thousand times no! How is that? you may say, he must know vey well that
he has not been to Shanghai... to be sure he knows... only.... Perhaps the
time has come when we should settle the question of the reputation for
lying which has been given to the people of the Midi.

There are no liars in the Midi, neither at Marseille, nor Nimes, nor
Toulouse, nor Tarascon. The man of the Midi does not lie, he deceives
himself. He does not always speak the truth but he believes he speaks
it. His untruth, for him, is not a lie, it is a sort of mirage. To
understand better you must visit the Midi yourself. You will see a
countryside where the sun transfigures everything and makes it larger
than life-size. The little hills of Provence, no bigger than the Butte
Montmartre will seem to you gigantic. The Maison Carrée at Nimes, a
pretty little Roman temple, will seem to you as big as Notre Dame. You
will see that the only liar in the Midi, if there is one, is the sun;
everything that he touches he exaggerates. Can you be surprised that
this sun shining down on Tarascon has been able to make a retired
Captain Quartermaster into the gallant Commandant Bravida, to make a
thing like a turnip into a baobab and a man who almost went to Shanghai
into one who has really been there.




Chapter 7.

Now that we have shown Tartarin as he was in his private life, before
fame had crowned his head with laurels. Now that we have recounted the
story of his heroic existance in modest surroundings, the story of his
joys and sorrows, his dreams and his hopes, let us hurry forward to the