Kabanata Kabanata 7 · VII. Tartarin--The Europeans at Shanghai--Commerce--The Tartars--Can
. VII. Tartarin--The Europeans at Shanghai--Commerce--The Tartars--Can
Tartarin of Tarascon be an Impostor?--The Mirage.
UNDER one conjunction of circumstances, Tartarin did, however, once
almost start out upon a great voyage.
The three brothers Garcio-Camus, relatives of Tarascon, established
in business at Shanghai, offered him the managership of one of their
branches there. This undoubtedly presented the kind of life he hankered
after. Plenty of active business, a whole army of under-strappers to
order about, and connections with Russia, Persia, Turkey in Asia--in
short, to be a merchant prince!
In Tartarin’s mouth, the title of Merchant Prince thundered out as
something stunning!
The house of Garcio-Camus had the further advantage of sometimes being
favoured with a call from the Tartars. Then the doors would be slammed
shut, all the clerks flew to arms, up ran the consular flag, and zizz!
phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars.
I need not tell you with what enthusiasm Quixote-Tartarin clutched this
proposition; sad to say, Sancho-Tartarin did not see it in the same
light, and, as he was the stronger party, it never came to anything. But
in the town there was much talk about it. Would he go or would he not?
“I’ll lay he will!”--and “I’ll wager he won’t!” It was the event of the
week. In the upshot, Tartarin did not depart, but the matter redounded
to his credit none the less. Going or not going to Shanghai was all one
to Tarascon. Tartarin’s journey was so much talked about that people got
to believe he had done it and returned, and at the club in the evening
members would actually ask for information on life at Shanghai, the
manners and customs and climate, about opium, and commerce.
Deeply read up, Tartarin would graciously furnish the particulars
desired, and, in the end, the good fellow was not quite sure himself
about not having gone to Shanghai, so that, after relating for the
hundredth time how the Tartars came down on the trading post, it would
most naturally happen him to add:
“Then I made my men take up arms and hoist the consular flag, and zizz!
phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars.”
On hearing this, the whole club would quiver.
“But according to that, this Tartarin of yours is an awful liar.”
“No, no, a thousand times over, no! Tartarin was no liar.”
“But the man ought to know that he has never been to Shanghai”--
“Why, of course, he knows that; but still”--
“But still,” you see--mark that! It is high time for the law to be laid
down once for all on the reputation as drawers of the long bow which
Northerners fling at Southerners. There are no Baron Munchausens in the
south of France, neither at Nimes nor Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon.
The Southerner does not deceive but is self-deceived. He does not always
tell the cold-drawn truth, but he believes he does. His falsehood is not
any such thing, but a kind of mental mirage.
Yes, purely mirage! The better to follow me, you should actually follow
me into the South, and you will see I am right. You have only to look at
that Lucifer’s own country, where the sun transmogrifies everything,
and magnifies it beyond life-size. The little hills of Provence are no
bigger than the Butte Montmartre, but they will loom up like the Rocky
Mountains; the Square House at Nimes--a mere model to put on your
sideboard--will seem grander than St. Peter’s. You will see--in brief,
the only exaggerator in the South is Old Sol, for he does enlarge
everything he touches. What was Sparta in its days of splendour? a
pitiful hamlet. What was Athens? at the most, a second-class town; and
yet in history both appear to us as enormous cities. This is a sample of
what the sun can do.
Are you going to be astonished after this that the same sun falling upon
Tarascon should have made of an ex-captain in the Army Clothing Factory,
like Bravida, the “brave commandant;” of a sprout an Indian fig-tree;
and of a man who had missed going to Shanghai one who had been there?