Tartarin of Tarascon | Page 8

congratulatory grips of the hand were silently
exchanged! The sensation was so great and unforeseen that nobody
could find a word to say -- not even Tartarin.
Blanched and agitated, with the needle-gun still in his fist, he brooded,
erect before the counter. A lion from the Atlas Range at pistol range
from him, a couple of strides off? a lion, mind you -- the beast heroic
and ferocious above all others, the King of the Brute Creation, the
crowning game of his fancies, something like the leading actor in the
ideal company which played such splendid tragedies in his mind's eye.
A lion, heaven be thanked! and from the Atlas, to boot! It was more
than the great Tartarin could bear.
Suddenly a flush of blood flew into his face. His eyes flashed. With one
convulsive movement he shouldered the needle-gun, and turning
towards the brave Commandant Bravida (formerly captain in the Army
Clothing Department, please to remember), he thundered to him --
"Let's go have a look at him, commandant."
"Here, here, I say! that's my gun -- my needle-gun you are carrying
off," timidly ventured the wary Costecalde; but Tartarin had already got
round the corner, with all the cap-poppers proudly lock- stepping
behind him.
When they arrived at the menagerie, they found a goodly number of
people there. Tarascon, heroic but too long deprived of sensational
shows, had rushed upon Mitaine's portable theatre, and had taken it by
storm. Hence the voluminous Madame Mitaine was highly contented.
In an Arab costume, her arms bare to the elbow, iron anklets on, a whip
in one hand and a plucked though live pullet in the other, the noted lady
was doing the honours of the booth to the Tarasconians; and, as she
also had "double muscles," her success was almost as great as her

animals.
The entrance of Tartarin with the gun on his shoulder was a damper.
All our good Tarasconians, who had been quite tranquilly strolling
before the cages, unarmed and with no distrust, without even any idea
of danger, felt momentary apprehension, naturally enough, on
beholding their mighty Tartarin rush into the enclosure with his
formidable engine of war. There must be something to fear when a hero
like he was, came weaponed; so, in a twinkling, all the space along the
cage fronts was cleared. The youngsters burst out squalling for fear,
and the women looked round for the nearest way out. The chemist
Bezuquet made off altogether, alleging that he was going home for his
gun.
Gradually, however, Tartarin's bearing restored courage. With head
erect, the intrepid Tarasconian slowly and calmly made the circuit of
the booth, passing the seal's tank without stopping, glancing
disdainfully on the long box filled with sawdust in which the boa would
digest its raw fowl, and going to take his stand before the lion's cage.
A terrible and solemn confrontation, this! The lion of Tarascon and the
lion of Africa face to face!
On the one part, Tartarin erect, with his hamstrings in tension, and his
arms folded on his gun barrel; on the other, the lion, a gigantic
specimen, humped up in the straw, with blinking orbs and brutish mien,
resting his huge muzzle and tawny full-bottomed wig on his forepaws.
Both calm in their gaze.
Singular thing! whether the needle-gun had given him "the needle," if
the popular idiom is admissible, or that he scented an enemy of his race,
the lion, who had hitherto regarded the Tarasconians with sovereign
scorn, and yawned in their faces, was all at once affected by ire. At first
he sniffed; then he growled hollowly, stretching out his claws; rising,
he tossed his head, shook his mane, opened a capacious maw, and
belched a deafening roar at Tartarin.

A yell of fright responded, as Tarascon precipitated itself madly
towards the exit, women and children, lightermen, cap-poppers, even
the brave Commandant Bravida himself. But, alone, Tartarin of
Tarascon had not budged. There he stood, firm and resolute, before the
cage, lightnings in his eyes, and on his lip that gruesome grin with
which all the town was familiar. In a moment's time, when all the
cap-poppers, some little fortified by his bearing and the strength of the
bars, re-approached their leader, they heard him mutter, as he stared
Leo out of countenance:
"Now, this is something like a hunt!"
All the rest of that day, never a word farther could they draw from
Tartarin of Tarascon.

IX. Singular effects of Mental Mirage.
CONFINING his remarks to the sentence last recorded, Tartarin had
unfortunately still said overmuch.
On the morrow, there was nothing talked about through town but the
near-at-hand departure of Tartarin for Algeria and lion-hunting. You
are all witness, dear readers, that the honest fellow had not breathed a
word