The novels, romances, and memoirs of Alphonse Daudet (28 page)

With Jacques' hundred francs and their salaries from the theatre, they certainly had enough to live on, especially in that quarter of poor devils. But neither one nor the other knew, as they say, what money is: he, because he had never had any; she, because she had always had too much. So, what a waste they made of it! At the fifth of the month their coffer — a little Javan slipper of maize-straw — was empty. In the first place, there was the cockatoo that alone cost as much to feed as a human being. Then came paint, black for the eyes, rice-powder, opiates, false whiskers, and all the apparatus needed for the theatrical make-up. Moreover, the play books were too old and worn; Madame wanted new ones. She also required flowers, quantities of flowers. She

would rather have gone without eating than have seen her flower-stands empty.

In two months' time, they were over head and ears in debt. They owed for their lodgings, to the restaurant, and to the porter of the theatre. Sometimes a creditor grew tired of waiting, and came to make a disturbance in the morning. On these occasions, in despair of everything, they rushed to the printer of the Pastoral Comedy^ and borrowed a few louis from him in Jacques' name. The printer, who had in hand the second volume of the famous memoirs, and knew that Jacques continued to be secretary to M. d'Hacqueville, opened his purse without misgivings. The money thus borrowed gradually mounted up to four hundred francs, which, added to the nine hundred for the Pastoral Comedy, brought Jacques' debt up to thirteen hundred francs.

My poor Mother Jacques ! How many disasters awaited him at his return! Daniel gone, the black eyes in tears, not a single volume sold, and thirteen hundred francs to pay. How should he ever extricate himself from all this ? The Creole did not care, but the thought of it never left Little What's-His-Name. It was an obsession, a perpetual anguish. It was in vain that he sought forgetfulness in working like a galley-slave (and good God ! what kind of work it was) in learning new buffoonery, and studying new grimaces before the mirror; the mirror always returned him Jacques' image instead of his own ; between the lines of his part, instead of Langlumeau, Josias, and the other

comic characters, he saw only the name of Jacques, — Jacques, Jacques, always Jacques.

Each morning he looked at the calendar in terror, and, counting the days that separated him from the time when the notes were to fall due, he thought with a shudder: "But one month more, but three weeks more." For he knew that at the first protested note, all would be discovered, and that his brother's martyrdom would then begin. This idea pursued him even in his sleep. Sometimes he started up at night, a weight on his heart, and his face bathed in tears, with the confused recollection of a strange and terrible dream he had just had.

This dream was always the same and returned almost every night. In it he saw an unfamiliar room, in which there stood a great wardrobe, ornamented with old wrought-iron work. Jacques was there, pale, horribly pale, stretched out upon a sofa; he had just died. Camille Pierrotte was there, too, standing in front of the wardrobe; she was trying to open it, to take out a shroud, but she could not succeed in doing so; and while she was fumbling about the lock with the key, she could be heard saying in a heart-rending voice: " I cannot open it: I have cried too much; I can see no more."

However much he struggled against it, this dream made upon him an impression beyond all reason. As soon as he closed his eyes, he saw Jacques lying stretched out on the sofa, and Camille, blind, in front of the wardrobe. His re-

morse and terror made him daily more sombre and irritable. The Creole, on her part, was patient no longer. Besides, she felt vaguely that he was escaping her, though she knew not how, and it exasperated her. There were constant terrible scenes between them, with shrieks and abuse worthy of a boatful of washerwomen.

She said to him: " Go back to your Pierrette, and get her to give you more sugar hearts."

And he returned at once : " Go back to your Pacheco, and get him to stab you in the lip."

She called him " Philistine! "

And he answered " Hussy! "

Then they burst into tears and generously forgave each other, to begin again the next day.

It was thus that they lived, — no, that they wallowed together, fettered by the same irons, lying in the same gutter. It is this disgraceful existence and these miserable hours that pass to-day before my eyes, when I hum the strange and melancholy refrain of the negress: Tolocototignan, tolocototi^7ian !

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ESCAPE.

