"Tartarin, Tartarin..." Even among the plane-trees on the Promenade, heavy with white dust, distracted gra.s.shoppers, vibrating in the sunlight, seemed to strangle with those two sonorous syllables: "Tar..

tar.. tar.. tar.. tar..."

As no one knew anything, naturally every one was well-informed and gave explanations of the departure of the president. Extravagant versions appeared. According to some, he had entered La Trappe; he had eloped with the Dugazon; others declared he had gone to the Isles to found a colony to be called Port-Tarascon, or else to roam Central Africa in search of Livingstone.

"Ah! _va!_ Livingstone!.. Why he has been dead these two years."

But Tarasconese imagination defies all hints of time and s.p.a.ce. And the curious thing is that these ideas of La Trappe, colonization, distant travel, were Tartarin's own ideas, dreams of that sleeper awake, communicated in past days to his intimate friends, who now, not knowing what to think, and vexed in their hearts at not being duly informed, affected toward the public the greatest reserve and behaved to one another with a sly air of private understanding. Excourbanies suspected Bravida of being in the secret; Bravida, on his side, thought: "Bezuquet knows the truth; he looks about him like a dog with a bone."

True it was that the apothecary suffered a thousand deaths from this hair-shirt of a secret, which cut him, skinned him, turned him pale and red in the same minute and caused him to squint continually. Remember that he belonged to Tarascon, unfortunate man, and say if, in all martyrology, you can find so terrible a torture as this--the torture of Saint Bezuquet, who knew a secret and could not tell it.

This is why, on that particular evening, in spite of the terrifying news he had just received, his step had something, I hardly know what, freer, more buoyant, as he went to the session of the Club. _Enfin!_.. He was now to speak, to unbosom himself, to tell that which weighed so heavily upon him; and in his haste to unload his breast he cast a few half words as he went along to the loiterers on the Promenade. The day had been so hot, that in spite of the unusual hour (_a quarter to eight_ on the clock of the town hall!) and the terrifying darkness, quite a crowd of reckless persons, bourgeois families getting the good of the air while that of their houses evaporated, bands of five or six sewing-women, rambling along in an undulating line of chatter and laughter, were abroad. In every group they were talking of Tartarin.

"_Et autrement_, Monsieur Bezuquet, still no letter?" they asked of the apothecary, stopping him on his way.

"Yes, yes, my friends, yes, there is... Read the _Forum_ to-morrow morning..."

He hastened his steps, but they followed him, fastened on him, and along the Promenade rose a murmuring sound, the bleating of a flock, which gathered beneath the windows of the Club, left wide open in great squares of light.

The sessions were held in the _bouillotte_ room, where the long table covered with green cloth served as a desk. At the centre, the presidential arm-chair, with P. C. A. embroidered on the back of it; at one end, humbly, the armless chair of the secretary. Behind, the banner of the Club, draped above a long glazed map in relief, on which the Alpines stood up with their respective names and alt.i.tudes. Alpenstocks of honour, inlaid with ivory, stacked like billiard cues, ornamented the corners, and a gla.s.s-case displayed curiosities, crystals, silex, petrifactions, two porcupines and a salamander, collected on the mountains.

In Tartarin's absence, Costecalde, rejuvenated and radiant, occupied the presidential arm-chair; the armless chair was for Excourbanies, who fulfilled the functions of secretary; but that devil of a man, frizzled, hairy, bearded, was incessantly in need of noise, motion, activity which hindered his sedentary employments. At the smallest pretext, he threw out his arms and legs, uttered fearful howls and "Ha! ha! has!" of ferocious, exuberant joy which always ended with a war-cry in the Tarasconese patois: "_Fen de brut_... let us make a noise "... He was called "the gong" on account of his metallic voice, which cracked the ears of his friends with its ceaseless explosions.

Here and there, on a horsehair divan that ran round the room were the members of the committee.

In the first row, sat the former captain of equipment, Bravida, whom all Tarascon called the Commander; a very small man, clean as a new penny, who redeemed his childish figure by making himself as moustached and savage a head as Vercingetorix.

Next came the long, hollow, sickly face of Pegoulade, the collector, last survivor of the wreck of the "Medusa." Within the memory of man, Tarascon has never been without a last survivor of the wreck of the "Medusa." At one time they even numbered three, who treated one another mutually as impostors, and never con~ sented to meet in the same room.

Of these three the only true one was Pegoulade. Setting sail with his parents on the "Medusa," he met with the fatal disaster when six months old,--which did not prevent him from relating the event, _de visu_, in its smallest details, famine, boats, raft, and how he had taken the captain, who was selfishly saving himself, by the throat: "To your duty, wretch!.. "At six months old, _outre!_... Wearisome, to tell the truth, with that eternal tale which everybody was sick of for the last fifty years; but he took it as a pretext to a.s.sume a melancholy air, detached from life: "After what I have seen!" he would say--very unjustly, because it was to that he owed his post as collector and kept it 'under all administrations.

