Chapter 5
An enfevered and motley mob hustle one another around the long green table-covers: Turcos out for the day and staking their double halfpence, Moorish traders from the native town, Negroes, Maltese, colonists from the inland, who have come forty leagues in order to risk on a turning card the price of a plough or of a yoke of oxen; all a-quivering, pale, clenching their teeth, and with that singular, wavering, sidelong look of the gamester, become a squint from always staring at the same card in the lay-out.
A little apart are the tribes of Algerian Jews, playing among acquaintances. The men are in the Oriental costume; hideously varied with blue stockings and velvet caps. The puffy and flabby women sit up stiffly in tight golden bodices. Grouped around the tables, the whole tribe wail, squeal, combine, reckon on the fingers, and play but little. Now and anon, however, after long conferences, some old patriarch, with a beard like those of saints by the Old Masters, detaches himself from the party and goes to risk the family duro. As long as the game lasted there would be a scintillation of Hebraic eyes directed on the board--dreadful black diamonds, which made the gold pieces shiver, and ended by gently attracting them, as if drawn by a thread. Then arose wrangles, quarrels, battles, oaths of every land, mad outcries in all tongues, knives flashing out, the guard marching in, and the money disappearing.
It was into the thick of this saturnalia that the great Tartarin came straying one evening to find oblivion and heart’s ease.
He was roving alone through the gathering, brooding about his Moorish beauty, when two angered voices arose suddenly from a gaming-table above all the clamour and chink of coin.
“I tell you, M’sieu, that I am twenty francs short!”
“Stuff, M’sieu!”
“Stuff yourself; M’sieu!”
“You shall learn whom you are addressing, M’sieu!”
“I am dying to do that, M’sieu!”
“I am Prince Gregory of Montenegro, M’sieu.”
Upon this title Tartarin, much excited, cleft the throng and placed himself in the foremost rank, proud and happy to find his prince again, the Montenegrin noble of such politeness whose acquaintance he had begun on board of the mail steamer. Unfortunately the title of Highness, which had so dazzled the worthy Tarasconian, did not produce the slightest impression upon the Chasseurs officer with whom the noble had his dispute.
“I am much the wiser!” observed the military gentleman sneeringly; and turning to the bystanders he added: “‘Prince Gregory of Montenegro’--who knows any such a person? Nobody!”
The indignant Tartarin took one step forward.
“Allow me. I know the prince,” said he, in a very firm voice, and with his finest Tarasconian accent.
The light cavalry officer eyed him hard for a moment, and then, shrugging his shoulders, returned:
“Come, that is good! Just you two share the twenty francs lacking between you, and let us talk no more on the score.”
Whereupon he turned his back upon them and mixed with the crowd. The stormy Tartarin was going to rush after him, but the prince prevented that.
“Let him go. I can manage my own affairs.”
Taking the interventionist by the arm, he drew him rapidly out of doors. When they were upon the square, Prince Gregory of Montenegro lifted his hat off; extended his hand to our hero, and as he but dimly remembered his name, he began in a vibrating voice:
“Monsieur Barbarin--”
“Tartarin!” prompted the other, timidly.
“Tartarin, Barbarin, no matter! Between us henceforward it is a league of life and death!”
The Montenegrin noble shook his hand with fierce energy. You may infer that the Tarasconian was proud.
“Prince, prince!” he repeated enthusiastically.
In a quarter of an hour subsequently the two gentlemen were installed in the Platanes Restaurant, an agreeable late supper-house, with terraces running out over the sea, where, before a hearty Russian salad, seconded by a nice Crescia wine, they renewed the friendship.
You cannot image any one more bewitching than this Montenegrin prince. Slender, fine, with crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved “a week under” and pumice-stoned on that, bestarred with out-of-the-way decorations, he had the wily eye, the fondling gestures, and vaguely the accent of an Italian, which gave him an air of Cardinal Mazarin without his chin-tuft and moustaches. He was deeply versed in the Latin tongues, and lugged in quotations from Tacitus, Horace, and Caesar’s Commentaries at every opening.
Of an old noble strain, it appeared that his brothers had had him exiled at the age of ten, on account of his liberal opinions, since which time he had roamed the world for pleasure and instruction as a philosophical noble. A singular coincidence! the prince had spent three years in Tarascon; and as Tartarin showed amazement at never having met him at the club or on the esplanade, His Highness evasively remarked that he never went about. Through delicacy, the Tarasconian did not dare to question further. All great existences have such mysterious nooks.
