to study the manners of the people, I used to walk in sight of the
public-houses which the desire of escaping payment of the duty has
multiplied outside the walls of the capital; on these excursions I was
often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as
animals might have done. My feelings on this subject have very much
altered since I have been personally exposed to the tortures of hunger.
I have discovered, in fact, that a man, whatever may have been his
origin, his education, and his habits, is governed, under certain
circumstances, much more by his stomach than by his intelligence and his
heart. Here is the fact which suggested these reflections to me.
To celebrate the unhoped-for arrival of _una onza de oro_, M. Berthémie
and I had procured an immense dish of potatoes. The ordnance officer of
the Emperor was already devouring it with his eyes, when a Moroccan, who
was making his ablutions near us with one of his companions,
accidentally filled it with dirt. M. Berthémie could not control his
anger; he darted upon the clumsy Mussulman, and inflicted upon him a
rough punishment.
I remained a passive spectator of the combat, until the second Moroccan
came to the aid of his compatriot. The party no longer being equal, I
also took part in the conflict by seizing the new assailant by the
beard. The combat ceased at once, because the Moroccan would not raise
his hand against a man who could write a petition so rapidly. This
conflict, like the struggles of which I had often been a witness outside
the barriers of Paris, had originated in a dish of potatoes.
The Spaniards always cherished the idea that the ship and her cargo
might be confiscated; a commission came from Girone to question us. It
was composed of two civil judges and one inquisitor. I acted as
interpreter. When M. Berthémie's turn came, I went to fetch him, and
said to him, "Pretend that you can only talk Styrian, and be at ease; I
will not compromise you in translating your answers."
It was done as we had agreed; unfortunately the language spoken by M.
Berthémie had but little variety, and the _sacrement der Teufel_, which
he had learnt in Germany, when he was aide-de-camp to Hautpoul,
predominated too much in his discourse. Be that as it may, the judges
observed that there was too great a conformity between his answers and
those which I had made myself, to render it necessary to continue an
interrogatory, which I may say, by the way, disturbed me much. The wish
to terminate it was still more decided on the part of the judges, when
it came to the turn of a sailor named Mehemet. Instead of making him
swear on the Koran to tell the truth, the judge was determined to make
him place his thumb on the forefinger so as represent the cross. I
warned him that great offence would thus be given; and, accordingly,
when Mehemet became aware of the meaning of this sign, he began to spit
upon it with inconceivable violence. The meeting ended at once.
The next day things had wholly changed their appearance; one of the
judges from Girone came to declare to us that we were free to depart,
and to go with our ship wherever we chose. What was the cause of this
sudden change? It was this.
During our quarantine in the windmill at Rosas, I had written, in the
name of Captain Braham, a letter to the Dey of Algiers. I gave him an
account of the illegal arrest of his vessel, and of the death of one of
the lions which the Dey had sent to the Emperor. This last circumstance
transported the African monarch with rage. He sent immediately for the
Spanish Consul, M. Onis, claimed pecuniary damages for his dear lion,
and threatened war if his ship was not released directly. Spain had then
to do with too many difficulties to undertake wantonly any new ones, and
the order to release the vessel so anxiously coveted arrived at Girone,
and from thence at Palamos.
This solution, to which our Consul at Algiers, M. Dubois Thainville, had
not remained inattentive, reached us at the moment when we least
expected it. We at once made preparations for our departure, and on the
28th of November, 1808, we set sail, steering for Marseilles; but, as
the Mussulmen on board the vessel declared, it was written above that we
should not enter that town. We could already perceive the white
buildings which crown the neighbouring hills of Marseilles, when a gust
of the "mistral," of great violence, sent us from the north towards the
south.
I do not know what route we followed, for I was lying in my cabin,
overcome with sea-sickness; I may therefore, though an astronomer, avow
without shame, that at the moment when our unqualified pilots supposed
themselves to be off the Baléares, we landed, on the 5th of December,
at Bougie.
