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A Mummer's Tale, a fiction by Anatole France |
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_ CHAPTER X Under the great void reserved by the height of the roof for the upward flight of prayers the motley crowd of human beings was huddled together like a flock of sheep. They were all there, at the foot of the catafalque surrounded by lights and covered with flowers, Durville, old Maury, Delage, Vicar, Destree, Leon Clim, Valrosche, Aman, Regnard, Pradel, Romilly, and Marchegeay, the manager. They were all there, Madame Ravaud, Madame Doulce, Ellen Midi, Duvernet, Herschell, Falempin, Stella, Marie-Claire, Louise Dalle, Fagette, Nanteuil, kneeling, robed in black, like elegiac figures. Some of the women were reading their missals. Some were weeping. All of them brought to the coffin of their comrade at least the tribute of their heavy eyes and their faces pallid from the cold of the morning. Journalists, actors, playwrights, whole families of those artisans who gain their living by the theatre, and a crowd of curious onlookers filled the nave. The choristers were uttering the mournful cries of the _Kyrie eleison_; the priest kissed the altar; turned towards the people and said: _"Dominus vobiscum."_ Romilly; taking in the crowd at a glance, remarked "Chevalier has a full house." "Just look at that Louise Dalle," said Fagette. "To look as though she's in mourning, she has put on a black mackintosh!" A little to the back of the church, with Pradel and Constantin Marc, Dr. Trublet was, in subdued tones, according to his habit, delivering his moral homilies. "Observe," he said, "that they are lighting, on the altar and about the coffin, in the guise of wax candles, diminutive night-lights mounted on billiard cues, and are thereby making an offering of lamp oil instead of virgin wax to the Lord. The pious men who dwell in the sanctuary have at all times been proved to defraud their God by these little deceptions. This observation is not my own; it is, I believe, Renan's." The celebrant, standing on the epistle side of the altar, was reciting in a low voice: _"Nolumus autem vos ignorare fratres de dormientibus, ut non contrisemimi, sicut et caeteri qui spem non habent."_ "Who is taking the part of Florentin?" inquired Durville of Romilly. "Regnard: he'll be no worse in it than Chevalier." Pradel plucked Trublet by the sleeve, and said: "Dr. Socrates, I beg you to tell me whether as a scientific man, as a physiologist, you see any serious objections to the immortality of the soul?" He asked the question as a busy and practical man in need of personal information. "You are doubtless aware, my dear friend," replied Trublet, "what Cyrano's bird said on this very subject. One day Cyrano de Bergerac heard two birds conversing in a tree. One of them said, 'The souls of birds are immortal,' 'There can be no doubt of it,' replied the other. 'But it is inconceivable that beings who possess neither bill nor feathers, who have no wings and walk on two legs, should believe that they, like the birds, have an immortal soul.'" "All the same," said Pradel, "when I hear the organ, I am chock-full of religious ideas." _"Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine."_ The celebrated author of _La Nuit du 23 octobre 1812_ appeared in the church, and no sooner had he done so than he was everywhere at one and the same moment--in the nave, under the porch, and in the choir. Like the _Diable boiteux_ he must, bestriding his crutch, have soared above the heads of the congregation, to pass as he did in the twinkling of an eye from Morlot, the deputy, who, being a freethinker, had remained in the parvis, to Marie-Claire kneeling at the foot of the catafalque. At one and at the same moment he whispered into the ears of all a few nimble phrases: "Pradel, can you imagine this fellow going and chucking his part, an excellent part, and running off to kill himself? A pumpkin-headed fool! Blows out his brains just two days before the first night. Compels us to replace him and sets us back a week. What an imbecile! A rotten bad egg. But we must do him justice; he could jump, and jump well, the animal. Well, my dear Romilly, we rehearse the new man to-day at two o'clock. See to it that Regnard has the script of his part, and that he knows how to climb on to the roof. Let us hope he won't kick the bucket on our hands like Chevalier. What if he, too, were to commit suicide! You needn't laugh. There's an evil spell on certain parts. Thus, in my _Marino Falieri_, the gondolier Sandro breaks his arm at the dress rehearsal. I am given another Sandro. He sprains his ankle on the first night. I am given a third, he contracts typhoid fever. My little Nanteuil, I'll entrust you with a magnificent role to create when you get to the Francais. But I have sworn by the great gods that I'll never again have a single play performed in this