up well, and take even
superfluous necessaries with him. Sancho-Tartarin would listen to
nothing. The poor craven saw himself already torn to tatters by the
lions, or engulfed in the desert sands like his late royal highness
Cambyses, and the other Tartarin only managed to appease him a little by
explaining that the start was not immediate, as nothing pressed.

It is clear enough, indeed, that none embark on such an enterprise
without some preparations. A man is bound to know whither he goes,
hang it all! and not fly off like a bird. Before anything else, the
Tarasconian wanted to peruse the accounts of great African tourists, the
narrations of Mungo Park, Du Chaillu, Dr. Livingstone, Stanley, and so
on.

In them, he learnt that these daring explorers, before donning their
sandals for distant excursions, hardened themselves well beforehand to
support hunger and thirst, forced marches, and all kinds of privation.
Tartarin meant to act like they did, and from that day forward he lived
upon water broth alone. The water broth of Tarascon is a few slices of
bread drowned in hot water, with a clove of garlic, a pinch of thyme,
and a sprig of laurel. Strict diet, at which you may believe poor Sancho
made a wry face.

To the regimen of water broth Tartarin of Tarascon joined other
wise practices. To break himself into the habit of long marches,
he constrained himself to go round the town seven or eight times
consecutively every morning, either at the fast walk or run, his elbows
well set against his body, and a couple of white pebbles in the mouth,
according to the antique usage.

To get inured to fog, dew, and night coolness, he would go down into his
garden every dusk, and stop out there till ten or eleven, alone with his
gun, on the lookout, behind the baobab.

Finally, so long as Mitaine's wild beast show tarried in Tarascon, the
cap-poppers who were belated at Costecalde's might spy in the shadow
of the booth, as they crossed the Castle-green, a mysterious figure
stalking up and down. It was Tartarin of Tarascon, habituating himself
to hear without emotion the roarings of the lion in the sombre night.

X. Before the Start.

PENDING Tartarin's delay of the event by all sorts of heroic means,
all Tarascon kept an eye upon him, and nothing else was busied about.
Cap-popping was winged, and ballad-singing dead. The piano in Bezuquet's
shop mouldered away under a green fungus, and the Spanish flies
dried upon it