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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tartarin of Tarascon, by Alphonse Daudet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tartarin of Tarascon
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Release Date: August, 1999 [EBook #1862]
+Posting Date: November 23, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TARTARIN OF TARASCON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donal O'Danachair
+
+
+
+
+
+TARTARIN OF TARASCON
+
+By Alphonse Daudet
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE THE FIRST, IN TARASCON
+
+
+
+I. The Garden Round the Giant Trees.
+
+
+MY first visit to Tartarin of Tarascon has remained a
+never-to-be-forgotten date in my life; although quite ten or a dozen
+years ago, I remember it better than yesterday.
+
+At that time the intrepid Tartarin lived in the third house on the left
+as the town begins, on the Avignon road. A pretty little villa in
+the local style, with a front garden and a balcony behind, the walls
+glaringly white and the venetians very green; and always about the
+doorsteps a brood of little Savoyard shoe-blackguards playing hopscotch,
+or dozing in the broad sunshine with their heads pillowed on their
+boxes.
+
+Outwardly the dwelling had no remarkable features, and none would ever
+believe it the abode of a hero; but when you stepped inside, ye gods and
+little fishes! what a change! From turret to foundation-stone--I mean,
+from cellar to garret,--the whole building wore a heroic front; even so
+the garden!
+
+O that garden of Tartarin's! there's not its match in Europe! Not a
+native tree was there--not one flower of France; nothing hut exotic
+plants, gum-trees, gourds, cotton-woods, cocoa and cacao, mangoes,
+bananas, palms, a baobab, nopals, cacti, Barbary figs--well, you would
+believe yourself in the very midst of Central Africa, ten thousand
+leagues away. It is but fair to say that these were none of full growth;
+indeed, the cocoa-palms were no bigger than beet root and the baobab
+(arbos gigantea--"giant tree," you know) was easily enough circumscribed
+by a window-pot; but, notwithstanding this, it was rather a sensation
+for Tarascon, and the townsfolk who were admitted on Sundays to the
+honour of contemplating Tartarin's baobab, went home chokeful of
+admiration.
+
+Try to conceive my own emotion, which I was bound to feel on that day of
+days when I crossed through this marvellous garden, and that was capped
+when I was ushered into the hero's sanctum.
+
+His study, one of the lions--I should say, lions' dens--of the town, was
+at the end of the garden, its glass door opening right on to the baobab.
+
+You are to picture a capacious apartment adorned with firearms and steel
+blades from top to bottom: all the weapons of all the countries in the
+wide world--carbines, rifles, blunderbusses, Corsican, Catalan, and
+dagger knives, Malay kreeses, revolvers with spring-bayonets, Carib and
+flint arrows, knuckle-dusters, life-preservers, Hottentot clubs, Mexican
+lassoes--now, can you expect me to name the rest? Upon the whole fell a
+fierce sunlight, which made the blades and the brass butt-plate of the
+muskets gleam as if all the more to set your flesh creeping. Still,
+the beholder was soothed a little by the tame air of order and tidiness
+reigning over the arsenal. Everything was in place, brushed, dusted,
+labelled, as in a museum; from point to point the eye descried some
+obliging little card reading:
+
+
+       -----------------------------------------
+       I             Poisoned Arrows!          I
+       I               Do Not Touch!           I
+       -----------------------------------------
+
+     Or,
+
+       -----------------------------------------
+       I                Loaded!                I
+       I             Take care, please!        I
+       -----------------------------------------
+
+If it had not been for these cautions I never should have dared venture
+in.
+
+In the middle of the room was an occasional table, on which stood
+a decanter of rum, a siphon of soda-water, a Turkish tobacco-pouch,
+"Captain Cook's Voyages," the Indian tales of Fenimore Cooper and
+Gustave Aimard, stories of hunting the bear, eagle, elephant, and so
+on. Lastly, beside the table sat a man of between forty and forty-five,
+short, stout, thick-set, ruddy, with flaming eyes and a strong stubbly
+beard; he wore flannel tights, and was in his shirt sleeves; one hand
+held a book, and the other brandished a very large pipe with an iron
+bowl-cap. Whilst reading heaven only knows what startling adventure of
+scalp-hunters, he pouted out his lower lip in a terrifying way, which
+gave the honest phiz of the man living placidly on his means the same
+impression of kindly ferocity which abounded throughout the house.
+
+This man was Tartarin himself--the Tartarin of Tarascon, the great,
+dreadnought, incomparable Tartarin of Tarascon.
+
+
+
+II. A general glance bestowed upon the good town of Tarascon, and a
+particular one on "the cap-poppers."
+
+
+AT the time I am telling of, Tartarin of Tarascon had not become the
+present-day Tartarin, the great one so popular in the whole South of
+France: but yet he was even then the cock of the walk at Tarascon.
+
+Let us show whence arose this sovereignty.
+
+In the first place you must know that everybody is shooting mad in these
+parts, from the greatest to the least. The chase is the local craze, and
+so it has ever been since the mythological times when the Tarasque, as
+the county dragon was called, flourished himself and his tail in the
+town marshes, and entertained shooting parties got up against him. So
+you see the passion has lasted a goodish bit.
+
+It follows that, every Sunday morning, Tarascon flies to arms, lets
+loose the dogs of the hunt, and rushes out of its walls, with game-bag
+slung and fowling-piece on the shoulder, together with a hurly-burly of
+hounds, cracking of whips, and blowing of whistles and hunting-horns.
+It's splendid to see! Unfortunately, there's a lack of game, an absolute
+dearth.
+
+Stupid as the brute creation is, you can readily understand that, in
+time, it learnt some distrust.
+
+For five leagues around about Tarascon, forms, lairs, and burrows are
+empty, and nesting-places abandoned. You'll not find a single quail or
+blackbird, one little leveret, or the tiniest tit. And yet the pretty
+hillocks are mightily tempting, sweet smelling as they are of myrtle,
+lavender, and rosemary; and the fine muscatels plumped out with
+sweetness even unto bursting, as they spread along the banks of the
+Rhone, are deucedly tempting too. True, true; but Tarascon lies behind
+all this, and Tarascon is down in the black books of the world of fur
+and feather. The very birds of passage have ticked it off on their
+guide-books, and when the wild ducks, coming down towards the Camargue
+in long triangles, spy the town steeples from afar, the outermost flyers
+squawk out loudly:
+
+"Look out! there's Tarascon! give Tarascon the go-by, duckies!"
+
+And the flocks take a swerve.
+
+In short, as far as game goes, there's not a specimen left in the land
+save one old rogue of a hare, escaped by miracle from the massacres, who
+is stubbornly determined to stick to it all his life! He is very well
+known at Tarascon, and a name has been given him. "Rapid" is what
+they call him. It is known that he has his form on M. Bompard's
+grounds--which, by the way, has doubled, ay, tripled, the value of the
+property--but nobody has yet managed to lay him low. At present, only
+two or three inveterate fellows worry themselves about him. The rest
+have given him up as a bad job, and old Rapid has long ago passed
+into the legendary world, although your Tarasconer is very slightly
+superstitious naturally, and would eat cock-robins on toast, or the
+swallow, which is Our Lady's own bird, for that matter, if he could find
+any.
+
+"But that won't do!" you will say. Inasmuch as game is so scarce, what
+can the sportsmen do every Sunday?
+
+What can they do?
+
+Why, goodness gracious! they go out into the real country two or
+three leagues from town. They gather in knots of five or six, recline
+tranquilly in the shade of some well, old wall, or olive tree, extract
+from their game-bags a good-sized piece of boiled beef, raw onions, a
+sausage, and anchovies, and commence a next to endless snack, washed
+down with one of those nice Rhone wines, which sets a toper laughing and
+singing. After that, when thoroughly braced up, they rise, whistle the
+dogs to heel, set the guns on half cock, and go "on the shoot"--another
+way of saying that every man plucks off his cap, "shies" it up with all
+his might, and pops it on the fly with No. 5, 6, or 2 shot, according to
+what he is loaded for.
+
+The man who lodges most shot in his cap is hailed as king of the hunt,
+and stalks back triumphantly at dusk into Tarascon, with his riddled
+cap on the end of his gun-barrel, amid any quantity of dog-barks and
+horn-blasts.
+
+It is needless to say that cap-selling is a fine business in the town.
+There are even some hatters who sell hunting-caps ready shot, torn, and
+perforated for the bad shots; but the only buyer known is the chemist
+Bezuquet. This is dishonourable!
+
+As a marksman at caps, Tartarin of Tarascon never had his match.
+
+Every Sunday morning out he would march in a new cap, and back he would
+strut every Sunday evening with a mere thing of shreds. The loft of
+Baobab Villa was full of these glorious trophies. Hence all Tarascon
+acknowledged him as master; and as Tartarin thoroughly understood
+hunting, and had read all the handbooks of all possible kinds of venery,
+from cap-popping to Burmese tiger-shooting, the sportsmen constituted
+him their great cynegetical judge, and took him for referee and
+arbitrator in all their differences.
+
+Between three and four daily, at Costecalde the gunsmith's, a stout
+stern pipe-smoker might be seen in a green leather-covered arm-chair in
+the centre of the shop crammed with cap-poppers, they all on foot and
+wrangling. This was Tartarin of Tarascon delivering judgement--Nimrod
+plus Solomon.
+
+
+
+III. "Naw, naw, naw!" The general glance protracted upon the good town.
+
+
+AFTER the craze for sporting, the lusty Tarascon race cherishes one
+love: ballad-singing. There's no believing what a quantity of ballads
+is used up in that little region. All the sentimental stuff turning into
+sere and yellow leaves in the oldest portfolios, are to be found in full
+pristine lustre in Tarascon. Ay, the entire collection. Every family has
+its own pet, as is known to the town.
+
+For instance, it is an established fact that this is the chemist
+Bezuquet's family's:
+
+"Thou art the fair star that I adore!"
+
+The gunmaker Costecalde's family's:
+
+"Would'st thou come to the land Where the log-cabins rise?"
+
+The official registrar's family's:
+
+"If I wore a coat of invisible green, Do you think for a moment
+I could be seen?"
+
+And so on for the whole of Tarascon. Two or three times a week there
+were parties where they were sung. The singularity was their being
+always the same, and that the honest Tarasconers had never had an
+inclination to change them during the long, long time they had been
+harping on them. They were handed down from father to son in the
+families, without anybody improving on them or bowdlerising them:
+they were sacred. Never did it occur to Costecalde's mind to sing
+the Bezuquets', or the Bezuquets to try Costecalde's. And yet you may
+believe that they ought to know by heart what they had been singing for
+two-score years! But, nay! everybody stuck to his own,and they were all
+contented.
+
+In ballad-singing, as in cap-popping, Tartarin was still the foremost.
+His superiority over his fellow-townsmen consisted in his not having
+any one song of his own, but in knowing the lot, the whole, mind you!
+But--there's a but--it was the devil's own work to get him to sing them.
+
+Surfeited early in life with his drawing-room successes, our hero
+preferred by far burying himself in his hunting story-books, or spending
+the evening at the club, to making a personal exhibition before a Nimes
+piano between a pair of home-made candles. These musical parades seemed
+beneath him. Nevertheless, at whiles, when there was a harmonic party at
+Bezuquet's, he would drop into the chemist's shop, as if by chance,
+and, after a deal of pressure, consent to do the grand duo in Robert
+le Diable with old Madame Bezuquet. Whoso never heard that never heard
+anything! For my part, even if I lived a hundred years, I should always
+see the mighty Tartarin solemnly stepping up to the piano, setting
+his arms akimbo, working up his tragic mien, and, beneath the green
+reflection from the show-bottles in the window, trying to give his
+pleasant visage the fierce and satanic expression of Robert the Devil.
+Hardly would he fall into position before the whole audience would be
+shuddering with the foreboding that something uncommon was at
+hand. After a hush, old Madame Bezuquet would commence to her own
+accompaniment:
+
+  "Robert, my love is thine!
+  To thee I my faith did plight,
+  Thou seest my affright,--
+  Mercy for thine own sake,
+  And mercy for mine!"
+
+In an undertone she would add: "Now, then, Tartarin!" Whereupon Tartarin
+of Tarascon, with crooked arms, clenched fists, and quivering nostrils,
+would roar three times in a formidable voice, rolling like a thunderclap
+in the bowels of the instrument:
+
+"No! no! no!" which, like the thorough southerner he was, he pronounced
+nasally as "Naw! naw! naw!" Then would old Madame Bezuquet again sing:
+
+  "Mercy for thine own sake,
+   And mercy for mine!"
+
+"Naw! naw! naw!" bellowed Tartarin at his loudest, and there the gem
+ended.
+
+Not long, you see; but it was so handsomely voiced forth, so clearly
+gesticulated, and so diabolical, that a tremor of terror overran the
+chemist's shop, and the "Naw! naw! naw!" would be encored several times
+running.
+
+Upon this Tartarin would sponge his brow, smile on the ladies, wink to
+the sterner sex, and withdraw upon his triumph to go remark at the club
+with a trifling, offhand air:
+
+"I have just come from the Bezuquets', where I was forced to sing 'em
+the duo from Robert le Diable."
+
+The cream of the joke was that he really believed it!
+
+
+
+IV. "They!"
+
+
+CHIEFLY to the account of these diverse talents did Tartarin owe his
+lofty position in the town of Tarascon. Talking of captivating, though,
+this deuce of a fellow knew how to ensnare everybody. Why, the army,
+at Tarascon, was for Tartarin. The brave commandant, Bravida, honorary
+captain retired--in the Military Clothing Factory Department--called him
+a game fellow; and you may well admit that the warrior knew all about
+game fellows, he played such a capital knife and fork on game of all
+kinds.
+
+So was the legislature on Tartarin's side. Two or three times, in open
+court, the old chief judge, Ladevese, had said, in alluding to him:
+
+"He is a character!"
+
+Lastly, the masses were for Tartarin. He had become the swell bruiser,
+the aristocratic pugilist, the crack bully of the local Corinthians
+for the Tarasconers, from his build, bearing, style--that aspect of a
+guard's-trumpeter's charger which fears no noise; his reputation as a
+hero coming from nobody knew whence or for what, and some scramblings
+for coppers and a few kicks to the little ragamuffins basking at his
+doorway.
+
+Along the waterside, when Tartarin came home from hunting on Sunday
+evenings, with his cap on the muzzle of his gun, and his fustian
+shooting-jacket belted in tightly, the sturdy river-lightermen would
+respectfully bob, and blinking towards the huge biceps swelling out his
+arms, would mutter among one another in admiration:
+
+"Now, there's a powerful chap if you like! he has double-muscles!"
+
+"Double muscles!" why, you never heard of such a thing outside of
+Tarascon!
+
+For all this, with all his numberless parts, double-muscles, the
+popular favour, and the so precious esteem of brave Commandant Bravida,
+ex-captain (in the Army Clothing Factory), Tartarin was not happy: this
+life in a petty town weighed upon him and suffocated him.
+
+The great man of Tarascon was bored in Tarascon.
+
+The fact is, for a heroic temperament like his, a wild adventurous
+spirit which dreamt of nothing but battles, races across the pampas,
+mighty battues, desert sands, blizzards and typhoons, it was not enough
+to go out every Sunday to pop at a cap, and the rest of the time to
+ladle out casting-votes at the gunmaker's. Poor dear great man! If this
+existence were only prolonged, there would be sufficient tedium in it to
+kill him with consumption.
+
+In vain did he surround himself with baobabs and other African trees,
+to widen his horizon, and some little to forget his club and the
+market-place; in vain did he pile weapon upon weapon, and Malay kreese
+upon Malay kreese; in vain did he cram with romances, endeavouring like
+the immortal Don Quixote to wrench himself by the vigour of his fancy
+out of the talons of pitiless reality. Alas! all that he did to appease
+his thirst for deeds of daring only helped to augment it. The sight of
+all the murderous implements kept him in a perpetual stew of wrath and
+exaltation. His revolvers, repeating rifles, and ducking-guns shouted
+"Battle! battle!" out of their mouths. Through the twigs of his baobab,
+the tempest of great voyages and journeys soughed and blew bad advice.
+To finish him came Gustave Aimard, Mayne Reid, and Fenimore Cooper.
+
+Oh, how many times did Tartarin with a howl spring up on the sultry
+summer afternoons, when he was reading alone amidst his blades, points,
+and edges; how many times did he dash down his book and rush to the wall
+to unhook a deadly arm! The poor man forgot he was at home in Tarascon,
+in his underclothes, and with a handkerchief round his head. He would
+translate his readings into action, and, goading himself with his own
+voice, shout out whilst swinging a battle-axe or tomahawk:
+
+"Now, only let 'em come!"
+
+"Them"? who were they?
+
+Tartarin did not himself any too clearly understand. "They" was all
+that should be attacked and fought with, all that bites, claws, scalps,
+whoops, and yells--the Sioux Indians dancing around the war-stake to
+which the unfortunate pale-face prisoner is lashed. The grizzly of the
+Rocky Mountains, who wobbles on his hind legs, and licks himself with a
+tongue full of blood. The Touareg, too, in the desert, the Malay pirate,
+the brigand of the Abruzzi--in short, "they" was warfare, travel,
+adventure, and glory.
+
+But, alas!! it was to no avail that the fearless Tarasconer called for
+and defied them; never did they come. Odsboddikins! what would they have
+come to do in Tarascon?
+
+Nevertheless Tartarin always expected to run up against them,
+particularly some evening in going to the club.
+
+
+
+V. How Tartarin went round to his club.
+
+
+LITTLE, indeed, beside Tartarin of Tarascon, arming himself capa-pie
+to go to his club at nine, an hour after the retreat had sounded on the
+bugle, was the Templar Knight preparing for a sortie upon the infidel,
+the Chinese tiger equipping himself for combat, or the Comanche warrior
+painting up for going on the war-path. "All hands make ready for
+action!" as the men-of-war's men say.
+
+In his left hand Tartarin took a steel-pointed knuckle-duster; in the
+right he carried a sword-cane; in his left pocket a life-preserver; in
+the right a revolver. On his chest, betwixt outer and under garment,
+lay a Malay kreese. But never any poisoned arrows--they are weapons
+altogether too unfair.
+
+Before starting, in the silence and obscurity of his study, he exercised
+himself for a while, warding off imaginary cuts and thrusts, lunging at
+the wall, and giving his muscles play; then he took his master-key and
+went through the garden leisurely; without hurrying, mark you. "Cool and
+calm--British courage, that is the true sort, gentlemen." At the garden
+end he opened the heavy iron door, violently and abruptly so that it
+should slam against the outer wall. If "they" had been skulking behind
+it, you may wager they would have been jam. Unhappily, they were not
+there.
+
+The way being open, out Tartarin would sally, quickly glancing to the
+right and left, ere banging the door to and fastening it smartly with
+double-locking. Then, on the way.
+
+Not so much as a cat upon the Avignon road--all the doors closed, and
+no lights in the casements. All was black, except for the parish lamps,
+well spaced apart, blinking in the river mist.
+
+Calm and proud, Tartarin of Tarascon marched on in the night, ringing
+his heels with regularity, and sending sparks out of the paving-stones
+with the ferule of his stick. Whether in avenues, streets, or lanes,
+he took care to keep in the middle of the road--an excellent method of
+precaution, allowing one to see danger coming, and, above all, to avoid
+any droppings from windows, as happens after dark in Tarascon and the
+Old Town of Edinburgh. On seeing so much prudence in Tartarin, pray do
+not conclude that Tartarin had any fear--dear, no! he only was on his
+guard.
+
+The best proof that Tartarin was not scared is, that instead of going to
+the club by the shortest cut, he went over the town by the longest and
+darkest way round, through a mass of vile, paltry alleys, at the mouth
+of which the Rhone could be seen ominously gleaming. The poor knight
+constantly hoped that, beyond the turn of one of these cut-throats'
+haunts, "they" would leap from the shadow and fall on his back. I
+warrant you, "they" would have been warmly received, though; but, alack!