theatre." And immediately, under the little door which shuts off the choir on the right hand side of the altar, showing his friends Racine's epitaph, which is let into the wall, like a Parisian thoroughly conversant with the antiquities of his city, he recalled the history of this stone, he told them how the poet had been buried in accordance with his desire at Port-Royal-des-Champs, at the foot of Monsieur Hamon's grave, and that, after the destruction of the abbey and the violation of the tombs, the body of Messire Jean Racine, the King's secretary, Groom of the Chamber, had been transferred, all unhonoured; to Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. And he told how the tombstone, bearing the inscription composed for Boileau, beneath the knight's crest and the shield with its swan argent, and done into Latin by Monsieur Dodart, had served as a flagstone in the choir of the little church of Magny-Lessart; where it had been discovered in 1808. "There it is," he added. "It was broken in six pieces and the name of Racine was effaced by the shoes of the peasants. The fragments were pieced together and the missing letters carved anew." On this subject he expatiated with his customary vivacity and diffusiveness, drawing from his prodigious memory a multitude of curious facts and amusing anecdotes, breathing life into history and endowing archaeology with a living interest. His admiration and his wrath burst forth in swift and violent alternation in the solemnity of the church, and amid the pomp of the ceremony. "I would give something to know, for instance, who were the stupid bunglers who set this stone in the wall. _Hic jacet nobilis vir Johannes Racine._ It is not true! They make honest Boileau's epitaph lie. The body of Racine is not in this spot. It was laid to rest in the third chapel on the left, as you enter. What idiots!" Then, suddenly calm, he pointed to Pascal's tombstone. "That came here from the museum of the Petits-Augustins. No praise can be too great for Lenoir, who, in the days of the Revolution, collected and preserved." Thereupon, he improvised a second lecture on lapidary archaeology, even more brilliant than the first, transformed the history of Pascal's life into a terrible yet amusing drama, and vanished. In all, he had remained in the church for the space of ten minutes. Over those heads full of worldly cares and profane desires the _Dies irae_ rumbled like a storm:
"Your ignorance of the feminine heart surprises me." "Herschell was prettier when she was a brunette." "I must be off to lunch." "Do you know anyone who knows the Minister?" "Durville is a has-been. He blows like a grampus." "Put me in a little paragraph about Marie Falempin. I can tell you she was simply delicious in _Les Trois Magots_."
The celebrant poured the wine and the water into the chance, saying: _"Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisu...."_ "Is it really true, doctor, that he killed himself because Nanteuil wouldn't have any more to do with him?" "He killed himself," replied Trublet, "because she loved another. The obsession of genetic images frequently determines mania and melancholia." "You don't understand second-rate actors, Dr. Socrates," said Pradel. "He killed himself to cause a sensation, and for no other reason." "It's not only second-rate actors," said Constantin Marc, "who suffer from an uncontrollable desire to attract attention to themselves at whatever cost. Last year, in the place where I live, Saint-Bartholome, while a threshing-machine was at work, a thirteen-year-old boy shoved his arm into the gear; it was crushed up to the shoulder. The surgeon who amputated it asked him, as he was dressing the stump, why he mutilated himself like that. The boy confessed that it was to draw attention to himself." Meanwhile, Nanteuil, with dry eyes and pursed lips, had fixed her eyes upon the black cloth with which the catafalque was covered, and was impatiently waiting until enough holy water, candles and Latin prayers should be bestowed upon the dead man for him to depart in peace. She had seen him again the night before, and she thought he had returned because the priests had not yet bidden him to rest in peace. Then, reflecting that one day she, too, would die, and would, like him, be laid in a coffin, beneath a black pall, she shuddered with horror and closed her eyes. The idea of life was so strong within her that she pictured death as a hideous life. Afraid of death, she prayed for a long life. Kneeling, with bowed head, the voluptuous ashen cloud of her buoyant hair falling over her forehead, she, a profane penitent, was reading in her prayer-book words which reassured her, although she did not understand them. "Lord Jesus Christ, King of Glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful dead from the pains of hell and from the depths of the bottomless pit. Deliver them from the lion's jaws. Let them not be plunged into