William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmar"

Chas. A. Tyrrell - "The Royal Road to Health"

William Shakespeare - "The Tragedie of Macbeth"

Lady Barker - "Station Amusements"

Tartarin of Tarascon

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> Tartarin of Tarascon



This etext was prepared by Donal O'Danachair, email
kodak_seaside@hotmail.com.







TARTARIN OF TARASCON
by
ALPHONSE DAUDET




EPISODE THE FIRST
IN TARASCON



I.
The Garden Round the Giant Trees.


MY first visit to Tartarin of Tarascon has remained a never-to-be-
forgotten date in my life; although quite ten or a dozen years ago, I
remember it better than yesterday.

At that time the intrepid Tartarin lived in the third house on the left
as the town begins, on the Avignon road. A pretty little villa in the
local style, with a front garden and a balcony behind, the walls
glaringly white and the venetians very green; and always about the
doorsteps a brood of little Savoyard shoeblackguards playing
hopscotch, or dozing in the broad sunshine with their heads
pillowed on their boxes.

Outwardly the dwelling had no remarkable features, and none
would ever believe it the abode of a hero; but when you stepped
inside, ye gods and little fishes! what a change! From turret to
foundation-stone -- I mean, from cellar to garret, -- the whole
building wore a heroic front; even so the garden!

O that garden of Tartarin's! there's not its match in Europe! Not a
native tree was there -- not one flower of France; nothing hut
exotic plants, gum-trees, gourds, cotton-woods, cocoa and cacao,
mangoes, bananas, palms, a baobab, nopals, cacti, Barbary figs --
well, you would believe yourself in the very midst of Central Africa,
ten thousand leagues away. It is but fair to say that these were
none of full growth; indeed, the cocoa-palms were no bigger than
beet root and the baobab (arbos gigantea -- "giant tree," you
know) was easily enough circumscribed by a window-pot; but,
notwithstanding this, it was rather a sensation for Tarascon, and the
townsfolk who were admitted on Sundays to the honour of
contemplating Tartarin's baobab, went home chokeful of
admiration.

Try to conceive my own emotion, which I was bound to feel on
that day of days when I crossed through this marvellous garden,
and that was capped when I was ushered into the hero's sanctum.

His study, one of the lions -- I should say, lions' dens -- of the town,
was at the end of the garden, its glass door opening right on to the
baobab.

You are to picture a capacious apartment adorned with firearms
and steel blades from top to bottom: all the weapons of all the
countries in the wide world -- carbines, rifles, blunderbusses,
Corsican, Catalan, and dagger knives, Malay kreeses, revolvers
with spring-bayonets, Carib and flint arrows, knuckle-dusters, life-
preservers, Hottentot clubs, Mexican lassoes -- now, can you
expect me to name the rest? Upon the whole fell a fierce sunlight,
which made the blades and the brass butt-plate of the muskets
gleam as if all the more to set your flesh creeping. Still, the
beholder was soothed a little by the tame air of order and tidiness
reigning over the arsenal. Everything was in place, brushed,
dusted, labelled, as in a museum; from point to point the eye
descried some obliging little card reading:


-----------------------------------------
I Poisoned Arrows! I
I Do Not Touch! I
-----------------------------------------

Or,

-----------------------------------------
I Loaded! I
I Take care, please! I
-----------------------------------------

If it had not been for these cautions I never should have dared
venture in.

In the middle of the room was an occasional table, on which stood
a decanter of rum, a siphon of soda-water, a Turkish tobacco-
pouch, "Captain Cook's Voyages," the Indian tales of Fenimore
Cooper and Gustave Aimard, stories of hunting the bear, eagle,
elephant, and so on. Lastly, beside the table sat a man of between
forty and forty-five, short, stout, thick-set, ruddy, with flaming eyes
and a strong stubbly beard; he wore flannel tights, and was in his
shirt sleeves; one hand held a book, and the other brandished a very
large pipe with an iron bowl-cap. Whilst reading heaven only
knows what startling adventure of scalp-hunters, he pouted out his
lower lip in a terrifying way, which gave the honest phiz of the man
living placidly on his means the same impression of kindly ferocity
which abounded throughout the house.

This man was Tartarin himself -- the Tartarin of Tarascon, the
great, dreadnought, incomparable Tartarin of Tarascon.



II.
A general glance bestowed upon the good town of
Tarascon, and a particular one on "the cap-poppers."


AT the time I am telling of, Tartarin of Tarascon had not become
the present-day Tartarin, the great one so popular in the whole
South of France: but yet he was even then the cock of the walk at
Tarascon.

