And with this, he made another salaam, smiled persuasively, and said—­

“Alpha, beta, gamma, delta—­chin-chin—­Potz tausend!—­Erin-go-bragh!”

“Borriobooloobah!” shrieked his majesty, apparently stung to desperation.

“Rocofoco!” retorted Mueller promptly.

But as if this last was more than any Ashantee temper could bear, Caraba Rodokala clenched both his fists, set his teeth hard, and charged down upon Mueller like a wild elephant.  Being met, however, by a well-planted blow between the eyes, he went down like a ninepin—­picked himself up,—­rushed in again, and, being forcibly seized and held back by the cocked hat, Pierre of the pigeons, and a third man who came tumbling up precipitately from somewhere behind the stage, vented his fury, in a torrent of very highly civilized French oaths.

“Eh, sacredieu!” he cried, shaking his fist in Mueller’s face, “I’ve not done with you yet, diable de galerien!”

Whereupon there burst forth a general roar—­a roar like the “inextinguishable laughter” of Olympus.

“Tiens!” said Mueller, “his majesty speaks French almost as well as I speak Ashantee!”

“Bourreau!  Brigand!  Assassin!” shrieked his Ferocity, as his friends hustled him off the stage.

The curtains then fell together again; and the audience, still laughing vociferously, dispersed with cries of “Vive Caraba Rodokala!” “Kind remembrances to the Queens of Ashantee!” “What’s the latest news from home?” “Borriobooloo-bah—­ah—­ah!”

Elbowing our way out with the crowd, we now plunged once more into the press of the fair.  Here our old friends the dancing dogs of the Champs Elysees, and the familiar charlatan of the Place du Chatelet with his chariot and barrel-organ, transported us from Ashantee to Paris.  Next we came to a temporary shooting-gallery, adorned over the entrance with a spirited cartoon of a Tyrolean sharpshooter; and then to an exhibition of cosmoramas; and presently to a weighing machine, in which a great, rosy-cheeked, laughing Normandy peasant girl, with her high cap, blue skirt, massive gold cross and heavy ear-rings, was in the act of being weighed.

“Tiens!  Mam’selle est joliment solide!” remarks a saucy bystander, as the owner of the machine piles on weight after weight.

“Perhaps if I had no more brains than m’sieur, I should weigh as light!” retorts the damsel, with a toss of her high cap.

“Pardon! it is not a question of brains—­it is a question of hearts,” interposes an elderly exquisite in a white hat.  “Mam’selle has captured so many that she is completely over weighted.”

“Twelve stone six ounces,” pronounces the owner of the machine, adjusting the last weight.

Whereupon there is a burst of ironical applause, and the big paysanne, half laughing, half angry, walks off, exclaiming, “Eh bien! tant mieux!  I’ve no mind to be a scarecrow—­moi!”