small silver coins.

But hardly had Tartarin set foot on earth before the quay sprang
into life and changed its aspect. A horde of savages, still more
hideous than the pirates upon the steamer, rose between the stones
on the strand and rushed upon the new-comer. Tall Arabs were
there, nude under woollen blankets, little Moors in tatters, Negroes,
Tunisians, Port Mahonese, M'zabites, hotel servants in white
aprons, all yelling and shouting, hooking on his clothes, fighting
over his luggage, one carrying away the provender, another his
medicine-chest, and pelting him in one fantastic medley with the
names of preposterously-entitled hotels.

Bewildered by all this tumult, poor Tartarin wandered to and fro,
swore and stormed, went mad, ran after his property, and not
knowing how to make these barbarians understand him, speechified
them in French, Provencal, and even in dog Latin: "Rosa, the rose;
bonus, bona, bonum!" -- all that he knew -- but to no purpose. He
was not heeded. Happily, like a god in Homer, intervened a little
fellow in a yellow-collared tunic, and armed with a long running-
footman's cane, who dispersed the whole riff-raff with cudgel-play.
He was a policeman of the Algerian capital. Very politely, he
suggested Tartarin should put up at the Hotel de l'Europe, and he
confided him to its waiters, who carted him and his impedimenta
thither in several barrows.

At the first steps he took in Algiers, Tartarin of Tarascon opened
his eyes widely. Beforehand he had pictured it as an Oriental city --
a fairy one, mythological, something between Constantinople and
Zanzibar; but it was back into Tarascon he fell. Cafes, restaurants,