nd--down
South, you know"--

At this point they reached the hostelry, a suburban pothouse, with a
withered green bough over the door, crossed billiard-cues painted on the
wall, and this harmless sign over a picture of wild rabbits, feeding:

"GAME FELLOWS MEET HERE."

"Game fellows!" It made Tartarin think of Captain Bravida.

VII. About an Omnibus, a Moorish Beauty, and a Wreath of Jessamine.

COMMON people would have been discouraged by such a first adventure, but
men of Tartarin's mettle do not easily get cast down.

"The lions are in the South, are they?" mused the hero. "Very well,
then. South I go."

As soon as he had swallowed his last mouthful he jumped up, thanked his
host, nodded good-bye to the old hag without any ill-will, dropped a
final tear over the hapless Blackey, and quickly returned to Algiers,
with the firm intention of packing up and starting that very day for the
South.

The Mustapha highroad seemed, unfortunately, to have stretched since
overnight; and what a sun and dust there were, and what a weight in that
shelter-tent! Tartarin did not feel to have the courage to walk to the
town, and he beckoned to the first omnibus coming along, and climbed in.

Oh, our poor Tartarin of Tarascon! how much better it would have been
for his name and fame not to have stepped into that fatal ark on
wheels, but to have continued on his road afoot, at the risk of falling
suffocated beneath the burden of the atmosphere, the tent, and his heavy
double-barrelled rifles.

When Tartarin got in the 'bus was full. At the end, with his nose in his
prayer-book, sat a large and black-bearded vicar from town; facing him
was a young Moorish merchant smoking coarse cigarettes, and a Maltese
sailor and four or five Moorish women muffled up in white cloths, so
that only their eyes could be spied.

These ladies had been to offer up prayers in the Abdel Kader cemetery;
but this funereal visit did not seem to have much saddened them, for
they could be heard chuckling and chattering between themselves under
their coverings whilst munching pastry. Tartarin fancied that they
watched him narrowly. One in particular, seated over against him, had
fixed her eyes upon his, and never took them off all the drive. Although
the dame was veiled, the liveliness of the big black eyes, lengthened
out by k'hol; a delightfully slender wrist loaded with gold bracelets,
of which a glimpse was given from time to time among the fold