Tartarin of Tarascon Read online

  Produced by Donal O'Danachair

  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 anever-to-be-forgotten date in my life; although quite ten or a dozenyears ago, I remember it better than yesterday.

  At that time the intrepid Tartarin lived in the third house on the leftas the town begins, on the Avignon road. A pretty little villa inthe local style, with a front garden and a balcony behind, the wallsglaringly white and the venetians very green; and always about thedoorsteps a brood of little Savoyard shoe-blackguards playing hopscotch,or dozing in the broad sunshine with their heads pillowed on theirboxes.

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

  O that garden of Tartarin's! there's not its match in Europe! Not anative tree was there--not one flower of France; nothing hut exoticplants, gum-trees, gourds, cotton-woods, cocoa and cacao, mangoes,bananas, palms, a baobab, nopals, cacti, Barbary figs--well, you wouldbelieve yourself in the very midst of Central Africa, ten thousandleagues 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 circumscribedby a window-pot; but, notwithstanding this, it was rather a sensationfor Tarascon, and the townsfolk who were admitted on Sundays to thehonour of contemplating Tartarin's baobab, went home chokeful ofadmiration.

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

  His study, one of the lions--I should say, lions' dens--of the town, wasat 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 steelblades from top to bottom: all the weapons of all the countries in thewide world--carbines, rifles, blunderbusses, Corsican, Catalan, anddagger knives, Malay kreeses, revolvers with spring-bayonets, Carib andflint arrows, knuckle-dusters, life-preservers, Hottentot clubs, Mexicanlassoes--now, can you expect me to name the rest? Upon the whole fell afierce sunlight, which made the blades and the brass butt-plate of themuskets 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 tidinessreigning over the arsenal. Everything was in place, brushed, dusted,labelled, as in a museum; from point to point the eye descried someobliging 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 venturein.

  In the middle of the room was an occasional table, on which stooda decanter of rum, a siphon of soda-water, a Turkish tobacco-pouch,"Captain Cook's Voyages," the Indian tales of Fenimore Cooper andGustave Aimard, stories of hunting the bear, eagle, elephant, and soon. Lastly, beside the table sat a man of between forty and forty-five,short, stout, thick-set, ruddy, with flaming eyes and a strong stubblybeard; he wore flannel tights, and was in his shirt sleeves; one handheld a book, and the other brandished a very large pipe with an ironbowl-cap. Whilst reading heaven only knows what startling adventure ofscalp-hunters, he pouted out his lower lip in a terrifying way, whichgave the honest phiz of the man living placidly on his means the sameimpression 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 aparticular one on "the cap-poppers."

  AT the time I am telling of, Tartarin of Tarascon had not become thepresent-day Tartarin, the great one so popular in the whole South ofFrance: 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 theseparts, from the greatest to the least. The chase is the local craze, andso it has ever been since the mythological times when the Tarasque, asthe county dragon was called, flourished himself and his tail in thetown marshes, and entertained shooting parties got up against him. Soyou see the passion has lasted a goodish bit.

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

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

  For five leagues around about Tarascon, forms, lairs, and burrows areempty, and nesting-places abandoned. You'll not find a single quail orblackbird, one little leveret, or the tiniest tit. And yet the prettyhillocks are mightily tempting, sweet smelling as they are of myrtle,lavender, and rosemary; and the fine muscatels plumped out withsweetness even unto bursting, as they spread along the banks of theRhone, are deucedly tempting too. True, true; but Tarascon lies behindall this, and Tarascon is down in the black books of the world of furand feather. The very birds of passage have ticked it off on theirguide-books, and when the wild ducks, coming down towards the Camarguein long triangles, spy the town steeples from afar, the outermost flyerssquawk 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 landsave one old rogue of a hare, escaped by miracle from the massacres, whois stubbornly determined to stick to it all his life! He is very wellknown at Tarascon, and a name has been given him. "Rapid" is whatthey call him. It is known that he has his form on M. Bompard'sgrounds--which, by the way, has doubled, ay, tripled, the value of theproperty--but nobody has yet managed to lay him low. At present, onlytwo or three inveterate fellows worry themselves about him. The resthave given him up as a bad job, and old Rapid has long ago passedinto the legendary world, although your Tarasconer is very slightlysuperstitious naturally, and would eat cock-robins on toast, or theswallow, which is Our Lady's own bird, for that matter, if he could findany.

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

  What can they do?

  Why, goodness gracious! they go out into the real country two orthree leagues from town. They gather in knots of five or six, reclinetranquilly in the shade of some well, old wall, or olive tree, extractfrom their game-bags a good-sized piece of boiled beef, raw onions, asausage, and anchovies, and commence a next to endless snack, washeddown with one of those nice Rhone wines, which sets a toper laughing andsinging. After that, when thoroughly braced up, they rise, whistle thedogs to heel, set the guns on half cock, and go "on the shoot"--anotherway of saying that every man plucks off his cap, "shies" it up with allhis might, and pops it on the fly with No. 5, 6, or 2 shot, according towhat 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 riddledcap on the end of his gun-barrel, amid any quantity of dog-barks andhorn-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, andperforated for the bad shots; but the only buyer known is the chemistBezuquet. 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 wouldstrut every Sunday evening with a mere thing of shreds. The loft ofBaobab Villa was full of these glorious trophies. Hence all Tarasconacknowledged him as master; and as Tartarin thoroughly understoodhunting, and had read all the handbooks of all possible kinds of venery,from cap-popping to Burmese tiger-shooting, the sportsmen constitutedhim their great cynegetical judge, and took him for referee andarbitrator in all their differences.