+by reason of some nasty meanness of destiny, never indeed did Tartarin
+of Tarascon enjoy the luck to meet any ugly customers--not so much as a
+dog or a drunken man--nothing at all!
+
+Still, there were false alarms somewhiles. He would catch a sound of
+steps and muffled voices.
+
+"Ware hawks!" Tartarin would mutter, and stop short, as if taking root
+on the spot, scrutinising the gloom, sniffing the wind, even glueing his
+ear to the ground in the orthodox Red Indian mode. The steps would
+draw nearer, and the voices grow more distinct, till no more doubt was
+possible. "They" were coming--in fact, here "they" were!
+
+Steady, with eye afire and heaving breast, Tartarin would gather
+himself like a jaguar in readiness to spring forward whilst uttering his
+war-cry, when, all of a sudden, out of the thick of the murkiness, he
+would hear honest Tarasconian voices quite tranquilly hailing him with:
+
+"Hullo! you, by Jove! it's Tartarin! Good night, old fellow!"
+
+Maledictions upon it! It was the chemist Bezuquet, with his family,
+coming from singing their family ballad at Costecalde's.
+
+"Oh, good even, good even!" Tartarin would growl, furious at his
+blunder, and plunging fiercely into the gloom with his cane waved on
+high.
+
+On arriving in the street where stood his club-house, the dauntless one
+would linger yet a moment, walking up and down before the portals ere
+entering. But, finally, weary of awaiting "them," and certain "they"
+would not show "themselves," he would fling a last glare of defiance
+into the shades and snarl wrathfully:
+
+"Nothing, nothing at all! there never is nothing!"
+
+Upon which double negation, which he meant as a stronger affirmative,
+the worthy champion would walk in to play his game of bezique with the
+commandant.
+
+
+
+VI. The two Tartarins.
+
+
+ANSWER me, you will say, how the mischief is it that Tartarin of
+Tarascon never left Tarascon with all this mania for adventure, need of
+powerful sensations, and folly about travel, rides, and journeys from
+the Pole to the Equator?
+
+For that is a fact: up to the age of five-and-forty, the dreadless
+Tarasconian had never once slept outside his own room. He had not even
+taken that obligatory trip to Marseilles which every sound Provencal
+makes upon coming of age. The most of his knowledge included Beaucaire,
+and yet that's not far from Tarascon, there being merely the bridge to
+go over. Unfortunately, this rascally bridge has so often been blown
+away by the gales, it is so long and frail, and the Rhone has such
+a width at this spot that--well, faith! you understand! Tartarin of
+Tarascon preferred terra firma.
+
+We are afraid we must make a clean breast of it: in our hero there were
+two very distinct characters. Some Father of the Church has said: "I
+feel there are two men in me." He would have spoken truly in saying this
+about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the
+same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose
+and romantic; but, worse is the luck! he had not the body of the
+celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which
+material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through twenty
+nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled off, and forty-eight
+hours on a handful of rice. On the contrary, Tartarin's body was a stout
+honest bully of a body, very fat, very weighty, most sensual and fond
+of coddling, highly touchy, full of low-class appetite and homely
+requirements--the short, paunchy body on stumps of the immortal Sancho
+Panza.
+
+Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the one same man! you will readily
+comprehend what a cat-and-dog couple they made! what strife! what
+clapper-clawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for Lucian or Saint-Evremond to
+write, between the two Tartarins--Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin!
+Quixote-Tartarin firing up on the stories of Gustave Aimard, and
+shouting: "Up and at 'em!" and Sancho-Tartarin thinking only of the
+rheumatics ahead, and murmuring: "I mean to stay at home."
+
+
+                       THE DUET.
+
+  QUIXOTE-TARTARIN.              SANCHO-TARTARIN.
+  (Highly excited.)              (Quite calmly.)
+  Cover yourself with glory,     Tartarin, cover yourself
+  Tartarin.                      with flannel.
+
+  (Still more excitedly.)        (Still more calmly.)
+  O for the terrible double-     O for the thick knitted
+  barrelled rifle! O for         waistcoats! and warm
+  bowie-knives, lassoes,         knee-caps! O for the
+  and moccasins!                 welcome padded caps
+                                 with ear-flaps!
+
+  (Above all self-control.)     (Ringing up the maid.)
+  A battle-axe! fetch me a       Now, then, Jeannette, do
+  battle-axe!                    bring up that chocolate!
+
+
+Whereupon Jeannette would appear with an unusually good cup of
+chocolate, just right in warmth, sweetly smelling, and with the play
+of light on watered silk upon its unctuous surface, and with succulent
+grilled steak flavoured with anise-seed, which would set Sancho-Tartarin
+off on the broad grin, and into a laugh that drowned the shouts of
+Quixote-Tartarin.
+
+Thus it came about that Tartarin of Tarascon never had left Tarascon.
+
+
+
+VII. Tartarin--The Europeans at Shanghai--Commerce--The Tartars--Can
+Tartarin of Tarascon be an Impostor?--The Mirage.
+
+
+UNDER one conjunction of circumstances, Tartarin did, however, once
+almost start out upon a great voyage.
+
+The three brothers Garcio-Camus, relatives of Tarascon, established
+in business at Shanghai, offered him the managership of one of their
+branches there. This undoubtedly presented the kind of life he hankered
+after. Plenty of active business, a whole army of under-strappers to
+order about, and connections with Russia, Persia, Turkey in Asia--in
+short, to be a merchant prince!
+
+In Tartarin's mouth, the title of Merchant Prince thundered out as
+something stunning!
+
+The house of Garcio-Camus had the further advantage of sometimes being
+favoured with a call from the Tartars. Then the doors would be slammed
+shut, all the clerks flew to arms, up ran the consular flag, and zizz!
+phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars.
+
+I need not tell you with what enthusiasm Quixote-Tartarin clutched this
+proposition; sad to say, Sancho-Tartarin did not see it in the same
+light, and, as he was the stronger party, it never came to anything. But
+in the town there was much talk about it. Would he go or would he not?
+"I'll lay he will!"--and "I'll wager he won't!" It was the event of the
+week. In the upshot, Tartarin did not depart, but the matter redounded
+to his credit none the less. Going or not going to Shanghai was all one
+to Tarascon. Tartarin's journey was so much talked about that people got
+to believe he had done it and returned, and at the club in the evening
+members would actually ask for information on life at Shanghai, the
+manners and customs and climate, about opium, and commerce.
+
+Deeply read up, Tartarin would graciously furnish the particulars
+desired, and, in the end, the good fellow was not quite sure himself
+about not having gone to Shanghai, so that, after relating for the
+hundredth time how the Tartars came down on the trading post, it would
+most naturally happen him to add:
+
+"Then I made my men take up arms and hoist the consular flag, and zizz!
+phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars."
+
+On hearing this, the whole club would quiver.
+
+"But according to that, this Tartarin of yours is an awful liar."
+
+"No, no, a thousand times over, no! Tartarin was no liar."
+
+"But the man ought to know that he has never been to Shanghai"--
+
+"Why, of course, he knows that; but still"--
+
+"But still," you see--mark that! It is high time for the law to be laid
+down once for all on the reputation as drawers of the long bow which
+Northerners fling at Southerners. There are no Baron Munchausens in the
+south of France, neither at Nimes nor Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon.
+The Southerner does not deceive but is self-deceived. He does not always
+tell the cold-drawn truth, but he believes he does. His falsehood is not
+any such thing, but a kind of mental mirage.
+
+Yes, purely mirage! The better to follow me, you should actually follow
+me into the South, and you will see I am right. You have only to look at
+that Lucifer's own country, where the sun transmogrifies everything,
+and magnifies it beyond life-size. The little hills of Provence are no
+bigger than the Butte Montmartre, but they will loom up like the Rocky
+Mountains; the Square House at Nimes--a mere model to put on your
+sideboard--will seem grander than St. Peter's. You will see--in brief,
+the only exaggerator in the South is Old Sol, for he does enlarge
+everything he touches. What was Sparta in its days of splendour? a
+pitiful hamlet. What was Athens? at the most, a second-class town; and
+yet in history both appear to us as enormous cities. This is a sample of
+what the sun can do.
+
+Are you going to be astonished after this that the same sun falling upon
+Tarascon should have made of an ex-captain in the Army Clothing Factory,
+like Bravida, the "brave commandant;" of a sprout an Indian fig-tree;
+and of a man who had missed going to Shanghai one who had been there?
+
+
+
+VIII. Mitaine's Menagerie--A Lion from the Atlas at Tarascon--A Solemn
+and Fearsome Confrontation.
+
+
+EXHIBITING Tartarin of Tarascon, as we are, in his private life, before
+Fame kissed his brow and garlanded him with her well-worn laurel wreath,
+and having narrated his heroic existence in a modest state, his delights
+and sorrows, his dreams and his hopes, let us hurriedly skip to the
+grandest pages of his story, and to the singular event which was to give
+the first flight to his incomparable career.
+
+It happened one evening at Costecalde the gunmaker's, where Tartarin was
+engaged in showing several sportsmen the working of the needle-gun,
+then in its first novelty. The door suddenly flew open, and in rushed a
+bewildered cap-popper, howling "A lion, a lion!" General was the alarm,
+stupor, uproar and tumult. Tartarin prepared to resist cavalry with
+the bayonet, whilst Costecalde ran to shut the door. The sportsman was
+surrounded and pressed and questioned, and here follows what he told
+them: Mitaine's Menagerie, returning from Beaucaire Fair, had consented
+to stay over a few days at Tarascon, and was just unpacking, to set up
+the show on the Castle-green, with a lot of boas, seals, crocodiles, and
+a magnificent lion from the Atlas Mountains.
+
+An African lion in Tarascon?
+
+Never in the memory of living man had the like been seen. Hence our
+dauntless cap-poppers looked at one another how proudly! What a beaming
+on their sunburned visages! and in every nook of Costecalde's shop what
+hearty congratulatory grips of the hand were silently exchanged! The
+sensation was so great and unforeseen that nobody could find a word to
+say--not even Tartarin.
+
+Blanched and agitated, with the needle-gun still in his fist, he
+brooded, erect before the counter. A lion from the Atlas Range at pistol
+range from him, a couple of strides off? a lion, mind you--the beast
+heroic and ferocious above all others, the King of the Brute Creation,
+the crowning game of his fancies, something like the leading actor in
+the ideal company which played such splendid tragedies in his mind's
+eye. A lion, heaven be thanked! and from the Atlas, to boot! It was more
+than the great Tartarin could bear.
+
+Suddenly a flush of blood flew into his face. His eyes flashed. With one
+convulsive movement he shouldered the needle-gun, and turning towards
+the brave Commandant Bravida (formerly captain in the Army Clothing
+Department, please to remember), he thundered to him--
+
+"Let's go have a look at him, commandant."
+
+"Here, here, I say! that's my gun--my needle-gun you are carrying off,"
+timidly ventured the wary Costecalde; but Tartarin had already got round
+the corner, with all the cap-poppers proudly lock-stepping behind him.
+
+When they arrived at the menagerie, they found a goodly number of people
+there. Tarascon, heroic but too long deprived of sensational shows, had
+rushed upon Mitaine's portable theatre, and had taken it by storm. Hence
+the voluminous Madame Mitaine was highly contented. In an Arab costume,
+her arms bare to the elbow, iron anklets on, a whip in one hand and a
+plucked though live pullet in the other, the noted lady was doing the
+honours of the booth to the Tarasconians; and, as she also had "double
+muscles," her success was almost as great as her animals.
+
+The entrance of Tartarin with the gun on his shoulder was a damper.
+
+All our good Tarasconians, who had been quite tranquilly strolling
+before the cages, unarmed and with no distrust, without even any idea
+of danger, felt momentary apprehension, naturally enough, on beholding
+their mighty Tartarin rush into the enclosure with his formidable engine
+of war. There must be something to fear when a hero like he was, came
+weaponed; so, in a twinkling, all the space along the cage fronts was
+cleared. The youngsters burst out squalling for fear, and the women
+looked round for the nearest way out. The chemist Bezuquet made off
+altogether, alleging that he was going home for his gun.
+
+Gradually, however, Tartarin's bearing restored courage. With head
+erect, the intrepid Tarasconian slowly and calmly made the circuit
+of the booth, passing the seal's tank without stopping, glancing
+disdainfully on the long box filled with sawdust in which the boa would
+digest its raw fowl, and going to take his stand before the lion's cage.
+
+A terrible and solemn confrontation, this! The lion of Tarascon and the
+lion of Africa face to face!
+
+On the one part, Tartarin erect, with his hamstrings in tension, and
+his arms folded on his gun barrel; on the other, the lion, a gigantic
+specimen, humped up in the straw, with blinking orbs and brutish mien,
+resting his huge muzzle and tawny full-bottomed wig on his forepaws.
+Both calm in their gaze.
+
+Singular thing! whether the needle-gun had given him "the needle," if
+the popular idiom is admissible, or that he scented an enemy of
+his race, the lion, who had hitherto regarded the Tarasconians with
+sovereign scorn, and yawned in their faces, was all at once affected by
+ire. At first he sniffed; then he growled hollowly, stretching out his
+claws; rising, he tossed his head, shook his mane, opened a capacious
+maw, and belched a deafening roar at Tartarin.
+
+A yell of fright responded, as Tarascon precipitated itself madly
+towards the exit, women and children, lightermen, cap-poppers, even the
+brave Commandant Bravida himself. But, alone, Tartarin of Tarascon
+had not budged. There he stood, firm and resolute, before the cage,
+lightnings in his eyes, and on his lip that gruesome grin with which
+all the town was familiar. In a moment's time, when all the cap-poppers,
+some little fortified by his bearing and the strength of the bars,
+re-approached their leader, they heard him mutter, as he stared Leo out
+of countenance:
+
+"Now, this is something like a hunt!"
+
+All the rest of that day, never a word farther could they draw from
+Tartarin of Tarascon.
+
+
+
+IX. Singular effects of Mental Mirage.
+
+
+CONFINING his remarks to the sentence last recorded, Tartarin had
+unfortunately still said overmuch.
+
+On the morrow, there was nothing talked about through town but the
+near-at-hand departure of Tartarin for Algeria and lion-hunting. You
+are all witness, dear readers, that the honest fellow had not breathed
+a word on that head; but, you know, the mirage had its usual effect. In
+brief, all Tarascon spoke of nothing but the departure.
+
+On the Old Walk, at the club, in Costecalde's, friends accosted one
+another with a startled aspect:
+
+"And furthermore, you know the news, at least?"
+
+"And furthermore, rather? Tartarin's setting out, at least?"
+
+For at Tarascon all phrases begin with "and furthermore," and conclude
+with "at least," with a strong local accent. Hence, on this occasion
+more than upon others, these peculiarities rang out till the windows
+shivered.
+
+The most surprised of men in the town on hearing that Tartarin was
+going away to Africa, was Tartarin himself. But only see what vanity is!
+Instead of plumply answering that he was not going at all, and had not
+even had the intention, poor Tartarin, on the first of them mentioning
+the journey to him, observed with a neat little evasive air, "Aha!
+maybe I shall--but I do not say as much." The second time; a trifle more
+familiarised with the idea, he replied, "Very likely;" and the third
+time, "It's certain."
+
+Finally, in the evening, at Costecalde's and the club, carried away by
+the egg-nogg, cheers, and illumination; intoxicated by the impression
+that bare announcement of his departure had made on the town, the
+hapless fellow formally declared that he was sick of banging away at
+caps, and that he would shortly be on the trail of the great lions of
+the Atlas. A deafening hurrah greeted this assertion. Whereupon more
+egg-nogg, bravoes, handshaking, slappings of the shoulder, and a
+torchlight serenade up to midnight before Baobab Villa.
+
+It was Sancho-Tartarin who was anything but delighted. This idea of
+travel in Africa and lion-hunting made him shudder beforehand; and
+when the house was re-entered, and whilst the complimentary concert
+was sounding under the windows, he had a dreadful "row" with
+Quixote-Tartarin, calling him a cracked head, a visionary, imprudent,
+and thrice an idiot, and detailing by the card all the catastrophes
+awaiting him on such an expedition--shipwreck, rheumatism, yellow fever,
+dysentery, the black plague, elephantiasis, and the rest of them.
+
+In vain did Quixote-Tartarin vow that he had not committed any
+imprudence--that he would wrap himself up well, and take even
+superfluous necessaries with him. Sancho-Tartarin would listen to
+nothing. The poor craven saw himself already torn to tatters by the
+lions, or engulfed in the desert sands like his late royal highness
+Cambyses, and the other Tartarin only managed to appease him a little by
+explaining that the start was not immediate, as nothing pressed.
+
+It is clear enough, indeed, that none embark on such an enterprise
+without some preparations. A man is bound to know whither he goes,
+hang it all! and not fly off like a bird. Before anything else, the
+Tarasconian wanted to peruse the accounts of great African tourists, the
+narrations of Mungo Park, Du Chaillu, Dr. Livingstone, Stanley, and so
+on.
+
+In them, he learnt that these daring explorers, before donning their
+sandals for distant excursions, hardened themselves well beforehand to
+support hunger and thirst, forced marches, and all kinds of privation.
+Tartarin meant to act like they did, and from that day forward he lived
+upon water broth alone. The water broth of Tarascon is a few slices of
+bread drowned in hot water, with a clove of garlic, a pinch of thyme,
+and a sprig of laurel. Strict diet, at which you may believe poor Sancho
+made a wry face.
+
+To the regimen of water broth Tartarin of Tarascon joined other
+wise practices. To break himself into the habit of long marches,
+he constrained himself to go round the town seven or eight times
+consecutively every morning, either at the fast walk or run, his elbows
+well set against his body, and a couple of white pebbles in the mouth,
+according to the antique usage.
+
+To get inured to fog, dew, and night coolness, he would go down into his
+garden every dusk, and stop out there till ten or eleven, alone with his
+gun, on the lookout, behind the baobab.
+
+Finally, so long as Mitaine's wild beast show tarried in Tarascon, the
+cap-poppers who were belated at Costecalde's might spy in the shadow
+of the booth, as they crossed the Castle-green, a mysterious figure
+stalking up and down. It was Tartarin of Tarascon, habituating himself
+to hear without emotion the roarings of the lion in the sombre night.
+
+
+
+X. Before the Start.
+
+
+PENDING Tartarin's delay of the event by all sorts of heroic means,
+all Tarascon kept an eye upon him, and nothing else was busied about.
+Cap-popping was winged, and ballad-singing dead. The piano in Bezuquet's
+shop mouldered away under a green fungus, and the Spanish flies
+dried upon it, belly up. Tartarin's expedition had a put a stopper on
+everything.
+
+Ah, you ought to have seen his success in the parlours. He was snatched
+away by one from another, fought for, loaned and borrowed, ay, stolen.
+There was no greater honour for the ladies than to go to Mitaine's
+Menagerie on Tartarin's arms, and have it explained before the lion's
+den how such large game are hunted, where they should be aimed at, at
+how many paces off; if the accidents were numerous, and the like of
+that.
+
+Tartarin furnished all the elucidation desired. He had read "The Life of
+Jules Gerard, the Lion-Slayer," and had lion-hunting at his finger ends,
+as if he had been through it himself. Hence he orated upon these matters
+with great eloquence.
+
+But where he shone the brightest was at dinner at Chief Judge
+Ladeveze's, or brave Commandant Bravida's (the former captain in the
+Army Clothing Factory, you will keep in mind), when coffee came in, and
+all the chairs were brought up closer together, whilst they chatted of
+his future hunts.
+
+Thereupon, his elbow on the cloth, his nose over his Mocha, our hero
+would discourse in a feeling tone of all the dangers awaiting him
+thereaway. He spoke of the long moonless night lyings-in-wait, the
+pestilential fens, the rivers envenomed by leaves of poison-plants,
+the deep snow-drifts, the scorching suns, the scorpions, and rains of
+grasshoppers; he also descanted on the peculiarities of the great lions
+of the Atlas, their way of fighting, their phenomenal vigour; and their
+ferocity in the mating season.
