What is the use of a _marabout_, if he cannot be
bribed?
I am all for keeping up local colour, even when it entails, as it
generally does, a certain percentage of local smells; yet it seems a pity
that such glorious hot springs, a gift of the gods in a climate like this,
should be converted into a _cloaca maxima_, especially in Gafsa, which
already boasts of a superfluity of open drains.
But my friend the magistrate showed me a special bathing room which has
lately been built for the use of Europeans. We tried the door and found it
locked.
Where was the key?
At the _Ponts et Chaussees_.
Thither I went, and discovered an elderly official of ample proportions
dozing in a trim apartment--the chief of the staff. Great was this
gentleman's condescension; he bade me be seated, opened his eyes wide, and
enquired after my wants.
The key? The key of the _piscine?_ He regretted he could give me no
information as to its whereabouts--no information whatever. He had never
so much as seen the key in question; perhaps it had been lost, perhaps it
never existed. Several tourists, he added, had already come on the same
quest as myself; he also, on one occasion last year, thought he would like
to take a bath, but--what would you? There was no key! If I liked to
bathe, I might go to the tank at the gardens of Sidi Ahmed Zarroung.
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