The Provence town of Tarascon is 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 travelling menagerie, the over-imaginative town understands him to be planning a hunting expedition to Algeria. So as not to lose face, Tartarin is forced to go, after gathering an absurd mass of equipment and weapons. On the boat from Marseille to Algiers, he hooks up with a conman posing as a Montenegran prince who takes advantage of him in multiple ways. Tartarin's gullibility causes him a number of misadventures until he returns home penniless but covered in glory after shooting a tame, blind lion.
