"Come to the bottom of your little garden, Father Fischer," said the important man. "You are hearty?" he went on, sitting down under a vine arbor and scanning the old man from head to foot, as a dealer in human flesh scans a substitute for the conscription. "Ay, hearty enough for a tontine," said the lean little old man; his sinews were wiry, and his eye bright. "Does heat disagree with you?" "Quite the contrary." "What do you say to Africa?" "A very nice country!--The French went there with the little Corporal" (Napoleon). "To get us all out of the present scrape, you must go to Algiers," said the Baron. "And how about my business?" "An official in the War Office, who has to retire, and has not enough to live on with his pension, will buy your business." "And what am I to do in Algiers?" "Supply the Commissariat with victuals, corn, and forage; I have your commission ready filled in and signed. You can collect supplies in the country at seventy per cent below the prices at which you can credit us." "How shall we get them?" "Oh, by raids, by taxes in kind, and the Khaliphat.--The country is little known, though we settled there eight years ago; Algeria produces vast quantities of corn and forage. When this produce belongs to Arabs, we take it from them under various pretences; when it belongs to us, the Arabs try to get it back again. There is a great deal of fighting over the corn, and no one ever knows exactly how much each party has stolen from the other. There is not time in the open field to measure the corn as we do in the Paris market, or the hay as it is sold in the Rue d'Enfer. The Arab chiefs, like our Spahis, prefer hard cash, and sell the plunder at a very low price. The Commissariat needs a fixed quantity and must have it. It winks at exorbitant prices calculated on the difficulty of procuring food, and the dangers to which every form of transport is exposed. That is Algiers from the army contractor's point of view. "It is a muddle tempered by the ink-bottle, like every incipient government. We shall not see our way through it for another ten years --we who have to do the governing; but private enterprise has sharp eyes.--So I am sending you there to make a fortune; I give you the job, as Napoleon put an impoverished Marshal at the head of a kingdom where smuggling might be secretly encouraged. "I am ruined, my dear Fischer; I must have a hundred thousand francs within a year." "I see no harm in getting it out of the Bedouins," said the Alsatian calmly. "It was always done under the Empire----" "The man who wants to buy your business will be here this morning, and pay you ten thousand francs down," the Baron went on. "That will be enough, I suppose, to take you to Africa?" The old man nodded assent. "As to capital out there, be quite easy. I will draw the remainder of the money due if I find it necessary." "All I have is yours--my very blood," said old Fischer.