+
+Heating with his own recital, he would rise from table, bounding to the
+middle of the dining-room, imitating the roar of a lion and the
+going off of a rifle crack! bang! the zizz of the explosive
+bullet--gesticulating and roaring about till he had overset the chairs.
+
+Everybody turned pale around the board: the gentlemen looking at one
+another and wagging their heads, the ladies shutting their eyes with
+pretty screams of fright, the elderly men combatively brandishing their
+canes; and, in the side apartments, the little boys, who had been put to
+bed betimes, were greatly startled by the sudden outcries and imitated
+gun-fire, and screamed for lights. Meanwhile, Tartarin did not start.
+
+
+
+XI. "Let's have it out with swords gentleman, not pins!"
+
+
+A DELICATE question: whether Tartarin really had any intention of going,
+and one which the historian of Tartarin would be highly embarrassed to
+answer. In plain words, Mitaine's Menagerie had left Tarascon over three
+months, and still the lion-slayer had not started. After all, blinded by
+a new mirage, our candid hero may have imagined in perfectly good faith
+that he had gone to Algeria. On the strength of having related his
+future hunts, he may have believed he had performed them as sincerely
+as he fancied he had hoisted the consular flag and fired on the Tartars,
+zizz, phit, bang! at Shanghai.
+
+Unfortunately, granting Tartarin was this time again dupe of an
+illusion, his fellow-townsfolk were not. When, after the quarter's
+expectation, they perceived that the hunter had not packed even a
+collar-box, they commenced murmuring.
+
+"This is going to turn out like the Shanghai expedition," remarked
+Costecalde, smiling.
+
+The gunsmith's comment was welcomed all over town, for nobody believed
+any longer in their late idol. The simpletons and poltroons--all the
+fellows of Bezuquet's stamp, whom a flea would put to flight, and who
+could not fire a shot without closing their eyes--were conspicuously
+pitiless. In the club-rooms or on the esplanade, they accosted poor
+Tartarin with bantering mien:
+
+"And furthermore, when is that trip coming off?"
+
+In Costecalde's shop, his opinions gained no credence, for the
+cap-poppers renounced their chief!
+
+Next, epigrams dropped into the affair. Chief Judge Ladevese, who
+willingly paid court in his leisure hours to the native Muse, composed
+in local dialect a song which won much success. It told of a sportsman
+called "Master Gervais," whose dreaded rifle was bound to exterminate
+all the lions in Africa to the very last. Unluckily, this terrible gun
+was of a strange kind: "though loaded daily, it never went off."
+
+"It never went off"--you will catch the drift.
+
+In less than no time, this ditty became popular; and when Tartarin came
+by, the longshoremen and the little shoeblacks before his door sang in
+chorus--
+
+  "Muster Jarvey's roifle
+  Allus gittin' chaarged;
+  Muster Jarvey's roifle
+  'il hev to git enlaarged;
+  Muster Jarvey's roifle's
+  Loaded oft--don't scoff;
+  Muster Jarvey's roifle
+  Nivver do go off!"
+
+But it was shouted out from a safe distance, on account of the double
+muscles.
+
+Oh, the fragility of Tarascon's fads!
+
+The great object himself feigned to see and hear nothing; but, under the
+surface, this sullen and venomous petty warfare much afflicted him. He
+felt aware that Tarascon was slipping out of his grip, and that popular
+favour was going to others; and this made him suffer horribly.
+
+Ah, the huge bowl of popularity! it's all very well to have a seat in
+front of it, but what a scalding you catch when it is overturned!
+
+Notwithstanding his pain, Tartarin smiled and peacefully jogged on in
+the same life as if nothing untoward had happened. Still, the mask
+of jovial heedlessness glued by pride on his face would sometimes
+be suddenly detached. Then, in lieu of laughter, one saw grief and
+indignation. Thus it was that one morning, when the little blackguards
+yelped "Muster Jarvey's Roifle" beneath his window, the wretches' voices
+rose even into the poor great man's room, where he was shaving before
+the glass. (Tartarin wore a full beard, but as it grew very thick, he
+was obliged to keep it trimmed orderly.)
+
+All at once the window was violently opened, and Tartarin appeared in
+shirt-sleeves and nightcap, smothered in lather, flourishing his razor
+and shaving-brush, and roaring with a formidable voice:
+
+"Let's have it out with swords, gentlemen, not pins!"
+
+Fine words, worthy of history's record, with only the blemish that they
+were addressed to little scamps not higher than their boot-boxes, and
+who were quite incapable of holding a smallsword.
+
+
+
+XII. A memorable Dialogue in the little Baobab Villa.
+
+
+AMID the general falling off, the army alone stuck out firmly for
+Tartarin. Brave Commandant Bravida (the former captain in the Army
+Clothing Department) continued to show him the same esteem as ever.
+"He's game!" he persisted in saying--an assertion, I beg to believe,
+fully worth the chemist Bezuquet's. Not once did the brave officer let
+out any allusion to the trip to Africa; but when the public clamour grew
+too loud, he determined to have his say.
+
+One evening the luckless Tartarin was in his study, in a brown study
+himself, when he saw the commandant stride in, stern, wearing black
+gloves, buttoned up to his ears.
+
+"Tartarin," said the ex-captain authoritatively, "Tartarin, you'll have
+to go!"
+
+And there he dwelt, erect in the doorway frame, grand and rigid as
+embodied Duty. Tartarin of Tarascon comprehended all the sense in
+"Tartarin, you'll have to ago!"
+
+Very pale, he rose and looked around with a softened eye upon the cosy
+snuggery, tightly closed in, full of warmth and tender light--upon the
+commodious easy chair, his books, the carpet, the white blinds of the
+windows, beyond which trembled the slender twigs of the little garden.
+Then, advancing towards the brave officer, he took his hand, grasped it
+energetically, and said in a voice somewhat tearful, but stoical for all
+that:
+
+"I am going, Bravida."
+
+And go he did, as he said he would. Not straight off though, for it
+takes time to get the paraphernalia together.
+
+To begin with, he ordered of Bompard two large boxes bound with brass,
+and an inscription to be on them:
+
+         -----------------------------------------
+         I         TARTARIN, OF TARASCON         I
+         I             Firearms, &c.             I
+         -----------------------------------------
+
+The binding in brass and the lettering took much time. He also
+ordered at Tastavin's a showy album, in which to keep a diary and his
+impressions of travel; for a man cannot help having an idea or two
+strike him even when he is busy lion-hunting.
+
+Next, he had over from Marseilles a downright cargo of tinned
+eatables, pemmican compressed in cakes for making soup, a new pattern
+shelter-tent, opening out and packing up in a minute, sea-boots, a
+couple of umbrellas, a waterproof coat, and blue spectacles to ward off
+ophthalmia. To conclude, Bezuquet the chemist made him up a miniature
+portable medicine chest stuffed with diachylon plaister, arnica,
+camphor, and medicated vinegar.
+
+Poor Tartarin! he did not take these safeguards on his own behalf;
+but he hoped, by dint of precaution and delicate attentions, to allay
+Sancho-Tartarin's fury, who, since the start was fixed, never left off
+raging day or night.
+
+
+
+XIII. The Departure.
+
+
+EFTSOON arrived the great and solemn day. From dawn all Tarascon had
+been on foot, encumbering the Avignon road and the approaches to Baobab
+Villa. People were up at the windows, on the roofs, and in the trees;
+the Rhone bargees, porters, dredgers, shoeblacks, gentry, tradesfolk,
+warpers and weavers, taffety-workers, the club members, in short the
+whole town; moreover, people from Beaucaire had come over the bridge,
+market-gardeners from the environs, carters in their huge carts with
+ample tilts, vinedressers upon handsome mules, tricked out with ribbons,
+streamers, bells, rosettes, and jingles, and even, here and there, a few
+pretty maids from Arles, come on the pillion behind their sweethearts,
+with bonny blue ribbons round the head, upon little iron-grey Camargue
+horses.
+
+All this swarm squeezed and jostled before our good Tartarin's door, who
+was going to slaughter lions in the land of the Turks.
+
+For Tarascon, Algeria, Africa, Greece, Persia, Turkey, and Mesopotamia,
+all form one great hazy country, almost a myth, called the land of the
+Turks. They say "Tur's," but that's a linguistic digression.
+
+In the midst of all this throng, the cap-poppers bustled to and fro,
+proud of their captain's triumph, leaving glorious wakes where they had
+passed.
+
+In front of the Indian fig-tree house were two large trucks. From time
+to time the door would open, and allow several persons to be spied,
+gravely lounging about the little garden. At every new box the throng
+started and trembled. The articles were named in a loud voice:
+
+"That there's the shelter-tent; these the potted meats; that's
+the physic-chest; these the gun-cases,"--the cap-poppers giving
+explanations.
+
+All of a sudden, about ten o'clock, there was a great stir in the
+multitude, for the garden gate banged open.
+
+"Here he is! here he is!" they shouted.
+
+It was he indeed. When he appeared upon the threshold, two outcries of
+stupefaction burst from the assemblage:
+
+"He's a Turk!" "He's got on spectacles!"
+
+In truth, Tartarin of Tarascon had deemed it his duty, on going to
+Algeria, to don the Algerian costume. Full white linen trousers, small
+tight vest with metal buttons, a red sash two feet wide around the
+waist, the neck bare and the forehead shaven, and a vast red fez, or
+chechia, on his head, with something like a long blue tassel thereto.
+Together with this, two heavy guns, one on each shoulder, a broad
+hunting-knife in the girdle, a bandolier across the breast, a revolver
+on the hip, swinging in its patent leather case--that is all. No, I cry
+your pardon, I was forgetting the spectacles--a pantomimically large
+pair of azure barnacles, which came in partly to temper what was rather
+too fierce in the bearing of our hero.
+
+"Long life to Tartarin! hip, hip, hurrah for Tartarin!" roared the
+populace.
+
+The great man smiled, but did not salute, on account of the firearms
+hindering him. Moreover, he knew now on what popular favour depends;
+it may even be that in the depths of his soul he cursed his terrible
+fellow-townsfolk, who obliged him to go away and leave his pretty little
+pleasure-house with whitened walls and green venetians. But there was no
+show of this.
+
+Calm and proud, although a little pallid, he stepped out on the footway,
+glanced at the hand-carts, and, seeing all was right, lustily took the
+road to the railway-station, without even once looking back towards
+Baobab Villa. Behind him marched the brave Commandant Bravida, Ladevese
+the Chief Judge, Costecalde the gunsmith next, and then all the
+sportsmen who pop at caps, preceding the hand-carts and the rag, tag,
+and bobtail.
+
+Before the station the station-master awaited them, an old African
+veteran of 1830, who shook Tartarin's hand many times with fervency.
+
+The Paris-to-Marseilles express was not yet in, so Tartarin and his
+staff went into the waiting-rooms. To prevent the place being overrun,
+the station-master ordered the gates to be closed.
+
+During a quarter of an hour, Tartarin promenaded up and down in the
+rooms in the midst of his brother marksmen, speaking to them of his
+journey and his hunting, and promising to send them skins; they put
+their names down in his memorandum-book for a lionskin apiece, as
+waltzers book for a dance.
+
+Gentle and placid as Socrates on the point of quaffing the hemlock, the
+intrepid Tarasconian had a word and a smile for each. He spoke simply,
+with an affable mien; it looked as if, before departing, he meant to
+leave behind him a wake of charms, regrets, and pleasant memories. On
+hearing their leader speak in this way, all the sportsmen felt tears
+well up, and some were stung with remorse, to wit, Chief Judge Ladevese
+and the chemist Bezuquet. The railway employees blubbered in the
+corners, whilst the outer public squinted through the bars and bellowed:
+"Long live Tartarin!"
+
+At length the bell rang. A dull rumble was heard, and a piercing whistle
+shook the vault.
+
+"The Marseilles express, gen'lemen!"
+
+"Good-bye, Tartarin! Good luck, old fellow!"
+
+"Good-bye to you all!" murmured the great man, as, with his arms
+around the brave Commandant Bravida, he embraced his dear native place
+collectively in him. Then he leaped out upon the platform, and clambered
+into a carriage full of Parisian ladies, who were ready to die with
+fright at sight of this stranger with so many pistols and rifles.
+
+
+
+XIV. The Port of Marseilles--"All aboard, all aboard!"
+
+
+UPON the 1st of December 18--, in clear, brilliant, splendid weather,
+under a south winter sun, the startled inhabitants of Marseilles beheld
+a Turk come down the Canebiere, or their Regent Street. A Turk, a
+regular Turk--never had such a one been seen; and yet, Heaven knows,
+there is no lack of Turks at Marseilles.
+
+The Turk in question--have I any necessity of telling you it was the
+great Tartarin of Tarascon?--waddled along the quays, followed by
+his gun-cases, medicine-chest, and tinned comestibles, to reach the
+landing-stage of the Touache Company and the mail steamer the Zouave,
+which was to transport him over the sea.
+
+With his ears still ringing with the home applause, intoxicated by the
+glare of the heavens and the reek of the sea, Tartarin fairly beamed as
+he stepped out with a lofty head, and between his guns on his shoulders,
+looking with all his eyes upon that wondrous, dazzling harbour of
+Marseilles, which he saw for the first time. The poor fellow believed he
+was dreaming. He fancied his name was Sinbad the Sailor, and that he
+was roaming in one of those fantastic cities abundant in the "Arabian
+Nights." As far as eye could reach there spread a forest of masts and
+spars, cris-crossing in every way.
+
+Flags of all countries floated--English, American, Russian, Swedish,
+Greek and Tunisian.
+
+The vessels lay alongside the wharves--ay, head on, so that their
+bowsprits stuck up out over the strand like rows of bayonets. Over it,
+too, sprawled the mermaids, goddesses, madonnas, and other figure-heads
+in carved and painted wood which gave names to the ships--all worn by
+sea-water, split, mildewed, and dripping. Ever and anon, between the
+hulls, a patch of harbour like watered silk splashed with oil. In the
+intervals of the yards and booms, what seemed swarms of flies prettily
+spotted the blue sky. These were the shipboys, hailing one another in
+all languages.
+
+On the waterside, amidst thick green or black rivulets coming down
+from the soap factories loaded with oil and soda, bustled a mass of
+custom-house officers, messengers, porters, and truckmen with their
+bogheys, or trolleys, drawn by Corsican ponies.
+
+There were shops selling quaint articles, smoky shanties where sailors
+were cooking their own queer messes, dealers in pipes, monkeys,
+parrots, ropes, sailcloth, fanciful curios, amongst which were mingled
+higgledy-piggledy old culverins, huge gilded lanterns, worn-out
+pulley-blocks, rusty flukeless anchors, chafed cordage, battered
+speaking-trumpets, and marine glasses almost contemporary with the Ark.
+Sellers of mussels and clams squatted beside their heaps of shellfish
+and yawped their goods. Seamen rolled by with tar-pots, smoking
+soup-bowls, and big baskets full of cuttlefish, from which they went to
+wash the ink in the milky waters of the fountains.
+
+Everywhere a prodigious collection of all kinds of goods: silks,
+minerals, wood in stacks, lead in pigs, cloths, sugars, caruba wood
+logs, colza seed, liquorice sticks, sugar-canes. The East and the West
+cheek by jowl, even to pyramids of Dutch cheeses which the Genoese were
+dyeing red by contact with their hands.
+
+Yonder was the corn market: porters discharging sacks down the shoots
+of lofty elevators upon the pier, and loose grain rolling as a golden
+torrent through a blonde dust. Men in red skullcaps were sifting it as
+they caught it in large asses'-skin sieves, and loading it upon carts
+which took their millward way, followed by a regiment of women and
+youngsters with wisps and gleaning baskets. Farther on, the dry docks,
+where large vessels were laid low on their sides till their yards dipped
+in the water; they were singed with thorn-bushes to free them of sea
+weed; there rose an odour of pitch, and the deafening clatter of the
+sheathers coppering the bottoms with broad sheets of yellow metal.
+
+At whiles a gap in between the masts, in which Tartarin could see the
+haven mouth, where the vessels came and went: a British frigate off for
+Malta, dainty and thoroughly washed down, with the officer in primrose
+gloves, or a large home-port brig hauling out in the midst of uproar and
+oaths, whilst the fat captain, in a high silk hat and frockcoat, ordered
+the operations in Provencal dialect. Other craft were making forth under
+all sail, and, still farther out, more were slowly looming up in the
+sunshine as if they were sailing in the air.
+
+All the time a frightful riot, the rumbling of carts, the "Haul all,
+haul away!" of the shipmen, oaths, songs, steamboat whistles, the bugles
+and drums in Forts Saint Jean and Saint Nicolas, the bells of the Major,
+the Accoules, and Saint Victor; with the mistral atop of all, catching
+up the noises and clamour, and rolling them up together with a furious
+shaking, till confounded with its own voice, which intoned a mad, wild,
+heroic melody like a grand charging tune--one that filled hearers with a
+longing to be off, and the farther the better--a craving for wings.
+
+It was to the sound of this splendid blast that the intrepid Tartarin
+Tarasco of Tarascon embarked for the land of lions.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE THE SECOND, AMONG "THE TURKS"
+
+
+
+I. The Passage--The Five Positions of the Fez--The Third Evening
+Out--Mercy upon us!
+
+
+JOYFUL would I be, my dear readers, if I were a painter--a great artist,
+I mean--in order to set under your eyes, at the head of this second
+episode, the various positions taken by Tartarin's red cap in the
+three days' passage it made on board of the Zouave, between France and
+Algeria.
+
+First would I show you it at the steaming out, upon deck, arrogant and
+heroic as it was, forming a glory round that handsome Tarasconian head.
+Next would I show you it at the harbour-mouth, when the bark began
+to caper upon the waves; I would depict it for you all of a quake in
+astonishment, and as though already experiencing the preliminary qualms
+of sea-sickness. Then, in the Gulf of the Lion, proportionably to the
+nearing the open sea, where the white caps heaved harder, I would make
+you behold it wrestling with the tempest, and standing on end upon the
+hero's cranium, with its mighty mane of blue wool bristling out in the
+spray and breeze. Position Fourth: at six in the afternoon, with the
+Corsican coast in view; the unfortunate chechia hangs over the ship's
+side, and lamentably stares down as though to plumb the depths of
+ocean. Finally and lastly, the Fifth Position: at the back of a narrow
+state-room, in a box-bed so small it seemed one drawer in a nest of
+them, something shapeless rolled on the pillow with moans of desolation.
+This was the fez--the fez so defiant at the sailing, now reduced to the
+vulgar condition of a nightcap, and pulled down over the very ears of
+the head of a pallid and convulsed sufferer.
+
+How the people of Tarascon would have kicked themselves for having
+constrained the great Tartarin to leave home, if they had but seen him
+stretched in the bunk in the dull, wan gleam through the dead-light,
+amid the sickly odour of cooking and wet wood--the heart-heaving perfume
+of mail-boats; if they had but heard him gurgle at every turn of the
+screw, wail for tea every five minutes, and swear at the steward in a
+childish treble!
+
+On my word of honour as a story-teller, the poor Turk would have made
+a paste-board dummy pity him. Suddenly, overcome by the nausea, the
+hapless victim had not even the power to undo the Algerian girdle-cloth,
+or lay aside his armoury; the lumpy-handled hunting-sword pounded his
+ribs, and the leather revolver-case made his thigh raw. To finish him
+arose the taunts of Sancho-Tartarin, who never ceased to groan and
+inveigh:
+
+"Well, for the biggest kind of imbecile, you are the finest specimen! I
+told you truly how it would be. Ha, ha! you were bound to go to Africa,
+of course! Well, old merriman, now you are going to Africa, how do you
+like it?"
+
+The cruellest part of it was that, from the retreat where he was
+moaning, the hapless invalid could hear the passengers in the grand
+saloon laughing, munching, singing, and playing at cards. On board the
+Zouave the company was as jolly as numerous, composed of officers going
+back to join their regiments, ladies from the Marseilles Alcazar Music
+Hall, strolling-players, a rich Mussulman returning from Mecca, and a
+very jocular Montenegrin prince, who favoured them with imitations
+of the low comedians of Paris. Not one of these jokers felt the
+sea-sickness, and their time was passed in quaffing champagne with the
+steamer captain, a good fat born Marseillais, who had a wife and family
+as well at Algiers as at home, and who answered to the merry name of
+Barbassou.
