aware, for a
start, that everyone in these parts is a hunter. From the highest to the
lowest hunting is a passion with the Tarasconais and has been ever since
the legendary Tarasque prowled in the marshes near the town and was
hunted down by the citizens.

Now, every Sunday morning, the men of Tarascon take up arms and leave
town, bag on back and gun on shoulder, with an excited collection of
dogs, with ferrets, with trumpets and hunting horns, it is a splendid
spectacle.... Sadly, however, there is a shortage of game... in fact
there is a total absence of game.... Animals may be dumb but they are
not stupid, so for miles around Tarascon the burrows are empty and the
nests abandoned. There is not a quail, not a blackbird, not the smallest
rabbit nor even the tiniest wheatear.

These pretty little Tarascon hills, scented with lavender, myrtle and
rosemary are very tempting, and those fine muscat grapes, swollen
with sugar, which line the banks of the Rhone, are wonderfully
appetising... yes, but there is Tarascon in he distance, and in the world
of fur and feather Tarascon is bad news. The birds of passage seem to
have marked it with a cross on their maps, and when the long wedges of
wild duck, heading for the Camargue, see far off the town's steeples,
the whole flight veers away. In short there is nothing left by way of
game in this part of the country but an old rascal of a hare, who has
escaped by some miracle the guns of Tarascon and appears determined to
stay there. This hare is well known. He has been given a name. He
is called "Speedy". He is known to live on land belonging to
M. Bompard... which, by the way, has doubled or even tripled its value.
No one has yet been able to catch him, and at the present time there
are not more than two or three fanatics who go after him. The rest have
given up and Speedy has become something of a protected species, though
the Tarasconais are not very conservation minded and would make a stew
of the rarest of creatures, if they managed to shoot one.

Now, you may say, "Since game is in such short supply, what do these
Tarasconais sportsmen do every Sunday?" What do they do? Eh! Mon Dieu!
They go out into the country, several miles from the town. They assemble
in little groups of five or six. They settle down comfortably in
some shady spot. They take out of their game-bags a nice piece of
boeuf-en-daube, some raw onions, a sausage and some anchovies and they
begin a very long l