Tartarin Of Tarascon Part 3

Gradually, however, Tartarin's bearing restored courage. With head erect, the intrepid Tarasconian slowly and calmly made the circuit of the booth, pa.s.sing the seal's tank without stopping, glancing disdainfully on the long box filled with sawdust in which the boa would digest its raw fowl, and going to take his stand before the lion's cage.

A terrible and solemn confrontation, this! The lion of Tarascon and the lion of Africa face to face!

On the one part, Tartarin erect, with his hamstrings in tension, and his arms folded on his gun barrel; on the other, the lion, a gigantic specimen, humped up in the straw, with blinking orbs and brutish mien, resting his huge muzzle and tawny full-bottomed wig on his forepaws.

Both calm in their gaze.

Singular thing! whether the needle-gun had given him "the needle," if the popular idiom is admissible, or that he scented an enemy of his race, the lion, who had hitherto regarded the Tarasconians with sovereign scorn, and yawned in their faces, was all at once affected by ire. At first he sniffed; then he growled hollowly, stretching out his claws; rising, he tossed his head, shook his mane, opened a capacious maw, and belched a deafening roar at Tartarin.

A yell of fright responded, as Tarascon precipitated itself madly towards the exit, women and children, lightermen, cap-poppers, even the brave Commandant Bravida himself. But, alone, Tartarin of Tarascon had not budged. There he stood, firm and resolute, before the cage, lightnings in his eyes, and on his lip that gruesome grin with which all the town was familiar. In a moment's time, when all the cap-poppers, some little fortified by his bearing and the strength of the bars, re-approached their leader, they heard him mutter, as he stared Leo out of countenance:

"Now, this is something like a hunt!"

All the rest of that day, never a word farther could they draw from Tartarin of Tarascon.

IX. Singular effects of Mental Mirage.

CONFINING his remarks to the sentence last recorded, Tartarin had unfortunately still said overmuch.

On the morrow, there was nothing talked about through town but the near-at-hand departure of Tartarin for Algeria and lion-hunting. You are all witness, dear readers, that the honest fellow had not breathed a word on that head; but, you know, the mirage had its usual effect. In brief, all Tarascon spoke of nothing but the departure.

On the Old Walk, at the club, in Costecalde's, friends accosted one another with a startled aspect:

"And furthermore, you know the news, at least?"

"And furthermore, rather? Tartarin's setting out, at least?"

For at Tarascon all phrases begin with "and furthermore," and conclude with "at least," with a strong local accent. Hence, on this occasion more than upon others, these peculiarities rang out till the windows shivered.

The most surprised of men in the town on hearing that Tartarin was going away to Africa, was Tartarin himself. But only see what vanity is!

Instead of plumply answering that he was not going at all, and had not even had the intention, poor Tartarin, on the first of them mentioning the journey to him, observed with a neat little evasive air, "Aha!

maybe I shall--but I do not say as much." The second time; a trifle more familiarised with the idea, he replied, "Very likely;" and the third time, "It's certain."

Finally, in the evening, at Costecalde's and the club, carried away by the egg-nogg, cheers, and illumination; intoxicated by the impression that bare announcement of his departure had made on the town, the hapless fellow formally declared that he was sick of banging away at caps, and that he would shortly be on the trail of the great lions of the Atlas. A deafening hurrah greeted this a.s.sertion. Whereupon more egg-nogg, bravoes, handshaking, slappings of the shoulder, and a torchlight serenade up to midnight before Baobab Villa.

It was Sancho-Tartarin who was anything but delighted. This idea of travel in Africa and lion-hunting made him shudder beforehand; and when the house was re-entered, and whilst the complimentary concert was sounding under the windows, he had a dreadful "row" with Quixote-Tartarin, calling him a cracked head, a visionary, imprudent, and thrice an idiot, and detailing by the card all the catastrophes awaiting him on such an expedition--shipwreck, rheumatism, yellow fever, dysentery, the black plague, elephantiasis, and the rest of them.

In vain did Quixote-Tartarin vow that he had not committed any imprudence--that he would wrap himself up well, and take even superfluous necessaries with him. Sancho-Tartarin would listen to nothing. The poor craven saw himself already torn to tatters by the lions, or engulfed in the desert sands like his late royal highness Cambyses, and the other Tartarin only managed to appease him a little by explaining that the start was not immediate, as nothing pressed.

It is clear enough, indeed, that none embark on such an enterprise without some preparations. A man is bound to know whither he goes, hang it all! and not fly off like a bird. Before anything else, the Tarasconian wanted to peruse the accounts of great African tourists, the narrations of Mungo Park, Du Chaillu, Dr. Livingstone, Stanley, and so on.

In them, he learnt that these daring explorers, before donning their sandals for distant excursions, hardened themselves well beforehand to support hunger and thirst, forced marches, and all kinds of privation.

Tartarin meant to act like they did, and from that day forward he lived upon water broth alone. The water broth of Tarascon is a few slices of bread drowned in hot water, with a clove of garlic, a pinch of thyme, and a sprig of laurel. Strict diet, at which you may believe poor Sancho made a wry face.