+
+Tartarin of Tarascon hated this pack of wretches; their mirthfulness
+deepened his ails.
+
+At length, on the third afternoon, there was such an extraordinary
+hullabaloo on the deck that our hero was roused out of his long torpor.
+The ship's bell was ringing and the seamen's heavy boots ran over the
+planks.
+
+"Go ahead! Stop her! Turn astern!" barked the hoarse voice of Captain
+Barbassou; and then, "Stop her dead!"
+
+There was an abrupt check of movement, a shock, and no more, save the
+silent rolling of the boat from side to side like a balloon in the air.
+This strange stillness alarmed the Tarasconian.
+
+"Heaven ha' mercy upon us!" he yelled in a terrifying voice, as,
+recovering his strength by magic, he bounded out of his berth, and
+rushed upon deck with his arsenal.
+
+
+
+II. "To arms! to arms"
+
+
+ONLY the arrival, not a foundering.
+
+The Zouave was just gliding into the roadstead--a fine one of black,
+deep water, but dull and still, almost deserted. On elevated ground
+ahead rose Algiers, the White City, with its little houses of a dead
+cream-colour huddling against one another lest they slid into the sea.
+It was like Meudon slope with a laundress's washing hung out to dry.
+Over it a vast blue satin sky--and such a blue!
+
+A little restored from his fright, the illustrious Tartarin gazed on
+the landscape, and listened with respect to the Montenegrin prince, who
+stood by his side, as he named the different parts of the capital, the
+Kasbah, the upper town, and the Rue Bab-Azoon. A very finely-brought-up
+prince was this Montenegrin; moreover, knowing Algeria thoroughly, and
+fluently speaking Arabic. Hence Tartarin thought of cultivating his
+acquaintance.
+
+All at once, along the bulwark against which they were leaning, the
+Tarasconian perceived a row of large black hands clinging to it from
+over the side. Almost instantly a Negro's woolly head shot up before
+him, and, ere he had time to open his mouth, the deck was overwhelmed
+on every side by a hundred black or yellow desperadoes, half naked,
+hideous, and fearsome. Tartarin knew who these pirates were--"they," of
+course, the celebrated "they" who had too often been hunted after by him
+in the by-ways of Tarascon. At last they had decided to meet him face to
+face. At the outset surprise nailed him to the spot. But when he saw
+the outlaws fall upon the luggage, tear off the tarpaulin covering, and
+actually commence the pillage of the ship, then the hero awoke. Whipping
+out his hunting-sword, "To arms! to arms!" he roared to the passengers;
+and away he flew, the foremost of all, upon the buccaneers. "Ques
+aco? What's the stir? What's the matter with you?" exclaimed Captain
+Barbassou, coming out of the 'tweendecks.
+
+"About time you did turn up, captain! Quick, quick, arm your men!"
+
+"Eh, what for? dash it all!"
+
+"Why, can't you see?"
+
+"See what?"
+
+"There, before you, the corsairs"
+
+Captain Barbassou stared, bewildered. At this juncture a tall blackamoor
+tore by with our hero's medicine-chest upon his back.
+
+"You cut-throat! just wait for me!" yelled the Tarasconer as he ran
+after, with the knife uplifted.
+
+But Barbassou caught him in the spring, and holding him by the
+waist-sash, bade him be quiet.
+
+"Tron de ler! by the throne on high! they're no pirates. It's long since
+there were any pirates hereabout. Those dark porters are light porters.
+Ha, ha!"
+
+"P--p-porters?"
+
+"Rather, only come after the luggage to carry it ashore. So put up
+your cook's galley knife, give me your ticket, and walk off behind that
+nigger--an honest dog, who will see you to land, and even into a hotel,
+if you like."
+
+A little abashed, Tartarin handed over his ticket, and falling in
+behind the representative of the Dark Continent, clambered down by the
+hanging-ladder into a big skiff dancing alongside. All his effects were
+already there--boxes, trunks, gun-cases, tinned food,--so cramming up
+the boat that there was no need to wait for any other passengers. The
+African scrambled upon the boxes, and squatted there like a baboon,
+with his knees clutched by his hands. Another Negro took the oars. Both
+laughingly eyed Tartarin, and showed their white teeth.
+
+Standing in the stern-sheets, making that terrifying face which had
+daunted his fellow-countrymen, the great Tarasconian feverishly fumbled
+with his hunting-knife haft; for, despite what Barbassou had told
+him, he was only half at ease as regarded the intention of these
+ebony-skinned porters, who so little resembled their honest mates of
+Tarascon.
+
+Five minutes afterwards the skiff landed Tartarin, and he set foot upon
+the little Barbary wharf, where, three hundred years before, a Spanish
+galley-slave yclept Miguel Cervantes devised, under the cane of the
+Algerian taskmaster, a sublime romance which was to bear the title of
+"Don Quixote."
+
+
+
+III. An Invocation to Cervantes--The Disembarkation--Where are the
+Turks?--Not a sign of them--Disenchantment
+
+
+O MIGUEL CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, if what is asserted be true, to wit,
+that wherever great men have dwelt some emanation of their spirits
+wanderingly hovers until the end of ages, then what remained of your
+essence on the Barbary coast must have quivered with glee on beholding
+Tartarin of Tarascon disembark, that marvellous type of the French
+Southerner, in whom was embodied both heroes of your work, Don Quixote
+and Sancho Panza.
+
+The air was sultry on this occasion. On the wharf, ablaze with sunshine,
+were half a dozen revenue officers, some Algerians expecting news from
+France, several squatting Moors who drew at long pipes, and some Maltese
+mariners dragging large nets, between the meshes of which thousands of
+sardines glittered like small silver coins.
+
+But hardly had Tartarin set foot on earth before the quay sprang into
+life and changed its aspect. A horde of savages, still more hideous than
+the pirates upon the steamer, rose between the stones on the strand and
+rushed upon the new-comer. Tall Arabs were there, nude under woollen
+blankets, little Moors in tatters, Negroes, Tunisians, Port Mahonese,
+M'zabites, hotel servants in white aprons, all yelling and shouting,
+hooking on his clothes, fighting over his luggage, one carrying away the
+provender, another his medicine-chest, and pelting him in one fantastic
+medley with the names of preposterously-entitled hotels.
+
+Bewildered by all this tumult, poor Tartarin wandered to and fro, swore
+and stormed, went mad, ran after his property, and not knowing how
+to make these barbarians understand him, speechified them in French,
+Provencal, and even in dog Latin: "Rosa, the rose; bonus, bona,
+bonum!"--all that he knew--but to no purpose. He was not heeded.
+Happily, like a god in Homer, intervened a little fellow in a
+yellow-collared tunic, and armed with a long running-footman's cane, who
+dispersed the whole riff-raff with cudgel-play. He was a policeman of
+the Algerian capital. Very politely, he suggested Tartarin should put up
+at the Hotel de l'Europe, and he confided him to its waiters, who carted
+him and his impedimenta thither in several barrows.
+
+At the first steps he took in Algiers, Tartarin of Tarascon opened his
+eyes widely. Beforehand he had pictured it as an Oriental city--a fairy
+one, mythological, something between Constantinople and Zanzibar; but
+it was back into Tarascon he fell. Cafes, restaurants, wide streets,
+four-storey houses, a little market-place, macadamised, where the
+infantry band played Offenbachian polkas, whilst fashionably clad
+gentlemen occupied chairs, drinking beer and eating pancakes, some
+brilliant ladies, some shady ones, and soldiers--more soldiers--no end
+of soldiers, but not a solitary Turk, or, better to say, there was a
+solitary Turk, and that was he.
+
+Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the square, for everybody
+looked at him. The musicians stopped, the Offenbachian polka halting
+with one foot in the air.
+
+With both guns on his shoulders, and the revolver flapping on his
+hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, Tartarin gravely passed
+through the groups; but on arriving at the hotel his powers failed
+him. All spun and mingled in his head: the departure from Tarascon, the
+harbour of Marseilles, the voyage, the Montenegrin prince, the corsairs.
+They had to help him up into a room and disarm and undress him. They
+began to talk of sending for a medical adviser; but hardly was our
+hero's head upon the pillow than he set to snoring, so loudly and so
+heartily that the landlord judged the succour of science useless, and
+everybody considerately withdrew.
+
+
+
+IV. The First Lying in Wait.
+
+
+THREE o'clock was striking by the Government clock when Tartarin awoke.
+He had slept all the evening, night, and morning, and even a goodish
+piece of the afternoon. It must be granted, though, that in the last
+three days the red fez had caught it pretty hot and lively!
+
+Our hero's first thought on opening his eyes was, "I am in the land of
+the lions!" And--well, why should we not say it?--at the idea that lions
+were nigh hereabouts, within a couple of steps, almost at hand's reach,
+and that he would have to disentangle a snarled skein with them, ugh! a
+deadly chill struck him, and he dived intrepidly under the coverlet.
+
+But, before a moment was over, the outward gaiety, the blue sky, the
+glowing sun that streamed into the bedchamber, a nice little breakfast
+that he ate in bed, his window wide open upon the sea, the whole
+flavoured with an uncommonly good bottle of Crescia wine--it very
+speedily restored him his former pluckiness.
+
+"Let's out and at the lion!" he exclaimed, throwing off the clothes and
+briskly dressing himself.
+
+His plan was as follows: he would go forth from the city without saying
+a word to a soul, plunge into the great desert, await nightfall to
+ambush himself, and bang away at the first lion who walked up. Then
+would he return to breakfast in the morning at the hotel, receive the
+felicitations of the natives, and hire a cart to bring in the quarry.
+
+So he hurriedly armed himself, attached upright on his back the
+shelter-tent (which, when rolled up, left its centre pole sticking out
+a clear foot above his head), and descended to the street as stiffly as
+though he had swallowed it. Not caring to ask the way of anybody, from
+fear of letting out his project, he turned fairly to the right, and
+threaded the Bab-Azoon arcade to the very end, where swarms of Algerian
+Jews watched him pass from their corner ambushes like so many spiders;
+crossing the Theatre place, he entered the outer ward, and lastly came
+upon the dusty Mustapha highway.
+
+Upon this was a quaint conglomeration: omnibuses, hackney coaches,
+corricolos, the army service waggons, huge hay-carts drawn by bullocks,
+squads of Chasseurs d'Afrique, droves of microscopic asses, trucks
+of Alsatian emigrants, spahis in scarlet cloaks--all filed by in a
+whirlwind cloud of dust, amidst shouts, songs, and trumpetcalls, between
+two rows of vile-looking booths, at the doors of which lanky Mahonnais
+women might be seen doing their hair, drinking-dens filled with
+soldiers, and shops of butchers and knackers.
+
+"What rubbish, to din me about the Orient!" grumbled the great Tartarin;
+"there are not even as many Turks here as at Marseilles."
+
+All of a sudden he saw a splendid camel strut by him quite closely,
+stretching its long legs and puffing out its throat like a turkey-cock,
+and that made his heart throb. Camels already, eh? Lions could not be
+far Off now; and, indeed, in five minutes' time he did see a whole band
+of lion-hunters coming his way under arms.
+
+"Cowards!" thought our hero as he skirted them; "downright cowards, to
+go at a lion in companies and with dogs!"
+
+For it never could occur to him that anything but lions were objects of
+the chase in Algeria. For all that, these Nimrods wore such complacent
+phizzes of retired tradesmen, and their style of lion-hunting with
+dogs and game-bags was so patriarchal, that the Tarasconian, a little
+perplexed, deemed it incumbent to question one of the gentlemen.
+
+"And furthermore, comrade, is the sport good?"
+
+"Not bad," responded the other, regarding the speaker's imposing warlike
+equipment with a scared eye.
+
+"Killed any?"
+
+"Rather! Not so bad--only look." Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed
+that it was rabbits and woodcock stuffing out the bag.
+
+"What! do you call that your bag? Do you put such-like in your bag?"
+
+"Where else should I put 'em?"
+
+"But it's such little game."
+
+"Some run small and some run large," observed the hunter.
+
+In haste to catch up with his companions, he joined them with several
+long strides. The dauntless Tartarin remained rooted in the middle of
+the road with stupefaction. "Pooh!" he ejaculated, after a moment's
+reflection, "these are jokers. They haven't killed anything whatever,"
+and he went his way.
+
+Already the houses became scarcer, and so did the passengers. Dark came
+on and objects were blurred, though Tartarin walked on for half an hour
+more, when he stopped, for it was night. A moonless night, too, but
+sprinkled with stars. On the highroad there was nobody. The hero
+concluded that lions are not stage-coaches, and would not of their own
+choice travel the main ways. So he wheeled into the fields, where there
+were brambles and ditches and bushes at every step, but he kept on
+nevertheless.
+
+But suddenly he halted.
+
+"I smell lions about here!" said our friend, sniffing right and left.
+
+
+
+V. Bang, bang!
+
+
+CERTAINLY a great wilderness, bristling with odd plants of that Oriental
+kind which look like wicked creatures. Under the feeble starlight their
+magnified shadows barred the ground in every way. On the right loomed up
+confusedly the heavy mass of a mountain--perhaps the Atlas range. On the
+heart-hand, the invisible sea hollowly rolling. The very spot to attract
+wild beasts.
+
+With one gun laid before him and the other in his grasp, Tartarin of
+Tarascon went down on one knee and waited an hour, ay, a good couple,
+and nothing turned up. Then he bethought him how, in his books, the
+great lion-slayers never went out hunting without having a lamb or a
+kid along with them, which they tied up a space before them, and set
+bleating or baa-ing by jerking its foot with a string. Not having any
+goat, the Tarasconer had the idea of employing an imitation, and he set
+to crying in a tremulous voice:
+
+"Baa-a-a!"
+
+At first it was done very softly, because at bottom he was a little
+alarmed lest the lion should hear him; but as nothing came, he baa-ed
+more loudly. Still nothing. Losing patience, he resumed many times
+running at the top of his voice, till the "Baa, baa, baa!" came out with
+so much power that the goat began to be mistakable for a bull.
+
+Unexpectedly, a few steps in front, some gigantic black thing appeared.
+He was hushed. This thing lowered its head, sniffed the ground, bounded
+up, rolled over, and darted off at the gallop, but returned and stopped
+short. Who could doubt it was the lion? for now its four short legs
+could plainly be seen, its formidable mane and its large eyes gleaming
+in the gloom.
+
+Up went his gun into position. Fire's the word! and bang, bang! it
+was done. And immediately there was a leap back and the drawing of the
+hunting-knife. To the Tarasconian's shot a terrible roaring replied.
+
+"He's got it!" cried our good Tartarin as, steadying himself on his
+sturdy supporters, he prepared to receive the brute's charge.
+
+But it had more than its fill, and galloped off; howling. He did not
+budge, for he expected to see the female mate appear, as the story-books
+always lay it down she should.
+
+Unhappily, no female came. After two or three hours' waiting the
+Tarasconian grew tired. The ground was damp, the night was getting cool,
+and the sea-breeze pricked sharply.
+
+"I have a good mind to take a nap till daylight," he said to himself.
+
+To avoid catching rheumatism, he had recourse to his patent tent. But
+here's where Old Nick interfered! This tent was of so very ingenious a
+construction that he could not manage to open it. In vain did he toil
+over it and perspire an hour through--the confounded apparatus would
+not come unfolded. There are some umbrellas which amuse themselves under
+torrential rains with just such tricks upon you. Fairly tired out
+with the struggle, the victim dashed down the machine and lay upon it,
+swearing like the regular Southron he was. "Tar, tar, rar, tar! tar,
+rar, tar!"
+
+"What on earth's that?" wondered Tartarin, suddenly aroused.
+
+It was the bugles of the Chasseurs d'Afrique sounding the turn-out in
+the Mustapha barracks. The stupefied lion-slayer rubbed his eyes, for
+he had believed himself out in the boundless wilderness; and do you know
+where he really was?--in a field of artichokes, between a cabbage-garden
+and a patch of beets. His Sahara grew kitchen vegetables.
+
+Close to him, on the pretty verdant slope of Upper Mustapha, the snowy
+villas glowed in the rosy rising sun: anybody would believe himself in
+the neighbourhood of Marseilles, amongst its bastides and bastidons.
+
+The commonplace and kitchen-gardenish aspect of this sleep-steeped
+country much astonished the poor man, and put him in bad humour.
+
+"These folk are crazy," he reasoned, "to plant artichokes in the
+prowling-ground of lions; for, in short, I have not been dreaming. Lions
+have come here, and there's the proof."
+
+What he called the proof was blood-spots left behind the beast in its
+flight. Bending over this ruddy trail with his eye on the lookout and
+his revolver in his fist, the valiant Tarasconian went from artichoke to
+artichoke up to a little field of oats. In the trampled grass was a pool
+of blood, and in the midst of the pool, lying on its flank, with a large
+wound in the head, was a--guess what?
+
+"A lion, of course!"
+
+Not a bit of it! An ass!--one of those little donkeys so common in
+Algeria, where they are called bourriquots.
+
+
+
+VI. Arrival of the Female--A Terrible Combat--"Game Fellows Meet Here!"
+
+
+LOOKING on his hapless victim, Tartarin's first impulse was one of
+vexation. There is such a wide gap between a lion and poor Jack! His
+second feeling was one of pity. The poor bourriquot was so pretty and
+looked so kindly. The hide on his still warm sides heaved and fell like
+waves. Tartarin knelt down, and strove with the end of his Algerian sash
+to stanch the blood; and all you can imagine in the way of touchingness
+was offered by the picture of this great man tending this little ass.
+
+At the touch of the silky cloth the donkey, who had not twopennyworth of
+life in him, opened his large grey eye and winked his long ears two or
+three times, as much as to say, "Oh, thank you!" before a final spasm
+shook it from head to tail, whereafter it stirred no more.
+
+"Noiraud! Blackey!" suddenly screamed a voice, choking with anguish, as
+the branches in a thicket hard by moved at the same time.
+
+Tartarin had no more than enough time to rise and stand upon guard. This
+was the female!
+
+She rushed up, fearsome and roaring, under form of an old Alsatian
+woman, her hair in a kerchief, armed with large red umbrella, and
+calling for her ass, till all the echoes of Mustapha rang. It certainly
+would have been better for Tartarin to have had to deal with a lioness
+in fury than this old virago. In vain did the luckless sportsman try to
+make her understand how the blunder had occurred, and he had mistaken
+"Noiraud" for a lion. The harridan believed he was making fun of her,
+and uttering energetical "Der Teufels!" fell upon our hero to bang him
+with the gingham. A little bewildered, Tartarin defended himself as
+best he could, warding off the blows with his rifle, streaming with
+perspiration, panting, jumping about, and crying out:
+
+"But, Madame, but"--
+
+Much good his buts were! Madame was dull of hearing, and her blows
+continued hard as ever.
+
+Fortunately a third party arrived on the battlefield, the Alsatian's
+husband, of the same race; a roadside innkeeper, as well as a very good
+ready-reckoner, which was better. When he saw what kind of a customer he
+had to deal with--a slaughterer who only wanted to pay the value of his
+victim--he disarmed his better-half, and they came to an understanding.
+
+Tartarin gave two hundred francs, the donkey being worth about ten--at
+least that is the current price in the Arab markets. Then poor Blackey
+was laid to rest at the root of a fig-tree, and the Alsatian, raised to
+joviality by the colour of the Tarascon ducats, invited the hero to have
+a quencher with him in his wine-shop, which stood only a few steps off
+on the edge of the highway. Every Sunday the sportsmen from the city
+came there to regale of a morning, for the plain abounded with game, and
+there was no better place for rabbits for two leagues around.
+
+"How about lions?" inquired Tartarin.
+
+The Alsatian stared at him, greatly astounded.
