facing him was a young Moorish merchant smoking coarse
cigarettes, and a Maltese sailor and four or five Moorish women
muffled up in white cloths, so that only their eyes could be spied.

These ladies had been to offer up prayers in the Abdel Kader
cemetery; but this funereal visit did not seem to have much
saddened them, for they could be heard chuckling and chattering
between themselves under their coverings whilst munching pastry.
Tartarin fancied that they watched him narrowly. One in particular,
seated over against him, had fixed her eyes upon his, and never
took them off all the drive. Although the dame was veiled, the
liveliness of the big black eyes, lengthened out by k'hol; a
delightfully slender wrist loaded with gold bracelets, of which a
glimpse was given from time to time among the folds; the sound of
her voice, the graceful, almost childlike, movements of the head, all
revealed that a young, pretty, and loveable creature bloomed
underneath the veil. The unfortunate Tartarin did not know where to
shrink. The fond, mute gaze of these splendrous Oriental orbs
agitated him, perturbed him, and made him feel like dying with
flushes of heat and fits of cold shivers.

To finish him, the lady's slipper meddled in the onslaught: he felt the
dainty thing wander and frisk about over his heavy hunting boots
like a tiny red mouse. What could he do? Answer the glance and
the pressure, of course. Ay, but what about the consequences? A
loving intrigue in the East is a terrible matter! With his romantic
southern nature, the honest Tarasconian saw himself already falling
into the grip of the eunuchs, to be decapitated, or better -- we
mean, worse -- than that, sewn up in a leather sack and sunk in the
sea with his head under his arm beside him. This somewhat cooled