" It was to satirise this amiable weakness of his southern
compatriots that the novelist created the character of
Tartarin, but while he makes us laugh at the absurd
misadventures of the lion-hunter, it will be noticed how
ingeniously he prevents our growing out of temper with him,
how he contrives to keep a warm corner in our hearts for the
bragging, simple-minded, good-natured fellow. That is to say,
it is a work of essential humour, and the lively style in
which the story is told attracts us to it time and again with
undiminished pleasure. In two subsequent books, "Tartarin in
the Alps," and "Port Tarascon," Daudet recounted further
adventures of his delightful hero. His "Sapho" and "Kings in
Exile" have also been widely read. Daudet died on December 17,
1897.

_I.--The Mighty Hunter at Home_

I remember my first visit to Tartarin of Tarascon as clearly as if it
had been yesterday, though it is now more than a dozen years ago. When
you had passed into his back garden, you would never have fancied
yourself in France. Every tree and plant had been brought from foreign
climes; he was such a fellow for collecting the curiosities of Nature,
this wonderful Tartarin. His garden boasted, for instance, an example of
the baobab, that giant of the vegetable world, but Tartarin's specimen
was only big enough to occupy a mignonette pot. He was mightily proud of
it, all the same.

The great sight of his place, however, was the hero's private den at the
bottom of the garden. Picture to yourself a large hall gleaming from top
to bottom with firearms and weapons of all sorts: carbines, rifles,
blunderbusses, bowie-knives, revolvers, daggers, flint-arrows--in a
word, examples of the deadly weapons of all races used by man in all
parts of the world. Everything was neatly arranged, and labelled as if
it were in a public museum. "Poisoned Arrows. Please do not touch!" was
the warning on one of the cards. "Weapons loaded. Have a care!" greeted
you from another. My word, it required some pluck to move about in the
den of the great Tartarin.

There were books of travel and adventure, books about mighty hunting on
the table in the centre of the room; and seated at the table was a short
and rather fat, red-haired fellow of about forty-five, with a closely-
trimmed beard and a pair of bright eyes. He was in his shirtsleeves,
reading a book held in one hand while he gesti