The Treasure of Cousin Benedict

***

It was still only five in the morning, but there was a certain excitement in the house. Almost all the preparations were completed, clothes were sewn and cleaned, notepads and instruments were stuffed into pockets. Paganel paced the room briskly, aware of his absent-mindedness, checking his list.

"It is very important, nothing must be forgotten," he repeated.

The Major and Cousin Benedict (one had come to visit his sister, and the other had recently taken up residence in Mr. and Mrs. Paganel's house), watched him silently from their seats. The Major was blowing clouds of smoke, and Cousin Benedict was waving them away, adjusting his spectacles, and looking no less excited than the geographer himself, as if he too was going on a journey. But alas, this was not the case. In spite of all persuasions, neither the major nor the entomologist agreed to accompany him on the expedition, to which the venerable Paganel was seconded by the Parisian Geographical Society. Paganel had been in contact with them, although he had not lived in France for some years and had generally been too shy to show his face after what had occurred in New Zealand.

"Everything seems to be in order," the scientist concluded as he examined the bags he was about to take with him. "My friends, have you decided for sure not to go with me? Africa is a wonderful country and a great part of it is practically unexplored, even though David Livingstone has written so extensively about it and he has traversed it. Any traveller could return from it a discoverer of anything. Major? Cousin Benedict?"

Paganel looked at his friends, but they only shook their heads. The Major quietly, almost without extinguishing the light of a cigarette clutched in his teeth, and the entomologist on the contrary, so active that his already disheveled hair was even more disheveled. It was clear that they had both decided to stay.

"My dear Paganel," the Major said to the frustrated geographer, "as much as I hate to let you go alone, I am tired of all these adventures. You see that I am not young any more and that I have caught a cold the other day and I am afraid that if all the stories about Africa are true, the journey will kill me. On the contrary, you, Paganel, seem to be able to bear any hardship and still have ten crossings to go. I'm sure you'll be known as the second Livingstone. So, if you'll excuse me, you'll have to find someone else to accompany you. Our Cousin Benedict, for instance. Why don't you go with him? I'm sure each of you will find the journey interesting. Aren't there quite a few rare insects in Africa?"

Cousin Benedict, who had been silent until then, shook his head so hard at that moment that his glasses looked as if they were about to fall off his long nose.

"No, no," he muttered, "I will never set foot on this barbaric continent again. I have suffered too many disappointments there, not to mention the way it deceived me, the way it robbed me..."

The Cousin's excitement was so great that Paganel and the Major even had to reassure the big kid.

"What happened there, dear Benedict?" Paganel asked, surprised by his reaction, when at last he was calmed down.

“Indeed, you have already been to Africa, but you never spoke about it in detail,” the Major reminded.

"Tell us now," asked Paganel, "there is still time, my ship is in three hours."

Cousin Benedict seemed embarrassed by this conversation, but finally surrendered to the pressure of his friends anyway.

"It was awful," he exhaled in a heartbeat, hiding his face theatrically, though he seemed to be actually serious about his words. "I really was in Africa a few years ago. I had hoped to find some rare species of insect, but I was humiliated as a scientist, was deceived by nature itself. In the end I was crushed when I failed to become, as you say, a discoverer, when the valuable six-legged creature I was carrying turned out not to be valuable at all and not a six-legged creature at all."