hell, and let them not fall into the outer darkness, but suffer that St. Michael, the Prince of Angels, lead them to the holy light promised by Thee to Abraham and to his posterity." At the Elevation of the Host the congregation, permeated by a vague impression that the mystery was becoming more sacred, ceased its private conversations, and assumed a certain appearance of reverent devotion. And as the organ fell silent all heads were bowed at the tinkling of a little bell which was shaken by a child. Then, after the last Gospel, when, the service being over, the priest, attended by his acolytes, approached the catafalque to the chanting of the _Libera_, a sense of relief was experienced by the crowd, and they began to jostle one another a little in order to file past the coffin. The women, whose piety, grief and contrition were contingent upon their immobility and their kneeling posture, were at once recalled to their customary frame of mind by the movement and the encounters of the procession. They exchanged amongst themselves and with the men remarks relating to their profession. "Do you know," said Ellen Midi to Falempin, "that Nanteuil is going to join the Comedie-Francaise?" "It's not possible!" "The contract is signed." "How did she manage it?" "Not by her acting, you may be sure," replied Ellen, who proceeded to relate a highly scandalous story. "Take care," said Falempin, "she is just behind you." "Yes, I see her! She's got a cheek of her own to show herself here, don't you think?" Marie-Claire whispered an extraordinary piece of news into Durville's ear: "They say he committed suicide. Well, there's not a word of truth in it He didn't commit suicide at all. And the proof of it is that he is being buried with the rites of the Church." "What then?" inquired Durville. "Monsieur de Ligny surprised him with Nanteuil and killed him." "Come, come!" "I can assure you that I am accurately informed." The conversations were becoming animated and familiar. "So you are here, you wicked old sinner!" "The box-office receipts are falling off already." "Stella has succeeded in getting herself proposed by seventeen Deputies, nine of whom are members of the Budget Commission." "Yet I told Herschell, 'That little Bocquet fellow isn't the man for you. What you need is a man of standing.'" When the bier, borne by the undertaker's men, passed through the west door, the delicious rays of a winter sun fell on the faces of the women and the roses lying on the coffin. Grouped on either side of the parvis, a few young men from the great colleges sought the faces of celebrities; the little factory girls from the neighbouring workshops, standing in couples with arms round each other's waists, contemplated the actresses' dresses. And standing against the porch on their aching feet, a couple of tramps, accustomed to living under the open sky, whether mild or sullen, slowly shifted their dejected gaze, while a college lad gazed with rapture at the fiery tresses which coiled like flames on the nape of Fagette's neck. She had stopped on the topmost step in front of the doors, and was chatting with Constantin Marc and a few journalists: "...Monsieur de Ligny? He danced attendance upon me long before he knew Nanteuil. He used to gaze upon me by the hour, with eager eyes, without daring to speak a word to me. I received him willingly enough, for his behaviour was perfect. It is only fair to say that his manners are excellent. He was as reserved as a man could be. At last, one day, he declared that he was madly in love with me. I told him that as he was speaking to me seriously I would do the same; that I was truly sorry to see him in such a state; that every time such a thing happened I was greatly upset by it; that I was a woman of standing, I had settled my life, and could do nothing for him. He was desperate. He informed me that he was leaving for Constantinople, that he would never return. He couldn't make up his mind either to remain or to go away. He fell ill. Nanteuil, who thought I loved him and wanted to keep him, did all in her power to get him away from me. She flung herself at his head in the craziest fashion, I found her sometimes a trifle ridiculous, but, as you may imagine, I did not place any obstacle in her path. For his part, Monsieur de Ligny, with the object of inspiring me with regret, with vexation, or what not, perhaps in the hope of making me jealous, responded very visibly to Nanteuil's advances. And that is how they came to be together. I was delighted. Nanteuil and I are the best of friends." Madame Doulce, hedged in on either side by the onlookers, came slowly down the steps, indulging herself in the illusion that the crowd was whispering, "That's Doulce!" She seized Nanteuil as she was passing, pressed her to her bosom, and with a beautiful gesture of Christian charity enveloped her in her mantle, saying through her sobs: "Try to pray, my child, and accept