The novels, romances, and memoirs of Alphonse Daudet (27 page)

O my God! what do I hear ? Jacques, my dear Jacques, it is she. I tell you it is she. She is coming here. I know her step. She is there, quite near. I can hear her breathe. Her eye is looking at me through the key-hole, is burning me, is —

This letter was never sent.

CHAPTER XII.

TOLOCOTOTIGNAN.

I HAVE now reached the most sombre pages of my story, the days of misery and shame that Daniel Eyssette spent by the side of this woman, an actor in a suburb of Paris. Strange to say, this time of my Hfe, passed amid a whirl of variety and tumult, has left me remorse rather than recollections.

All this part of my memory is confused, and I can remember nothing at all.

But wait a minute ! I have but to close my eyes and to hum two or three times the strange and melancholy refrain : Tolocototignan, Tolocoto-tignan ! and instantly, as if by magic, my slumbering memories will awake, the dead hours will arise from their tomb, and I shall again see Little What's-His-Name, such as he was then, in a large new house on the Boulevard Montparnasse, between Irma Borel reciting her parts and the White-Cuckoo singing unceasingly: Tolocototignan, Tolocototignan !

Oh, that horrible house! I can see it yet; I can see it with its thousand windows, its green and slimy stairs, its yawning sinks, its numbered doors, and its long white corridors smelling of

fresh paint, — fresh and yet already soiled ! There were eight hundred rooms in it; in every room a family. And what families! All day long there were scenes, screams, uproar and quarrels ; at night, the wailing of children, the sound of bare feet walking over bricks, and the uniform rocking of cradles. From time to time, for a variety, there were visits from the police.

It was there, in that furnished cave, seven stories high, that Irma Borel and Little What 's-His-Name came to find a shelter for their love. They chose it because it was near the theatre, and besides, as in all new houses, the rent was not dear. For forty francs, — a price only for those who are willing to live within newly plastered walls — they had two rooms on the second floor, with a strip of balcony on the boulevard, the finest apartment in the palace. They went in every evening toward midnight, after the play was over. It was gloomy returning through the long deserted avenues, in which were prowling silent figures in blouses, girls without hats and night-watchmen in long gray overcoats.

They walked quickly in the middle of the street. On arriving, they found a little cold meat on a corner of the table, and White-Cuckoo, the negress, waiting for them—for Irma Borel had kept the White-Cuckoo. M. Eight-till-Ten had taken back his coachman, his furniture, his plate and his carriage. Irma Borel kept her negress, her cockatoo, a few jewels and all her gowns. These, of course, she only wore now on the stage, as the trains of

kma Borel and Little-What 's-his-Name

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velvet and watered silk were not made to sweep suburban boulevards. The gowns alone occupied one of the two rooms. They were hung all around on steel hooks, and their long silken folds and vivid hues contrasted strangely with the discolored floor and faded furniture. The negress slept in this room. There she had established her straw-mattress, her horseshoe and brandy-bottle; but, for fear of fire, no light was allowed her. So, at night, when the pair returned, the White-Cuckoo, crouching on her mattress in the moonlight, among those mysterious gowns, looked like an old witch whom Bluebeard had left in charge of his seven wives hanging on the wall. The other room, the smaller, was for the other two and the cockatoo. There was just space for a bed, three chairs, a table, and a great perch with gilded sticks.

Sad and narrow as their dwelling was, they never left it. The time they were not at the theatre they spent at home studying their parts, and I assure you they made a great hubbub. From one end of the house to the other could be heard their dramatic shrieks: "My daughter, give me back my daughter ! — This way, Gaspard ! — Her name, her name, you wr-wr-wretch! " And through it all, the piercing cries of the parrot and the shrill voice of the White-Cuckoo who kept on eternally singing: " Tolocototignan, tolocototignan !"

Irma Borel was happy. She liked the life ; it amused her to play at the housekeeping of poor artists. " Lregret nothing," she said often. What should she have regretted ? The day which was

to find her weary of poverty, tired of drinking wine by the htre, and eating the hideous portions covered with brown sauce that were sent up from a cheap eating-house, the day she should be satiated with the dramatic art of the suburbs, on that very day, she knew well she could resume her former existence. She needed but lift a finger to regain all that she had lost.

It was the consciousness of this other string to her bow that gave her courage and made her say: " I regret nothing." She regretted nothing, but did not he regret ?

They had both made their appearance in Gas-pardo the Fisherman, one of the very finest pieces of meretricious melodrama. She was much applauded in it, — certainly not for her talent, for her voice was bad and her gestures ridiculous, — but for her snowy arms and velvet gowns. The public in those quarters is not accustomed to exhibitions of dazzling flesh-tints and magnificent gowns at forty francs a yard. In the house they said: " She is a duchess! " and the young workingmen, wonder-struck, clapped to a deafening degree.

He did not have the same success. They thought he was too little; then, he was frightened and ashamed. He spoke low, as if at confession, and they cried to him : " Louder, louder ! " But his throat contracted, choking the words in their passage, and he was hissed. What else could you expect? It was useless for Irma to say anything, for he had not the vocation. After all, being a bad poet is no reason for being a good actor.

