Tarascon

“ The Maison Carrée at Nimes, a pretty little Roman temple, will seem to you as big as Notre Dame. You will see that the only liar in the Midi, if there is one, is the sun; everything that he touches he exaggerates. Can you be surprised that this sun shining down on Tarascon has been able to make a retired Captain Quartermaster into the gallant Commandant Bravida, to make a thing like a turnip into a baobab and a man who almost went to Shanghai into one who has really been there. ”

“ To find one certain person in a city of a hundred thousand souls, only known by the eyes, breath, and slipper,—none but a son of Tarascon, panoplied by love, would be capable of attempting such an adventure.
The plague is that, under their broad white mufflers, all the Moorish women resemble one another ”

“ O MIGUEL CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, if what is asserted be true, to wit, that wherever great men have dwelt some emanation of their spirits wanderingly hovers until the end of ages, then what remained of your essence on the Barbary coast must have quivered with glee on beholding Tartarin of Tarascon disembark, that marvellous type of the French Southerner, in whom was embodied both heroes of your work, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. ”

“ Betimes at nightfall, when he was returning heart-broken at not having discovered anything at either bagnio or mosque, our man from Tarascon, in passing mansions, would hear monotonous songs, smothered twanging of guitars, thumping of tambourines, and feminine laughter-peals, which would make his heart beat. ”

“ Costecalde, gunsmith by trade, represents a type that is rather rare in Tarascon. Envy, base, malignant envy, is visible in the wicked curve of his thin lips, and a species of yellow bile, proceeding from his liver in puffs, suffuses his broad, clean-shaven, regular face, with its surface dented as if by a hammer, like an ancient coin of Tiberius or Caracalla. Envy with him is a disease, which he makes no attempt to hide, and, with the fine Tarasconese temperament that overlays everything, he sometimes says in speaking of his infirmity: “You don’t know how that hurts me...” ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the presence of this burdensome quadruped rendered the thing impossible. What kind of a triumphal entry would he make? Good heavens! not a sou, not a lion, nothing to show for it save a camel!
“Tarascon! Tarascon!”
He was obliged to get down.
O amazement!
Scarce had the hero’s red fez popped out of the doorway before a loud shout of “Tartarin for ever!” made the glazed roof of the railway station tremble. “Long life to Tartarin, the lion-slayer!” And out burst the windings of horns and the choruses of the local musical societies. ”

“ Tarascon on Ariège is a busier place than sleepy Tarascon on Rhone, that was drawn out of its obscurity by the mythical Tastarin. It is the great centre of activity to the country, "a land whose stones are iron." Formerly it was more prosperous than it is to-day. But the population remains stationary, which in the midst of a universal shrinkage may be reckoned as good. The town is divided into two parts. Old Tarascon clusters about the decayed castle. ”

“ Now, every Sunday morning, the men of Tarascon take up arms and leave town, bag on back and gun on shoulder, with an excited collection of dogs, with ferrets, with trumpets and hunting horns, it is a splendid spectacle.... Sadly, however, there is a shortage of game... in fact there is a total absence of game.... Animals may be dumb but they are not stupid, so for miles around Tarascon the burrows are empty and the nests abandoned. There is not a quail, not a blackbird, not the smallest rabbit nor even the tiniest wheatear. ”

“ There are no liars in the Midi, neither at Marseille, nor Nimes, nor Toulouse, nor Tarascon. The man of the Midi does not lie, he deceives himself. He does not always speak the truth but he believes he speaks it. His untruth, for him, is not a lie, it is a sort of mirage. To understand better you must visit the Midi yourself. You will see a countryside where the sun transfigures everything and makes it larger than life-size. ”

“ Tartarin of Tarascon had a corner of the inside, where he installed himself most free-and-easily: and, preliminarily to inspiring the rank emanations of the great African felines, the hero had to content himself with that homely old odour of the stage-coach, oddly composed of a thousand smells, of man and woman, horses and harness, eatables and mildewed straw. ”

“ It wil be some time before Tartarin de Tarascon comes to slaughter you. At the moment his equipment, his arms, his medicine chest, the preserved food and the bivouac tent are piled up peacefully in a corner of room 36 in the Hotel de l’Europe. Sleep without fear, great tawny lions! The Tarasconais is searching for his Moor.
Since the events in the omnibus, the unhappy man seems to feel constantly on his feet the scurrying of the little red mouse, and the sea breeze which wafts across his face seems somehow perfumed by an amorous odour of patisserie and anise. ”

“ On the quay, on sunday evenings, when Tartarin returned from the hunt, his hat dangling from the end of his gun, the stevedores would nod to him respectfully and eying the arms bulging the sleeves of his tightly buttoned jacket, would murmur to one another, “He’s strong he is. He’s got double muscles.” The possession of double muscles is something you hear about only in Tarascon. ”

“ Of an old noble strain, it appeared that his brothers had had him exiled at the age of ten, on account of his liberal opinions, since which time he had roamed the world for pleasure and instruction as a philosophical noble. A singular coincidence! the prince had spent three years in Tarascon; and as Tartarin showed amazement at never having met him at the club or on the esplanade, His Highness evasively remarked that he never went about. Through delicacy, the Tarasconian did not dare to question further. All great existences have such mysterious nooks. ”

