French,
Provencal, and even in dog Latin: "Rosa, the rose; bonus, bona,
bonum!"--all that he knew--but to no purpose. He was not heeded.
Happily, like a god in Homer, intervened a little fellow in a
yellow-collared tunic, and armed with a long running-footman's cane, who
dispersed the whole riff-raff with cudgel-play. He was a policeman of
the Algerian capital. Very politely, he suggested Tartarin should put up
at the Hotel de l'Europe, and he confided him to its waiters, who carted
him and his impedimenta thither in several barrows.

At the first steps he took in Algiers, Tartarin of Tarascon opened his
eyes widely. Beforehand he had pictured it as an Oriental city--a fairy
one, mythological, something between Constantinople and Zanzibar; but
it was back into Tarascon he fell. Cafes, restaurants, wide streets,
four-storey houses, a little market-place, macadamised, where the
infantry band played Offenbachian polkas, whilst fashionably clad
gentlemen occupied chairs, drinking beer and eating pancakes, some
brilliant ladies, some shady ones, and soldiers--more soldiers--no end
of soldiers, but not a solitary Turk, or, better to say, there was a
solitary Turk, and that was he.

Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the square, for everybody
looked at him. The musicians stopped, the Offenbachian polka halting
with one foot in the air.

With both guns on his shoulders, and the revolver flapping on his
hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, Tartarin gravely passed
through the groups; but on arriving at the hotel his powers failed
him. All spun and mingled in his head: the departure from Tarascon, the
harbour of Marseilles, the voyage, the Montenegrin prince, the corsairs.
They had to help him up into a room and disarm and undress him. They
began to talk of sending for a medical adviser; but hardly was our
hero's head upon the pillow than he set to snoring, so loudly and so
heartily that the landlord judged the succour of science useless, and
everybody considerately withdrew.

IV. The First Lying in Wait.

THREE o'clock was striking by the Government clock when Tartarin awoke.
He had slept all the evening, night, and morning, and even a goodish
piece of the afternoon. It must be granted, though, that in the last
three days the red fez had caught it pretty hot and lively!

Our hero's first thought on opening his eyes was, "I am in the land of
the lions!" And--well, why should we not say it?--at the