presided over the Ducros'
kitchen (M. Dueros' own sister) deservedly enjoyed an enormous local
reputation.

Most people must be familiar with Alphonse Daudet's immortal work,
Tartarin de Tarascon, in which the typical "Meridional" of Southern
France is portrayed with such unerring exactitude that Daudet himself,
after writing the book, was never able to set foot in Tarascon again.

We had a cercle in Nyons, in the Place Napoleon (re-christened Place de
la Republique after September 4, 1870), housed in three rather stately,
sparsely furnished, eighteenth-century rooms. Here, with the exception
of Tartarin himself, the counterparts of all Daudet's characters were
to be found. "Le Capitaine Bravida" was represented by Colonel Olivier,
a fiercely moustached and imperialled Crimean veteran, who perpetually
breathed fire and swords on any potential enemy of France. "Costecalde"
found his prototype in M. Sichap, who, although he had in all
probability never fired off a gun in his life, could never see a tame
pigeon, or even a sparrow flying over him, without instantly putting
his walking-stick to his shoulder and loudly ejaculating, "Pan, pan,"
which was intended to counterfeit the firing of both barrels of a gun.
I once asked M. Sichap why so excellent a shot as he (with a
walking-stick) invariably missed his bird with his first barrel, and
only brought him down with his second. This was quite a new light to M.
Sichap, who had hithered considered the double "Pan, pan," an
indispensable adjunct to the pantomime of firing a gun; much as my
young brother and I had once imagined "Ug, ug," an obligatory
commencement to any remark made by a Red Indian "brave."

In so remote a place as Nyons, over four hundred miles from the
capital, the glamour of Paris exercised a magical attraction. The few
inhabitants of Nyons who had ever visited Paris, or even merely passed
through it, were never quite as other people, some little remnant of an
aureole encircled them. The dowdy little wife of M. Pelissier, who had
first seen the light in some grubby suburb of Paris, either
Levallois-Perret or Clichy, held an immense position in Nyons on the
strength of being "une vraie Parisienne," and most questions of taste
were referred to her. M. Sisteron, the collector of taxes, himself a
native of Nyons, had twenty years before gone to Paris on business, and
spent four days there. There were the darkest rumours current in Nyons,
to the effect that M.