there, yatagan in hand, he declared himself ready to enter the lists in combat against those who should still maintain the truth of the news.  As these continual threats might endanger him, (for they had no support beyond his mere animal courage,) we had wished to render him expert in the handling of arms by giving him some lessons in fencing; but he could not endure the idea that Christians should touch him at every turn with foils; he therefore proposed to substitute for the simulated duel a real combat with the yatagan.

One may gain an exact idea of this savage nature when I mention that, having one day heard a pistol-shot, the sound of which proceeded from his room, people ran, and found him bathed in his blood; he had just shot off a ball into his arm to cure himself of a rheumatic pain.

Seeing with what facility the Deys disappeared, I said one day to our janissary, “With this prospect before your eyes, would you consent to become Dey?” “Yes, doubtless,” answered he.  “You seem to count as nothing the pleasure of doing all that one likes, if only even for a single day!”

When we wished to take a turn in the town of Algiers, we generally took care to be escorted by the janissary attached to the consular house; it was the only means of escaping insults, affronts, and even acts of violence.  I have just said it was the only means.  I made a mistake; there was one other; that was, to go in the company of a French “lazarist” of seventy years of age, and whose name, if my memory serves me, was Father Joshua; he had lived in this country for half a century.  This man, of exemplary virtue, had devoted himself with admirable self-denial to the service of the slaves of the Regency, and had divested himself of all considerations of nationality;—­the Portuguese, Neapolitans, Sicilians, all were equally his brethren.

In the times of plague he was seen day and night carrying eager help to the Mussulmans; thus, his virtue had conquered even religious hatreds; and wherever he passed, he and the persons who might accompany him received from multitudes of the people, from the janissaries, and even from the officials of the mosques, the most respectful salutations.

During our long hours of sailing on board the Algerine vessel, and our compulsory stay in the prisons at Rosas, and on the hulk at Palamos, I gathered some ideas as to the interior life of the Moors or the Coulouglous, which, even now when Algiers has fallen under the dominion of France, would perhaps be yet worth preserving.  I shall, however, confine myself to recounting, nearly word for word, a conversation which I had with Rais Braham, whose father was a “Turc fin,” that is to say, a Turk born in the Levant.

“How is it that you consent,” said I to him, “to marry a young girl whom you have never seen, and find in her, perhaps, an excessively ugly woman, instead of the beauty whom you had fancied to yourself?”

“We never marry without having obtained information from the women who serve in the capacity of servants at the public baths.  The Jewesses are moreover, in these cases, very useful go-betweens.”