After the horse dies he finds refuge in a cave and manages to tame a panther with which he is somehow in love.

He calls her "Mignonne", in memory of his former lover, and projects a number of feminine qualities on the beast.

The story finishes with the soldier telling the narrator of his regrets and of his experience of the desert.

[2] Balzac had planned to write a number of stories in the Scènes de la vie militaire section of La Comedie Humaine, but Une passion dans le désert was one of only two that were completed, the other being Les Chouans.

However a number of works from other parts of La Comedie Humaine such as Le Médecin de campagne, Adieu, El Verdugo and others depict military scenes from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.