Let us show whence arose this sovereignty.

In the first place you must know that everybody is shooting mad in
these parts, from the greatest to the least. The chase is the local
craze, and so it has ever been since the mythological times when the
Tarasque, as the county dragon was called, flourished himself and
his tail in the town marshes, and entertained shooting parties got up
against him. So you see the passion has lasted a goodish bit.

It follows that, every Sunday morning, Tarascon flies to arms, lets
loose the dogs of the hunt, and rushes out of its walls, with game-
bag slung and fowling-piece on the shoulder, together with a hurly-
burly of hounds, cracking of whips, and blowing of whistles and
hunting-horns. It's splendid to see! Unfortunately, there's a lack of
game, an absolute dearth.

Stupid as the brute creation is, you can readily understand that, in
time, it learnt some distrust.

For five leagues around about Tarascon, forms, lairs, and burrows
are empty, and nesting-places abandoned. You'll not find a single
quail or blackbird, one little leveret, or the tiniest tit. And yet the
pretty hillocks are mightily tempting, sweet smelling as they are of
myrtle, lavender, and rosemary; and the fine muscatels plumped out
with sweetness even unto bursting, as they spread along the banks
of the Rhone, are deucedly tempting too. True, true; but Tarascon
lies behind all this, and Tarascon is down in the black books of the
world of fur and feather. The very birds of passage have ticked it
off on their guide-books, and when the wild ducks, coming down
towards the Camargue in long triangles, spy the town steeples from
afar, the outermost flyers squawk out loudly:

"Look out! there's Tarascon! give Tarascon the go-by, duckies!"

And the flocks take a swerve.

In short, as far as game goes, there's not a specimen left in the land
save one old rogue of a hare, escaped by miracle from the
massacres, who is stubbornly determined to stick to it all his life!
He is very well known at Tarascon, and a name has been given him.
"Rapid" is what they call him. It is known that he has his form on
M. Bompard's grounds -- which, by the way, has doubled, ay,
tripled, the value of the property -- but nobody has yet managed to
lay him low. At present, only two or three inveterate fellows worry
themselves about him. The rest have given him up as a bad job, and
old Rapid has long ago passed into the legendary world, although
your Tarasconer is very slightly superstitious naturally, and would
eat cock-robins on toast, or the swallow, which is Our Lady's own
bird, for that matter, if he could find any.

"But that won't do!" you will say. Inasmuch as game is so scarce,
what can the sportsmen do every Sunday?

What can they do?

Why, goodness gracious! they go out into the real country two or
three leagues from town. They gather in knots of five or six,
recline tranquilly in the shade of some well, old wall, or olive tree,
extract from their game-bags a good-sized piece of boiled beef, raw
onions, a sausage, and anchovies, and commence a next to endless
snack, washed down with one of those nice Rhone wines, which
sets a toper laughing and singing. After that, when thoroughly
braced up, they rise, whistle the dogs to heel, set the guns on half
cock, and go "on the shoot" -- another way of saying that every
man plucks off his cap, "shies" it up with all his might, and pops it
on the fly with No. 5, 6, or 2 shot, according to what he is loaded
for.

The man who lodges most shot in his cap is hailed as king of the
hunt, and stalks back triumphantly at dusk into Tarascon, with his
riddled cap on the end of his gun-barrel, amid any quantity of dog-
barks and horn-blasts.

It is needless to say that cap-selling is a fine business in the town.
There are even some hatters who sell hunting-caps ready shot, torn,
and perforated for the bad shots; but the only buyer known is the
chemist Bezuquet. This is dishonourable!

As a marksman at caps, Tartarin of Tarascon never had his match.

Every Sunday morning out he would march in a new cap, and back
he would strut every Sunday evening with a mere thing of shreds.
The loft of Baobab Villa was full of these glorious trophies. Hence
all Tarascon acknowledged him as master; and as Tartarin
thoroughly understood hunting, and had read all the handbooks of
all possible kinds of venery, from cap-popping to Burmese tiger-
shooting, the sportsmen constituted him their great cynegetical
judge, and took him for referee and arbitrator in all their
differences.

Between three and four daily, at Costecalde the gunsmith's, a stout
stern pipe-smoker might be seen in a green leather-covered arm-
chair in the centre of the shop crammed with cap-poppers, they all
on foot and wrangling. This was Tartarin of Tarascon delivering
judgement -- Nimrod plus Solomon.



