Negroes, Bedouins, rascals and adventurers from every country, colonists
who stink me out with their pipes, and all of them talking a language
which even our Heavenly Father couldn't understand.... And then you
see how they treat me. Never brushed. Never washed. They grudge me the
grease for my axles, and instead of the fine big, quiet horses which I
used to have, they give me little Arab horses which have the devil in
them, fighting, biting, dancing about and running like goats, breaking
my shafts with kicks. Aie!... Aie! They are at it again now.... And the
roads! It's still all right here, because we are near Government House,
but out there, nothing! No road of any sort. One goes as best one can
over hill and dale through dwarf palms and mastic trees. Not a single
fixed stop. One pulls up at wherever the guard fancies, sometimes at one
farm, sometimes at another. Sometimes this rogue takes me on a detour of
two leagues just so that he can go and drink with a friend. After that
it's 'Whip up postillion, we must make up for lost time.' The sun burns.
The dust chokes... Whip!... Whip! We crash. We tip over.
More whip. We swim across rivers, we are cold, soaked and half
drowned... Whip!... Whip!... Whip! Then in the evening, dripping wet...
that's good for me at my age... I have to bed down in the yard of some
caravan halt, exposed to all the winds. At night jackals and hyenas
come to sniff at my lockers and creatures which fear the dawn hide in
my compartments. That's the life I lead, monsieur Tartarin, and I shall
lead until the day when, scorched by sun and rotted by humid nights, I
shall fall at some corner of this beastly road, where Arabs will boil
their cous-cous on the remains of my old carcase."

"Blidah!... Blidah!" Shouted the guard, opening the coach door.