—To Algeria! And they tell me that all Mussulmans are temperance people, the barbarians! What services will they give me in exchange for this ambrosia, which has cost me so much labor?
—None at all; it is not intended for Mussulmans, but for good Christians who spend their days in Barbary.
—What can they do there which will be of service to me?
—Undertake and undergo raids; kill and be killed; get dysenteries and come home to be doctored; dig harbors, make roads, build villages and people them with Maltese, Italians, Spaniards and Swiss, who live on your hogshead, and many others which I shall come in the future to ask of you.
—Mercy! This is too much, and I flatly refuse you my hogshead. They would send a wine-grower who did such foolish acts to the mad-house. Make roads in the Atlas Mountains, when I cannot get out of my own house! Dig ports in Barbary when the Garonne fills up with sand every day! Take from me my children whom I love, in order to torment Arabs! Make me pay for the houses, grain and horses, given to the Greeks and Maltese, when there are so many poor around us!
—The poor! Exactly; they free the country of this superfluity.
—Oh, yes, by sending after them to Algeria the money which would enable them to live here.
—But then you lay the basis of a great empire, you carry civilization into Africa, and you crown your country with immortal glory.
—You are a poet, my dear Collector; but I am a vine-grower, and I refuse.
—Think that in a few thousand years you will get back your advances a hundred-fold. All those who have charge of the enterprise say so.