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 .-
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 JNIVERS1TY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 1
 
 Alphonse Daudet.
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 Ellustrations 
 
 1 In France every one is somewhat Tarasconian " 
 
 REVISED TRANSLATION 
 
 NEW YORK: 46 EAST MTH STREET 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 BOSTON : 100 PURCHASE STREET
 
 COPYRIGHT, 
 
 1895, 
 BY T. Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 JOHN WILSON & SON, CAMBRIDGE, U S. A.
 
 SFo mg JFrtcnB, 
 GONZAGUE PRIVAT
 
 Contents 
 
 FIRST EPISODE 
 IN TARASCON 
 
 Page 
 I. The Baobab Garden 3 
 
 II. A general survey of the good town of Tarascon; the 
 cap-hunters 9 
 
 III. Nan J nan! nan! Continuation of the general survey 
 
 of the good town of Tarascon 17 
 
 IV. "They!" ! 23 
 
 V. How Tartarin went round to his club 29 
 
 VI. The two Tartarins 37
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 VII. The Europeans at Shanghai High Commerce 
 
 The Tartars Can Tartarin of Tarascon be an 
 impostor ? The mirage ....... 43 
 
 VIII. Mitaine's Menagerie A lion from the Atlas at 
 
 Tarascon A solemn and awe-inspiring con- 
 frontation 49 
 
 IX. Singular effects of mirage 157 
 
 X. Before the start 63 
 
 XI. " Use swords, gentlemen, swords, not pins ! " . . . 69 
 
 XII. What was said in the little Baobab Villa .... 75 
 
 XIII. The departure Si 
 
 XIV. The Port of Marseilles " All aboard, all aboard ! " 89
 
 CONTENTS IX 
 
 SECOND EPISODE 
 AMONG THE TEURS 
 
 Page 
 I. The passage The five positions of the Chechia 
 
 The third evening out Mercy on us ! .... 97 
 
 II. " To arms ! to arms !" 103 
 
 III. Invocation to Cervantes The disembarkation 
 Where are the Teurs? Not a Teur Disen- 
 chantment 109 
 
 IV. The first lying in wait 115 
 
 V. Bang, bang! 121 
 
 VI. Arrival of the female A terrible combat "Le 
 
 Rendez-vous des Lapins " 127 
 
 VII. History of an omnibus, a Moorish beauty, and a 
 
 wreath of jasmine flowers 133 
 
 VIII. Lions of the Atlas, sleep ! 139 
 
 IX. Prince Gregory of Montenegro 145 
 
 X. " Tell me your father's name, and I will tell you the 
 
 name of this flower " 133 
 
 XI. Sidi Tart'ri Ren Tart'ri 161 
 
 XII. The latest news from Tarascon 169
 
 THIRD EPISODE 
 AMONG THE LIONS 
 
 I. Exiled stage-coaches 
 
 II. In which a little man is seen to pass 
 
 III. A monastery of lions 
 
 IV. The caravan on the march . . . 
 V. The night-watch in Oleander Grove 
 
 VI. At last! 
 
 VII. Catastrophes upon catastrophes . . 
 
 VIII. Tarascon ! Tarascon ! 
 
 Page 
 
 i/7 
 185 
 
 '93 
 
 201 
 209 
 2I 9 
 
 227 
 2 35
 
 FIRST EPISODE. 
 
 IN TARASCON.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Baobab Garden.
 
 
 The Baobab Garden. 
 
 MY first visit to Tartarin of Tarascon has remained 
 a never-to-be-forgotten date in my life; it was ten or 
 a dozen years ago, but I remember it better than 
 yesterday. 
 
 The intrepid Tartarin lived at that time on the 
 Avignon road, in the third house on the left as the 
 town begins. A pretty little villa in the local style, 
 with a garden in front, a balcony behind, very white 
 walls, green Venetian blinds, and about the door- 
 steps a brood of little Savoyard urchins playing hop- 
 scotch, or dozing in the broad sunshine with their 
 heads pillowed on their blacking-boxes. 
 
 Outwardly the dwelling had no remarkable 
 features. 
 
 You would never have believed it to be the abode 
 of a hero. But when you stepped inside, coquin de 
 sort! .
 
 4 TARTARIN OF TAR AS CON 
 
 The whole building from cellar to garret, even the 
 garden, had an heroic aspect. 
 
 Oh that garden of Tartarin's ! there was not an- 
 other like it in Europe ! Not a native tree was 
 there, not one flower of France ; nothing but 
 exotic plants, gum-trees, calabash -trees, cotton- 
 woods, cocoanut-trees, mangoes, bananas, palms, a 
 
 baobab, nopals, cacti, Barbary 
 
 figs, till you would think yourself in the very midst 
 of Central Africa, ten thousand leagues away. 
 None of these, of course, was full grown ; thus the 
 cocoanut-trees were scarcely bigger than beets, and 
 the baobab (arbos gtgantea, "giant tree") was 
 easily held by a mignonette-pot ; but, all the same, it 
 was rather fine for Tarascon, and the townsfolk who 
 were admitted on Sundays to the honor of con- 
 templating Tartarin's baobab, went home full of 
 admiration.
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 5 
 
 Imagine what emotion I must have felt on the day 
 when I passed through this marvellous garden ! . . . 
 Even that was capped when I was ushered into the 
 hero's sanctum. 
 
 This sanctum, one of the curiosities of the town, 
 was at the end of the garden, its glass door opening 
 directly out on the baobab. 
 
 Picture a large apartment adorned from top to 
 bottom with guns and sabres : all the weapons of 
 all the countries in the world, carbines, rifles, 
 blunderbusses, Corsican knives, Catalan knives, 
 revolver knives, dagger knives, Malay kreeses, Carib 
 arrows, flint arrows, knuckle-dusters, tomahawks, 
 Hottentot clubs, Mexican lassoes, and what not ! 
 
 A fierce sunlight fell from above, making the 
 steel of the blades and the butt ends of the firearms 
 gleam as if to give you all the more goose-flesh. . . . 
 
 Still, the fine appearance of order and tidiness 
 reigning over all this yataghanry was somewhat re- 
 assuring. Everything was in place, brushed, dusted, 
 labelled, as though it were an apothecary shop; at 
 intervals an obliging little card reading, 
 
 Poisoned Arrows I Do not touch ! 
 Or, 
 
 Loaded! Take care ! 
 
 Had it not been for these cautions, I should never 
 have dared to enter. 
 
 In the middle of the room stood a round table; on 
 the table a flagon of rum, a Turkish tobacco-pouch, 
 " Captain Cook's Voyages," the tales of Cooper and
 
 6 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 Gustave Aimard, stories of bear-hunting, hawking, 
 elephant-hunting, and so on. 
 
 Lastly, beside the table sat a man of between 
 forty and forty-five, short, stout, thick-set, ruddy, with 
 blazing eyes and a vigorous stubbly beard ; he wore 
 flannel tights, and was in his shirt-sleeves ; he held 
 a book in one hand, and in the other brandished an 
 enormous pipe with an iron bowl-cap, and while 
 reading some terrific adventure of scalp-hunters, he 
 pouted out his lower lip, making a frightful face, 
 which gave the little Tarascon gentleman's honest 
 phiz the same impression of kindly ferocity which 
 abounded throughout the house. 
 
 This man was Tartarin himself, Tartarin of 
 Tarascon, the intrepid, the great, incomparable Tar- 
 tarin of Tarascon.
 
 CHAPTER IJ 
 
 A general survey of the good town of Tar 
 ascon; the cap-hunters.
 
 II 
 
 A general survey of the good town of Tarascon j 
 the cap-hunters. 
 
 AT the time of which I am telling you, Tartarin 
 of Tarascon had not yet become the present-day 
 Tartarin, the great Tartarin of Tarascon, so popular 
 in the whole South of France. Yet even then 
 he was already King of Tarascon ! 
 
 Let us show whence arose his sovereignty. 
 
 In the first place you must know that everybody 
 in that region, from the greatest to the least, is a 
 huntsman. Hunting is the local craze, and it has 
 been so ever since the mythological times when the 
 Tarasque flourished in the town marshes, and when 
 the Tarasconians of that day organized shooting- 
 parties against him. That 's a long time, as you see. 
 
 Q
 
 10 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 So, every Sunday morning, Tarascon /files to 
 arms and rushes out of its walls, with game-bag on 
 back, with fowling-piece on shoulder, together with 
 a tremor of hounds, of ferrets, of bugles, and of 
 hunting-horns. It's splendid to see! . . . Unfortu- 
 nately, game is lacking, absolutely lacking. 
 
 Stupid as animals are, you can realize that at 
 length they learnt to feel distrust. 
 
 For five leagues around about Tarascon, the 
 burrows are empty, the nesting-places abandoned. 
 Not a blackbird, not a quail, not one little leveret, 
 not the tiniest snipe. 
 
 Yet mightily tempting are these pretty Tarascon 
 hillocks, all sweet smelling of myrtle, lavender, and 
 rosemary ; and the fine muscatel grapes plumped out 
 with sweetness, as they spread along the banks of 
 the Rhone, are deucedly appetizing too. . . . Yes, 
 but Tarascon lies behind all this, and Tarascon has 
 a very bad reputation in the little world of fur and 
 feather. The very birds of passage have marked it 
 on their guide-books with a big cross ; and when the 
 wild ducks, coming down towards the Camargue in 
 long triangles, spy the town steeples from afar, the 
 leader begins to squawk out loudly, 
 
 " There 's Tarascon ! there 's Tarascon ! " 
 
 And the whole flock takes a swerve. 
 
 In short, so far as game goes, there 's no more 
 left in the land save one old rogue of a hare, escaped 
 as by miracle from the September massacres of the 
 Tarasconians, and stubbornly determined to live. 
 This hare is very well known at Tarascon. A name 
 has. been given him. He is called, "-The Rapid." It
 
 7^ARTARIN OF TARASCON II 
 
 is known that he has his form on M. Bompard's 
 grounds, and this, by the way, has doubled, ay, 
 tripled, the value of the property, but no one as 
 yet has managed to get him. 
 
 At the present time, only two or three inveterate 
 fellows worry themselves about him. 
 
 The rest have given him up, and " The Rapid " 
 long ago passed into the legendary world, although 
 the Tarasconian is by nature very slightly supersti- 
 tious, and eats ragouts of swallows whenever he can 
 get them. 
 
 Ah, but that won't do ! you will say. If game 
 is so scarce at Tarascon, what do the Tarasconian 
 sportsmen do every Sunday ? 
 
 What do they do ? 
 
 Why, good gracious! they go out into the real 
 country two or three miles from town. They gather 
 in knots of five or six, stretch themselves out tran- 
 quilly in the shade of some well, old wall, or olive- 
 tree, extract from their game-bags a good-sized 
 piece of spiced beef, raw onions, a big sausage, a 
 few anchovies, and begin an interminable luncheon, 
 washed down with one of those nice Rhone wines, 
 which make one laugh and make one sing. 
 
 After that, when they are thoroughly set up, they 
 rise, whistle the dogs to heel, cock their guns, and 
 go " on the shoot." That is to say, every man of 
 them doffs his cap, shies it up with all his might into 
 the air, and pops at it with No. 5, 6, or 2 shot, 
 according to regulations. 
 
 He who hits the cap oftenest is proclaimed King 
 of the sport, and returns triumphantly at evening to
 
 12 
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 Tarascon, with his riddled cap on the end of his gun, 
 accompanied by the barking of dogs and the flourish 
 of trumpets. 
 
 It is needless to say that cap-selling is a fine busi- 
 ness in the town. There are even some hatters who 
 sell hunting-caps ready shot, torn, and perforated for 
 poor marksmen ; but almost the only one known 
 to buy this kind is the apothecary Bezuquet. It is 
 dishonorable !
 
 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 13 
 
 As a crack shot at caps, Tartarin of Tarascon 
 aever had his match. 
 
 Every Sunday morning he went out in a new cap, 
 and every Sunday evening he came back with a mere 
 thing of shreds. The garrets of the little Baobab 
 Villa were full of these glorious trophies. Hence all 
 the Tarasconians acknowledged him as their master; 
 and as Tartarin thoroughly understood the hunts- 
 man's code, as he had read all the handbooks of all 
 possible kinds of venery, from cap-popping to Bur- 
 mese tiger-shooting, these gentlemen constituted him 
 their great cynegetical umpire, and took him for ref- 
 eree in all their differences. 
 
 Between three and four daily, at Costecalde the 
 gunsmith's, a stern, stout man, with a pipe between 
 his teeth, might be seen in a green leather-covered 
 arm-chair in the centre of the shop crammed with 
 cap-hunters, all standing up and wrangling. This 
 was Tartarin of Tarascon delivering judgment. 
 Nimrod plus Solomon.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Nan ! nan ! nan ! Continuation of the 
 general survey of the good town of Tarascon.
 
 Ill 
 
 Nan I nan! nan! Continuation of the general 
 survey of the good town of Tarascon, 
 
 TOGETHER with the craze for sporting, the lusty 
 Tarascon race cherishes another passion, that of 
 singing romances. The quantity of ballads used 
 up in that little region is beyond belief! All the 
 old sentimental stuff turning sere and yellow in the 
 most antiquated of portfolios, is to be found at 
 Ta-rascon in full pristine lustre. It is all there, all 
 of it ! Every family has its own, and in town is 
 well known. 
 
 For instance, it is known that the chemist Be"zu- 
 quet's is, 
 
 Tot, blanche cloile qite f adore ; * 
 
 * "Thou art the fair star I adore!"
 
 1 8 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 the gunmaker Costecalde's, 
 
 Veux-tu venir au pays des cabanes: * 
 the official registrar's (supposed to be comic), 
 
 Sifetais-t-invisiblepersonne ft 1 me verrait ;t 
 and so on for all Tarascon. Two or three times a 
 week they met at each other's houses, where these 
 were sung* The strange thing about it is that they are 
 always the same, and that these honest Tarasconians 
 have never had an inclination to change them, long 
 as they have been singing them. They are handed 
 down from father to son in the families, and no 
 one ventures to improve on them; they are sacred. 
 There is never any attempt made to borrow from one 
 another. Never would it occur to the Costecaldes' 
 mind to sing the Bezuquets', or the Bdzuquets to try 
 the Costecaldes'. And yet you may believe that 
 they ought to know by heart what had been sung 
 for forty years! But, no! every one sticks to his 
 own, and they are all contented. 
 
 In romance-singing, as in cap-popping, Tartarin was 
 still the foremost. His superiority over his fellow- 
 townsmen consisted in this: Tartarin of Tarascon 
 had no one song of his own. He had them all ! 
 
 All! 
 
 But it was the devil's own work to get hiir to sing 
 
 o 
 
 them. 
 
 Surfeited early in life with his drawing-room tri- 
 umphs, the Tarascon hero preferred by far to bury 
 
 * " WUt thou come to the land 
 
 Where the log-cabins stand ? " 
 t " If I were only invisible, 
 
 No one could see me."
 
 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 19 
 
 himself in his hunting story-books, or to spend the 
 evening at the club, rather than to make a personal 
 exhibition before a Nimes piano between a pair of 
 Tarascon candles. These musical parades seemed 
 beneath him. . . . 
 
 Nevertheless, at times, when there was music at 
 Bdzuquet's, he would drop into the apothecary shop 
 as if by chance, and, after a deal of urging, consent 
 to do the grand duo in Robert le Diable with old 
 Madame Be*zuquet. . . . 
 
 Whoso never heard that, never heard anything . . . ! 
 
 For my part, even if I lived a hundred years, I 
 should always see the mighty Tartarin approaching 
 the piano with solemn step, leaning on his elbow, 
 getting his mouth ready, 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; it was felt 
 that something great was at hand. . . . 
 
 Then after a hush, old Madame Bdzuquet would 
 begin to her own accompaniment : 
 
 Robert, tot quefalme 
 Et qiti refits mafoi, 
 Tu vois man affroi, (bis) 
 Grace pour toi-meme 
 Et grclce pour mot.* 
 
 * " Robert, thou whom I love, 
 
 And who didst receive my plighted faith, 
 Thou seest my despair, 
 Pardon for thyself 
 And pardon for me ! "
 
 20 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 In a whisper she would add: "Now, then, 
 Tartarin ! " and Tartarin of Tarascon, with extended 
 arm, clenched fists, and quivering nostrils, would 
 roar three times in a formidable voice, rolling like a 
 thunder-clap in the bowels of the instrument: 
 
 " Non . . . ! non . . . / non . . . / " which, like the 
 thorough Southerner he was, he pronounced nasally 
 as " Nan . . . ! nan . . . / nan . . . /" Then would 
 old Madame Be"zuquet again sing : 
 
 Gr&ce pour toi-meme 
 Et grace pour moi .' 
 
 " Nan . . . / nan . . . / nan . . . / " bellowed Tar- 
 tarin at his loudest, and there the gem ended. 
 
 Not long, you see ; but it was so handsomely 
 voiced forth, so clearly gesticulated, and so diaboli- 
 cal, that a tremor of terror overran the apothecary 
 shop, and the " Nan . . . .' nan . . . ! nan . . . / " 
 would be encored four or five times running. 
 
 Upon this Tartarin would sponge his brow, smile 
 on the ladies, wink at the men, and withdrawing 
 upon his triumph would go remark at the club with 
 a trifling, offhand air, 
 
 " I have just been at the Bdzuquets', singing the 
 duo from Robert le Diable." 
 
 The cream of the joke was that he really believed 
 it! .
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 "Tfoy!"
 
 IV 
 
 " They ! " 
 
 THESE diverse talents gave Tartarin of Tarascon 
 his high position in the town. 
 
 However, this deuce of a fellow knew how to 
 captivate every one. 
 
 The army, at Tarascon, was for Tartarin. The 
 gallant commandant, Bravida, the quartermaster on 
 the retired list, called him un lapin, a buck rabbit, 
 and you may imagine that the commandant knew 
 all about rabbits after having dressed so many! 
 
 23
 
 24 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 The magistracy was for Tartarin. Two or three 
 times, in open court, the old chief judge, Ladeveze, 
 had said, in alluding to him, 
 
 " He is a character ! " 
 
 Lastly, the people were for Tartarin. He was the 
 Lord Seymour of the place, the King of the Taras- 
 conian markets ; and this was due to his breadth of 
 shoulders, his gait, his bearing, the bearing of a 
 trumpeter's charger fearing no noise, to his repu- 
 tation as a hero which he had acquired from some 
 unknown source, and to some scattering of coppers 
 and of thumps among the little bootblacks basking 
 at his doorway. 
 
 Along the quais on Sunday evenings, when Tar- 
 tarin came home from hunting with his cap on the 
 end of his gun, and his fustian shooting-jacket 
 belted in tightly, the stevedores of the Rhone would 
 respectfully salute him, and, blinking toward the 
 huge biceps swelling out his arms, would mutter 
 to one another in admiration, 
 
 "That there's a powerful chap! ... he has 
 double-muscles ! " 
 
 DOUBLE MUSCLES! 
 
 Only at Tarascon are such things known ! 
 
 And yet, with all his numberless talents, his 
 double muscles, the popular favor, and the so pre- 
 cious esteem of the gallant Commandant Bravida, 
 ex-quartermaster, Tartarin was not happy: this life 
 in a petty town weighed upon him, suffocated him. 
 
 The great man of Tarascon was bored in Tarascon. 
 
 The fact is, for a heroic temperament like his, for 
 a wild adventurous spirit dreaming of nothing but
 
 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 2$ 
 
 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 act as umpire at the gun- 
 maker Costecalde's. . . . Poor dear great man ! Had 
 this existence been prolonged, there would have 
 been sufficient reason for him to die of 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 romantic reading, endeavoring like the immor- 
 tal Don Quixote to wrench himself by the vigor 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 excitement. His 
 rifles, arrows, and lassoes cried to him: "Battle! 
 battle ! " The tempest of great travels blew through 
 the branches of his baobab and gave him bad ad- 
 vice. To finish him, Gustave Aimard and Fenimore 
 Cooper. . . . 
 
 Oh, how many times on sultry summer afternoons, 
 when he was reading alone amidst his blades, did 
 Tartarin with a howl spring up; how many times 
 did he dash down his book and rush to the wall to 
 unhook a deadly weapon ! 
 