“ And her majesty condescended to be amused: that hour her melancholy ceased, and never after returned. Whether the honour of this happy change was wholly due to the procession, or whether the saint might not assist the efforts of the patriotic ladies of Tarascon, by working a miracle in favour of the restoration of the queen’s health, is not on record; but her malady never returned; and the people of Tarascon were so much delighted by the procession of the “tarasque,” that it was determined to make the festival an annual one.
This festival was observed till the revolution ”

“ AT Milianah, Tartarin of Tarascon alighted, leaving the stage-coach to continue its way towards the South.
Two days’ rough jolting, two nights spent with eyes open to spy out of window if there were not discoverable the dread figure of a lion in the fields beyond the road—so much sleeplessness well deserved some hours repose. Besides, if we must tell everything, since his misadventure with Bombonnel, the outspoken Tartarin felt ill at ease, notwithstanding his weapons, his terrifying visage, and his red cap, before the Orleansville photographer and the two ladies fond of the military. ”

“ Tartarin knew who these pirates were—“they,” of course, the celebrated “they” who had too often been hunted after by him in the by-ways of Tarascon. At last they had decided to meet him face to face. At the outset surprise nailed him to the spot. But when he saw the outlaws fall upon the luggage, tear off the tarpaulin covering, and actually commence the pillage of the ship, then the hero awoke. Whipping out his hunting-sword, “To arms! to arms!” he roared to the passengers; and away he flew, the foremost of all, upon the buccaneers. “Ques aco? What’s the stir? What’s the matter with you?” ”

“ I have read somewhere, however, that Tarascon is supposed to produce handsome men, as Arles is known to deal in handsome women. It may be that I should have found the Tarasconnais very fine fellows, if I had encountered enough specimens to justify an induction. But there were very few males in the streets, and the place presented no appearance of activity. Here and there the black coif of an old woman or of a young girl was framed by a low doorway; but for the rest, as I have said, Tarascon was mostly involved in a siesta. ”

“ However, some African merchants who came to the fair at Beaucaire, claim to have met, in the heart of the desert, a white man whose description corresponds with his and who was heading for Timbuctoo. May God preserve our Tartarin!”
When he read this, Tartarin blushed and trembled. All Tarascon rose before his eyes. The club. The hat hunters. The green armchair at Costecalde’s shop: and soaring above, like the extended wings of an eagle, the formidable moustache of the brave Commandant Bravida. ”

“ Tartarin donned them, and gravely stepped out upon the minaret platform.
In the distance the sea shone. The white roofs glittered in the moonbeams. On the sea breeze was heard the strumming of a few belated guitars. The Tarasconian muezzin gathered himself up for the effort during a space, and then, raising his arms, he set to chanting in a very shrill voice:
“La Allah il Allah! Mahomet is an old humbug! The Orient, the Koran, bashaws, lions, Moorish beauties—they are all not worth a fly’s skip! There is nothing left but gammoners. Long live Tarascon!” ”

“ At that time Tartarin was not the Tartarin which he is today, the great Tartarin de Tarascon who is so popular throughout the Midi of France, however, even at this epoch, he was already the king of Tarascon.
Let us examine how he acquired his crown. You will be aware, for a start, that everyone in these parts is a hunter. From the highest to the lowest hunting is a passion with the Tarasconais and has been ever since the legendary Tarasque prowled in the marshes near the town and was hunted down by the citizens. ”

“ There was just time enough to inspect his equipment, to don his arms and accoutrements, to put on his big boots, to write a few lines to prince Gregory, confiding Baia to his care, to slip into an envelope some banknotes, wet with tears, and the intrepid Tarasconais was in a stage-coach, rolling down the road to Blidah, leaving the stupefied negress in his house, gazing at the turban, the slippers and all the muslim rig-out of Sidi Tart’ri, hanging discarded on the wall. ”

“ Major Bravida dons black when he calls to compel Tartarin 'to redeem his honour' and sail for Algiers; when Port Tarascon, the frantic colony, is formed, costumes are designed for grandees, for the militia, for the bureaucrats. Appearances alone matter: Tarascon is not content with the [Pg 154] French flag, but spread-eagles across it a fantastic local animal, La Tarasque, of mythical origin.
Life in Tarascon is too easy: Tartarin helps it on with a war-whoop. He creates adventure. ”

“ I had been wandering a-wheel over many a league of these fair southern roads one summer before I found myself at the ancient Roman city of Nîmes, the rarest treasure of France, and it was a visit to Daudet's birthplace there that suggested the idea of going on to Tarascon a desire intensified by the ardour of a gentleman from that town whom I met at a hotel, and who perspired with indignation as he denounced "that Daudet" for libelling the 175 good folk of Tarascon. "Tartarin! The whole thing's a farce. There never was such a man!" ”

“ An African lion in Tarascon?
Never in the memory of living man had the like been seen. Hence our dauntless cap-poppers looked at one another how proudly! What a beaming on their sunburned visages! and in every nook of Costecalde’s shop what hearty 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? ”

“ Our Tarascon correspondent writes:—
“The city is in distress. There has been no news for several months from Tartarin the lion-slayer, who set off to hunt the great feline tribe in Africa. What can have become of our heroic fellow-countryman? Those hardly dare ask who know, as we do, how hot-headed he was, and what boldness and thirst for adventures were his. Has he, like many others, been smothered in the sands, or has he fallen under the murderous fangs of one of those monsters of the Atlas Range of which he had promised the skins to the municipality? ”

“ 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. ”