wide streets, four-storey houses, a little market-place,
macadamised, where the infantry band played Offenbachian polkas,
whilst fashionably clad gentlemen occupied chairs, drinking beer
and eating pancakes, some brilliant ladies, some shady ones, and
soldiers -- more soldiers -- no end of soldiers, but not a solitary
Turk, or, better to say, there was a solitary Turk, and that was he.

Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the square, for
everybody looked at him. The musicians stopped, the Offenbachian
polka halting with one foot in the air.

With both guns on his shoulders, and the revolver flapping on his
hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, Tartarin gravely
passed through the groups; but on arriving at the hotel his powers
failed him. All spun and mingled in his head: the departure from
Tarascon, the harbour of Marseilles, the voyage, the Montenegrin
prince, the corsairs. They had to help him up into a room and
disarm and undress him. They began to talk of sending for a
medical adviser; but hardly was our hero's head upon the pillow
than he set to snoring, so loudly and so heartily that the landlord
judged the succour of science useless, and everybody considerately
withdrew.



IV.
The First Lying in Wait.


THREE o'clock was striking by the Government clock when