es. The ferocious and uncontrolled authority of grotesque bashaws,
who gravely use their grand cordons of the Legion of Honour as
handkerchiefs, and for a mere yea or nay order a man to be bastinadoed.
It is the justice of the conscienceless, bespectacled cadis under
the palm-tree, Maw-worms of the Koran and Law, who dream languidly of
promotion and sell their decrees, as Esau did his birthright, for a dish
of lentils or sweetened kouskous. Drunken and libertine cadis are they,
formerly servants to some General Yusuf or the like, who get intoxicated
on champagne, along with laundresses from Port Mahon, and fatten on
roast mutton, whilst before their tents the whole tribe waste away with
hunger, and fight with the harriers for the bones of the lordly feast.

All around spread the plains in waste, burnt grass, leafless shrubs,
thickets of cactus and mastic--"the Granary of France!"--a granary void
of grain, alas! and rich alone in vermin and jackals. Abandoned camps,
frightened tribes fleeing from them and famine, they know not whither,
and strewing the road with corpses. At long intervals French villages,
with the dwellings in ruins, the fields untilled, the maddened
locusts gnawing even the window-blinds, and all the settlers in the
drinking-places, absorbing absinthe and discussing projects of reform
and the Constitution.

This is what Tartarin might have seen had he given himself the trouble;
but, wrapped up entirely in his leonine-hunger, the son of Tarascon went
straight on, looking to neither right nor left, his eyes steadfastly
fixed on the imaginary monsters which never really appeared.

As the shelter-tent was stubborn in not unfolding, and the compressed
meat-cakes would not dissolve, the caravan was obliged to stop, morn and
eve, at tribal camps. Everywhere, thanks to the gorgeous cap of Prince
Gregory, our hunters were welcomed with open arms. They lodged in the
aghas' odd palaces, large white windowless farmhouses, where they
found, pell-mell, narghilehs and mahogany furniture, Smyrna carpets
and moderator lamps, cedar coffers full of Turkish sequins, and French
statuette-decked clocks in the Louis Philippe style.

Everywhere, too, Tartarin was given splendrous galas, diffas, and
fantasias, which, being interpreted, mean feasts and circuses. In his
honour whole goums blazed away powder, and floated their burnouses in
the sun. When the powder was burnt, the agha would come and hand in his
bill. This is wha