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On seeing Tartarin's weaponry, the little gentleman, who was seated opposite him, looked very surprised, and began to stare at our hero. The horses were changed and the coach set off... the little gentleman continued to stare. At length Tartarin became offended and staring in his turn at the little gentleman he asked "Do you find this surprising?" "Not at all, but it does rather get in the way."

Frenchmen of the Midi, with the skin of Spaniards and the buzz of Tartarin's ze ze in their speech; priests, lean and fat; Germans who came to see a French stronghold as defenceless as a woman's palm; the Italian, a rarer type, whose shoes, sufficiently pointed to prick, and whose choice for decollete collars betrayed his nationality before his lisping French accent could place him indisputably beyond the Alps; herds of English of all types from the aristocrat, whose open-air life had colored his face with the hues of a butcher, to the pale, ascetic clerk, off on a two weeks' holiday, whose bending at his desk had given him the stoop of a scholar; with all these were mixed hordes of French provincials, chiefly of the bourgeois type, who singly, or in family parties, or in the nuptial train of sons or daughters, came up to the shrine of St.

One of the tiny donkeys so common in Algeria, which there are called "Bourriquots". Tartarin's first reaction at the sight of his unfortunate victim was one of annoyance. There is after all a considerable difference between a lion and a bourriquot. This was quickly replaced by a feeling of pity. The poor bourriqout was so pretty, so gentle, its warm flanks rising and falling as it breathed.

The three brothers Garcio-Camus, Tarasconais who were in business in Shanghai, offered him the management of one of their establishments. Now this was the sort of life he needed. Important transactions. An office full of clerks to control. Relations with Russia, Persia, Turkey. In short, Big Business, which in Tartarin's eyes was of enormous proportions.

COMMON people would have been discouraged by such a first adventure, but men of Tartarin's mettle do not easily get cast down. "The lions are in the South, are they?" mused the hero. "Very well, then. South I go."

When her husband came on the scene the matter was soon adjusted by Tartarin agreeing to pay eight pounds for the damage he had done, the price of the donkey being really something like eight shillings. The donkey owner was an inn-keeper, and the sight of Tartarin's money made him quite friendly. He invited the lion-hunter to have some food at the inn with him before he left.

The rest of the garden consisted of bare, sun-baked tracts of clay, intersected by gravel walks. I felt certain that amongst these seedlings there must have been a two-inch high specimen of the Baobab "l'arbre geant," the pride of Tartarin's heart, the tree which, as he explained, might under favourable conditions grow 200 feet high.

But the doubt merely flashed through Tartarin's brain like a stroke of lightning. The dame was so pretty thus, with her feet bare, and plump fingers, fine and pink, loaded with rings. Under her bodice of gilded cloth and the folds of her flower-patterned dress was suggested a lovable creature, rather blessed materially, rounded everywhere, and nice enough to eat.

Tartarin's neighbour was the last to leave and as she rose to go her face was so close to that of our hero that their breaths mingled and he was aware of a bouquet of youth, jasmine, musk and pastries. He could no longer resist.

To Tartarin's utter astonishment, the heroic chechia had barely appeared in the doorway, when it was greeted by a great cry of "Vive Tartarin!... Vive Tartarin!" Which shook the glass vault of the station roof. "Vive Tartarin!... Hurrah for the lion killer!" Then came fanfares and a choir.