Bab Bab 12 · XII. A memorable Dialogue in the little Baobab Villa.

. XII. A memorable Dialogue in the little Baobab Villa.

AMID the general falling off, the army alone stuck out firmly for

Tartarin. Brave Commandant Bravida (the former captain in the Army

Clothing Department) continued to show him the same esteem as ever.

“He’s game!” he persisted in saying--an assertion, I beg to believe,

fully worth the chemist Bezuquet’s. Not once did the brave officer let

out any allusion to the trip to Africa; but when the public clamour grew

too loud, he determined to have his say.

One evening the luckless Tartarin was in his study, in a brown study

himself, when he saw the commandant stride in, stern, wearing black

gloves, buttoned up to his ears.

“Tartarin,” said the ex-captain authoritatively, “Tartarin, you’ll have

to go!”

And there he dwelt, erect in the doorway frame, grand and rigid as

embodied Duty. Tartarin of Tarascon comprehended all the sense in

“Tartarin, you’ll have to ago!”

Very pale, he rose and looked around with a softened eye upon the cosy

snuggery, tightly closed in, full of warmth and tender light--upon the

commodious easy chair, his books, the carpet, the white blinds of the

windows, beyond which trembled the slender twigs of the little garden.

Then, advancing towards the brave officer, he took his hand, grasped it

energetically, and said in a voice somewhat tearful, but stoical for all

that:

“I am going, Bravida.”

And go he did, as he said he would. Not straight off though, for it

takes time to get the paraphernalia together.

To begin with, he ordered of Bompard two large boxes bound with brass,

and an inscription to be on them:

-----------------------------------------

I TARTARIN, OF TARASCON I

I Firearms, &c. I

-----------------------------------------

The binding in brass and the lettering took much time. He also

ordered at Tastavin’s a showy album, in which to keep a diary and his

impressions of travel; for a man cannot help having an idea or two

strike him even when he is busy lion-hunting.

Next, he had over from Marseilles a downright cargo of tinned

eatables, pemmican compressed in cakes for making soup, a new pattern

shelter-tent, opening out and packing up in a minute, sea-boots, a

couple of umbrellas, a waterproof coat, and blue spectacles to ward off

ophthalmia. To conclude, Bezuquet the chemist made him up a miniature

portable medicine chest stuffed with diachylon plaister, arnica,

camphor, and medicated vinegar.

Poor Tartarin! he did not take these safeguards on his own behalf;

but he hoped, by dint of precaution and delicate attentions, to allay

Sancho-Tartarin’s fury, who, since the start was fixed, never left off

raging day or night.