f his cap, paying no attention to
environing amazement, and waved it in the air three times, to do honour
to the ashes of those heroes. A few of the passengers mistook his
purpose, and politely returned his bow.

The engine at last gave a hoarse roar, its echo repercussioning from
cliff to cliff of the narrow space. The notice hung out on deck before
each new landing-place (as they do at public balls to vary the country
dances) announced the Tells-platte.

They arrived.

The chapel is situated just five minutes' walk from the landing, at the
edge of the lake, on the very rock to which William Tell sprang, during
the tempest, from Gessler's boat. It was to Tartarin a most delightful
emotion to tread, as he followed the travellers of the Circular Cook
along the lakeside, that historic soil, to recall and live again the
principal episodes of the great drama which he knew as he did his own
life.

From his earliest years, William Tell had been his type. When, in the
Bezuquet pharmacy, they played the game of preference, each person
writing secretly on folded slips the poet, the tree, the odour, the
hero, the woman he preferred, one of the papers invariably ran thus:--

"Tree preferred? ........... the baobab.
Odour? ..................... gunpowder.
Writer? .................... Fenimore Cooper.
What I would prefer to be .. William Tell."

And every voice in the pharmacy cried out: "That's Tartarin!"

Imagine, therefore, how happy he was and how his heart was beating as he
stood before that memorial chapel raised to a hero by the gratitude of
a whole people. It seemed to him that William Tell in person, still
dripping with the waters of the lake, his crossbow and his arrows in
hand, was about to open the door to him.

"No entrance... I am at work... This is not the day..." cried a loud
voice from within, made louder by the sonority of the vaulted roof.

"Monsieur Astier-Rehu, of the French Academy..."

"Herr Doctor Professor Schwanthaler..."

"Tartarin of Tarascon..."

In the arch above the portal, perched upon a scaffolding, appeared a
half-length of the painter in working-blouse, palette in hand.

"My _famulus_ will come down and open to you, messieurs," he said with
respectful intonations.

"I was sure of it, _pardi!_" thought Tartarin; "I had only to name
myself."

However, he had the good taste to stand aside modestly, and only entered
after all the others.

The painter, superb fe