Bab Bab 8 · VIII. Mitaine’s Menagerie--A Lion from the Atlas at Tarascon--A Solemn

. VIII. Mitaine’s Menagerie--A Lion from the Atlas at Tarascon--A Solemn

and Fearsome Confrontation.

EXHIBITING Tartarin of Tarascon, as we are, in his private life, before

Fame kissed his brow and garlanded him with her well-worn laurel wreath,

and having narrated his heroic existence in a modest state, his delights

and sorrows, his dreams and his hopes, let us hurriedly skip to the

grandest pages of his story, and to the singular event which was to give

the first flight to his incomparable career.

It happened one evening at Costecalde the gunmaker’s, where Tartarin was

engaged in showing several sportsmen the working of the needle-gun,

then in its first novelty. The door suddenly flew open, and in rushed a

bewildered cap-popper, howling “A lion, a lion!” General was the alarm,

stupor, uproar and tumult. Tartarin prepared to resist cavalry with

the bayonet, whilst Costecalde ran to shut the door. The sportsman was

surrounded and pressed and questioned, and here follows what he told

them: Mitaine’s Menagerie, returning from Beaucaire Fair, had consented

to stay over a few days at Tarascon, and was just unpacking, to set up

the show on the Castle-green, with a lot of boas, seals, crocodiles, and

a magnificent lion from the Atlas Mountains.

An African lion in Tarascon?

Never in the memory of living man had the like been seen. Hence our

dauntless cap-poppers looked at one another how proudly! What a beaming

on their sunburned visages! and in every nook of Costecalde’s shop what

hearty congratulatory grips of the hand were silently exchanged! The

sensation was so great and unforeseen that nobody could find a word to

say--not even Tartarin.

Blanched and agitated, with the needle-gun still in his fist, he

brooded, erect before the counter. A lion from the Atlas Range at pistol

range from him, a couple of strides off? a lion, mind you--the beast

heroic and ferocious above all others, the King of the Brute Creation,

the crowning game of his fancies, something like the leading actor in

the ideal company which played such splendid tragedies in his mind’s

eye. A lion, heaven be thanked! and from the Atlas, to boot! It was more

than the great Tartarin could bear.

Suddenly a flush of blood flew into his face. His eyes flashed. With one

convulsive movement he shouldered the needle-gun, and turning towards

the brave Commandant Bravida (formerly captain in the Army Clothing

Department, please to remember), he thundered to him--

“Let’s go have a look at him, commandant.”

“Here, here, I say! that’s my gun--my needle-gun you are carrying off,”

timidly ventured the wary Costecalde; but Tartarin had already got round

the corner, with all the cap-poppers proudly lock-stepping behind him.

When they arrived at the menagerie, they found a goodly number of people

there. Tarascon, heroic but too long deprived of sensational shows, had

rushed upon Mitaine’s portable theatre, and had taken it by storm. Hence

the voluminous Madame Mitaine was highly contented. In an Arab costume,

her arms bare to the elbow, iron anklets on, a whip in one hand and a

plucked though live pullet in the other, the noted lady was doing the

honours of the booth to the Tarasconians; and, as she also had “double

muscles,” her success was almost as great as her animals.

The entrance of Tartarin with the gun on his shoulder was a damper.

All our good Tarasconians, who had been quite tranquilly strolling

before the cages, unarmed and with no distrust, without even any idea

of danger, felt momentary apprehension, naturally enough, on beholding

their mighty Tartarin rush into the enclosure with his formidable engine

of war. There must be something to fear when a hero like he was, came

weaponed; so, in a twinkling, all the space along the cage fronts was

cleared. The youngsters burst out squalling for fear, and the women

looked round for the nearest way out. The chemist Bezuquet made off

altogether, alleging that he was going home for his gun.

Gradually, however, Tartarin’s bearing restored courage. With head

erect, the intrepid Tarasconian slowly and calmly made the circuit

of the booth, passing the seal’s tank without stopping, glancing

disdainfully on the long box filled with sawdust in which the boa would

digest its raw fowl, and going to take his stand before the lion’s cage.

A terrible and solemn confrontation, this! The lion of Tarascon and the

lion of Africa face to face!

On the one part, Tartarin erect, with his hamstrings in tension, and

his arms folded on his gun barrel; on the other, the lion, a gigantic

specimen, humped up in the straw, with blinking orbs and brutish mien,

resting his huge muzzle and tawny full-bottomed wig on his forepaws.

Both calm in their gaze.

Singular thing! whether the needle-gun had given him “the needle,” if

the popular idiom is admissible, or that he scented an enemy of

his race, the lion, who had hitherto regarded the Tarasconians with

sovereign scorn, and yawned in their faces, was all at once affected by

ire. At first he sniffed; then he growled hollowly, stretching out his

claws; rising, he tossed his head, shook his mane, opened a capacious

maw, and belched a deafening roar at Tartarin.

A yell of fright responded, as Tarascon precipitated itself madly

towards the exit, women and children, lightermen, cap-poppers, even the

brave Commandant Bravida himself. But, alone, Tartarin of Tarascon

had not budged. There he stood, firm and resolute, before the cage,

lightnings in his eyes, and on his lip that gruesome grin with which

all the town was familiar. In a moment’s time, when all the cap-poppers,

some little fortified by his bearing and the strength of the bars,

re-approached their leader, they heard him mutter, as he stared Leo out

of countenance:

“Now, this is something like a hunt!”

All the rest of that day, never a word farther could they draw from

Tartarin of Tarascon.