"It's I, Monsieur Tartarin. Don't you recognise me? I am the old stage-coach who used to do the road betwixt Nimes and Tarascon twenty year agone. How many times I have carried you and your friends when you went to shoot at caps over Joncquieres or Bellegarde way! I did not know you again at the first, on account of your Turk's cap and the flesh you have acc.u.mulated; but as soon as you began snoring--what a rascal is good-luck!--I twigged you straight away."

"All right, that's all right enough!" observed the Tarasconian, a shade vexed; but softening, he added, "But to the point, my poor old girl; whatever did you come out here for?"

"Pooh! my good Monsieur Tartarin, I a.s.sure you I never came of my own free will. As soon as the Beaucaire railway was finished I was considered good for nought, and shipped away into Algeria. And I am not the only one either! Bless you, next to all the old stage-coaches of France have been packed off like me. We were regarded as too much the conservative--'the slow-coaches'--d'ye see, and now we are here leading the life of a dog. This is what you in France call the Algerian railways."

Here the ancient vehicle heaved a long-drawn sigh before proceeding. "My wheels and linchpin! Monsieur Tartarin, how I regret my lovely Tarascon!

That was the good time for me, when I was young!--You ought to have seen me starting off in the morning, washed with no stint of water and all a-shine, with my wheels freshly varnished, my lamps blazing like a brace of suns, and my boot always rubbed up with oil! It was indeed lovely when the postillion cracked his whip to the tune of 'Lagadigadeou, the Tarasque! the Tarasque!' and the guard, his horn in its sling and laced cap c.o.c.ked well over one ear, chucking his little dog, always in a fury, upon the top, climbed up himself with a shout: 'Right-away!'

"Then would my four horses dash off to the medley of bells, barks, and horn-blasts, and the windows fly open for all Tarascon to look with pride upon the royal mail coach dart over the king's highway.

"What a splendid road that was, Monsieur Tartarin, broad and well kept, with its mile-stones, its little heaps of road-metal at regular distances, and its pretty clumps of vines and olive-trees on either hand! Then, again, the roadside inns so close together, and the changes of horses every five minutes! And what jolly, honest chaps my patrons were!--village mayors and parish priests going up to Nimes to see their prefect or bishop, taffety-weavers returning openly from the Mazet, collegians out on holiday leave, peasants in worked smock-frocks, all fresh shaven for the occasion that morning; and up above, on the top, you gentlemen-sportsmen, always in high spirits, and singing each your own family ballad to the stars as you came back in the dark.

"Deary me! it's a change of times now! Lord knows what rubbish I am carting here, come from n.o.body guesses where! They fill me with small deer, these negroes, Bedouin Arabs, swashbucklers, adventurers from every land, and ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and all jabbering a language that the Tower of Babel itself could make nothing of! And, furthermore, you should see how they treat me--I mean, how they never treat me: never a brush or a wash. They begrudge me grease for my axles. Instead of my good fat quiet horses of other days, little Arab ponies, with the devil in their frames, who fight and bite, caper as they run like so many goats, and break my splatterboard all to smithereens with their lashing out behind. Ouch! ouch! there they are at it again!

"And such roads! Just here it is bearable, because we are near the governmental headquarters; but out a bit there's nothing, Monsieur--not the ghost of a road at all. We get along as best we can over hill and dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. Ne'er a fixed change of horses, the stopping being at the whim of the guard, now at one farm, again at another.

"Somewhiles this rogue goes a couple of leagues out of the way to have a gla.s.s of absinthe or champoreau with a chum. After which, 'Crack on, postillion!' to make up for the lost time. Though the sun be broiling and the dust scorching, we whip on! We catch in the scrub and spill over, but whip on! We swim rivers, we catch cold, we get swamped, we drown, but whip! whip! whip! Then in the evening, streaming--a nice thing for my age, with my rheumatics--I have to sleep in the open air of some caravanseral yard, open to all the winds. In the dead o' night jackals and hyaenas come sniffing of my body; and the marauders who don't like dews get into my compartment to keep warm.

