r 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 is 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 falsehood, 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 splendor? 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-capta