Mitaine's Menagerie -- A Lion from the Atlas at Tarascon -- A Solemn and Fearsome Confrontation.
EXHIBITING Tartarin of Tarascon, as we are, in his private life, before Fame kissed his brow and garlanded him with her well-worn laurel wreath, and having narrated his heroic existence in a modest state, his delights and sorrows, his dreams and his hopes, let us hurriedly skip to the grandest pages of his story, and to the singular event which was to give the first flight to his incomparable career.
It happened one evening at Costecalde the gunmaker's, where Tartarin was engaged in showing several sportsmen the working of the needle-gun, then in its first novelty.The door suddenly flew open, and in rushed a bewildered cap-popper, howling "A lion, a lion !" General was the alarm, stupor, uproar and tumult.Tartarin prepared to resist cavalry with the bayonet, whilst Costecalde ran to shut the door.The sportsman was surrounded and pressed and questioned, and here follows what he told them: Mitaine's Menagerie, returning from Beaucaire Fair, had consented to stay over a few days at Tarascon, and was just unpacking, to set up the show on the Castle-green, with a lot of boas, seals, crocodiles, and a magnificent lion from the Atlas Mountains.
An African lion in Tarascon?
Never in the memory of living man had the like been seen.Hence our dauntless cap-poppers looked at one another how proudly !
What a beaming on their sunburned visages! and in every nook of Costecalde's shop what hearty congratulatory grips of the hand were silently exchanged! The sensation was so great and unforeseen that nobody could find a word to say-not even Tartarin.
Blanched and agitated, with the needle-gun still in his fist, he brooded, erect before the counter.A lion from the Atlas Range at pistol range from him, a couple of strides off? a lion, mind you--the beast heroic and ferocious above all others, the King of the Brute Creation, the crowning game of his fancies, something like the leading actor in the ideal company which played such splendid tragedies in his mind's eye.A lion, heaven be thanked! and from the Atlas, to boot! It was more than the great Tartarin could bear.
Suddenly a flush of blood flew into his face.His eyes flashed.With one convulsive movement he shouldered the needle-gun, and turning towards the brave Commandant Bravida (formerly captain in the Army Clothing Department, please to remember), he thundered to him --"Let's go have a look at him, commandant."
"Here, here, I say! that's my gun -- my needle-gun you are carrying off," timidly ventured the wary Costecalde; but Tartarin had already got round the corner, with all the cap-poppers proudly lock-stepping behind him.
When they arrived at the menagerie, they found a goodly number of people there.Tarascon, heroic but too long deprived of sensational shows, had rushed upon Mitaine's portable theatre, and bad taken it by storm.Hence the voluminous Madame Mitaine was highly contented.In an Arab costume, her arms bare to the elbow, iron anklets on, a whip in one hand and a plucked though live pullet in the other, the noted lady was doing the honours of the booth to the Tarasconians; and, as she also had "double muscles," her success was almost as great as her animals.
The entrance of Tartarin with the gun on his shoulder was a damper.
All our good Tarasconians, who had been quite tranquilly strolling before the cages, unarmed and with no distrust, without even any idea of danger, felt momentary apprehension, naturally enough, on beholding their mighty Tartarin rush into the enclosure with his formidable engine of war.There must be something to fear when a hero like he was, came weaponed; so, in a twinkling, all the space along the cage fronts was cleared.The youngsters burst out squalling for fear, and the women looked round for the nearest way out.The chemist Bezuquet made off altogether, alleging that he was going home for his gun.
Gradually, however, Tartarin's bearing restored courage.With head erect, the intrepid Tarasconian slowly and calmly made the circuit of the booth, passing the seal's tank without stopping, glancing disdainfully on the long box filled with sawdust in which the boa would digest its raw fowl, and going to take his stand before the lion's cage.
A terrible and solemn confrontation, this! The lion of Tarascon and the lion of Africa face to face!
On the one part, Tartarin erect, with his hamstrings in tension, and his arms folded on his gun barrel; on the other, the lion, a gigantic specimen, humped up in the straw, with blinking orbs and brutish mien, resting his huge muzzle and tawny full-bottomed wig on his forepaws.Both calm in their gaze.
Singular thing! whether the needle-gun had given him " the needle,"if the popular idiom is admissible, or that he scented an enemy of his race, the lion, who had hitherto regarded the Tarasconians with sovereign scorn, and yawned in their faces, was all at once affected by ire.At first he sniffed; then he growled hollowly, stretching out his claws; rising, he tossed his head., shook his mane, opened a capacious maw, and belched a deafening roar at Tartarin.
A yell of fright responded, as Tarascon precipitated itself madly towards the exit, women and children, lightermen, cap-poppers, even the brave Commandant Bravida himself.But, alone, Tartarin of Tarascon had not budged.There he stood, firm and resolute, before the cage, lightnings in his eyes, and on his lip that gruesome grin with which all the town was familiar.In a moment's time, when all the cap-poppers, some little fortified by his hearing and the strength of the bars, re-approached their leader, they heard him mutter, as he stared Leo out of countenance :
"Now, this is something like a hunt!"
All the rest of that day, never a word farther could they draw from Tartarin of Tarascon.