"Such is the life I lead, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, and that I shall lead to the day when--burnt up by the sun and rotted by the damp nights until unable to do anything else, I shall fall in some spot of bad road, where the Arabs will boil their kouskous with the bones of my old carca.s.s"--

"Blidah! Blidah!" called out the guard as he opened the door.

II. A little gentleman drops in and "drops upon" Tartarin.

VAGUELY through the mud-dimmed gla.s.s Tartarin of Tarascon caught a glimpse of a second-rate but pretty town market-place, regular in shape, surrounded by colonnades and planted with orange-trees, in the midst of which what seemed toy leaden soldiers were going through the morning exercise in the clear roseate mist. The cafes were shedding their shutters. In one corner there was a vegetable market. It was bewitching, but it did not smack of lions yet.

"To the South! farther to the South!" muttered the good old desperado, sinking back in his corner.

At this moment the door opened. A puff of fresh air rushed in, bearing upon its wings, in the perfume of the orange-blossoms, a little person in a brown frock-coat, old and dry, wrinkled and formal, his face no bigger than your fist, his neckcloth of black silk five fingers wide, a notary's letter-case, and umbrella--the very picture of a village solicitor.

On perceiving the Tarasconian's warlike equipment, the little gentleman, who was seated over against him, appeared excessively surprised, and set to studying him with burdensome persistency.

The horses were taken out and the fresh ones put in, whereupon the coach started off again. The little weasel still gazed at Tartarin, who in the end took snuff at it.

"Does this astonish you?" he demanded, staring the little gentleman full in the face in his turn.

"Oh, dear, no! it only annoys me," responded the other, very tranquilly.

And the fact is, that, with his shelter-tent, revolvers, pair of guns in their cases, and hunting-knife, not to speak of his natural corpulence, Tartarin of Tarascon did take up a lot of room.

The little gentleman's reply angered him.

"Do you by any chance fancy that I am going lion-hunting with your umbrella?" queried the great man haughtily.

The little man looked at his umbrella, smiled blandly, and still with the same lack of emotion, inquired:

"Oho, then you are Monsieur"--

"Tartarin of Tarascon, lion-killer!"

In uttering these words the dauntless son of Tarascon shook the blue ta.s.sel of his fez like a mane.

Through the vehicle was a spell of stupefaction.

The Trappist brother crossed himself, the dubious women uttered little screams of affright, and the Orleansville photographer bent over towards the lion-slayer, already cherishing the unequalled honour of taking his likeness.

The little gentleman, though, was not awed.

"Do you mean to say that you have killed many lions, Monsieur Tartarin?"

he asked, very quietly.

The Tarasconian received his charge in the handsomest manner.

"Is it many have I killed, Monsieur? I wish you had only as many hairs on your head as I have killed of them."

All the coach laughed on observing three yellow bristles standing up on the little gentleman's skull.

In his turn, the Orleansville photographer struck in:

"Yours must be a terrible profession, Monsieur Tartarin. You must pa.s.s some ugly moments sometimes. I have heard that poor Monsieur Bombonnel"--"Oh, yes, the panther-killer," said Tartarin, rather disdainfully.

"Do you happen to be acquainted with him?" inquired the insignificant person.

"Eh! of course! Know him? Why, we have been out on the hunt over twenty times together."

The little gentleman smiled.

"So you also hunt panthers, Monsieur Tartarin?" he asked.

"Sometimes, just for pastime," said the fiery Tarasconian. "But," he added, as he tossed his head with a heroic movement that inflamed the hearts of the two sweethearts of the regiment, "that's not worth lion-hunting."

"When all's said and done," ventured the photographer, "a panther is nothing but a big cat."

"Right you are!" said Tartarin, not sorry to abate the celebrated Bombonnel's glory a little, particularly in the presence of ladies.

Here the coach stopped. The conductor came to open the door, and addressed the insignificant little gentleman most respectfully, saying:

"We have arrived, Monsieur."

The little gentleman got up, stepped out, and said, before the door was closed again:

"Will you allow me to give you a bit of advice, Monsieur Tartarin?"

"What is it, Monsieur?"