In this enterprise the camel did not cast him off.  The strange animal had taken an unaccountable fancy for his master, and on seeing him leave Orleansville, he set to striding steadfastly behind him, regulating his pace by this, and never quitting him by a yard.

At the first outset Tartarin found this touching; such fidelity and devotion above proof went to his heart, all the more because the creature was accommodating, and fed himself on nothing.  Nevertheless, after a few days, the Tarasconian was worried by having this glum companion perpetually at his heels, to remind him of his misadventures.  Ire arising, he hated him for his sad aspect, hump and gait of a goose in harness.  To tell the whole truth, he held him as his Old Man of the Sea, and only pondered on how to shake him off; but the follower would not be shaken off.  Tartarin attempted to lose him, but the camel always found him; he tried to outrun him, but the camel ran faster.  He bade him begone, and hurled stones at him.  The camel stopped with a mournful mien, but in a minute resumed the pursuit, and always ended by overtaking him.  Tartarin had to resign himself.

For all that, when, after eight full days of tramping, the dusty and harassed Tarasconian espied the first white housetops of Algiers glimmer from afar in the verdure, and when he got to the city gates on the noisy Mustapha Avenue, amid the Zouaves, Biskris, and Mahonnais, all swarming around him and staring at him trudging by with his camel, overtasked patience escaped him.

“No! no!” he growled, “it is not likely!  I cannot enter Algiers with such an animal!”

Profiting by a jam of vehicles, he turned off into the fields and jumped into a ditch.  In a minute or so he saw over his head on the highway the camel flying off with long strides and stretching his neck with a wistful air.

Relieved of a great weight thereby, the hero sneaked out of his covert, and entered the town anew by a circuitous path which skirted the wall of his own little garden.

VII.  Catastrophes upon Catastrophes.

Entirely astonished was Tartarin before his Moorish dwelling when he stopped.

Day was dying and the street deserted.  Through the low pointed-arch doorway which the negress had forgotten to close, laughter was heard; and the clink of wine-glasses, the popping of champagne corks; and, floating over all the jolly uproar, a feminine voice singing clearly and joyously: 

“Do you like, Marco la Bella, to dance in the hall hung with bloom?”

“Throne of heaven!” ejaculated the Tarasconian, turning pale, as he rushed into the enclosure.

Hapless Tartarin! what a sight awaited him!  Beneath the arches of the little cloister, amongst bottles, pastry, scattered cushions, pipes, tambourines, and guitars, Baya was singing “Marco la Bella” with a ship captain’s cap over one ear.  She had on no blue vest or bodice; indeed, her only wear was a silvery gauze wrapper and full pink trousers.  At her feet, on a rug, surfeited with love and sweetmeats, Barbassou, the infamous skipper Barbassou, was bursting with laughter at hearing her.