Tartarin’s first feeling was one of vexation.  There is such a difference between a lion and an ass, and the poor little creature looked so innocent.  The great hunter knelt down and tried to stanch the donkey’s wounds, and it seemed grateful to him, for it feebly flapped its long ears two or three times before it lay still for ever.

Suddenly a voice was heard calling, “Noiraud!  Noiraud!” It was “the female.”  She came in the form of an old French woman with a large red umbrella, and it would have been better for Tartarin to have faced a female lion.

When the unhappy man tried to explain how he had mistaken her little donkey for a lion, she thought he was making fun of her, and belaboured him with her umbrella.  When her husband came on the scene the matter was soon adjusted by Tartarin agreeing to pay eight pounds for the damage he had done, the price of the donkey being really something like eight shillings.  The donkey owner was an inn-keeper, and the sight of Tartarin’s money made him quite friendly.  He invited the lion-hunter to have some food at the inn with him before he left.  And as they walked thither he was amazed to be told by the inn-keeper that he had never seen a lion there in twenty years!

Clearly, the lions were to be looked for further south.  “I’ll make tracks for the south, too,” said Tartarin to himself.  But he first of all returned to his hotel in an omnibus.  Think of it!  But before he was to go south on the high adventure, he loafed about the city of Algiers for some time, going to the theatres and other places of amusement, where he met Prince Gregory of Montenegro, with whom he made friends.

One day the captain of the Zouave came across him in the town, and showed him a note about himself in a Tarascon newspaper.  This spoke of the uncertainty that prevailed as to the fate of the great hunter, and wound up with these words: 

“Some Negro traders state, however, that they met in the open desert a European whose description answers to that of Tartarin, and who was making tracks for Timbuctoo.  May Heaven guard for us our hero!”

Tartarin went red and white by turns as he read this, and realised that he was in for it.  He very much wished to return to his beloved Tarascon, but to go there without having shot some lions—­one at least—­was impossible, and so it was Southward ho!

III.—­Tartarin’s Adventures in the Desert

The lion-hunter was keenly disappointed, after a very long journey in the stage-coach, to be told that there was not a lion left in all Algeria, though a few panthers might still be found worth shooting.

He got out at the town of Milianah, and let the coach go on, as he thought he might as well take things easily if, after all, there were no lions to be shot.  To his amazement, however, he came across a real live lion at the door of a cafe.