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Whereupon Jeannette would appear with an unusually good cup of chocolate, just right in warmth, sweetly smelling, and with the play of light on watered silk upon its unctuous surface, and with succulent grilled steak flavoured with anise-seed, which would set Sancho-Tartarin off on the broad grin, and into a laugh that drowned the shouts of Quixote-Tartarin.
Suddenly he leaped up and thundered: "The lion, the lion! Down with him!" And dashing into the dusty lumber-hole where mouldered the shelter-tent, the medicine-chest, the potted meats, and the gun-cases, he dragged them out into the middle of the court. Sancho-Tartarin was no more: Quixote-Tartarin occupied the field of active life.
I need not tell you with what enthusiasm Quixote-Tartarin clutched this proposition; sad to say, Sancho-Tartarin did not see it in the same light, and, as he was the stronger party, it never came to anything. But in the town there was much talk about it. Would he go or would he not? "I'll lay he will!" and "I'll wager he won't!" It was the event of the week.
Quixote-Tartarin had some twinges at whiles on thinking of Tarascon and the promises of lion-skins; but this remorse did not last, and to drive away such dampening ideas there sufficed one glance from Baya, or a spoonful of those diabolical dizzying and odoriferous sweetmeats like Circe's brews. In the evening Gregory came to discourse a little about a free Black Mountain.
In vain did Quixote-Tartarin vow that he had not committed any imprudence that he would wrap himself up well, and take even superfluous necessaries with him. Sancho-Tartarin would listen to nothing.
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." O for waistcoats! and warm bowie-knives, lassoes, knee-caps! O for the and moccasins! welcome padded caps with ear-flaps!
This idea of travel in Africa and lion-hunting made him shudder beforehand; and when the house was re-entered, and whilst the complimentary concert was sounding under the windows, he had a dreadful "row" with Quixote-Tartarin, calling him a cracked head, a visionary, imprudent, and thrice an idiot, and detailing by the card all the catastrophes awaiting him on such an expedition shipwreck, rheumatism, yellow fever, dysentery, the black plague, elephantiasis, and the rest of them.
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 clapper-clawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for Lucian or Saint-Evremond to write, between the two Tartarins Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin!
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