To sum up, this Signor Gregory was a very genial aristocrat. Whilst sipping the rosy Crescia juice he patiently listened to Tartarin’s expatiating on his lovely Moor, and he even promised to find her speedily, as he had full knowledge of the native ladies.
They drank hard and lengthily in toasts to “The ladies of Algiers” and “The freedom of Montenegro!”
Outside, upon the terrace, heaved the sea, and its rollers slapped the strand in the darkness with much the sound of wet sails flapping. The air was warm, and the sky full of stars.
In the plane-trees a nightingale was piping.
It was Tartarin who paid the piper.
X. “Tell me your father’s name, and I will tell you the name of that flower.”
PRINCES of Montenegro are the ones to find the love-bird.
On the morrow early after this evening at the Platanes, Prince Gregory was in the Tarasconian’s bedroom.
“Quick! Dress yourself quickly! Your Moorish beauty is found, Her name is Baya. She’s scarce twenty--as pretty as a love, and already a widow.”
“A widow! What a slice of luck!” joyfully exclaimed Tartarin, who dreaded Oriental husbands.
“Ay, but woefully closely guarded by her brother.”
“Oh, the mischief!”
“A savage chap who vends pipes in the Orleans bazaar.”
Here fell a silence.
“A fig for that!” proceeded the prince; “you are not the man to be daunted by such a trifle; and, anyhow, this old corsair can be pacified, I daresay, by having some pipes bought of him. But be quick! On with your courting suit, you lucky dog!”
Pale and agitated, with his heart brimming over with love, the Tarasconian leaped out of his couch, and, as he hastily buttoned up his capacious nether garment, wanted to know how he should act.
“Write straightway to the lady and ask for a tryst.”
“Do you mean to say she knows French?” queried the Tarasconian simpleton, with the disappointed mien of one who had believed thoroughly in the Orient.
“Not one word of it,” rejoined the prince imperturbably; “but you can dictate the billet-doux, and I will translate it bit by bit.”
“O prince, how kind you are!”
The lover began striding up and down the bedroom in silent meditation.
Naturally a man does not write to a Moorish girl in Algiers in the same way as to a seamstress of Beaucaire. It was a very lucky thing that our hero had in mind his numerous readings, which allowed him, by amalgamating the Red Indian eloquence of Gustave Aimard’s Apaches with Lamartine’s rhetorical flourishes in the “Voyage en Orient,” and some reminiscences of the “Song of Songs,” to compose the most Eastern letter that you could expect to see. It opened with:
“Like unto the ostrich upon the sandy waste”--
and concluded by:
“Tell me your father’s name, and I will tell you the name of that flower.”
To this missive the romantic Tartarin would have much liked to join an emblematic bouquet of flowers in the Eastern fashion; but Prince Gregory thought it better to purchase some pipes at the brother’s, which could not fail to soften his wild temper, and would certainly please the lady a very great deal, as she was much of a smoker.
“Let’s be off at once to buy them!” said Tartarin, full of ardour.
“No, no! Let me go alone. I can get them cheaper.”
“Eh, what? Would you save me the trouble? O prince, prince, you do me proud!”
Quite abashed, the good-hearted fellow offered his purse to the obliging Montenegrin, urging him to overlook nothing by which the lady would be gratified.
Unfortunately the suit, albeit capitally commenced, did not progress as rapidly as might have been anticipated. It appeared that the Moorish beauty was very deeply affected by Tartarin’s eloquence, and, for that matter, three-parts won beforehand, so that she wished nothing better than to receive him; but that brother of hers had qualms, and to lull them it was necessary to buy pipes by the dozens; nay, the gross--well, we had best say by the shipload at once.
“What the plague can Baya do with all these pipes?” poor Tartarin wanted to know more than once; but he paid the bills all the same, and without niggardliness.
At length, after having purchased a mountainous stack of pipes and poured forth lakes of Oriental poesy, an interview was arranged. I have no need to tell you with what throbbings of the heart the Tarasconian prepared himself; with what carefulness he trimmed, brilliantined, and perfumed his rough cap-popper’s beard, and how he did not forget--for everything must be thought of--to slip a spiky life-preserver and two or three six-shooters into his pockets.
