th so far as courage is concerned: there is
nothing to show that the Southerners, Tarasconnais and others, are any
more cowardly than the men of the North. Courage goes in zones, and
because the North has generally proved harder the South must not be
indicted _en bloc_. Presumably Daudet felt compelled to make Tartarin a
poltroon so as to throw into relief his braggadocio; that is a flaw in
his work, but if it be accepted as the licence of a _litterateur_, it
does not mar the picture of Tartarin.

It should not, therefore, be lost sight of by the reader of _Tartarin de
Tarascon_ and of _Tartarin Sur Les Alpes_ that this is a caricature.
Every line is true, but modified a little by the 'mirage' that Alphonse
Daudet so deftly satirises; it is only so much distorted as irony
demands. _Tartarin de Tarascon_ is by far the best of the three books;
it is the most compact, and within its hundred-odd pages the picture of
Tartarin is completely painted; the sequel is merely the response of the
author to the demand of a public who so loved Tartarin as to buy five
hundred thousand copies of his adventures. As for _Port Tarascon_, the
beginning of Tartarin's end, it should not have been written, for it
closes on a new Tartarin who no longer believes in his own triumphs--a
sober, disillusioned Tartarin, shorn of his glory, flouted by his
compatriots and ready to die in a foreign town. Alphonse Daudet had
probably tired of his hero, for he understood him no longer. The real
Tartarin could not be depressed by misadventure, chastened by loss of
prestige: to cast him to earth could only bring about once more the
prodigy of Anteus. He would have risen again, more optimistic and
bombastic than ever, certain that no enemy had thrown him and that he
had but slipped. And if Tartarin had to die, which is not certain, for
Tartarin's essence is immortal, he could not die disgraced, but must
die sumptuously--like Cleopatra among her jewels, or a Tartar chief
standing on his piled arms on the crest of a funeral pyre.

2. FALSTAFF

Like Hamlet, Tartuffe, Don Quixote, Falstaff has had his worshippers and
his exegetists. The character Dr. Johnson dwelled on still serves to-day
to exercise the critical capacity of the freshman; he is one of the
stars in a crowded cast, a human, fallible, lovable creature, and it is
not wonderful that so many have asked themselves whether there lurked
fineness and piety within his gross frame. But, though 'his pyra