Part 12 (1/2)
”Faith! you wear the look of a good sort of fellow, so I would, rather than not, let you have it. Get you back quickly to Tarascon, Monsieur Tartarin, for you are wasting your time here. There do remain a few panthers in the colony, but, out upon the big cats! they are too small game for you. As for lion-hunting, that's all over. There are none left in Algeria, my friend Cha.s.saing having lately knocked over the last.”
Upon which the little gentleman saluted, closed the door, and trotted away chuckling, with his doc.u.ment-wallet and umbrella.
”Guard,” asked Tartarin, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his face contemptuously, ”who under the sun is that poor little mannikin?”
”What! don't you know him? Why, that there's Monsieur Bombonnel!”
III. A Monastery of Lions.
AT Milianah, Tartarin of Tarascon alighted, leaving the stage-coach to continue its way towards the South.
Two days' rough jolting, two nights spent with eyes open to spy out of window if there were not discoverable the dread figure of a lion in the fields beyond the road--so much sleeplessness well deserved some hours repose. Besides, if we must tell everything, since his misadventure with Bombonnel, the outspoken Tartarin felt ill at ease, notwithstanding his weapons, his terrifying visage, and his red cap, before the Orleansville photographer and the two ladies fond of the military.
So he proceeded through the broad streets of Milianah, full of fine trees and fountains; but whilst looking up a suitable hotel, the poor fellow could not help musing over Bombonnel's words. Suppose they were true! Suppose there were no more lions in Algeria? What would be the good then of so much running about and fatigue?
Suddenly, at the turn of a street, our hero found himself face to face with--with what? Guess! ”A donkey, of course!” A donkey? A splendid lion this time, waiting before a coffee-house door, royally sitting up on his hind-quarters, with his tawny mane gleaming in the sun.
”What possessed them to tell me that there were no more of them?”
exclaimed the Tarasconian, as he made a backward jump.
On hearing this outcry the lion lowered his head, and taking up in his mouth a wooden bowl that was before him on the footway, humbly held it out towards Tartarin, who was immovable with stupefaction. A pa.s.sing Arab tossed a copper into the bowl, and the lion wagged his tail.
Thereupon Tartarin understood it all. He saw what emotion had prevented him previously perceiving: that the crowd was gathered around a poor tame blind lion, and that two stalwart Negroes, armed with staves, were marching him through the town as a Savoyard does a marmot.
The blood of Tarascon boiled over at once.
”Wretches that you are!” he roared in a voice of thunder, ”thus to debase such n.o.ble beasts!”
Springing to the lion, he wrenched the loathsome bowl from between his royal jaws. The two Africans, believing they had a thief to contend with, rushed upon the foreigner with uplifted cudgels. There was a dreadful conflict: the blackamoors smiting, the women screaming, and the youngsters laughing. An old Jew cobbler bleated out of the hollow of his stall, ”Dake him to the shustish of the beace!” The lion himself; in his dark state, tried to roar as his hapless champion, after a desperate struggle, rolled on the ground among the spilt pence and the sweepings.
At this juncture a man cleft the throng, made the Negroes stand back with a word, and the women and urchins with a wave of the hand, lifted up Tartarin, brushed him down, shook him into shape, and sat him breathless upon a corner-post.
”What, prince, is it you?” said the good Tartarin, rubbing his ribs.
”Yes, indeed, it is I, my valiant friend. As soon as your letter was received, I entrusted Baya to her brother, hired a post-chaise, flew fifty leagues as fast as a horse could go, and here I am, just in time to s.n.a.t.c.h you from the brutality of these ruffians. What have you done, in the name of just Heaven, to bring this ugly trouble upon you?”
”What done, prince? It was too much for me to see this unfortunate lion with a begging-bowl in his mouth, humiliated, conquered, buffeted about, set up as a laughing-stock to all this Moslem rabble”--
”But you are wrong, my n.o.ble friend. On the contrary, this lion is an object of respect and adoration. This is a sacred beast who belongs to a great monastery of lions, founded three hundred years ago by Mahomet Ben Aouda, a kind of fierce and forbidding La Trappe, full of roarings and wild-beastly odours, where strange monks rear and feed lions by hundreds, and send them out all over Northern Africa, accompanied by begging brothers. The alms they receive serve for the maintenance of the monastery and its mosques; and the two Negroes showed so much displeasure just now because it was their conviction that the lion under their charge would forthwith devour them if a single penny of their collection were lost or stolen through any fault of theirs.”
On hearing this incredible and yet veracious story Tartarin of Tarascon was delighted, and sniffed the air noisily. ”What pleases me in this,”
he remarked, as the summing up of his opinion, ”is that, whether Monsieur Bombonnel likes it or not, there are still lions in Algeria.”--
”I should think there were!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the prince enthusiastically.
”We will start to-morrow beating up the Sh.e.l.liff Plain, and you will see lions enough!”