There, they pretended that during the three months of winter, all
communication with Algiers, by means of the little boats named
_sandalis_, would be impossible, and I resigned myself to the painful
prospect of so long a stay in a place at that time almost a desert. One
evening I was making these sad reflections while pacing the deck of the
vessel, when a shot from a gun on the coast came and struck the side
planks close to which I was passing. This suggested to me the thought of
going to Algiers by land.
I went next day, accompanied by M. Berthémie and Captain Spiro
Calligero, to the Caïd of the town: "I wish," said I to him, "to go to
Algiers by land." The man, quite frightened, exclaimed, "I cannot allow
you to do so; you would certainly be killed on the road; your Consul
would make a complaint to the Dey, and I should have my head cut off."
"Fear not on that ground. I will give you an acquittance."
It was immediately drawn up in these terms: "We, the undersigned,
certify that the Caïd of Bougie wished to dissuade us from going to
Algiers by land; that he has assured us that we shall be massacred on
the road; that notwithstanding his representations, reiterated twenty
times, we have persisted in our project. We beg the Algerine
authorities, particularly our Consul, not to make him responsible for
this event if it should occur. We once more repeat, that the voyage has
been undertaken against his will.
_Signed_: ARAGO and BERTHÉMIE."
Having given this declaration to the Caïd, we considered ourselves quit
of this functionary; but he came up to me, undid, without saying a word,
the knot of my cravat, took it off, and put it into his pocket. All this
was done so quickly that I had not time, I will add that I had not even
the wish, to reclaim it.
At the conclusion of this audience, which had terminated in so singular
a manner, we made a bargain with a Mahomedan priest, who promised to
conduct us to Algiers for the sum of twenty "piastres fortes," and a red
mantle. The day was occupied in disguising ourselves well or ill, and we
set out the next morning, accompanied by several Moorish sailors
belonging to the crew of the ship, after having shown the Mahomedan
priest that we had nothing with us worth a sou, so that if we were
killed on the road he would inevitably lose all reward.
I went, at the last moment, to make my bow to the only lion that was
still alive, and with whom I had lived in very good harmony; I wished
also to say good-bye to the monkeys, who during nearly five months had
been equally my companions in misfortune.[4] These monkeys during our
frightful misery had rendered us a service which I scarcely dare
mention, and which will scarcely be guessed by the inhabitants of our
cities, who look upon these animals as objects of diversion; they freed
us from the vermin which infested us, and showed particularly a
remarkable cleverness in seeking out the hideous insects which lodged
themselves in our hair.
Poor animals! they seemed to me very unfortunate in being shut up in
the narrow enclosure of the vessel, when, on the neighbouring coast,
other monkeys, as if to bully them, came on to the branches of the
trees, giving innumerable proofs of their agility.
At the commencement of the day, we saw on the road two Kabyls, similar
to the soldiers of Jugurtha, whose harsh appearance powerfully allayed
our fancy for wandering. In the evening we witnessed a fearful tumult,
which appeared to be directed against us. We learnt afterwards that the
Mahomedan priest had been the object of it; that it originated with some
Kabyls whom he had disarmed on one of their journeys to Bougie. This
incident, which appeared likely to be repeated, inspired us for a moment
with the thought of returning; but the sailors were resolute, and we
continued our hazardous enterprise.
In proportion as we advanced, our troops became increased by a certain
number of Kabyls, who wished to go to Algiers to work there in the
quality of seamen, and who dared not undertake alone this dangerous
journey.
The third day we encamped in the open air, at the entrance of a forest.
