At last the great day arrived.

From first light the whole of Terascon was afoot, blocking the Avignon road and the approaches to the little house of the baobab.

There were people at windows, on roofs, up trees.
Bargees from the Rhone, stevedores, boot-blacks, clerks, weavers, the club members, in fact the whole town.

Then there were people from Beaucaire who had come across the bridge, market-gardeners from the suburbs, carts with big hoods, vignerons mounted on fine mules ornamented with ribbons, tassels, bows and bells, and even here and there some pretty girls from Arles, with blue kerchiefs round their heads, riding on the crupper behind their sweethearts on the small iron-grey horses of the Camargue.

All this crowd pushed and jostled before Tartarin's gate, the gate of this fine M.Tartarin who was going to kill lions in the country of the "Teurs".