annoyance. Get it well into your heads to let everything alone at
first; for we shall have it all by and by! and forward!"

So far so good. But all those people had heard a prophecy of
Napoleon, under the name of _Kebir Bonaberdis_; a word which in our
lingo means, "The Sultan fires a shot," and they feared him like the
devil. So the Grand Turk, Asia, and Africa have recourse to magic, and
they send a demon against us, named the Mahdi, who it was thought had
come down from heaven on a white charger which, like its master was
bullet-proof, and the pair of them lived on the air of that part of
the world. There are people who have seen them, but for my part I
cannot give you any certain informations about them. They were the
divinities of Arabia and of the Mamelukes who wished their troopers to
believe that the Mahdi had the power of preventing them from dying in
battle. They gave out that he was an angel sent down to wage war on
Napoleon, and to get back Solomon's seal, part of their paraphernalia
which they pretended our general had stolen. You will readily
understand that we made them cry peccavi all the same.

Ah, just tell me now how they came to know about that compact of
Napoleon's? Was that natural?

They took it into their heads for certain that he commanded the
genii, and that he went from place to place like a bird in the
twinkling of an eye; and it is a fact that he was everywhere. At
length it came about that he carried off a queen of theirs. She was
the private property of a Mameluke, who, although he had several more
of them, flatly refused to strike a bargain, though "the other"
offered all his treasures for her and diamonds as big as pigeon's
eggs. When things had come to that pass, they could not well be