The Arabs lighted a very large fire in the form of a circle, and placed
themselves in the middle. Towards eleven o'clock, I was awakened by the
noise which the mules made, all trying to break their fastenings. I
asked what was the cause of this disturbance. They answered me that a
"_sebâá_" had come roaming in the neighbourhood. I was not aware then
that a "_sebâá_" was a lion, and I went to sleep again. The next day, in
traversing the forest, the arrangement of the caravan was changed. It
was grouped in the smallest space possible; one Kabyl was at the head,
his gun ready for service; another was in the rear, in the same
position. I inquired of the owner of the mule the cause of these unusual
precautions. He answered me, that they were dreading an attack from a
"_sebâá_" and that if this should occur, one of us would be carried off
without having time to put himself on the defensive. "I would rather be
a spectator," I said to him, "than an actor in the scene you describe;
consequently, I will give you two piastres more if you will keep your
mule always in the centre of the moving group." My proposal was
accepted. It was then for the first time that I saw that my Arab carried
a yatagan under his tunic, which he used for pricking on the mule the
whole time that we were in the thicket. Superfluous cautions! The
"_sebâá_" did not show himself.
Each village being a little republic, whose territory we could not cross
without obtaining permission and a passport from the Mahomedan priest
_président_, the priest who conducted our caravan used to leave us in
the fields, and went sometimes a good way off to a village to solicit
the permission without which it would have been dangerous to continue
our route. He remained entire hours without returning to us, and we then
had occasion to reflect sadly on the imprudence of our enterprise. We
generally slept amongst habitations. Once, we found the streets of a
village barricaded, because they were fearing an attack from a
neighbouring village. The foremost man of our caravan removed the
obstacles; but a woman came out of her house like a fury, and belaboured
us with blows from a pole. We remarked that she was fair, of brilliant
whiteness, and very pretty.
Another time we lay down in a lurking-place dignified by the beautiful
name of caravansary. In the morning, when the sun rose, cries of
"_Roumi! Roumi!_" warned us that we had been discovered. The sailor,
Mehemet, he who figured in the scene of the oath at Palamos, entered in
a melancholy mood the enclosure where we were together, and made us
understand that the cries of "Roumi!" vociferated under these
circumstances, were equivalent to a sentence of death. "Wait," said he;
"a means of saving you has occurred to me." Mehemet entered some moments
afterwards, told us that his means had succeeded, and invited me to join
the Kabyls, who were going to say prayers.
I accordingly went out, and prostrated myself towards the East. I
imitated minutely the gestures which I saw made around me, pronouncing
the sacred words,--_La elah il Allah! oua Mahommed raçoul Allah!_ It was
the scene of Mamamouchi of the "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," which I had so
often seen acted by Dugazon,--with this one difference, that this time
it did not make me laugh. I was, however, ignorant of the consequences
it might have brought upon me on my arrival at Algiers. After having
made the profession of faith before Mahomedans--_There is but one God,
and Mahomet is his prophet_, if I had been informed against to the
mufti, I must inevitably have become Mussulman, and they would not have
allowed me to go out of the Regency.
I must not forget to relate by what means Mehemet had saved us from
inevitable death. "You have guessed rightly," said he to the Kabyls;
"there are two Christians in the caravansary, but they are Mahomedans at
heart, and are going to Algiers to be adopted by the mufti into our holy
religion. You will not doubt this when I tell you that I was myself a
slave to some Christians, and that they redeemed me with their money."
"In cha Allah!" they exclaimed with one voice. And it was then that the
scene took place which I have just described.
We arrived in sight of Algiers the 25th December, 1808. We took leave of
the Arab owners of our mules, who walked on foot by the side of us, and
we spurred them on, in order to reach the town before the closing of the
gates. On our arrival, we learnt that the Dey, to whom we owed our first
deliverance, had been beheaded. The guard of the palace before which we
passed, stopped us and questioned us as to whence we came. We replied
that we came from Bougie by land. "It is not possible!" exclaimed all
the janissaries at once; "the Dey himself would not venture to undertake
such a journey!" "We acknowledge that we have committed a great
imprudence; that we would not undertake to recommence the journey for
millions; but the fact that we have just declared is the strict truth."
Arrived at the consular house, we were, as on the first occasion, very
cordially welcomed. We received a visit from a dragoman sent by the Dey,
who asked whether we persisted in maintaining that Bougie had been our
point of departure, and not Cape Matifou, or some neighbouring port. We
again affirmed the truth of our recital; it was confirmed, the next day,
on the arrival of the proprietors of our mules.
