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 Iregret my lovely Tarascon! That was the good time for me, when Iwas 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 road that was, Monsieur Tartarin, broad and well kept, with its mile-stones, its little heaps of road-metal at regular distances, and its pretty clumps of vines and olive-trees on either hand! Then, again, the roadside 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 Iam 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 roads! 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 road at 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 road, 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.
