chateau to care for the Arab women and to heal them with their simple goodness. He told the bishop of the ministry’s intention to move them to Amboise in November.

“The authorities are still afraid I will try to escape to Spain. How little they understand me.”

“Yes, I know, and you will stop on the way in Bordeaux, which is my town where you will be honored. I will accompany you from there up to Amboise.”

The Arabs were scheduled to depart on November second. The previous day, Abd el-Kader at last consented to Boissonnet’s final offer of a tour of the chateau. Boissonnet showed him the fine tapestries that had been stored in other rooms of the residence, the goblets and silverware, the heavy Renaissance furniture and the huge tortoise shell that had served as a cradle for Henry of Navarre.

A large crowd pressed around the chateau gates wanting to see him off. Abd el-Kader asked Boissonnet if he could leave in an open caleche to go to the hippodrome from where he was to take his official leave of the city. Descending the stairs, the emir gave a member of his escort an envelope, asking that it be given to the local curé. “It is for the poor. Excuse the small sum but my resources are few,” he explained. The emir caught sight of the handyman, Rullier, who had helped him almost daily with practical problems small and large. “I have no more money, but take this, it has pearl buttons,” he said, giving him a simple cloth waistcoat. Rullier had made a treasured coffee filter for the emir and had built the coffins for those who had died at Pau.

The controversy over the emir’s residence at the royal chateau had completely evaporated. Instead, he had become a heroic figure in his suffering. At the hippodrome, a convoy of heavy diligences was assembled to transfer the emir’s entourage to Bordeaux. So too were the mayor, the prefect and a multitude of wellwishers to say goodbye. Abd el-Kader left as he came, with a few gracious words: “I leave Pau physically, but my heart remains. All the expressions of sympathy which I have received since being here make my departure sad and difficult. But there is consolation in knowing that I have so many friends among you.”

The decision to move the emir to Amboise pleased those who were in a position to help him. Amboise was close to Paris, where decisions were made. At the same time, others preoccupied with security and with imagining every embarrassing possibility for his escape saw Amboise as a safer prison, buried in the interior of France. Nevertheless, Abd el-Kader’s passage from Pau to Amboise had the marks of a royal progress.

Bishop Dupuch had organized a warm welcome in Bordeaux. The emir stayed at the famous Hôtel des Princes. There were banquets, a visit to the opera and countless meetings with local dignitaries. The morning of his departure for Nantes, the emir appeared on the balcony of the city hall before a large square full of an enthusiastic crowd of wellwishers. He was flanked by Dupuch and the chief prelate of Bordeaux, Archbishop Donnet. Cheers went up from the people. Abd el-Kader wrongly assumed these signs of affection were for his clerical companions, to whom he remarked, “because of your vows, I know you cannot have a family, but the love you give to people who need your help and the devotion they give back to you must be a divine consolation.”

Afterward, the archbishop offered his personal carriage to drive the emir’s mother and his wives to the port and the waiting corvette, Caiman, which would take them up the coast to Paimboeuf. From there, they would transfer to a riverboat and enter the mouth of the Loire at Nantes. The emir was accompanied by the ever-solicitous Boissonnet and Dupuch, who stayed with him all the way to Amboise. The emir’s arrival at Nantes was announced with a thirteen cannon military salute. The prefect of the department of Indre et Loire grasped Abd el-Kader’s hand and asked sympathetically if he was not suffering from the cold. “Thank you,” replied the emir with his customary graciousness, “I don’t suffer as much as you think, for the warmth of your reception melts the glacial air of your autumn.”

As the emir’s flotilla of paddleboats and barges approached Amboise on the moonlit evening of November 8, fairyland towers seemed to grow like majestic, topiaried trees out of the dark rock cliffs overlooking the broad flowing Loire, swollen from the fall rains. Despite its impressive majesty, Amboise was still another prison.