wounded lion had made off. He would now wait for the female to appear,
as he had read in books.

But two or more hours passed, and she did not come; and the ground was
damp, and the night air cold, so the hunter thought he would camp for
the night. After much struggling, he could not get his patent tent to
open. Finally, he threw it on the ground in a rage, and lay on the top
of it. Thus he slept until the bugles in the barracks near by wakened
him in the morning. For behold, instead of finding himself out on the
Sahara, he was in the kitchen garden of some suburban Algerian!

"These people are mad," he growled to himself, "to plant their
artichokes where lions are roaming about. Surely I have been dreaming.
Lions do come here; there's proof positive."

From artichoke to artichoke, from field to field, he followed the thin
trail of blood, and came at length to a poor little donkey he had
wounded!

Tartarin's first feeling was one of vexation. There is such a difference
between a lion and an ass, and the poor little creature looked so
innocent. The great hunter knelt down and tried to stanch the donkey's
wounds, and it seemed grateful to him, for it feebly flapped its long
ears two or three times before it lay still for ever.

Suddenly a voice was heard calling, "Noiraud! Noiraud!" It was "the
female." She came in the form of an old French woman with a large red
umbrella, and it would have been better for Tartarin to have faced a
female lion.