The Creole consoled him as best she could. " They have not taken in the characteristic style of your head," she said to him often; but the manager did not deceive himself about the character of it. After two stormy performances, he sent for him to come to his office and said to him: " Melodrama is not for you, little fellow. We have made a mistake. Let us try light comedy. I think you will do that very well." And the next day, they tried light comedy. He played the part of the young comic hero, the flurried coxcomb who is made to drink effervescing lemonade for champagne and runs round the stage holding on to his stomach; the simpleton in a red wig who cries like a moon-calf, and the country beau who rolls his stupid eyes about and says " Mam'selle, I love you ; it's true, I love you awfully."

He played the peasant, the comic dancer, and all the ugly parts that make people laugh; and truth compels me to say that he did it pretty well. The poor wretch was successful; he amused the audience.

Explain, if you can, how it happened that it was on the stage when he was plastered over with paint and covered with tawdry finery, that Little What's-His-Name thought of Jacques and the black eyes. It was in the midst of grimaces and buffoonery that the images of all those dear people whom he had so basely betrayed rose suddenly before him.

Almost every evening, and the working-men of the vicinity can testify to it, he would stop short

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in the middle of a tirade, and remain standing there, speechless, and open-mouthed, staring at the audience. At those times, his soul would leave his body, clear the foot-lights, cleave the roof of the theatre with a blow of its wing, and fly far away to embrace Jacques and Mme. Eyssette, and ask forgiveness of the black eyes, complaining bitterly all the while of the miserable profession he was forced to follow.

" Yes, it's true, I love you awfully! " said the prompter's voice all of a sudden, and then, unhappy Little What's-His-Name, snatched from his dream and fallen from heaven, rolled about his dazed and wide-open eyes in so natural and ludicrous a bewilderment that all the audience burst into loud laughter. In theatrical slang this is what is called producing an effect. Involuntarily, he had managed to produce an effect.

The company to which he belonged, acted in several different places. It was a kind of strolling company, playing sometimes at Crenelle, and sometimes at Montparnasse, or at Sevres, Sceaux, or at Saint-Cloud. In going from one point to another, they all piled into the theatre omnibus,— an old cream-colored omnibus drawn by a consumptive horse. On the way, they sang and played cards, and those who did not know their parts sat at the farther end, reading over the play. That was Little What's-His-Name's place.

There he stayed silent and sad as comic actors are, his ears deaf to all the trivialities that were buzzing about him. Low as he had fallen, this

waggon-load of strolling players was still beneath him. He was ashamed to find himself in such society. The women still clung to pretensions of a long-past youth, and were faded, painted, affected and pompous. The men were common creatures, without ideals or orthography, sons of barbers or fritter-vendors, who had become actors through laziness and the desire of idleness; because they loved costumes and spangles, and longed to show themselves on the boards in pale pink tights and coats a la Souwaroff; low-lived fops, always absorbed in their dress, spending their wages at the hairdresser's, and telling you with an air of conviction: " I have worked very hard to-day," when they had passed five hours making a pair of Louis XV. boots with two yards of glazed paper. Truly it was a pity to have jeered at Pierrotte's musical parties, to end in that omnibus.

Because of his sulky air and haughty silence his comrades did not love him. " He is a sly one " they said. To make amends, the Creole had won all hearts. She sat in the omnibus, enthroned like a princess on a lark, laughing merrily, and threw back her head to show her slender throat; familiar with everybody, she called the men: " old fellow," and the women : " little dear," forcing even the most churlish to say of her: "She is a good girl." A good girl, — what irony!

Jogging on thus, amid laughter and a fire of coarse jokes, they reached the theatre where the performance was to take place. When the play was over, they undressed in a twinkling, and got

into the omnibus to return to Paris, It was late at night then ; they talked in whispers and nudged one another in the darkness. Occasionally, there was a smothered laugh. At the octroi of the Faubourg du Maine, the omnibus stopped, and was put up. Everybody got out, and all went in a body to escort Irma Borel to the door of the great tenement house, where the White-Cuckoo, more than half-tipsy, was waiting for them with her melancholy song: Tolocototignan, tolocototignan !

To see them rivetted thus, one to the other, it might be supposed that they loved each other. No, they did not love each other. They knew each other too well for that. He knew that she was false, cold, and heartless. She knew that he was weak and tame-spirited even to cowardice. She thought: " One fine morning his brother will come and take him away from me to give him back to that girl who sells china." He said: " One of these days, weary of the life she is leading, she will fly away with M. Eight-till-Ten, and I, I shall be left alone in the mire." This eternal fear of losing each other was what they had that was nearest to love. They did not love each other, and yet they were jealous.

Strange, is n't it, that there may be jealousy where there is no love. Well! It was so. When she spoke in an intimate way to anybody belonging to the theatre, he turned pale. When he received a letter, she flung herself upon it, and tore open the seal with trembling hands. It was gen-

erally a letter from Jacques. She read it to the end with a sneer, and then threw it on some piece of furniture, saying disdainfully that it was always the same thing. Alas! yes, it was always the same thing, that is to say, the same devotion, generosity and self-abnegation. It was for that she hated my brother so much.

But Jacques never suspected. He suspected nothing. Little What 's-His-Name wrote him that all was going well, that the edition of the Pastoral Comedy was nearly sold, and that, when the notes fell due, all the money needed to meet them could be had from the booksellers. Trustful and kind as ever, he continued to send the hundred francs a month to the Rue Bonaparte, where the White-Cuckoo went to get them.