+
+"Lions!"
+
+"Yes, lions. Don't you see them sometimes?" resumed the poor fellow,
+with less confidence.
+
+The Boniface burst out in laughter.
+
+"Ho, ho! bless us! lions! What would we do with lions here?"
+
+"Are there, then, none in Algeria?"
+
+"'Pon my faith, I never saw any, albeit I have been twenty years in the
+colony. Still, I believe I have heard tell of such a thing--leastwise, I
+fancy the newspapers said--but that is ever so much farther inland--down
+South, you know"--
+
+At this point they reached the hostelry, a suburban pothouse, with a
+withered green bough over the door, crossed billiard-cues painted on the
+wall, and this harmless sign over a picture of wild rabbits, feeding:
+
+  "GAME FELLOWS MEET HERE."
+
+"Game fellows!" It made Tartarin think of Captain Bravida.
+
+
+
+VII. About an Omnibus, a Moorish Beauty, and a Wreath of Jessamine.
+
+
+COMMON people would have been discouraged by such a first adventure, but
+men of Tartarin's mettle do not easily get cast down.
+
+"The lions are in the South, are they?" mused the hero. "Very well,
+then. South I go."
+
+As soon as he had swallowed his last mouthful he jumped up, thanked his
+host, nodded good-bye to the old hag without any ill-will, dropped a
+final tear over the hapless Blackey, and quickly returned to Algiers,
+with the firm intention of packing up and starting that very day for the
+South.
+
+The Mustapha highroad seemed, unfortunately, to have stretched since
+overnight; and what a sun and dust there were, and what a weight in that
+shelter-tent! Tartarin did not feel to have the courage to walk to the
+town, and he beckoned to the first omnibus coming along, and climbed in.
+
+Oh, our poor Tartarin of Tarascon! how much better it would have been
+for his name and fame not to have stepped into that fatal ark on
+wheels, but to have continued on his road afoot, at the risk of falling
+suffocated beneath the burden of the atmosphere, the tent, and his heavy
+double-barrelled rifles.
+
+When Tartarin got in the 'bus was full. At the end, with his nose in his
+prayer-book, sat a large and black-bearded vicar from town; facing him
+was a young Moorish merchant smoking coarse cigarettes, and a Maltese
+sailor and four or five Moorish women muffled up in white cloths, so
+that only their eyes could be spied.
+
+These ladies had been to offer up prayers in the Abdel Kader cemetery;
+but this funereal visit did not seem to have much saddened them, for
+they could be heard chuckling and chattering between themselves under
+their coverings whilst munching pastry. Tartarin fancied that they
+watched him narrowly. One in particular, seated over against him, had
+fixed her eyes upon his, and never took them off all the drive. Although
+the dame was veiled, the liveliness of the big black eyes, lengthened
+out by k'hol; a delightfully slender wrist loaded with gold bracelets,
+of which a glimpse was given from time to time among the folds; the
+sound of her voice, the graceful, almost childlike, movements of the
+head, all revealed that a young, pretty, and loveable creature bloomed
+underneath the veil. The unfortunate Tartarin did not know where to
+shrink. The fond, mute gaze of these splendrous Oriental orbs agitated
+him, perturbed him, and made him feel like dying with flushes of heat
+and fits of cold shivers.
+
+To finish him, the lady's slipper meddled in the onslaught: he felt the
+dainty thing wander and frisk about over his heavy hunting boots like a
+tiny red mouse. What could he do? Answer the glance and the pressure,
+of course. Ay, but what about the consequences? A loving intrigue in the
+East is a terrible matter! With his romantic southern nature, the honest
+Tarasconian saw himself already falling into the grip of the eunuchs,
+to be decapitated, or better--we mean, worse--than that, sewn up in a
+leather sack and sunk in the sea with his head under his arm beside him.
+This somewhat cooled him. In the meantime the little slipper continued
+its proceedings, and the eyes, widely open opposite him like twin black
+velvet flowers, seemed to say:
+
+"Come, cull us!"
+
+The 'bus stopped on the Theatre place, at the mouth of the Rue
+Bab-Azoon. One by one, embedded in their voluminous trousers, and
+drawing their mufflers around them with wild grace, the Moorish women
+alighted. Tartarin's confrontatress was the last to rise, and in doing
+so her countenance skimmed so closely to our hero's that her breath
+enveloped him--a veritable nosegay of youth and freshness, with an
+indescribable after-tang of musk, jessamine, and pastry.
+
+The Tarasconian stood out no longer. Intoxicated with love, and ready
+for anything, he darted out after the beauty. At the rumpling sound of
+his belts and boots she turned, laid a finger on her veiled mouth, as
+one who would say, "Hush!" and with the other hand quickly tossed him a
+little wreath of sweet-scented jessamine flowers. Tartarin of
+Tarascon stooped to pick it up; but as he was rather clumsy, and much
+overburdened with implements of war, the operation took rather long.
+When he did straighten up, with the jessamine garland upon his heart,
+the donatrix had vanished.
+
+
+
+VIII. Ye Lions of the Atlas, repose in peace!
+
+
+LIONS of the Atlas, sleep!--sleep tranquilly at the back of your lairs
+amid the aloes and cacti. For a few days to come, any way, Tartarin
+of Tarascon will not massacre you. For the time being, all his warlike
+paraphernalia, gun-cases, medicine chest, alimentary preserves, dwelt
+peacefully under cover in a corner of room 36 in the Hotel de l'Europe.
+
+Sleep with no fear, great red lions, the Tarasconian is engaged in
+looking up that Moorish charmer. Since the adventure in the omnibus,
+the unfortunate swain perpetually fancied he felt the fidgeting of
+that pretty red mouse upon his huge backwoods trapper's foot; and the
+sea-breeze fanning his lips was ever scented, do what he would, with a
+love-exciting odour of sweet cakes and patchouli.
+
+He hungered for his indispensable light of the harem! and he meant to
+behold her anew.
+
+But it was no joke of a task. To find one certain person in a city of
+a hundred thousand souls, only known by the eyes, breath, and
+slipper,--none but a son of Tarascon, panoplied by love, would be
+capable of attempting such an adventure.
+
+The plague is that, under their broad white mufflers, all the Moorish
+women resemble one another; besides, they do not go about much, and to
+see them, a man has to climb up into the native or upper town, the city
+of the "Turks," and that is a regular cut-throat's den.
+
+Little black alleys, very narrow, climbing perpendicularly up between
+mysterious house-walls, whose roofs lean to touching and form a tunnel;
+low doors, and sad, silent little casements well barred and grated.
+Moreover, on both hands, stacks of darksome stalls, wherein ferocious
+"Turks" smoked long pipes stuck between glittering teeth in piratical
+heads with white eyes, and mumbled in undertones as if hatching wicked
+attacks.
+
+To say that Tartarin traversed this grisly place without any emotion
+would be putting forth falsehood. On the contrary, he was much
+affected, and the stout fellow only went up the obscure lanes, where his
+corporation took up all the width, with the utmost precaution, his eye
+skinned, and his finger on his revolver trigger, in the same manner as
+he went to the clubhouse at Tarascon. At any moment he expected to have
+a whole gang of eunuchs and janissaries drop upon his back, yet the
+longing to behold that dark damsel again gave him a giant's strength and
+boldness.
+
+For a full week the undaunted Tartarin never quitted the high town. Yes;
+for all that period he might have been seen cooling his heels before
+the Turkish bath-houses, awaiting the hour when the ladies came forth in
+troops, shivering and still redolent of soap and hot water; or squatting
+at the doorways of mosques, puffing and melting in trying to get out of
+his big boots in order to enter the temples.
+
+Betimes at nightfall, when he was returning heart-broken at not having
+discovered anything at either bagnio or mosque, our man from Tarascon,
+in passing mansions, would hear monotonous songs, smothered twanging
+of guitars, thumping of tambourines, and feminine laughter-peals, which
+would make his heart beat.
+
+"Haply she is there!" he would say to himself.
+
+Thereupon, granting the street was unpeopled, he would go up to one of
+these dwellings, lift the heavy knocker of the low postern, and timidly
+rap. The songs and merriment would instantly cease. There would be
+audible behind the wall nothing excepting low, dull flutterings as in a
+slumbering aviary.
+
+"Let's stick to it, old boy," our hero would think. "Something will
+befall us yet."
+
+What most often befell him was the contents of the cold-water jug on
+the head, or else peel of oranges and Barbary figs; never anything more
+serious.
+
+Well might the lions of the Atlas Mountains doze in peace.
+
+
+
+IX. Prince Gregory of Montenegro.
+
+
+IT was two long weeks that the unfortunate Tartarin had been seeking his
+Algerian flame, and most likely he would have been seeking after her to
+this day if the little god kind to lovers had not come to his help under
+the shape of a Montenegrin nobleman.
+
+It happened as follows.
+
+Every Saturday night in winter there is a masked ball at the Grand
+Theatre of Algiers, just as at the Paris Opera-House. It is the undying
+and ever-tasteless county fancy dress ball--very few people on the
+floor, several castaways from the Parisian students' ballrooms or
+midnight dance-houses, Joans of Arc following the army, faded characters
+out of the Java costume-book of 1840, and half-a-dozen laundress's
+underlings who are aiming to make loftier conquests, but still preserve
+a faint perfume of their former life--garlic and saffron sauce. The real
+spectacle is not there, but in the green-room, transformed for the nonce
+into a hall of green cloth or gaming saloon.
+
+An enfevered and motley mob hustle one another around the long green
+table-covers: Turcos out for the day and staking their double halfpence,
+Moorish traders from the native town, Negroes, Maltese, colonists from
+the inland, who have come forty leagues in order to risk on a turning
+card the price of a plough or of a yoke of oxen; all a-quivering, pale,
+clenching their teeth, and with that singular, wavering, sidelong look
+of the gamester, become a squint from always staring at the same card in
+the lay-out.
+
+A little apart are the tribes of Algerian Jews, playing among
+acquaintances. The men are in the Oriental costume; hideously varied
+with blue stockings and velvet caps. The puffy and flabby women sit up
+stiffly in tight golden bodices. Grouped around the tables, the whole
+tribe wail, squeal, combine, reckon on the fingers, and play but little.
+Now and anon, however, after long conferences, some old patriarch, with
+a beard like those of saints by the Old Masters, detaches himself from
+the party and goes to risk the family duro. As long as the game
+lasted there would be a scintillation of Hebraic eyes directed on the
+board--dreadful black diamonds, which made the gold pieces shiver, and
+ended by gently attracting them, as if drawn by a thread. Then arose
+wrangles, quarrels, battles, oaths of every land, mad outcries in all
+tongues, knives flashing out, the guard marching in, and the money
+disappearing.
+
+It was into the thick of this saturnalia that the great Tartarin came
+straying one evening to find oblivion and heart's ease.
+
+He was roving alone through the gathering, brooding about his Moorish
+beauty, when two angered voices arose suddenly from a gaming-table above
+all the clamour and chink of coin.
+
+"I tell you, M'sieu, that I am twenty francs short!"
+
+"Stuff, M'sieu!"
+
+"Stuff yourself; M'sieu!"
+
+"You shall learn whom you are addressing, M'sieu!"
+
+"I am dying to do that, M'sieu!"
+
+"I am Prince Gregory of Montenegro, M'sieu."
+
+Upon this title Tartarin, much excited, cleft the throng and placed
+himself in the foremost rank, proud and happy to find his prince again,
+the Montenegrin noble of such politeness whose acquaintance he had begun
+on board of the mail steamer. Unfortunately the title of Highness, which
+had so dazzled the worthy Tarasconian, did not produce the slightest
+impression upon the Chasseurs officer with whom the noble had his
+dispute.
+
+"I am much the wiser!" observed the military gentleman sneeringly; and
+turning to the bystanders he added: "'Prince Gregory of Montenegro'--who
+knows any such a person? Nobody!"
+
+The indignant Tartarin took one step forward.
+
+"Allow me. I know the prince," said he, in a very firm voice, and with
+his finest Tarasconian accent.
+
+The light cavalry officer eyed him hard for a moment, and then,
+shrugging his shoulders, returned:
+
+"Come, that is good! Just you two share the twenty francs lacking
+between you, and let us talk no more on the score."
+
+Whereupon he turned his back upon them and mixed with the crowd. The
+stormy Tartarin was going to rush after him, but the prince prevented
+that.
+
+"Let him go. I can manage my own affairs."
+
+Taking the interventionist by the arm, he drew him rapidly out of doors.
+When they were upon the square, Prince Gregory of Montenegro lifted his
+hat off; extended his hand to our hero, and as he but dimly remembered
+his name, he began in a vibrating voice:
+
+"Monsieur Barbarin--"
+
+"Tartarin!" prompted the other, timidly.
+
+"Tartarin, Barbarin, no matter! Between us henceforward it is a league
+of life and death!"
+
+The Montenegrin noble shook his hand with fierce energy. You may infer
+that the Tarasconian was proud.
+
+"Prince, prince!" he repeated enthusiastically.
+
+In a quarter of an hour subsequently the two gentlemen were installed in
+the Platanes Restaurant, an agreeable late supper-house, with terraces
+running out over the sea, where, before a hearty Russian salad, seconded
+by a nice Crescia wine, they renewed the friendship.
+
+You cannot image any one more bewitching than this Montenegrin prince.
+Slender, fine, with crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved "a week
+under" and pumice-stoned on that, bestarred with out-of-the-way
+decorations, he had the wily eye, the fondling gestures, and vaguely the
+accent of an Italian, which gave him an air of Cardinal Mazarin without
+his chin-tuft and moustaches. He was deeply versed in the Latin tongues,
+and lugged in quotations from Tacitus, Horace, and Caesar's Commentaries
+at every opening.
+
+Of an old noble strain, it appeared that his brothers had had him exiled
+at the age of ten, on account of his liberal opinions, since which time
+he had roamed the world for pleasure and instruction as a philosophical
+noble. A singular coincidence! the prince had spent three years in
+Tarascon; and as Tartarin showed amazement at never having met him at
+the club or on the esplanade, His Highness evasively remarked that he
+never went about. Through delicacy, the Tarasconian did not dare to
+question further. All great existences have such mysterious nooks.
+
+To sum up, this Signor Gregory was a very genial aristocrat. Whilst
+sipping the rosy Crescia juice he patiently listened to Tartarin's
+expatiating on his lovely Moor, and he even promised to find her
+speedily, as he had full knowledge of the native ladies.
+
+They drank hard and lengthily in toasts to "The ladies of Algiers" and
+"The freedom of Montenegro!"
+
+Outside, upon the terrace, heaved the sea, and its rollers slapped the
+strand in the darkness with much the sound of wet sails flapping. The
+air was warm, and the sky full of stars.
+
+In the plane-trees a nightingale was piping.
+
+It was Tartarin who paid the piper.
+
+
+
+X. "Tell me your father's name, and I will tell you the name of that
+flower."
+
+
+PRINCES of Montenegro are the ones to find the love-bird.
+
+On the morrow early after this evening at the Platanes, Prince Gregory
+was in the Tarasconian's bedroom.
+
+"Quick! Dress yourself quickly! Your Moorish beauty is found, Her name
+is Baya. She's scarce twenty--as pretty as a love, and already a widow."
+
+"A widow! What a slice of luck!" joyfully exclaimed Tartarin, who
+dreaded Oriental husbands.
+
+"Ay, but woefully closely guarded by her brother."
+
+"Oh, the mischief!"
+
+"A savage chap who vends pipes in the Orleans bazaar."
+
+Here fell a silence.
+
+"A fig for that!" proceeded the prince; "you are not the man to be
+daunted by such a trifle; and, anyhow, this old corsair can be pacified,
+I daresay, by having some pipes bought of him. But be quick! On with
+your courting suit, you lucky dog!"
+
+Pale and agitated, with his heart brimming over with love, the
+Tarasconian leaped out of his couch, and, as he hastily buttoned up his
+capacious nether garment, wanted to know how he should act.
+
+"Write straightway to the lady and ask for a tryst."
+
+"Do you mean to say she knows French?" queried the Tarasconian
+simpleton, with the disappointed mien of one who had believed thoroughly
+in the Orient.
+
+"Not one word of it," rejoined the prince imperturbably; "but you can
+dictate the billet-doux, and I will translate it bit by bit."
+
+"O prince, how kind you are!"
+
+The lover began striding up and down the bedroom in silent meditation.
+
+Naturally a man does not write to a Moorish girl in Algiers in the same
+way as to a seamstress of Beaucaire. It was a very lucky thing that
+our hero had in mind his numerous readings, which allowed him, by
+amalgamating the Red Indian eloquence of Gustave Aimard's Apaches with
+Lamartine's rhetorical flourishes in the "Voyage en Orient," and some
+reminiscences of the "Song of Songs," to compose the most Eastern letter
+that you could expect to see. It opened with:
+
+"Like unto the ostrich upon the sandy waste"--
+
+and concluded by:
+
+"Tell me your father's name, and I will tell you the name of that
+flower."
+
+To this missive the romantic Tartarin would have much liked to join an
+emblematic bouquet of flowers in the Eastern fashion; but Prince Gregory
+thought it better to purchase some pipes at the brother's, which could
+not fail to soften his wild temper, and would certainly please the lady
+a very great deal, as she was much of a smoker.
+
+"Let's be off at once to buy them!" said Tartarin, full of ardour.
+
+"No, no! Let me go alone. I can get them cheaper."
+
+"Eh, what? Would you save me the trouble? O prince, prince, you do me
+proud!"
+
+Quite abashed, the good-hearted fellow offered his purse to the obliging
+Montenegrin, urging him to overlook nothing by which the lady would be
+gratified.
+
+Unfortunately the suit, albeit capitally commenced, did not progress
+as rapidly as might have been anticipated. It appeared that the Moorish
+beauty was very deeply affected by Tartarin's eloquence, and, for that
+matter, three-parts won beforehand, so that she wished nothing better
+than to receive him; but that brother of hers had qualms, and to lull
+them it was necessary to buy pipes by the dozens; nay, the gross--well,
+we had best say by the shipload at once.
+
+"What the plague can Baya do with all these pipes?" poor Tartarin wanted
+to know more than once; but he paid the bills all the same, and without
+niggardliness.
+
+At length, after having purchased a mountainous stack of pipes and
+poured forth lakes of Oriental poesy, an interview was arranged. I have
+no need to tell you with what throbbings of the heart the Tarasconian
+prepared himself; with what carefulness he trimmed, brilliantined, and
+perfumed his rough cap-popper's beard, and how he did not forget--for
+everything must be thought of--to slip a spiky life-preserver and two or
+three six-shooters into his pockets.
+
+The ever-obliging prince was coming to this first meeting in the office
+of interpreter.
+
+The lady dwelt in the upper part of the town. Before her doorway a boy
+Moor of fourteen or less was smoking cigarettes; this was the brother in
+question, the celebrated Ali. On seeing the pair of visitors arrive, he
+gave a double knock on the postern gate and delicately glided away.
+
+The door opened. A negress appeared, who conducted the gentlemen,
+without uttering a word, across the narrow inner courtyard into a small
+cool room, where the lady awaited them, reclining on a low ottoman. At
+first glance she appeared smaller and stouter than the Moorish damsel
+met in the omnibus by the Tarasconian. In fact, was it really the same?
+But the doubt merely flashed through Tartarin's brain like a stroke of
+lightning.
+
+The dame was so pretty thus, with her feet bare, and plump fingers, fine
+and pink, loaded with rings. Under her bodice of gilded cloth and the
+folds of her flower-patterned dress was suggested a lovable creature,
+rather blessed materially, rounded everywhere, and nice enough to eat.
+The amber mouthpiece of a narghileh smoked at her lips, and enveloped
+her wholly in a halo of light-coloured smoke.
+
+On entering, the Tarasconian laid a hand on his heart and bowed as
+Moorlike as possible, whilst rolling his large impassioned eyes.
+
+Baya gazed on him for a moment without making any answer; but then,
+dropping her pipe-stem, she threw her head back, hid it in her hands,
+and they could only see her white neck rippling with a wild laugh like a
+bag full of pearls.
