Deceptive security!

Hardly were they two leagues from the city before every head was stuck out of window.  There were outcries and astonishment.  Tartarin looked in his turn, and what did he descry! the camel, reader, the inevitable camel, racing along the line behind the train, and keeping up with it!  The dismayed Tartarin drew back and shut his eyes.

After this disastrous expedition of his he had reckoned on slipping into his house incognito.  But the presence of this burdensome quadruped rendered the thing impossible.  What kind of a triumphal entry would he make?  Good heavens! not a sou, not a lion, nothing to show for it save a camel!

“Tarascon!  Tarascon!”

He was obliged to get down.

O amazement!

Scarce had the hero’s red fez popped out of the doorway before a loud shout of “Tartarin for ever!” made the glazed roof of the railway station tremble.  “Long life to Tartarin, the lion-slayer!” And out burst the windings of horns and the choruses of the local musical societies.

Tartarin felt death had come:  he believed in a hoax.  But, no! all Tarascon was there, waving their hats, all of the same way of thinking.  Behold the brave Commandant Bravida, Costecalde the armourer, the Chief Judge, the chemist, and the whole noble corps of cap-poppers, who pressed around their leader, and carried him in triumph out through the passages.

Singular effects of the mirage! —­ the hide of the blind lion sent to Bravida was the cause of all this riot.  With that humble fur exhibited in the club-room, the Tarasconians, and, at the back of them, the whole South of France, had grown exalted.  The Semaphore newspaper had spoken of it.  A drama had been invented.  It was not merely a solitary lion which Tartarin had slain, but ten, nay, twenty —­ pooh! a herd of lions had been made marmalade of.  Hence, on disembarking at Marseilles, Tartarin was already celebrated without being aware of it, and an enthusiastic telegram had gone on before him by two hours to his native place.

But what capped the climax of the popular gladness was to see a fancifully shaped animal, covered with foam and dust, appear behind the hero, and stumble down the station stairs.

Tarascon for an instant believed that its dragon was come again.

Tartarin set his fellow-citizens at ease.

“This is my camel,” he said.

Already feeling the influence of the splendid sun of Tarascon, which makes people tell “bouncers” unwittingly, he added, as he fondled the camel’s hump: 

“It is a noble beast!  It saw me kill all my lions!”

Whereupon he familiarly took the arm of the commandant, who was red with pleasure; and followed by his camel, surrounded by the cap-hunters, acclaimed by all the population, he placidly proceeded towards the Baobab Villa; and, on the march, thus commenced the account of his mighty hunting: