me doubt. He doubted
Montenegro, friendship, glory, and even lions; and the great man
blubbered bitterly.

Whilst he was pensively seated on the sill of the sanctuary, holding
his head between his hands and his gun between his legs, with the
camel mooning at him, the thicket over the way was divided, and the
stupor-stricken Tartarin saw a gigantic lion appear not a dozen paces
off. It thrust out its high head and emitted powerful roars, which made
the temple walls shake beneath their votive decorations, and even the
saint's slippers dance in their niche.

The Tarasconian alone did not tremble.

"At last you've come!" he shouted, jumping up and levelling the rifle.

Bang, bang! went a brace of shells into its head.

It was done. For a minute, on the fiery background of the African sky,
there was a dreadful firework display of scattered brains, smoking
blood, and tawny hair. When all fell, Tartarin perceived two colossal
Negroes furiously running towards him, brandishing cudgels. They were
his two Negro acquaintances of Milianah!

Oh, misery!

This was the domesticated lion, the poor blind beggar of the Mohammed
Monastery, whom the Tarasconian's bullets had knocked over.

This time, spite of Mahound, Tartarin escaped neatly. Drunk with
fanatical fury, the two African collectors would have surely beaten him
to pulp had not the god of chase and war sent him a delivering angel
in the shape of the rural constable of the Orleansville commune. By a
bypath this garde champetre came up, his sword tucked under his arm.

The sight of the municipal cap suddenly calmed the Negroes' choler.
Peaceful and majestic, the officer with the brass badge drew up a report
on the affair, ordered the camel to be loaded with what remained of the
king of beasts, and the plaintiffs as well as the delinquent to follow
him, proceeding to Orleansville, where all was deposited with the
law-courts receiver.

There issued a long and alarming case!

After the Algeria of the native tribes which he had overrun, Tartarin of
Tarascon became thence acquainted with another Algeria, not less weird
and to be dreaded--the Algeria in the towns, surcharged with lawyers and
their papers. He got to know the pettifogger who does business at the
back of a cafe--the legal Bohemian with documents reeking of wormwood
bitters and white neckcloths spotted with champoreau; the ushers, the
attorneys, all the locusts of stamped paper, meagre and famished, who
eat u