The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (2 page)

times as many as a dozen times to get the best emotional effects properly lighted.

On Hector Turnbull, author of "The Cheat," Miss Negri's previous picture, rested the responsibility of editing the seventy-five reels of film down to nine reels. After several v/eeks of work he got it down to 8,400 feet.

Then, for the first time, the director saw the net results of his months of work, and he was happy to learn that people with a viewpoint more detached than his considered it good. Some rate it Mr. Brenon's greatest achievement. Almost every one ranks it as Pola Negri's best picture since "Passion" and the finest of her American work.

Maritana lives again, reincarnated in another generation by means of a new toy which Victor Hugo, with all his creative imagination, could not foresee.

Glendon Allvine.

FR,Eir'^OE-

An entertaining little tale is attached to the springing into life of that charmingly unique character, Don Caesar de Bazan.

About 1830, all art in Paris—literary and theatrical-^ became involved in the revolution concurrent with the political one. Dramatic authors claimed rights which HO former playwrights, pets of princes and adulatory slaves of kings and wealth, had dreamt of.

More terrifying still, these young writers dro'pped threadbare subjects ridiculing absurdities of peasant, trader and retired bankers, and exposed aristocratic vices and evil passions. Laying outrageous hands on the royal robes, they dragged the monarchs into stage-light and showed what "a poor forked radish" is your Peter, Charles or Louis "the Great."

Victor Hugo, by tearing ofi masks and cloaks and dissipating perfumes and vapors, incurred hostility of rulers and their hangers-on, particularly by his "Ruy Bias." In this powerful drama, a queen of Spain is compelled to yield the tribute of admiration to a consummate statesman, fervent patriot, astute pleader and intrepid war-maker, although he was basely born and, before he donned court suits, wore the footman's livery.

At once, Hugo had his revenge for the suppression', since "Ruy," excluded from Paris, triumphantly madej

the tour of Europe, being saluted with music in the Land of Song. Italy made him an operatic hero—her crowning triumph.

Before it was brought out, it had won its pla'ce. This was at thoise readings customary at the time. After the friends heard and praised, they forced the managers to sue for it. Such was the enkindled desire that th^ French Theatre, the chief, clamored for it.

At the first reading of "Ruy Bias," to the actors, the "old sticks" eyed each other in dismay; never could they hope to represent this whirlwind in a doublet, this sirocco under the velvet cap, this virile young spirit who, spurning his lackey's coat as the butterfly rejects the cocoon, assumed the imperial mantle and held his head with peers and senators. Upon which the author, smiling in his sleeve, relieved them of anxiety, and filled them with spite, by saying that he had found the ideal, in "the Great Frederick!"

All laughed, for this actor of the petty theatres, was the unknown—Lemaitre ("the master," prophetic name!), but the appreciative knew him well. He had, like Kean, played every role from king to harlequin ; but poverty was keeping him ddwn; all his courage was needed to hold a grim face before those sultans of the stage who frowned at "M. Hugo's foundling out of the popular side-show." He sat like Marius brooding over ruins, for his failure would be death to his long-nourished ambition.

Readers of "Ruy Bias" remember the plot: in the first act, one is startled and hesitates to admire, though inevitably loving a rakish figure, a Spanish Mercutio, a young and slender Falstaff, care-free, lively, generous, fearless, but honorable to his sword's point.

Don Ciesar de Bazan, for this is that immortal hi-

dalgiQ, who, stepping out of Lope de Vega, appears again only at the last scene.

Lemaitre, absorbed from the inrush of this devil-may-care, courtly ragamuffin, was thoughtful throughout the rest, and only brightened as Caesar, the irrepressible, shot up with all his glamour at the last.