this medal. It has been blessed by the Pope. A Dominican Father gave it to me." Madame Nanteuil, who was a little out of breath, but was growing young again since she had renewed her experience of love, was the last to come out. Durville pressed her hand. "Poor Chevalier!" he murmured. "His was not a bad character," answered Madame Nanteuil, "but he showed a lack of tact. A man of the world does not commit suicide in such a manner. Poor boy, he had no breeding." The hearse began its journey in the colossal shadow of the Pantheon, and proceeded down the Rue Soufflet, which is lined on both sides with booksellers' shops. Chevalier's fellow-players, the employes of the theatre, the director, Dr. Socrates, Constantin Marc, a few journalists and a few inquisitive onlookers followed. The clergy and the actresses took their seats in the mourning coaches. Nanteuil, disregarding Madame Doulce's advice, followed with Fagette, in a hired coupe. The weather was fine. Behind the hearse the mourners were conversing in familiar fashion. "The cemetery is the devil of a way!" "Montparnasse? Half an hour at the outside." "Do you know Nanteuil is engaged at the Comedie-Francaise?" "Do we rehearse to-day?" Constantin Marc inquired of Romilly. "To be sure we do, at three o'clock, in the green-room. We shall rehearse till five. I am playing to-night; I am playing to-morrow; on Sunday I play both afternoon and evening. Work is never over for us actors; one is always beginning over again, always putting one's shoulder to the wheel." Adolphe Meunier, the poet, laying his hand on his shoulder said: "Everything going well, Romilly?" "How are you getting on yourself, Meunier? Always rolling the rock of Sisyphus. That would be nothing, but success does not depend on us alone. If the play is bad and falls flat, all that we have put into it, our work, our talent, a bit of our own life, collapses with it. And the number of 'frosts' I've seen! How often the play has fallen under me like an old hack, and has chucked me into the gutter! Ah, if one were punished only for one's own sins!" "My dear Romilly," replied Meunier sharply, "do you imagine that the fate of dramatic authors like myself does not depend as much upon the actors as upon ourselves? Do you think it never happens that actors, by their carelessness or clumsiness, ruin a work which was meant to reach the heights? And do not we also, like Caesar's legionary, become seized with dismay and anguish at the thought that our fate is not assured by our own valour, but that it depends on those who fight beside us?" "Such is life," observed Constantin Marc. "In every undertaking, everywhere and always, we pay for the faults of others." "That is only too true," resumed Meunier, who had just seen his lyric drama, _Pandolphe et Clarimonde_, come hopelessly to grief. "But the iniquity of it disgusts us." "It should not disgust us in the least," replied Constantin Marc. "There is a sacred law which governs the world, which we are forced to obey, which we are proud to worship. It is injustice, holy injustice, august injustice. It is everywhere blessed under the name of happiness, fortune, genius and grace. It is a weakness not to acknowledge it and to venerate it under its true name." "That's rather weird, what you have just said!" remarked the gentle Meunier. "Think it over," resumed Constantin Marc. "You, too, belong yourself to the party of injustice, for you are striving for distinction, and you very reasonably want to throttle your competitors, a natural, unjust and legitimate desire. Do you know of anything more stupid or more odious than the sort of people we have seen demanding justice? Public opinion, which is not, however, remarkable for its intelligence, and common sense, which nevertheless is not a superior sense, have felt that they constituted the precise contrary of nature, society and life." "Quite so," said Meunier, "but justice----" "Justice is nothing but the dream of a few simpletons. Injustice is the thought of God Himself. The doctrine of original sin would alone suffice to make me a Christian, while the doctrine of grace embodies all truths divine and human." "Then are you a believer?" asked Romilly respectfully. "No, but I should like to be. I regard faith as the most precious possession which a man can enjoy in this world. At Saint-Bartholome, I go to Mass every Sunday and feast day, and I have never once listened to the exposition of the Gospel by the _cure_ without saying to myself: 'I would give all I possess, my house, my acres, my woods, to be as stupid as that animal there.'" Michel, the young painter with the mystic's beard, was saying to Roget, the scene painter: "That poor Chevalier was a man with ideas. But they were not all good ones. One evening, he walked into the _brasserie_ radiant and transfigured, sat himself beside us, and twirling his old felt hat between his long red fingers, he cried: 'I have discovered the true manner of acting tragedy. Hitherto no one has realized how to act tragedy, no one, you understand!' And he told us what his discovery was. 