THE JUGGLERS
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: “THINK WHAT IT IS TO ACT WHEN ONE FEELS IT.”]
THE JUGGLERS
_A Story_
BY
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1911
_Dramatic and all other rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911.
_Dramatic and all other rights reserved._
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO
NELLIE AND ISABEL
WHO HAVE A GENIUS FOR FRIENDSHIP
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DIANE, THE DREAMER 1
II. THE MARQUIS EGMONT OF THE HOLY ANGELS 31
III. THE SPLENDID EVENTS THAT HAPPENED AT BIENVILLE 65
IV. THE BRIDAL VEIL 95
V. THE DELUGE 122
VI. THE DAY OF GLORY HAS ARRIVED 158
THE JUGGLERS
CHAPTER I
DIANE, THE DREAMER
The lazy blue river and the wide, brown plains of Picardy lay basking
in the still splendor of the November afternoon. The mysterious hush
of the autumn lay upon the fields and the farmsteads. A flock of
herons in a near-by marsh meditated gravely, standing one-legged, and
watching the cows kneedeep in the muddy meadows. High in the sunny air,
a vulture sailed, majestically evil, watching both the cows and the
herons. The world was saying farewell softly to the sunny hours.
The only sound that broke the deep silence was the steady trot of the
big Normandy horses on the flinty towpath, as they drew a covered boat
along the narrow and shallow stream, and the faint echo of the voices
of five persons sitting on the roof of the boat in the sunshine. The
herons cocked their eyes toward the boat, and listened attentively,
though they could not understand a word of these strange, noisy,
laughing, weeping, fighting, dancing, talking creatures, called men and
women. Sometimes, so the herons thought, these odd beings were a little
kind; sometimes they were very cruel, but always they were formidable,
and were masters of life and death.
The great question under discussion on the roof of the boat was, where
the theatrical company of jugglers and singers should spend the winter.
Grandin, the proprietor of the show, a tall, handsome, boastful man,
with a big voice like a church organ and a backbone made of brown
paper, always gave his opinion first, but was generally overruled
by Madame Grandin, also tall, handsome, easily wheedled or bullied,
but inexorably truthful. Decisions really rested with the three
subordinates, Diane Dorian, the prima donna, Jean Leroux, her partner,
and the individual known as François le Bourgeois, juggler.
“I have determined upon Bienville,” roared Grandin, in his big, rich
voice. “We wintered there nine years ago, and my lithograph was in
some of the best shops in the place.”
“Oh, what a lie!” cried Madame Grandin, amiably. “They only put your
picture in three butcher shops and the bake shop across the street, and
I am sure you paid enough for it. But Bienville is my choice too.”
Grandin took this with the utmost good nature. Between his propensity
to tell agreeable lies, and Madame Grandin’s natural inability to let a
lie go uncontradicted, the couple struck a very good average of truth.
The manager and his wife having spoken, the real discussion was now on.
“I should say Bienville,” said Jean Leroux, quietly.
He, too, was big--an ugly, resolute man with an indomitable eye, and as
honest as the day was long.
He looked at Diane as he spoke. She was dark haired and dark eyed,
with a skin milk white in spite of grease paint, and had a vivid,
irregular, theatrical beauty, in great contrast to the big, Juno-like
manager’s wife. Also, she was so slight and thin as to deserve the name
of “Skinny,” which was freely applied to her by François, and she had
a voice like the flute of Pan. In spite of her soft voice and gently
drooping head, Diane had ten times the resolution of the resolute Jean
Leroux. She was also the vainest of women, and in order to protect her
matchless complexion wore, over her scarlet hood, a transparent veil
of a misty grey, through which her eyes shone as the flash of stars is
seen through a drifting cloud. Jean Leroux, who frankly adored her, sat
at her right, and François, who always laughed at her, sat on the other
side. This François had the clear cut, highbred features, the slim
hands and feet, that indescribable air of the aristocrat which marks
a man who can trace his descent through many lines of greatness, back
to those who shone at the court of Philippe le Bel. Yet François was
a frowzy person, and his small feet had burst through his shoes; but
he had the same glorious and ineffable impudence of his ancestors who
bullied their kings and princes.
