[Tartarin de Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet]@TWC D-Link bookTartarin de Tarascon CHAPTER 5 2/2
you will understand...! At this point I think one has to admit that there were two sides to our hero's character.
On the one hand was the spirit of Don Quixote, devoted to chivalry, to heroic ideals, to grandiose romantic folly, but lacking the body of the celebrated hidalgo, that thin, bony apology of a body, careless of material wants, capable of going for twenty nights without unbuckling its breastplate and surviving for twenty-four hours on a handful of rice.
Tartarin, on the other hand, had a good solid body, fat, heavy, sybaritic, soft and complaining, full of bourgeois appetites and domestic necessities, the short-legged, full-bellied body of Sancho Panza. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the same man! You may imagine the arguments, the quarrels, the fights.
Carried away by some lurid tale of adventure, Tartarin-Quixote would clamour to be off to the fields of glory, to set sail for distant lands, but then Tartarin-Sancho ringing for the maid servant, would say "Jeanette, my chocolate." Upon which Jeanette would return with a fine cup of chocolate, hot, silky and scented, and some succulent grilled snacks, flavoured with anise; greatly pleasing Tartarin-Sancho and silencing the cries of Tartarin-Quixote. That is how it happens that Tartarin de Tarascon had never left Tarascon..
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