The chapel is situated just five minutes’ walk from the landing, at the edge of the lake, on the very rock to which William Tell sprang, during the tempest, from Gessler’s boat. It was to Tartarin a most delightful emotion to tread, as he followed the travellers of the Circular Cook along the lakeside, that historic soil, to recall and live again the principal episodes of the great drama which he knew as he did his own life. From his earliest years, William Tell had been his type. When, in the Bézuquet pharmacy, they played the game of preference, each person writing secretly on folded slips the poet, the tree, the odour, the hero, the woman he preferred, one of the papers invariably ran thus:-- “Tree preferred? ........... the baobab. Odour? ..................... gunpowder. Writer? .................... Fenimore Cooper. What I would prefer to be .. William Tell.” And every voice in the pharmacy cried out: “That’s Tartarin!” Imagine, therefore, how happy he was and how his heart was beating as he stood before that memorial chapel raised to a hero by the gratitude of a whole people. It seemed to him that William Tell in person, still dripping with the waters of the lake, his crossbow and his arrows in hand, was about to open the door to him. “No entrance... I am at work... This is not the day...” cried a loud voice from within, made louder by the sonority of the vaulted roof. “Monsieur Astier-Réhu, of the French Academy...” “Herr Doctor Professor Schwanthaler...” “Tartarin of Tarascon...” In the arch above the portal, perched upon a scaffolding, appeared a half-length of the painter in working-blouse, palette in hand. “My _famulus_ will come down and open to you, messieurs,” he said with respectful intonations. “I was sure of it, _pardi!_” thought Tartarin; “I had only to name myself.” However, he had the good taste to stand aside modestly, and only entered after all the others. The painter, superb fellow, with the gilded, ruddy head of an artist of the Renaissance, received his visitors on the wooden steps which led to the temporary staging put up for the purpose of painting the roof. The frescos, representing the principal episodes in the life of William Tell, were finished, all but one, namely: the scene of the apple in the market-place of Altorf. On this he was now at work, and his young _famulus_, as he called him, feet and legs bare under a toga of the middle ages, and his hair archangelically arranged, was posing as the son of William Tell. All these archaic personages, red, green, yellow, blue, made taller than nature in narrow streets and under the posterns of the period, intended, of course, to be seen at a distance, impressed the spectators rather sadly. However, they were there to admire, and they admired. Besides, none of them knew anything. “I consider that a fine characterization,” said the pontifical Astier-Réhu, carpet-bag in hand.