--

"But you are wrong, my noble friend. On the contrary, this lion is an
object of respect and adoration. This is a sacred beast who belongs to a
great monastery of lions, founded three hundred years ago by Mahomet Ben
Aouda, a kind of fierce and forbidding La Trappe, full of roarings
and wild-beastly odours, where strange monks rear and feed lions by
hundreds, and send them out all over Northern Africa, accompanied by
begging brothers. The alms they receive serve for the maintenance of
the monastery and its mosques; and the two Negroes showed so much
displeasure just now because it was their conviction that the lion under
their charge would forthwith devour them if a single penny of their
collection were lost or stolen through any fault of theirs."

On hearing this incredible and yet veracious story Tartarin of Tarascon
was delighted, and sniffed the air noisily. "What pleases me in this,"
he remarked, as the summing up of his opinion, "is that, whether
Monsieur Bombonnel likes it or not, there are still lions in Algeria."--

"I should think there were!" ejaculated the prince enthusiastically.
"We will start to-morrow beating up the Shelliff Plain, and you will see
lions enough!"

"What, prince! have you an intention to go a-hunting, too?"

"Of course! Do you think I am going to leave you to march by yourself
into the heart of Africa, in the midst of ferocious tribes of whose
languages and usages you are ignorant! No, no, illustrious Tartarin,
I shall quit you no more. Go where you will, I shall make one of the
party."

"O Prince! prince!"

The beaming Tartarin hugged the devoted Gregory to his breast at the
proud thought of his going to have a foreign prince to accompany him
in his hunting, after the example of Jules Gerard, Bombonnel, and other
famous lion-slayers.

IV. The Caravan on the March.

LEAVING Milianah at the earliest hour next morning, the intrepid
Tartarin and the no less intrepid Prince Gregory descended towards
the Shelliff Plain through a delightful gorge shaded with jessamine,
carouba, tuyas, and wild olive-trees, between hedges of little native
gardens and thousands of merry, lively rills which scampered down from
rock to rock with a singing splash--a bit of landscape meet for the
Lebanon.

As much loaded with arms as the great Tartarin, Prince Gregory had, over
and above that, donned a queer but magnificent military cap, all covered
with gold lace and a trimming of oak-leaves in