+
+
+
+XI. Sidi Tart'ri Ben Tart'ri.
+
+
+SHOULD you ever drop into the coffee-houses of the Algerian upper town
+after dark, even at this day, you would still hear the natives chatting
+among themselves, with many a wink and slight laugh, of one Sidi Tart'ri
+Ben Tart'ri, a rich and good-humoured European, who dwelt, a few years
+back, in that neighbourhood, with a buxom witch of local origin, named
+Baya.
+
+This Sidi Tart'ri, who has left such a merry memory around the Kasbah,
+is no other than our Tartarin, as will be guessed.
+
+How could you expect things otherwise? In the lives of heroes, of
+saints, too, it happens the same way--there are moments of blindness,
+perturbation, and weakness. The illustrious Tarasconian was no more
+exempt from this than another, and that is the reason during two months
+that, oblivious of fame and lions, he revelled in Oriental amorousness,
+and dozed, like Hannibal at Capua, in the delights of Algiers the white.
+
+The good fellow took a pretty little house in the native style in
+the heart of the Arab town, with inner courtyard, banana-trees, cool
+verandahs, and fountains. He dwelt, afar from noise, in company with the
+Moorish charmer, a thorough woman to the manner born, who pulled at her
+hubble-bubble all day when she was not eating.
+
+Stretched out on a divan in front of him, Baya would drone him
+monotonous tunes with a guitar in her fist; or else, to distract her
+lord and master, favour him with the Bee Dance, holding a hand-glass up,
+in which she reflected her white teeth and the faces she made.
+
+As the Esmeralda did not know a word of French, and Tartarin none in
+Arabic, the conversation died away sometimes, and the Tarasconian had
+plenty of leisure to do penance for the gush of language of which he had
+been guilty in the shop of Bezuquet the chemist or that of Costecalde
+the gunmaker.
+
+But this penance was not devoid of charm, for he felt a kind of
+enjoyable sullenness in dawdling away the whole day without speaking,
+and in listening to the gurgling of the hookah, the strumming of the
+guitar, and the faint splashing of the fountain on the mosaic pavement
+of the yard.
+
+The pipe, the bath, and caresses filled his entire life. They seldom
+went out of doors. Sometimes with his lady-love upon a pillion, Sidi
+Tart'ri would ride upon a sturdy mule to eat pomegranates in a little
+garden he had purchased in the suburbs. But never, without exception,
+did he go down into the European quarter. This kind of Algiers appeared
+to him as ugly and unbearable as a barracks at home, with its Zouaves
+in revelry, its music-halls crammed with officers, and its everlasting
+clank of metal sabre-sheaths under the arcades.
+
+The sum total is, that our Tarasconian was very happy.
+
+Sancho-Tartarin particularly, being very sweet upon Turkish pastry,
+declared that one could not be more satisfied than by this new
+existence. Quixote-Tartarin had some twinges at whiles on thinking of
+Tarascon and the promises of lion-skins; but this remorse did not last,
+and to drive away such dampening ideas there sufficed one glance
+from Baya, or a spoonful of those diabolical dizzying and odoriferous
+sweetmeats like Circe's brews.
+
+In the evening Gregory came to discourse a little about a free Black
+Mountain. Of indefatigable obligingness, this amiable nobleman filled
+the functions of an interpreter in the household, or those of a steward
+at a pinch, and all for nothing for the sheer pleasure of it. Apart from
+him, Tartarin received none but "Turks." All those fierce-headed pirates
+who had given him such frights from the backs of their black stalls
+turned out, when once he made their acquaintance, to be good
+inoffensive tradesmen, embroiderers, dealers in spice, pipe-mouthpiece
+turners--well-bred fellows, humble, clever, close, and first-class hands
+at homely card games. Four or five times a week these gentry would
+come and spend the evening at Sidi Tart'ri's, winning his small change,
+eating his cakes and dainties, and delicately retiring on the stroke of
+ten with thanks to the Prophet.
+
+Left alone, Sidi Tart'ri and his faithful spouse by the broomstick
+wedding would finish the evening on their terrace, a broad white roof
+which overlooked the city.
+
+All around them a thousand of other such white flats, placid beneath the
+moonshine, were descending like steps to the sea. The breeze carried up
+tinkling of guitars.
+
+Suddenly, like a shower of firework stars, a full, clear melody would
+be softly sprinkled out from the sky, and on the minaret of the
+neighbouring mosque a handsome muezzin would appear, his blanched form
+outlined on the deep blue of the night, as he chanted the glory of Allah
+with a marvellous voice, which filled the horizon.
+
+Thereupon Baya would let go her guitar, and with her large eyes turned
+towards the crier, seem to imbibe the prayer deliciously. As long as
+the chant endured she would remain thrilled there in ecstasy, like an
+Oriental saint. The deeply impressed Tartarin would watch her pray, and
+conclude that it must be a splendid and powerful creed that could cause
+such frenzies of faith.
+
+Tarascon, veil thy face! here is a son of thine on the point of becoming
+a renegade!
+
+
+
+XII. The Latest Intelligence from Tarascon.
+
+
+PARTING from his little country seat, Sidi Tart'ri was returning alone
+on his mule on a fine afternoon, when the sky was blue and the zephyrs
+warm. His legs were kept wide apart by ample saddle-bags of esparto
+cloth, swelled out with cedrats and water-melons. Lulled by the ring of
+his large stirrups, and rocking his body to the swing and swaying of the
+beast, the good fellow was thus traversing an adorable country, with
+his hands folded on his paunch, three-quarters gone, through heat, in a
+comfortable doze. All at once, on entering the town, a deafening appeal
+aroused him.
+
+"Ahoy! What a monster Fate is! Anybody'd take this for Monsieur
+Tartarin."
+
+On this name, and at the jolly southern accent, the Tarasconian lifted
+his head, and perceived, a couple of steps away, the honest tanned
+visage of Captain Barbassou, master of the Zouave, who was taking his
+absinthe at the door of a little coffee-house.
+
+"Hey! Lord love you, Barbassou!" said Tartarin, pulling up his mule.
+
+Instead of continuing the dialogue, Barbassou stared at him for a space
+ere he burst into a peal of such hilarity that Sidi Tart'ri sat back
+dumbfounded on his melons.
+
+"What a stunning turban, my poor Monsieur Tartarin! Is it true, what
+they say of your having turned Turk? How is little Baya? Is she still
+singing 'Marco la Bella'?"
+
+"Marco la Bella!" repeated the indignant Tartarin. "I'll have you to
+know, captain, that the person you mention is an honourable Moorish
+lady, and one who does not know a word of French."
+
+"Baya does not know French! What lunatic asylum do you hail from, then?"
+
+The good captain broke into still heartier laughter; but, seeing the
+chops of poor Sidi Tart'ri fall he changed his course.
+
+"Howsoever, may happen it is not the same lass. Let's reckon that I
+have mixed 'em up. Still, mark you, Monsieur Tartarin, you will do well,
+nonetheless, to distrust Algerian Moors and Montenegrin princes."
+
+Tartarin rose in the stirrups, making a wry face.
+
+"The prince is my friend, captain."
+
+"Come, come, don't wax wrathy. Won't you have some bitters to sweeten
+you? No? Haven't you anything to say to the folks at home, neither?
+Well, then, a pleasant journey. By the way, mate, I have some good
+French 'bacco upon me, and if you would like to carry away a few
+pipefuls, you have only to take some. Take it, won't you? It's your
+beastly Oriental 'baccoes that have befogged your brain."
+
+Upon this the captain went back to his absinthe, whilst the moody
+Tartarin trotted slowly on the road to his little house. Although his
+great soul refused to credit anything, Barbassou's insinuations had
+vexed him, and the familiar adjurations and home accent had awakened
+vague remorse.
+
+He found nobody at home, Baya having gone out to the bath. The negress
+appeared sinister and the dwelling saddening. A prey to inexpressible
+melancholy, he went and sat down by the fountain to load a pipe with
+Barbassou's tobacco. It was wrapped up in a piece of the Marseilles
+Semaphore newspaper. On flattening it out, the name of his native place
+struck his eyes.
+
+"Our Tarascon correspondent writes:--
+
+"The city is in distress. There has been no news for several months from
+Tartarin the lion-slayer, who set off to hunt the great feline tribe
+in Africa. What can have become of our heroic fellow-countryman? Those
+hardly dare ask who know, as we do, how hot-headed he was, and what
+boldness and thirst for adventures were his. Has he, like many others,
+been smothered in the sands, or has he fallen under the murderous fangs
+of one of those monsters of the Atlas Range of which he had promised the
+skins to the municipality? What a dreadful state of uncertainty! It is
+true some Negro traders, come to Beaucaire Fair, assert having met in
+the middle of the deserts a European whose description agreed with his;
+he was proceeding towards Timbuctoo. May Heaven preserve our Tartarin!"
+
+When he read this, the son of Tarascon reddened, blanched, and
+shuddered. All Tarascon appeared unto him: the club, the cap-poppers,
+Costecalde's green arm-chair, and, hovering over all like a spread
+eagle, the imposing moustaches of brave Commandant Bravida.
+
+At seeing himself here, as he was, cowardly lolling on a mat, whilst his
+friends believed him slaughtering wild beasts, Tartarin of Tarascon was
+ashamed of himself, and could have wept had he not been a hero.
+
+Suddenly he leaped up and thundered:
+
+"The lion, the lion! Down with him!"
+
+And dashing into the dusty lumber-hole where mouldered the shelter-tent,
+the medicine-chest, the potted meats, and the gun-cases, he dragged them
+out into the middle of the court.
+
+Sancho-Tartarin was no more: Quixote-Tartarin occupied the field of
+active life.
+
+Only the time to inspect his armament and stores, don his harness, get
+into his heavy boots, scribble a couple of words to confide Baya to
+the prince, and slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears into
+the envelope, and then the dauntless Tarasconian rolled away in the
+stage-coach on the Blidah road, leaving the house to the negress,
+stupor-stricken before the pipe, the turban, and babooshes--all the
+Moslem shell of Sidi Tart'ri which sprawled piteously under the little
+white trefoils of the gallery.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE THE THIRD, AMONG THE LIONS
+
+
+
+I. What becomes of the Old Stage-coaches.
+
+
+COME to look closely at the vehicle, it was an old stage-coach all
+of the olden time, upholstered in faded deep blue cloth, with those
+enormous rough woollen balls which, after a few hours' journey, finally
+establish a raw spot in the small of your back.
+
+Tartarin of Tarascon had a corner of the inside, where he installed
+himself most free-and-easily: and, preliminarily to inspiring the rank
+emanations of the great African felines, the hero had to content himself
+with that homely old odour of the stage-coach, oddly composed of a
+thousand smells, of man and woman, horses and harness, eatables and
+mildewed straw.
+
+There was a little of everything inside--a Trappist monk, some Jew
+merchants, two fast ladies going to join their regiment, the Third
+Hussars, a photographic artist from Orleansville, and so on. But,
+however charming and varied was the company, the Tarasconian was not in
+the mood for chatting; he remained quite thoughtful, with an arm in the
+arm-rest sling-strap and his guns between his knees. All churned up his
+wits--the precipitate departure, Baya's eyes of jet, the terrible chase
+he was about to undertake, to say nothing of this European coach; with
+its Noah's Ark aspect, rediscovered in the heart of Africa, vaguely
+recalling the Tarascon of his youth, with its races in the suburbs,
+jolly dinners on the river-side--a throng of memories, in short.
+
+Gradually night came on. The guard lit up the lamps. The rusty diligence
+danced creakingly on its old springs; the horses trotted and their bells
+jangled. From time to time in the boot arose a dreadful clank of iron:
+that was the war material.
+
+Tartarin of Tarascon, nearly overcome, dwelt a moment scanning the
+fellow-passengers, comically shaken by the jolts, and dancing before
+him like the shadows in galanty-shows, till his eyes grew cloudy and his
+mind befogged, and only vaguely he heard the wheels grind and the sides
+of the conveyance squeak complainingly.
+
+Suddenly a voice called Tartarin by his name, the voice of an old fairy
+godmother, hoarse, broken, and cracked.
+
+"Monsieur Tartarin!" three times.
+
+"Who's calling me?"
+
+"It's I, Monsieur Tartarin. Don't you recognise me? I am the old
+stage-coach who used to do the road betwixt Nimes and Tarascon twenty
+year agone. How many times I have carried you and your friends when you
+went to shoot at caps over Joncquieres or Bellegarde way! I did not know
+you again at the first, on account of your Turk's cap and the flesh you
+have accumulated; but as soon as you began snoring--what a rascal is
+good-luck!--I twigged you straight away."
+
+"All right, that's all right enough!" observed the Tarasconian, a shade
+vexed; but softening, he added, "But to the point, my poor old girl;
+whatever did you come out here for?"
+
+"Pooh! my good Monsieur Tartarin, I assure you I never came of my
+own free will. As soon as the Beaucaire railway was finished I was
+considered good for nought, and shipped away into Algeria. And I am not
+the only one either! Bless you, next to all the old stage-coaches of
+France have been packed off like me. We were regarded as too much the
+conservative--'the slow-coaches'--d'ye see, and now we are here
+leading the life of a dog. This is what you in France call the Algerian
+railways."
+
+Here the ancient vehicle heaved a long-drawn sigh before proceeding. "My
+wheels and linchpin! Monsieur Tartarin, how I regret my lovely Tarascon!
+That was the good time for me, when I was young!--You ought to have seen
+me starting off in the morning, washed with no stint of water and all
+a-shine, with my wheels freshly varnished, my lamps blazing like a brace
+of suns, and my boot always rubbed up with oil! It was indeed lovely
+when the postillion cracked his whip to the tune of 'Lagadigadeou, the
+Tarasque! the Tarasque!' and the guard, his horn in its sling and laced
+cap cocked well over one ear, chucking his little dog, always in a fury,
+upon the top, climbed up himself with a shout: 'Right-away!'
+
+"Then would my four horses dash off to the medley of bells, barks, and
+horn-blasts, and the windows fly open for all Tarascon to look with
+pride upon the royal mail coach dart over the king's highway.
+
+"What a splendid road that was, Monsieur Tartarin, broad and well
+kept, with its mile-stones, its little heaps of road-metal at regular
+distances, and its pretty clumps of vines and olive-trees on either
+hand! Then, again, the roadside inns so close together, and the changes
+of horses every five minutes! And what jolly, honest chaps my patrons
+were!--village mayors and parish priests going up to Nimes to see their
+prefect or bishop, taffety-weavers returning openly from the Mazet,
+collegians out on holiday leave, peasants in worked smock-frocks, all
+fresh shaven for the occasion that morning; and up above, on the top,
+you gentlemen-sportsmen, always in high spirits, and singing each your
+own family ballad to the stars as you came back in the dark.
+
+"Deary me! it's a change of times now! Lord knows what rubbish I am
+carting here, come from nobody guesses where! They fill me with small
+deer, these negroes, Bedouin Arabs, swashbucklers, adventurers from
+every land, and ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and all
+jabbering a language that the Tower of Babel itself could make nothing
+of! And, furthermore, you should see how they treat me--I mean, how they
+never treat me: never a brush or a wash. They begrudge me grease for my
+axles. Instead of my good fat quiet horses of other days, little Arab
+ponies, with the devil in their frames, who fight and bite, caper
+as they run like so many goats, and break my splatterboard all to
+smithereens with their lashing out behind. Ouch! ouch! there they are at
+it again!
+
+"And such roads! Just here it is bearable, because we are near the
+governmental headquarters; but out a bit there's nothing, Monsieur--not
+the ghost of a road at all. We get along as best we can over hill and
+dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. Ne'er a fixed change of horses,
+the stopping being at the whim of the guard, now at one farm, again at
+another.
+
+"Somewhiles this rogue goes a couple of leagues out of the way to have
+a glass of absinthe or champoreau with a chum. After which, 'Crack on,
+postillion!' to make up for the lost time. Though the sun be broiling
+and the dust scorching, we whip on! We catch in the scrub and spill
+over, but whip on! We swim rivers, we catch cold, we get swamped, we
+drown, but whip! whip! whip! Then in the evening, streaming--a nice
+thing for my age, with my rheumatics--I have to sleep in the open air
+of some caravanseral yard, open to all the winds. In the dead o' night
+jackals and hyaenas come sniffing of my body; and the marauders who
+don't like dews get into my compartment to keep warm.
+
+"Such is the life I lead, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, and that I shall
+lead to the day when--burnt up by the sun and rotted by the damp nights
+until unable to do anything else, I shall fall in some spot of bad
+road, where the Arabs will boil their kouskous with the bones of my old
+carcass"--
+
+"Blidah! Blidah!" called out the guard as he opened the door.
+
+
+
+II. A little gentleman drops in and "drops upon" Tartarin.
+
+
+VAGUELY through the mud-dimmed glass Tartarin of Tarascon caught a
+glimpse of a second-rate but pretty town market-place, regular in shape,
+surrounded by colonnades and planted with orange-trees, in the midst
+of which what seemed toy leaden soldiers were going through the morning
+exercise in the clear roseate mist. The cafes were shedding their
+shutters. In one corner there was a vegetable market. It was bewitching,
+but it did not smack of lions yet.
+
+"To the South! farther to the South!" muttered the good old desperado,
+sinking back in his corner.
+
+At this moment the door opened. A puff of fresh air rushed in, bearing
+upon its wings, in the perfume of the orange-blossoms, a little person
+in a brown frock-coat, old and dry, wrinkled and formal, his face no
+bigger than your fist, his neckcloth of black silk five fingers wide,
+a notary's letter-case, and umbrella--the very picture of a village
+solicitor.
+
+On perceiving the Tarasconian's warlike equipment, the little gentleman,
+who was seated over against him, appeared excessively surprised, and set
+to studying him with burdensome persistency.
+
+The horses were taken out and the fresh ones put in, whereupon the coach
+started off again. The little weasel still gazed at Tartarin, who in the
+end took snuff at it.
+
+"Does this astonish you?" he demanded, staring the little gentleman full
+in the face in his turn.
+
+"Oh, dear, no! it only annoys me," responded the other, very tranquilly.
+
+And the fact is, that, with his shelter-tent, revolvers, pair of guns in
+their cases, and hunting-knife, not to speak of his natural corpulence,
+Tartarin of Tarascon did take up a lot of room.
+
+The little gentleman's reply angered him.
+
+"Do you by any chance fancy that I am going lion-hunting with your
+umbrella?" queried the great man haughtily.
+
+The little man looked at his umbrella, smiled blandly, and still with
+the same lack of emotion, inquired:
+
+"Oho, then you are Monsieur"--
+
+"Tartarin of Tarascon, lion-killer!"
+
+In uttering these words the dauntless son of Tarascon shook the blue
+tassel of his fez like a mane.
+
+Through the vehicle was a spell of stupefaction.
+
+The Trappist brother crossed himself, the dubious women uttered little
+screams of affright, and the Orleansville photographer bent over towards
+the lion-slayer, already cherishing the unequalled honour of taking his
+likeness.
+
+The little gentleman, though, was not awed.
+
+"Do you mean to say that you have killed many lions, Monsieur Tartarin?"
+he asked, very quietly.
+
+The Tarasconian received his charge in the handsomest manner.
+
+"Is it many have I killed, Monsieur? I wish you had only as many hairs
+on your head as I have killed of them."
+
+All the coach laughed on observing three yellow bristles standing up on
+the little gentleman's skull.
+
+In his turn, the Orleansville photographer struck in:
+
+"Yours must be a terrible profession, Monsieur Tartarin. You must
+pass some ugly moments sometimes. I have heard that poor Monsieur
+Bombonnel"--"Oh, yes, the panther-killer," said Tartarin, rather
+disdainfully.
+
+"Do you happen to be acquainted with him?" inquired the insignificant
+person.
+
+"Eh! of course! Know him? Why, we have been out on the hunt over twenty
+times together."
+
+The little gentleman smiled.