 The poor man, forgetting that he was at home in 
 Tarascon, in his underclothes, and with a handker- 
 chief round his head, would translate his readings
 
 26 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 into action, and, growing excited at the sound of his 
 own voice, shout out while swinging a battle-axe or 
 tomahawk, 
 
 " Now, let 'em come ! " 
 
 Them ? who were they f 
 
 Tartarin himself did not know. . . . They was 
 all that attacks, all that fights, all that bites, all that 
 claws, all that scalps, all that whoops, all that 
 yells. . . . They ! It was the Sioux Indian dancing 
 around the war-stake to which the unfortunate pale- 
 face is lashed. 
 
 It was the grizzly of the Rocky Mountains, which 
 waddles and licks himself with a tongue full of blood. 
 Again it was the Touareg of the desert, the Malay 
 pirate, the brigand of the Abruzzi. ... In short, 
 they ! it was they, . . . that is to say, warfare, travel, 
 adventure, glory. 
 
 But, alas ! it was in vain that the intrepid Taras- 
 conian called for them, defied them; . . . never did 
 they come. Odsboddikins ! what would they have 
 come to do in Tarascon? 
 
 Nevertheless, Tartarin was always expecting them, 
 particularly at eventide in going to the club.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 How Tartarin went round to his club.
 
 V 
 
 Hoiv Tartarin went round to his club. 
 
 THE Knight Templar preparing for a sortie upon 
 the besieging infidel, the Chinese tiger equipping 
 himself for combat, the Comanche warrior about 
 to go on the war-path, all these were as nothing 
 compared to Tartarin of Tarascon arming himself 
 cap-a-pie to go to his club at nine, an hour after the 
 retreat had sounded on the bugle. 
 
 " Clear the decks 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 tomahawk ; in the right 
 
 29
 
 30 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 a revolver. On his chest, betwixt outer and under 
 garment, lay a Malay kreese. But never any poi- 
 soned arrows, they are weapons altogether too 
 unfair ! . . . 
 
 Before starting, in the silence and gloom of his 
 study, he would exercise himself for a while, ward- 
 ing off imaginary cuts and thrusts, lunging at the 
 wall, and giving his muscles play ; then he would 
 take his master-key and go through the garden 
 leisurely, without hurrying. Cool and calm, Brit- 
 ish courage, that is the true sort, gentlemen. 
 
 At the garden end he would open the heavy iron 
 door. He would open it 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 door being open, Tartarin would sally out, 
 quickly glancing to the right and left, ere banging 
 the door to and fastening it smartly with double- 
 locking. Then, away. 
 
 Not even a cat on the Avignon road, doors 
 closed; lights out. All was black. At intervals the 
 street lamps, blinking in the mist of the Rh6ne. . . . 
 
 Calm and proud, Tartarin of Tarascon marched 
 on in the night, ringing his heels with regularity, 
 and striking 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 what is sometimes thrown from windows after
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 31 
 
 dark in Tarascon. On seeing so much prudence 
 in Tartarin, pray do not conclude that Tartarin was 
 afraid. . . . No ! he was only on his guard. 
 
 The best proof that Tartarin was not afraid is 
 that instead of going to the club by the street called 
 the Cours, he went by the town, that is to say, by 
 the longest and darkest way round, through a maze 
 of vile, paltry alleys, at the mouth of which the 
 Rhone could be seen ominously gleaming. The 
 poor man 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. . . . But, 
 alas ! by some irony of Fate, never, never in the 
 world, did Tartarin of Tarascon enjoy the luck to 
 meet an ugly customer, not even a dog, not even a 
 drunken man, nothing at all ! 
 
 Yet sometimes there were false alarms. A sound 
 of steps, muffled voices. . . . 
 
 "Look out!" Tartarin would mutter, and stop 
 short, rooted to the spot, scrutinizing the gloom, sniff- 
 ing the wind, applying his ear to the ground Indian 
 fashion. . . . The steps would draw nearer, the 
 voices would grow distinct. . . . No more doubts ! 
 . . . They were coming . . . here they were ! 
 
 Steady, with eye afire and heaving breast, Tartarin, 
 like a jaguar, would gather himself together and 
 would be in readiness to spring forward while utter- 
 ing his war-cry . . . when, all of a sudden, out of 
 the thick of the murk'mess, he would hear honest 
 Parasconian voices quite tranquilly hailing him 
 with,
 
 32 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 "TV/ Ve! ... it's Tartarin! . . . And good- 
 night, Tartarin ! " 
 
 Curse it! it was the druggist Be'zuquet, \fith his 
 family, coming from singing their family ballad at 
 Costecalde's. 
 
 " Good evening, good evening!" Tartarin would 
 growl, furious at his blunder, and plunging fiercely 
 into the night with his cane on high. 
 
 On arriving in the street where stood his club- 
 house, the dauntless Tarasconian would linger yet 
 a moment, walking up and down before the portals 
 ere entering. ... At last, weary of awaiting thetn t
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 33 
 
 and certain they would not show themselves, he 
 would fling a last glare of defiance into the shades, 
 and mutter wrathfully, 
 
 " Nothing . . . nothing at all ! ... there never is 
 anything ! " 
 
 Whereupon the worthy man would walk in to play 
 his game of bdzique with the commandant.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The tzvo Tartarins.
 
 VI 
 
 The tiuo Tartarins. 
 
 How the mischief is it that with all this mania for 
 adventures, this need of powerful sensations, this 
 craze for travel, hunting, and journeys to the ends 
 of the earth, Tartarin of Tarascon had never been 
 away from Tarascon ? 
 
 For that is a fact. Up to the age of forty-five, the 
 intrepid Tarasconian had never once gone to bed 
 outside his own city. He had not even taken that 
 famous trip to Marseilles which every good Proven- 
 c,al makes on coming of age. It is doubtful if he 
 knew Beaucaire, and yet Beaucaire is not far from 
 Tarascon, there being merely the bridge to go over. 
 Unfortunately, this rascally bridge has been so often 
 blown away by the gales, it is so long, so frail, and 
 the Rhone is so wide at this spot, that faith! you 
 
 37
 
 38 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 understand ! . . . Tartarin of Tarascon preferred terra 
 fir ma. 
 
 We must make a clean breast of it ; in our hero 
 there were two very distinct characters. Some 
 Church Father 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, the same 
 heroic ideal, the same craze for the grandiose and 
 romantic ; but, unhappily ! he had not the body of 
 the celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre body, 
 that apology for a body, over which material life 
 failed to get control ; one able to go twenty nights 
 without unbuckling its breast-plate, and forty-eight 
 hours on a handful of rice. . . . On the contrary, Tar- 
 tarin's body was a good honest body, very fat, very 
 weighty, very sensual, very delicate, very squeam- 
 ish, full of middle-class appetites and homely re- 
 quirements, the short-legged, paunchy body of the 
 immortal Sancho Panza. 
 
 Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in one and the 
 same man ! You will readily comprehend what a cat- 
 and-dog couple they made! what strife! what clap- 
 perclawing ! . . . Oh the fine dialogue for Lucian or 
 Saint-Evremond to write, a dialogue between the two 
 Tartarins. Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin ! 
 Quixote-Tartarin firing up on the stories of Gustave 
 Aimard, and shouting, "I am going!" and Sancho- 
 Tartarin thinking only of the rheumatics, and saying, 
 "I stay at home." 
 
 QUIXOTE-TARTARIN (highly excited). Cover 
 yourself with glory, Tartarin.
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 39 
 
 SANCHO-TARTARIN (qiiite calmly). Tartarin, 
 cover yourself with flannel. 
 
 QUIXOTE-TARTARIN (still more excitedly). Oh 
 for the terrible double-barrelled rifle ! Oh for bowie- 
 knives, lassoes, and moccasins ! 
 
 SANCHO-TARTARIN (still more calmly). Oh for 
 the thick-knitted waistcoats and warm knee-caps! 
 Oh for the welcome caps with ear-flaps ! 
 
 QUIXOTK-TARTAKIN (above all self-control). A 
 battle-axe ! fetch me a battle-axe ! 
 
 SANCHO-TARTARIN (ringing ttp the maid). Jean- 
 nette, my chocolate ! 
 
 Whereupon Jeannette appears with an excellent 
 cup of chocolate, hot, wavy-mottled, odoriferous, and 
 with succulent toast flavored with aniseseed, making 
 Sancho-Tartarin laugh as he drowned the shouts of 
 Quixote-Tartarin. 
 
 And thus it came about that Tartarin of Tarascon 
 had never been away from Tarascon.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Europeans at Shanghai Commerce 
 The Tartars Can Tartarin of Tarascon 
 be an impostor ? The mirage.
 
 VII 
 
 The Europeans at Shanghai Commerce The 
 Tartars Can Tartarin of Tarascon be an 
 impostor ? The mirage. 
 
 ONCE, however, had Tartarin almost started out 
 on a great journey. 
 
 The three brothers Garcio-Camus, natives of Ta- 
 rascon, established in business at Shanghai, offered 
 him the managership of one of their branches 
 there. This undoubtedly was the kind of life he 
 hankered after. Plenty of important business, a 
 whole army of under-strappers to control, connec- 
 tions with Russia, Persia, Turkey in Asia, in short, 
 High Commerce. 
 
 43
 
 44 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 In Tartarin's mouth, this expression le Haul 
 Commerce High Commerce thundered out as 
 something High indeed ! . . . 
 
 The house of Garcio-Camus had the further ad- 
 vantage of sometimes being favored with a call from 
 the Tartars. Then the doors would be quickly shut. 
 All the clerks would fly to arms, they would run up 
 the consular flag, and bang ! bang ! out of the win- 
 dows 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. Will he go or will he not ? "I '11 wager 
 he will" and " I '11 wager he won't ! " It was an 
 event. ... In the upshot, Tartarin did not go, 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 all the 
 members would ask him about life at Shanghai, 
 about the manners and customs and climate, opium, 
 and High Commerce. 
 
 From his fund of information 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, he came to add in 
 the most natural way,
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 45 
 
 " Then I made my clerks take up arms, I hoisted 
 the consular flag, and bang ! bang ! out of the win- 
 dows 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 no ! Tartarin was 
 no liar. 
 
 But the man ought to have known that he never 
 went to Shanghai. 
 
 Why, of course, he knew it ; only . . . 
 
 " Only " : now listen ! It is high time to come 
 to an understanding once for all on the reputation 
 for lying which Northerners fling at Southerners. 
 There are no liars in the South of France, neither 
 at Nimes nor Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon. 
 The Southerner does not lie ; he is self -deceived. 
 He does not always tell the truth, but he believes 
 he does. . . . His falsehood is not falsehood, it is 
 a kind of mirage. . . . 
 
 Yes, mirage! . . . and the better to understand 
 me, go South, and you will see. You will see that 
 deuce of a country where the sun transmogrifies 
 everything, and magnifies it beyond life-size. You 
 will see those little hills of Provence which are no 
 higher than the Butte Montmartre, but they will 
 loom up gigantic. You will see the Square House 
 at Nimes, a mere model to put on your whatnot, 
 and it will seem grander than Notre Dame. You 
 will see ... in brief, the only liar in the South 
 if there is one is the sun. . . . He exaggerates 
 everything that he touches ! . . . What was Sparta
 
 46 TART A KIN OF TARASCON 
 
 in its days of splendor? A pitiful hamlet. . . . 
 What was Athens ? At the most, a provincial town, 
 . . . and yet in history both appear to us as enor- 
 mous cities. This is a sample of what the sun 
 can do. 
 
 Are you going to be astonished after this that 
 the same sun falling on Tarascon should have made 
 an ex-quartermaster like Bravida into the "gallant 
 commandant Bravida;" a sprout into a baobab; 
 and a man who had missed going to Shanghai into 
 one who had been there ?
 
 CHAFFER VIII 
 
 Mitaincs Menagerie A Lion from the 
 Atlas at Tarascon A solemn and aive- 
 insp iring confron ta tion .
 
 VIII 
 
 Mitaine's Menagerie A lion from the Atlas at 
 Tarascon A solemn and awe-inspiring con- 
 frontation. 
 
 AND now that we have shown Tartarin of Taras 
 con as he was in his private life, before Fame kissed 
 his brow and garlanded him with her well-worn laurel 
 wreath, now that we have narrated his heroic 
 existence in a modest state, his joys 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. 
 
 49
 
 50 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 It happened one evening at Costecalde the gun- 
 maker's, Tartarin was engaged in showing several 
 sportsmen the working of the needle-gun, then in its 
 first novelty. . . . The door suddenly flies open, and 
 in rushes a frightened cap-hunter, howling, 
 
 "A lion, a lion!" 
 
 General stupefaction, alarm, uproar, tumult ! Tar- 
 tarin sets the bayonet, Costecalde runs to shut the 
 door. The sportsman is surrounded and pressed 
 and questioned, and here follows what he told 
 them : Mitaine's Menagerie, returning from the 
 Fair at Beaucaire, had consented to stay over a 
 few days at Tarascon, and had just set up the 
 show on the Place du Chateau, 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 man had the like been 
 seen. Hence how proudly our dauntless cap-hunters 
 looked at one another! What a beaming on their 
 manly faces ! and in every corner of Costecalde's 
 shop what hearty congratulatory grips of the hand 
 were silently exchanged ! The sensation was so 
 great, so unforeseen, that nobody could find a word 
 to say. . . . 
 
 Not even Tartarin. 
 
 Blanched and agitated, with the needle-gun still in 
 hia hands, he brooded, erect before the counter. . . . 
 A lion from the Atlas there, so near, only two steps 
 off! A lion, the beast heroic and ferocious above 
 all others, the King of the Brute Creation, the crown- 
 ing game of his fancies, something like the leading
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 51 
 
 actor in the ideal company which played such 
 splendid dramas in his imagination. . . . 
 
 A lion, ye Gods ! . . . 
 
 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 toward 
 the gallant Commandant Bravida, ex-quartermaster, 
 he thundered to him, 
 
 " Let 's go have a look at him, commandant." 
 
 " He ! be . . . I he I be ! . . . And my gun . . . you 
 are carrying off my needle-gun!" timidly ventured 
 the prudent Costecalde; but Tartarin had already 
 got round the corner, with all the cap-hunters 
 proudly marching in lock-step behind him. 
 
 When they reached the menagerie, they found a 
 goodly number of people there. Tarascon, heroic 
 but too long deprived of sensational shows, had 
 rushed upon Mitaine's booth, and had taken it by 
 storm. Hence the voluminous Madame Mitaine 
 was highly contented. ... In a Kabyl costume, her 
 arms bare to the elbow, iron anklets on, a whip in 
 one hand and a plucked though live fowl in the 
 other, the illustrious lady was doing the honors 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 these good Tarasconians, who had been quite 
 tranquilly strolling before the cages, unarmed and
 
 52 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 with no distrust, without even any idea of danger, 
 felt momentary apprehension, naturally enough, on 
 beholding their mighty Tartarin rush into the en- 
 closure with his formidable engine of war. There 
 must be something to fear when such a hero as he 
 was . . . 
 
 In a twinkling all the space along the cage fronts 
 was cleared. The youngsters burst out squalling 
 for fear; the women looked round for the door. 
 The druggist Bdzuquet 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, 
 passed the seal's tank without stopping, glanced 
 disdainfully on the long box rilled with bran in 
 which the boa was scanning its featherless fowl, and 
 went to take his stand before the lion's cage. . . . 
 
 A terrible and solemn confrontation ! 
 
 The lion of Tarascon and the lion of the Atlas 
 face to face ! . . . 
 
 On the one hand, Tartarin, erect, rigid, his arms 
 folded on his rifle ; on the other, the lion, a gigantic 
 lion, stretched out on the straw, with blinking eyes 
 and brutish mien, resting his huge muzzle and tawny 
 wig on his forepaws. . . . Both calm and gazing at 
 each other. 
 
 Singular thing ! the needle-gun may have put him 
 out of sorts, or he may have scented an enemy of 
 his race, but the lion, which had hitherto regarded 
 the Tarasconians with sovereign scorn, and yawned 
 in their faces, was all at once affected by ire. At
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 53 
 
 first he sniffed ; then he growled hollowly, unsheathed 
 his claws, stretched out his paws ; then he rose, 
 tossed his head, shook his mane, opened his enor- 
 mous mouth, and belched a deafening roar at 
 Tartarin. 
 
 A yell of fright responded. Tarascon precipitated 
 itself madly towards the exit, all, women and chil- 
 dren, stevedores, cap-hunters, the gallant Comman- 
 dant Bravida himself. . . . Tartarin of Tarascon 
 alone did not budge. . . . There he stood, firm and 
 resolute, before the cage, lightnings in his eyes, and 
 that gruesome expression with which all the town 
 was familiar. ... In a moment's time, when all the 
 cap-hunters, some little fortified by his bearing and 
 the strength of the bars, re-approached their leader, 
 they heard him mutter, at he gazed at the lion, 
 
 "Now, this is something to hunt ! " 
 
 That day, Tartarin of Tarascon said nothing more 
 about it.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Singular effects of mirage.
 
 IX 
 
 Singular effects of mirage. 
 
 THAT day Tartarin of Tarascon said nothing 
 more about it, but unfortunately he had already 
 said too much. 
 
 On the morrow there was nothing talked about 
 through town but the speedy departure of Tartarin 
 for Algeria and lion-hunting. You are all wit- 
 ness, clear readers, that the honest fellow had not 
 breathed a word on that head; but, you know, the 
 mirage . . . 
 
 In brief, all Tarascon spoke of nothing but his 
 departure. 
 
 On the " Cours," at the club, at Costecalde's, friends 
 accosted one another with a startled aspect, 
 
 "And furthermore, you know the news, at least?" 
 
 57
 
 58 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON 
 
 " And furthermore, rather ? Tartarin 's setting out, 
 at least ? " 
 
 For at Tarascon all phrases begin with et autre- 
 tnent, pronounced aiiiretnain, and conclude with au 
 mains, which is pronounced au mouain. Now, on 
 this occasion more than upon others, these peculiari- 
 ties rang out till the windows shivered. 
 
 The man in town most surprised to hear that he 
 was going off to Africa, was Tartarin himself. But 
 only see what vanity is ! Instead of plumply an- 
 swering that he was not going at all, and had never 
 had any such intention, poor Tartarin, the first time 
 this journey was' mentioned to him, observed with 
 a neat little evasive air. " He" ! ... h^ ! ... may- 
 be I shall, but I do not say as much." The 
 second time, a trifle more familiarized with the idea, 
 he replied, " Very likely." The third time, "It's 
 certain." 
 
 Finally, in the evening, at Costecalde ? s and the 
 club, carried away by the egg-nog, cheers, and 
 illumination, intoxicated by the impression that 
 announcement of his departure had made on the 
 town, the hapless fellow formally declared that he 
 was sick of hunting caps, and that he was going, 
 before long, to engage in pursuing the great lions 
 of the Atlas. . . . 
 
 A deafening hurrah greeted this announcement. 
 Whereupon more egg-nog, bravoes, hand-shaking, 
 slappings of the shoulder, and a torchlight serenade 
 up to midnight before Boabab Villa.
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 59 
 
 Sancho-Tartarin was anything but delighted. This 
 idea of travel in Africa and lion-hunting made him 
 shudder beforehand ; and when the two Tartarins 
 went home again, even while the complimentary 
 concert was sounding under their windows, he had 
 a dreadful "row" with Quixote-Tartarin, calling 
 him "cracked," visionary, imprudent, and thrice an 
 idiot, and detailing by the card all the catastrophes 
 awaiting him on such an expedition, shipwreck, 
 rheumatism, high-fever, dysentery, the black plague, 
 elephantiasis, and all the rest. . . . 
 
 In vain did Quixote-Tartarin vow that he would 
 not commit any imprudence, that he would wrap 
 himself up well, that he would take everything that 
 was necessary with him. Sancho-Tartarin would 
 listen to nothing. The poor man saw himself already 
 torn to tatters by the lions, engulfed in the desert 
 sands like the late Cambyses ; and the other Tartarin 
 managed to appease him a little only by explain- 
 ing that the start was not immediate, that there was 
 no hurry, and that after all they were still at home ! 
 
