to the enclosure with his formidable engine
of war. There must be something to fear when a hero like he was, came
weaponed; so, in a twinkling, all the space along the cage fronts was
cleared. The youngsters burst out squalling for fear, and the women
looked round for the nearest way out. The chemist Bezuquet made off
altogether, alleging that he was going home for his gun.

Gradually, however, Tartarin's bearing restored courage. With head
erect, the intrepid Tarasconian slowly and calmly made the circuit
of the booth, passing the seal's tank without stopping, glancing
disdainfully on the long box filled with sawdust in which the boa would
digest its raw fowl, and going to take his stand before the lion's cage.

A terrible and solemn confrontation, this! The lion of Tarascon and the
lion of Africa face to face!

On the one part, Tartarin erect, with his hamstrings in tension, and
his arms folded on his gun barrel; on the other, the lion, a gigantic
specimen, humped up in the straw, with blinking orbs and brutish mien,
resting his huge muzzle and tawny full-bottomed wig on his forepaws.
Both calm in their gaze.

Singular thing! whether the needle-gun had given him "the needle," if
the popular idiom is admissible, or that he scented an enemy of
his race, the lion, who had hitherto regarded the Tarasconians with
sovereign scorn, and yawned in their faces, was all at once affected by
ire. At first he sniffed; then he growled hollowly, stretching out his
claws; rising, he tossed his head, shook his mane, opened a capacious
maw, and belched a deafening roar at Tartarin.

A yell of fright responded, as Tarascon precipitated itself madly
towards the exit, women and children, lightermen, cap-poppers, even the
brave Commandant Bravida himself. But, alone, Tartarin of Tarascon
had not budged. There he stood, firm and resolute, before the cage,
lightnings in his eyes, and on his lip that gruesome grin with which
all the town was familiar. In a moment's time, when all the cap-poppers,
some little fortified by his bearing and the strength of the bars,
re-approached their leader, they heard him mutter, as he stared Leo out
of countenance:

"Now, this is something like a hunt!"

All the rest of that day, never a word farther could they draw from
Tartarin of Tarascon.

IX. Singular effects of Mental Mirage.

CONFINING his remarks to the sentence last recorded, Tartarin had
unfortunately still said overmuch.

On the m