undred feet above sea-level), which make an
horizon of blue waves along the Provencal roads and are decorated by the
local imagination with the fabulous and characteristic names of: Mount
Terrible; The End of the World; The Peak of the Giants, etc.

'T is a pleasure to see, of a Sunday morning, the gaitered Tarasconese,
pickaxe in hand, knapsack and tent on their backs, starting off, bugles
in advance, for ascensions, of which the _Forum_, the local
journal, gives full account with a descriptive luxury and wealth of
epithets--abysses, gulfs, terrifying gorges--as if the said ascension
were among the Himalayas. You can well believe that from this exercise
the aborigines have acquired fresh strength and the "double muscles"
heretofore reserved to the only Tartarin, the good, the brave, the
heroic Tartarin.

If Tarascon epitomizes the South, Tartarin epitomizes Tarascon. He is
not only the first citizen of the town, he is its soul, its genius, he
has all its finest whimseys. We know his former exploits, his triumphs
as a singer (oh! that duet of "Robert le Diable" in Bezuquet's
pharmacy!), and the amazing odyssey of his lion-hunts, from which he
returned with that splendid camel, the last in Algeria, since deceased,
laden with honours and preserved in skeleton at the town museum among
other Tarasconese curiosities.

Tartarin himself has not degenerated; teeth still good and eyes good, in
spite of his fifties; still that amazing imagination which brings nearer
and enlarges all objects with the power of a telescope. He remains the
same man as he of whom the brave Commander Bravida used to say: "He's a
_lapin_..."

Or, rather, _two lapins!_ For in Tartarin, as in all the Tarasconese,
there is a warren race and a cabbage race, very clearly accentuated:
the roving rabbit of the warren, adventurous, headlong; and the
cabbage-rabbit, homekeeping, coddling, nervously afraid of fatigue, of
draughts, and of any and all accidents that may lead to death.

We know that this prudence did not prevent him from showing himself
brave and even heroic on occasion; but it is permissible to ask what
he was doing on the Rigi (_Regina Montium_) at his age, when he had so
dearly bought the right to rest and comfort.

To that inquiry the infamous Costecalde can alone reply.

Costecalde, gunsmith by trade, represents a type that is rather rare in
Tarascon. Envy, base, malignant envy, is visible in the wicked curve of
his thin lips, and a spe