The flight of the happy pair is fraught from that time on with an exciting series of hairbreadth escapes, but these little incidents do not seem to trouble the hero, he being constantly occupied with his personal appearance.
In the second act the hero led the princess, still in the jeweled tea-gown she wore when they met, up to the last barricade of an elaborately carved oriental city, which is besieged by the English.
Here the hero bids the princess and her maid sit down while he rolls a cigarette, and incidentally picks off with his gun, rested on the sill of a convenient window, the leaders of the advancing army.
FINALE AT THE THÉÂTRE PORTE ST. MARTIN
During all this fighting his gray leather leggings remain as spotless as the flowing silk scarf heaving over his manly chest, sunburned by adventure. All of which win for him not only the heart of the beautiful Zuléma, but of every other fellow’s sweetheart throughout the depth and breadth of the broad gallery.
At last the trio reach a ravine. As yet none of the princess’s jewels have been stolen; she still wears the décolleté tea-gown and keeps her manicured nails well polished. In the ravine, behind a papier-maché rock, Zuléma discovers her irate father, who, having been hot-footed up hill and down dale by the bloodthirsty Anglais, is glad enough to come out of his hiding place to give his blessing to the eloping pair, and bestow upon the powdered neck of his only child a talisman—whereupon our hero pounds his chest and swears to revenge their pursuers.
An old friend of mine who knows Fourteenth street better than I do tells me that most of the spirit mediums who rent a residence along it during the season when Coney Island is frozen over, never call upon a lesser personage for a spirit answer than Napoléon Bonaparte! For who would pay two dollars to hear Uncle John’s opinion of his only living relative? It is surprising that the great Napoléon should make a beeline for Fourteenth street before even going to wash up at the club. But he does. “Ting-a-ling-a-ling,” goes the bell, and the head of the First Empire tells from behind a turkey-red curtain all he knows as precisely as a museum dwarf does his age. And so it is with our hero when he stumbles across a witch in the ravine, who happens to be occupied at the time in boiling a purée of certain poisonous herbs. She gives him a morsel of her stew, which he straightway puts in his upper pocket, and becomes as invulnerable against the bullets of the popping enemy as a Sandy Hook target in front of a popgun. They fairly rattle off him. The princess thinks it nothing short of Providence, and says so. She and her serving-maid occupy themselves with their fancy work at the bottom of the secret fastness while our hero with the magnetic eye peers over an adjoining rock, and the father of the fair Zuléma up stage keeps sharp watch of the enemy from beneath the folds of his voluminous cloak.
And so the day passes and night comes on apace and the stars glitter in pairs in the canvas heavens. No sound breaks the stillness of the night save the creepy titter of violins in the orchestra.
