Tartarin de Tarascon

by Alphonse Daudet

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
TEXT
PREMIER ÉPISODE: A TARASCON
I. Le jardin du baobab.
II. Coup d'oeil général jeté sur la bonne ville de Tarascon; les
chasseurs de Casquettes.
III. Nan! nan! nan! Suite du coup d'oeil général jeté sur la bonne ville
de Tarascon.
IV. Ils!!!
V. Quand Tartarin de Tarascon allait au cercle.
VI. Les deux Tartarins.
VII. Les Européens à Shang-haï. Le Haut Commerce. Les Tartares. Tartarin
de Tarascon serait-il un imposteur? Le mirage.
VIII. La ménagerie Mitaine. Un lion de l'Atlas à Tarascon. Terrible et
solennelle entrevue!
IX. Singuliers effets du mirage.
X. Avant le départ.
XI. Des coups d'épée, messieurs, des coups d'épée, mais pas de coups
d'épingle!
XII. De ce qui fut dit dans la petite maison du baobab.
XIII. Le départ.
XIV. Le port de Marseille. Embarque! embarque!
DEUXIÈME ÉPISODE CHEZ LES TEURS
I. La traversée. Les cinq positions de la chechia. Le soir du
troisième jour. Miséricorde!
II. Aux armes! aux armes!
III. Invocation à Cervantes. Débarquement. Où sont les Teurs? Pas de
Teurs.
Désillusion.
IV. Le premier affût.
V. Pan! Pan!
VI. Arrivée de la femelle. Terrible combat. Le Rendez-vous des Lapins.
VII. Histoire d'un omnibus, d'une Mauresque et d'un chapelet de fleurs
de Jasmin.
VIII. Lions de l'Atlas, dormez!
IX. Le prince Grégory du Monténégro.
X. Dis-moi le nom de ton père, et je te dirai le nom de cette fleur.
XI. Sidi Tart'ri ben Tart'ri.
XII. On nous écrit de Tarascon.
TROISIÈME ÉPISODE: CHEZ LES LIONS
I. Les diligences déportées.
II. Où l'on voit passer un petit monsieur.
III. Un couvent de lions.
IV. La caravane en marche.
V. L'affût du soir dans un bois de lauriers-roses.
VI. Enfin!
VII. Catastrophes sur catastrophes.
VIII. Tarascon! Tarascon!
NOTES
EXERCISES

INTRODUCTION

ALPHONSE DAUDET

(Nîmes, May 13, 1840; Paris, December 16, 1897)

Alphonse Daudet was born in the ancient Provençal city of Nîmes, near the Rhône, May 13, 1840. In this same year Émile Zola, destined like Daudet to pass his youth in Provence, was born at Paris.

As a resuit of the commercial upheaval which attended the revolution of 1848, Daudet's father, a wealthy silk manufacturer, was ruined. After a hard struggle he was forced to give up his business at Nîmes and moved to Lyons (1849). He was not successful here, and finally, in 1856, the family was broken up. The sons now had to shift for themselves.

These first sixteen years of Alphonse Daudet's life were far from unhappy. He had found delight in exploring the abandoned factory at Nîmes. His school days at Lyons were equally agreeable to the young vagabond. His studies occupied him little; he loved to wander through the streets of the great city, finding everywhere food for fanciful speculation. He would follow a person he did not know, scrutinizing his every movement, and striving to lose his own identity in that of the other, to live the other's life. His frequent days of truancy he spent in these idle rambles, or in drifting down the river. Literary ambition had already seized him; he had written a novel (of which no trace remains) and numerous verses. Notwithstanding his lack of application to study, he had succeeded in completing the course of the lycée.

In 1856 when it became certain that the father could no longer care for the family, the mother and daughter took refuge in the home of relatives; Ernest, the older of the two surviving sons, sought his fortune in the literary circles of Paris; and Alphonse accepted a position as "master of the study hall" (maître d'études, pion) at the college of Alais in the Cévennes. The boy was too young, too delicate, and too sensitive to be able to endure the mental suffering and humiliation to which he was subjected at the hands of the bullies of this school.[1] After a year of martyrdom he set out on his terrible journey to Paris. Here he was welcomed by his brother Ernest.

[Footnote 1: See "Le Petit Chose," "Little What's-His-Name.">[

The two brothers had always felt and always continued to feel the closest sympathy for each other. Ernest believed in Alphonse's genius more than in his own, and bestowed on his younger brother the motherly devotion which Alphonse so gratefully and tenderly acknowledges in "Le Petit Chose," his romantic autobiography, where Ernest appears as "ma mère Jacques."