At Palamos, during the various interviews which I had with the dowager
Duchess of Orleans, one circumstance had particularly affected me. The
Princess spoke to me unceasingly of the wish she had to go and rejoin
one of her sons, whom she believed to be alive, but of whose death I had
been informed by a person belonging to her household. Hence I was
anxious to do all that lay in my power to mitigate a sorrow which she
must experience before long.
At the moment when I quitted Spain for Marseilles, the Duchess confided
to me two letters which I was to forward in safety to their addresses.
One was destined for the Empress-mother of Russia, the other for the
Empress of Austria.
Scarcely had I arrived at Algiers, when I mentioned these two letters to
M. Dubois Thainville, and begged him to send them to France by the first
opportunity. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he at once answered me.
"Do you know that you have behaved in this affair like a young
inexperienced man, or, to speak out, like a blunderer? I am surprised
that you did not comprehend that the Emperor, with his pettish spirit,
might take this much amiss, and consider you, according to the contents
of the two letters, as the promoter of an intrigue in favour of the
exiled family of the Bourbons." Thus the paternal advice of the French
Consul taught me that in all that regards politics, however nearly or
remotely, one cannot give himself up without danger to the dictates of
the heart and the reason.
I enclosed my two letters in an envelope bearing the address of a
trustworthy person, and gave them into the hands of a corsair, who,
after touching at Algiers, would proceed to France. I have never known
whether they reached their destination.
The reigning Dey, successor to the beheaded Dey, had formerly filled the
humble office of "_épileur_"[5] of dead bodies in the mosques. He
governed the Regency with much gentleness, occupying himself with
little but his harem. This disgusted those who had raised him to this
eminent post, and they resolved upon getting rid of him. We became aware
of the danger which menaced him, by seeing the courts and vestibules of
the consular house full, according to the custom under such
circumstances, of Jews, carrying with them whatever they had of most
value. It was a rule at Algiers, that all that happened in the interval
comprised between the death of a Dey and the installation of his
successor, could not be followed up by justice, and must remain
unpunished. One can imagine, then, why the children of Moses should seek
safety in the consular houses, the European inhabitants of which had the
courage to arm themselves for self-defence as soon as the danger was
apparent, and who, moreover, had a janissary to guard them.
Whilst the unfortunate Dey "épileur" was being conducted towards the
place where he was to be strangled, he heard the cannon which announced
his death and the installation of his successor. "They are in great
haste," said he; "what will you gain by carrying matters to extremities?
Send me to the Levant; I promise you never to return. What have you to
reproach me with?" "With nothing," answered his escort, "but your
insignificance. However, a man cannot live as a mere private man, after
having been Dey of Algiers." And the unfortunate man perished by the
rope.
The communication by sea between Bougie and Algiers was not so
difficult, even with the "_sandalas_," as the Caïd of the former town
wished to assure me. Captain Spiro had the cases landed, which belonged
to me. The Caïd sought to discover what they contained; and, having
perceived through a chink something yellowish, he hastened to send the
news to the Dey, that the Frenchmen who had come to Algiers by land had
among their baggage cases filled with zechins, destined to revolutionize
the Kabylie. They immediately had these cases forwarded to Algiers, and
at their opening, before the Minister of Naval Affairs, all the
phantasmagoria of zechins, of treasure, of revolution, disappeared at
the sight of the stands and the limbs of several repeating circles in
copper.
We are now going to sojourn several months in Algiers. I will take
advantage of this to put together some details of manners which may be
interesting as the picture of a state of things anterior to that of the
occupation of the Regency by the French. This occupation, it must be
remarked, has already fundamentally altered the manners and the habits
of the Algerine population.
