Tartarin of Tarascon

'Tartarin of Tarascon' is a novel written by the French author Alphonse Daudet. The story is set in the Provençal town of Tarascon, whose citizens are so enthusiastic about hunting that no game lives anywhere near it, and its inhabitants resort to telling hunting stories and throwing their own caps in the air to shoot at them. Tartarin, a plump middle-aged man, is the chief «cap-hunter», but following his enthusiastic reaction to seeing an Atlas lion in a traveling menagerie, the over-imaginative town understands him to be planning a hunting expedition to Algeria.