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Updated: July 12, 2025
Three minutes later the boat reached land and Tartarin set foot on the little Barbary quay, where three hundred years earlier a galley-slave named Michael Cervantes, under the whip of an Algerian galley-master, had begun to plan the wonderful story of Don Quixote.
Ah, the huge bowl of popularity! it's all very well to have a seat in front of it, but what a scalding you catch when it is overturned! Notwithstanding his pain, Tartarin smiled and peacefully jogged on in the same life as if nothing untoward had happened. Still, the mask of jovial heedlessness glued by pride on his face would sometimes be suddenly detached.
Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the square, for everybody looked at him. The musicians stopped, the Offenbachian polka halting with one foot in the air. With both guns on his shoulders, and the revolver flapping on his hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, Tartarin gravely passed through the groups; but on arriving at the hotel his powers failed him.
Instead of replying that he was not going and had never intended to go, poor Tartarin, on the first occasion that the subject was broached adopted a somewhat evasive air, "He!... He!... perhaps... I can't say." On the second occasion, now a little more accustomed to the idea, he replied "Probably" and on the third "Yes, definitely."
I love their jolly abandon of manner, their kindness and "honesty," and their gasconade. So here's to you Cyrano and Daudet, D'Artagnan and Tartarin, not forgetting M. le Président. Who do you think sat beside us within arm's length but Réjane!
The camel pitched and rolled like a frigate in a rough sea and the chechia responded to the motion as it had on the Zouave. "Prince... prince" Murmured Tartarin, ashen-faced, and clutching the scanty hair of the hump, "Prince... let us get down, I feel... I feel I am going to disgrace France." But the camel was in full flight and nothing was going to stop it.
At the club, on the esplanade, they accosted poor Tartarin with little mocking remarks, "Et autremain, what about this trip then?" At Costecalde's shop his opinion was no longer law. The hat hunters had deserted their leader. Then there were the epigrams. President Ladeveze who in his spare time dabbled in provencal poetry, composed a little song in dialect which was a great success.
There are even some hatters who sell hunting-caps ready shot, torn, and perforated for the bad shots; but the only buyer known is the chemist Bezuquet. This is dishonourable! As a marksman at caps, Tartarin of Tarascon never had his match. Every Sunday morning out he would march in a new cap, and back he would strut every Sunday evening with a mere thing of shreds.
On the pavement, at the club, at Costecalde's shop, people accosted one another with an air of excitement. "Et autrement, have you heard the latest, au moins?" "Et autrement, what now, is Tartarin going, au moins?"
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.
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