The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tartarin of Tarascon, by Alphonse Daudet

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Title: Tartarin of Tarascon

Author: Alphonse Daudet

Release Date: August, 1999 [EBook #1862]
Posting Date: November 23, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TARTARIN OF TARASCON ***

Produced by Donal O'Danachair

TARTARIN OF TARASCON

By Alphonse Daudet

EPISODE THE FIRST, IN TARASCON

I. The Garden Round the Giant Trees.

MY first visit to Tartarin of Tarascon has remained a
never-to-be-forgotten date in my life; although quite ten or a dozen
years ago, I remember it better than yesterday.

At that time the intrepid Tartarin lived in the third house on the left
as the town begins, on the Avignon road. A pretty little villa in
the local style, with a front garden and a balcony behind, the walls
glaringly white and the venetians very green; and always about the
doorsteps a brood of little Savoyard shoe-blackguards playing hopscotch,
or dozing in the broad sunshine with their heads pillowed on their
boxes.

Outwardly the dwelling had no remarkable features, and none would ever
believe it the abode of a hero; but when you stepped inside, ye gods and
little fishes! what a change! From turret to foundation-stone--I mean,
from cellar to garret,--the whole building wore a heroic front; even so
the garden!

O that garden of Tartarin's! there's not its match in Europe! Not a
native tree was there--not one flower of France; nothing hut exotic
plants, gum-trees, gourds, cotton-woods, cocoa and cacao, mangoes,
bananas, palms, a baobab, nopals, cacti, Barbary figs--well, you would
believe yourself in the very midst of Central Africa, ten thousand
leagues away. It is but fair to say that these were none of full growth;
indeed, the cocoa-palms were no bigger than beet root and the baobab
(arbos gigantea--"giant tree," you know) was easily enough circumscribed
by a window-pot; but, notwithstanding this, it was rather a sensation
for Tarascon, and the townsfolk who were admitted on Sundays to the
honour of contemplating Tartarin's baobab, went home chokeful of
admiration.

Try to conceive my own emotion, w