“What do you say, Diane?” he asked, giving Diane a friendly kick.
“I say Bienville,” replied Diane in her lovely stage voice. “I was
born and brought up five miles from Bienville, in a little hole of a
house, for my father, the village hatter, and my mother had a hard time
to keep body and soul together. When I was a little, little girl, I
used to look in clear days toward Bienville where I could see the tall
spires of the cathedral making a dark line against the sky, and I used
to imagine I could hear the bells on the clear December days, and in
the soft summer nights. I yearned with all my heart to go to Bienville
on market day, and to see the wonderful things that I had heard of
there. My mother and father were always promising me that when they had
enough money they would take me to Bienville on a market day, but, poor
souls, they never had enough. So then, when they died and I was twelve
years old, I was taken far away by my uncle. I never saw Bienville,
and tended geese until I was sixteen and begun to sing at the village
festivals.”
“How interesting!” cried François, who had heard the story forty times
before. “When you are prima donna at the Paris Opera, and your noble
lineage is acknowledged by the proudest houses in France, it will be so
romantic to hear ‘The Tale of the Goose Girl’!”
This was an old joke of François’, at which everybody was expected to
laugh, but Diane remained sullenly silent. François had told her by way
of a gibe that her name, Dorian, was undoubtedly a corruption of the
noble name of D’Orian, and the ridiculous story had taken possession of
Diane, who was as ambitious as Julius Cæsar, and not without repartee.
“Anyhow,” she answered tartly, “it is better to rise from being a goose
girl to being a singer in a nice company like this, than--” Diane
stopped, but François finished the sentence for her.
“Than to be born in a chateau and come down to being general utility
man in a nice, though small, theatrical company. But I tell you, ladies
and gentlemen, that the fault is in the stars, not in me. God is a
great showman, and arranges many highly dramatic events in certain
lives. He has a little string, which He calls Life, and when He pulls
it, we walk, talk, and sin. And when He cuts that string, we walk,
talk, and sin no more. To return to the concrete, however--I give my
voice for Bienville too, because the Bishop is a friend of mine, and so
is the major general commanding the district.”
Now, François had never before been known to mention any great people
he had ever known in his former life, claiming acquaintance only with
organ-grinders, ratcatchers, and the like. So all present pricked up
their ears at this.
“When I was a little lad five years old,” continued François, “they
wanted to teach me to read, but I did not want to read, so then I was
taken into the meadows and shown two big boys, twelve and fourteen
years old, who watched the cows, and meanwhile each carried a book
which he read every moment he could. One of those boys has become
Bishop of Bienville, and the other, I tell you, is a major general
commanding. I suppose they will turn up their noses at me, as indeed
they should. But Bienville is the place for the winter.”
The three subordinates having spoken, the question of spending the
winter in Bienville was considered settled, provided they could get a
cheap hall in which to give performances three times a week. The horses
were to be sold, as they always were at the end of a season, and the
boat tied up at the quay, because it could not be heated for winter
weather.
“I am sorry,” said Diane, “that the summer is over, and this is the
last time for this year that we shall travel by water.”
Diane did not suspect that it was the last time she should ever travel
in that way again.
The horses trotted on steadily toward the far-off steeples and roofs
of Bienville coming within clear sight. By that time it was nearly
dusk, and a great golden, smoky moon hung in the heavens. The boat was
stopped on the river bank where the streets of the little town ran
down to the waterside. The horses were taken out, rubbed down, and
fed, while the Juno-like manager’s wife and the future prima donna
of the Paris Opera cooked supper. Presently they were all assembled
around a little table in the small, stuffy cabin, lighted by a kerosene
lamp hung on the beam over their heads. They were very humble people,
and poor, but they were not unhappy, and lived in a singular harmony
together, in spite of the fact that the three ruling spirits, Diane,
Jean Leroux, and François were all made on a special model. But each
had that strange, artistic conscience which begets the iron discipline
of the stage. Apart from the stage, François was frankly an outlaw, and
submitted to things because there was always a strong and relentless
world against him.
