XIII. The Departure.

EFTSOON arrived the great and solemn day. From dawn all Tarascon had been on foot, encumbering the Avignon road and the approaches to Baobab Villa. People were up at the windows, on the roofs, and in the trees; the Rhone bargees, porters, dredgers, shoeblacks, gentry, tradesfolk, warpers and weavers, taffety-workers, the club members, in short the whole town; moreover, people from Beaucaire had come over the bridge, market-gardeners from the environs, carters in their huge carts with ample tilts, vinedressers upon handsome mules, tricked out with ribbons, streamers, bells, rosettes, and jingles, and even, here and there, a few pretty maids from Arles, come on the pillion behind their sweethearts, with bonny blue ribbons round the head, upon little iron-grey Camargue horses.

All this swarm squeezed and jostled before our good Tartarin’s door, who was going to slaughter lions in the land of the Turks.

For Tarascon, Algeria, Africa, Greece, Persia, Turkey, and Mesopotamia, all form one great hazy country, almost a myth, called the land of the Turks. They say “Tur’s,” but that’s a linguistic digression.

In the midst of all this throng, the cap-poppers bustled to and fro, proud of their captain’s triumph, leaving glorious wakes where they had passed.

In front of the Indian fig-tree house were two large trucks. From time to time the door would open, and allow several persons to be spied, gravely lounging about the little garden. At every new box the throng started and trembled. The articles were named in a loud voice:

“That there’s the shelter-tent; these the potted meats; that’s the physic-chest; these the gun-cases,"— the cap-poppers giving explanations.

All of a sudden, about ten o’clock, there was a great stir in the multitude, for the garden gate banged open.

“Here he is! here he is!” they shouted.

It was he indeed. When he appeared upon the threshold, two outcries of stupefaction burst from the assemblage:

“He’s a Turk!” “He’s got on spectacles!”

In truth, Tartarin of Tarascon had deemed it his duty, on going to Algeria, to don the Algerian costume. Full white linen trousers, small tight vest with metal buttons, a red sash two feet wide around the waist, the neck bare and the forehead shaven, and a vast red fez, or chechia, on his head, with something like a long blue tassel thereto. Together with this, two heavy guns, one on each shoulder, a broad hunting-knife in the girdle, a bandolier across the breast, a revolver on the hip, swinging in its patent leather case — that is all. No, I cry your pardon, I was forgetting the spectacles — a pantomimically large pair of azure barnac............