It was toward nine, one evening, at the theatre Montparnasse. Little What 's-His-Name, who had played in the first piece, had just finished and was returning to his dressing-room. On the way he met Irma Borel going to the stage. She was radiant, all dressed in velvet and lace, a fan in her hand, like Celimene.

" Go out and sit in the theatre," said she; " I am in the right mood, and shall be very fine."

He hastened to his dressing-room and undressed very quickly. This room, which he shared with two fellow-actors, was a closet without a window; it had a low ceiling, and was lighted from the roof. Two or three straw chairs made up the furniture. Along the walls were hung fragments of looking-glass, uncurled wigs, tattered tinsel, faded velvet, and tarnished gold lace. On the ground, in a corner, were rouge-pots without covers, and powder-puffs worn bare.

Little What 's-His-Name had been there for a minute, engaged in taking off his things, when he heard a scene-shifter calling from below: " Monsieur Daniel! Monsieur Daniel! " He left the

dressing-room, and, leaning over the damp wooden banisters, asked: " Who is it ? " Then, finding that no one answered, he went down, as he was, half-clad, daubed with white and red paint, his great yellow wig falling over his eyes.

At the foot of the stairs he stumbled against some one. "Jacques," he cried, starting back.

It was Jacques. They looked at each other for a moment, without speaking, and then Jacques clasped his hands, and murmured in a gentle, tearful voice: " Oh, Daniel! " That was enough. Little What 's-His-Name, stirred to the bottom of his heart, looked about him like a timid child, and said very low, so low that his brother could scarcely hear him: '* Take me away from here, Jacques."

Jacques shuddered, and taking him by the hand, drew him outside. A cab was waiting at the door, and they got into it. " Rue des Dames, at the Batignolles," cried Mother Jacques. *' That's my district," answered the coachman cheerfully, and the carriage moved off.

Jacques had been for two days in Paris. He came from Palermo, where a letter from Pierrotte, that had been following him for three months, had finally reached him. This letter, brief and to the point, told him of Daniel's disappearance.

On reading it, Jacques guessed everything. He said to himself: "The boy is up to mischief; I must go to him." And he asked the Marquis on the spot to give him leave of absence.

" Leave of absence! " said the old gentleman,

with a jump. "Are you crazy? What about my

memoirs ?" , ^ ,

" Only a week, sir. Just time enough to go and come! My brother's life is at stake.''

"I don't care a straw for your brother. Did not I warn you when you entered my employ ? Have you forgotten our agreement ?"

" No, sir; but — "

-Buts are of no account. It will be with you as with the others. If you leave your place for a week, you shall never return to it. Reflect upon it, please; and, wait a minute, while you are reflecting, sit down there. I am going to dictate.

" I have reflected, sir. I must go."

" Go to the devil." , u- u *.

Whereupon the stubborn old man took his hat, and set out for the French Consulate to inquire for a new secretary.

Jacques left that same evening. On reaching Paris he hastened to the Rue Bonaparte. Is my brother upstairs ? " he cried to the porter, who was smoking his pipe in the court-yard sitting astride the well. The porter began to laugh. He has been out for some time," said he slyly.

The man wanted to keep silence, but a hve-franc piece unlocked his lips. He then told how, for a'ong time, the little fellow of the fifth floor and the lady of the first had disappeared, and were hiding in Paris, nobody knew where, but they certainly were together, for White-Cuckoo, the negress came every month to see if anything had come for them. He added that M. Daniel had

forgotten to give him warning when he went away, and still owed four months' rent, not to speak of other smaller debts.

" That is all right," said Jacques ; " it will all be paid." And without losing an instant, without even taking time to shake off the dust of his journey, he started in pursuit of his child.

He went first to the printer, thinking correctly, that, as the general depositary of the Pastoral Comedy was there, Daniel must have often gone there too.

" I was going to write you," said the printer, as he saw him come in. " You know the first note falls due in four days,"

Jacques answered calmly: " I have not forgotten it. To-morrow I am going to make a round of the booksellers. They have money to remit me. The book has sold very well."

The printer opened his big blue Alsatian eyes inordinately wide.

"What? The book has sold well? Who told you that? "

Jacques turned pale, foreseeing a catastrophe.

