Come to look closely at the vehicle, it was an old stage-coach all of the olden time, upholstered in faded deep blue cloth, with those enormous rough woollen balls which, after a few hours' journey, finally establish a raw spot in the small of your back.
Tartarin of Tarascon had a corner of the inside, where he installed himself most free-and-easily: and, preliminarily to inspiring the rank emanations of the great African felines, the hero had to content himself with that homely old odour of the stage-coach, oddly composed of a thousand smells, of man and woman, horses and harness, eatables and mildewed straw.
There was a little of everything inside -- a Trappist monk, some Jew merchants, two fast ladies going to join their regiment, the Third Hussars, a photographic artist from Orleansville, and so on: But, however charming and varied was the company, the Tarasconian was not in the mood for chatting; he remained quite thoughtful, with an arm in the arm-rest sling-strap and his guns between his knees. All churned up his wits -- the precipitate departure, Baya's eyes of jet, the terrible chase he was about to undertake, to say nothing of this European coach; with its Noah's Ark aspect, rediscovered in the heart of Africa, vaguely recalling the Tarascon of his youth, with its races in the suburbs, jolly dinners on the river-side -- a throng of memories, in short.
Gradually night came on. The guard lit up the lamps. The rusty diligence danced creakingly on its old springs; the horses trotted and their bells jangled. From time to time in the boot arose a dreadful clank of iron: that was the war material.
Tartarin of Tarascon, nearly overcome, dwelt a moment scanning the fellow-passengers, comically shaken by the jolts, and dancing before him like the shadows in galanty-shows, till his eyes grew cloudy and his mind befogged, and only vaguely he heard the wheels grind and the sides of the conveyance squeak complainingly.
Suddenly a voice called Tartarin by his name, the voice of an old fairy godmother, hoarse, broken, and cracked.
"Monsieur Tartarin!" three times.
"Who's calling me?"
"It's I, Monsieur Tartarin. Don't you recognise me? I am the old stage-coach who used to do the rbetwixt Nimes and Tarascon twenty year agone. How many times I have carried you and your friends when you went to shoot at caps over Joncquieres or Bellegarde way! I did not know you again at the first, on account of your Turk's cap and the flesh you have accumulated ; but as soon as you began snoring -- what a rascal is good-luck ! -- I twigged you straight away."
"All right, that's all right enough!" observed the Tarasconian, a shade vexed; but softening, he added, "But to the point, my poor old girl; whatever did you come out here for?"
"Pooh! my good Monsieur Tartarin, I assure you I never came of my own free will. As soon as the Beaucaire railway was finished I was considered good for nought, and shipped away into Algeria. And I am not the only one either! Bless you, next to all the old stage-coaches of France have been packed off like me. We were regarded as too much the conservative -- 'the slow-coaches' -- d'ye see, and now we are here leading the life of a dog. This is what you in France call the Algerian railways."
Here the ancient vehicle heaved a long-drawn sigh before proceeding. "My wheels and linchpin! Monsieur Tartarin, how I regret my lovely Tarascon! That was the good time for me, when I was young! -- You ought to have seen me starting off in the morning, washed with no stint of water and all a-shine, with my wheels freshly varnished, my lamps blazing like a brace of suns, and my boot always rubbed up with oil! It was indeed lovely when the postillion cracked his whip to the tune of 'Lagadigadeou, the Tarasque! the Tarasque!' and the guard, his horn in its sling and laced cap cocked well over one ear, chucking his little dog, always in a fury, upon the top, climbed up himself with a shout: 'Right- away!'
"Then would my four horses dash off to the medley of bells, barks, and horn-blasts, and the windows fly open for all Tarascon to look with pride upon the royal mail coach dart over the king's highway.
"What a splendid rthat was, Monsieur Tartarin, brand well kept, with its mile-stones, its little heaps of rmetal at regular distances, and its pretty clumps of vines and olive-trees on either hand! Then, again, the ride inns so close together, and the changes of horses every five minutes! And what jolly, honest chaps my patrons were! -- village mayors and parish priests going up to Nimes to see their prefect or bishop, taffety-weavers returning openly from the Mazet, collegians out on holiday leave, peasants in worked smock-frocks, all fresh shaven for the occasion that morning; and up above, on the top, you gentlemen-sportsmen, always in high spirits, and singing each your own family ballad to the stars as you came back in the dark.
"Deary me! it's a change of times now! Lord knows what rubbish I am carting here, come from nobody guesses where! They fill me with small deer, these negroes, Bedouin Arabs, swashbucklers, adventurers from every land, and ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and all jabbering a language that the Tower of Babel itself could make nothing of! And, furthermore, you should see how they treat me -- I mean, how they never treat me: never a brush or a wash. They begrudge me grease for my axles. Instead of my good fat quiet horses of other days, little Arab ponies, with the devil in their frames, who fight and bite, caper as they run like so many goats, and break my splatterboard all to smithereens with their lashing out behind. Ouch! ouch! there they are at it again!
"And such r! Just here it is bearable, because we are near the governmental headquarters; but out a bit there's nothing, Monsieur -- not the ghost of a rat all. We get along as best we can over hill and dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. Ne'er a fixed change of horses, the stopping being at the whim of the guard, now at one farm, again at another.
"Somewhiles this rogue goes a couple of leagues out of the way to have a glass of absinthe or champoreau with a chum. After which, 'Crack on, postillion!' to make up for the lost time. Though the sun be broiling and the dust scorching, we whip on! We catch in the scrub and spill over, but whip on! We swim rivers, we catch cold, we get swamped, we drown, but whip! whip! whip! Then in the evening, streaming -- a nice thing for my age, with my rheumatics -- I have to sleep in the open air of some caravanseral yard, open to all the winds. In the dead o' night jackals and hyaenas come sniffing of my body; and the marauders who don't like dews get into my compartment to keep warm.
"Such is the life I lead, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, and that I shall lead to the day when -- burnt up by the sun and rotted by the damp nights until unable to do anything else-I shall fall in some spot of bad r where the Arabs will boil their kouskous with the bones of my old carcass" --
"Blidah! Blidah!" called out the guard as he opened the door.
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