Chapter Chapter 22 · VIII. Ye Lions of the Atlas, repose in peace!

. VIII. Ye Lions of the Atlas, repose in peace!

LIONS of the Atlas, sleep!--sleep tranquilly at the back of your lairs

amid the aloes and cacti. For a few days to come, any way, Tartarin

of Tarascon will not massacre you. For the time being, all his warlike

paraphernalia, gun-cases, medicine chest, alimentary preserves, dwelt

peacefully under cover in a corner of room 36 in the Hotel de l’Europe.

Sleep with no fear, great red lions, the Tarasconian is engaged in

looking up that Moorish charmer. Since the adventure in the omnibus,

the unfortunate swain perpetually fancied he felt the fidgeting of

that pretty red mouse upon his huge backwoods trapper’s foot; and the

sea-breeze fanning his lips was ever scented, do what he would, with a

love-exciting odour of sweet cakes and patchouli.

He hungered for his indispensable light of the harem! and he meant to

behold her anew.

But it was no joke of a task. To find one certain person in a city of

a hundred thousand souls, only known by the eyes, breath, and

slipper,--none but a son of Tarascon, panoplied by love, would be

capable of attempting such an adventure.

The plague is that, under their broad white mufflers, all the Moorish

women resemble one another; besides, they do not go about much, and to

see them, a man has to climb up into the native or upper town, the city

of the “Turks,” and that is a regular cut-throat’s den.

Little black alleys, very narrow, climbing perpendicularly up between

mysterious house-walls, whose roofs lean to touching and form a tunnel;

low doors, and sad, silent little casements well barred and grated.

Moreover, on both hands, stacks of darksome stalls, wherein ferocious

“Turks” smoked long pipes stuck between glittering teeth in piratical

heads with white eyes, and mumbled in undertones as if hatching wicked

attacks.

To say that Tartarin traversed this grisly place without any emotion

would be putting forth falsehood. On the contrary, he was much

affected, and the stout fellow only went up the obscure lanes, where his

corporation took up all the width, with the utmost precaution, his eye

skinned, and his finger on his revolver trigger, in the same manner as

he went to the clubhouse at Tarascon. At any moment he expected to have

a whole gang of eunuchs and janissaries drop upon his back, yet the

longing to behold that dark damsel again gave him a giant’s strength and

boldness.

For a full week the undaunted Tartarin never quitted the high town. Yes;

for all that period he might have been seen cooling his heels before

the Turkish bath-houses, awaiting the hour when the ladies came forth in

troops, shivering and still redolent of soap and hot water; or squatting

at the doorways of mosques, puffing and melting in trying to get out of

his big boots in order to enter the temples.

Betimes at nightfall, when he was returning heart-broken at not having

discovered anything at either bagnio or mosque, our man from Tarascon,

in passing mansions, would hear monotonous songs, smothered twanging

of guitars, thumping of tambourines, and feminine laughter-peals, which

would make his heart beat.

“Haply she is there!” he would say to himself.

Thereupon, granting the street was unpeopled, he would go up to one of

these dwellings, lift the heavy knocker of the low postern, and timidly

rap. The songs and merriment would instantly cease. There would be

audible behind the wall nothing excepting low, dull flutterings as in a

slumbering aviary.

“Let’s stick to it, old boy,” our hero would think. “Something will

befall us yet.”

What most often befell him was the contents of the cold-water jug on

the head, or else peel of oranges and Barbary figs; never anything more

serious.

Well might the lions of the Atlas Mountains doze in peace.