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

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

  AFTER the craze for sporting, the lusty Tarascon race cherishes onelove: ballad-singing. There's no believing what a quantity of balladsis used up in that little region. All the sentimental stuff turning intosere and yellow leaves in the oldest portfolios, are to be found in fullpristine lustre in Tarascon. Ay, the entire collection. Every family hasits own pet, as is known to the town.

  For instance, it is an established fact that this is the chemistBezuquet'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 momentI could be seen?"

  And so on for the whole of Tarascon. Two or three times a week therewere parties where they were sung. The singularity was their beingalways the same, and that the honest Tarasconers had never had aninclination to change them during the long, long time they had beenharping on them. They were handed down from father to son in thefamilies, without anybody improving on them or bowdlerising them:they were sacred. Never did it occur to Costecalde's mind to singthe Bezuquets', or the Bezuquets to try Costecalde's. And yet you maybelieve that they ought to know by heart what they had been singing fortwo-score years! But, nay! everybody stuck to his own,and they were allcontented.

  In ballad-singing, as in cap-popping, Tartarin was still the foremost.His superiority over his fellow-townsmen consisted in his not havingany 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 heropreferred by far burying himself in his hunting story-books, or spendingthe evening at the club, to making a personal exhibition before a Nimespiano between a pair of home-made candles. These musical parades seemedbeneath him. Nevertheless, at whiles, when there was a harmonic party atBezuquet'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 Robertle Diable with old Madame Bezuquet. Whoso never heard that never heardanything! For my part, even if I lived a hundred years, I should alwayssee the mighty Tartarin solemnly stepping up to the piano, settinghis arms akimbo, working up his tragic mien, and, beneath the greenreflection from the show-bottles in the window, trying to give hispleasant visage the fierce and satanic expression of Robert the Devil.Hardly would he fall into position before the whole audience would beshuddering with the foreboding that something uncommon was athand. After a hush, old Madame Bezuquet would commence to her ownaccompaniment:

  "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 Tartarinof Tarascon, with crooked arms, clenched fists, and quivering nostrils,would roar three times in a formidable voice, rolling like a thunderclapin the bowels of the instrument:

  "No! no! no!" which, like the thorough southerner he was, he pronouncednasally 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 gemended.

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

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

  "I have just come from the Bezuquets', where I was forced to sing 'emthe 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 hislofty 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, honorarycaptain retired--in the Military Clothing Factory Department--called hima game fellow; and you may well admit that the warrior knew all aboutgame fellows, he played such a capital knife and fork on game of allkinds.

  So was the legislature on Tartarin's side. Two or three times, in opencourt, 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 Corinthiansfor the Tarasconers, from his build, bearing, style--that aspect of aguard's-trumpeter's charger which fears no noise; his reputation as ahero coming from nobody knew whence or for what, and some scramblingsfor coppers and a few kicks to the little ragamuffins basking at hisdoorway.

  Along the waterside, when Tartarin came home from hunting on Sundayevenings, with his cap on the muzzle of his gun, and his fustianshooting-jacket belted in tightly, the sturdy river-lightermen wouldrespectfully bob, and blinking towards the huge biceps swelling out hisarms, 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 ofTarascon!

  For all this, with all his numberless parts, double-muscles, thepopular favour, and the so precious esteem of brave Commandant Bravida,ex-captain (in the Army Clothing Factory), Tartarin was not happy: thislife 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 adventurousspirit which dreamt of nothing but battles, races across the pampas,mighty battues, desert sands, blizzards and typhoons, it was not enoughto go out every Sunday to pop at a cap, and the rest of the time toladle out casting-votes at the gunmaker's. Poor dear great man! If thisexistence were only prolonged, there would be sufficient tedium in it tokill 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 themarket-place; in vain did he pile weapon upon weapon, and Malay kreeseupon Malay kreese; in vain did he cram with romances, endeavouring likethe immortal Don Quixote to wrench himself by the vigour of his fancyout of the talons of pitiless reality. Alas! all that he did to appeasehis thirst for deeds of daring only helped to augment it. The sight ofall the murderous implements kept him in a perpetual stew of wrath andexaltation. His revolvers, repeating rifles, and ducking-guns shouted"Battle! battle!" out of their mouths. Through the twigs of his bao
bab,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 sultrysummer 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 wallto 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 wouldtranslate his readings into action, and, goading himself with his ownvoice, 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 allthat should be attacked and fought with, all that bites, claws, scalps,whoops, and yells--the Sioux Indians dancing around the war-stake towhich the unfortunate pale-face prisoner is lashed. The grizzly of theRocky Mountains, who wobbles on his hind legs, and licks himself with atongue 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 forand defied them; never did they come. Odsboddikins! what would they havecome 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-pieto go to his club at nine, an hour after the retreat had sounded on thebugle, was the Templar Knight preparing for a sortie upon the infidel,the Chinese tiger equipping himself for combat, or the Comanche warriorpainting up for going on the war-path. "All hands make ready foraction!" as the men-of-war's men say.