A grandfather brandishes his walking-stick in a bellicose manner and, in the next room, the small children who have been put to bed earlier are startled out of their sleep by the banging and bellowing, and greatly frightened demand lights.
Tartarin, however, showed no sign of leaving for Africa...

did he really have any intention of going?
That is a delicate question and one to which his biographer would find difficulty in replying.

The fact is that the menagerie had now been gone for three months but the killer of lions had not budged...

could it be that our innocent hero, blinded perhaps by a new mirage, honestly believed that he had been to Africa, and by talking so much about his hunting expedition believed that it had actually taken place.

Unfortunately, if this was the case and Tartarin had once more fallen victim to the mirage, the people of Tarascon had not.