+
+"So you also hunt panthers, Monsieur Tartarin?" he asked.
+
+"Sometimes, just for pastime," said the fiery Tarasconian. "But," he
+added, as he tossed his head with a heroic movement that inflamed
+the hearts of the two sweethearts of the regiment, "that's not worth
+lion-hunting."
+
+"When all's said and done," ventured the photographer, "a panther is
+nothing but a big cat."
+
+"Right you are!" said Tartarin, not sorry to abate the celebrated
+Bombonnel's glory a little, particularly in the presence of ladies.
+
+Here the coach stopped. The conductor came to open the door, and
+addressed the insignificant little gentleman most respectfully, saying:
+
+"We have arrived, Monsieur."
+
+The little gentleman got up, stepped out, and said, before the door was
+closed again:
+
+"Will you allow me to give you a bit of advice, Monsieur Tartarin?"
+
+"What is it, Monsieur?"
+
+"Faith! you wear the look of a good sort of fellow, so I would, rather
+than not, let you have it. Get you back quickly to Tarascon, Monsieur
+Tartarin, for you are wasting your time here. There do remain a few
+panthers in the colony, but, out upon the big cats! they are too small
+game for you. As for lion-hunting, that's all over. There are none left
+in Algeria, my friend Chassaing having lately knocked over the last."
+
+Upon which the little gentleman saluted, closed the door, and trotted
+away chuckling, with his document-wallet and umbrella.
+
+"Guard," asked Tartarin, screwing up his face contemptuously, "who under
+the sun is that poor little mannikin?"
+
+"What! don't you know him? Why, that there's Monsieur Bombonnel!"
+
+
+
+III. A Monastery of Lions.
+
+
+AT Milianah, Tartarin of Tarascon alighted, leaving the stage-coach to
+continue its way towards the South.
+
+Two days' rough jolting, two nights spent with eyes open to spy out of
+window if there were not discoverable the dread figure of a lion in the
+fields beyond the road--so much sleeplessness well deserved some hours
+repose. Besides, if we must tell everything, since his misadventure with
+Bombonnel, the outspoken Tartarin felt ill at ease, notwithstanding his
+weapons, his terrifying visage, and his red cap, before the Orleansville
+photographer and the two ladies fond of the military.
+
+So he proceeded through the broad streets of Milianah, full of fine
+trees and fountains; but whilst looking up a suitable hotel, the poor
+fellow could not help musing over Bombonnel's words. Suppose they were
+true! Suppose there were no more lions in Algeria? What would be the
+good then of so much running about and fatigue?
+
+Suddenly, at the turn of a street, our hero found himself face to face
+with--with what? Guess! "A donkey, of course!" A donkey? A splendid lion
+this time, waiting before a coffee-house door, royally sitting up on his
+hind-quarters, with his tawny mane gleaming in the sun.
+
+"What possessed them to tell me that there were no more of them?"
+exclaimed the Tarasconian, as he made a backward jump.
+
+On hearing this outcry the lion lowered his head, and taking up in his
+mouth a wooden bowl that was before him on the footway, humbly held it
+out towards Tartarin, who was immovable with stupefaction. A passing
+Arab tossed a copper into the bowl, and the lion wagged his tail.
+Thereupon Tartarin understood it all. He saw what emotion had prevented
+him previously perceiving: that the crowd was gathered around a poor
+tame blind lion, and that two stalwart Negroes, armed with staves, were
+marching him through the town as a Savoyard does a marmot.
+
+The blood of Tarascon boiled over at once.
+
+"Wretches that you are!" he roared in a voice of thunder, "thus to
+debase such noble beasts!"
+
+Springing to the lion, he wrenched the loathsome bowl from between his
+royal jaws. The two Africans, believing they had a thief to contend
+with, rushed upon the foreigner with uplifted cudgels. There was a
+dreadful conflict: the blackamoors smiting, the women screaming, and the
+youngsters laughing. An old Jew cobbler bleated out of the hollow of his
+stall, "Dake him to the shustish of the beace!" The lion himself; in
+his dark state, tried to roar as his hapless champion, after a desperate
+struggle, rolled on the ground among the spilt pence and the sweepings.
+
+At this juncture a man cleft the throng, made the Negroes stand back
+with a word, and the women and urchins with a wave of the hand, lifted
+up Tartarin, brushed him down, shook him into shape, and sat him
+breathless upon a corner-post.
+
+"What, prince, is it you?" said the good Tartarin, rubbing his ribs.
+
+"Yes, indeed, it is I, my valiant friend. As soon as your letter was
+received, I entrusted Baya to her brother, hired a post-chaise, flew
+fifty leagues as fast as a horse could go, and here I am, just in time
+to snatch you from the brutality of these ruffians. What have you done,
+in the name of just Heaven, to bring this ugly trouble upon you?"
+
+"What done, prince? It was too much for me to see this unfortunate lion
+with a begging-bowl in his mouth, humiliated, conquered, buffeted about,
+set up as a laughing-stock to all this Moslem rabble"--
+
+"But you are wrong, my noble friend. On the contrary, this lion is an
+object of respect and adoration. This is a sacred beast who belongs to a
+great monastery of lions, founded three hundred years ago by Mahomet Ben
+Aouda, a kind of fierce and forbidding La Trappe, full of roarings
+and wild-beastly odours, where strange monks rear and feed lions by
+hundreds, and send them out all over Northern Africa, accompanied by
+begging brothers. The alms they receive serve for the maintenance of
+the monastery and its mosques; and the two Negroes showed so much
+displeasure just now because it was their conviction that the lion under
+their charge would forthwith devour them if a single penny of their
+collection were lost or stolen through any fault of theirs."
+
+On hearing this incredible and yet veracious story Tartarin of Tarascon
+was delighted, and sniffed the air noisily. "What pleases me in this,"
+he remarked, as the summing up of his opinion, "is that, whether
+Monsieur Bombonnel likes it or not, there are still lions in Algeria."--
+
+"I should think there were!" ejaculated the prince enthusiastically.
+"We will start to-morrow beating up the Shelliff Plain, and you will see
+lions enough!"
+
+"What, prince! have you an intention to go a-hunting, too?"
+
+"Of course! Do you think I am going to leave you to march by yourself
+into the heart of Africa, in the midst of ferocious tribes of whose
+languages and usages you are ignorant! No, no, illustrious Tartarin,
+I shall quit you no more. Go where you will, I shall make one of the
+party."
+
+"O Prince! prince!"
+
+The beaming Tartarin hugged the devoted Gregory to his breast at the
+proud thought of his going to have a foreign prince to accompany him
+in his hunting, after the example of Jules Gerard, Bombonnel, and other
+famous lion-slayers.
+
+
+
+IV. The Caravan on the March.
+
+
+LEAVING Milianah at the earliest hour next morning, the intrepid
+Tartarin and the no less intrepid Prince Gregory descended towards
+the Shelliff Plain through a delightful gorge shaded with jessamine,
+carouba, tuyas, and wild olive-trees, between hedges of little native
+gardens and thousands of merry, lively rills which scampered down from
+rock to rock with a singing splash--a bit of landscape meet for the
+Lebanon.
+
+As much loaded with arms as the great Tartarin, Prince Gregory had, over
+and above that, donned a queer but magnificent military cap, all covered
+with gold lace and a trimming of oak-leaves in silver cord, which gave
+His Highness the aspect of a Mexican general or a railway station-master
+on the banks of the Danube.
+
+This plague of a cap much puzzled the beholder; and as he timidly craved
+some explanation, the prince gravely answered:
+
+"It is a kind of headgear indispensable for travel in Algeria."
+
+Whilst brightening up the peak with a sweep of his sleeve, he instructed
+his simple companion in the important part which the military cap plays
+in the French connection with the Arabs, and the terror this article of
+army insignia alone has the privilege of inspiring, so that the Civil
+Service has been obliged to put all its employees in caps, from the
+extra-copyist to the receiver-general. To govern Algeria (the prince is
+still speaking) there is no need of a strong head, or even of any head
+at all. A military cap does it alone, if showy and belaced, and shining
+at the top of a non-human pole, like Gessler's.
+
+Thus chatting and philosophising, the caravan proceeded. The barefooted
+porters leaped from rock to rock with ape-like screams. The guncases
+clanked, and the guns themselves flashed. The natives who were passing,
+salaamed to the ground before the magic cap. Up above, on the ramparts
+of Milianah, the head of the Arab Department, who was out for an airing
+with his wife, hearing these unusual noises, and seeing the weapons
+gleam between the branches, fancied there was a revolt, and ordered the
+drawbridge to be raised, the general alarm to be sounded, and the whole
+town put under a state of siege. A capital commencement for the caravan!
+
+Unfortunately, before the day ended, things went wrong. Of the black
+luggage-bearers, one was doubled up with atrocious colics from having
+eaten the diachylon out of the medicine-chest: another fell on the
+roadside dead drunk with camphorated brandy; the third, carrier of
+the travelling-album, deceived by the gilding on the clasps into the
+persuasion that he was flying with the treasures of Mecca, ran off into
+the Zaccar on his best legs.
+
+This required consideration. The caravan halted, and held a council in
+the broken shadow of an old fig-tree.
+
+"It's my advice that we turn up Negro porters from this evening
+forward," said the prince, trying without success to melt a cake of
+compressed meat in an improved patent triple-bottomed sauce-pan. "There
+is, haply, an Arab trader quite near here. The best thing to do is to
+stop there, and buy some donkeys."
+
+"No, no; no donkeys," quickly interrupted Tartarin, becoming quite red
+at memory of Noiraud. "How can you expect," he added, hypocrite that he
+was, "that such little beasts could carry all our apparatus?"
+
+The prince smiled.
+
+"You are making a mistake, my illustrious friend. However weakly and
+meagre the Algerian bourriquot may appear to you, he has solid loins. He
+must have them so to support all that he does. Just ask the Arabs. Hark
+to how they explain the French colonial organisation. 'On the top,' they
+say, 'is Mossoo, the Governor, with a heavy club to rap the staff; the
+staff, for revenge, canes the soldier; the soldier clubs the settler,
+and he hammers the Arab; the Arab smites the Negro, the Negro beats
+the Jew, and he takes it out of the donkey. The poor bourriquot having
+nobody to belabour, arches up his back and bears it all.' You see
+clearly now that he can bear your boxes."
+
+"All the same," remonstrated Tartarin, "it strikes me that jackasses
+will not chime in nicely with the effect of our caravan. I want
+something more Oriental. For instance, if we could only get a camel"--
+
+"As many as you like," said His Highness; and off they started for the
+Arab mart.
+
+It was held a few miles away, on the banks of the Shelliff. There were
+five or six thousand Arabs in tatters here, grovelling in the sunshine
+and noisily trafficking, amid jars of black olives, pots of honey, bags
+of spices; and great heaps of cigars; huge fires were roasting whole
+sheep, basted with butter; in open air slaughter-houses stark naked
+Negroes, with ruddy arms and their feet in gore, were cutting up kids
+hanging from crosspoles, with small knives.
+
+In one corner, under a tent patched with a thousand colours, a Moorish
+clerk of the market in spectacles scrawled in a large book. Here was a
+cluster of men shouting with rage: it was a spinning-jenny game, set on
+a corn-measure, and Kabyles were ready to cut one another's throats over
+it. Yonder were laughs and contortions of delight: it was a Jew trader
+on a mule drowning in the Shelliff. Then there were dogs, scorpions,
+ravens, and flies--rather flies than anything else.
+
+But a plentiful lack of camels abounded. They finally unearthed one,
+though, of which the M'zabites were trying to get rid--the real ship of
+the desert, the classical, standard camel, bald, woe-begone, with a long
+Bedouin head, and its hump, become limp in consequence of unduly long
+fasts, hanging melancholically on one side.
+
+Tartarin considered it so handsome that he wanted the entire party to
+get upon it. Still his Oriental craze!
+
+The beast knelt down for them to strap on the boxes.
+
+The prince enthroned himself on the animal's neck. For the sake of the
+greater majesty, Tartarin got them to hoist him on the top of the hump
+between two boxes, where, proud, and cosily settled down, he saluted
+the whole market with a lofty wave of the hand, and gave the signal of
+departure.
+
+Thunderation! if the people of Tarascon could only have seen him!
+
+The camel rose, straightened up its long knotty legs, and stepped out.
+
+Oh, stupor! At the end of a few strides Tartarin felt he was losing
+colour, and the heroic chechia assumed one by one its former positions
+in the days of sailing in the Zouave. This devil's own camel pitched and
+tossed like a frigate.
+
+"Prince! prince!" gasped Tartarin pallid as a ghost, as he clung to the
+dry tuft of the hump, "prince, let's get down. I find--I feel that I
+m-m-must get off; or I shall disgrace France."
+
+A deal of good that talk was--the camel was on the go, and nothing could
+stop it. Behind it raced four thousand barefooted Arabs, waving their
+hands and laughing like mad, so that they made six hundred thousand
+white teeth glitter in the sun.
+
+The great man of Tarascon had to resign himself to circumstances. He
+sadly collapsed on the hump, where the fez took all the positions it
+fancied, and France was disgraced.
+
+
+
+V. The Night-watch in a Poison-tree Grove.
+
+
+SWEETLY picturesque as was their new steed, our lion-hunters had to give
+it up, purely out of consideration for the red cap, of course. So
+they continued the journey on foot as before, the caravan tranquilly
+proceeding southwardly by short stages, the Tarasconian in the van, the
+Montenegrin in the rear, and the camel, with the weapons in their cases,
+in the ranks.
+
+The expedition lasted nearly a month.
+
+During that seeking for lions which he never found, the dreadful
+Tartarin roamed from douar to douar on the immense plain of the
+Shelliff, through the odd but formidable French Algeria, where the old
+Oriental perfumes are complicated by a strong blend of absinthe and the
+barracks, Abraham and "the Zouzou" mingled, something fairy-tale-like
+and simply burlesque, like a page of the Old Testament related by Tommy
+Atkins.
+
+A curious sight for those who have eyes that can see.
+
+A wild and corrupted people whom we are civilising by teaching them our
+vices. The ferocious and uncontrolled authority of grotesque bashaws,
+who gravely use their grand cordons of the Legion of Honour as
+handkerchiefs, and for a mere yea or nay order a man to be bastinadoed.
+It is the justice of the conscienceless, bespectacled cadis under
+the palm-tree, Maw-worms of the Koran and Law, who dream languidly of
+promotion and sell their decrees, as Esau did his birthright, for a dish
+of lentils or sweetened kouskous. Drunken and libertine cadis are they,
+formerly servants to some General Yusuf or the like, who get intoxicated
+on champagne, along with laundresses from Port Mahon, and fatten on
+roast mutton, whilst before their tents the whole tribe waste away with
+hunger, and fight with the harriers for the bones of the lordly feast.
+
+All around spread the plains in waste, burnt grass, leafless shrubs,
+thickets of cactus and mastic--"the Granary of France!"--a granary void
+of grain, alas! and rich alone in vermin and jackals. Abandoned camps,
+frightened tribes fleeing from them and famine, they know not whither,
+and strewing the road with corpses. At long intervals French villages,
+with the dwellings in ruins, the fields untilled, the maddened
+locusts gnawing even the window-blinds, and all the settlers in the
+drinking-places, absorbing absinthe and discussing projects of reform
+and the Constitution.
+
+This is what Tartarin might have seen had he given himself the trouble;
+but, wrapped up entirely in his leonine-hunger, the son of Tarascon went
+straight on, looking to neither right nor left, his eyes steadfastly
+fixed on the imaginary monsters which never really appeared.
+
+As the shelter-tent was stubborn in not unfolding, and the compressed
+meat-cakes would not dissolve, the caravan was obliged to stop, morn and
+eve, at tribal camps. Everywhere, thanks to the gorgeous cap of Prince
+Gregory, our hunters were welcomed with open arms. They lodged in the
+aghas' odd palaces, large white windowless farmhouses, where they
+found, pell-mell, narghilehs and mahogany furniture, Smyrna carpets
+and moderator lamps, cedar coffers full of Turkish sequins, and French
+statuette-decked clocks in the Louis Philippe style.
+
+Everywhere, too, Tartarin was given splendrous galas, diffas, and
+fantasias, which, being interpreted, mean feasts and circuses. In his
+honour whole goums blazed away powder, and floated their burnouses in
+the sun. When the powder was burnt, the agha would come and hand in his
+bill. This is what is called Arab hospitality.
+
+But always no lions, no more than on London Bridge.
+
+Nevertheless, the Tarasconian did not grow disheartened. Ever bravely
+diving more deeply into the South, he spent the days in beating up the
+thickets, probing the dwarf-palms with the muzzle of his rifle, and
+saying "Boh!" to every bush. And every evening, before lying down, he
+went into ambush for two or three hours. Useless trouble, however, for
+the lion did not show himself.
+
+One evening, though, going on six o'clock, as the caravan scrambled
+through a violet-hued mastic-grove, where fat quails tumbled about in
+the grass, drowsy through the heat, Tartarin of Tarascon fancied he
+heard though afar and very vague, and thinned down by the breeze--that
+wondrous roaring to which he had so often listened by Mitaine's
+Menagerie at home.
+
+At first the hero feared he was dreaming; but in an instant further the
+roaring recommenced more distinct, although yet remote; and this time
+the camel's hump shivered in terror, and made the tinned meats and arms
+in the cases rattle, whilst all the dogs in the camps were heard howling
+in every corner of the horizon.
+
+Beyond doubt this was the lion.
+
+Quick, quick! to the ambush. There was not a minute to lose.
+
+Near at hand there happened to be an old marabout's, or saint's, tomb,
+with a white cupola, and the defunct's large yellow slippers placed in a
+niche over the door, and a mass of odd offerings--hems of blankets, gold
+thread, red hair--hung on the wall.
+
+Tartarin of Tarascon left his prince and his camel and went in search of
+a good spot for lying in wait. Prince Gregory wanted to follow him, but
+the Tarasconian refused, bent on confronting Leo alone. But still he
+besought His Highness not to go too far away, and, as a measure of
+foresight, he entrusted him with his pocket-book, a good-sized one, full
+of precious papers and bank-notes, which he feared would get torn by the
+lion's claws. This done, our hero looked up a good place.
+
+A hundred steps in front of the temple a little clump of rose-laurel
+shook in the twilight haze on the edge of a rivulet all but dried up.
+There it was that Tartarin went and ensconced himself, one knee on the
+ground, according to the regular rule, his rifle in his hand, and his
+huge hunting-knife stuck boldly before him in the sandy bank.
+
+Night fell.
+
+The rosy tint of nature changed into violet, and then into dark blue.
+A pretty pool of clear water gleamed like a hand-glass over the
+river-pebbles; this was the watering-place of the wild animals.
+
+On the other slope the whitish trail was dimly to be discerned which
+their heavy paws had traced in the brush--a mysterious path which made
+one's flesh creep. Join to this sensation that from the vague swarming
+sound in African forests, the swishing of branches, the velvety-pads of
+roving creatures, the jackal's shrill yelp, and up in the sky, two or
+three hundred feet aloft, vast flocks of cranes passing on with screams
+like poor little children having their weasands slit. You will own that
+there were grounds for a man being moved.
+
+Tartarin was so, and even more than that, for the poor fellow's teeth
+chattered, and on the cross-bar of his hunting-knife, planted upright
+in the bank, as we repeat, his rifle-barrel rattled like a pair of
+castanets. Do not ask too much of a man! There are times when one is
+not in the mood; and, moreover, where would be the merit if heroes were
+never afraid?
+
+Well, yes, Tartarin was afraid, and all the time, too, for the matter
+of that. Nevertheless, he held out for an hour; better, for two; but
+heroism has its limits. Nigh him, in the dry part of the rivulet-bed,
+the Tarasconian unexpectedly heard the sound of steps and of pebbles
+rolling. This time terror lifted him off the ground. He banged away both
+barrels at haphazard into the night, and retreated as fast as his
+legs would carry him to the marabout's chapel-vault, leaving his knife
+standing up in the sand like a cross commemorative of the grandest panic
+that ever assailed the soul of a conqueror of hydras.