To the regimen of water broth Tartarin of Tarascon joined other wise practices. To break himself into the habit of long marches, he constrained himself to go round the town seven or eight times consecutively every morning, either at the fast walk or run, his elbows well set against his body, and a couple of white pebbles in the mouth, according to the antique usage.

To get inured to fog, dew, and night coolness, he would go down into his garden every dusk, and stop out there till ten or eleven, alone with his gun, on the lookout, behind the baobab.

Finally, so long as Mitaine's wild beast show tarried in Tarascon, the cap-poppers who were belated at Costecalde's might spy in the shadow of the booth, as they crossed the Castle-green, a mysterious figure stalking up and down. It was Tartarin of Tarascon, habituating himself to hear without emotion the roarings of the lion in the sombre night.

X. Before the Start.

PENDING Tartarin's delay of the event by all sorts of heroic means, all Tarascon kept an eye upon him, and nothing else was busied about.

Cap-popping was winged, and ballad-singing dead. The piano in Bezuquet's shop mouldered away under a green fungus, and the Spanish flies dried upon it, belly up. Tartarin's expedition had a put a stopper on everything.

Ah, you ought to have seen his success in the parlours. He was s.n.a.t.c.hed away by one from another, fought for, loaned and borrowed, ay, stolen.

There was no greater honour for the ladies than to go to Mitaine's Menagerie on Tartarin's arms, and have it explained before the lion's den how such large game are hunted, where they should be aimed at, at how many paces off; if the accidents were numerous, and the like of that.

Tartarin furnished all the elucidation desired. He had read "The Life of Jules Gerard, the Lion-Slayer," and had lion-hunting at his finger ends, as if he had been through it himself. Hence he orated upon these matters with great eloquence.

But where he shone the brightest was at dinner at Chief Judge Ladeveze's, or brave Commandant Bravida's (the former captain in the Army Clothing Factory, you will keep in mind), when coffee came in, and all the chairs were brought up closer together, whilst they chatted of his future hunts.

Thereupon, his elbow on the cloth, his nose over his Mocha, our hero would discourse in a feeling tone of all the dangers awaiting him thereaway. He spoke of the long moonless night lyings-in-wait, the pestilential fens, the rivers envenomed by leaves of poison-plants, the deep snow-drifts, the scorching suns, the scorpions, and rains of gra.s.shoppers; he also descanted on the peculiarities of the great lions of the Atlas, their way of fighting, their phenomenal vigour; and their ferocity in the mating season.

Heating with his own recital, he would rise from table, bounding to the middle of the dining-room, imitating the roar of a lion and the going off of a rifle crack! bang! the zizz of the explosive bullet--gesticulating and roaring about till he had overset the chairs.

Everybody turned pale around the board: the gentlemen looking at one another and wagging their heads, the ladies shutting their eyes with pretty screams of fright, the elderly men combatively brandishing their canes; and, in the side apartments, the little boys, who had been put to bed betimes, were greatly startled by the sudden outcries and imitated gun-fire, and screamed for lights. Meanwhile, Tartarin did not start.

XI. "Let's have it out with swords gentleman, not pins!"

A DELICATE question: whether Tartarin really had any intention of going, and one which the historian of Tartarin would be highly embarra.s.sed to answer. In plain words, Mitaine's Menagerie had left Tarascon over three months, and still the lion-slayer had not started. After all, blinded by a new mirage, our candid hero may have imagined in perfectly good faith that he had gone to Algeria. On the strength of having related his future hunts, he may have believed he had performed them as sincerely as he fancied he had hoisted the consular flag and fired on the Tartars, zizz, phit, bang! at Shanghai.

Unfortunately, granting Tartarin was this time again dupe of an illusion, his fellow-townsfolk were not. When, after the quarter's expectation, they perceived that the hunter had not packed even a collar-box, they commenced murmuring.

"This is going to turn out like the Shanghai expedition," remarked Costecalde, smiling.

The gunsmith's comment was welcomed all over town, for n.o.body believed any longer in their late idol. The simpletons and poltroons--all the fellows of Bezuquet's stamp, whom a flea would put to flight, and who could not fire a shot without closing their eyes--were conspicuously pitiless. In the club-rooms or on the esplanade, they accosted poor Tartarin with bantering mien:

"And furthermore, when is that trip coming off?"

In Costecalde's shop, his opinions gained no credence, for the cap-poppers renounced their chief!

Next, epigrams dropped into the affair. Chief Judge Ladevese, who willingly paid court in his leisure hours to the native Muse, composed in local dialect a song which won much success. It told of a sportsman called "Master Gervais," whose dreaded rifle was bound to exterminate all the lions in Africa to the very last. Unluckily, this terrible gun was of a strange kind: "though loaded daily, it never went off."

"It never went off"--you will catch the drift.

In less than no time, this ditty became popular; and when Tartarin came by, the longsh.o.r.emen and the little s...o...b..acks before his door sang in chorus--

"Muster Jarvey's roifle Allus gittin' chaarged; Muster Jarvey's roifle 'il hev to git enlaarged; Muster Jarvey's roifle's Loaded oft--don't scoff; Muster Jarvey's roifle Nivver do go off!"