nt to
open. Finally, he threw it on the ground in a rage, and lay on the top
of it. Thus he slept until the bugles in the barracks near by wakened
him in the morning. For behold, instead of finding himself out on the
Sahara, he was in the kitchen garden of some suburban Algerian!

"These people are mad," he growled to himself, "to plant their
artichokes where lions are roaming about. Surely I have been dreaming.
Lions do come here; there's proof positive."

From artichoke to artichoke, from field to field, he followed the thin
trail of blood, and came at length to a poor little donkey he had
wounded!

Tartarin's first feeling was one of vexation. There is such a difference
between a lion and an ass, and the poor little creature looked so
innocent. The great hunter knelt down and tried to stanch the donkey's
wounds, and it seemed grateful to him, for it feebly flapped its long
ears two or three times before it lay still for ever.

Suddenly a voice was heard calling, "Noiraud! Noiraud!" It was "the
female." She came in the form of an old French woman with a large red
umbrella, and it would have been better for Tartarin to have faced a
female lion.

When the unhappy man tried to explain how he had mistaken her little
donkey for a lion, she thought he was making fun of her, and belaboured
him with her umbrella. When her husband came on the scene the matter was
soon adjusted by Tartarin agreeing to pay eight pounds for the damage he
had done, the price of the donkey being really something like eight
shillings. The donkey owner was an inn-keeper, and the sight of
Tartarin's money made him quite friendly. He invited the lion-hunter to
have some food at the inn with him before he left. And as they walked
thither he was amazed to be told by the inn-keeper that he had never
seen a lion there in twenty years!

Clearly, the lions were to be looked for further south. "I'll make
tracks for the south, too," said Tartarin to himself. But he first of
all returned to his hotel in an omnibus. Think of it! But before he was
to go south on the high adventure, he loafed about the city of Algiers
for some time, going to the theatres and other places of amusement,
where he met Prince Gregory of Montenegro, with whom he made friends.

One day the captain of the Zouave came across him in the town, and
showed him a note about himself in a Tarascon newspaper. This spoke of
the uncertainty that prevailed as to the fate of the great hunter,