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At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad gipsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning Negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass and charmed or feigned to charm great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders.
They have suffered the same vicissitudes as Tyre, Sidon, or Alexandria; and like Carthage for ages the emporium of the wealth and commerce of the world, which now exhibits on its site a piratical race of descendants in the modern Tunisians and their neighbors the Algerines the commercial ports of Borneo have become a nest of banditti, and the original inhabitants of both, from similar causes the decay of commerce have degenerated to the modern pirates of the present day.
General WILLIAM EATON, for some years U.S. Consul at Tunis, and commander of the expedition against Tripoli, in 1895, thus gives vent to his feelings at the sight of many hundreds of Sardinians who had been enslaved by the Tunisians: "Many have died of grief, and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death.
The French genius for the dramatic was quite at home in arranging that part of the display; and they did not allow the full effect to suffer for want of some artificial eking out. The kibaubs, pilau and sherbet that were served up in fine Oriental style were not in all cases prepared by Turks, Persians and Tunisians.
At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders.
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.
Charles, however, reaped great glory from an expedition which had but one good result, which was, that he succeeded in rescuing twenty thousand captives; these men, very naturally, on their return to their homes in every corner of Europe, magnified the wonderful deeds of that prince who had been instrumental in securing their release, and the massacre of the Tunisians was conveniently ignored.
Thus war was commenced at the very first moment against the Mussulman prince whom there had been a promise of seeing before long a Christian. At the end of a fortnight, after some fights between the Tunisians and the crusaders, so much political and military blindness produced its natural consequences.
At M. Jansoulet's, what made the work still more difficult for me was the number of foreigners Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Tunisians.
Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled with that exotic element, a whole multicolored Parisian Bohemia of decayed gentlemen, squinting tradesmen, penniless journalists, inventors of strange objects, men from the South landed in Paris without a sou all the tempest-tossed vessels to be revictualled, all the flocks of birds whirling about in the darkness, that were attracted by that great fortune as by the light of a lighthouse.
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