little garden he had purchased in the suburbs. But never, without
exception, did he go down into the European quarter. This kind of
Algiers appeared to him as ugly and unbearable as a barracks at
home, with its Zouaves in revelry, its music-halls crammed with
officers, and its everlasting clank of metal sabre-sheaths under the
arcades.

The sum total is, that our Tarasconian was very happy.

Sancho-Tartarin particularly, being very sweet upon Turkish pastry,
declared that one could not be more satisfied than by this new
existence. Quixote-Tartarin had some twinges at whiles on
thinking of Tarascon and the promises of lion-skins; but this
remorse did not last, and to drive away such dampening ideas there
sufficed one glance from Baya, or a spoonful of those diabolical
dizzying and odoriferous sweetmeats like Circe's brews.

In the evening Gregory came to discourse a little about a free Black
Mountain. Of indefatigable obligingness, this amiable nobleman
filled the functions of an interpreter in the household, or those of a
steward at a pinch, and all for nothing for the sheer pleasure of it.
Apart from him, Tartarin received none but "Turks." All those
fierce-headed pirates who had given him such frights from the
backs of their black stalls turned out, when once he made their
acquaintance, to be good inoffensive tradesmen, embroiderers,
dealers in spice, pipe-mouthpiece turners -- well-bred fellows,
humble, clever, close, and first-class hands at homely card games.
Four or five times a week these gentry would come and spend the
evening at Sidi Tart'ri's, winning his small change, eating his cakes
and dainties, and delicately retiring on the stroke of ten with thanks