the voices grow more distinct, till no more doubt was
possible. "They" were coming--in fact, here "they" were!

Steady, with eye afire and heaving breast, Tartarin would gather
himself like a jaguar in readiness to spring forward whilst uttering his
war-cry, when, all of a sudden, out of the thick of the murkiness, he
would hear honest Tarasconian voices quite tranquilly hailing him with:

"Hullo! you, by Jove! it's Tartarin! Good night, old fellow!"

Maledictions upon it! It was the chemist Bezuquet, with his family,
coming from singing their family ballad at Costecalde's.

"Oh, good even, good even!" Tartarin would growl, furious at his
blunder, and plunging fiercely into the gloom with his cane waved on
high.

On arriving in the street where stood his club-house, the dauntless one
would linger yet a moment, walking up and down before the portals ere
entering. But, finally, weary of awaiting "them," and certain "they"
would not show "themselves," he would fling a last glare of defiance
into the shades and snarl wrathfully:

"Nothing, nothing at all! there never is nothing!"

Upon which double negation, which he meant as a stronger affirmative,
the worthy champion would walk in to play his game of bezique with the
commandant.

VI. The two Tartarins.

ANSWER me, you will say, how the mischief is it that Tartarin of
Tarascon never left Tarascon with all this mania for adventure, need of
powerful sensations, and folly about travel, rides, and journeys from
the Pole to the Equator?

For that is a fact: up to the age of five-and-forty, the dreadless
Tarasconian had never once slept outside his own room. He had not even
taken that obligatory trip to Marseilles which every sound Provencal
makes upon coming of age. The most of his knowledge included Beaucaire,
and yet that's not far from Tarascon, there being merely the bridge to
go over. Unfortunately, this rascally bridge has so often been blown
away by the gales, it is so long and frail, and the Rhone has such
a width at this spot that--well, faith! you understand! Tartarin of
Tarascon preferred terra firma.

We are afraid we must make a clean breast of it: in our hero there were
two very distinct characters. Some Father of the Church has said: "I
feel there are two men in me." He would have spoken truly in saying this
about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the
same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grand