avering, sidelong look
of the gamester, become a squint from always staring at the same card in
the lay-out.

A little apart are the tribes of Algerian Jews, playing among
acquaintances. The men are in the Oriental costume; hideously varied
with blue stockings and velvet caps. The puffy and flabby women sit up
stiffly in tight golden bodices. Grouped around the tables, the whole
tribe wail, squeal, combine, reckon on the fingers, and play but little.
Now and anon, however, after long conferences, some old patriarch, with
a beard like those of saints by the Old Masters, detaches himself from
the party and goes to risk the family duro. As long as the game
lasted there would be a scintillation of Hebraic eyes directed on the
board--dreadful black diamonds, which made the gold pieces shiver, and
ended by gently attracting them, as if drawn by a thread. Then arose
wrangles, quarrels, battles, oaths of every land, mad outcries in all
tongues, knives flashing out, the guard marching in, and the money
disappearing.

It was into the thick of this saturnalia that the great Tartarin came
straying one evening to find oblivion and heart's ease.

He was roving alone through the gathering, brooding about his Moorish
beauty, when two angered voices arose suddenly from a gaming-table above
all the clamour and chink of coin.

"I tell you, M'sieu, that I am twenty francs short!"

"Stuff, M'sieu!"

"Stuff yourself; M'sieu!"

"You shall learn whom you are addressing, M'sieu!"

"I am dying to do that, M'sieu!"

"I am Prince Gregory of Montenegro, M'sieu."

Upon this title Tartarin, much excited, cleft the throng and placed
himself in the foremost rank, proud and happy to find his prince again,
the Montenegrin noble of such politeness whose acquaintance he had begun
on board of the mail steamer. Unfortunately the title of Highness, which
had so dazzled the worthy Tarasconian, did not produce the slightest
impression upon the Chasseurs officer with whom the noble had his
dispute.

"I am much the wiser!" observed the military gentleman sneeringly; and
turning to the bystanders he added: "'Prince Gregory of Montenegro'--who
knows any such a person? Nobody!"

The indignant Tartarin took one step forward.

"Allow me. I know the prince," said he, in a very firm voice, and with
his finest Tarasconian accent.

The light cavalry officer eyed him hard for a moment, and then,
shrugging his shoulders, returned:

"Come, that is good!