of amazement rose from the crowd:--"He's a Teur!.... He's wearing
sun-glasses!".... Tartarin, it is true, had believed that as he was going
to Algeria he should adopt Algerian costume. Large baggy pantaloons of
white cloth, a small tight jacket with metal buttons, a red sash wound
round his stomach and on his head a gigantic "Chechia" (a red floppy
bonnet) with an immensely long blue tassel dangling from its crown.
Added to this, he carried two rifles, one on each shoulder, a hunting
knife stuck into the sash round his middle, a cartridge-bag slung on
one side and a revolver in a leather holster on the other. That was
it. Ah!... forgive me... I forgot the sun-glasses, a huge pair of blue
sun-glasses which were just the very thing to correct any suggestion of
extravagance in his turnout.

"Vive Tartarin!... Vive Tartarin!" Yelled the people. The great man
smiled but did not wave, partly because of the rifles, which were giving
him some trouble and partly because he had learned what little value one
can place on popular favour. Perhaps even, in the depths of his soul, he
cursed these terrible compatriots who were forcing him to leave, to quit
his pretty little house with its green shutters and white walls, but if
so he did not show it. Calm and proud, though a little pale, he marched
down the pathway, inspected his handcarts and seeing that all was in
order set off jauntily on the road to the station, without looking back
even once at the house of the baobab.

On his arrival at the station he was greeted by the station-master,
a former soldier, who shook him warmly by the hand several times. The
Paris-Marseille express had not yet arrived, so Tartarin and his general
staff went into the waiting-room. To keep back the following crowd the
station-master closed the barriers.