gentleman's condescension; he bade me be seated, opened his eyes wide, and
enquired after my wants.

The key? The key of the _piscine?_ He regretted he could give me no
information as to its whereabouts--no information whatever. He had never
so much as seen the key in question; perhaps it had been lost, perhaps it
never existed. Several tourists, he added, had already come on the same
quest as myself; he also, on one occasion last year, thought he would like
to take a bath, but--what would you? There was no key! If I liked to
bathe, I might go to the tank at the gardens of Sidi Ahmed Zarroung.

I gently insisted, pointing out that I did not care for a walk across the
wind-swept desert only to dip myself into a pool of lukewarm and
pestilentially sulphureous water. But "the key" was evidently a sore
subject.

"There is no key, Monsieur"; and he accompanied the words with a
portentous negative nod that blended the resigned solicitude of an old and
trusted friend with the firmness of a Bismarck. This closed the
discussion; with expressions of undying gratitude, and a few remarks as to
the palpable advantages to be derived from keeping a public bathing-room
permanently locked, I left him to his well-earned slumbers....

It is hard to understand what the guide-books mean when they call the
market of Gafsa "rich and well-appointed": a five-pound note, I calculate,
would buy the entire exhibition. The produce, though varied, is wretched;
but the scenery fine. Over a dusty level, strewn with wares, you look upon
a stretch of waving palms, with the distant summit of Jebel Orbata shining
in the deep blue sky. Here are a few butchers and open-air cooks who fry
suspicious-looking bundles of animal intestines for the epicurean Arabs; a