SPONTANEITY— AN AFRICAN PARADISE. 
17 
the excellence of his terrapin stews. The colony wept for him, 
authority* reclaimed him, but unsuccessfully, by the voice of the 
drum. Some days from this disappearance, the chief of the dis- 
trict, making a reconnaissance toward the sources of the Arratch, 
met the fugitive sleeping the sleep of innocence under a dark 
mass of orange trees. Around him lay, in the most artistic disor- 
der, the wrecks of his last meal, innumerable stalks of wild aspar- 
agus decapitated, a pile of quite fresh partridge egg-shells, speak- 
ing witness of some monster omelet, whose golden fringe still 
bordered a gigantic frying-pan, which served the sleeper as an um- 
brella. How, you here, idle fellow said the civil officer, de- 
lighted with his guest : ‘‘ you asleep in broad daylight under the 
orange trees of the Arratch, when all the stomachs of the colony 
call you, when glory and fortune at once extend their arms to you, 
when the great markets are reopened, and game, fish and fowl, de- 
scend again to the fabulous prices of the first days of the French 
occupation ? Rise, do you see, and regain from this evening the 
sceptre of the kitchen-range, which the voice of public interest 
forbids you to abdicate ?” 
The artist replied, rubbing his eyes : ‘‘ Who talks to me of 
work, of fortune, of kitchen-ranges, when I have eighteen francs in 
my pocket, a gun and a frying-pan ? Who would have me condemn 
myself to live among furnaces, in a constant heat of forty-five de- 
grees centigrade, or foolishly grow lean for the pleasure of others, 
when it is so easy for me to be happy without doing any thing ? 
To work, to give oneself trouble in this blessed land, but it is a 
reflection on the good God who has poured forth His treasures here 
with full hands ! What good to heat oneself ? why run after for- 
tune when good comes in sleeping ? Oh do not try to seduce me 
by flattering my pride as an artist, for your attempts would be vain, 
and I have too long breathed the smoke of glory. And you, who 
speak to me, sir, you a hunter, perhaps if you knew, as I do, the 
joys of wild life, you would do like me.’’ Whereupon this friend of 
liberty began to relate his happiness to me, and as how there existed 
at the bottom of the Mitidja, two leagues from the sea, and from 
Cape Matifoux, a delicious Eden, where flowed a peaceful stream 
concealed under the shades of citron and ash trees, a stream Avhose 