The ever-obliging prince was coming to this first meeting in the office of interpreter.
The lady dwelt in the upper part of the town. Before her doorway a boy Moor of fourteen or less was smoking cigarettes; this was the brother in question, the celebrated Ali. On seeing the pair of visitors arrive, he gave a double knock on the postern gate and delicately glided away.
The door opened. A negress appeared, who conducted the gentlemen, without uttering a word, across the narrow inner courtyard into a small cool room, where the lady awaited them, reclining on a low ottoman. At first glance she appeared smaller and stouter than the Moorish damsel met in the omnibus by the Tarasconian. In fact, was it really the same? But the doubt merely flashed through Tartarin’s brain like a stroke of lightning.
The dame was so pretty thus, with her feet bare, and plump fingers, fine and pink, loaded with rings. Under her bodice of gilded cloth and the folds of her flower-patterned dress was suggested a lovable creature, rather blessed materially, rounded everywhere, and nice enough to eat. The amber mouthpiece of a narghileh smoked at her lips, and enveloped her wholly in a halo of light-coloured smoke.
On entering, the Tarasconian laid a hand on his heart and bowed as Moorlike as possible, whilst rolling his large impassioned eyes.
Baya gazed on him for a moment without making any answer; but then, dropping her pipe-stem, she threw her head back, hid it in her hands, and they could only see her white neck rippling with a wild laugh like a bag full of pearls.
XI. Sidi Tart’ri Ben Tart’ri.
SHOULD you ever drop into the coffee-houses of the Algerian upper town after dark, even at this day, you would still hear the natives chatting among themselves, with many a wink and slight laugh, of one Sidi Tart’ri Ben Tart’ri, a rich and good-humoured European, who dwelt, a few years back, in that neighbourhood, with a buxom witch of local origin, named Baya.
This Sidi Tart’ri, who has left such a merry memory around the Kasbah, is no other than our Tartarin, as will be guessed.
How could you expect things otherwise? In the lives of heroes, of saints, too, it happens the same way--there are moments of blindness, perturbation, and weakness. The illustrious Tarasconian was no more exempt from this than another, and that is the reason during two months that, oblivious of fame and lions, he revelled in Oriental amorousness, and dozed, like Hannibal at Capua, in the delights of Algiers the white.
The good fellow took a pretty little house in the native style in the heart of the Arab town, with inner courtyard, banana-trees, cool verandahs, and fountains. He dwelt, afar from noise, in company with the Moorish charmer, a thorough woman to the manner born, who pulled at her hubble-bubble all day when she was not eating.
Stretched out on a divan in front of him, Baya would drone him monotonous tunes with a guitar in her fist; or else, to distract her lord and master, favour him with the Bee Dance, holding a hand-glass up, in which she reflected her white teeth and the faces she made.
As the Esmeralda did not know a word of French, and Tartarin none in Arabic, the conversation died away sometimes, and the Tarasconian had plenty of leisure to do penance for the gush of language of which he had been guilty in the shop of Bezuquet the chemist or that of Costecalde the gunmaker.
But this penance was not devoid of charm, for he felt a kind of enjoyable sullenness in dawdling away the whole day without speaking, and in listening to the gurgling of the hookah, the strumming of the guitar, and the faint splashing of the fountain on the mosaic pavement of the yard.
The pipe, the bath, and caresses filled his entire life. They seldom went out of doors. Sometimes with his lady-love upon a pillion, Sidi Tart’ri would ride upon a sturdy mule to eat pomegranates in a little garden he had purchased in the suburbs. But never, without exception, did he go down into the European quarter. This kind of Algiers appeared to him as ugly and unbearable as a barracks at home, with its Zouaves in revelry, its music-halls crammed with officers, and its everlasting clank of metal sabre-sheaths under the arcades.
The sum total is, that our Tarasconian was very happy.
Sancho-Tartarin particularly, being very sweet upon Turkish pastry, declared that one could not be more satisfied than by this new existence. Quixote-Tartarin had some twinges at whiles on thinking of Tarascon and the promises of lion-skins; but this remorse did not last, and to drive away such dampening ideas there sufficed one glance from Baya, or a spoonful of those diabolical dizzying and odoriferous sweetmeats like Circe’s brews.
