CHAPTER 1.
Although it is now some twelve or fifteen years since my first meeting with Tartarin de Tarascon, the memory of the encounter remains as fresh as if it had been yesterday.
At that time Tartarin lived near the entrance to the town, in the third house on the left on the Avignon road, a pretty little Tarascon villa, with a garden in front, a balcony behind, very white walls and green shutters.
From outside the place looked perfectly ordinary, one would never have believed that it was the home of a hero, but when one went inside, well...

My goodness! The whole establishment had an heroic air, even the garden! Ah...! The Garden...

there was not another like it in Europe.

Not one indigenous tree grew there, not one French flower; nothing but exotic plants, gum trees, calabashes, cotton trees, coconut palms, mangos, bananas, cactuses, figs and a baobab.

One might have thought oneself in the middle of Africa, thousands of miles from Tarascon.