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 --