At length, after a month's running about, entanglements, and waiting under the sun in the yards of Arab Departmental offices, it was established that, whereas the lion had been killed on the military territory, on the other hand Tartarin was in the civil territory when he shot.So the case was decided in the civil courts, and our hero was let off on paying two thousand five hundred francs damages, costs not included.
How could he pay such a sum?
The few piashtres escaped from the prince's sweep had long since gone in legal documents and judicial libations.The unfortunate lion-destroyer was therefore reduced to selling the store of guns by retail, rifle by rifle; so went the daggers, the Malay kreeses, and the life-preservers.A grocer purchased the preserved aliments; an apothecary what remained of the medicaments.The big boots themselves walked off after the improved tent to a dealer of curiosities, who elevated them to the dignity of "rarities from Cochin-China."When everything was paid up, only the lion's skin and the camel remained to Tartarin.The hide he had carefully packed, to be sent to Tarascon to the address of brave Commandant Bravida, and, later on, we shall see what came of this fabulous trophy.As for the camel, he reckoned on making use of him to get back to Algiers, not by riding on him, but by selling him to pay his coach-fare -- the best way to employ a camel in travelling.Unhappily the beast was difficult to place, and no one would offer a copper for him.
Still Tartarin wanted to regain Algiers by hook or crook.He was in haste again to behold Baya's blue bodice, his little snuggery and his fountains, as well as to repose on the white trefoils of his little cloister whilst awaiting money from France.So our hero did not hesitate; distressed but not downcast, he undertook to make the journey afoot and penniless by short stages.
In this enterprise the camel did not cast him off.The strange animal had taken an unaccountable fancy for his master, and on seeing him leave Orleansville, he set to striding steadfastly behind him, regulating his pace by this, and never quitting him by a yard.
At the first outset Tartarin found this touching; such fidelity and devotion above proof went to his heart, all the more because the creature was accommodating, and fed himself on nothing.
Nevertheless, after a few days, the Tarasconian was worried by having this glum companion perpetually at his heels, to remind him of his misadventures.Ire arising, he hated him for his sad aspect, hump and gait of a goose in harness.To tell the whole truth, he held him as his Old Man of the Sea, and only pondered on how to shake him off; but the follower would not be shaken off.Tartarin attempted to lose him, but the camel always found him; he tried to outrun him, but the camel ran faster.He bade him begone, and hurled stones at him.The camel stopped with a mournful mien, but in a minute resumed the pursuit, and always ended by overtaking him.Tartarin had to resign himself.
For all that, when, after eight full days of tramping, the dusty and harassed Tarasconian espied the first white housetops of Algiers glimmer from afar in the verdure, and when he got to the city gates on the noisy Mustapha Avenue, amid the Zouaves, Biskris, and Mahonnais, all swarming around him and staring at him trudging by with his camel, overtasked patience escaped him.
"No! no!" he growled, "it is not likely! I cannot enter Algiers with such an animal!"Profiting by a jam of vehicles, he turned off into the fields and jumped into a ditch.In a minute or so he saw over his head on the highway the camel flying off with long strides and stretching his neck with a wistful air.
Relieved of a great weight thereby, the hero sneaked out of his covert, and entered the town anew by a circuitous path which skirted the wall of his own little garden.