III.
"Naw, naw, naw!" The general glance
protracted upon the good town.


AFTER the craze for sporting, the lusty Tarascon race cherishes
one love: ballad-singing. There's no believing what a quantity of
ballads is used up in that little region. All the sentimental stuff
turning into sere and yellow leaves in the oldest portfolios, are to be
found in full pristine lustre in Tarascon. Ay, the entire collection.
Every family has its own pet, as is known to the town.

For instance, it is an established fact that this is the chemist
Bezuquet's family's:

"Thou art the fair star that I adore!"

The gunmaker Costecalde's family's:

"Would'st thou come to the land
Where the log-cabins rise?"

The official registrar's family's:

"If I wore a coat of invisible green,
Do you think for a moment I could be seen?"

And so on for the whole of Tarascon. Two or three times a week
there were parties where they were sung. The singularity was their
being always the same, and that the honest Tarasconers had never
had an inclination to change them during the long, long time they
had been harping on them. They were handed down from father to
son in the families, without anybody improving on them or
bowdlerising them: they were sacred. Never did it occur to
Costecalde's mind to sing the Bezuquets', or the Bezuquets to try
Costecalde's. And yet you may believe that they ought to know by
heart what they had been singing for two-score years! But, nay!
everybody stuck to his own ,and they were all contented.

In ballad-singing, as in cap-popping, Tartarin was still the foremost.
His superiority over his fellow-townsmen consisted in his not
having any one song of his own, but in knowing the lot, the whole,
mind you! But -- there's a but -- it was the devil's own work to get
him to sing them.

Surfeited early in life with his drawing-room successes, our hero
preferred by far burying himself in his hunting story-books, or
spending the evening at the club, to making a personal exhibition
before a Nimes piano between a pair of home-made candles. These
musical parades seemed beneath him. Nevertheless, at whiles, when
there was a harmonic party at Bezuquet's, he would drop into the
chemist's shop, as if by chance, and, after a deal of pressure,
consent to do the grand duo in Robert le Diable with old Madame
Bezuquet. Whoso never heard that never heard anything! For my
part, even if I lived a hundred years, I should always see the mighty
Tartarin solemnly stepping up to the piano, setting his arms akimbo,
working up his tragic mien, and, beneath the green reflection from
the show-bottles in the window, trying to give his pleasant visage
the fierce and satanic expression of Robert the Devil. Hardly would
he fall into position before the whole audience would be shuddering
with the foreboding that something uncommon was at hand. After
a hush, old Madame Bezuquet would commence to her own
accompaniment:

"Robert, my love is thine!
To thee I my faith did plight,
Thou seest my affright, --
Mercy for thine own sake,
And mercy for mine!"

In an undertone she would add: "Now, then, Tartarin!" Whereupon
Tartarin of Tarascon, with crooked arms, clenched fists, and
quivering nostrils, would roar three times in a formidable voice,
rolling like a thunderclap in the bowels of the instrument:

"No! no! no!" which, like the thorough southerner he was, he
pronounced nasally as "Naw! naw! naw!" Then would old Madame
Bezuquet again sing:

"Mercy for thine own sake,
And mercy for mine!"

"Naw! naw! naw!" bellowed Tartarin at his loudest, and there the
gem ended.

Not long, you see; but it was so handsomely voiced forth, so clearly
gesticulated, and so diabolical, that a tremor of terror overran the
chemist's shop, and the "Naw! naw! naw!" would be encored
several times running.

Upon this Tartarin would sponge his brow, smile on the ladies,
wink to the sterner sex, and withdraw upon his triumph to go
remark at the club with a trifling, offhand air:

"I have just come from the Bezuquets', where I was forced to sing
'em the duo from Robert le Diable."

The cream of the joke was that he really believed it!



IV.
"They!"


CHIEFLY to the account of these diverse talents did Tartarin owe
his lofty position in the town of Tarascon. Talking of captivating,
though, this deuce of a fellow knew how to ensnare everybody.
Why, the army, at Tarascon, was for Tartarin. The brave
commandant, Bravida, honorary captain retired -- in the Military
Clothing Factory Department -- called him a game fellow; and you
may well admit that the warrior knew all about game fellows, he
played such a capital knife and fork on game of all kinds.

So was the legislature on Tartarin's side. Two or three times, in
open court, the old chief judge, Ladevese, had said, in alluding to
him:

"He is a character!"

Lastly, the masses were for Tartarin. He had become the swell
bruiser, the aristocratic pugilist, the crack bully of the local
Corinthians for the Tarasconers, from his build, bearing, style --
that aspect of a guard's-trumpeter's charger which fears no noise;
his reputation as a hero coming from nobody knew whence or for
what, and some scramblings for coppers and a few kicks to the little
ragamuffins basking at his doorway.