 It is clear enough, indeed, that no one embarks on 
 such an enterprise without some precautions. 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 explorers, the 
 narrations of Mungo Park, Du Chaillu, Dr. Living- 
 stone, and Henri Duveyrier. 
 
 In them he learnt that these daring explorers, 
 before donning their sandals for distant excursions, 
 hardened themselves well beforehand to support
 
 60 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 hunger and thirst, forced marches, and all kinds of 
 privation. Tartarin meant to do as 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 Taras- 
 con joined other wise practices. Thus, to break him- 
 self into the habit of long marches, he constrained 
 himself to go round the town seven or eight times 
 consecutively every morning, sometimes at double 
 quick, sometimes at a gymnastic pace, his elbows 
 well set against his body, and two white pebbles in 
 his mouth, according to the antique usage. 
 
 Then, to get inured to fog, dew, and the cool night 
 air, he would go down into his garden every evening, 
 and stay there till ten or eleven, alone with his gun, 
 on the lookout, behind the baobab. . . . 
 
 Finally, so long as Mitaine's Menagerie tarried in 
 Tarascon, the cap-hunters belated at Costecalde's 
 might spy in the shadow of the tent, as they crossed 
 the Place du Chateau, 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.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Before the start.
 
 Before the start, 
 
 WHILE Tartarin was thus delaying the event by 
 all sorts of heroic means, all Tarascon kept an eye 
 on him, and nothing else was thought of. Cap- 
 popping flapped only one wing, romances lay fallow. 
 The piano in Be"zuquet's apothecary shop languished 
 under its green cover, and the Spanish flies dried 
 up on it, their bellies in the air. . . . Tartarin's expe- 
 dition had put a stopper on everything. 
 
 You ought to have seen his success in the parlors. 
 He was snatched away by one from another, fought 
 for, loaned and borrowed, ay, stolen. There was no 
 greater honor for the ladies than to go to Mitaine's 
 Menagerie on Tartarin's arm, and have it explained 
 
 6.3
 
 64 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 before the lion's cage 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. 
 
 Tartarin furnished all the elucidation desired. 
 He had read Jules Gerard, and had lion-hunting at 
 his finger ends, as if he had been through it him- 
 self. Hence he orated on these matters with great 
 eloquence. 
 
 But where he shone the brightest was at dinner 
 at Chief Judge Ladeveze's, or the gallant Comman- 
 dant Bravida's the ex-quartermaster, when coffee was 
 brought in, and all the company hitched up their 
 chairs closer, and made him chat of his future 
 hunts. . . . 
 
 Then, with his elbow on the cloth, his nose over 
 his Mocha, the hero would discourse in a feeling tone 
 of all the dangers awaiting him yonder. He would 
 speak of the long moonless night lyings-in-wait, the 
 pestilential fens, the rivers poisoned by oleander 
 leaves, the deep snow-drifts, the scorching suns, the 
 scorpions, and rains of grasshoppers; he would also 
 descant on the peculiarities of the great lions of the 
 Atlas, their way of fighting, their phenomenal vigor, 
 and their ferocity in the mating-season. . . . 
 
 Then, growing enthusiastic over his own recital, 
 he would rise from table, bound into the middle of 
 the dining-room, imitating the bellowing of a lion 
 and the going off of a rifle, bang ! bang ! the hiss- 
 ing of an explosive bullet, pfft ! pff t ! gesticulat- 
 ing, roaring, overturning the chairs. . . . 
 
 Every one around the board would turn pale.
 
 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON 65 
 
 The gentlemen would look at one another and wag 
 their heads ; the ladies would shut their eyes with 
 pretty screams of fright; the elderly men would 
 combatively brandish their long canes ; and, in the 
 side apartments, the little boys, who had been put 
 to bed betimes, suddenly waked up by the roars and 
 imitations of guns, would be frightened out of their 
 wits, and scream for lights. 
 
 Meanwhile Tartarin did not go.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " Use swords, gentlemen, not pins"
 
 XI 
 
 " Use swords, gentlemen, swords, not pins!" 
 
 HAD he really any intention of going? . . . 
 
 A delicate question, which Tartarin's biographer 
 would be highly embarrassed to answer. 
 
 The truth is, Mitaine's I\fenagerie had been gone 
 from Tarascon over three months, and still the 
 lion-slayer had not started. . . . After all, our candid 
 hero, blinded by a new mirage, 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 sin- 
 cerely as he fancied he had hoisted the consular flag 
 and fired on the Tartars, bang ! bang ! at Shanghai.
 
 70 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 Unfortunately, granting that Tartarin was this 
 time again dupe of an illusion, his fellow townsfolk 
 were not. When, after three months of expectation, 
 they perceived that the hunter had not yet packed 
 one trunk, they began to murmur. 
 
 "This is going to turn out like the Shanghai 
 expedition," remarked Costecalde, smiling. 
 
 The gunsmith's comment was welcomed all over 
 town, for no one believed any longer in Tartarin. 
 
 Simpletons and poltroons 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, 
 
 " Et autreinain, when is that trip coming off?'' 
 
 In Costecalde's shop, his opinions no longer were 
 of weight. The cap-hunters renounced their chief ! 
 
 Next, epigrams dropped into the affair. Chief 
 Judge Ladeveze, who in his leisure hours willingly 
 paid court to the native Muse, composed in local 
 dialect a song which won much success. It told of 
 a great huntsman 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,
 
 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON 7 1 
 
 Lou fftsiou de mestre Gervai, 
 Toujou lou cargon, toujou lou cargon, 
 Lou fitsiou de mestre Gerva'i, 
 Toujou lou car gon, part jamai. 
 
 But it was sung from a distance, on account of the 
 double muscles. 
 
 Oh the fragility of Tarascon fads ! . . . 
 
 The great man himself feigned to see and hear 
 nothing; but, under the surface, this sullen and 
 venomous petty warfare much afflicted him. He 
 felt Tarascon slipping out of his grip, the popular 
 favor going to others; and this made him suffer 
 horribly. 
 
 Ah, the huge porringer of popularity ! 't is fine to 
 sit 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. 
 
 Sometimes, however, the mask of jovial unconcern 
 which out of sheer pride he had fastened over his 
 face would be suddenly detached. Then, in lieu of 
 laughter, grief and indignation were to be seen. . . . 
 
 Thus it was that one morning, when the little 
 bootblacks were singing " lou fusion de mestre 
 Gervai" 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 watch it.) 
 
 All at once the window was violently opened, 
 and Tartarin appeared in nightgown and nightcap,
 
 72 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 smothered in lather, flourishing his razor and shav- 
 ing-brush, and roaring in a formidable voice, 
 
 " Use swords, gentlemen, swords, not pins ! ... no 
 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 gen- 
 tlemen quite incapable of holding a sword.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 What was said in the little Baobab Villa.
 
 XII 
 
 What was said in the little Baobab Villa. 
 
 AMID the general defection, the army alone stuck 
 out firmly for Tartarin. 
 
 The gallant Commandant Bravida, ex-quartermas- 
 ter, continued to show him the same esteem as ever. 
 Cest un lapin, "He's game!" he persisted in 
 saying ; and his assertion, I believe, was fully worth 
 the chemist Bezuquet's. . . . Not once did the gal- 
 lant commandant make any allusion to the trip to 
 Africa ; but when the public clamor grew too loud, 
 he determined to speak. 
 
 One evening the luckless Tartarin was alone 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-quartermaster, authorita- 
 tively, " Tartarin, you '11 have to go ! " 
 
 75
 
 76 TARTAR IN OF TARASCOJV 
 
 And there he stood, erect in the doorway frame, 
 grand and rigid as Duty. . . . 
 
 Tartarin of Tarascon comprehended all the signifi- 
 cance of " Tartarin, you '11 have to go ! " 
 
 Very pale, he rose and looked around with a 
 softened eye on his pretty study, tightly closed in, 
 full of warmth and tender light, on his commo- 
 dious easy-chair, his books, his carpet, the white 
 blinds of his windows, beyond which trembled the 
 slender twigs of the little garden. Then, advancing 
 toward the gallant commandant, he took his hand, 
 grasped it energetically, and said in a voice full of 
 tears, but yet stoical, 
 
 " I am going, Bravida." 
 
 And go he did, as he said he would. Not straight 
 off, though ... it takes time to provide paraphernalia. 
 
 To begin with, he ordered of Bompard two large 
 boxes sheathed with copper, and with a long label 
 bearing this inscription : 
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 FIREARMS 
 
 The sheathing and the lettering took much time. 
 He also ordered at Tastavin's a magnificent album, 
 in which to keep a diary and his impressions of 
 travel; for a man can not 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 canned eatables, pemmican compressed in
 
 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON JJ 
 
 cakes for making soup, a new pattern shelter-tent, 
 opening out and packing up in a minute, sea-boots, 
 two umbrellas, a waterproof coat, and blue specta- 
 cles to ward off ophthalmia. Finally, Bdzuquet the 
 druggist made him up a miniature portable medicine- 
 chest stuffed with diachylon plaster, arnica, cam- 
 phor, and medicated vinegar. 
 
 Poor Tartarin ! he did not do these things on his 
 own behalf; but he hoped, by dint of precautions 
 and delicate attentions, to allay Sancho-Tartarin's 
 fury, who, since the start was fixed, never left off 
 raging day or night.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 The departure.
 
 XIII 
 77^ departure. 
 
 AT last it arrived, the great day, the solemn day. 
 
 From early dawn all Tarascon had been on foot, 
 encumbering the Avignon road and the approaches 
 to the Baobab Villa. 
 
 People were up at the windows, on the roofs, and 
 in the trees; the Rhone bargees, stevedores, shoe- 
 blacks, gentry, tradesfolk, warpers and weavers, taf- 
 fety-workers, the club members, - in short, the whole 
 town ; moreover, people from Beaucaire had come 
 over the bridge, market-gardeners from the suburbs, 
 carts with huge awnings, vine-dressers upon hand- 
 some mules, tricked out with ribbons, streamers, 
 bells, rosettes, and jingles, and even, here and there, 
 
 81
 
 82 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 a few pretty maids from Aries, come on the pillion 
 behind their sweethearts, with bonny blue ribbons 
 round their heads, on little iron-gray Camargue 
 horses. 
 
 All this swarm squeezed and jostled before the 
 door of Tartarin, our good Tartarin, who was going 
 to slaughter lions in the land of the Teurs. 
 
 For Tarascon, Algeria, Africa, Greece, Persia, 
 Turkey, and Mesopotamia all form one great hazy 
 country, almost mythological, called the land of the 
 Teurs, that is, the Turks. 
 
 In the midst of all this throng, the cap-hunters 
 bustled to and fro, proud of their leader's triumph, 
 leaving, as it were, glorious wakes where they passed. 
 
 In front of the house of the Baobab, were two 
 large wheelbarrows. From time to time the door 
 would open, and allow several persons to be, seen 
 gravely walking up and down in the little garden. 
 Men were bringing out trunks, boxes, carpet-bags, 
 and piling them up on the wheelbarrows. 
 
 At every new package the throng trembled. The 
 articles were named in a loud voice : 
 
 "There's the shelter-tent. . . . Those are the pot- 
 ted meats. . . . That 's the medicine-chest, the gun- 
 cases ; " and the cap-hunters gave explanations. 
 
 All of a sudden, about ten o'clock, there was a 
 great stir in the multitude. The garden gate banged 
 open. 
 
 " Here he is ! ... here he is ! " they shouted. 
 
 It was he. ... 
 
 When he appeared on the threshold, two outcries 
 of stupefaction burst from the assemblage-
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 83 
 
 "It's a Teur!" 
 
 " He 's got on goggles ! " 
 
 In truth, Tartarin of Tarascon had deemed it his 
 duty, on going to Algeria, to don the Algerian cos- 
 tume. Full white linen trousers, small tight jacket 
 with metal buttons, a red sash two feet wide around 
 the waist, the neck bare and the forehead shaven, 
 and on his head a vast red fez, or Chechia, with 
 something like a long blue tassel. . . . 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 leather 
 case, that is all. 
 
 No, I crave your pardon, I was forgetting the 
 goggles, an enormous pair of azure goggles, which 
 came in appropriately to temper what was rather too 
 fierce in our hero's appearance. 
 
 " Long life to Tartarin ! . . . hurrah for Tartarin ! " 
 roared the populace. 
 
 The great man smiled, but did not salute, on ac- 
 count of the firearms hindering him. Moreover, he 
 knew now how far to rely on popular favor; it may 
 be that in the depths of his soul he even cursed his 
 terrible fellow-townsfolk, who obliged him to go 
 away and have his pretty little home with its white 
 walls and green Venetians. . . . But there was no 
 show of this. 
 
 Calm and proud, although a little pallid, he stepped 
 out on the sidewalk, glanced at the wheelbarrows, 
 and, seeing all was right, lustily took the road to 
 the railway-station, without even once looking back 
 toward Baobab Villa. Behind him marched the
 
 84 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 gallant Commandant Bravida, ex-quartermaster, La- 
 deveze the Chief Judge, then Costecalde the gunsmith 
 and all the cap-hunters, then the wheelbarrows, then 
 the populace. 
 
 Before the station the station-master was waiting 
 for him, an old African veteran of 1830, who shook 
 Tartarin's hand many times with fervency. 
 
 The Paris-Marseilles express was not yet in. 
 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. He spoke to them of his journey and 
 his hunting, and promised to send them skins. 
 They put their names down in his memorandum- 
 book for a lion-skin 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 for each and a smile for all. He spoke 
 simply, with an affable mien ; it looked as if, before 
 departing, he meant to leave behind him a trail of 
 delight, regrets, and. pleasant memories. On hear- 
 ing their leader speak in this way, all the cap-hunters 
 had tears in their eyes ; and some were stung with 
 remorse, as, for example, Chief Judge Ladeveze and 
 the apothecary Bezuquet. 
 
 The railway employe's blubbered in the corners. 
 Outside the public squinted through the bars and 
 shouted: "Long live Tartarin!" 
 
 At length the bell rang. A dull rumble was heard,
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 85 
 
 and a piercing whistle shook the vault : . . . All 
 aboard ! All aboard ! 
 
 " Good-bye, Tartarin ! . . . Good-bye, Tartarin ! . . . " 
 " Good-bye to you all ! ..." murmured the great 
 man ; and kissing the gallant Commandant Bravida 
 on the cheeks, he kissed his dear Tarascon. 
 
 Then he leaped out on the platform, and clam- 
 bered into a car full of Parisian ladies, who were 
 ready to die with fright at sight of this stranger with 
 so many pistols and rifles.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Port of Marseilles "AH aboard, 
 all aboard! "
 
 sAHst^ssi ' V- **$m~> 
 Jfti% H . v, .' '.. .** ; -:' ..; - ; a A -, 
 
 <^?4? 
 
 XIV 
 
 7%<? /Vr/ of Marseilles " All aboard, all 
 aboard! " 
 
 ON the ist of December, 186-, at noon, in clear, 
 brilliant, splendid weather, under a Provencal winter's 
 sun, the startled inhabitants of Marseilles beheld a 
 Teitr come down the Canebiere. A Te^^r, a regular 
 Turk, never had such a one been seen; and yet, 
 Heaven knows, there is no lack of Teurs at 
 Marseilles. 
 
 The Teur in question have I any necessity of 
 telling you? was Tartarin, the great Tartarin of 
 Tarascon, who marched along the quays, followed 
 by his gun-cases, medicine-chest, and canned comes- 
 tibles, on his way to 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 Tarasconian ap- 
 plause, intoxicated by the glare of the heavens 
 and the reek of the sea, Tartarin fairly beamed as 
 
 89
 
 90 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 he stepped out with his guns on his shoulders, his 
 head high, looking with all his eyes on that wondrous 
 dazzling harbor 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 was a forest of 
 masts and spars, crossing in every direction. Flags 
 of all countries, Russian, Swedish, Greek, Tunisian, 
 American. . . . 
 
 The vessels with their decks almost on a level 
 with the quay, their bowsprits projecting over the 
 strand like rows of bayonets. Beneath them the 
 mermaids, goddesses, madonnas, and other carved 
 and painted wooden figure-heads which give names 
 to ships all worn by sea-water, split, dripping, 
 mouldy. . . . Ever and anon, between the hulls, 
 a patch of harbor like watered silk splashed with 
 oil. . . . Between the intertangled yards clouds of 
 sea-gulls, prettily spotting the blue sky; shipboys, 
 hailing one another in all languages. 
 
 On the quay, amid rivulets, green, thick, black, 
 flowing down from the soap-factories loaded with 
 oil and soda, bustled a tribe of custom-house officers, 
 messengers, porters, and truckmen with their bogheys, 
 drawn by small Corsican horses. 
 
 Shops for strange wares; smoky shanties where 
 sailors were cooking ; dealers in pipes, monkeys, 
 parrots, ropes, sailcloth, fanciful curios, amongst 
 which were mingled higgledy-piggledy old culverins, 
 huge gilded lanterns, old tackle, old flukeless anchors,
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 91 
 
 old cordage, old pulleys, old speaking-trumpets, and 
 marine glasses of the time of Jean Bart and Duguay- 
 Trouin. Women with cockles and mussels for sale 
 squatted beside their heaps of shellfish and yawped 
 their goods. Seamen rolled by with tar-pots, with 
 smoking saucepans, with big baskets full of cuttlefish, 
 which they went to wash in the whitish water of the 
 fountains. 
 
 Everywhere a prodigious collection of all kinds of 
 merchandise : silks, minerals, piles of wood, pigs 
 of lead, cloths, sugars, carob beans, rape-seed, lico- 
 rice, sugar-cane. The East and the West in indis- 
 criminate confusion. Pyramids of Dutch cheeses 
 which the Genoese women were staining red with 
 their hands. 
 
 Yonder, the corn market : stevedores discharging 
 their sacks down from high scaffoldings on the pier. 
 Loose grain rolling like a golden torrent through 
 a blond dust. Men in red skullcaps sifting it as 
 they caught it in large asses'-skin sieves, and 
 loading it on carts which rolled away, followed by 
 a regiment of women and youngsters with wisps and 
 gleaning-baskets. . . . Farther on, the careenage dock; 
 large vessels lying on their sides and singed with 
 thorn-bushes to free them of sea-weed ; the yards 
 dipping in the water, the smell of pitch, the deafening 
 clatter of carpenters sheathing the bottoms with 
 broad sheets of copper. 
 
 Here and there a gap between the masts. Then 
 Tartarin could see the harbor mouth, with the 
 coming and going of vessels : a British frigate off 
 for Malta, smart and thoroughly washed down, the
 
 92 TAR TAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 officers in primrose gloves, or a large Marseillaise 
 brig hauling out in the midst of uproar and oaths, 
 and on the poop the fat captain, in a high silk hat 
 and frock-coat, ordering the operations in Provencal. 
 Out-going craft running before the wind under all 
 sail. Far out in the offing, others slowly beating 
 in loomed up in the sunshine as if they were sailing 
 in the air. 
 
 And then 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 Fort Saint-Jean and Fort Saint-Nicolas, 
 the bells of the Major, the Accoules, and Saint 
 Victor; with the mistral atop of all, catching up all 
 these noises and this clamor and rolling them up 
 together, shaking them, confounding them with its 
 own voice, and making a mad, wild, heroic music 
 like a great flourish of trumpets, a fanfare for a 
 journey, filling you with a longing to be off, to go 
 far away, to have wings. 
 
 It was to the sound of this splendid blast that 
 the intrepid Tartarin of Tarascon embarked for the 
 land of lions. .
 
 SECOND EPISODE. 
 
 AMONG "THE TEURS."
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The passage The five positions of the 
 Chechia The third evening 02it Mercy on 
 us !
 
 I 
 
 The passage The five positions of the Chechia 
 The third evening out Mercy on us! 
 
 WOULD that I were a painter, and a great painter, 
 my dear readers, that I might set under your eyes, 
 at the head of this second episode, the various posi- 
 tions taken by Tartarin's Chechia in the three days' 
 passage it made on board of the "Zouave," between 
 France and Algeria. 
 
