ved through a chink something yellowish, he hastened to send the
news to the Dey, that the Frenchmen who had come to Algiers by land had
among their baggage cases filled with zechins, destined to revolutionize
the Kabylie. They immediately had these cases forwarded to Algiers, and
at their opening, before the Minister of Naval Affairs, all the
phantasmagoria of zechins, of treasure, of revolution, disappeared at
the sight of the stands and the limbs of several repeating circles in
copper.

We are now going to sojourn several months in Algiers. I will take
advantage of this to put together some details of manners which may be
interesting as the picture of a state of things anterior to that of the
occupation of the Regency by the French. This occupation, it must be
remarked, has already fundamentally altered the manners and the habits
of the Algerine population.

I am about to report a curious fact, and one which shows that politics,
which insinuate themselves and bring discord into the bosom of the most
united families, had succeeded, strange to say, in penetrating as far as
the galley-slaves' prison at Algiers. The slaves belonged to three
nations: there were in 1809 in this prison, Portuguese, Neapolitans, and
Sicilians; among these two latter classes were counted partisans of
Murat and those of Ferdinand of Naples. One day, at the beginning of the
year, a dragoman came in the name of the Dey to beg M. Dubois Thainville
to go without delay to the prison, where the friends of the French and
their adversaries had involved themselves in a furious combat; and
already several had fallen. The weapon with which they struck each other
was the heavy long chain attached to their legs.

Each Consul, as I said above, had a janissary placed with him as his
guard; the one belonging to the French Consul was a Candiote; he had
been surnamed _the Terror_. Whenever some news unfavourable to France
was announced in the cafes, he came to the Consulate to inform himself
as to the reality of the fact; and when we told him that the other
janissaries had propagated false news, he returned to them, and there,
yatagan in hand, he declared himself ready to enter the lists in combat
against those who should still maintain the truth of the news. As these
continual threats might endanger him, (for they had no support beyond
his mere animal courage,) we had wished to render him expert in the
handling of arms by giving him some lessons in fencing;