Along the waterside, when Tartarin came home from hunting on
Sunday evenings, with his cap on the muzzle of his gun, and his
fustian shooting-jacket belted in tightly, the sturdy river-lightermen
would respectfully bob, and blinking towards the huge biceps
swelling out his arms, would mutter among one another in
admiration:

"Now, there's a powerful chap if you like! he has double-muscles!"

"Double muscles!" why, you never heard of such a thing outside of
Tarascon!

For all this, with all his numberless parts, double-muscles, the
popular favour, and the so precious esteem of brave Commandant
Bravida, ex-captain (in the Army Clothing Factory), Tartarin was
not happy: this life in a petty town weighed upon him and
suffocated him.

The great man of Tarascon was bored in Tarascon.

The fact is, for a heroic temperament like his, a wild adventurous
spirit which dreamt of nothing but battles, races across the pampas,
mighty battues, desert sands, blizzards and typhoons, it was not
enough to go out every Sunday to pop at a cap, and the rest of the
time to ladle out casting-votes at the gunmaker's. Poor dear great
man! If this existence were only prolonged, there would be
sufficient tedium in it to kill him with consumption.

In vain did he surround himself with baobabs and other African
trees, to widen his horizon, and some little to forget his club and
the market-place; in vain did he pile weapon upon weapon, and
Malay kreese upon Malay kreese; in vain did he cram with
romances, endeavouring like the immortal Don Quixote to wrench
himself by the vigour of his fancy out of the talons of pitiless reality.
Alas! all that he did to appease his thirst for deeds of daring only
helped to augment it. The sight of all the murderous implements
kept him in a perpetual stew of wrath and exaltation. His revolvers,
repeating rifles, and ducking-guns shouted "Battle! battle!" out of
their mouths. Through the twigs of his baobab, the tempest of
great voyages and journeys soughed and blew bad advice. To finish
him came Gustave Aimard, Mayne Reid, and Fenimore Cooper.

Oh, how many times did Tartarin with a howl spring up on the
sultry summer afternoons, when he was reading alone amidst his
blades, points, and edges; how many times did he dash down his
book and rush to the wall to unhook a deadly arm! The poor man
forgot he was at home in Tarascon, in his underclothes, and with a
handkerchief round his head. He would translate his readings into
action, and, goading himself with his own voice, shout out whilst
swinging a battle-axe or tomahawk:

"Now, only let 'em come!"

"Them"? who were they?

Tartarin did not himself any too clearly understand. "They" was all
that should be attacked and fought with, all that bites, claws, scalps,
whoops, and yells -- the Sioux Indians dancing around the war-
stake to which the unfortunate pale-face prisoner is lashed. The
grizzly of the Rocky Mountains, who wobbles on his hind legs, and
licks himself with a tongue full of blood. The Touareg, too, in the
desert, the Malay pirate, the brigand of the Abruzzi -- in short,
"they" was warfare, travel, adventure, and glory.

But, alas!! it was to no avail that the fearless Tarasconer called for
and defied them; never did they come. Odsboddikins! what would
they have come to do in Tarascon?

Nevertheless Tartarin always expected to run up against them,
particularly some evening in going to the club.



V.
How Tartarin went round to his club.


LITTLE, indeed, beside Tartarin of Tarascon, arming himself capa-
pie to go to his club at nine, an hour after the retreat had sounded
on the bugle, was the Templar Knight preparing for a sortie upon
the infidel, the Chinese tiger equipping himself for combat, or the
Comanche warrior painting up for going on the war-path. "All
hands make ready for action!" as the men-of-war's men say.

In his left hand Tartarin took a steel-pointed knuckle-duster; in the
right he carried a sword-cane; in his left pocket a life-preserver; in
the right a revolver. On his chest, betwixt outer and under
garment, lay a Malay kreese. But never any poisoned arrows -- they
are weapons altogether too unfair.

Before starting, in the silence and obscurity of his study, he
exercised himself for a while, warding off imaginary cuts and
thrusts, lunging at the wall, and giving his muscles play; then he
took his master-key and went through the garden leisurely; without
hurrying, mark you. "Cool and calm -- British courage, that is the
true sort, gentlemen." At the garden end he opened the heavy iron
door, violently and abruptly so that it should slam against the outer
wall. If "they" had been skulking behind it, you may wager they
would have been jam. Unhappily, they were not there.

The way being open, out Tartarin would sally, quickly glancing to
the right and left, ere banging the door to and fastening it smartly
with double-locking. Then, on the way.