It was the modesty of his rank. Afflicted by this gloom, the author said with feeling:

"Do yo'U not approve?" The others had split their gloves. "Is not the part good enough for you? I am grieved, for I thought often of you while writing 'Ruy.' "

" 'Ruy Bias ?' you thought of giving me, 'Ruy'—the leading part; on in every scene! I—'play 'Ruy?' Oh, .Victor, my friend, for 'Ruy' I will do anything for its creator!" Then pausing, as when a favorite dish is borne away, although the successor is a daintier still, he longingly said: "But I should have been satisfied to play that captivating Don Caesar!"

Unhappily for his prospects, the censor said that the Royal House was interlocked with Spain; that the vague queen, enamored of a footman, must be the king's blood-relative. "Ruy Bias" was "strangled in an hour."

Lemaitre was in despair; must he leave town to "star" in the forbidden piece?

Two authors came to his aid. It was when Hugo, by his republicanism, won the hate of both monarchists and imperialists. His works were doubly banned.

The authors were Dumanoir and Dennery. The first once monopolized our stage, but his works were given under the translators' names. Dennery wrote the "Two Orphans;" no pale copyist has kept his name off the bills. Boucicault called him "the foremost of playwrigfhts;" no more can be said.

They talked with Lemaitre thus:

"Hugo is outlawed, but he winks at us making for youl

a three-act drama of his 'Don Caesar de Bazan.' Thus, he and you will be again the popular idol!"

Eclipsed in the tragedy, Don Csesar reappeared more vividly than ever. In the original, genius had shot out two or three gleams; here skilled intellect burned steadily, 'but as brightly.

The longer-lived hero—promoted to eternity, in fact— strode amid the grotesque imagery and lurid amosphere of "Old Madrid," with the fullness of action of "Gil Bias," the rich colors of Velasquez, the variety of Cervantes, and the polished wit of a good-humored, yet caustic, Paul-Louis Courier.

"There is always something great, pleasing or curious in a popular attraction," and Don Caesar proves himself all three.

To us "the Cid" is nothing, and this Csesar is "the most famous of Castilians."

In this creation, Hugo paid a debt to humanity in sterling metal, impressed with poetry, genius and originality. H. L. W.

DON C^SAR DE BAZAN.

CHAPTER I.

THE DANCING GIRL.

Everybody knows that the Escurial, royal palace of Spain, is modeled to remind the architectural student of the gridiron on which St. Lawrence was carbonized.

But it is not as widely known that it served as the bed (to many a royal tenant) through sleepless nights and melancholy days.

Perhaps as miserable as any under that golden sorrow, the crown of the monarch of the Indies and still wealthy Spain, was the consort of King Charles the Second,

"Celestial choirs" from the no'ted convents and chapels, the court buffoon, the merrymakers who had cheered multitudes on the trestles of the itinerant stages, all had failed to cheer the poor, declining queen.

As a last resort, a stage had been erected in the outer yard, facing her suite windows, on which were given entertainments by traveling mountebanks. At night, fireworks from Italy, home of such brief glitter, lit up the gloomy gardens.

But nothing dispelled her tedium.

"In order to distract her," said the master of ceremonies, "we shall be driven distracted,"

At last, at their wits' end, they descended to the low-

JO The Dancing Girl.

est form of popular recreation, the outcast "antics," jokers and ribalds of the byways.

On the balcony, protected from the sun by awnings trimmed with silk fringe and heavy with bullion tassels and cords, the royal dame, amid her ladies and other attendants, deigned to look down over the fans at the latest company raked together no longer by the master of the revels, but the lieutenant-royal of police.

This time, Don Jose de Santarem, the "civil" inquisitor, as he was playfully entitled, S'mihd complacently as his "troupe" made their profound bows on the platform. The queen had actually smiled at the preposterous attire and ell-wide grimaces of the merry Andrew.

The queen's saddening features were much improved by this passing alleviation of her growing dullness. She w^as never beautiful, but before she 'became thin under the Spanish sun, she had been comely and prepossessing. Only one Spanish trait was hers, the immoderate munching' of chocolate, which began to spoil her teeth.

In laughing at the jester, she forgot her habit of keeping her lips closed to hide her teeth.

