Le 'Tueur de Lions'; The Life and Adventures of Jules G Rard, the 'Lion-Killer', Comprising His Ten Years' Campaigns [Ed. by T.W.M. Transl.].

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXVI. A LAST CAMPAIGN WITH THE OULED-SASSI.--CONVERSATIONS UNDEB THE TENT. A LION WOUNDED IN HIS PEESONAL VANITr, A LEGEND FOB THE PBIVATE EDIFICATION OF COQUETTES. I tooK the field once more on the 20th of October; on the 23rd, I searched and beat carefully the mountain of Ounk-jemel, and on the evening of that same day I was encamped at the Ouled-sassi, between El-hanout and the Zerazer. Having met from my guests, as usual, the most cordial reception, we spent part of the night, my spahi Hamida and I, under the cheik's tent, surrounded by a dozen Arabs of the douar. We talked about lions, of course, that inexhaustible fund of all conversations between men; and I confess that I relished it not a little, entirely weaned as I had been, during a residence of twelve months in France, from all those stories and traditions, so full of interest, which the popular credulity has gathered in this country with respect to the monarch with the colossal head; that terrible and mysterious lord, that fanciful and marvellous assemblage of cruelty and magnanimity, of unaccountable caprices, and of unparalleled audacity. Among the narratives more or less authentic, which succeeded one another without interruption that evening, I will introduce one which Alexander Dumas embodied two years ago in his Mousquetaire, from the recital of Hamida, whose memory is the most faithful I ever met with for traditions of this sort. It is a kind of philosophical legend, which I recommend to the meditation of young coquettes. Some hundred years before I came to this tribe, said the narrator, there lived in this same tribe a young girl particularly proud and haughty; it was not that she was richer than her companions; for her father had but his tent, his horse, and his gun; but ...