Sisteron had spent these four days in a whirl of
the most frantic and abandoned dissipation. It was popularly supposed
that these four days in Paris, twenty years ago, had so completely
unsettled M. Sisteron that life in Nyons had lost all zest for him. He
was perpetually hungering for the delirious joys of the metropolis;
even the collection of taxes no longer afforded him the faintest
gratification. Every inhabitant of Nyons was secretly proud of being
able to claim so dare-devil a roysterer as a fellow-townsman. The
memory of those rumored four hectic days in Paris clung round him like
a halo; it became almost a pleasure to pay taxes to so celebrated a
character. M. Sisteron was short, paunchy, bald, and bearded. He was a
model husband and a pattern as a father. I am persuaded that he had
spent those four days in Paris in the most blameless and innocuous
fashion, living in the cheapest hotel he could find, and, after the
manner of the people of Nyons, never spending one unnecessary franc.
Still, the legend of his lurid four days, and of the amount of
champagne he had consumed during them, persisted. In moments of
expansion, his intimate friends would dig him in the ribs, remembering
those four feverish days, with a facetious, "Ah! vieux polisson de
Sisteron, va! Nous autres, nous n'avons pas fait des farces a Paris
dans notre jeunesse!" to M. Sisteron's unbounded delight. It was in the
genuine spirit of Tartarin de Tarascon, with all the mutual
make-believe on both sides. His wife, Mme. Sisteron, was fond of
assuring her friends that she owed her excellent health to the fact
that she invariably took a bath twice a year, whether she required it
or not.

The other members of the cercle were also mostly short, tubby,
black-bearded, and olive-complexioned. When not engaged in playing
"manille" for infinitesimal points, they would all shout and
gesticulate violently, as only Southern Frenchmen can, relapsing as the
discussion grew more heated into their native Provencal, for though
Nyons is geographically in Dauphine, climatically and racially it is in
Provence. In Southern France the "Langue d'Oil," the literary language
of Paris and Northern France, has never succeeded in ousting the
"Langue d'Oc," the language of the Troubadours. From hearing so much
Provencal talked round me, I could not help picking up some of it. It
was years before I could rid myself of the habit of inquiring quezaco?
instead of "qu'est ce que c'e