'I've just come from the Chamber. They made me climb up to the amphitheatre. I could see the Deputies swarming like black insects at the bottom of a pit. Suddenly a stumpy little man mounted the tribune. He looked as if he were carrying a sack of coals on his back. He threw out his arms and clenched his fists. By Jove, he was comical! He had a Southern accent, and his delivery was full of defects. He spoke of the workers, of the proletariat, of social justice. It was magnificent; his voice, his gestures gripped one's very bowels; the applause nearly brought the house down. I said to myself "What he is doing, I'll do on the stage, and I'll do it better. I, a comic actor, will play tragedy. Great tragedy parts, if they are to produce their true effect, ought to be played by a comedian, but he must have a soul."' The poor fellow actually thought that he had imagined a new form of art. 'You'll see,' he said." At the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michel, a journalist came up to Meunier, and asked him: "Is it true that Robert de Ligny was at one time madly in love with Fagette?" "If he's in love with her, he hasn't been so long. Only a fortnight ago he asked me, in the theatre, 'Who is that little fair-haired woman?' and he pointed to Fagette." "I cannot understand," said the chronicler of an evening paper to a chronicler of a morning paper, "what can be the origin of our mania for calumniating humanity. I am amazed, on the other hand, by the number of decent people I come across. It is enough to make one incline to the belief that men are ashamed of the good they do, and that they conceal themselves when performing acts of devotion and generosity. Don't you think that is so?" "As far as I am concerned," replied the chronicler of the morning paper, "every time I have opened a door by mistake--I mean this both literally and metaphorically--I have always come across some unsuspected baseness. Were society suddenly turned inside out like a glove, so that one could see the inside, we should all faint away with horror and disgust." "Some time ago," said Roger to the painter Michel, "I used to know Chevalier's uncle on the Butte de Montmartre. He was a photographer who dressed like an astrologer. A crazy old fellow, always sending one customer the portrait of another. The customers used to complain. But not all of them. There were even some who thought the portraits were a good likeness." "What has become of him?" "He went bankrupt and hanged himself." In the Boulevard Saint-Michel Pradel, who was walking beside Trublet, was still profiting by the opportunity of obtaining information as to the immortality of the soul and the fate of man after death. He obtained nothing that seemed to him sufficiently positive and repeated: "I should like to know." To which Dr. Socrates replied: "Men were not made to know; men were not made to understand. They do not possess the necessary faculties. A man's brain is larger and richer in convolutions than that of a gorilla, but there is no essential difference between the two. Our highest thoughts and our most comprehensive systems will never be anything more than the magnificent extension of the ideas contained in the head of a monkey. We know more about the world than the dog does, and this flatters and entertains us; but it is very little in itself, and our illusions increase with our knowledge." But Pradel was not listening. He was mentally rehearsing the speech which he had to deliver at Chevalier's grave. When the funeral procession turned towards the shabby grass-plots which overflow the Avenue de l'Observatoire, the tram-cars, out of respect for the dead, made way for it. Trublet remarked upon this. "Men," he said, "respect death, since they rightly believe that, if it is respectable to die, every one is assured of being respectable in that, at least." The actors were excitedly discussing Chevalier's death. Durville, mysteriously, and in a deep voice, disclosed the tragedy: "It is not a case of suicide. It is a crime of passion. Monsieur de Ligny surprised Chevalier with Nanteuil. He fired seven revolver shots at him. Two bullets struck our unfortunate comrade in the head and the chest, four went wide, and the fifth grazed Nanteuil below the left breast." "Is Nanteuil wounded?" "Only slightly." "Will Monsieur de Ligny be arrested?" "The affair is to be hushed up, and rightly so. I have, however, the best authority for what I say." In the carriages, too, the actresses were engaged in spreading various reports. Some felt sure it was a case of murder; others, one of suicide. "He shot himself in the chest with a revolver," asserted Falempin. "But he only succeeded in wounding himself. The doctor said that if he had been attended to in time he might have been