Here and there, on a horsehair divan that ran round the room were the members of the committee. In the first row, sat the former captain of equipment, Bravida, whom all Tarascon called the Commander; a very small man, clean as a new penny, who redeemed his childish figure by making himself as moustached and savage a head as Vercingétorix. Next came the long, hollow, sickly face of Pégoulade, the collector, last survivor of the wreck of the “Medusa.” Within the memory of man, Tarascon has never been without a last survivor of the wreck of the “Medusa.” At one time they even numbered three, who treated one another mutually as impostors, and never con~ sented to meet in the same room. Of these three the only true one was Pégoulade. Setting sail with his parents on the “Medusa,” he met with the fatal disaster when six months old,--which did not prevent him from relating the event, _de visu_, in its smallest details, famine, boats, raft, and how he had taken the captain, who was selfishly saving himself, by the throat: “To your duty, wretch!.. “At six months old, _outre!_... Wearisome, to tell the truth, with that eternal tale which everybody was sick of for the last fifty years; but he took it as a pretext to assume a melancholy air, detached from life: “After what I have seen!” he would say--very unjustly, because it was to that he owed his post as collector and kept it ‘under all administrations. Near him sat the brothers Rognonas, twins and sexagenarians, who never parted, but always quarrelled and said the most monstrous things to each other; their two old heads, defaced, corroded, irregular, and ever looking in opposite directions out of antipathy, were so alike that they might have figured in a collection of coins with IANVS BIFRONS on the exergue. Here and there, were Judge Bédaride, Barjavel the lawyer, the notary Cambalalette, and the terrible Doctor Tournatoire, of whom Bravida remarked that he could draw blood from a radish. In consequence of the great heat, increased by the gas, these gentlemen held the session in their shirt-sleeves, which detracted much from the solemnity of the occasion. It is true that the meeting was a very small one; and the infamous Costecalde was anxious to profit by that circumstance to fix the earliest possible date for the elections without awaiting Tartarin’s return. Confident in this manoeuvre, he was enjoying his triumph in advance, and when, after the reading of the minutes by Excourbaniès, he rose to insinuate his scheme, an infernal smile curled up the corners of his thin lips. “Distrust the man who smiles before he speaks,” murmured the Commander. Costecalde, not flinching, and winking with one eye at the faithful Tournatoire, began in a spiteful voice:-- “Gentlemen, the extraordinary conduct of our president, the uncertainty in which he leaves us...” “False!.. The president has written...”