nce call the Algerian
railways."

Here the ancient vehicle heaved a long-drawn sigh before proceeding. "My
wheels and linchpin! Monsieur Tartarin, how I regret my lovely Tarascon!
That was the good time for me, when I was young!--You ought to have seen
me starting off in the morning, washed with no stint of water and all
a-shine, with my wheels freshly varnished, my lamps blazing like a brace
of suns, and my boot always rubbed up with oil! It was indeed lovely
when the postillion cracked his whip to the tune of 'Lagadigadeou, the
Tarasque! the Tarasque!' and the guard, his horn in its sling and laced
cap cocked well over one ear, chucking his little dog, always in a fury,
upon the top, climbed up himself with a shout: 'Right-away!'

"Then would my four horses dash off to the medley of bells, barks, and
horn-blasts, and the windows fly open for all Tarascon to look with
pride upon the royal mail coach dart over the king's highway.

"What a splendid road that was, Monsieur Tartarin, broad and well
kept, with its mile-stones, its little heaps of road-metal at regular
distances, and its pretty clumps of vines and olive-trees on either
hand! Then, again, the roadside inns so close together, and the changes
of horses every five minutes! And what jolly, honest chaps my patrons
were!--village mayors and parish priests going up to Nimes to see their
prefect or bishop, taffety-weavers returning openly from the Mazet,
collegians out on holiday leave, peasants in worked smock-frocks, all
fresh shaven for the occasion that morning; and up above, on the top,
you gentlemen-sportsmen, always in high spirits, and singing each your
own family ballad to the stars as you came back in the dark.

"Deary me! it's a change of times now! Lord knows what rubbish I am
carting here, come from nobody guesses where! They fill me with small
deer, these negroes, Bedouin Arabs, swashbucklers, adventurers from
every land, and ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and all
jabbering a language that the Tower of Babel itself could make nothing
of! And, furthermore, you should see how they treat me--I mean, how they
never treat me: never a brush or a wash. They begrudge me grease for my
axles. Instead of my good fat quiet horses of other days, little Arab
ponies, with the devil in their frames, who fight and bite, caper
as they run like so many goats, and break my splatterboard all to
smithereens with their lashing out behind. Ouch! ouch! there