IV.
Tartarin was, in a word, an epitomy of innocent vanities; large-hearted, generous, he had the Cæsarian ambition to be the first man in his town; he was imbued with the national hunger for "la Gloire," and many were the amusing ways in which he sought to demonstrate his prowess. To impress his townsmen, the dear old humbug surrounded himself with all sorts of foreign curiosities. His garden was stuffed with exotics from every clime, most notable of all the wonderful baobab, which he grew in a flower-pot, although that is the unmatched giant of the tree kingdom! His study was decked with the weapons of many strange and savage people, and, like a miniature museum, his possessions were ticketed thus: "Poisoned arrows! Do not touch!" "Weapons loaded! Have a care!"
His earliest exploits were as chief of the "cap-hunters," for, you see, in those days the good folk of Tarascon were great sports, and the whole country-side having been denuded of game, they were reduced to the device of going forth in hunting-parties, and after a jolly picnic they would throw up their caps in the air and shoot at them as they fell! "The man whose hat bears the greatest number of shot marks is hailed as champion of the chase, and in the evening, with his riddled cap stuck on the end of his rifle, he makes a triumphal entry into Tarascon, midst the barking of dogs and fanfares of trumpets."
TARASCON: THE MAIRIE
Tartarin, however, determined to cover himself with glory—as well as flannel—by making an expedition into Algeria and Morocco, there to try his prowess on the lions of the Atlas. His ludicrous adventures on this great enterprise—how he shot a donkey and a blind lion, and returned to Tarascon pursued by his devoted camel—form the theme of the first of Daudet's three charming stories. The years pass with Tartarin lording it at Baobab House, and at the club every evening spinning his untruthful yarns, beginning: "Picture to yourself a certain evening in the open Sahara." Then comes the further adventures of "Tartarin in the Alps," and I confess that when, a good many years ago, I first clambered up a portion of Mont Blanc it was of Tartarin's famous ascent I thought rather than of Jacques Balmat's; the fiction was more vivid in my mind than the fact; and again at the Castle of Chillon—I say it fairly—the comic figure of Tartarin imprisoned there was more engaging to the imagination than that of Bonnivard; and, by the bye, in the famous dungeon one can see scratched on the wall the signatures of both Lord Byron and Alphonse Daudet.
The last, and in some respects the best, of all the Tartarin books—like Mulvaney, the mighty Tarasconian has his fame "dishpersed most notoriously in sev'ril volumes"—is Port Tarascon, wherein are detailed the mirthful misadventures of the great man, and many of his townsmen who, under his direction, set sail to found a colony in Polynesia, an undertaking that proved fatal to his fame, and ended eventually in his self-exile across the river to Beaucaire, where he died soon after; of sheer melancholy we may suppose.