If by any chance the ghost of Micheal Cervantes was abroad on that bit
of the Barbary coast, it must have been delighted at the arrival of this
splendid specimen of a Frenchman from the Midi, in whom were combined
the two heroes of his book, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

It was a warm day. On the quay, bathed in sunshine, were five or
six customs officers, some settlers awaiting news from France, some
squatting Moors, smoking their long pipes, some Maltese fishermen,
hauling in a large net, in the meshes of which thousands of sardines
glittered like pieces of silver; but scarcely had Tartarin set
foot there when the quay sprang into life and changed entirely its
appearance.

A band of savages, more hideous even than the pirates of the boat,
seemed to rise from the very cobble-stones to hurl themselves on the
newcomer. Huge Arabs, naked beneath their long woolen garments, little
Moors dressed in rags, Negroes, Tunisians, hotel waiters in white
aprons, pushing and shouting, plucking at his clothes, fighting over his
luggage; one grabbing his preserves another his medicine chest and, in a
screeching babel of noise, throwing at his head the improbable names
of hotels.... Deafened by this tumult, Tartarin ran hither and
thither,struggling, fuming, and cursing after his baggage, and not
knowing how to communicate with these barbarians, harangued them in
French, Provencal and even what he could remember of Latin. It was a
wasted effort, no one was listening.... Happily, however, a little man
dressed in a tunic with a yellow collar and armed with a long cane
arrived on the scene and dispersed the rabble with blows from his stick.
He was an Algerian policeman. Very politely he arranged for Tartarin to
go to the Hotel de l'Europe, and confided him to the care of some locals