United States or El Salvador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Low doorways and small windows, opaque and barred, and then, to right and left, little shops within whose deep shade fierce "Teurs" with piratical faces, glittering eyes and gleaming teeth, smoke their hookahs and converse in low tones, as if planning some wicked deed.... To say that Tartarin walked through this fearsome township unmoved would be to lie.

All passing in a great cloud of dust, with cries, songs and trumpet calls, between two rows of miserable shacks, where could be seen prostitutes applying their make-up at their doors, tap-rooms full of soldiers and the stalls of butchers and slaughtermen. The tales I have been told about this place are quite untrue, thought Tartarin, there are fewer "Teurs" here than there are in Marseille.

Never had they seen one like this before, though God knows there is no shortage of Teurs in Marseille. The Teur, need I tell you, was none other than Tartarin de Tarascon, who was proceeding down the quay followed by his case of arms, his medicine chest and his preserved foods, in search of the embarkation point of the Compagnie Touache and the ferry-boat "Le Zouave" which was to carry him away.

To make matters worse, it must be confessed that beneath their masks all Moorish ladies tend to look very much the same; and then they do not go out a great deal, and if one wants to see them one must go to the upper town, the Arab town, the town of the Teurs. A real cut-throat place that upper town.

Of indefatigable complaisance, this agreeable nobleman undertook in the house the function of interpreter and, if need be, even that of steward, and all for nothing. Apart from him, Tartarin had only "Teurs" as visitors.