+
+"Help! this Way, prince; the lion is on me!"
+
+There was silence. "Prince, prince, are you there?"
+
+The prince was not there. On the white moonlit wall of the fane the
+camel alone cast the queer-shaped shadow of his protuberance. Prince
+Gregory had cut and run with the wallet of bank-notes. His Highness had
+been for the month past awaiting this opportunity.
+
+
+
+VI. Bagged him at Last.
+
+
+IT was not until early on the morrow of this adventurous and dramatic
+eve that our hero awoke, and acquired assurance doubly sure that the
+prince and the treasure had really gone off, without any prospect
+of return. When he saw himself alone in the little white tombhouse,
+betrayed, robbed, abandoned in the heart of savage Algeria, with a
+one-humped camel and some pocket-money as all his resources, then did
+the representative of Tarascon for the first time doubt. He doubted
+Montenegro, friendship, glory, and even lions; and the great man
+blubbered bitterly.
+
+Whilst he was pensively seated on the sill of the sanctuary, holding
+his head between his hands and his gun between his legs, with the
+camel mooning at him, the thicket over the way was divided, and the
+stupor-stricken Tartarin saw a gigantic lion appear not a dozen paces
+off. It thrust out its high head and emitted powerful roars, which made
+the temple walls shake beneath their votive decorations, and even the
+saint's slippers dance in their niche.
+
+The Tarasconian alone did not tremble.
+
+"At last you've come!" he shouted, jumping up and levelling the rifle.
+
+Bang, bang! went a brace of shells into its head.
+
+It was done. For a minute, on the fiery background of the African sky,
+there was a dreadful firework display of scattered brains, smoking
+blood, and tawny hair. When all fell, Tartarin perceived two colossal
+Negroes furiously running towards him, brandishing cudgels. They were
+his two Negro acquaintances of Milianah!
+
+Oh, misery!
+
+This was the domesticated lion, the poor blind beggar of the Mohammed
+Monastery, whom the Tarasconian's bullets had knocked over.
+
+This time, spite of Mahound, Tartarin escaped neatly. Drunk with
+fanatical fury, the two African collectors would have surely beaten him
+to pulp had not the god of chase and war sent him a delivering angel
+in the shape of the rural constable of the Orleansville commune. By a
+bypath this garde champetre came up, his sword tucked under his arm.
+
+The sight of the municipal cap suddenly calmed the Negroes' choler.
+Peaceful and majestic, the officer with the brass badge drew up a report
+on the affair, ordered the camel to be loaded with what remained of the
+king of beasts, and the plaintiffs as well as the delinquent to follow
+him, proceeding to Orleansville, where all was deposited with the
+law-courts receiver.
+
+There issued a long and alarming case!
+
+After the Algeria of the native tribes which he had overrun, Tartarin of
+Tarascon became thence acquainted with another Algeria, not less weird
+and to be dreaded--the Algeria in the towns, surcharged with lawyers and
+their papers. He got to know the pettifogger who does business at the
+back of a cafe--the legal Bohemian with documents reeking of wormwood
+bitters and white neckcloths spotted with champoreau; the ushers, the
+attorneys, all the locusts of stamped paper, meagre and famished, who
+eat up the colonist body and boots--ay, to the very straps of them, and
+leave him peeled to the core like an Indian cornstalk, stripped leaf by
+leaf.
+
+Before all else it was necessary to ascertain whether the lion had been
+killed on the civil or the military territory. In the former case the
+matter regarded the Tribunal of Commerce; in the second, Tartarin
+would be dealt with by the Council of War: and at the mere name the
+impressionable Tarasconian saw himself shot at the foot of the ramparts
+or huddled up in a casemate-silo.
+
+The puzzle lay in the limitation of the two territories being very hazy
+in Algeria.
+
+At length, after a month's running about, entanglements, and waiting
+under the sun in the yards of Arab Departmental offices, it was
+established that, whereas the lion had been killed on the military
+territory, on the other hand Tartarin was in the civil territory when he
+shot. So the case was decided in the civil courts, and our hero was
+let off on paying two thousand five hundred francs damages, costs not
+included.
+
+How could he pay such a sum?
+
+The few piashtres escaped from the prince's sweep had long since gone in
+legal documents and judicial libations. The unfortunate lion-destroyer
+was therefore reduced to selling the store of guns by retail, rifle by
+rifle; so went the daggers, the Malay kreeses, and the life-preservers.
+A grocer purchased the preserved aliments; an apothecary what remained
+of the medicaments. The big boots themselves walked off after the
+improved tent to a dealer of curiosities, who elevated them to the
+dignity of "rarities from Cochin-China."
+
+When everything was paid up, only the lion's skin and the camel remained
+to Tartarin. The hide he had carefully packed, to be sent to Tarascon
+to the address of brave Commandant Bravida, and, later on, we shall
+see what came of this fabulous trophy. As for the camel, he reckoned on
+making use of him to get back to Algiers, not by riding on him, but by
+selling him to pay his coach-fare--the best way to employ a camel in
+travelling. Unhappily the beast was difficult to place, and no one would
+offer a copper for him.
+
+Still Tartarin wanted to regain Algiers by hook or crook. He was in
+haste again to behold Baya's blue bodice, his little snuggery and his
+fountains, as well as to repose on the white trefoils of his little
+cloister whilst awaiting money from France. So our hero did not
+hesitate; distressed but not downcast, he undertook to make the journey
+afoot and penniless by short stages.
+
+In this enterprise the camel did not cast him off. The strange animal
+had taken an unaccountable fancy for his master, and on seeing him leave
+Orleansville, he set to striding steadfastly behind him, regulating his
+pace by this, and never quitting him by a yard.
+
+At the first outset Tartarin found this touching; such fidelity and
+devotion above proof went to his heart, all the more because the
+creature was accommodating, and fed himself on nothing. Nevertheless,
+after a few days, the Tarasconian was worried by having this glum
+companion perpetually at his heels, to remind him of his misadventures.
+Ire arising, he hated him for his sad aspect, hump and gait of a goose
+in harness. To tell the whole truth, he held him as his Old Man of the
+Sea, and only pondered on how to shake him off; but the follower would
+not be shaken off. Tartarin attempted to lose him, but the camel always
+found him; he tried to outrun him, but the camel ran faster. He bade
+him begone, and hurled stones at him. The camel stopped with a
+mournful mien, but in a minute resumed the pursuit, and always ended by
+overtaking him. Tartarin had to resign himself.
+
+For all that, when, after eight full days of tramping, the dusty and
+harassed Tarasconian espied the first white housetops of Algiers glimmer
+from afar in the verdure, and when he got to the city gates on the noisy
+Mustapha Avenue, amid the Zouaves, Biskris, and Mahonnais, all swarming
+around him and staring at him trudging by with his camel, overtasked
+patience escaped him.
+
+"No! no!" he growled, "it is not likely! I cannot enter Algiers with
+such an animal!"
+
+Profiting by a jam of vehicles, he turned off into the fields and jumped
+into a ditch. In a minute or so he saw over his head on the highway
+the camel flying off with long strides and stretching his neck with a
+wistful air.
+
+Relieved of a great weight thereby, the hero sneaked out of his covert,
+and entered the town anew by a circuitous path which skirted the wall of
+his own little garden.
+
+
+
+VII. Catastrophes upon Catastrophes.
+
+
+ENTIRELY astonished was Tartarin before his Moorish dwelling when he
+stopped.
+
+Day was dying and the street deserted. Through the low pointed-arch
+doorway which the negress had forgotten to close, laughter was heard;
+and the clink of wine-glasses, the popping of champagne corks; and,
+floating over all the jolly uproar, a feminine voice singing clearly and
+joyously:
+
+"Do you like, Marco la Bella, to dance in the hall hung with bloom?"
+
+"Throne of heaven!" ejaculated the Tarasconian, turning pale, as he
+rushed into the enclosure.
+
+Hapless Tartarin! what a sight awaited him! Beneath the arches of the
+little cloister, amongst bottles, pastry, scattered cushions, pipes,
+tambourines, and guitars, Baya was singing "Marco la Bella" with a ship
+captain's cap over one ear. She had on no blue vest or bodice; indeed,
+her only wear was a silvery gauze wrapper and full pink trousers. At
+her feet, on a rug, surfeited with love and sweetmeats, Barbassou, the
+infamous skipper Barbassou, was bursting with laughter at hearing her.
+
+The apparition of Tartarin, haggard, thinned, dusty, his flaming
+eyes, and the bristling up fez tassel, sharply interrupted this tender
+Turkish-Marseillais orgie. Baya piped the low whine of a frightened
+leveret, and ran for safety into the house. But Barbassou did not wince;
+he only laughed the louder, saying:
+
+"Ha, ha, Monsieur Tartarin! What do you say to that now? You see she
+does know French."
+
+Tartarin of Tarascon advanced furiously, crying:
+
+"Captain!"
+
+"Digo-li que vengue, moun bon!--Tell him what's happened, old dear!"
+screamed the Moorish woman, leaning over the first floor gallery with a
+pretty low-bred gesture!
+
+The poor man, overwhelmed, let himself collapse upon a drum. His genuine
+Moorish beauty not only knew French, but the French of Marseilles!
+
+"I told you not to trust the Algerian girls," observed Captain Barbassou
+sententiously! "They're as tricky as your Montenegrin prince."
+
+Tartarin lifted his head
+
+"Do you know where the prince is?"
+
+"Oh, he's not far off. He has gone to live five years in the handsome
+prison of Mustapha. The rogue let himself be caught with his hand in the
+pocket. Anyways, this is not the first time he has been clapped into
+the calaboose. His Highness has already done three years somewhere,
+and--stop a bit! I believe it was at Tarascon."
+
+"At Tarascon!" cried out her worthiest son, abruptly enlightened.
+"That's how he only knew one part of the Town."
+
+"Hey? Of course. Tarascon--a jail bird's-eye view from the state prison.
+I tell you, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, you have to keep your peepers
+jolly well skinned in this deuce of a country, or be exposed to very
+disagreeable things. For a sample, there's the muezzin's game with you."
+
+"What game? Which muezzin?"
+
+"Why your'n, of course! The chap across the way who is making up to
+Baya. That newspaper, the Akbar, told the yarn t'other day, and
+all Algiers is laughing over it even now. It is so funny for that
+steeplejack up aloft in his crow's-nest to make declarations of love
+under your very nose to the little beauty whilst singing out his
+prayers, and making appointments with her between bits of the Koran."
+
+"Why, then, they're all scamps in this country!" howled the unlucky
+Tarasconian.
+
+Barbassou snapped his fingers like a philosopher.
+
+"My dear lad, you know, these new countries are 'rum!' But, anyhow, if
+you'll believe me, you'd best cut back to Tarascon at full speed."
+
+"It's easy to say, 'Cut back.' Where's the money to come from? Don't you
+know that I was plucked out there in the desert?"
+
+"What does that matter?" said the captain merrily. "The Zouave sails
+tomorrow, and if you like I will take you home. Does that suit you,
+mate? Ay? Then all goes well. You have only one thing to do. There are
+some bottles of fizz left, and half the pie. Sit you down and pitch in
+without any grudge."
+
+After the minute's wavering which self-respect commanded, the
+Tarasconian chose his course manfully. Down he sat, and they touched
+glasses. Baya, gliding down at that chink, sang the finale of "Marco la
+Bella," and the jollification was prolonged deep into the night.
+
+About 3 A.M., with a light head but a heavy foot, our good Tarasconian
+was returning from seeing his friend the captain off when, in passing
+the mosque, the remembrance of his muezzin and his practical jokes made
+him laugh, and instantly a capital idea of revenge flitted through his
+brain.
+
+The door was open. He entered, threaded long corridors hung with mats,
+mounted and kept on mounting till he finally found himself in a little
+oratory, where an openwork iron lantern swung from the ceiling, and
+embroidered an odd pattern in shadows upon the blanched walls.
+
+There sat the crier on a divan, in his large turban and white pelisse,
+with his Mostaganam pipe, and a bumper of absinthe before him, which he
+whipped up in the orthodox manner, whilst awaiting the hour to call true
+believers to prayer. At view of Tartarin, he dropped his pipe in terror.
+
+"Not a word, knave!" said the Tarasconian, full of his project. "Quick!
+Off with turban and coat!"
+
+The Turkish priest-crier tremblingly handed over his outer garments, as
+he would have done with anything else. Tartarin donned them, and gravely
+stepped out upon the minaret platform.
+
+In the distance the sea shone. The white roofs glittered in the
+moonbeams. On the sea breeze was heard the strumming of a few belated
+guitars. The Tarasconian muezzin gathered himself up for the effort
+during a space, and then, raising his arms, he set to chanting in a very
+shrill voice:
+
+"La Allah il Allah! Mahomet is an old humbug! The Orient, the Koran,
+bashaws, lions, Moorish beauties--they are all not worth a fly's skip!
+There is nothing left but gammoners. Long live Tarascon!"
+
+Whilst the illustrious Tartarin, in his queer jumbling of Arabic and
+Provencal, flung his mirthful maledictions to the four quarters, sea,
+town, plain and mountain, the clear, solemn voices of the other muezzins
+answered him, taking up the strain from minaret to minaret, and the
+believers of the upper town devoutly beat their bosoms.
+
+
+VIII. Tarascon again!
+
+
+MID-DAY has come.
+
+The Zouave had her steam up, ready to go. Upon the balcony of the
+Valentin Cafe, high above, the officers were levelling telescopes, and,
+with the colonel at their head, looking at the lucky little craft that
+was going back to France. This is the main distraction of the staff. On
+the lower level, the roads glittered. The old Turkish cannon breaches,
+stuck up along the waterside, blazed in the sun. The passengers hurried,
+Biskris and Mahonnais piled their luggage up in the wherries.
+
+Tartarin of Tarascon had no luggage. Here he comes down the Rue de
+la Marine through the little market, full of bananas and melons,
+accompanied by his friend Barbassou. The hapless Tarasconian left on the
+Moorish strand his gun-cases and his illusions, and now he had to sail
+for Tarascon with his hands in his otherwise empty pockets. He had
+barely leaped into the captain's cutter before a breathless beast slid
+down from the heights of the square and galloped towards him. It was the
+faithful camel, who had been hunting after his master in Algiers during
+the last four-and-twenty hours.
+
+On seeing him, Tartarin changed countenance, and feigned not to know
+him, but the camel was not going to be put off. He scampered along the
+quay; he whinnied for his friend, and regarded him with affection.
+
+"Take me away," his sad eyes seemed to say, "take me away in your ship,
+far, far from this sham Arabia, this ridiculous Land of the East, full
+of locomotives and stage coaches, where a camel is so sorely out of
+keeping that I do not know what will become of me. You are the last real
+Turk, and I am the last camel. Do not let us part, O my Tartarin!"
+
+"Is that camel yours?" the captain inquired.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" replied Tartarin, who shuddered at the idea of
+entering Tarascon with that ridiculous escort; and, impudently denying
+the companion of his misfortunes, he spurned the Algerian soil with his
+foot, and gave the cutter the shoving-off start. The camel sniffed of
+the water, extended its neck, cracked its joints, and, jumping in behind
+the row-boat at haphazard, he swam towards the Zouave with his humpback
+floating like a bladder, and his long neck projecting over the wave like
+the beak of a galley.
+
+Cutter and camel came alongside the mail steamer together.
+
+"This dromedary regularly cuts me up," observed Captain Barbassou, quite
+affected. "I have a good mind to take him aboard and make a present of
+him to the Zoological Gardens at Marseilles."
+
+And so they hauled up the camel with many blocks and tackles upon the
+deck, being increased in weight by the brine, and the Zouave started.
+
+Tartarin spent the two days of the crossing by himself in his stateroom,
+not because the sea was rough, or that the red fez had too much to
+suffer, but because the deuced camel, as soon as his master appeared
+above decks, showed him the most preposterous attentions. You never did
+see a camel make such an exhibition of a man as this.
+
+From hour to hour, through the cabin portholes, where he stuck out his
+nose now and then, Tartarin saw the Algerian blue sky pale away; until
+one morning, in a silvery fog, he heard with delight Marseilles bells
+ringing out. The Zouave had arrived and cast anchor.
+
+Our man, having no luggage, got off without saying anything, hastily
+slipped through Marseilles for fear he was still pursued by the camel,
+and never breathed till he was in a third-class carriage making for
+Tarascon.
+
+Deceptive security!
+
+Hardly were they two leagues from the city before every head was stuck
+out of window. There were outcries and astonishment. Tartarin looked
+in his turn, and what did he descry! the camel, reader, the inevitable
+camel, racing along the line behind the train, and keeping up with it!
+The dismayed Tartarin drew back and shut his eyes.
+
+After this disastrous expedition of his he had reckoned on slipping
+into his house incognito. But the presence of this burdensome quadruped
+rendered the thing impossible. What kind of a triumphal entry would he
+make? Good heavens! not a sou, not a lion, nothing to show for it save a
+camel!
+
+"Tarascon! Tarascon!"
+
+He was obliged to get down.
+
+O amazement!
+
+Scarce had the hero's red fez popped out of the doorway before a loud
+shout of "Tartarin for ever!" made the glazed roof of the railway
+station tremble. "Long life to Tartarin, the lion-slayer!" And out burst
+the windings of horns and the choruses of the local musical societies.
+
+Tartarin felt death had come: he believed in a hoax. But, no! all
+Tarascon was there, waving their hats, all of the same way of thinking.
+Behold the brave Commandant Bravida, Costecalde the armourer, the
+Chief Judge, the chemist, and the whole noble corps of cap-poppers, who
+pressed around their leader, and carried him in triumph out through the
+passages.
+
+Singular effects of the mirage!--the hide of the blind lion sent to
+Bravida was the cause of all this riot. With that humble fur exhibited
+in the club-room, the Tarasconians, and, at the back of them, the whole
+South of France, had grown exalted. The Semaphore newspaper had spoken
+of it. A drama had been invented. It was not merely a solitary lion
+which Tartarin had slain, but ten, nay, twenty--pooh! a herd of lions
+had been made marmalade of. Hence, on disembarking at Marseilles,
+Tartarin was already celebrated without being aware of it, and an
+enthusiastic telegram had gone on before him by two hours to his native
+place.
+
+But what capped the climax of the popular gladness was to see a
+fancifully shaped animal, covered with foam and dust, appear behind the
+hero, and stumble down the station stairs.
+
+Tarascon for an instant believed that its dragon was come again.
+
+Tartarin set his fellow-citizens at ease.
+
+"This is my camel," he said.
+
+Already feeling the influence of the splendid sun of Tarascon, which
+makes people tell "bouncers" unwittingly, he added, as he fondled the
+camel's hump:
+
+"It is a noble beast! It saw me kill all my lions!"
+
+Whereupon he familiarly took the arm of the commandant, who was red
+with pleasure; and followed by his camel, surrounded by the cap-hunters,
+acclaimed by all the population, he placidly proceeded towards the
+Baobab Villa; and, on the march, thus commenced the account of his
+mighty hunting:
+
+"Once upon an evening, you are to imagine that, out in the depths of the
+Sahara"--
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+Obituary of Alphonse Daudet.
+
+
+                17th December 1897
+                DEATH OF A FRENCH NOVELIST.
+                ALPHONSE DAUDET.
+
+M. Alphonse Daudet, the eminent French novelist and playwright, died
+suddenly yesterday evening while at dinner The cause of death was
+syncope due to failure of the heart.
+
+Alphonse Daudet was born of poor parents at Nimes in 1840. He studied in
+the Lyons Lyceum, and then became usher in a school at Alais. Going
+to Paris to seek his fortune in literature in 1858, he succeeded in
+publishing a book of verses entitled Les Amoreuses, which led to his
+employment by several newspapers. He published many novels and tales,
+and about half a dozen plays. His most popular work is "Les Morticoles."
+His son, Leon Daudet, is a litterateur of promise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tartarin of Tarascon, by Alphonse Daudet
+
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