ance 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-