o be topsy-turvy
here at Ahaggar."

"You, no doubt, formulated several hypotheses when you first
encountered the name, Antinea," continued M. Le Mesge, imperturbable
under my fixed gaze, addressing himself to Morhange. "Would you object
to repeating them to me?"

"Not at all, sir," said Morhange.

And, very composedly, he enumerated the etymological suggestions I
have given previously.

The little man with the cherry-colored shirt front rubbed his hands.

"Very good," he admitted with an accent of intense jubilation.
"Amazingly good, at least for one with only the modicum of Greek that
you possess. But it is all none the less false, super-false."

"It is because I suspected as much that I put my question to you,"
said Morhange blandly.

"I will not keep you longer in suspense," said M. Le Mesge. "The word,
Antinea, is composed as follows: _ti_ is nothing but a Tifinar
addition to an essentially Greek name. _Ti_ is the Berber feminine
article. We have several examples of this combination. Take _Tipasa_,
the North African town. The name means the whole, from _ti_ and from
[Greek: nap]. So, _tinea_ signifies the new, from _ti_ and from
[Greek: ea]."

"And the prefix, _an_?" queried Morhang.

"Is it possible, sir, that I have put myself to the trouble of talking
to you for a solid hour about the Critias with such trifling effect?
It is certain that the prefix _an_, alone, has no meaning. You will
understand that it has one, when I tell you that we have here a very
curious case of apocope. You must not read _an_; you must read _atlan_.
_Atl_ has been lost, by apocope; _an_ has survived. To sum up, Antinea
is composed in the following manner: [Greek: ti-nea--atl'An]. And its
meaning, _the new Atlantis_, is dazzlingly apparent from this
demonstration."

I looked at Morhange. His astonishment was without bounds. The Berber
prefix _ti_ had literally stunned him.

"Have you had occasion, sir, to verify this very ingenious etymology?"
he was finally able to gasp out.

"You have only to glance over these few books," said M. Le Mesge
disdainfully.

He opened successively five, ten, twenty cupboards. An enormous
library was spread out to our view.

"Everything, everything--it is all here," murmured Morhange, with an
astonishing inflection of terror and admiration.

"Everything that is worth consulting, at any rate," said M. Le Mesge.
"All the great books, whose loss the so-called learned world deplores
to-day."