saved. But they left him lying on the floor, bathed in blood." And Madame Doulce said to Ellen Midi: "It has often been my fate to stand beside a deathbed. I always go down on my knees and pray. I at once feel myself invaded by a heavenly serenity." "You are indeed fortunate!" replied Ellen Midi. At the end of the Rue Campagne-Premiere, on the wide grey boulevards, they became conscious of the length of the road which they had covered, and the melancholy nature of the journey. They felt that while following the coffin they had crossed the confines of life, and were already in the country of the dead. On their right stretched the yards of the marble-workers, the florists' shops which supplied wreaths for funerals, displays of potted flowers, and the economical furniture of tombs, zinc flower-stands, wreaths of immortelles in cement, and guardian angels in plaster. On their left, they could see behind the low wall of the cemetery the white crosses rising among the bare tops of the lime-trees, and everywhere, in the wan dust, they breathed death, commonplace, uniform deaths under the administration of City and State, and poorly embellished by the pious hands of relations. They passed between two massive pillars of stone surmounted by winged hour-glasses. The hearse advanced slowly on the gravel which creaked in the silence. It seemed, amid the homes of the dead, to be twice as tall as before. The mourners read the famous names on some of the tombs, or gazed at the statue of a young girl, seated, book in hand. Old Maury deciphered, in the inscriptions, the age of the deceased. Short lives, and even more lives of average duration, distressed him as being of ill omen. But, when he encountered those of the dead who were notable for the length of their years, he joyfully drew from them the hope and probability of a long lease of life. The hearse stopped in the middle of a side alley. The clergy and the women stepped out of the coaches. Delage received in his arms, from the top of the carriage steps, the worthy Madame Ravaud, who was getting a little ponderous, and of a sudden, half in jest, half in earnest, he made certain proposals to her. She was no longer young, having been on the stage for half a century. Delage, with his twenty-five years, looked upon her as prodigiously old. Yet, as he whispered into her ear, he felt excited, infatuated, he became sincere, he really desired her, out of perverse curiosity, because he wanted to do something extraordinary, and was certain that he would be able to do it, perhaps because of his professional instinct as a handsome youth, and, lastly, because, in the first place having asked for what he did not want, he began to want what he had asked for. Madame Ravaud, indignant but flattered, made good her escape. The coffin was carried along a narrow path bordered with dwarf cypresses, amid a murmuring of prayers: _"In paradisum deducant te Angeli, in tuo adventu susciptant te Martyres et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem, Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, aeternam habeas requiem."_ Soon there was no longer any visible path. It was necessary, in following the quickly vanishing coffin, the priests and the choristers, to scatter, striding over the recumbent tombstones, and slipping between the broken columns and upright slabs. They lost the coffin and found it again. Nanteuil evinced a certain eagerness in her pursuit of it, anxious and abrupt, her prayer-book in her hand, freeing her skirt as it caught on the railings, and brushing past the withered wreaths which left the heads of immortelles adhering to her gown. Finally, the first to reach the graveside smelt the acrid odour of the freshly turned soil, and from the heights of the neighbouring flagstones saw the grave into which the coffin was being lowered. The actors had contributed liberally to the expenses of the funeral; they had clubbed together to buy for their comrade as much earth as he needed, two metres granted for five years. Romilly, on behalf of the actors of the Odeon, had paid the cemetery board 300 francs--to be exact, 301 fr. 80 centimes. He had even made plans for a monument, a broken stele with comedy masks suspended upon it. But no decision had been come to on this point. The celebrant blessed the open grave. And the priest and the boy choristers murmured the responses: "Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine." _"Et lux perpetua luceat ei."_ _"Requiescat in pace."_ _"Amen."_ _"Anima ejus et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace."_ _"Amen."_ _"De profundis...."