at Shanghai.

Unfortunately, granting Tartarin was this time again dupe of an
illusion, his fellow-townsfolk were not. When, after the quarter's
expectation, they perceived that the hunter had not packed even a
collar-box, they commenced murmuring.

"This is going to turn out like the Shanghai expedition," remarked
Costecalde, smiling.

The gunsmith's comment was welcomed all over town, for nobody
believed any longer in their late idol. The simpletons and poltroons
-- all the fellows of Bezuquet's stamp, whom a flea would put to
flight, and who could not fire a shot without closing their eyes --
were conspicuously pitiless. In the club-rooms or on the esplanade,
they accosted poor Tartarin with bantering mien:

"And furthermore, when is that trip coming off?"

In Costecalde's shop, his opinions gained no credence, for the cap-
poppers renounced their chief!

Next, epigrams dropped into the affair. Chief Judge Ladevese, who
willingly paid court in his leisure hours to the native Muse,
composed in local dialect a song which won much success. It told
of a sportsman called "Master Gervais," whose dreaded rifle was
bound to exterminate all the lions in Africa to the very last.
Unluckily, this terrible gun was of a strange kind: "though loaded
daily, it never went off."