La gardienne de l'idole noire

An aging veteran living in a convent looks back on a life shaped by passion and greed, narrating travels to distant lands, military service, and slender fortunes. He recalls campaigns under foreign banners, wounds and exile, and employment with a Moorish commander besieging a pagan city, where his appetite for wealth and women drives risky choices. The narrative unfolds as a framed memoir that mixes vivid travel episodes and moral reflection on desire and avarice with a central extraordinary adventure involving an idol in an Eastern city, whose dangers and consequences force the narrator to reckon with his past as he approaches death.