The expedition lasted for a month.  For a whole month, Tartarin, hunting for non-existent lions, wandered from village to village in the immense plain of the Chetiff, across this extraordinary, cock-eyed French Algeria, where the perfumes of ancient Araby are mingled with a powerful stink of Absinthe and barrack-room; Abraham and Zouzou combined, a strange mixture like a page of the Old Testament rewritten by Sergeant Le Ramee or Corporal Pitou....  A curious spectacle for those who would care to look....  A savage and decadent people whom we are civilising by giving them our own vices.  The cruel and uncontrolled authority of Pashas, inflated with self-importance in their cordons of the legion of honour, who at their whim have people beaten on the soles of their feet.  The so-called justice of bespectacled Cadis, traitors to the koran and to the law, who sell their judgements as did Esau his birthright for a plate of cous-cous.  Drunken and libertine headmen, former batmen to General Yussif someone or other, who guzzle champagne in the company of harlots, and indulge in feasts of roast mutton, while before their tents the whole tribe is starving and disputes with the dogs the leavings of the seigniorial banquet.

Then, all around, uncultivated plain.  Scorched grass.  Bushes bare of leaves.  Scrub.  Cactus.  Mastic trees...  The granary of France?...  A granary empty of grain and rich only in jackals and bugs.  Abandoned villages.  Bewildered tribesfolk who run they know not where, fleeing from famine and sowing corpses along the road.  Here and there a French settlement, the houses dilapidated, the fields untilled and raging hordes of locusts who eat the very curtains from the windows, while the colonists are all in cafes, drinking absinthe and discussing projects for the reform of the constitution.

That is what Tartarin could have seen, if he had taken the trouble, but obsessed with his fantasy the man from Tarascon marched straight ahead, his vision limited to searching for these monstrous felines, of which there was no trace.

Since the bivouac tent obstinately refused to open and the pemmican tablets to dissolve, the hunting party was compelled to stop daily at tribal villages.  Everywhere, thanks to the prince’s kepi, they were received with open arms.  They were lodged by chieftains in strange palaces, great white buildings without windows, where were piled up hookahs and mahogany commodes, Smyrna carpets and adjustable oil lamps, cedar-wood chests full of Turkish sequins and clocks decorated in the style of Louis Phillipe.  Everywhere Tartarin was treated to fetes and official receptions.  In his honour whole villages turned out, firing volleys in the air, their burnous gleaming in the sun:  after which the good chieftain would come to present the bill.

Nowhere, however, were there any more lions than there are on the Pont Neuf in Paris:  but Tartarin was not discouraged, he pushed bravely on to the south.  His days were spent scouring the scrub, rummaging among the dwarf palms with the end of his carbine and going “Frt!...  Frt!” At each bush...  Then every evening a stand-to of two or three hours...  A wasted effort.  No lions appeared.