X. “Tell me your father’s name, and I will tell you the name of that flower.”

PRINCES of Montenegro are the ones to find the love-bird.

On the morrow early after this evening at the Platanes, Prince Gregory was in the Tarasconian’s bedroom.

“Quick! Dress yourself quickly! Your Moorish beauty is found, Her name is Baya. She’s scarce twenty — as pretty as a love, and already a widow.”

“A widow! What a slice of luck!” joyfully exclaimed Tartarin, who dreaded Oriental husbands.

“Ay, but woefully closely guarded by her brother.”

“Oh, the mischief!”

“A savage chap who vends pipes in the Orleans bazaar.”

Here fell a silence.

“A fig for that!” proceeded the prince; “you are not the man to be daunted by such a trifle; and, anyhow, this old corsair can be pacified, I daresay, by having some pipes bought of him. But be quick! On with your courting suit, you lucky dog!”

Pale and agitated, with his heart brimming over with love, the Tarasconian leaped out of his couch, and, as he hastily buttoned up his capacious nether garment, wanted to know how he should act.

“Write straightway to the lady and ask for a tryst.”

“Do you mean to say she knows French?” queried the Tarasconian simpleton, with the disappointed mien of one who had believed thoroughly in the Orient.

“Not one word of it,” rejoined the prince imperturbably; “but you can dictate the billet-doux, and I will translate it bit by bit.”

“O prince, how kind you are!”

The lover began striding up and down the bedroom in silent meditation.

Naturally a man does not write to a Moorish girl in Algiers in the same way as to a seamstress of Beaucaire. It was a very lucky thing that our hero had in mind his numerous readings, which allowed him, by amalgamating the Red Indian eloquence of Gustave Aimard’s Apaches with Lamartine’s rhetorical flourishes in the “Voyage en Orient,” and some reminiscences of the “Song of Songs,” to compose the most Eastern letter that you could expect to see. It opened with:

“Like unto the ostrich upon the sandy waste”—

and concluded by:

“Tell me your father’s name, and I will tell you the name of that flower.”

To this missive the romantic Tartarin would have much liked to join an emblematic bouquet of flowers in the Eastern fashion; but Prince Gregory thought it better to purchase some pipes at the brother’s, which could not fail to soften his wild temper, and would certainly please the lady a very great deal, as she was much of a smoker.

“Let’s be off at once to buy them!” said Tartarin, full of ardour.

“No, no! Let me go alone. I can g............