ip, and that popular
favour was going to others; and this made him suffer horribly.

Ah, the huge bowl of popularity! it's all very well to have a seat in
front of it, but what a scalding you catch when it is overturned!

Notwithstanding his pain, Tartarin smiled and peacefully jogged on in
the same life as if nothing untoward had happened. Still, the mask
of jovial heedlessness glued by pride on his face would sometimes
be suddenly detached. Then, in lieu of laughter, one saw grief and
indignation. Thus it was that one morning, when the little blackguards
yelped "Muster Jarvey's Roifle" beneath his window, the wretches' voices
rose even into the poor great man's room, where he was shaving before
the glass. (Tartarin wore a full beard, but as it grew very thick, he
was obliged to keep it trimmed orderly.)

All at once the window was violently opened, and Tartarin appeared in
shirt-sleeves and nightcap, smothered in lather, flourishing his razor
and shaving-brush, and roaring with a formidable voice:

"Let's have it out with swords, gentlemen, not pins!"

Fine words, worthy of history's record, with only the blemish that they
were addressed to little scamps not higher than their boot-boxes, and
who were quite incapable of holding a smallsword.

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 slen