When supper was over and everything settled for the night, Grandin and
his wife were soon snoring loudly in the little coop which was their
room. Diane was not in her little coop, nor was Jean Leroux huddled
in his blanket in the large cabin which he shared with François. Both
Diane and Jean were sitting on the roof of the cabin watching the moon
and stars reflected in the black river, and listening to the sounds
brought to them upon the wandering breeze of a merry little town at
night. Jean Leroux, a taciturn man, was, as usual, on or off the stage,
watching Diane.
“At last I am in Bienville,” murmured Diane. “After so many years of
longing and yearning! I feel that something will happen to me here,
something great and splendid.”
“Now, Diane,” said Leroux, “don’t let François’ jokes get into your
head as serious things. Nothing is going to happen here. You sing
pretty well, but you have no more chance of being a great opera singer
than I have of being an archbishop. You haven’t the voice, my dear, for
opera at all. You will never get beyond a good music hall artist.”
“You are so discouraging, Jean,” complained Diane. “You have a fine
voice and know how to act too, but you never aspire to anything but a
music hall.”
“No, and I never mean to,” was the reply of the practical Jean. “I wish
you had good sense, Diane. But I love you just the same as if you had.”
Diane made no reply, and Jean was confirmed in his belief that women
were the most obstinate and senseless creatures on earth when once they
took a notion into their heads.
“Besides,” continued Jean, “you are too old, twenty-six, to begin
training for grand opera, and you haven’t the money either. At this
moment, your capital consists of two hundred and forty-six francs; you
told me so yourself.”
“Two hundred and sixty-six francs,” cried Diane with flashing eyes.
“You ought to be more careful how you talk about such important things,
Jean.”
“Anyhow,” answered Jean gruffly, “for you to try grand opera would be
exactly like a cow trying to play the piano.”
Diane argued with him angrily for half an hour. She had not the
slightest intention or even wish to be a grand opera singer, and knew
the absurdity of the situation quite as well as Jean. But having, like
all women, great powers of deception, she was carefully concealing the
true object of her wishes and ambitions--to go to Paris and become a
great music hall artist, a profession which she consistently derided
and contemned. The simple creature, man, is no match for the complex
creature, woman.
“After all,” murmured Diane, “I am in Bienville. I have dreamed three
times lately of putting on my petticoat wrong side out, and that means
that I shall make a great deal of money. And then I have twice dreamed
of cooking onions, and that means a splendid lover.”
This was more than Jean could stand.
“Very well, Diane,” he said, “you had better go to bed now, and dream
of petticoats and love and onions. I am off.”
Jean got up and took Diane’s hand as she ran nimbly down the short
ladder to the deck of the boat. The touch of that hand thrilled poor
Jean. His heart yearned over Diane; she was such a fool, and always
wanted to do things and to get in places for which she was eternally
unfitted, so Jean thought. As a matter of fact, Diane was as practical
as Jean, but chose to talk a little wildly.
Meanwhile, Diane in her little coop was sitting on the edge of her bed
and looking through the small, square window toward the town. Afar off
she heard the echo of a military band playing.
“There is a garrison here,” she thought to herself, and then suddenly
remembered that the silk petticoat of which she had dreamed was red
like the color of the soldiers’ trousers, and also that the onions
which she had cooked in her dreams were red. Then her mind wandered
to Jean. If she should have a splendid lover, how should she get on
without Jean? It was he who taught her most that she knew about singing
and had a peculiar scowl that he gave her on the stage when she was
getting off the key. Jean evidently did not fit into the plan of the
splendid marriage which she was certain to make in Bienville, nor did
anything seem to fit without Jean. While Diane was puzzling over this,
she slipped into her narrow cot and fell asleep, the laughing stars and
grinning moon gazing at her through the little window.