_ Each one of those present came forward to sprinkle holy water on the coffin. Nanteuil stood watching it all, the prayers, the spadefuls of earth, the sprinkling; then, kneeling apart on the corner of a tomb, she fervently recited "Our Father who art in heaven...." Pradel spoke at the graveside. He refrained from making a speech. But the Theatre de l'Odeon could not allow a young artist beloved of all to depart without a word of farewell. "I shall speak therefore, in the name of the great and true-hearted dramatic family, the words that are in every bosom." Grouped about the speaker in studied attitudes, the actors listened with profound knowledge. They listened actively, with their ears, lips, eyes, arms, and legs. Each listened in his own manner, with nobility, simplicity, grief or rebelliousness, according to the parts which the actor was accustomed to play. No, the director of the theatre would not suffer the valiant actor, who, in the course of his only too brief career, had shown more than promise, to depart without a word of farewell. "Chevalier, impetuous, uneven, restless, imparted to his creations an individual character, a distinctive physiognomy. We saw him a very few days ago--a few hours ago, I might say--bring an episodical character into powerful relief. The author of the play was struck by the performance. Chevalier was on the verge of success. The sacred flame was his. There are those who have asked, what was the cause of so cruel an end? Let us not seek for that cause. Chevalier died of his art; he died of dramatic fever. He died consumed by the flame which is slowly consuming all of us. Alas, the stage, of which the public sees only the smiles, and the tears, as sweet as the smiles, is a jealous master which demands of its servants an absolute devotion and the most painful sacrifices, and, at times, claims its victims. In the name of all your comrades, farewell, Chevalier, farewell!" The handkerchiefs were at work, wiping away the mourners' tears. The actors were weeping with all sincerity; they were weeping for themselves. After they had slipped away, Dr. Trublet, left alone in the cemetery with Constantin Marc, took in the multitude of graves with a glance. "Do you remember," he said, "one of Auguste Comte's reflections: 'Humanity is composed of the dead and the living. The dead are by far the more numerous.' Assuredly, the dead are by far the more numerous. By the multitudinous numbers and the magnitude of their work, they are more powerful. It's they who rule; we obey them. Our masters lie beneath these stones. Here is the lawgiver who made the law to which I submit to-day; the architect who built my house, the poet who created the illusions which still disturb us; the orator who swayed us before our birth. Here are all the artisans of our knowledge, true or false, of our wisdom and of our follies. There they lie, the inexorable leaders, whom we dare not disobey. In them dwells strength, continuity, and duration. What does a generation of living folk amount to, in comparison with the numberless generations of the dead? What is our will of a day before the will of a thousand centuries? Can we rebel against them? Why, we have not even time to disobey them!" "At last you are coming to the point, Dr. Socrates!" said Constantin Marc. "You renounce progress, the new justice, the peace of the world, freedom of thought; you submit to tradition. You consent to the ancient error, the good old-fashioned ignorance, the venerable iniquity of our forbears. You withdraw into the French tradition, you submit to ancient custom, to the authority of our ancestors." "Whence do you obtain custom and tradition?" asked Trablet. "Whence do you receive authority? There are irreconcilable traditions, diverse customs; and opposed authorities. The dead do not impose any one will upon us. They subject us to contradictory wills. The opinions of the past which weigh upon us are uncertain and confused. In crushing us they destroy one another. All these dead have lived, like ourselves, in the midst of disorder and contradiction. Each in his time, in his own fashion, in hatred or in love, has dreamed the dream of life. Let us in our turn dream this dream with kindness and joy, if it be possible, and let us go to lunch. I am taking you to a little tavern in the Rue Vavin, kept by Clemence, who cooks only one dish, but a marvellous one at that, the Castelnaudary _cassoulet_, not to be confused with the _cassoulet_ prepared in the Carcassonne fashion, which is merely a leg of mutton with haricot beans. The _cassoulet_ of Castelnaudary comprises pickled goose legs, haricot beans that have been previously bleached, bacon, and a small sausage. To be good, it must be cooked for a long time over a slow fire. Clemence's _cassoulet_ has been cooking for twenty years. From time to time she puts in the saucepan, now a little bit of goose or bacon, now a sausage or some haricots, but it is always the same _cassoulet_. The stock remains, and this ancient and precious stock gives it the flavour which, in the pictures of the old Venetian masters, one finds in the amber-coloured flesh of the women. Come, I want you to taste Clemence's _cassoulet_." _ |
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