hich I was bound to feel on that day of
days when I crossed through this marvellous garden, and that was capped
when I was ushered into the hero's sanctum.

His study, one of the lions--I should say, lions' dens--of the town, was
at the end of the garden, its glass door opening right on to the baobab.

You are to picture a capacious apartment adorned with firearms and steel
blades from top to bottom: all the weapons of all the countries in the
wide world--carbines, rifles, blunderbusses, Corsican, Catalan, and
dagger knives, Malay kreeses, revolvers with spring-bayonets, Carib and
flint arrows, knuckle-dusters, life-preservers, Hottentot clubs, Mexican
lassoes--now, can you expect me to name the rest? Upon the whole fell a
fierce sunlight, which made the blades and the brass butt-plate of the
muskets gleam as if all the more to set your flesh creeping. Still,
the beholder was soothed a little by the tame air of order and tidiness
reigning over the arsenal. Everything was in place, brushed, dusted,
labelled, as in a museum; from point to point the eye descried some
obliging little card reading:

-----------------------------------------
I Poisoned Arrows! I
I Do Not Touch! I
-----------------------------------------

Or,

-----------------------------------------
I Loaded! I
I Take care, please! I
-----------------------------------------

If it had not been for these cautions I never should have dared venture
in.

In the middle of the room was an occasional table, on which stood
a decanter of rum, a siphon of soda-water, a Turkish tobacco-pouch,
"Captain Cook's Voyages," the Indian tales of Fenimore Cooper and
Gustave Aimard, stories of hunting the bear, eagle, elephant, and so
on. Lastly, beside the table sat a man of between forty and forty-five,
short, stout, thick-set, ruddy, with flaming eyes and a strong stubbly
beard; he wore flannel tights, and was in his shirt sleeves; one hand
held a book, and the other brandished a very large pipe with an iron
bowl-cap. Whilst reading heaven only knows what startling adventure of
scalp-hunters, he pouted out his lower lip in a terrifying way, which
gave the honest phiz of the man living placidly on his means the same
impression of kindly ferocity which abounded throughout the house.

This man was Tartarin himse