Near him sat the brothers Rognonas, twins and s.e.xagenarians, who never parted, but always quarrelled and said the most monstrous things to each other; their two old heads, defaced, corroded, irregular, and ever looking in opposite directions out of antipathy, were so alike that they might have figured in a collection of coins with IANVS BIFRONS on the exergue.

Here and there, were Judge Bedaride, Barjavel the lawyer, the notary Cambalalette, and the terrible Doctor Tournatoire, of whom Bravida remarked that he could draw blood from a radish.

In consequence of the great heat, increased by the gas, these gentlemen held the session in their shirt-sleeves, which detracted much from the solemnity of the occasion. It is true that the meeting was a very small one; and the infamous Costecalde was anxious to profit by that circ.u.mstance to fix the earliest possible date for the elections without awaiting Tartarin's return. Confident in this manoeuvre, he was enjoying his triumph in advance, and when, after the reading of the minutes by Excourbanies, he rose to insinuate his scheme, an infernal smile curled up the corners of his thin lips.

"Distrust the man who smiles before he speaks," murmured the Commander.

Costecalde, not flinching, and winking with one eye at the faithful Tournatoire, began in a spiteful voice:--

"Gentlemen, the extraordinary conduct of our president, the uncertainty in which he leaves us..."

"False!.. The president has written..."

Bezuquet, quivering, planted himself squarely before the table; but conscious that his att.i.tude was anti-parliamentary, he changed his tone, and, raising one hand according to usage, he asked for the floor, to make an urgent communication.

"Speak! Speak!"

Costecalde, very yellow, his throat tightened, gave him the floor by a motion of his head. Then, and not till then, Bezuquet spoke:

"Tartarin is at the foot of the Jungfrau... he is about to make the ascent... he desires to take with him our banner..."

Silence; broken by the heavy breathing of chests; then a loud hurrah, bravos, stamping of the feet, above which rose the gong of Excourbanies uttering his war-cry "Ha! ha! ha! _fen de brut!_" to which the anxious crowd without responded.

Costecalde, getting more and more yellow, tinkled the presidential bell desperately. Bezuquet at last was allowed to continue, mopping his forehead and puffing as if he had just mounted five pairs of stairs.

_Differemment_, the banner that their president requested in order to plant it on virgin heights, should it be wrapped up, packed up, and sent by express like an ordinary trunk?..

"Never!.. Ah! ah! ah!.." roared Excourbanies.

Would it not be better to appoint a delegation--draw lots for three members of the committee?..

He was not allowed to finish. The time to say _zou!_ and Bezuquet's proposition was voted by acclamation, and the names of three delegates drawn in the following order: 1, Bravida; 2, Pegoulade; 3, the apothecary.

No. 2, protested. The long journey frightened him, so feeble and ill as he was, _pecherel_ ever since that terrible event of the "Medusa."

"I 'll go for you, Pegoulade," roared Excour-banies, telegraphing with all his limbs. As for Bezuquet, he could not leave the pharmacy, the safety of the town depended on him. One imprudence of the pupil, and all Tarascon might be poisoned, decimated:

"_Outre!_" cried the whole committee, agreeing as one man.

Certainly the apothecary could not go himself, but he could send Fascalon; Pascalon could take charge of the banner. That was his business. Thereupon, fresh exclamations, further explosions of the gong, and on the Promenade such a popular tempest that Excourbanies was forced to show himself and address the crowd above its roarings, which his matchless voice soon mastered.

"My friends, Tartarin is found. He is about to cover himself with glory."

Without adding more than "Vive Tartarin!" and his war-cry, given with all the force of his lungs, he stood for a moment enjoying the tremendous clamour of the crowd below, rolling and hustling confusedly in clouds of dust, while from the branches of the trees the gra.s.shoppers added their queer little rattle as if it were broad day.

Hearing all this, Costecalde, who had gone to a window with the rest, returned, staggering, to his arm-chair.

"_Ve!_ Costecalde," said some one. "What's the matter with him?.. Look how yellow he is!"

They sprang to him; already the terrible Tournatoire had whipped out his lancet: but the gunsmith, writhing in distress, made a horrible grimace, and said ingenuously:

"Nothing... nothing... let me alone... I know what it is... it is envy."

Poor Costecalde, he seemed to suffer much.

While these things were happening, at the other end of the Tour de Ville, in the pharmacy, Bezuquet's pupil, seated before his master's desk, was patiently patching and gumming together the fragments of Tartarin's letter overlooked by the apothecary at the bottom of the basket. But numerous bits were lacking in the reconstruction, for here is the singular and sinister enigma spread out before him, not unlike a map of Central Africa, with voids and s.p.a.ces of _terra incognita_, which the artless standard-bearer explored in a state of terrified imagination:

mad with love reed -wick lam preserves of Chicago.

cannot tear myself Nihilist to death condition abom in exchange for her You know me, Ferdi know my liberal ideas, but from there to tzaricide rrible consequences Siberia hung adore her Ah! press thy loyal hand

Tar Tar

VIII.

Memorable dialogue between the jungfrau and Tartarin. A nihilist salon. The duel with hunting-knives. Frightful nightmare, "Is it I you are seeking, messieurs?" Strange reception given by the hotel-keeper Meyer to the Tarasconese delegation.