Not so much as a cat upon the Avignon road -- all the doors closed,
and no lights in the casements. All was black, except for the parish
lamps, well spaced apart, blinking in the river mist.

Calm and proud, Tartarin of Tarascon marched on in the night,
ringing his heels with regularity, and sending sparks out of the
paving-stones with the ferule of his stick. Whether in avenues,
streets, or lanes, he took care to keep in the middle of the road --
an excellent method of precaution, allowing one to see danger
coming, and, above all, to avoid any droppings from windows, as
happens after dark in Tarascon and the Old Town of Edinburgh.
On seeing so much prudence in Tartarin, pray do not conclude that
Tartarin had any fear -- dear, no! he only was on his guard.

The best proof that Tartarin was not scared is, that instead of going
to the club by the shortest cut, he went over the town by the
longest and darkest way round, through a mass of vile, paltry alleys,
at the mouth of which the Rhone could be seen ominously
gleaming. The poor knight constantly hoped that, beyond the turn
of one of these cut-throats' haunts, "they" would leap from the
shadow and fall on his back. I warrant you, "they" would have
been warmly received, though; but, alack! by reason of some nasty
meanness of destiny, never indeed did Tartarin of Tarascon enjoy
the luck to meet any ugly customers -- not so much as a dog or a
drunken man -- nothing at all!

Still, there were false alarms somewhiles. He would catch a sound
of steps and muffled voices.

"Ware hawks!" Tartarin would mutter, and stop short, as if taking
root on the spot, scrutinising the gloom, sniffing the wind, even
glueing his ear to the ground in the orthodox Red Indian mode.
The steps would draw nearer, and the voices grow more distinct,
till no more doubt was possible. "They" were coming -- in fact,
here "they" were!

Steady, with eye afire and heaving breast, Tartarin would gather
himself like a jaguar in readiness to spring forward whilst uttering
his war-cry, when, all of a sudden, out of the thick of the
murkiness, he would hear honest Tarasconian voices quite
tranquilly hailing him with:

"Hullo! you, by Jove! it's Tartarin! Good night, old fellow!"

Maledictions upon it! It was the chemist Bezuquet, with his family,
coming from singing their family ballad at Costecalde's.

"Oh, good even, good even!" Tartarin would growl, furious at his
blunder, and plunging fiercely into the gloom with his cane waved
on high.

On arriving in the street where stood his club-house, the dauntless
one would linger yet a moment, walking up and down before the
portals ere entering. But, finally, weary of awaiting "them," and
certain "they" would not show "themselves," he would fling a last
glare of defiance into the shades and snarl wrathfully:

"Nothing, nothing at all! there never is nothing!"

Upon which double negation, which he meant as a stronger
affirmative, the worthy champion would walk in to play his game of
bezique with the commandant.



VI.
The two Tartarins.


ANSWER me, you will say, how the mischief is it that Tartarin of
Tarascon never left Tarascon with all this mania for adventure, need
of powerful sensations, and folly about travel, rides, and journeys
from the Pole to the Equator?

For that is a fact: up to the age of five-and-forty, the dreadless
Tarasconian had never once slept outside his own room. He had
not even taken that obligatory trip to Marseilles which every sound
Provencal makes upon coming of age. The most of his knowledge
included Beaucaire, and yet that's not far from Tarascon, there
being merely the bridge to go over. Unfortunately, this rascally
bridge has so often been blown away by the gales, it is so long and
frail, and the Rhone has such a width at this spot that -- well, faith!
you understand! Tartarin of Tarascon preferred terra firma.

We are afraid we must make a clean breast of it: in our hero there
were two very distinct characters. Some Father of the Church has
said: "I feel there are two men in me." He would have spoken truly
in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of
Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and
crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but, worse is the luck!
he had not the body of the celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre
apology for a body, on which material life failed to take a hold; one
that could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being
unbuckled off, and forty-eight hours on a handful of rice. On the
contrary, Tartarin's body was a stout honest bully of a body, very
fat, very weighty, most sensual and fond of coddling, highly touchy,
full of low-class appetite and homely requirements -- the short,
paunchy body on stumps of the immortal Sancho Panza.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the one same man! you will
readily comprehend what a cat-and-dog couple they made! what
strife! what clapperclawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for Lucian or
Saint-Evremond to write, between the two Tartarins -- Quixote-
Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin! Quixote-Tartarin firing up on the
stories of Gustave Aimard, and shouting: "Up and at 'em!" and
Sancho-Tartarin thinking only of the rheumatics ahead, and
murmuring: "I mean to stay at home."

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.