The three brothers Garcio-Camus, relatives of Tarascon, established in business at Shanghai, offered him the managership of one of their branches there.  This undoubtedly presented the kind of life he hankered after.  Plenty of active business, a whole army of under-strappers to order about, and connections with Russia, Persia, Turkey in Asia —­ in short, to be a merchant prince!

In Tartarin’s mouth, the title of Merchant Prince thundered out as something stunning!

The house of Garcio-Camus had the further advantage of sometimes being favoured with a call from the Tartars.  Then the doors would be slammed shut, all the clerks flew to arms, up ran the consular flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars.

I need not tell you with what enthusiasm Quixote-Tartarin clutched this proposition; sad to say, Sancho-Tartarin did not see it in the same light, and, as he was the stronger party, it never came to anything.  But in the town there was much talk about it.  Would he go or would he not?  “I’ll lay he will!” —­ and “I’ll wager he won’t!” It was the event of the week.  In the upshot, Tartarin did not depart, but the matter redounded to his credit none the less.  Going or not going to Shanghai was all one to Tarascon.  Tartarin’s journey was so much talked about that people got to believe he had done it and returned, and at the club in the evening members would actually ask for information on life at Shanghai, the manners and customs and climate, about opium, and commerce.

Deeply read up, Tartarin would graciously furnish the particulars desired, and, in the end, the good fellow was not quite sure himself about not having gone to Shanghai, so that, after relating for the hundredth time how the Tartars came down on the trading post, it would most naturally happen him to add: 

“Then I made my men take up arms and hoist the consular flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars.”

On hearing this, the whole club would quiver.

“But according to that, this Tartarin of yours is an awful liar.”

“No, no, a thousand times over, no!  Tartarin was no liar.”

“But the man ought to know that he has never been to Shanghai” —­

“Why, of course, he knows that; but still” —­

“But still,” you see —­ mark that!  It is high time for the law to be laid down once for all on the reputation as drawers of the long bow which Northerners fling at Southerners.  There are no Baron Munchausens in the south of France, neither at Nimes nor Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon.  The Southerner does not deceive but is self-deceived.  He does not always tell the cold-drawn truth, but he believes he does.  His falsehood is not any such thing, but a kind of mental mirage.