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Updated: June 24, 2025
Tarascon, veil thy face! here is a son of thine on the point of becoming a renegade! XII. The Latest Intelligence from Tarascon. PARTING from his little country seat, Sidi Tart'ri was returning alone on his mule on a fine afternoon, when the sky was blue and the zephyrs warm. His legs were kept wide apart by ample saddle-bags of esparto cloth, swelled out with cedrats and water-melons.
If you go in the evening into some of the coffee-houses of the Algerian upper town, you will hear even today, Moors speak among themselves, with winks and chuckles, of a certain Sidi ben Tart'ri, an amiable, rich European who it now some years ago lived in the upper town with a little local girl called Baia. This Sidi ben Tart'ri was of course none other than Tartarin. Well what could you expect.
Only the time to inspect his armament and stores, don his harness, get into his heavy boots, scribble a couple of words to confide Baya to the prince, and slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears into the envelope, and then the dauntless Tarasconian rolled away in the stage-coach on the Blidah road, leaving the house to the negress, stupor-stricken before the pipe, the turban, and babooshes all the Moslem shell of Sidi Tart'ri which sprawled piteously under the little white trefoils of the gallery.
There was just time enough to inspect his equipment, to don his arms and accoutrements, to put on his big boots, to write a few lines to prince Gregory, confiding Baia to his care, to slip into an envelope some banknotes, wet with tears, and the intrepid Tarasconais was in a stage-coach, rolling down the road to Blidah, leaving the stupefied negress in his house, gazing at the turban, the slippers and all the muslim rig-out of Sidi Tart'ri, hanging discarded on the wall.
Four or five times a week these gentry would come and spend the evening at Sidi Tart'ri's, winning his small change, eating his cakes and dainties, and delicately retiring on the stroke of ten with thanks to the Prophet. Left alone, Sidi Tart'ri and his faithful spouse by the broomstick wedding would finish the evening on their terrace, a broad white roof which overlooked the city.
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