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"Take me away," his sad eyes seemed to say, "take me away in your ship, far, far from this sham Arabia, this ridiculous Land of the East, full of locomotives and stage coaches, where a camel is so sorely out of keeping that I do not know what will become of me. You are the last real Turk, and I am the last camel. Do not let us part, O my Tartarin!" "Is that camel yours?" the captain inquired.
On hearing this, the whole club would quiver. "But according to that, this Tartarin of yours is an awful liar." "No, no, a thousand times over, no! Tartarin was no liar." "But the man ought to know that he has never been to Shanghai" "Why, of course, he knows that; but still" "But still," you see mark that!
"It never went off" you will catch the drift. In less than no time, this ditty became popular; and when Tartarin came by, the longshoremen and the little shoeblacks before his door sang in chorus "Muster Jarvey's roifle Allus gittin' chaarged; Muster Jarvey's roifle 'il hev to git enlaarged; Muster Jarvey's roifle's Loaded oft don't scoff; Muster Jarvey's roifle Nivver do go off!"
To his amazement, however, he came across a real live lion at the door of a café. "What made them say there were no more lions?" he cried, astounded at the sight. The lion lifted in its mouth a wooden bowl from the pavement, and a passing Arab threw a copper in the bowl, at which the lion wagged its tail. Suddenly the truth dawned on Tartarin.
As the lady did not understand French and Tartarin did not speak a word of Arabic, conversation languished somewhat and the talkative Tarasconais had time to repent of any intemperate loquaciousness of which he might have been guilty at Bezuquet's pharmacy or Costecalde the gunsmith's shop. This penance even had a certain charm.
Tartarin was determined to get back to Algiers, even if it meant walking. He longed to see once more Baia's blue corslet, his house, his fountain and to rest on the white tiles of his his little cloister while he awaited money to be sent from France. In these circumstances the camel did not desert him.
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.
The Mustapha highroad seemed, unfortunately, to have stretched since overnight; and what a sun and dust there were, and what a weight in that shelter-tent! Tartarin did not feel to have the courage to walk to the town, and he beckoned to the first omnibus coming along, and climbed in.
That is what Tartarin could have seen, if he had taken the trouble, but obsessed with his fantasy the man from Tarascon marched straight ahead, his vision limited to searching for these monstrous felines, of which there was no trace. Since the bivouac tent obstinately refused to open and the pemmican tablets to dissolve, the hunting party was compelled to stop daily at tribal villages.
On hearing this exclamation the lion lowered its head, and taking in its jaws the wooden begging bowl which lay on the pavement before it, extended it humbly in the direction of Tartarin, who was paralyzed by astonishment... a passing Arab tossed in a few coppers. Then Tartarin understood.
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