 I would first show it to you at the hour of de- 
 parture, on deck, arrogant and heroic as it was, 
 forming an aureole round that handsome Taras- 
 conian head. Next would I show you it at the 
 
 Q7
 
 9 8 
 
 TAR TAR IN OF TARASCOA r 
 
 harbor-mouth, when the "Zouave" began to cara- 
 cole on the waves; I would depict it for you all 
 of a quake in astonishment, and as though already 
 experiencing preliminary qualms. 
 
 Then, in the Gulf of Lyons, 
 as they came nearer to the 
 open sea, where the white 
 caps heaved harder, I would 
 make you behold it wrest- 
 ling with the tempest, stand- 
 ing up in terror on the hero's 
 cranium, with its mighty mane 
 of blue wool bristling out in 
 the spray and the squall. . . . 
 
 Fourth position : six in the afternoon, with the 
 Corsican coast in view. . . . The unfortunate Chechia 
 hangs over the ship's side, and 
 lamentably stares down and 
 sounds the sea. . . . Finally, the 
 fifth and last position : at the 
 back of a narrow state-room, in 
 a box-bed like a bureau drawer, 
 something shapeless and dis- 
 consolate, rolling and moaning 
 on the pillow. 
 
 This is the Chechia, the Chechia so heroic at the sail- 
 ing, now reduced to the vulgar condition of a night- 
 cap, and pulled down over the very ears of the head 
 of a pallid and convulsed sufferer. . . . 
 
 Ah ! if the people of Tarascon could have seen their 
 great Tartarin stretched in his bureau drawer in the
 
 TARTAR IN OF TAR A SCON 
 
 99 
 
 dull, wan gleam that fell through the dead-lights, 
 amid the sickly odor 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, how angry 
 would they not have been with 
 themselves for having compelled 
 him to leave home ! . . . 
 
 On my word of honor as a his- 
 torian, the poor Teur was a pitiable 
 object ! 
 
 Suddenly overcome by nausea, 
 the hapless victim had not the courage to undo his 
 Algerian girdle, or lay aside his armory ; the clumsy- 
 handled hunting-knife hurt his ribs, and the leather 
 revolver-case made his thigh 
 raw. To finish him arose 
 the taunts of Sancho-Tar- 
 tarin, who never ceased to 
 groan and inveigh, 
 
 " Imbecile, there ! . . . I told 
 you so! ... Ha! you were 
 bound to go to Africa. . . . 
 Well, there 's Africa, . . . how do you like it?" 
 
 The crudest part of it was that, from the depths 
 of his stateroom and his moaning, the hapless wretch 
 could hear the passengers in the grand saloon laugh- 
 ing, munching, singing, and playing cards. On board 
 the "Zouave" the company was as jolly as it was 
 numerous. Officers going back to join their regi-
 
 100 TARTARIN OF TARASCOX 
 
 merits, ladies from the Marseilles Alcazar, strolling- 
 players, a rich Mussulman returning from Mecca, 
 and a very jocular Montenegrin prince, who gave 
 imitations of Ravel and Gil 
 Pe"res. . . . Not one of these 
 people were sea-sick, and their 
 time was passed in quaffing 
 champagne with the captain 
 of the li Zouave," a good fat 
 native of Marseilles, 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 afternoon of the third day, there 
 was such an extraordinary disturbance on board the 
 vessel that our hero was roused out of his long 
 torpor. The ship's bell was ringing; seamen's heavy 
 boots were trampling over the deck. 
 
 " Go ahead ! . . . Back her ! . . . " barked the hoarse 
 voice of Captain Barbassou ; and then, " Stop her ! " 
 An abrupt check of movement, a shock, and no 
 more. . . . Nothing except the silent rocking of the 
 boat from side to side like a balloon in the air. . . . 
 This strange stillness alarmed the Tarasconian. 
 " Mercy on us, we are going down ! ..." he yelled 
 in a terrible voice ; and, recovering his strength by 
 magic, he bounded out of his berth, and rushed on 
 deck with his arsenal.
 
 CHAFIER II 
 To arms ! to anus ! "
 
 II 
 
 " To arms ! to arms ! " 
 
 THEY were not foundering, they were making 
 port. 
 
 The " Zouave " had just glided into the roadstead, 
 a fine roadstead of deep, black water, but silent, 
 dull, almost deserted. On elevated ground ahead 
 rose Algiers, the White City, with its little cream- 
 colored houses huddled together and pressing down 
 to the sea. It was like Meuclon slope with a laun- 
 dress's washing hung out to dry. Over it a splendid 
 sky of blue satin, oh ! but so blue ! . . . 
 
 A little restored from his fright, the illustrious 
 Tartarin gazed on the landscape, and respectfully 
 listened to the Montenegrin prince, who stood by 
 
 103
 
 IO4 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON 
 
 his side and named the different parts of the town, 
 the Kasbah, the upper town, and the Bab-Azun 
 Street. Very well brought-up was this Montenegrin 
 prince; moreover, knowing Algeria thoroughly, and 
 speaking Arabic fluently. 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, before he had time to open his 
 mouth, the deck was invaded from all sides by a 
 hundred black or yellow corsairs, half-naked, hid- 
 eous, terrible. 
 
 Tartarin knew who these pirates were. ... It was 
 they, that is to say, THEY, the celebrated THEY 
 whom he had so often hunted in the by-ways of Ta- 
 rascon. At last then THEY had decided to come ! 
 
 ... At first surprise nailed him to the spot. But 
 when he saw the Corsairs fall on the luggage, tear 
 off the tarpaulin covering, and actually begin the pil- 
 lage of the ship, then the hero awoke, and, whipping 
 out his hunting-knife, " To arms ! to arms ! " he 
 roared to the passengers ; and away he flew, the 
 foremost of all, on the buccaneers. 
 
 " Ques aco ? What is it ? What 's the matter with 
 you?" exclaimed Captain Barbassou, coming out of 
 the 'tweendecks. 
 
 "Ah, here you are, captain! . . . Quick, quick, 
 arm your men ! " 
 
 " Hi! what for, boun Diou f " 
 
 " Why, can't you see ? "
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 105 
 
 "See what?" 
 
 " There, before you, the pirates. 
 
 Captain Barbassou stared at 
 him in bewilderment. At this 
 juncture a tall blackamoor tore 
 by with our hero's medicine- 
 chest on his back. 
 
 " You wretch ! . . . just wait 
 for me ! " yelled the Tarasco- 
 nian ; and he darted in pursuit, 
 with the knife uplifted. 
 
 Barbassou caught him on the 
 fly, and holding him back by his 
 waist-sash, 
 
 " Now don't disturb yourself ! 
 Tron de ler / . . . they 're hot 
 pirates. . . . It 's long since there 
 were any pirates hereabout. . . . 
 Those are porters." 
 
 " Porters ? . . . " 
 
 " He* ! yes, porters after the 
 luggage to carry it ashore. . . . 
 So put up your cutlas, give me 
 your ticket, and walk off behind 
 that negro, an honest lad, 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 negro, clambered down by 
 the hanging-ladder into a big skiff dancing alongside. 
 All his effects were already there, his boxes, trunks, 
 gun-cases, canned provisions ; as they loaded up the
 
 IO6 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 boat, there was no need to wait for any other pas- 
 sengers. The negro scrambled upon the boxes, and 
 squatted there like a baboon, with his hands clutch- 
 ing his knees. Another negro took the oars. . . . 
 Both of them eyed Tartarin, and laughed, 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 the haft 
 of his hunting-knife ; for, in spite of what Barbassou 
 had told him, he was only half at ease as regarded 
 the intention of these ebony-skinned porters, who so 
 little resembled the honest porters of Tarascon. . . . 
 
 Five minutes afterwards the skiff reached shore, 
 and Tartarin set foot on the little Barbary wharf, 
 where, three hundred years before, a Spanish galley- 
 slave named Miguel Cervantes, under the cane of 
 the Algerian taskmaster, was devising a sublime 
 romance which was to bear the title of " Don 
 Quixote."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Invocation to Cervantes The disembar- 
 kation Where are the Teurs ? Not a Teur 
 Disenchantment.
 
 Ill 
 
 Invocation to Cervantes The disembarkation 
 Where are the Teurs? Not a Teur Disen- 
 chantment. 
 
 OH, Miguel Cervantes Saavedra, if what is 
 asserted be true, to wit, that wherever great men 
 have dwelt some emanation of their spirits wanders 
 and hovers in the air until the end of ages, then 
 what remained of your essence on the Barbary coast 
 must have quivered with glee to behold the landing 
 of Tartarin of Tarascon, that marvellous type of 
 the French Southerner, in whom were embodied 
 both heroes of your work, Don Quixote and Sancho 
 
 Panza. . . . 
 
 109
 
 JIO TART ART A 7 OF TAR A SCON 
 
 The air was sultry that day. On the quays, ablaze 
 with sunshine, were five or six revenue officers, Alge- 
 rians waiting for news from France, squatting Moors 
 pulling at their long pipes, Maltese mariners drag- 
 ging large nets, in the meshes of which thousands 
 of sardines glittered like small silver coins. 
 
 But Tartarin hardly had set foot on shore before 
 the quay sprang into life and changed its aspect. A 
 horde of savages, still more hideous than the pirates 
 on the steamer, rose between the stones on the 
 strand and rushed upon the new-comer. Tall Arabs 
 nude under woollen blankets, little Moors in tatters, 
 negroes, Tunisians, Port Mahonese, M'zabites, hotel 
 servants in white aprons, all yelling, shouting, clutch- 
 ing his clothes, fighting over his luggage, one carry- 
 ing away the provender, another his medicine-chest, 
 and pelting him in one fantastic medley with the 
 preposterous names of hotels. . . . 
 
 Bewildered by all this tumult, poor Tartarin wan- 
 dered to and fro, blustered, swore, and stormed, ran 
 after his property, and, not knowing how to make 
 these barbarians understand him, harangued and 
 addressed them in French, Provencal, and even in 
 Latin, the Latin of Pourceaugnac : il Rosa, the rose : 
 bonus, bona, bonnm ! " all that he knew. . . . Wasted 
 labor. No one heeded him. . . . Happily, a little 
 man in a yellow-collared tunic, and armed with a 
 long running-footman's cane, intervened like a god 
 in Homer, and dispersed the whole riff-raff with 
 cudgel-play. He was a policeman of the Algerian 
 capital. Very politely he induced Tartarin to put 
 up at the Hotel de 1'Europe, and confided him to
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON III 
 
 its waiters, who carted him and his traps thither in 
 several brouettes. 
 
 At the first steps which he took in Algiers, Tar- 
 tarin of Tarascon opened his eyes wide. Beforehand 
 he had pictured it as an Oriental, fairy-like, mytho- 
 logical city, something between Constantinople and 
 Zanzibar. ... It was nothing but Tarascon over 
 again. . . . Cafes, restaurants, wide streets, four- 
 story houses, a little macadamized square, where 
 the infantry band was playing Offenbach polkas, 
 gentlemen in chairs, drinking beer and eating sinnel 
 cakes, ladies, a few lorettes, and then soldiers 
 more soldiers no end of soldiers, . . . but not a 
 Teur . . . only himself! . . . 
 
 Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the 
 square. Everybody looked at him. The musicians 
 stopped, and the Offenbach polka halted with one 
 foot in the air. 
 
 With both guns on his shoulders, the revolver 
 on his hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, 
 Tartarin gravely passed through all these groups; 
 but on arriving at the hotel his powers failed him. 
 The departure from Tarascon, the harbor of Mar- 
 seilles, the voyage, the Montenegrin prince, the 
 corsairs, everything was jumbled in wild confusion 
 in his mind. . . . They had to help him up into a room 
 and disarm him and undress him. ... At first they 
 talked of sending for a doctor; but hardly was his 
 head on the pillow than the hero set to snoring, so 
 loudly and so heartily that the landlord judged the 
 succor of science useless, and every one considerately 
 withdrew.
 
 CHAFFER IV 
 The first lying in wait.
 
 IV 
 
 The Jirst lying in wait. 
 
 THREE o'clock was striking by the Government 
 clock when Tartarin awoke. He had slept all the 
 evening, all night, all the morning, and even a good 
 piece of the afternoon. We must acknowledge, 
 though, that during the last three days the Chechia 
 had seen pretty rough times ! 
 
 The hero's first thought on opening his eyes was, 
 " I am in the land of the lions ! " And why not 
 say it? at the idea that lions were nigh hereabouts, 
 within a couple of steps, almost at hand's reach, and 
 that he was bound to have a tussle with them, 
 brr! ... a deadly chill struck him, and he dived 
 intrepidly under the bedclothes. 
 
 "5
 
 Il6 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 But, at the end of a moment, the outward gayety, 
 the blue sky, the broad sun streaming into the bed- 
 chamber, a nice little breakfast which he ate in bed, 
 his window wide open upon the sea, the whole 
 flavored with an excellent bottle of Crescia wine, 
 very speedily restored him his former pluckiness. 
 
 " Now for the lion, for the lion ! " he exclaimed, 
 throwing off the clothes and briskly dressing himself. 
 
 This was his plan : to 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 which should stalk by; ... 
 then return to breakfast in the morning at the hotel, 
 receive the congratulations of the natives, and hire 
 a cart to bring in the quarry. 
 
 So he hurriedly armed himself, fastened to his 
 back the shelter-tent, the centre pole of which pro- 
 jected a clear foot above his head, and descended to 
 the street as stiff as a stake. Not caring to ask the 
 way of any one, from fear of letting out his project, he 
 turned square to the right, and threaded to the very 
 end the Bab-Azun arcades, where, as he passed, 
 swarms of Algerian Jews watched him from their 
 corner ambushes like so many spiders; crossing the 
 Place du Thdatre, he entered the outer ward, and at 
 last came out on the dusty Mustapha highway. 
 
 On this road was a quaint conglomeration : 
 omnibuses, hackney-coaches, corricolos, army-service 
 wagons, huge hay-carts drawn by bullocks, squads 
 of Chasseurs d'Afrique, droves of microscopic asses, 
 negro women selling cakes, trucks of Alsatian emi- 
 grants, spahis in scarlet cloaks, all filing by in a
 
 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON H/ 
 
 whirlwind cloud of dust, amid shouts, songs, and 
 trumpet-calls, between two rows of vile-looking 
 booths, at the doors of which lanky Port Mali on 
 women might be seen doing their hair, drinking, 
 dens filled with soldiers, and shops of butchers and 
 knackers. . . . 
 
 " Now, what rubbish have I heard sung about the 
 Orient ! " said the great Tartarin to himself ; " there 
 are not even as many Tears here as at Marseilles." 
 
 All of a sudden he saw a superb camel passing by 
 him quite close to him, stretching its long legs and 
 puffing out its throat like a turkey-cock. That made 
 his heart throb. 
 
 Camels already ! Lions could not be far off now ; 
 and, indeed, within five minutes he saw a whole 
 band of lion-hunters coming his way with guns on 
 their shoulders. 
 
 " Cowards !" thought our hero, as he skirted them ; 
 "cowards! to go at a lion in companies and with 
 dogs ! " 
 
 For it would never have occurred to him that 
 anything but lions could be hunted in Algeria. 
 Nevertheless, these huntsmen wore such complacent 
 faces, like retired tradesmen, and then this style of 
 lion-hunting witli dogs and game-bags was so patri- 
 archal, that the Tarasconian, a little perplexed, 
 deemed it incumbent to question one of the gentle- 
 men. 
 
 " Et autrement . . . comrade, good sport ? " 
 
 " Not bad," responded the other, regarding the 
 Tarasconian warriors imposing equipment with a 
 scared eye.
 
 Il8 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 " Killed any ? " 
 
 " Rather! . . . Not so bad . . . only look." 
 
 Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed his 
 game-bag stuffed out with rabbits and woodcock. 
 
 "What! that? your bag? . . . You put those in 
 your bag ? " 
 
 "Where else should I put 'em?" 
 
 " But then ... it 's ... it 's such little game." 
 
 " Some run small, and some run large," observed 
 the hunter. 
 
 And as he was in haste to get home, he rejoined 
 his companions with long strides. 
 
 The dauntless Tartarin remained rooted in the 
 middle of the road with stupefaction. . . . 
 
 Then, after a moment's reflection, " Pooh ! " he 
 ejaculated, " these are jokers. . . . They have n't killed 
 anything whatever ; " and he went his way. 
 
 Already the houses were becoming scarcer, and 
 also the passengers. Night was coming on and 
 objects were growing blurred. . . . Tartarin walked 
 on for half an hour more. Then he stopped. ... It 
 was absolutely night. A moonless night, too, but 
 sprinkled with stars. On the highroad there was 
 no one. ... In spite of everything the hero concluded 
 that lions are not stage-coaches, and would not of 
 their own choice travel the main ways. So he started 
 across country. . . . Everywhere were ditches and 
 brambles and bushes. No matter ; he still kept 
 on. ... 
 
 Then suddenly he halted. 
 
 " I smell lions about here ! " said our friend, and 
 sniffed to right and to left.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Bang, bang!
 
 V 
 
 Bang, bang I 
 
 IT was a great wilderness, bristling with odd 
 plants, -with those Oriental plants which look like 
 ugly beasts. Under the feeble starlight their magni- 
 fied shadows barred the ground in every direction. 
 On the right the confused and heavy mass of a 
 mountain, perhaps the Atlas range ! . . . On the left, 
 the invisible sea tumbling with a muffled roar. , , 
 The very spot to attract wild beasts. . . . 
 
 With one gun laid before him, the other in his 
 grasp, Tartarin of Tarascon went down on one knee 
 and waited. . . . He waited one hour, two hours . . . 
 nothing! . . . Then he bethought him how, in his 
 books, the great lion-slayers never went hunting 
 without taking along with them a kid, which they 
 tied up a few paces before them, and made to bleat
 
 122 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 by jerking its foot with a string. Not having any 
 kid, the Tarasconian had the idea of making imita- 
 tions, and he set to crying in a tremulous voice, 
 
 "Me! Me ! ..." 
 
 At first very softly, because in the bottom of his 
 heart he was a little afraid lest the lion should hear 
 him; . . . then, when he saw that nothing came, he 
 bleated more loudly: " Me ! . . . Me! . . . " Still 
 nothing ! . . . Losing patience, he tried it again more 
 vigorously many times in succession : " Me ! . . . 
 Me ! . . . Me ! . . . " with so much power that the kid 
 began to seem like a bull. . . . 
 
 Suddenly, a few steps in front, something black and 
 gigantic burst upon him. He held his breath. . . . 
 This thing lowered its head, sniffed the ground, 
 bounded up, rolled over, and darted off at a gallop, 
 then came back and stopped short. ... It was the 
 lion, no doubt ! . . . now he could plainly see its four 
 short legs, its formidable mane and two eyes, two big 
 eyes gleaming in the gloom. . . . 
 
 Aim ! Fire ! bang, bang! ... it was done. Then 
 instantly a leap to the goal and the drawing of the 
 hunting-knife. 
 
 To the Tarasconian's shot a terrible roaring 
 replied. 
 
 " I hit him ! " cried our good Tartarin, and, steady- 
 ing himself on his sturdy legs, he prepared to receive 
 the brute's charge. 
 
 But it had more than its fill, and galloped off, 
 howling. . . . Nevertheless he did not budge. He 
 was waiting for the lioness. . . . Still, just as in his 
 books !
 
 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 12$ 
 
 Unhappily, the lioness came not. After two or 
 three hours' waiting the Tarasconian grew tired. 
 The ground was damp, the night was getting cool, 
 and the sea-breeze was keen. 
 
 " I have a good mind to take a nap till daylight," 
 he said to himself. 
 
 To avoid catching the rheumatism, he had recourse 
 to his shelter-tent. . . . But here 's where the devil 
 .nterfered ! This tent was of so very ingenious a 
 construction that he could not manage to open it. 
 
 In vain for an hour did he toil over it and sweat 
 over it, the confounded tent would not come un- 
 folded. . . . There are some umbrellas which amuse 
 themselves under torrential rains in playing just such 
 tricks on you. . . . Fairly tired out with the struggle, 
 the Tarasconian dashed the machine on the ground, 
 and lay down on it, swearing like the true Provencal 
 that he was. 
 
 " Ta, ta, ra, ta .' fa, ra, ta ! " 
 
 " Ques aco ? . . . What 's that ? " wondered Tartarin, 
 suddenly aroused. 
 