I am about to report a curious fact, and one which shows that politics,
which insinuate themselves and bring discord into the bosom of the most
united families, had succeeded, strange to say, in penetrating as far as
the galley-slaves' prison at Algiers. The slaves belonged to three
nations: there were in 1809 in this prison, Portuguese, Neapolitans, and
Sicilians; among these two latter classes were counted partisans of
Murat and those of Ferdinand of Naples. One day, at the beginning of the
year, a dragoman came in the name of the Dey to beg M. Dubois Thainville
to go without delay to the prison, where the friends of the French and
their adversaries had involved themselves in a furious combat; and
already several had fallen. The weapon with which they struck each other
was the heavy long chain attached to their legs.
Each Consul, as I said above, had a janissary placed with him as his
guard; the one belonging to the French Consul was a Candiote; he had
been surnamed _the Terror_. Whenever some news unfavourable to France
was announced in the cafés, he came to the Consulate to inform himself
as to the reality of the fact; and when we told him that the other
janissaries had propagated false news, he returned to them, and there,
yatagan in hand, he declared himself ready to enter the lists in combat
against those who should still maintain the truth of the news. As these
continual threats might endanger him, (for they had no support beyond
his mere animal courage,) we had wished to render him expert in the
handling of arms by giving him some lessons in fencing; but he could not
endure the idea that Christians should touch him at every turn with
foils; he therefore proposed to substitute for the simulated duel a real
combat with the yatagan.
One may gain an exact idea of this savage nature when I mention that,
having one day heard a pistol-shot, the sound of which proceeded from
his room, people ran, and found him bathed in his blood; he had just
shot off a ball into his arm to cure himself of a rheumatic pain.
Seeing with what facility the Deys disappeared, I said one day to our
janissary, "With this prospect before your eyes, would you consent to
become Dey?" "Yes, doubtless," answered he. "You seem to count as
nothing the pleasure of doing all that one likes, if only even for a
single day!"
When we wished to take a turn in the town of Algiers, we generally took
care to be escorted by the janissary attached to the consular house; it
was the only means of escaping insults, affronts, and even acts of
violence. I have just said it was the only means. I made a mistake;
there was one other; that was, to go in the company of a French
"lazarist" of seventy years of age, and whose name, if my memory serves
me, was Father Joshua; he had lived in this country for half a century.
This man, of exemplary virtue, had devoted himself with admirable
self-denial to the service of the slaves of the Regency, and had
divested himself of all considerations of nationality;--the Portuguese,
Neapolitans, Sicilians, all were equally his brethren.
In the times of plague he was seen day and night carrying eager help to
the Mussulmans; thus, his virtue had conquered even religious hatreds;
and wherever he passed, he and the persons who might accompany him
received from multitudes of the people, from the janissaries, and even
from the officials of the mosques, the most respectful salutations.
During our long hours of sailing on board the Algerine vessel, and our
compulsory stay in the prisons at Rosas, and on the hulk at Palamos, I
gathered some ideas as to the interior life of the Moors or the
Coulouglous, which, even now when Algiers has fallen under the dominion
of France, would perhaps be yet worth preserving. I shall, however,
confine myself to recounting, nearly word for word, a conversation which
I had with Raïs Braham, whose father was a "_Turc fin_," that is to say,
a Turk born in the Levant.
"How is it that you consent," said I to him, "to marry a young girl whom
you have never seen, and find in her, perhaps, an excessively ugly
woman, instead of the beauty whom you had fancied to yourself?"
"We never marry without having obtained information from the women who
serve in the capacity of servants at the public baths. The Jewesses are
moreover, in these cases, very useful go-betweens."
"How many legitimate wives have you?"
"I have four, that is to say, the number authorized by the Koran."
"Do they live together on a good understanding?"
"Ah, sir, my house is a hell. I never enter it without finding them at
the step of the door, or at the bottom of the stairs; then, each wants
to be the first to make me listen to the complaints which she has to
bring against her companions. I am about to utter blasphemy, but I think
that our holy religion ought to prohibit a plurality of wives to those
who are not rich enough to give to each a separate habitation."
"But since the Koran allows you to repudiate even legitimate wives, why
do you not send back three of them to their parents?"