times a good way off to a village to solicit
the permission without which it would have been dangerous to continue
our route. He remained entire hours without returning to us, and we then
had occasion to reflect sadly on the imprudence of our enterprise. We
generally slept amongst habitations. Once, we found the streets of a
village barricaded, because they were fearing an attack from a
neighbouring village. The foremost man of our caravan removed the
obstacles; but a woman came out of her house like a fury, and belaboured
us with blows from a pole. We remarked that she was fair, of brilliant
whiteness, and very pretty.

Another time we lay down in a lurking-place dignified by the beautiful
name of caravansary. In the morning, when the sun rose, cries of
"_Roumi! Roumi!_" warned us that we had been discovered. The sailor,
Mehemet, he who figured in the scene of the oath at Palamos, entered in
a melancholy mood the enclosure where we were together, and made us
understand that the cries of "Roumi!" vociferated under these
circumstances, were equivalent to a sentence of death. "Wait," said he;
"a means of saving you has occurred to me." Mehemet entered some moments
afterwards, told us that his means had succeeded, and invited me to join
the Kabyls, who were going to say prayers.

I accordingly went out, and prostrated myself towards the East. I
imitated minutely the gestures which I saw made around me, pronouncing
the sacred words,--_La elah il Allah! oua Mahommed racoul Allah!_ It was
the scene of Mamamouchi of the "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," which I had so
often seen acted by Dugazon,--with this one difference, that this time
it did not make me laugh. I was, however, ignorant of the consequences
it might have brought upon me on my arrival at Algiers. After having
made the profession of faith before Mahomedans--_There is but one God,
and Mahomet is his prophet_, if I had been informed against to the
mufti, I must inevitably have become Mussulman, and they would not have
allowed me to go out of the Regency.

I must not forget to relate by what means Mehemet had saved us from
inevitable death. "You have guessed rightly," said he to the Kabyls;
"there are two Christians in the caravansary, but they are Mahomedans at
heart, and are going to Algiers to be adopted by the mufti into our holy
religion. You will not doubt this when I tell you that I was myself a
slave to some Christians, and that they redeemed me with their money."