In the evening Gregory came to discourse a little about a free Black Mountain. Of indefatigable obligingness, this amiable nobleman filled the functions of an interpreter in the household, or those of a steward at a pinch, and all for nothing for the sheer pleasure of it. Apart from him, Tartarin received none but “Turks.” All those fierce-headed pirates who had given him such frights from the backs of their black stalls turned out, when once he made their acquaintance, to be good inoffensive tradesmen, embroiderers, dealers in spice, pipe-mouthpiece turners--well-bred fellows, humble, clever, close, and first-class hands at homely card games. Four or five times a week these gentry would come and spend the evening at Sidi Tart’ri’s, winning his small change, eating his cakes and dainties, and delicately retiring on the stroke of ten with thanks to the Prophet.
Left alone, Sidi Tart’ri and his faithful spouse by the broomstick wedding would finish the evening on their terrace, a broad white roof which overlooked the city.
All around them a thousand of other such white flats, placid beneath the moonshine, were descending like steps to the sea. The breeze carried up tinkling of guitars.
Suddenly, like a shower of firework stars, a full, clear melody would be softly sprinkled out from the sky, and on the minaret of the neighbouring mosque a handsome muezzin would appear, his blanched form outlined on the deep blue of the night, as he chanted the glory of Allah with a marvellous voice, which filled the horizon.
Thereupon Baya would let go her guitar, and with her large eyes turned towards the crier, seem to imbibe the prayer deliciously. As long as the chant endured she would remain thrilled there in ecstasy, like an Oriental saint. The deeply impressed Tartarin would watch her pray, and conclude that it must be a splendid and powerful creed that could cause such frenzies of faith.
Tarascon, veil thy face! here is a son of thine on the point of becoming a renegade!
XII. The Latest Intelligence from Tarascon.
PARTING from his little country seat, Sidi Tart’ri was returning alone on his mule on a fine afternoon, when the sky was blue and the zephyrs warm. His legs were kept wide apart by ample saddle-bags of esparto cloth, swelled out with cedrats and water-melons. Lulled by the ring of his large stirrups, and rocking his body to the swing and swaying of the beast, the good fellow was thus traversing an adorable country, with his hands folded on his paunch, three-quarters gone, through heat, in a comfortable doze. All at once, on entering the town, a deafening appeal aroused him.
“Ahoy! What a monster Fate is! Anybody’d take this for Monsieur Tartarin.”
On this name, and at the jolly southern accent, the Tarasconian lifted his head, and perceived, a couple of steps away, the honest tanned visage of Captain Barbassou, master of the Zouave, who was taking his absinthe at the door of a little coffee-house.
“Hey! Lord love you, Barbassou!” said Tartarin, pulling up his mule.
Instead of continuing the dialogue, Barbassou stared at him for a space ere he burst into a peal of such hilarity that Sidi Tart’ri sat back dumbfounded on his melons.
“What a stunning turban, my poor Monsieur Tartarin! Is it true, what they say of your having turned Turk? How is little Baya? Is she still singing ‘Marco la Bella’?”
“Marco la Bella!” repeated the indignant Tartarin. “I’ll have you to know, captain, that the person you mention is an honourable Moorish lady, and one who does not know a word of French.”
“Baya does not know French! What lunatic asylum do you hail from, then?”
The good captain broke into still heartier laughter; but, seeing the chops of poor Sidi Tart’ri fall he changed his course.
“Howsoever, may happen it is not the same lass. Let’s reckon that I have mixed ‘em up. Still, mark you, Monsieur Tartarin, you will do well, nonetheless, to distrust Algerian Moors and Montenegrin princes.”
Tartarin rose in the stirrups, making a wry face.
“The prince is my friend, captain.”
“Come, come, don’t wax wrathy. Won’t you have some bitters to sweeten you? No? Haven’t you anything to say to the folks at home, neither? Well, then, a pleasant journey. By the way, mate, I have some good French ‘bacco upon me, and if you would like to carry away a few pipefuls, you have only to take some. Take it, won’t you? It’s your beastly Oriental ‘baccoes that have befogged your brain.”
Upon this the captain went back to his absinthe, whilst the moody Tartarin trotted slowly on the road to his little house. Although his great soul refused to credit anything, Barbassou’s insinuations had vexed him, and the familiar adjurations and home accent had awakened vague remorse.