 It was the bugles of the Chasseurs d'Afrique 
 sounding the reveille in the Mustapha barracks. . . > 
 The stupefied lion-slayer rubbed his eyes. . . . He 
 who had believed himself out in the boundless 
 desert! . . . Do you know where he was? ... In a 
 field of artichokes, between a cabbage-garden and 
 a beet-patch. 
 
 His Sahara grew kitchen vegetables. . . . 
 
 Quite close to him, on the pretty verdant slope of 
 Upper Mustapha, the snowy Algerian villas sparkled 
 in the dew of the dawn: one might have thought
 
 124 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 oneself in the neighborhood of Marseilles,. amongst 
 its bastides and bastidons. 
 
 The commonplace and kitchen-gardenish aspect 
 of this sleeping landscape much astonished the poor 
 man, and put him in very bad humor. 
 
 "These folk are crazy," he reasoned, "to plant 
 artichokes in the prowling-ground of lions; . . . for, 
 surely, I have not been dreaming. . . . Lions come 
 here. . . . There 's the proof. ..." 
 
 "The proof" was blood-spots which the beast in 
 its flight had left behind. Bending over this gory 
 trail, with his eye on the lookout and his revolver in 
 his hand, the valiant Tarasconian went from arti- 
 choke to artichoke down 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 ! " 
 
 No ! An ass ! one of those little asses so com- 
 mon in Algeria, where they are called bourriquots.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Arrival of the female A terrible combat 
 - "Le rendezvous des Lapins ! "
 
 VI 
 
 Arrival of the female A terribu combat 
 ' Le rendezvous des Lapins ! " 
 
 TARTARIN'S first impulse when he caught sight of 
 his hapless victim was one of vexation. There is 
 such a wide gap between a lion and a bourriquot! . . . 
 His second impulse was one of pity. The poor 
 bourriquot was so pretty, and looked so gentle. 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 of the 
 wretched beast; and this great man tending this 
 little ass was all you can imagine most touching. 
 
 127
 
 128 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 At the touch of the silky cloth the bourriquot, who 
 had not twopennyworth of life in him, opened his 
 large gray eye and moved his long ears two or three 
 times, as much as to say, " Thank you ! . . . thank 
 you ! . . . " Then a final spasm shook it from head 
 to tail, and it stirred no more. 
 
 " Noiraud ! Noiraud ! " suddenly screamed a voice, 
 choking with anguish. At the same time the branches 
 in a thicket hard by stirred. . . . 
 
 Tartarin had no more than enough time to rise 
 and stand on guard. . . . This was the female! 
 
 She rushed up, terrible and bellowing, under form 
 of an old Alsatian woman, her hair in a kerchief, 
 armed with a 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 thing had occurred ; that 
 he had mistaken Noiraud for a lion. . . . The old 
 woman believed that he was making fun of her, 
 and, uttering energetic " Der Teifels ! " fell on the 
 hero with blows of her umbrella. Tartarin, a lit- 
 tle bewildered, defended himself as best he could, 
 and warded off the blows with his rifle ; he per- 
 spired, he panted, he jumped about, and kept crying 
 out, 
 
 " But, Madame . . . but, Madame ..." 
 
 Mind your own affairs ! Madame was deaf, as 
 was shown by her undiminished energy! 
 
 Fortunately a third party arrived on the battle- 
 field. This was the Alsatian woman's husband,
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 1 29 
 
 himself an Alsatian, a roadside innkeeper, more- 
 over a very good ready-reckoner. When he saw 
 what kind of a customer he had to deal with, and 
 that the assassin 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 ass was 
 worth about ten ! That is the current price of 
 bourriqiiots in the Arab markets. Then poor Noi- 
 raud was laid to rest at the root of a fig-tree, and 
 the Alsatian, raised to joviality by the color of the 
 Tarascon duros, invited the hero to have a bite with 
 him in his tavern, which stood only a few steps off 
 on the edge of the highway. 
 
 Every Sunday the sportsmen from the city came 
 there to breakfast; for the plain abounded in 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 some- 
 times?" resumed the poor fellow, with less confi- 
 dence. 
 
 The innkeeper burst out in laughter: 
 
 " Ah ! ben ! bless us ! ... lions ! . . . What should 
 we do with lions here ? " 
 
 " Why, are n't there any in Algeria?" 
 
 " Faith ! I never saw any. . . . And yet I have been 
 twenty years in the colony. Still, I believe I have 
 heard tell ... it seems to me the newspapers . . .
 
 130 TARTARIN OF TAR AS CON 
 
 But that is ever so much farther inland down 
 South ..." 
 
 At this point they reached the tavern, a suburban 
 tavern such as you see at Vanves or Pantin, with a 
 withered green bough over the door, crossed billiard- 
 cues painted on the wall, and this harmless sign : 
 
 AU RENDEZ-VOUS DES LA PINS 
 
 The meeting-place for Laptns, buck-rabbits, game 
 fellows ! Oh ! Bravida, what a memory !
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 History of an omnibus, a Moorish beauty, 
 and a wreath of jasmine flowers.
 
 VII 
 
 History of an omnibus, a Moorish beauty, and a 
 wreath of jasmine flowers. 
 
 THIS first adventure would have had something 
 discouraging for many people ; but men of Tartarin's 
 stamp are not easily cast down. 
 
 "The lions are in the South, are they?" mused 
 the hero. " Very well. South I go." 
 
 As soon as he had swallowed his last mouthful, he 
 lumped up, thanked his host, kissed the old woman 
 without any ill-will, dropped a final tear over the 
 hapless Noiraud, and quickly returned to Algiers, 
 with the firm intention of packing up and starting 
 that very day for the South. 
 
 133
 
 134 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 Unfortunately, the Mustapha highroad seemed to 
 have stretched since over-night; what a hot sun! 
 what dust! what a weight in that shelter-tent! . . . 
 Tartarin felt no courage to walk to town, and he 
 beckoned to the first omnibus coming along, and 
 climbed in. . . . 
 
 Oh, 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, an Algerian 
 vicar with a long black beard. Facing him, a young 
 Moorish merchant smoking coarse cigarettes. Then, 
 a Maltese sailor and four or five Moorish women 
 muffled up in white cloths, so that only their eyes 
 could be seen. These ladies had been to offer up 
 prayers in the Abd-el-Kader cemetery; but this 
 funereal visit did not seem to have saddened them, 
 for they could be heard chuckling and jabbering 
 together under their coverings while munching 
 pastry. 
 
 Tartarin fancied that they watched him narrowly. 
 One in particular, seated over against him, had fixed 
 her eyes on his, and never took them off all the 
 way. Although the dame was veiled, the liveliness 
 of the big black eyes, lengthened out by K'hol; a 
 deliciously 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 grace-
 
 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON 135 
 
 ful, almost childlike, movements of the head, all 
 hinted at something young, pretty, adorable. . . . The 
 unfortunate Tartarin did not know where to hide. 
 The fond, mute gaze of those splendrous Oriental 
 eyes agitated him, perturbed him, and made him feel 
 like dying; he was hot, he was cold. . . . 
 
 To finish him, the lady's slipper took part : he felt 
 it run, that dainty slipper, run and frisk about 
 
 over his heavy hunting-boots like a tiny red mouse 
 
 What could he do? Answer the glance and the pres- 
 sure ! Ay, but the consequences ? A love affair in 
 the East is a terrible matter ! . . . And with his roman 
 tic Southern imagination, the honest Tarasconian saw 
 himself already falling into the grip of the eunuchs, 
 to be decapitated, or, better perhaps 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 mean time 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. They were on the Place du 
 Theatre, at the mouth of the Rue Bab-Azun. One 
 by one, entangled in their voluminous trousers, and 
 drawing their veils around them with wild grace, 
 the Moorish women alighted. The one opposite 
 Tartarin was the last to rise, and in rising her coun- 
 tenance came so close to our hero's that her breath 
 enveloped him, a veritable nosegay of youth, of 
 jasmine, musk, and pastry. 
 
 The Tarasconian no longer resisted. Intoxicated
 
 136 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 with love, and ready for anything, he darted out 
 after the beauty. ... At the sound of his straps and 
 boots she turned, laid a finger on her veiled mouth, 
 as if to say, " Hush ! " and with the other hand 
 quickly tossed him a little sweet-scented chaplet made 
 of jasmine flowers. Tartarin of Tarascon stooped to 
 pick it up ; but as our hero was somewhat clumsy, 
 and much overburdened with implements of war, 
 the operation took rather long. . . . 
 
 When he did straighten up, with the jasmine 
 garland on his heart, the Moorish beauty had 
 vanished.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Lions of tlic Atlas, sleep !
 
 VIII 
 
 Lions of the Atlas, sleep ! 
 
 LIONS of the Atlas, sleep ! Sleep tranquilly in 
 the depths of your lairs amid the aloes and wild 
 cacti. . . . For a few days longer Tartarin of Tarascon 
 will not massacre you. For the time being, all his 
 warlike paraphernalia, gun-cases, medicine-chest, 
 shelter-tent, alimentary preserves, are peacefully 
 reposing in their wrappers in a corner of room 36, 
 Hotel de 1'Europe. 
 
 Sleep without fear, great tawny lions ! The Taras- 
 conian is engaged in looking up his Moorish charmer. 
 
 139
 
 140 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 Since his adventure in the omnibus, the unfortunate 
 perpetually fancies that he feels the scampering of 
 that tiny red mouse on his foot, his huge trapper's 
 foot; and the sea-breeze fanning his lips is ever 
 scented, in spite of all that he can do, with a love- 
 exciting odor of pastry and anise. 
 
 He wants his Maugrabine ! 
 
 But it is no easy task. In a city of a hundred 
 thousand souls, to find one certain person, whom 
 one knows only by the breath, the slippers, and the 
 color of her eyes, none but a Tarasconian stung 
 by love would be capable of attempting such an 
 adventure. 
 
 The plague of it is that, under their broad white 
 mufflers, all the Moorish women look alike; besides, 
 these ladies do not go about much, and to see them 
 a man has to climb up into the upper town, the 
 native city, the city of the Teurs. 
 
 A regular cut-throat place, this upper town. Little 
 black alleys, very narrow, climbing perpendicularly 
 up between mysterious house-walls, the roofs of 
 which almost touch and form a tunnel. Low doors ; 
 sad, silent little casements well barred and grated. 
 And then, on both hands, a mass of very dark 
 stalls, wherein ferocious, piratical-looking Teurs, 
 with white eyes and glittering teeth, are smoking 
 long pipes, and whispering together as if hatching 
 wicked attacks. . . . 
 
 To say that Tartarin traversed this grisly place 
 without emotion would be telling a lie. On the 
 contrary, he was much affected, and along these 
 obscure alleys, where his protuberant stomach took
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 14! 
 
 up all the width, the worthy fellow advanced only 
 with the utmost precaution, his eye alert, his finger 
 on the trigger of a revolver. Just as at Tarascon 
 when he went to the clubhouse ! At any moment 
 he expected to have an onslaught of eunuchs and 
 janissaries drop down at his back, yet the longing to 
 behold his lady again gave him a giant's strength 
 and boldness. 
 
 For a full week the undaunted Tartarin never 
 quitted the high town. Sometimes he was seen 
 cooling his heels before the Moorish bath-houses, 
 awaiting the hour when the ladies came forth in 
 troops, shivering and still redolent of soap and hot 
 water; sometimes he was seen at the doorway of 
 some mosque, stooping over, puffing, and melting in 
 his efforts to get out of his big boots in order to 
 enter the sanctuary. . . . 
 
 Sometimes at nightfall, when he was returning 
 heart-broken at not having discovered anything at 
 either bagnio or mosque, the Tarasconian, in passing 
 Moorish mansions, would hear monotonous songs, 
 the smothered twanging of guitars, the thumping 
 of tambourines, and feminine laughter-peals, which 
 would make his heart beat. 
 
 " Perhaps she is there ! " he would say to himself. 
 
 Then, if the street was empty, 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. Behind the wall 
 nothing would be audible excepting little indefinite 
 flutterings as in a slumbering pigeon-house.
 
 142 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 " Let 's stick to it," the hero would think. . . . 
 " Something will befall me yet." 
 
 What most often befell him was the contents of 
 the cold-water 'jug on his head, or else peel of 
 oranges and Barbary figs. . . . Never anything more 
 serious. 
 
 Lions of the Atlas, sleep !
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Prince Gregory of Montenegro,
 
 IX 
 
 Prince Gregory of Montenegro. 
 
 FOR two long weeks the unfortunate Tartarin had 
 been seeking his Algerian lady, and most likely he 
 would be seeking after her to this day if the Provi- 
 dence of lovers had not come to his aid in 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 eternal and insipid 
 provincial bal masque ! Few people on the floor, 
 several waifs from Bullier's x or the Casino, wild 
 
 1 The students' ball at Bullier's will soon be a thing of the 
 past. The establishment which took the place of the " Closerie 
 au Silas " as a resort of the Quartier Latin, though frequented 
 ro 145
 
 146 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 maidens following the army, faded veterans, routed 
 porters, and five or six little Port Mahon laundresses 
 aiming high, but still preserving a faint perfume of 
 the garlic and saffron sauce of their virtuous days. 
 . . . The real spectacle is not there, but in the 
 foyer, transformed for the nonce into a gaming- 
 saloon. . . . 
 
 A feverish and motley mob hustle one another 
 around the long green table-covers : Turcos on parole 
 and staking the fat sous of their advance pay, Moor- 
 ish traders from the upper town, negroes, Maltese, 
 colonists from the inland, who have come forty miles 
 in order to risk on an ace the price of a plough or of 
 a yoke of oxen, ... all quivering, pale, clenching 
 their teeth, and with that singular, anxious, sidelong 
 look of the gamester, become a squint from always 
 staring at the same card. 
 
 A little apart are the tribes of Algerian Jews, 
 gambling en famille. The men are in the Oriental 
 costume, hideously embellished with blue stockings 
 and velvet caps. The women, puffy and wan, sit up 
 stiffly in tight golden bodices. . . . Grouped around 
 the tables, the whole tribe are squealing, laying 
 their heads together, reckoning on the fingers, and 
 risking but little. Now and anon, however, after long 
 conferences, some old patriarch, with a beard such 
 as the Father Eternal wears in pictures, detaches 
 himself from the party and goes to risk the family 
 duro. ... As long as the game lasts, there is a 
 scintillation of Hebraic eyes directed on the board, 
 
 by a lower class, was one of the sights which foreigners visiting 
 Paris felt morally called upon to enjoy.
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCOtV 147 
 
 dreadful black diamond-like eyes, making the gold 
 pieces shiver, and at last gently attracting them, as 
 if by a thread. . . . 
 
 Then wrangles, quarrels, battles, oaths of every 
 land, mad outcries in all tongues, knives flashing 
 out, the guard marching in, and the money dis- 
 appearing. . . . 
 
 Into the thick of these saturnalia the great Tar- 
 tarin came straying one evening to find oblivion and 
 heart's ease. 
 
 The hero was roving alone through the gathering, 
 thinking of his Moorish beauty, when two angered 
 voices arose suddenly from a gaming-table above all 
 the clamor and chink of coin. 
 
 " I tell you, M'sieu, that I am twenty francs 
 short ! " 
 
 "M'sieu!" 
 
 "Well, then . . . M'sieu!" 
 
 " You shall learn whom you are addressing, 
 M'sieu!" 
 
 " I ask nothing better, M'sieu ! " 
 
 " I am Prince Gregory of Montenegro, M'sieu. ..." 
 
 On hearing this name, Tartarin, much excited, 
 pushed his way through the throng, and placed him- 
 self in the foremost ra.nk, proud and happy to find 
 his prince again, his polite Montenegrin prince, 
 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 prince was having his dispute.
 
 148 TARTARIN OF TARASCOK 
 
 " I am much the wiser ! " observed the military 
 gentleman, sneeringly ; and turning to the by- 
 standers, he added : " ' Prince Gregory of Monte- 
 negro,' who knows any such person ? . . . No 
 one ! " 
 
 The indignant Tartarin took one step forward. 
 
 " Allow me. I know the preince" said he, in a 
 very firm voice, and with his finest Tarasconian 
 accent. 
 
 The Chasseurs officer eyed him hard for a moment ; 
 then, shrugging his shoulders, returned, 
 
 " Come, that is good ! . . . Just you two share 
 between you the twenty francs lacking, and let us 
 talk no more about it." 
 
 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." 
 
 And taking the Tarasconian by the arm, he drew 
 him rapidly out of doors. 
 
 When they were on the square, Prince Gregory 
 of Montenegro took off his hat, gave 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 ! " 
 
 And the Montenegrin noble shook his hand with 
 fierce energy. . . . You may infer that the Tarasconian 
 was proud.
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 149 
 
 " Preince, preince ! ..." he repeated enthusiasti- 
 cally. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later the two gentlemen were 
 installed in the Restaurant des Platanes, an agree- 
 able late supper-house, with terraces running out 
 over the sea, and there, before a hearty Russian 
 salad, seconded by a nice Crescia wine, they renewed 
 their friendship. 
 
 You can not imagine any one more bewitching 
 than this Montenegrin prince. Slender, fine, with 
 crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved and as it were 
 pumice-stoned, bestarred with strange decorations, 
 he had a wily eye, cajoling gestures, and a vaguely 
 Italian accent, which gave him a spurious resem- 
 blance to Cardinal Mazarin without his mustaches. 
 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, and since then he 
 had roamed the world for instruction and pleasure, 
 a genuine philosophical prince ! . . . A singular coin- 
 cidence ! the prince had spent three years in Taras- 
 con ; and as Tartarin showed amazement at never 
 having met him at the club or on the Esplanade, his 
 Highness evasively remarked that he went out very 
 little. Through delicacy, the Tarasconian did not 
 dare to question further. All great existences have 
 such mysterious nooks ! . . . 
 
 All in all, this Seigneur Gregory was a very genial 
 prince. While sipping the roseate wine of Crescia,
 
 I5O TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 he patiently listened to Tartarin expatiating on his 
 Moorish beauty, and he even promised to find her 
 speedily, as he knew all these ladies. 
 
 They drank hard and long. They toasted "The 
 ladies of Algiers " and " The freedom of Monte- 
 negro ! " 
 
 Outside, under the terrace, heaved the sea, and its 
 rollers slapped the strand in the darkness with a 
 noise like wet sheets flapping. The air was warm, 
 the sky full of stars. 
 
 In the plane-trees a nightingale was piping. . . . 
 
 Tartarin paid the piper.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 "TV// me your fathers name, and I will 
 tell you the name of this flower."
 
 " Tell me your father 1 s name, and I will tell you 
 the name of tliis flower" 
 
 MONTENEGRIN princes are the ones to start up 
 the quail. 
 
 Early in the morning following this evening at the 
 Platanes, Prince Gregory was in the Tarasconian's 
 bedroom. 
 
 " Quick ! Quick ! Dress yourself ! . . . Your Moor- 
 ish beauty is found. . . . Her name is Ba'ia. She 's 
 twenty, as pretty as a picture, and already a 
 widow. ..." 
 
 " A widow ! . . . What luck ! " joyfully exclaimed the 
 worthy Tartarin, who dreaded Oriental husbands. 
 
 " Yes, but closely guarded by her brother." 
 
 " Oh, the deuce ! " 
 
 " A savage Moor who sells pipes in the Orleans 
 bazaar." 
 
 Here a silence. 
 
 153
 
 154 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 " Good ! " proceeded the prince ; " you are not 
 the man to be daunted by such a trifle ; and ther 
 perhaps you can pacify this old corsair by buying 
 some pipes of him. . . . Come, quick ! On with 
 your clothes, . . . you lucky dog ! " 
 
 Pale and agitated, with his heart brimming ovei 
 with love, the Tarasconian leaped out of bed, anc 
 hastily buttoned up his capacious flannel drawers 
 
 " What must I do ? " 
 
 ' Simply write to the lady and ask for a rendezvous.' 
 
 " Why, does she know French ? " replied the simple 
 hearted Tartarin, disappointed, for he had dreamec 
 of the unadulterated Orient. 
 
