! one may have one's heart in the right place and solidly hooked
there, but these are cruel moments. Nevertheless, neither his hand nor
his voice trembled while he distributed among his fellow-citizens all
the ethnographical riches piled in his little home, carefully dusted and
preserved in immaculate order.

"To the Club of the Alpines, my baobab (_arbos gigantea_) to stand on
the chimney-piece of the hall of sessions;"

To Bravida, his carbines, revolvers, hunting knives, Malay krishes,
tomahawks, and other murderous weapons;

To Excourbanies, all his pipes, calumets, narghiles, and pipelets for
smoking kif and opium;

To Costecalde--yes, Costecalde himself had his legacy--the famous
poisoned arrows (Do not touch).

Perhaps beneath this gift was the secret hope that the traitor would
touch and die; but nothing of the kind was exhaled by the will, which
closed with the following words, of a divine meekness:

"I beg my dear Alpinists not to forget their president... I wish them
to forgive my enemy as I have forgiven him, although it is he who has
caused my death..."

Here Tartarin was forced to stop, blinded by a flood of tears. For a
minute he beheld himself crushed, lying in fragments at the foot of
a high mountain, his shapeless remains gathered up in a barrow, and
brought back to Tarascon. Oh, the power of that Provencal imagination!
he was present at his own funeral; he heard the lugubrious chants, and
the talk above his grave: "Poor Tartarin, _pechere!_" and, mingling with
the crowd of his faithful friends, he wept for himself.

But immediately after, the sight of the sun streaming into his study and
glittering on the weapons and pipes in their usual order, the song of
that thread of a fountain in the middle of the garden recalled him to
the actual state of things. _Differemment_, why die? Why go, even? Who
obliged him? What foolish vanity! Risk his life for a presidential chair
and three letters!..

'Twas a passing weakness, and it lasted no longer than any other. At the
end of five minutes the will was finished, signed, the flourish added,
sealed with an enormous black seal, and the great man had concluded his
last preparations for departure.

Once more had the warren Tartarin triumphed over the cabbage Tartarin.
It could be said of the Tarasconese hero, as was said of Turenne: "His
body was not always willing to go into battle, but his will led him
there in spite of himself."

The evening of that