The apparition of Tartarin, haggard, thinned, dusty, his flaming eyes, and the bristling up fez tassel, sharply interrupted this tender Turkish-Marseillais orgie.  Baya piped the low whine of a frightened leveret, and ran for safety into the house.  But Barbassou did not wince; he only laughed the louder, saying: 

“Ha, ha, Monsieur Tartarin!  What do you say to that now?  You see she does know French.”

Tartarin of Tarascon advanced furiously, crying: 

“Captain!”

“Digo-li que vengue, moun bon! —­ Tell him what’s happened, old dear!” screamed the Moorish woman, leaning over the first floor gallery with a pretty low-bred gesture!

The poor man, overwhelmed, let himself collapse upon a drum.  His genuine Moorish beauty not only knew French, but the French of Marseilles!

“I told you not to trust the Algerian girls,” observed Captain Barbassou sententiously!  “They’re as tricky as your Montenegrin prince.”

Tartarin lifted his head

“Do you know where the prince is?”

“Oh, he’s not far off.  He has gone to live five years in the handsome prison of Mustapha.  The rogue let himself be caught with his hand in the pocket.  Anyways, this is not the first time he has been clapped into the calaboose.  His Highness has already done three years somewhere, and —­ stop a bit!  I believe it was at Tarascon.”

“At Tarascon!” cried out her worthiest son, abruptly enlightened.  “That’s how he only knew one part of the Town.”

“Hey?  Of course.  Tarascon —­ a jail bird’s-eye view from the state prison.  I tell you, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, you have to keep your peepers jolly well skinned in this deuce of a country, or be exposed to very disagreeable things.  For a sample, there’s the muezzin’s game with you.”

“What game?  Which muezzin?”

“Why your’n, of course!  The chap across the way who is making up to Baya.  That newspaper, the Akbar, told the yarn t’other day, and all Algiers is laughing over it even now.  It is so funny for that steeplejack up aloft in his crow’s-nest to make declarations of love under your very nose to the little beauty whilst singing out his prayers, and making appointments with her between bits of the Koran.”

“Why, then, they’re all scamps in this country!” howled the unlucky Tarasconian.

Barbassou snapped his fingers like a philosopher.

“My dear lad, you know, these new countries are ‘rum!’ But, anyhow, if you’ll believe me, you’d best cut back to Tarascon at full speed.”

“It’s easy to say, ‘Cut back.’  Where’s the money to come from?  Don’t you know that I was plucked out there in the desert?”

“What does that matter?” said the captain merrily.  “The Zouave sails tomorrow, and if you like I will take you home.  Does that suit you, mate?  Ay?  Then all goes well.  You have only one thing to do.  There are some bottles of fizz left, and half the pie.  Sit you down and pitch in without any grudge.”