A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out.

She had rented a house for the occasion. She married Slimane Ehnni an Algerian soldier on October 17 1901 in Marseille. Her first trip to North Africa was with her mother in May 1897 whereby her mother was hoping to meet up with Augustin.

She died in a flash flood in the desert at the age of 27. Isabelle Eberhardt (17 February 1877 – 21 October 1904) was a Swiss explorer and writer who lived and travelled extensively in North Africa. For her time Isabelle Eberhardt was a liberated individual who rejected conventional European morality in favour of her own path and that of Islam.