aid Tartarin, waking up with a
start. It was the trumpets of the Chasseurs d'Afrique sounding reveille
in the barracks at Mustapha. The lion killer rubbed his eyes in
amazement. He who had believed that he was in the middle of a
desert... do you know where he was?... In a field full of artichokes,
between a cauliflower and a swede... his Sahara was a vegetable patch.

Nearby, on the pretty green coast of upper Mustapha, white Algerian
villas gleamed in the dawn light, one might have been among the suburban
houses in the outskirts of Marseille. The bourgeois appearance of the
sleeping countryside greatly astonished Tartarin and put him in a bad
humour. "These people are crazy", he said to himself, "To plant their
artichokes in an area infested by lions. For I was not dreaming, there
are lions here and there is the proof".

The proof was a trail of blood which the fleeing beast had left behind
it. Following this blood-spoor, with watchful eye and revolver in hand,
the valiant Tarasconais went from artichoke to artichoke until he arrived
at a small field of oats.... In a patch of flattened grain was a pool
of blood and in the middle of the pool, lying on its side with a large
wound to its head, was... what?... a lion?... No Parbleu!... A donkey!
One of the tiny donkeys so common in Algeria, which there are called
"Bourriquots".

Chapter 17.

Tartarin's first reaction at the sight of his unfortunate victim was
one of annoyance. There is after all a considerable difference between
a lion and a bourriquot. This was quickly replaced by a feeling of pity.
The poor bourriqout was so pretty, so gentle, its warm flanks rising and
falling as it breathed. Tartarin knelt down and with the end of his sash
he tried to staunch the blood from its wound. The sight of this great
man tending the little donkey was the most touching thing you could
imagine. At the soothing contact of the sash, the bourriquot, which
was already at death's door, opened a big grey eye and twitched once
or twice its long ears, as if to say "Thank you!... Thank you!". Then a
final tremor shook it from head to tail and it moved no more.

"Noiraud!... Noiraud!" Came a sudden cry from a strident, anxious voice,
and the branches of some nearby bushes were thrust aside. Tartarin had
barely time to get up and put himself on guard. It was the female!...
She arrived, roaring and terrible, in the guise of an elderly Alsation
lady in a rabbit-skin coat, armed wit