 " She does not know one word of it," rejoined th( 
 prince, imperturbably, . . . "but you can dictate youi 
 letter, and I will translate it word for word." 
 
 " Oh, prince, how kind you are ! " 
 
 And the Tarasconian began striding up and dowr 
 the bedroom in silent meditation. 
 
 You realize a man does not write to a Moorish gir 
 in Algiers in the same way as to a seamstress oi 
 Beaucaire. Very luckily our hero had in mind hh 
 numerous readings, which allowed him, by amalga 
 mating the Apache eloquence of Gustave Aimard'i 
 Red Indians with Lamartine's " Voyage en Orient,' 
 and some vague reminiscences of the " Song oJ 
 Songs," to compose the most Eastern letter imagi 
 nable. It opened with, 
 
 " Like the ostrich in the sandy waste " - 
 and concluded with, 
 
 " Tell me your father's name, and 1 will tell you 
 the name of this flower.' 1 ''
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 155 
 
 To this missive the romantic Tartarin would have 
 much liked to join a bouquet of emblematic flowers in 
 the Eastern fashion; but Prince Gregory thought it 
 was better to purchase some pipes at the brother's, 
 which could not fail to soften his wild temper, and 
 would certainly confer a very great pleasure on the 
 lady, as she was much of a smoker. 
 
 " Come quick, let 's buy the pipes ! " said Tartarin, 
 full of ardor. 
 
 " No, ... no ! ... Let me go alone. I can get 
 them cheaper. ..." 
 
 " What ? Will you ? . . . O prince, . . . prince . . . ! " 
 
 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 begun, did 
 not progress as rapidly as might have been antici- 
 pated. It appeared that the Moorish beauty, very 
 deeply affected by Tartarin's eloquence, and, for 
 that matter, three fourths won beforehand, would 
 have wished nothing better than to receive him ; but 
 her brother had scruples, and to lull them it was 
 necessary to buy pipes by the dozens, by the 
 gross, by the shipload. . . . 
 
 " What the devil can Bai'a do with all these 
 pipes ? " poor Tartarin asked himself more than 
 once ; but he paid the bills all the same, and without 
 stinginess. 
 
 At length, after having purchased mountains of 
 pipes and poured forth lakes of Oriental poesy, 
 an interview was arranged.
 
 156 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 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-hunter's beard, and how he 
 did not forget for in everything there is need of 
 forethought to slip a spiky life-preserver and two 
 or three revolvers into his pockets. 
 
 The ever-obliging prince went to this first tryst as 
 interpreter. 
 
 The lady dwelt .in the upper part of the town. 
 Before her doorway a boy Moor of thirteen or four- 
 teen was smoking cigarettes. This was the cele- 
 brated Ali, the brother in question. On seeing the 
 two visitors arrive, he gave a double knock on the 
 postern gate and delicately glided away. 
 
 The door opened. A negress appeared, who with- 
 out uttering a word conducted the gentlemen across 
 the narrow inner courtyard into a small cool room, 
 where the lady was awaiting them, reclining on a low 
 bed. ... At first glance she seemed to the Taras- 
 conian shorter and stouter than the Moorish damsel 
 in the omnibus. ... In fact, was it really the same ? 
 But the doubt merely flashed through Tartarin's 
 brain like a stroke of lightning. 
 
 The lady was so pretty thus, with her feet bare, 
 her plump fingers loaded with rings, she was so pink, 
 so delicate ; and under her bodice of gilded cloth and 
 the folds of her brocaded dress was suggested a 
 lovely creature, somewhat redundant, rounded every- 
 where, and nice enough to eat. . . . The amber 
 mouthpiece of a narghileh smoked at her lips, and 
 enveloped her wholly in a halo of light-yellow smoke.
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 157 
 
 On entering, the Tarasconian laid a hand on his 
 heart and bowed as Moorishly as possible, rolling 
 his large impassioned eyes. . . . 
 
 Baia gazed on him for a moment without saying 
 anything; then, dropping her amber mouthpiece, she 
 threw herself back, hid her face in her hands, and 
 only her white neck could be seen dancing with a 
 wild laugh, like a bag full of pearls.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 Sidi Tarfri Ben Tarfri.
 
 XI 
 
 Sidi Tarfri Ben Tarfri. 
 
 SHOULD you ever drop into the Algerian coffee- 
 houses of the 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- 
 humored European, who dwelt, a few years back, in 
 that neighborhood with a little lady of local origin, 
 named Ba'fa. 
 
 This Sidi Tart'ri, who left such a merry memory 
 around the Kasbah, is no other than our Tartarin, 
 as will be guessed. 
 
 161
 
 l62 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 What could you expect? In the lives of saints 
 and heroes, 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 that 
 during two months, oblivious of lions and glory, 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 foun- 
 tains. Afar from noise, in company with his Moor- 
 ish charmer, he dwelt there, himself a Moor from 
 top to toe, pulling at his narghileh all day and eating 
 musk-scented sweets. 
 
 Stretched out on a divan in front of him, Bai'a, 
 with a guitar on her arm, would drone him monoto- 
 nous tunes ; or else, to distract her lord and master, 
 favor him with the Danse du venire, holding up a 
 little mirror in which she reflected her white teeth 
 and the faces she made. 
 
 As the lady knew not a word of French, and 
 Tartarin not a word of Arabic, the conversation 
 sometimes languished, and the Tarasconian prattler 
 had plenty of leisure to do penance for the gush of 
 language of which he had been guilty in Bdzuquet's 
 apothecary shop or at Costecalde the gunmaker's. 
 
 But this penance was not devoid of charm, and he 
 felt a kind of voluptuous spleen in dawdling away 
 the whole day without speaking, and in listening to 
 the gurgling of the narghileh, the strumming of the
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 163 
 
 guitar, and the faint splashing of the fountain on the 
 mosaic pavement of the courtyard. 
 
 The pipe, the bath, caresses filled his entire life. 
 They seldom went out of doors. Sometimes, with 
 his lady-love on a pillion, Sidi Tart'ri would ride out 
 on a sturdy mule to eat pomegranates in a little 
 garden he had purchased in the suburbs. . . . But 
 never, never in the world did he go down into 
 the European quarter. That part of Algiers, with its 
 drunken Zouaves, its alcazars crammed with officers, 
 and its everlasting clink of sabre-sheaths under the 
 arcades, appeared to him as ugly and unbearable as 
 a barracks at home. 
 
 In short, our Tarasconian was very happy. 
 
 Sancho-Tartarin particularly, being very sweet on 
 Turkish pastry, declared that nothing could be more 
 satisfactory than this new existence. . . . Quixote- 
 Tartarin now and then had twinges of conscience 
 on thinking of Tarascon and the lion-skins which he 
 had promised ; . . . but this remorse did not last, 
 and to drive away such gloomy ideas one glance 
 from Ba'ia, or a spoonful of those diabolical sweet- 
 meats, dizzying and odoriferous like Circe's potions, 
 was sufficient. 
 
 In the evening Gregory came to discourse a little 
 about a free Montenegro. ... Of indefatigable oblig- 
 ingness, this amiable nobleman filled the functions 
 of an interpreter in the household, at a pinch even 
 those of a steward, and all for nothing, for the 
 sheer pleasure of it. ... With the exception of him, 
 Tartarin received none but " Teurs" All those
 
 164 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 fierce-headed pirates who had at first given him 
 such frights from the backs of their black stalls 
 proved, 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, 
 win his money, eat his cates and dainties, and dis- 
 creetly retire on the stroke of ten with thanks to the 
 Prophet. 
 
 Left alone, Sidi Tart'ri and his faithful spouse 
 would finish the evening on their terrace, a broad 
 white terrace, serving as a roof to the house and 
 overlooking the city. 
 
 All around them a thousand of other such white 
 terraces, placid beneath the moonshine, sloped down 
 like steps to the sea. The sound of tinkling guitars 
 came to them on the wings of the breeze. . . . Sud- 
 denly, like a shower of firework stars, a full, clear 
 melody would be softly sprinkled out from the sky, 
 and on the minaret of the neighboring mosque a 
 handsome muezzin would appear, a wan shadow 
 outlined on the deep blue of the night, and chant 
 the glory of Allah with a marvellous voice, filling 
 the horizon. 
 
 Thereupon BaTa would let go her guitar, and with 
 her large eyes turned toward the crier, seem to 
 imbibe the prayer deliciously. As long as the chant 
 endured she would remain there thrilled, in ecstasy, 
 like an Oriental Saint Theresa. . . . Tartarin, deeply
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 165 
 
 impressed, 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 ! Thy Tartarin was on 
 the point of becoming a renegade !
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The latest news from Tarascon.
 
 XII 
 
 The latest news from Tarascon. 
 
 ONE fine afternoon when the sky was blue and 
 the breeze was warm, Sidi Tart'ri astride of his mule 
 was returning alone from his little country-seat. . . . 
 With his legs kept wide apart by ample esparto 
 saddle-bags stuffed with lemons and watermelons, 
 lulled by the ring of his large stirrups, and rocking 
 his whole body to the balin balan of his beast, the 
 worthy man was thus traversing an adorable country, 
 with his hands folded on his paunch, three quarters 
 asleep through the heat and the comfort of it all. 
 
 Suddenly, on entering the town, a deafening appeal 
 aroused him : 
 
 " He ! monstre de sort! Anybody 'd take this for 
 Monsieur Tartarin." 
 
 At the name of Tartarin, at this jolly Southern 
 accent, the Tarasconian lifted his head, and per- 
 ceived, a couple of steps away, the honest tanned 
 
 169
 
 I/O TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 visage of Captain Barbassou, captain of the "Zouave,"' 
 who was taking his absinthe and smoking his pipe at 
 the door of a little coffee-house. 
 
 " He ! Lord love you, Barbassou ! " said Tartarin, 
 pulling up his mule. 
 
 Instead of continuing the dialogue, Barbassou 
 stared at him for a moment ; then he burst into a 
 peal of such hilarity that Sidi Tart'ri sat back dum- 
 founded on his melons. 
 
 " What a turban, my poor Monsieur Tartarin ! . . . 
 Is it true, what they say of your having turned 
 Teur ? . . . How is little Ba'i'a ? Is she still singing 
 Marco la Belle ' ? " 
 
 " Marco la Belle ! " repeated the indignant Tar- 
 tarin. ..." I '11 have you to know, Captain, that the 
 person you mention is an honorable Moorish lady, 
 and that she does not know a word of French." 
 
 " Ba'ia does not know French ! . . . Where do 
 you hail from, then ? , . . " 
 
 And the worthy captain broke into still heartier 
 laughter. 
 
 Then, seeing the poor Sidi Tart'ri's face growing 
 long, he changed his course. 
 
 " However, maybe it 's not the same. . . . Let 's 
 reckon that I have mixed 'em up. . . . Still, mark 
 you, Monsieur Tartarin, you will do well, none the 
 less, to distrust the Moorish women of Algiers and 
 princes from Montenegro." 
 
 Tartarin rose in the stirrups, making his own 
 grimace. 
 
 "The prince is my friend, Captain." 
 
 " Come, come, don't wax wrathy. . . . Won't you
 
 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON I/ 1 
 
 have some absinthe ? No? Haven't you anything 
 to say to the folks at home ? No, again ? . . . Well, 
 then, a pleasant journey. ... By the way, mate, I 
 have some good French tobacco, and if you would 
 like to carry away a few pipefuls . . . Take it, take 
 it, won't you? It will do you good. ... It's your 
 beastly Oriental tobaccoes that have befogged your 
 brain." 
 
 Upon this the captain returned to his absinthe, 
 and the moody Tartarin trotted slowly on the road 
 to his little house. . . . Although his great soul re- 
 fused to credit anything, Barbassou's insinuations 
 had vexed him, and the familiar adjurations and the 
 home accent had awakened in him vague remorse. 
 
 At the house he found no one. Ba'ia was taking 
 her bath. . . . The negress seemed to him ugly, the 
 dwelling melancholy. ... A prey to indefinable sad- 
 ness, he went and sat down by the fountain and 
 filled a pipe with Barbassou's tobacco. This tobacco 
 was wrapped up in a piece of the " Semaphore." 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 went to hunt the great 
 feline tribe in Africa. . . . What can have become of our heroic 
 fellow-countryman ? . . . Those who know, as we do, how hot- 
 headed and how bold, how thirsting for adventures, he was, 
 hardly dare ask. . . . 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, the skins of which he had 
 promised to the municipality ? . . . Dreadful uncertainty ! It 
 is true some negro traders, come to Beaucaire Fair, assert having
 
 1/2 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 met in the middle of the desert a European whose description 
 agreed with his ; he was proceeding toward Timbuctoo. . . . 
 May Heaven preserve our Tartarin ! " 
 
 When he read this, the Tarasconian reddened, 
 blanched, shuddered. All Tarascon appeared unto 
 him : the club, the cap-hunters, Costecalde's green 
 arm-chair, and, hovering over all like a spread eagle, 
 the imposing mustaches of the gallant Commandant 
 Bravida. 
 
 Then, at seeing himself here, as he was, cowardly 
 lolling on a mat, while his friends believed him to be 
 slaughtering wild beasts, Tartarin of Tarascon was 
 ashamed of himself, and wept. 
 
 Suddenly he leaped up. 
 
 " The lions ! the lions ! " 
 
 And dashing into the dusty lumber-hole where 
 slept 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 
 alone was left. 
 
 Only time to inspect his armament and stores, don 
 his harness, get into his heavy boots, scribble a 
 couple of words to confide Ba'ia to the prince, only 
 time to slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears 
 into the envelope, and then the intrepid Tarasconian 
 was rolling away in the stage-coach on the Blidah 
 road, leaving the house to the negress, stupor-stricken 
 before the narghileh, the turban, the babooshes, 
 all of Sidi Tart'ri's Mussulman belongings sprawl- 
 ing piteously under the little white trefoils of the 
 gallery. . . .
 
 THIRD EPISODE. 
 
 AMONG THE LIONS.
 
 CHAFFER 1 
 Exiled stage-coaches .
 
 Exiled stage-coaches. 
 
 IT was an ancient, old-fashioned diligence, up- 
 holstered in coarse blue cloth all faded, with those 
 enormous rough woollen pads which, after a few 
 hours' journey, finally cause raw spots in your back. 
 
 Tartarin of Tarascon had a corner of the inside, 
 where he installed himself as best he could ; and, 
 until he should breathe the musky emanations of 
 the great African felines, the hero had to content 
 himself with that good old stage-coach odor, oddly 
 composed of a thousand smells of men and horses, 
 women and leather, eatables and musty straw. - 
 
 There was a little of everything inside, a Trap- 
 pist monk, some Jew merchants, two fast ladies 
 going to join their regiment, the Third Hussars, 
 a photographer from Orldansville. . . . But, how- 
 ever charming and varied was the company, the 
 Tarasconian was not in the mood for chatting; he 
 remained quite thoughtful, with an arm in the sling- 
 strap, with his guns between his knees. . . . 
 
 177
 
 178 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 His precipitate departure, Ba'ia's black eyes, the 
 terrible hunting he was about to undertake, all 
 disturbed his imagination, to say nothing of this 
 European diligence, with its patriarchal aspect, re- 
 discovered 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. . . . 
 
 Gradually night came on. The guard lit up the 
 lamps. . . . The rusty diligence bobbed and creaked 
 on its old springs ; the horses trotted, the bells 
 jangled. . . . From time to time under the awning 
 of the imperial a dreadful clank of iron . . . that was 
 the war material. 
 
 Tartarin of Tarascon, three quarters asleep, for 
 a moment scanned his fellow-passengers, comically 
 shaken by the jolts, and dancing before him like 
 comic shadows ; then his eyes grew cloudy and his 
 mind befogged, and only vaguely he heard the 
 wheels grinding on the axles, and the sides of the 
 diligence complaining. . . . 
 
 Suddenly a voice called the Tarasconian by his 
 name, the voice of an old fairy godmother, hoarse, 
 broken, and cracked. 
 
 " Monsieur Tartarin ! Monsieur Tartarin !" 
 
 " Who 's calling me ? " 
 
 " It 's I, Monsieur Tartarin. Don't you recognize 
 me ? ... I am the old diligence who used to do the 
 road betwixt Nimes and Tarascon twenty years ago. 
 . . . How many times I have carried you and your 
 friends when you went to shoot at caps over Jonc- 
 quieres or Bellegarde way ! ... I did not place you
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCOtf 179 
 
 at first, on account of your Teur's cap and the flesh 
 you have accumulated ; but as soon as you began to 
 snore, coquin de ban sort ! I knew you instantly." 
 
 " All right, that 's all right ! " observed the Taras- 
 conian, a shade vexed. Then, softening, he added, 
 "But to the point, my poor old girl; what did you 
 come out here for ? " 
 
 " Ah ! my good Monsieur Tartarin, I assure you 
 I never came of my own free will. . . . As soon as 
 the Beaucaire Railway was finished, 1 was considered 
 good for nothing, and shipped away to Africa. . . . 
 And I am not the only one, either ! Almost all the 
 old diligences of France have been packed off like 
 me. We were regarded as too conservative, ' the 
 slow coaches,' and now we are all here leading a 
 dog's life. . . . This is what you in France call the 
 Algerian railways : 
 
 Here the ancient vehicle heaved a long-drawn sigh. 
 Then she proceeded : 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur Tartarin, how I regret my lovely 
 Tarascon ! That was the good time for me, when I 
 was young! It was a great sight when I started off 
 in the morning, washed with no stint of water and 
 all ashine, with my wheels freshly varnished, my 
 lamps blazing like two suns, and my boot always 
 rubbed up with oil ! It was indeed lovely when the 
 postilion cracked his whip to the tune of ' Lagadiga- 
 cleou, the Tarasque ! the Tarasque ! ' and the guard, 
 his horn in its sling, his laced cap cocked well over 
 one ear, chucking his little dog, always in a fury, on 
 the awning of the imperial, climbed up himself with 
 a shout : ' Right away ! '
 
 180 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 " Then would my four horses dash off to the 
 medley of bells, barks, and horn-blasts, the win- 
 dows would fly open, and all Tarascon would look 
 with pride as the diligence darted over the king's 
 highway. 
 
 " What a splendid road that was, Monsieur Tar- 
 tarin, broad and well kept, with its mile-stones, its 
 little heaps of road-metal at regular distances, and 
 its pretty plains full of vines and olive-trees ! . . . 
 Then, the taverns every ten steps, 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 their bishop, taffety-weavers returning openly from 
 the Mazet, collegians on their vacations, peasants in 
 worked smock-frocks, all fresh shaven that morning; 
 and up above, on the imperial, you gentlemen, you 
 cap-hunters, always in high spirits, and singing each 
 your own family ballad to the stars as you came back 
 in the evening. . . . 
 
 " Now it 's another story. . . . Lord knows the kind 
 of folks I am carting here, a crowd of infidels 
 come from no one knows where ! They fill me 
 with vermin, with negroes, with Bedouin Arabs, with 
 swashbucklers, adventurers from every land, with 
 ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and 
 all jabbering a language that the Almighty himself 
 could make nothing of ! ... And, furthermore, you 
 see how I am treated, never brushed, never washed. 
 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
 
 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON l8l 
 
 fight and bite, caper as they run like so many goats, 
 and smash my shafts with their heels. . . . Ate! . . . 
 aie! . . . there they are at it again ! . . . 
 
 "And such roads! Just here it is bearable, be- 
 cause we are near the governmental headquarters ; 
 but out a bit there 's nothing, no road at all. We 
 get along as we can over hill and dale, among dwarf 
 palms and mastic-trees. . . . Never a certain change 
 of horses. We stop at the guard's whim, now at 
 one farm, again at another. 
 
 " Sometimes this rogue goes a couple of leagues 
 out of the way to have a glass of absinthe orchampo- 
 reau with a friend. . . . After which, ' Whip up, 
 postilion ! ' so as to make the lost time. The sun 
 broils, the dust scorches, we whip up ! We catch in 
 the scrub and spill over, but whip up ! We swim 
 rivers, we catch cold, we get swamped, we drown, . . . 
 but whip! whip! whip! . . . Then in the evening, 
 all streaming, a nice thing for my age, with my 
 rheumatics ! . . . I have to sleep in the open air of 
 some caravanserai yard, open to all the winds. In 
 the night jackals and hyaenas come sniffing my 
 body ; and the marauders, who don't like the dew, 
 get into my compartment to keep warm. . . . 
 
