Chapter Chapter 23 · IX. Prince Gregory of Montenegro.
. IX. Prince Gregory of Montenegro.
IT was two long weeks that the unfortunate Tartarin had been seeking his
Algerian flame, and most likely he would have been seeking after her to
this day if the little god kind to lovers had not come to his help under
the shape of a Montenegrin nobleman.
It happened as follows.
Every Saturday night in winter there is a masked ball at the Grand
Theatre of Algiers, just as at the Paris Opera-House. It is the undying
and ever-tasteless county fancy dress ball--very few people on the
floor, several castaways from the Parisian students’ ballrooms or
midnight dance-houses, Joans of Arc following the army, faded characters
out of the Java costume-book of 1840, and half-a-dozen laundress’s
underlings who are aiming to make loftier conquests, but still preserve
a faint perfume of their former life--garlic and saffron sauce. The real
spectacle is not there, but in the green-room, transformed for the nonce
into a hall of green cloth or gaming saloon.
An enfevered and motley mob hustle one another around the long green
table-covers: Turcos out for the day and staking their double halfpence,
Moorish traders from the native town, Negroes, Maltese, colonists from
the inland, who have come forty leagues in order to risk on a turning
card the price of a plough or of a yoke of oxen; all a-quivering, pale,
clenching their teeth, and with that singular, wavering, sidelong look
of the gamester, become a squint from always staring at the same card in
the lay-out.
A little apart are the tribes of Algerian Jews, playing among
acquaintances. The men are in the Oriental costume; hideously varied
with blue stockings and velvet caps. The puffy and flabby women sit up
stiffly in tight golden bodices. Grouped around the tables, the whole
tribe wail, squeal, combine, reckon on the fingers, and play but little.
Now and anon, however, after long conferences, some old patriarch, with
a beard like those of saints by the Old Masters, detaches himself from
the party and goes to risk the family duro. As long as the game
lasted there would be a scintillation of Hebraic eyes directed on the
board--dreadful black diamonds, which made the gold pieces shiver, and
ended by gently attracting them, as if drawn by a thread. Then arose
wrangles, quarrels, battles, oaths of every land, mad outcries in all
tongues, knives flashing out, the guard marching in, and the money
disappearing.
It was into the thick of this saturnalia that the great Tartarin came
straying one evening to find oblivion and heart’s ease.
He was roving alone through the gathering, brooding about his Moorish
beauty, when two angered voices arose suddenly from a gaming-table above
all the clamour and chink of coin.
“I tell you, M’sieu, that I am twenty francs short!”
“Stuff, M’sieu!”
“Stuff yourself; M’sieu!”
“You shall learn whom you are addressing, M’sieu!”
“I am dying to do that, M’sieu!”
“I am Prince Gregory of Montenegro, M’sieu.”
Upon this title Tartarin, much excited, cleft the throng and placed
himself in the foremost rank, proud and happy to find his prince again,
the Montenegrin noble of such politeness whose acquaintance he had begun
on board of the mail steamer. Unfortunately the title of Highness, which
had so dazzled the worthy Tarasconian, did not produce the slightest
impression upon the Chasseurs officer with whom the noble had his
dispute.
“I am much the wiser!” observed the military gentleman sneeringly; and
turning to the bystanders he added: “‘Prince Gregory of Montenegro’--who
knows any such a person? Nobody!”
The indignant Tartarin took one step forward.
“Allow me. I know the prince,” said he, in a very firm voice, and with
his finest Tarasconian accent.
The light cavalry officer eyed him hard for a moment, and then,
shrugging his shoulders, returned:
“Come, that is good! Just you two share the twenty francs lacking
between you, and let us talk no more on the score.”
Whereupon he turned his back upon them and mixed with the crowd. The
stormy Tartarin was going to rush after him, but the prince prevented
that.
“Let him go. I can manage my own affairs.”
Taking the interventionist by the arm, he drew him rapidly out of doors.
When they were upon the square, Prince Gregory of Montenegro lifted his
hat off; extended his hand to our hero, and as he but dimly remembered
his name, he began in a vibrating voice:
“Monsieur Barbarin--”
“Tartarin!” prompted the other, timidly.
“Tartarin, Barbarin, no matter! Between us henceforward it is a league
of life and death!”
The Montenegrin noble shook his hand with fierce energy. You may infer
that the Tarasconian was proud.
“Prince, prince!” he repeated enthusiastically.
In a quarter of an hour subsequently the two gentlemen were installed in
the Platanes Restaurant, an agreeable late supper-house, with terraces
running out over the sea, where, before a hearty Russian salad, seconded
by a nice Crescia wine, they renewed the friendship.
You cannot image any one more bewitching than this Montenegrin prince.
Slender, fine, with crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved “a week
under” and pumice-stoned on that, bestarred with out-of-the-way
decorations, he had the wily eye, the fondling gestures, and vaguely the
accent of an Italian, which gave him an air of Cardinal Mazarin without
his chin-tuft and moustaches. He was deeply versed in the Latin tongues,
and lugged in quotations from Tacitus, Horace, and Caesar’s Commentaries
at every opening.
Of an old noble strain, it appeared that his brothers had had him exiled
at the age of ten, on account of his liberal opinions, since which time
he had roamed the world for pleasure and instruction as a philosophical
noble. A singular coincidence! the prince had spent three years in
Tarascon; and as Tartarin showed amazement at never having met him at
the club or on the esplanade, His Highness evasively remarked that he
never went about. Through delicacy, the Tarasconian did not dare to
question further. All great existences have such mysterious nooks.
To sum up, this Signor Gregory was a very genial aristocrat. Whilst
sipping the rosy Crescia juice he patiently listened to Tartarin’s
expatiating on his lovely Moor, and he even promised to find her
speedily, as he had full knowledge of the native ladies.
They drank hard and lengthily in toasts to “The ladies of Algiers” and
“The freedom of Montenegro!”
Outside, upon the terrace, heaved the sea, and its rollers slapped the
strand in the darkness with much the sound of wet sails flapping. The
air was warm, and the sky full of stars.
In the plane-trees a nightingale was piping.
It was Tartarin who paid the piper.