Chương Chương 17 · III. An Invocation to Cervantes--The Disembarkation--Where are the

. III. An Invocation to Cervantes--The Disembarkation--Where are the

Turks?--Not a sign of them--Disenchantment

O MIGUEL CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, if what is asserted be true, to wit,

that wherever great men have dwelt some emanation of their spirits

wanderingly hovers until the end of ages, then what remained of your

essence on the Barbary coast must have quivered with glee on beholding

Tartarin of Tarascon disembark, that marvellous type of the French

Southerner, in whom was embodied both heroes of your work, Don Quixote

and Sancho Panza.

The air was sultry on this occasion. On the wharf, ablaze with sunshine,

were half a dozen revenue officers, some Algerians expecting news from

France, several squatting Moors who drew at long pipes, and some Maltese

mariners dragging large nets, between the meshes of which thousands of

sardines glittered like small silver coins.

But hardly had Tartarin set foot on earth before the quay sprang into

life and changed its aspect. A horde of savages, still more hideous than

the pirates upon the steamer, rose between the stones on the strand and

rushed upon the new-comer. Tall Arabs were there, nude under woollen

blankets, little Moors in tatters, Negroes, Tunisians, Port Mahonese,

M’zabites, hotel servants in white aprons, all yelling and shouting,

hooking on his clothes, fighting over his luggage, one carrying away the

provender, another his medicine-chest, and pelting him in one fantastic

medley with the names of preposterously-entitled hotels.

Bewildered by all this tumult, poor Tartarin wandered to and fro, swore

and stormed, went mad, ran after his property, and not knowing how

to make these barbarians understand him, speechified them in French,

Provencal, and even in dog Latin: “Rosa, the rose; bonus, bona,

bonum!”--all that he knew--but to no purpose. He was not heeded.

Happily, like a god in Homer, intervened a little fellow in a

yellow-collared tunic, and armed with a long running-footman’s cane, who

dispersed the whole riff-raff with cudgel-play. He was a policeman of

the Algerian capital. Very politely, he suggested Tartarin should put up

at the Hotel de l’Europe, and he confided him to its waiters, who carted

him and his impedimenta thither in several barrows.

At the first steps he took in Algiers, Tartarin of Tarascon opened his

eyes widely. Beforehand he had pictured it as an Oriental city--a fairy

one, mythological, something between Constantinople and Zanzibar; but

it was back into Tarascon he fell. Cafes, restaurants, wide streets,

four-storey houses, a little market-place, macadamised, where the

infantry band played Offenbachian polkas, whilst fashionably clad

gentlemen occupied chairs, drinking beer and eating pancakes, some

brilliant ladies, some shady ones, and soldiers--more soldiers--no end

of soldiers, but not a solitary Turk, or, better to say, there was a

solitary Turk, and that was he.

Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the square, for everybody

looked at him. The musicians stopped, the Offenbachian polka halting

with one foot in the air.

With both guns on his shoulders, and the revolver flapping on his

hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, Tartarin gravely passed

through the groups; but on arriving at the hotel his powers failed

him. All spun and mingled in his head: the departure from Tarascon, the

harbour of Marseilles, the voyage, the Montenegrin prince, the corsairs.

They had to help him up into a room and disarm and undress him. They

began to talk of sending for a medical adviser; but hardly was our

hero’s head upon the pillow than he set to snoring, so loudly and so

heartily that the landlord judged the succour of science useless, and

everybody considerately withdrew.