 " Such is the life I lead, my poor Monsieur Tar- 
 tarin, and that I shall lead to the day when burnt 
 up by the sun and rotted by the damp nights 
 unable to do anything else I shall fall in some spot 
 of bad road, where the Arabs will boil their kous- 
 kous with the bones of my old carcass ..." 
 
 "Blidah! Blidah ! " called out the guard, as he 
 opened the door.
 
 CHAPTER IT 
 In which a little man is seen to pass.
 
 II 
 
 /;/ which a little man is seen to pass. 
 
 THROUGH the steam-dimmed panes Tartarin of 
 'Tarascon could vaguely see a market-place, as of a 
 pretty provincial town, a regular square, sur- 
 rounded bv arcades and planted with orange- 
 trees, in the midst of which little tin soldiers were 
 going through their exercise in the clear roseate 
 morning mist. The cafe's were taking down their 
 shutters. In one corner, a vegetable market. ... It 
 was bewitching, but it did not smack of lions yet. 
 
 "To the South! farther to the South!" muttered 
 the good Tartarin, sinking back in his corner. 
 
 185
 
 1 86 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 At this moment the door opened. A puff of fresh, 
 air rushed in, bearing on its wings, in the perfume 
 of orange-blossoms, a very short gentleman in a 
 brown frock-coat, old and dry, wrinkled and for- 
 mal, his face no bigger than your fist, his black 
 silk neck-cloth five fingers wide, a notary's letter- 
 case, and umbrella, the very picture of a village 
 solicitor. 
 
 On perceiving the Tarasconian's warlike equip- 
 ment, the little gentleman, who had sat down oppo- 
 site him, appeared excessively surprised, and began 
 to stare at Tartarin with annoying persistency. 
 
 The horses were taken out and the fresh ones put 
 in; the coach started off again. . . . The little gentle- 
 man still gazed at Tartarin. . . . At last the Taras- 
 conian took offence at it. 
 
 "Does it astonish you?" he demanded, staring 
 the little gentleman full in the face in his turn. 
 
 " No ! it annoys me," responded the other, very 
 tranquilly. 
 
 And the fact is, that, with his shelter-tent, his 
 revolvers, his two guns in their cases, and hunting- 
 knife, not to speak of his natural corpulence, 
 Tartarin of Tarascon took 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 ; then, still with the same lack of emotion, 
 inquired, 
 
 " Then, sir, you are "
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 187 
 
 " Tartarin of Tarascon, lion-killer ! " 
 
 In uttering these words the intrepid Tarasconian 
 shook the tassel of his Chechia like a mane. 
 
 There was in the diligence a movement of stupe- 
 faction. 
 
 The Trappist brother crossed himself, the dubious 
 women uttered little screams of affright, and the 
 Orleansville photographer bent over toward the lion- 
 slayer, already meditating the distinguished honor 
 of taking his likeness. 
 
 The little man, though, was not awed. 
 
 " Have you already killed many lions, Monsieur 
 Tartarin ? " he asked very quietly. 
 
 The Tarasconian received his charge in the hand- 
 somest manner. 
 
 " Have I killed many, Monsieur? ... I only wish 
 you had as many hairs on your head ! " 
 
 All the coach laughed on observing three yel- 
 low bristles standing up on' the little gentleman's 
 skull. 
 
 In his turn, the Orldansville 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. 
 
 " Are you acquainted with him ? " demanded the 
 little man. 
 
 " Te ! pardil . . . Know him? . . . We have been 
 out on the hunt over twenty times together."
 
 1 88 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 
 
 The little gentleman smiled: 
 
 " So you also hunt panthers, Monsieur Tartarin? " 
 
 " Sometimes, just for pastime," said the fiery 
 Tarasconian. " But," he added, tossing his head 
 with a heroic movement that inflamed the heart of 
 the two cocottes, " that 's nothing compared to lion- 
 hunting." 
 
 " After all," ventured the photographer, " a pan- 
 ther is only 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 guard came to 
 open the door, and addressed the little old gentleman 
 most respectfully, saying, 
 
 " Here we are, sir." 
 
 The little gentleman got up, stepped out, and said, 
 before the door was closed again, 
 
 "Will you let me give you a bit of advice, 
 Monsieur Tartarin ? " 
 
 "What is it, Monsieur?" 
 
 " Faith ! you look like a good fellow. I prefer to 
 tell you things as they are. Go back quickly to 
 Tarascon, Monsieur Tartarin. . . . You are wasting 
 your time here. ... A few panthers are left in the 
 colony : but, out upon the big cats ! they are too 
 small game for you. ... As for lions, they 're all 
 gone. There's none left in Algeria . . . my friend 
 Chassaing has lately killed the last." 
 
 Upon which the little gentleman saluted, closed 
 the door, and trotted away chuckling, with his 
 document-wallet and umbrella.
 
 TARTARIN OF TAKASCON 189 
 
 " Guard," asked Tartarin, screwing up his face 
 contemptuously, " who under the sun is that little 
 man? " 
 
 " What ! don't you know him ? Why, that 's 
 Monsieur Bombonnel!"
 
 CHAPTER III 
 A monastery of Lions.
 
 y4 monastery of lions. 
 
 AT Milianah, Tartarin of Tarascon alighted, leav- 
 ing the stage-coach to continue its way toward the 
 South. 
 
 Two days of rough jolting, two nights spent with 
 open eyes gazing out of the window with the hope of 
 discovering the dread figure of a lion in the fields 
 along the road, so much sleeplessness well deserved 
 some hours' repose. Besides, if we must tell every- 
 thing, since his misadventure with Bombonnel, the 
 outspoken Tartarin, notwithstanding his weapons, his 
 terrifying visage, and his red cap, felt ill at ease 
 before the Orleansville photographer and the two 
 young ladies of the Third Hussars. 
 
 So he proceeded through the broad streets of 
 Milianah, full of fine trees and fountains; but while 
 looking up a suitable hotel, the poor fellow could not 
 help musing over Bombonnel's words. . . . Suppose 
 
 193
 
 194 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 they were true ! Suppose there were no more lions 
 in Algeria ? . . . What would be the good then of so 
 much running about, of so many fatigues ? . . . 
 
 Suddenly, at the turn of a street, our hero found 
 himself face to face with with what ? Guess ! . . . 
 With a splendid lion waiting before a coffee-house 
 door, royally sitting up on his hind-quarters, with 
 his tawny mane gleaming in the sun. 
 
 " What did they mean by telling me that there 
 were no more of them ? " exclaimed the Tarasconian, 
 as he recoiled. 
 
 On hearing this outcry, the lion lowered his head, 
 and, taking up in his mouth a wooden bowl that 
 was before him on the sidewalk, humbly held it 
 out towards Tartarin, who was immovable with 
 stupefaction. ... A passing Arab tossed a copper 
 into the bowl ; the lion wagged his tail. . . . There- 
 upon Tartarin understood it all. He saw, what 
 emotion had prevented him previously perceiving, the 
 crowd gathered around a poor tame blind lion, and 
 the two stalwart negroes, armed with staves, who 
 were marching him through the town as a Savoyard 
 does a marmot. 
 
 The blood of Tarascon boiled over at once. 
 
 " Wretches ! " he roared in a voice of thunder, 
 " thus to debase such noble beasts ! " 
 
 And springing to the lion, he wrenched the loath- 
 some bowl from between his royal jaws. . . . The 
 two negroes, believing they had a thief to contend 
 with, rushed upon the Tarasconian with uplifted 
 cudgels. . . . There was a dreadful tussle. . . . The 
 negroes whacked, the women screamed, the young-
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 195 
 
 sters laughed. An old Jew cobbler shouted from 
 the depths of his slicp, " Dake him to the shustish 
 of thebeace!" The lion himself, in his blindness, 
 
 tried to roar ; and the unhappy Tartarin, after a 
 desperate struggle, rolled on the ground among the 
 spilt sous 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 curbstone. 
 
 " What,^r//#tf, is it you ? " said the good Tartarin, 
 rubbing his ribs. 
 
 "Yes, indeed, it is I, my valiant friend. As soon
 
 196 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 as your letter was received, I intrusted Ba'ia 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 in Heaven's name have you been doing to 
 bring this ugly trouble upon you?" 
 
 "There, now, preince ! ... It was too much for 
 me to see this unfortunate lion with a wooden bowl 
 in his mouth, humiliated, conquered, buffeted about, 
 set up as a laughing-stock to all this Mussulman 
 rabble " 
 
 " But you are wrong, my noble friend. On the 
 contrary, this lion is an object of respect and adora- 
 tion. This is a sacred beast which belongs to a 
 great monastery of lions, founded three hundred years 
 ago by Mahommed-Ben-Auda, a kind of fierce and 
 formidable La Trappe, full of roarings and wild- 
 beastly odors, where strange monks rear and tame 
 lions by hundreds, and send them out all over North- 
 ern Africa, accompanied by begging brothers. . . . 
 The alms they receive serve for the maintenance of 
 the monastery and its mosque ; 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 sou, a single sou, 
 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 Mon-
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 1 97 
 
 sieur 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 Sheliff Plain, and you will see ! . . . " 
 
 " What, prince ! ... do you intend 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. . . . Wherever 
 you go, I want to be there." 
 
 " O preince ! prelnce ! " 
 
 The beaming Tartarin hugged the devoted Gregory 
 to his breast with pride at the thought that, like Jules 
 Gerard, Bombonnel, and other famous lion-slayers, 
 he was to have a foreign prince to accompany him 
 in his hunting.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The caravan on the march.
 
 IV 
 
 The caravan on the inarch. 
 
 LEAVING Milianah at the earliest hour next morn- 
 ing, the intrepid Tartarin and the no less intrepid 
 Prince Gregory, followed by half-a-dozen negro 
 porters, descended towards the Sheliff Plain through 
 a delightful gorge shaded with jasmines, tuyas, 
 carob-trees, and wild olives, between hedges of little 
 native gardens, and thousands of merry, lively rills 
 which scampered down from rock to rock with a 
 singing splash ... A veritable landscape of 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. 
 
 201
 
 2O2 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 This devil of a cap much puzzled the Tarasconian ; 
 and as he timidly craved some explanation, the 
 prince gravely answered, 
 
 " It is a kind of headgear indispensable for travel 
 in Algeria." 
 
 And while 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, 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 employes in Ke'pis, from the road- 
 breaker to the receiver-general. 
 
 " In fact, 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 alone does 
 it, a handsome laced Kepi, shining at the top of a 
 pole, like Gessler's." 
 
 Thus chatting and philosophizing, the caravan 
 proceeded. The barefooted porters leaped from 
 rock to rock with ape-like screams. The gun-cases 
 clanked. The guns 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 weapons gleaming between the branches, 
 fancied there was a revolt, ordered the drawbridge 
 to be raised, the general alarm to be sounded, and 
 put the whole town under a state of siege. 
 
 A capital commencement for the caravan ! 
 
 Unfortunately, before the day ended, things went
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 203 
 
 wrong. Of the negro luggage-bearers, one was doubled 
 up with atrocious colics from having eaten the adhe- 
 sive plaster out of the medicine-chest. Another fell 
 
 on the roadside dead- 
 drunk with camphor- 
 ated brandy. The 
 
 third - carrier of the 
 
 travelling-album, de- 
 ceived by the gilding 
 on the clasps, and 
 
 persuaded 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 give up negro porters 
 from this evening forward," said the prince, trying 
 unsuccessfully to melt a cake of compressed meat 
 in an improved pat- 
 ent triple - bottomed 
 saucepan. " There 
 is an Arab market 
 quite near here. The 
 best thing to do is to 
 stop there, and buy 
 bourriquots" 
 
 "No, ... no; ... no bourriquots" quickly inter- 
 rupted the great Tartarin, becoming quite red at 
 memory of Noiraud. And, hypocrite that he was. 
 he added, " How can you expect that such little 
 beasts could carry all our apparatus?" 
 
 The prince smiled. 
 
 V
 
 204 
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 " You are making a mistake, my illustrious friend. 
 However lean and thin 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. This is how they explain the French 
 colonial organization. . . . ' On the top,' they say, 
 ' is must the Gov- 
 ernor, with a heavy 
 club to cane the staff; 
 the staff, for revenge, 
 canes the soldier ; the 
 soldier canes the set- 
 tler, and the settler 
 canes the Arab; the 
 Arab canes the negro, 
 the negro canes the 
 Jew, and the Jew in 
 his turn canes the 
 bourriquot, and the 
 poor little bourriquot, having nobody to belabor, 
 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 would 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 market. 
 
 The market was held a few miles away, on the 
 banks of the Sheliff. . . . There were five or six 
 thousand Arabs in tatters there, swarming in the
 
 TARTARIN OF TAR A SCON 205 
 
 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 red arms and their feet in 
 gore, were cutting up kids hanging from cross-poles, 
 with small knives. 
 
 In one corner, under a tent patched with a thou- 
 sand colors, a Moorish scribe in spectacles was 
 scrawling in a large book. Here a group shouts 
 with rage : it was a game of roulette set on a 
 corn-measure, and Kabyles were ready to cut one 
 another's throats over it. ... Yonder were laughs 
 and contortions of delight : they were watching a 
 Jew trader on a mule drowning in the Sheliff. . . . 
 Then scorpions, dogs, ravens, and flies ! . . . 
 
 But camels were lacking. They finally discovered 
 one, though, which some M'zabites were trying to 
 dispose of. It was 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 melan- 
 cholically 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. They strapped on the 
 boxes. 
 
 The prince enthroned himself on the animal's 
 neck. Tartarin, for the sake of the greater majesty, 
 got them to hoist him on the top of the hump 
 between two boxes, where, proud, and cosily wedged
 
 2O6 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 in, be saluted the whole market with a lofty wave of 
 the hand, and gave the signal of departure. . . . 
 
 Thunder ! 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 growing pale, and the heroic Chechia 
 assumed one by one its former positions as in the 
 "Zouave." This devil's own camel pitched and 
 tossed like a frigate. 
 
 " Prtince ! preface ! " gasped Tartarin, pallid as 
 a ghost, and clinging to the dry tuft of the hump, 
 " preince, let 's get down. I feel ... I feel that I 
 m m must get off, or I shall disgrace France . . ." 
 
 Go to ! The camel had started, and nothing could 
 stop it. Behind it raced four thousand barefooted 
 Arabs, gesticulating, laughing like mad, and making 
 six hundred thousand white teeth glitter in the 
 sun. . . . 
 
 The great man of Tarascon had to resign himself. 
 He sadly collapsed on the hump. The Chechia took 
 all the positions it fancied, . . . and France was 
 disgraced.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The nigJit watch in an Oleander Grove.
 
 Trie night-watch in an Oleander Grove. 
 
 PICTURESQUE as was their new steed, our lion- 
 hunters had to give it up, out of consideration for 
 the red cap. So they continued the journey on foot 
 as before, and the caravan tranquilly proceeded 
 southward 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 a month, seeking for lions impossible to 
 find, the terrible Tartarin roamed from dftar to ddar 
 on the immense plain of the Sheliff, through that 
 formidable and absurd French Algeria, where the 
 old Oriental perfumes are complicated by a strong 
 odor of absinthe and the barracks, Abraham and
 
 210 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 "the Zouzou" mingled, something fairy-tale-like and 
 naively burlesque, like a page of the Old Testament 
 related by Sergeant La Rame, or Brigadier Pitou. 
 
 A curious sight for those who have eyes to see. . . . 
 
 A wild and corrupted people whom we are civiliz- 
 ing by teaching them our vices. . . . The ferocious 
 and uncontrolled authority of grotesque bashagas, 
 who gravely blow their noses on the wide ribbons of 
 the Legion of Honor, and for a mere yea or nay 
 order a man to be bastinadoed. It is the conscience- 
 less justice of begoggled cadis under the palm-tree, 
 hypocrites of the Koran and of the Law, dreaming 
 languidly of promotion and selling their decrees, as 
 Esau his birthright, for a dish of lentils or sweetened 
 kouskous. Drunken and libertine military cai'ds, 
 formerly servants to some General Yusuf or the 
 like, who riot on champagne with laundresses from 
 Port Mahon, and junket on roast mutton, while 
 before their tents the whole tribe waste away with 
 hunger, and fight with the hounds for the scraps of 
 the lordly feast. 
 
 Then, all around, desert plains, burnt grass, leafless 
 shrubs, thickets of cactus and mastic, " the Granary 
 of France ! "... A granary void of grain, alas ! and 
 rich only in jackals and bugs. Abandoned douars, 
 frightened tribes fleeing they know not whither to 
 escape famine, and strewing the road with corpses. 
 At long intervals a French village, with the dwellings 
 in ruins, the fields untilled, maddened locusts gnaw- 
 ing even the window-blinds, and all the settlers in 
 the cafe's engaged in drink ,ng absinthe and discussing 
 projects of reform and the Constitution.
 
 TARTAR1N OF TARASCON 211 
 
 This is what Tartarin might have seen had he 
 taken the trouble ; but, wholly absorbed in his leonine 
 passion, the man of Tarascon went straight on, 
 looking to neither right nor left, his eyes steadfastly 
 fixed on those imaginary monsters which never really 
 appeared. 
 
 As the shelter-tent was stubborn in not unfold- 
 ing, and the compressed meat-cakes would not dis- 
 solve, the caravan was obliged to stop, morning and 
 evening, at tribal camps. Everywhere, thanks to 
 Prince Gregory's cap, our hunters were welcomed 
 with open arms. They lodged with agas, in fantastic 
 palaces, large white windowless farmhouses, where 
 were found, pell-mell, narghilehs and mahogany 
 commodes, 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 splendid fetes, 
 diffas, and fantasias. ... In his honor whole gontns 
 made their powder speak and their burnouses gleam 
 in the sun. When the powder had spoken, the good 
 aga would come and hand in his bill. . . . This is 
 what is called Arab hospitality. 
 
 But still no lions. No more lions than on the 
 New Bridge. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Tarasconian did not grow dis- 
 heartened. Bravely diving ever more deeply into 
 the South, he spent his days in beating up the 
 thickets, probing the dwarf-palms with the muzzle 
 of his rifle, and saying " Frrt ! frrt ! " to every bush. 
 And every evening, before lying down, a little
 
 212 TARTAJUN OF TARASCOK 
 
 ambush for two or three hours. . . . Useless trouble ! 
 the lion did not show himself. 
 
 One evening, however, toward six o'clock, as the 
 caravan was scrambling through a violet-hued mastic- 
 grove, where fat quails, rendered heavy by the heat 
 were tumbling about in the grass, Tartarin of Taras- 
 con fancied he heard but afar, but vague, but 
 thinned down by the breeze that wondrous roaring 
 to which he had so often listened at Tarascon from 
 behind Mitaine's Menagerie. 
 
 At first the hero feared he was dreaming. . . . But 
 in another instant the roaring began again more 
 distinct, although yet remote; and this time the 
 camel's hump shivered in terror, making the canned 
 meats and the arms in the cases rattle, while all the 
 dogs in the Arab douars were heard howling in every 
 corner of the horizon. 
 
 No more doubt ! It was the liqn. . . . 
 
 Quick, quick ! to the ambush. Not a minute to 
 lose ! 
 
 Near at hand there happened to be an old mara- 
 bout (a 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 
 burnouses, gold thread, red hair hanging on the 
 wall. . . . 
 
 Tartarin of Tarascon left his prince and his camel 
 there, and went in search of a good spot for lying in 
 wait. Prince Gregory wanted to follow him, but 
 the Tarasconian refused; he was bent on confronting 
 the lion alone. But still he besought his Highness 
 not to go too far away, and, as a measure of foresight,
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 21$ 
 
 he intrusted him with his pocket-book, a fat pocket- 
 book, 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 marabout, a little 
 clump of oleander-trees shook in the twilight haze 
 on the edge of a rivulet all but dried up. There
 
 214 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 it was that Tartarin went into ambush, one knee on 
 the ground, according to the formula, 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. . . . Below him among the river 
 pebbles gleamed a little pool of clear water like a 
 hand-glass ; this was the watering-place of the wild 
 animals. On the slope of the opposite bank was 
 dimly discernible the whitish trail which their heavy 
 paws had traced among the lentisk bushes. This 
 mysterious path made the flesh creep. Add to this 
 the vague swarming sound of the African nights, the 
 light rustling of branches, the velvety steps of roving 
 creatures, the jackal's shrill yelp, and up in the sky, 
 five or ten hundred feet aloft, vast flocks of cranes 
 passing on with screams like children having their 
 throats cut. You will own that there were grounds 
 for a man being moved. 
 
