n given him. "Rapid" is what
they call him. It is known that he has his form on M. Bompard's
grounds--which, by the way, has doubled, ay, tripled, the value of the
property--but nobody has yet managed to lay him low. At present, only
two or three inveterate fellows worry themselves about him. The rest
have given him up as a bad job, and old Rapid has long ago passed
into the legendary world, although your Tarasconer is very slightly
superstitious naturally, and would eat cock-robins on toast, or the
swallow, which is Our Lady's own bird, for that matter, if he could find
any.

"But that won't do!" you will say. Inasmuch as game is so scarce, what
can the sportsmen do every Sunday?

What can they do?

Why, goodness gracious! they go out into the real country two or
three leagues from town. They gather in knots of five or six, recline
tranquilly in the shade of some well, old wall, or olive tree, extract
from their game-bags a good-sized piece of boiled beef, raw onions, a
sausage, and anchovies, and commence a next to endless snack, washed
down with one of those nice Rhone wines, which sets a toper laughing and
singing. After that, when thoroughly braced up, they rise, whistle the
dogs to heel, set the guns on half cock, and go "on the shoot"--another
way of saying that every man plucks off his cap, "shies" it up with all
his might, and pops it on the fly with No. 5, 6, or 2 shot, according to
what he is loaded for.

The man who lodges most shot in his cap is hailed as king of the hunt,
and stalks back triumphantly at dusk into Tarascon, with his riddled
cap on the end of his gun-barrel, amid any quantity of dog-barks and
horn-blasts.

It is needless to say that cap-selling is a fine business in the town.
There are even some hatters who sell hunting-caps ready shot, torn, and
perforated for the bad shots; but the only buyer known is the chemist
Bezuquet. This is dishonourable!

As a marksman at caps, Tartarin of Tarascon never had his match.

Every Sunday morning out he would march in a new cap, and back he would
strut every Sunday evening with a mere thing of shreds. The loft of
Baobab Villa was full of these glorious trophies. Hence all Tarascon
acknowledged him as master; and as Tartarin thoroughly understood
hunting, and had read all the handbooks of all possible kinds of venery,
from cap-popping to Burmese tiger-shooting, the sportsmen constituted
him their great cynegetical judge, and took him for referee