As a hat shooter Tartarin had no equal. Every Sunday morning he left with a new hat. Every evening he returned with a rag. In the little house of the baobab, the attic was full of these glorious trophies. All of Tarascon recognised him as their master in this respect. The gentlemen elected him as their chief justice in matters relating to the chase and arbitrator in any dispute, so that every day, between the hours of three and four in the afternoon, at Costecalde the gunsmith’s one could see the plump figure of a man, seated gravely on a green leather arm-chair, in the middle of the shop, which was full of hat hunters standing about and arguing. It was Tartarin delivering justice. Nimrod doubling as Soloman. Chapter 2. In addition to their passion for hunting the good people of Tarascon had another passion, which was for drawing-room ballads. The number of ballads which were sung in this part of the world passed all belief. All the old sentimental songs, yellowing in ancient cardboard boxes, could be found in Tarascon alive and flourishing. Each family had its own ballad and in the town this was well understood. One knew, for example, that for Bezuquet the chemist it was:-“Thou pale star whom I adore.” For the gunsmith Costecalde:-“Come with me to the forest glade.” For the Town Clark:--“If I was invisible, no one would see me.” (a comic song) Two or three times a week people would gather in one house or another and sing, and the remarkable thing is that the songs were always the same. No matter for how long they had been singing them, the people of Tarascon had no desire to change them. They were handed down in families from father to son and nobody dared to interfere with them, they were sacrosanct. They were never even borrowed. It would never occur to the Bezuquets to sing the Costecaldes’ song or to the Costecaldes to sing that of the Bezuquets. You might suppose that having known them for some forty years they might sometimes sing them to themselves, but no, everyone stuck to his own. In the matter of ballads, as in that of hats, Tartarin played a leading role. His superiority over his fellow citizens arose from the fact that he did not have a song of his own, and so he could take part in all of them, only it was extremely difficult to get him to sing at all. Returning early from some drawing-room success, our hero preferred to immerse himself in his books on hunting or spend the evening at the club rather than join in a sing-song round a Nimes piano, between two Tarascon candles. He felt that musical evenings were a little beneath him. Sometimes, however, when there was music at Bezuquet the chemists, he would drop in as if by chance, and after much persuasion he would consent to take part in the great duet from “Robert le Diable” with madame Bezuquet the elder.