He found nobody at home, Baya having gone out to the bath. The negress appeared sinister and the dwelling saddening. A prey to inexpressible melancholy, he went and sat down by the fountain to load a pipe with Barbassou’s tobacco. It was wrapped up in a piece of the Marseilles Semaphore newspaper. On flattening it out, the name of his native place struck his eyes.
“Our Tarascon correspondent writes:--
“The city is in distress. There has been no news for several months from Tartarin the lion-slayer, who set off to hunt the great feline tribe in Africa. What can have become of our heroic fellow-countryman? Those hardly dare ask who know, as we do, how hot-headed he was, and what boldness and thirst for adventures were his. Has he, like many others, been smothered in the sands, or has he fallen under the murderous fangs of one of those monsters of the Atlas Range of which he had promised the skins to the municipality? What a dreadful state of uncertainty! It is true some Negro traders, come to Beaucaire Fair, assert having met in the middle of the deserts a European whose description agreed with his; he was proceeding towards Timbuctoo. May Heaven preserve our Tartarin!”
When he read this, the son of Tarascon reddened, blanched, and shuddered. All Tarascon appeared unto him: the club, the cap-poppers, Costecalde’s green arm-chair, and, hovering over all like a spread eagle, the imposing moustaches of brave Commandant Bravida.
At seeing himself here, as he was, cowardly lolling on a mat, whilst his friends believed him slaughtering wild beasts, Tartarin of Tarascon was ashamed of himself, and could have wept had he not been a hero.
Suddenly he leaped up and thundered:
“The lion, the lion! Down with him!”
And dashing into the dusty lumber-hole where mouldered the shelter-tent, the medicine-chest, the potted meats, and the gun-cases, he dragged them out into the middle of the court.
Sancho-Tartarin was no more: Quixote-Tartarin occupied the field of active life.
Only the time to inspect his armament and stores, don his harness, get into his heavy boots, scribble a couple of words to confide Baya to the prince, and slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears into the envelope, and then the dauntless Tarasconian rolled away in the stage-coach on the Blidah road, leaving the house to the negress, stupor-stricken before the pipe, the turban, and babooshes--all the Moslem shell of Sidi Tart’ri which sprawled piteously under the little white trefoils of the gallery.
EPISODE THE THIRD, AMONG THE LIONS
I. What becomes of the Old Stage-coaches.
COME to look closely at the vehicle, it was an old stage-coach all of the olden time, upholstered in faded deep blue cloth, with those enormous rough woollen balls which, after a few hours’ journey, finally establish a raw spot in the small of your back.
Tartarin of Tarascon had a corner of the inside, where he installed himself most free-and-easily: and, preliminarily to inspiring the rank emanations of the great African felines, the hero had to content himself with that homely old odour of the stage-coach, oddly composed of a thousand smells, of man and woman, horses and harness, eatables and mildewed straw.
There was a little of everything inside--a Trappist monk, some Jew merchants, two fast ladies going to join their regiment, the Third Hussars, a photographic artist from Orleansville, and so on. But, however charming and varied was the company, the Tarasconian was not in the mood for chatting; he remained quite thoughtful, with an arm in the arm-rest sling-strap and his guns between his knees. All churned up his wits--the precipitate departure, Baya’s eyes of jet, the terrible chase he was about to undertake, to say nothing of this European coach; with its Noah’s Ark aspect, rediscovered in the heart of Africa, vaguely recalling the Tarascon of his youth, with its races in the suburbs, jolly dinners on the river-side--a throng of memories, in short.
Gradually night came on. The guard lit up the lamps. The rusty diligence danced creakingly on its old springs; the horses trotted and their bells jangled. From time to time in the boot arose a dreadful clank of iron: that was the war material.
Tartarin of Tarascon, nearly overcome, dwelt a moment scanning the fellow-passengers, comically shaken by the jolts, and dancing before him like the shadows in galanty-shows, till his eyes grew cloudy and his mind befogged, and only vaguely he heard the wheels grind and the sides of the conveyance squeak complainingly.
Suddenly a voice called Tartarin by his name, the voice of an old fairy godmother, hoarse, broken, and cracked.
“Monsieur Tartarin!” three times.
“Who’s calling me?”