Tartarin of Tarascon | Page 2

eagle, elephant, and so on.
Lastly, beside the table sat a man of between forty and forty-five, short,
stout, thick-set, ruddy, with flaming eyes and a strong stubbly beard; he
wore flannel tights, and was in his shirt sleeves; one hand held a book,
and the other brandished a very large pipe with an iron bowl-cap.
Whilst reading heaven only knows what startling adventure of
scalp-hunters, he pouted out his lower lip in a terrifying way, which
gave the honest phiz of the man living placidly on his means the same
impression of kindly ferocity which abounded throughout the house.
This man was Tartarin himself -- the Tartarin of Tarascon, the great,
dreadnought, incomparable Tartarin of Tarascon.

II. A general glance bestowed upon the good town of Tarascon, and a
particular one on "the cap-poppers."
AT the time I am telling of, Tartarin of Tarascon had not become the
present-day Tartarin, the great one so popular in the whole South of
France: but yet he was even then the cock of the walk at Tarascon.
Let us show whence arose this sovereignty.
In the first place you must know that everybody is shooting mad in
these parts, from the greatest to the least. The chase is the local craze,
and so it has ever been since the mythological times when the Tarasque,
as the county dragon was called, flourished himself and his tail in the

town marshes, and entertained shooting parties got up against him. So
you see the passion has lasted a goodish bit.
It follows that, every Sunday morning, Tarascon flies to arms, lets
loose the dogs of the hunt, and rushes out of its walls, with game- bag
slung and fowling-piece on the shoulder, together with a hurly- burly of
hounds, cracking of whips, and blowing of whistles and hunting-horns.
It's splendid to see! Unfortunately, there's a lack of game, an absolute
dearth.
Stupid as the brute creation is, you can readily understand that, in time,
it learnt some distrust.
For five leagues around about Tarascon, forms, lairs, and burrows are
empty, and nesting-places abandoned. You'll not find a single quail or
blackbird, one little leveret, or the tiniest tit. And yet the pretty hillocks
are mightily tempting, sweet smelling as they are of myrtle, lavender,
and rosemary; and the fine muscatels plumped out with sweetness even
unto bursting, as they spread along the banks of the Rhone, are
deucedly tempting too. True, true; but Tarascon lies behind all this, and
Tarascon is down in the black books of the world of fur and feather.
The very birds of passage have ticked it off on their guide-books, and
when the wild ducks, coming down towards the Camargue in long
triangles, spy the town steeples from afar, the outermost flyers squawk
out loudly:
"Look out! there's Tarascon! give Tarascon the go-by, duckies!"
And the flocks take a swerve.
In short, as far as game goes, there's not a specimen left in the land save
one old rogue of a hare, escaped by miracle from the massacres, who is
stubbornly determined to stick to it all his life! He is very well known
at Tarascon, and a name has been given him. "Rapid" is what they call
him. It is known that he has his form on M. Bompard's grounds --
which, by the way, has doubled, ay, tripled, the value of the property --
but nobody has yet managed to lay him low. At present, only two or
three inveterate fellows worry themselves about him. The rest have

given him up as a bad job, and old Rapid has long ago passed into the
legendary world, although your Tarasconer is very slightly
superstitious naturally, and would eat cock-robins on toast, or the
swallow, which is Our Lady's own bird, for that matter, if he could find
any.
"But that won't do!" you will say. Inasmuch as game is so scarce, what
can the sportsmen do every Sunday?
What can they do?
Why, goodness gracious! they go out into the real country two or three
leagues from town. They gather in knots of five or six, recline
tranquilly in the shade of some well, old wall, or olive tree, extract
from their game-bags a good-sized piece of boiled beef, raw onions, a
sausage, and anchovies, and commence a next to endless snack, washed
down with one of those nice Rhone wines, which sets a toper laughing
and singing. After that, when thoroughly braced up, they rise, whistle
the dogs to heel, set the guns on half cock, and go "on the shoot" --
another way of saying that every man plucks off his cap, "shies" it up
with all his might, and pops it on the fly with No. 5, 6, or 2 shot,
according to what he is loaded