 Tartarin was. He was even more than that. His 
 teeth chattered, poor fellow ! And on the cross-bar 
 of his hunting-knife, planted upright in the bank, 
 his rifle-barrel rattled like a pair of castanets. . . . 
 What do you expect? There are times when one is 
 not in the mood ; and, then, 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, for two hours ; but heroism has its 
 limits. . . . Near him, in the dry part of the rivulet-
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 21$ 
 
 bed, the Tarasconian suddenly hears a sound of 
 steps and of pebbles rolling. This time terror lifted 
 him off the ground. He fired off both his barrels 
 at haphazard into the night, and retreated as fast as 
 his legs would carry him to the maraboufs tomb, 
 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 ! preince ... the lion ! " 
 
 Silence ! 
 
 " Preince, preince, are you there ? " 
 
 The prince was not there. On the white moonlit 
 wall of the marabout the good camel alone cast the 
 queer-shaped shadow of his hump. . . . Prince 
 Gregory had cut and run with the wallet and the 
 bank-notes. . . . His Highness had been for a month 
 past awaiting this opportunity. . . .
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 At last! . . .
 
 VI 
 
 WHEN, on the morning after this adventurous and 
 tragic eve, our hero awoke early, very early, and got 
 assurance doubly sure that the prince and the trea- 
 sure had really gone off, gone off never to return ! 
 when he found himself alone in that little white tomb, 
 betrayed, robbed, abandoned in the heart of wild 
 Algeria, with a one-humped camel and some pocket- 
 money as all his resources, then for the first time 
 the Tarasconian doubted. He doubted Montene- 
 gro, he doubted friendship, he doubted glory, he 
 doubted even the lions; and the great man, like 
 Christ at Gethsemane, began to weep bitterly. 
 
 Now, while he was pensively seated there on the 
 sill of the marabout, with his head between his hands 
 and his gun between his legs, with the camel gazing 
 
 219
 
 22O TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 at him, suddenly the thicket in front of him was 
 divided, and Tartarin stupefied saw a gigantic lion 
 appear not a dozen paces off. It came on with its 
 head on high and emitting formidable roars, which 
 made the tinsel-laden walls of the marabout shake, 
 and even the saint's slippers dance in their niche. 
 
 The Tarasconian alone did not tremble. 
 
 " At last ! " he shouted, jumping up and levelling 
 the rifle. 
 
 Bang ! . . . bang ! pfft ! pfft ! It was done. . . . 
 
 The lion had two explosive bullets in his head. 
 For a minute, on the fiery background of the Afric 
 sky, there was a dreadful firework display of scattered 
 brains, smoking blood, and tawny hair. Then all 
 fell, and Tartarin perceived . . . two tall angry negroes 
 running toward him, brandishing their cudgels. The 
 two negroes of Milianah! 
 
 Oh, misery ! 
 
 It was the domesticated lion, the poor blind beggar 
 of the Mohammed Monastery, which the Tarasco- 
 nian's bullets had just knocked over. 
 
 This time, by Mahound, Tartarin escaped neatly. 
 Drunk with fanatical fury, the two negro collectors 
 would have surely beaten him to pulp had not the 
 God of the Christians sent to his aid a delivering 
 angel, the garde champetre of the Orle'ansville 
 commune, coming up by a bypath with his sword 
 under his arm. 
 
 The sight of the municipal cap suddenly calmed 
 the negroes' choler. Peaceful and majestic, the man 
 with the badge drew up a report on the affair, ordered 
 the camel to be loaded with what remained of the
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 221 
 
 lion, and the plaintiffs as well as the delinquent to 
 follow him, and proceeded to Orleansville, where the 
 whole matter was laid before the registry. 
 
 There resulted a long and terrible suit ! 
 
 After the Algeria of the native tribes which he 
 had just been traversing, Tartarin of Tarascon be- 
 came henceforth acquainted with another Algeria, 
 not less ridiculous and to be dreaded, the Algeria 
 of the towns, litigious and pettifogging. He came 
 to know the squint-eyed Law that is brewed at the 
 back of a cafe", the Bohemia of the Bar, briefs 
 reeking of absinthe, white neckcloths spotted with 
 champorcau ; he came to know the ushers, the attor- 
 neys, the business agents, all those locusts of stamped 
 paper, meagre and famished, who eat up the colonist 
 even to the very straps of his boots, and leave him 
 stripped leaf by leaf like a cornstalk. . . . 
 
 Before all, it was necessary to ascertain whether 
 the lion had been killed on the civil territory or the 
 military territory. In the former case the matter 
 concerned the Tribunal of Commerce ; in the second, 
 Tartarin would be dealt with by the Council of War; 
 and at the mere name .of Council of War the impres- 
 sionable Tarasconian saw himself already shot at the 
 foot of the ramparts or wallowing at the bottom of 
 a silo. . . . 
 
 The terrible thing about it is that the limitation of 
 the two territories is very hazy in Algeria. . . . 
 
 At length, after a month of running about, of 
 entanglements, and waiting under the sun in the 
 courts of Arab Bureaux, it was established that if on 
 the one hand the lion had been killed on the military
 
 222 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 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, without 
 costs. 
 
 How could he pay such a sum ? 
 
 The few piastres escaped from the prince's raid 
 had long since gone in legal documents and judicial 
 libations. 
 
 The unfortunate lion-destroyer was therefore re- 
 duced to selling the store of guns by retail, rifle by 
 rifle. He sold the daggers, the Malay kreeses, the 
 life-preservers. ... A grocer purchased the preserved 
 meats ; an apothecary what remained of the medica- 
 ments. The big boots themselves walked off, and 
 followed the improved tent to a bric-a-brac dealer, 
 who elevated them to the dignity of " curiosities 
 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 the gallant Commandant Bravida. (We 
 shall soon 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 dispose of, and no one would offer a 
 copper for him. 
 
 Still Tartarin wanted to regain Algiers by hook 
 or by crook. He was in haste once more to behold 
 Ba'ia's blue bodice, his little snuggery and his foun-
 
 TARTAR IN OF TARASCON 22 3 
 
 tains, and to repose on the white trefoils of his 
 little cloister while 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 abandon him. 
 The strange animal had taken an unaccountable 
 fancy for his master, and on seeing him leave 
 Orleansville, he started off striding religiously be- 
 hind him, regulating his pace by his, and never 
 quitting him by a foot ! 
 
 At the outset Tartarin found this touching; such 
 fidelity, such devotion above proof went to his heart, 
 all the more because the creature was accommo- 
 dating, 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 all his misadventures. Then, out 
 of sheer spite, he was vexed with him because of 
 his sad aspect, his hump, and his gait like a goose 
 in harness. To tell the whole truth, he detested him, 
 and only thought how to get rid of him ; but the 
 animal would not be shaken off. . . . Tartarin tried to 
 lose him, but the camel found him again; he tried 
 to run away, but the camel ran faster. . . . He bade 
 him begone, and hurled stones at him. The camel 
 stopped and gazed at him 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 a long week of tramping, 
 the dusty harassed Tarasconian espied the first
 
 224 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 white housetops of Algiers glimmer from afar in 
 the verdure, when he found himself at the city 
 gates, on the noisy Mustapha Avenue, amid Zouaves, 
 Biskris, and Port Mahon women, all swarming 
 around him and staring at him trudging by with 
 his camel, overtasked patience escaped him. 
 
 " No ! no ! " he said, " it is impossible ! . . . I 
 cannot enter Algiers with such an animal ! " And 
 profiting by a jam of vehicles, he turned off into 
 the fields, and jumped into a ditch. . . . 
 
 At the end of a minute he saw over his head on 
 the highway the camel flying off with long strides, 
 and stretching out his neck with a wistful air. 
 
 Then, relieved of a great weight, 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.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Catastrophes upon catastrophes. 
 
 '5
 
 VII 
 
 Catastrophes upon catastrophes. 
 
 As he reached his Moorish dwelling, Tartar! n 
 stopped in perfect astonishment. 
 
 Day was dying; the street was deserted. Through 
 the low-arched doorway which the negress had for- 
 gotten to close he could hear bursts of laughter, the 
 clink of wine-glasses, the popping of champagne 
 
 227
 
 228 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 corks, and, above all the jolly uproar, a woman's 
 voice, clear and joyous, singing, 
 
 Aimes-tu, Marco la Belle, 
 La danse aux salons en flcur. 
 
 " Tron de Diouf" ejaculated the Tarasconian, 
 turning pale ; and he rushed into the enclosure. 
 
 Hapless Tartarin ! what a sight awaited him ! . . . 
 Beneath the arches of the little cloister, amid bot- 
 tles, pastry, scattered cushions, pipes, tambourines, 
 and guitars, stood Ba'ia, without her blue vest or 
 bodice; wearing only a silvery gauze chemisette 
 and full pink pantaloons; and she was singing 
 Marco la Belle with a ship-captain's cap over one 
 ear. ... At her feet, on a mat, surfeited with love 
 and sweetmeats, Barbassou, the infamous Captain 
 Barbassou, was bursting with laughter at hearing 
 her. 
 
 The apparition of Tartarin, haggard, thin, dusty, 
 his flaming eyes, and the bristling Chechia, sharply 
 interrupted this tender Turkish-Marseillais orgie. 
 Bai'a uttered a squeal like a frightened leveret, and 
 ran for safety into the house. But Barbassou did 
 not wince ; he only laughed the louder, saying, 
 
 "He, he! Monsieur Tartarin! What do you say 
 about it now? You see she knows French." 
 
 Tartarin of Tarascon advanced furiously. 
 
 " Captain ! " 
 
 " Digo-li que vengue, moun bon ! tell him what 's 
 happened, my dear!" screamed the Moorish woman, 
 leaning over the first-floor gallery with a pretty low- 
 bred gesture.
 
 TARTARIN OF TAR AS CON 229 
 
 The poor man, overwhelmed, let himself collapse 
 on a drum. His Moorish beauty even knew the 
 French of Marseilles ! 
 
 " I told you not to trust the Algerian girls," ob- 
 served Captain Barbassou, sententiously. " They 're 
 as tricky as your Montenegrin prince." 
 
 Tartarin raised 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. . . . However, this is not the first 
 time he has been clapped into the calaboose. His 
 Highness has already been three years in some state 
 prison . . . and stop a bit ! I believe it was at 
 Tarascon." 
 
 " At Tarascon ! . . . " cried Tartarin, suddenly 
 enlightened. ..." That 's how he knew only one 
 part of the town." 
 
 "He! Of course. . . -. Tarascon as seen from 
 the state prison. ... I tell you, my poor Monsieur 
 Tartarin, you have to keep your eyes peeled in this 
 deuce of a country, or be exposed to very disagree- 
 able things. . . . For a sample, there 's the muezzin's 
 game with you." 
 
 " What game ? What muezzin ? " 
 
 " Te ! pardi! . . . The muezzin across the way who 
 was making up to Ba'ia. . . . The Akbar told the yarn 
 t' other day, and all Algiers is laughing over it even 
 now. ... It is so funny for that muezzin up there in 
 his tower to make declarations of love under your 
 very nose to the little beauty while singing out his
 
 230 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 prayers, and making appointments with her while 
 invoking the name of Allah." 
 
 " But are they all scamps in this country ? . . . " 
 howled the unlucky Tarasconian. 
 
 Barbassou shrugged his shoulders like a philoso- 
 pher. 
 
 " My dear, you know, these new countries ! . . . 
 But, anyhow, if you '11 believe me, you 'd best go back 
 to Tarascon at full speed." 
 
 " Go back ! . . . It 's easy to say. . . . And the 
 money? Don't you know that I was plucked out 
 there in the desert?" 
 
 " What does that matter ? " said the captain, laugh- 
 ing. " The ' Zouave ' sails to-morrow, and if you 
 like I will take you home. . . . Does that suit you, 
 mate? . . . Very well, then. You have only one 
 thing to do. There are some bottles of champagne 
 left, and half the pie. Sit you down and pitch in 
 without any grudge. ..." 
 
 After the minute's wavering which his dignity 
 demanded, the Tarasconian chose his course man- 
 fully. Down he sat, and they touched glasses. 
 Ba'ia, gliding down when she heard that chinking 
 sound, sang the finale of Marco la Belle, and the 
 jollification was prolonged deep into the night. 
 
 About 3 A.M., with a light head but a heavy foot, 
 the good Tarasconian was returning from seeing his 
 friend the captain home, when, in passing the mosque. 
 the remembrance of the 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
 
 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 231 
 
 corridors laid with mats, mounted and kept on 
 mounting, and at last found himself in a little Turk- 
 ish oratory, where an openwork iron lantern swung 
 from the ceiling, embroidering an odd pattern in 
 shadows on the white walls. 
 
 There sat the muezzin on a divan, in his large 
 turban and white pelisse, with his Mostaganem pipe, 
 and a great glass of absinthe which he was whipping 
 up in the orthodox manner, while awaiting the hour 
 to call true believers to prayer. ... At view of 
 Tartarin, he dropped his pipe in terror. 
 
 " Not a word, priest ! " said the Tarasconian, full 
 of his project. " Quick ! your turban, your pelisse ! " 
 
 The Turkish priest all a-trembling handed over 
 his turban, his pelisse, all that was demanded. 
 Tartarin put them on, and gravely stepped out on 
 the platform of the minaret. 
 
 In the distance shone the sea. The white roofs 
 glittered in the moonbeams. On the sea-breeze was 
 heard the strumming of a few belated guitars. . . . 
 The muezzin Tarascon deliberated for a moment ; 
 then, raising his arms, he set to chanting in a very 
 shrill voice, 
 
 " La Allah il Allah ! . . . Mahomet is an old hum- 
 bug ! . . . The Orient, the Koran, bashagas, lions, 
 Moorish beauties, the whole thing is not worth 
 a rap ! . . . There are no more Teurs ! There 
 is nothing left but gammoners. . . . Long live 
 Tarascon ! " 
 
 And while the illustrious Tartarin, in his queer 
 jumbling of Arabic and Provencal, flung his mirth- 
 ful Tarasconian malediction to the four corners of
 
 232 FARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 the horizon, over the sea, over the town, over the 
 plain, over the 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.
 
 Tarascon I Tarascon f
 
 VIII 
 
 Tarascon .' Tarascon ! 
 
 MID-DAY. 
 
 The " Zouave " has her steam up, ready to sail. Up 
 yonder, on the balcony of the Valentin Cafe", the 
 officers are levelling telescopes, and from the colonel 
 down are taking turns looking at the lucky little 
 craft that is going back to France. . This is the 
 main distraction of the staff. . . . On the lower level 
 the roads glitter. The breaches of the old Turkish 
 cannon, stuck up along the quay, blaze in the sun. 
 The passengers are hurrying. Biskris and Mahon- 
 nais are piling luggage up in the transfer-boats. 
 
 235
 
 236 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 Tartarin of Tarascon has 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 
 has left on the Moorish strand his gun-cases and his 
 illusions, and now he is ready to sail for Tarascon 
 with his hands in his pockets. . . . He has barely 
 leaped into the captain's cutter before a breathless 
 beast dashes down from the heights of the square 
 and gallops toward him. It is the camel, the faithful 
 camel, which during four-and-twenty hours has been 
 hunting after his master in Algiers. 
 
 On seeing him, Tartarin changes countenance, 
 and pretends not to know him ; but the camel is 
 desperate. He frisks along the quay ; he whinnies 
 for his friend ; he gazes on him with affection. 
 
 " Take me away," his sad eyes seem to say, 
 " take me away in your ship, far, far from this painted, 
 pasteboard Arabia, this ridiculous Orient, full of 
 locomotives and stage-coaches, where I a declassed 
 dromedary know not what will become of me. You 
 are the last real Turk ; I am the last camel. . . . Let 
 us not part, O my Tartarin ! " 
 
 " Is that camel yours ? " inquires the captain. 
 
 " Not at all ! " replies Tartarin, groaning at the 
 idea of entering Tarascon with that ridiculous es- 
 cort; and, impudently denying the companion of 
 his misfortunes, he spurns the Algerian soil, and 
 shoves the cutter off with his foot. . . . The camel 
 sniffs of the water, stretches out its neck, cracks 
 its joints, and, desperately jumping in behind the 
 row-boat, he swims toward the "Zouave," with
 
 TARTARIN OF TAKASCON 237 
 
 his humped back floating like a bladder, and his 
 long neck projecting over the wave like the beak 
 of a trireme. 
 
 Cutter and camel come alongside the mail-steamer 
 together. 
 
 " Now really this dromedary makes me sad," says 
 Captain Barbassou, quite affected. " I have a good 
 mind to take him aboard. . . . When I get to Mar- 
 seilles, I will make a present of him to the Zoological 
 Gardens." 
 
 With the aid of many blocks and tackles, they 
 hoist the camel, heavy with brine, up on deck, and 
 the " Zouave " starts. 
 
 The two days of the crossing Tartarin spent all 
 alone in his stateroom, not because the sea was 
 rough, or because the Chechia had too much to 
 endure, but because that deuced camel, as soon 
 as his master appeared above decks, showed him 
 the most preposterous attentions. . . . You never 
 saw 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 blue Algerian sky pale away; then one 
 morning, in a silvery fog, he heard with delight all 
 the bells of Marseilles ringing out. They had 
 arrived. . . . The "Zouave" cast anchor. 
 
 Our man, having no luggage, got off without say- 
 ing anything, hastily slipped through Marseilles, 
 always fearing he should be pursued by the camel, 
 and never breathed till he was in a third-class 
 carriage making for Tarascon. . . .
 
 238 TARTARIN OF TARASCON 
 
 Deceptive security ! 
 
 Hardly are they two leagues from Marseilles when, 
 lo ! all heads are stuck out of windows. There are 
 outcries and astonishment. Tartarin in his turn 
 looks, and . . . what does he descry ! . . . The camel, 
 Monsieur, the inevitable camel, racing over the rails 
 through the depths of Crau behind the train, and 
 keeping up with it ! Tartarin in dismay 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 ... a camel ! 
 
 " Tarascon ! . . . Tarascon ! " 
 
 He was obliged to get down. . . . 
 
 Oh, amazement ! 
 
 Scarce had the hero's Chechia appeared in the 
 doorway before a loud shout of " Vive Tartarin ! " 
 made the glazed roof of the railway-station tremble. 
 " Long life to Tartarin, the lion-slayer ! " And out 
 burst the blast of horns and the choruses of the 
 local musical societies. . . . 
 
 Tartarin felt death had come : he thought it was 
 a hoax. But, no ! all Tarascon was there, waving 
 their hats, and enthusiastic ! Behold the gallant 
 Commandant Bravida, Costecalde the armorer, the 
 Chief Judge, the apothecary, and the whole noble 
 corps of cap-hunters pressing around their leader,
 
 TARTARIN OF 7*ARASCON 239 
 
 and carrying him in triumph out through the passage- 
 ways. . . . 
 
 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" had spoken of it. A drama had been 
 invented. Tartarin had slain not merely one lion, 
 but ten lions, twenty lions, a marmalade of lions ! 
 Hence Tartarin, on disembarking at Marseilles, was 
 already celebrated without being aware of it, and an 
 enthusiastic telegram had gone on two hours before 
 him to his native place. 
 
 But what capped the climax of the popular glad- 
 ness was to see a fantastic animal, covered with 
 dust and sweat, appear behind the hero, and stumble 
 down the station stairs. 
 
 Tarascon for an instant believed that its dragon 
 was come again. 
 
 Tartarin reassured his fellow-citizens. 
 
 "This is my camel," he said. 
 
 And already, under the influence of the Tarasco 
 nian sun, that splendid sun which makes people lie 
 ingenuously, he added, as he fondled the dromedary'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 pla-
 
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