condemned to death, which lessened in no
way their youthful expansiveness.

They laughed, they talked openly, and as most of them spoke French,
Tartarin was soon at his ease. They called him "uncle," conscious of
something childlike and artless about him that they liked. Perhaps he
was over-ready with his hunting tales; turning up his sleeve to his
biceps in order to show the scar of a blow from a panther's claws, or
making his hearers feel beneath his beard the holes left there by the
fangs of a lion; perhaps also he became too rapidly familiar with these
persons, catching them round the waist, leaning on their shoulders,
calling them by their Christian names after five minutes' intercourse:

"Listen, Dmitri..." "You know me, Fedor Ivanovich..." They knew him only
since yesterday, in any case; but they liked him all the same for
his jovial frankness, his amiable, trustful air, and his readiness to
please. They read their letters before him, planned their plots,
and told their passwords to foil the police: a whole atmosphere
of conspiracy which amused the imagination of the Tarasconese hero
immensely: so that, however opposed by nature to acts of violence, he
could not help, at times, discussing their homicidal plans, approving,
criticising, and giving advice dictated by the experience of a great
leader who has trod the path of war, trained to the handling of all
weapons, and to hand-to-hand conflicts with wild beasts.

One day, when they told in his presence of the murder of a policeman,
stabbed by a Nihilist at the theatre, Tartarin showed them how badly the
blow had been struck, and gave them a lesson in knifing.

"Like this, _ve!_ from the top down. Then there's no risk of wounding
yourself..."

And, excited by his own imitation:

"Let's suppose, _te!_ that I hold your despot between four eyes in a
boar-hunt He is over there, where you are, Fedor, and I'm here,
near this round table, each of us with our hunting-knife... Come on,
monseigneur, we 'll have it out now..."

Planting himself in the middle of the salon, gathering his sturdy legs
under him for a spring, and snorting like a woodchopper, he mimicked a
real fight, ending by his cry of triumph as he plunged the weapon to
the hilt, from the top down, _coquin de sort!_ into the bowels of his
adversary.

"That's how it ought to be done, my little fellows!"

But what subsequent remorse! what anguish when, escaping from the
magnetism of Sonia's blue eyes,