" Look in that corner," continued the Alsatian, " at all those piles of books. That is the Pastoral Comedy. During the five months it has been offered for sale, but one single copy of it has been sold. At last the booksellers got tired of it, and sent me the volumes they had in stock. Now, all that is only good to sell as waste paper. It is a pity, for it was well printed."

Every word from this man fell on Jacques' head

like the blows of a loaded cane; but what finished him was hearing that Daniel had borrowed money in his name from the printer.

" No later than yesterday," said the pitiless Alsatian, " he sent me a hideous negress to ask me for two louis; but I refused point-blank. First, because this mysterious errand-bearer with a head like a chimney-sweep, did not inspire me with confidence; and, then, you understand, M. Eyssette, I am not rich, and have already advanced more than four hundred francs to your brother."

" I know," answered Jacques proudly, " but you need not be alarmed, for your money will soon be returned to you." Then he went out very quickly for fear of showing his emotion. In the street, he was obliged to sit down on a curb-stone, for his legs were giving way under him. His child flown, his place lost, the printer's money to be returned, the room, the porter, and the note to fall due the next day, all buzzed and whirled in his brain. Suddenly he rose. " The debts first," thought he; " they are the most important." And in spite of his brother's base conduct toward the Pierrottes, he turned toward them without hesitation.

As he entered the china shop, Jacques saw behind the counter a large, yellow, bloated face that he did not recognize at first; but at the noise of the door opening, the large face was lifted and the owner of it, perceiving who it was that had come in, uttered a resounding: "If I may be allowed to say so " about which there was no mis-

take. Poor Pierrotte! His daughter's sorrow had made another man of him. The old jovial and rubicund Pierrotte no longer existed. The tears his little girl had been shedding for the last five months had reddened his eyes, and altered his cheek. On his discolored lips the old hearty-laugh had now given place to a cold and silent smile, the smile of widows or forsaken maidens. It was no longer Pierrotte, but Ariadne or Nina.

Otherwise, there was nothing changed in the china shop. The colored shepherdesses, and the fat Chinamen in purple, still smiled beatifically on the high shelves, among the Bohemian glass and flowered plates. The rounded soup-tureens, and painted china lamps continued to glitter in the same places behind the same glass doors, and in the backroom the same flute warbled on as unobtrusively as ever.

" It is I, Pierrotte," said my Mother Jacques, steadying his voice; " I have come to ask a great favor of you. Will you lend me fifteen hundred francs ? "

Pierrotte, without speaking, opened his cash-box, and moved a few coins about in it; then, shutting the drawer, he rose quietly.

" I have not got them here. Monsieur Jacques. Wait a moment while I go upstairs for them." Before leaving the shop, he added in a constrained manner: " I don't ask you to go upstairs with me; it would give her too much pain."

Jacques sighed. " You are right, Pierrotte; it is better for me not to go up."

In five minutes, Pierrette came back with two notes of a thousand francs each, which he put into Jacques' hand. Jacques did not want to accept them: " I need only fifteen hundred francs," said he. But Pierrotte insisted.

" I entreat you to keep it all, Monsieur Jacques," said he. " I care very much about your having the two thousand francs, for that is the sum that Mademoiselle lent me long ago to buy a substitute. If you should refuse me—if I may be allowed to say so — I should be mortally offended with you."

Jacques dared not refuse; he put the money in his pocket, and, holding out his hand to the old man, said very simply: " Good-bye, Pierrotte, and thank you," Pierrotte kept his hand in his.

They stayed for some time thus, face to face, in silent emotion. Daniel's name was on the lips of both, but neither ventured to pronounce it, through the same feeling of delicacy. This father and this mother understood each other so well! Jacques was the first gently to disengage his hand : the tears were coming, and he was in haste to go. Pierrotte went with him to the street door, but there the poor man could no longer contain the bitterness that filled his heart, and began reproachfully : " Ah, Monsieur Jacques, Monsieur Jacques ! If I may be allowed to say so — " but he was too much agitated to accomplish his translation, and could only repeat twice over: "If I may be allowed to say so, if I may be allowed to say so." Oh, yes! he might well have been allowed to say so!