"You have done it," whispered the royal physician to the chief of royal police, half-enviously. "This is as! well as can be! If this band of marauders and thieves have more such farces in their quiver, faith! your excellency will turn her mourning into blitheness, and make tl'.c ailment I treated her for so vainly, into a schoolgirl's malady!"

"It will do, doctor!" replied Don Jose. "These Egyptian clowns are death to all rigorists and precisians ! Ah, if you wlio speak to the crowned ones in a corner, could but tell what worm bit the fruit—'what weight has pulled our lady down "

"Huim! you will not believe what all your spies musf

'&

have failed to report, since you have an empty budgfeti It is a rare complaint among royal ladies, espoused in the cradle to the future mate: she adores her husband!"

"It is a miracle!" sneered the criminal-lieutenant.

"When he is by, she cannot take her eyes off him!"

**That has been noted!"

"If he smiles upon her, she can be gay all the dayl"

"So he has ceased to smile? He has flown off tha hinges?"

"This palace game of omhre ought to be known to your lordship," returned Dr. Rhubarba. "I can on\f. say that I felicitate you, for your gypsy tomfools hav« •worked more heal than my dose's of Saracen's woun^d-wort "

"Yes, goldenrod does not cure the heartache!"

All eyes were fixed upon the man who had caused the drooping lady to cheer up.

Don Jose had not a friend among them. When ho first presented himself at court, he was lofty and distant, having come of the Santarem sto'ck which had coined money while other nobles fought in the protracted wars of the empire. Now, proud men please neither princes nor pages. At the outset, placed among-the mere "cloak forms," soon it was observed that he ro'se by little without ever being put down a step.

"He has the slow pace by which steeps are climbed," said the old courtiers.

Then it was perceived that his red hair was darkened by using the lead comb and that his yellow complexion assumed plumpness and color, as he furnished his table more lavishly and entertained.

He who had been a "funeral mute" in the olden apparel of the ascetic Charles V., black, dulled lace, few jewels, short feathers, unstretched collars, began to follow the latest French fashions.

The inconspicuous manikin became a popinjay.

Still, on being raised to the degree of the king's police lieutenant, he relapsed into the somber costume becoming the dread office. But still he paraded his gold chain of office, his jeweled badges of orders, his incrusted swordhilt of some knightly companionship, and his rings—signet and ornamental.

Delighted inwardly at his success, he smiled in his short, brown beard, and muttered.

"Now, Momus has had his triumph—let us see hoiw music and dancing will move the forlorn woman!"

On the stage, at the back of which sat the musicians and comrades of the performers, to encourage them, in the Eastern mode, by throwing out praise in their own language, the music of "pig's-head" keyed-instruments, lutes, cymbals and African-stringed drums, abruptly changed from the lively strains. To the decorous, measured notes of a slow march, in walked, rather than danced, the "stars" of the wandering compar. .

Men and women, all young, all good-looking in their way, serpentine in grace, showing teeth too sharp and white, eyes too black and flashing, feet and hands too effeminate, the gypsies were so choice that they seemed living models of the Bacchus and Antinoiis which the ancients liked to cast in golden bronze.

So beautiful and fascinating were they that courtiers crossed themselves and some uttered "Get thee back, Satan!"

The queen, her mood changing with the music, became enrapt. She leaned her fan on the balustrade, covered with a magnificent brocade, and her chin on her jeweled fan-handle. She fixed her eyes on the new set of performers.

They sang in chorus one of the Arabian poem-fablesi

lingering in Spain after the Moors were driven out. This was to prepare for the dance to follow.

Discreetly the other actors withdrew to the sides of the stage, where they squatted down and kept reciting the melodious verses.

The two dancers were superb.

The male, wearing a half-mask of black felt, which s'howed up his floured face and his mustache smothered with the farina, presented a statuelike effect. His dress was tawdry and gaudy, but worn with the freedom and even the display of a nobleman at a coronation.