glass up,
in which she reflected her white teeth and the faces she made.

As the Esmeralda did not know a word of French, and Tartarin none in
Arabic, the conversation died away sometimes, and the Tarasconian had
plenty of leisure to do penance for the gush of language of which he had
been guilty in the shop of Bezuquet the chemist or that of Costecalde
the gunmaker.

But this penance was not devoid of charm, for he felt a kind of
enjoyable sullenness in dawdling away the whole day without speaking,
and in listening to the gurgling of the hookah, the strumming of the
guitar, and the faint splashing of the fountain on the mosaic pavement
of the yard.

The pipe, the bath, and caresses filled his entire life. They seldom
went out of doors. Sometimes with his lady-love upon a pillion, Sidi
Tart'ri would ride upon a sturdy mule to eat pomegranates in a little
garden he had purchased in the suburbs. But never, without exception,
did he go down into the European quarter. This kind of Algiers appeared
to him as ugly and unbearable as a barracks at home, with its Zouaves
in revelry, its music-halls crammed with officers, and its everlasting
clank of metal sabre-sheaths under the arcades.

The sum total is, that our Tarasconian was very happy.

Sancho-Tartarin particularly, being very sweet upon Turkish pastry,
declared that one could not be more satisfied than by this new
existence. Quixote-Tartarin had some twinges at whiles on thinking of
Tarascon and the promises of lion-skins; but this remorse did not last,
and to drive away such dampening ideas there sufficed one glance
from Baya, or a spoonful of those diabolical dizzying and odoriferous
sweetmeats like Circe's brews.

In the evening Gregory came to discourse a little about a free Black
Mountain. Of indefatigable obligingness, this amiable nobleman filled
the functions of an interpreter in the household, or those of a steward
at a pinch, and all for nothing for the sheer pleasure of it. Apart from
him, Tartarin received none but "Turks." All those fierce-headed pirates
who had given him such frights from the backs of their black stalls
turned out, when once he made their acquaintance, to be good
inoffensive tradesmen, embroiderers, dealers in spice, pipe-mouthpiece
turners--well-bred fellows, humble, clever, close, and first-class hands
at homely card games. Four or five times a week these gentry would
come and spend the evening at Sidi Tart'ri's, winning his small