The next morning began the serious business of going into winter
quarters at Bienville. It was a busy day for Jean. First, the horses
had to be sold. Anybody who flattered Grandin could get horses or
anything else out of him, so Jean felt it his duty to go with the
manager to the horse mart where the horses fetched a good price.
François, who was very little use in any way, except doing his stage
tricks, was with Madame Grandin and Diane, looking for lodgings. Jean
had some confidence in Diane’s management of money, but this confidence
was rudely shattered when he and Grandin met the two ladies at the
corner of a street, and were taken to inspect the lodgings which were
under consideration for the whole party. First, Jean was dubious
about the street, which was much too nice. The sight of the lodgings
confirmed his worst suspicions. There was actually a sitting room in
addition to a bedroom for the Grandins, a little kitchen, and beyond
it a small white room, with a fireplace, for Diane. Under the roof was
a big attic where Jean and François could be accommodated royally. The
price, of course, was staggering, one hundred francs the month. For
once, however, Jean found himself unable to move Diane or to bully the
Grandins.
While they were all in the sitting room arguing at the top of their
lungs, Diane’s high-pitched, musical voice cutting in every ten
seconds, the door opened and in walked François.
“Look here, François,” said Jean, “help me to reason with these people.
A hundred francs for lodgings, and we haven’t even got a hall yet, and
don’t know whether anybody will come to the performances or not.”
“A hundred francs! A bagatelle!” cried François, slapping his hat down
on the table. “Do you suppose when I come to a place where the Bishop
and the general commanding are my friends, that I intend to stand back
for a little money? No, indeed. If we are thrown out of these luxurious
quarters, we can all go to the workhouse anyhow.”
“Just look at this!” cried Jean, pointing to the carpet on the floor,
and the mirrors on the walls.
“But come and look at my bedroom. I am sure that’s plain enough,”
shrieked Diane.
“It is the best bedroom you ever had in your life,” growled Jean.
Then they all trooped back beyond the kitchen to the little white room
for Diane. There was one window in it, and it looked across the street
directly in the garden of a small, but very nice hotel, much frequented
by officers. There was a pavilion enclosed in glass, and at that moment
there were officers breakfasting there, with their swords about their
legs. As Diane and the rest watched, an orderly rode up leading an
officer’s horse. Then the officer came out, a handsome young man in a
splendid dragoon uniform, and putting on his helmet with its gorgeous
red plume waving in the sunny air. He mounted and clattered off,
followed by the orderly and also by the eyes of Diane. Jean, looking
at her, felt a knife enter his heart. Her eyes had been fixed upon the
young officer with a look of enchantment; her red lips were partly
open. She was like a person hypnotized.
“Diane will be a big success with the officers of the garrison,” said
François, laughing.
“You mean with the corporals,” said Jean. “François, you remind me of
those soldiers called gentlemen-rankers, gentlemen, that is, who get
into the ranks. They always give trouble. You don’t belong with us. You
ought to go with people of your own kind, who understand your jokes.”
“But I can’t,” responded François, with unabashed good humor. “They
have kicked me out long ago.”
Then, the discussion about the lodgings began all over again, everybody
talking at once, except Diane who remained perfectly silent. When they
were talked out, Diane spoke a word.
“I will take the whole apartment myself, if the rest of you don’t,” she
said. “I have two hundred and sixty-six francs of my own.”
Jean said no more, and Grandin sent for the landlady, and made the
terms, Jean looking after him that he did nothing more wildly foolish
than to take the apartment at a hundred francs.
When that business was over, the whole party started out to find a hall
suitable for their performances. In this they had extraordinary good
luck, finding a large place in the same street, the whole front of
glass, and which had been lately vacated as a furniture shop. It would
not take much to build a little stage, and the dressing-rooms could
be divided off with canvas. Jean then piloted the whole party to the
office of the agent, where Diane was put forward to make the plea for
the company. The agent was a susceptible person, and Diane’s soft eyes
and arguments that the place would become better known by having many
persons attend it, caused him to make a ridiculously low offer, and it
was promptly accepted. On the strength of this, Diane assumed to be a
fine business woman, and gave herself great airs in consequence.
When all was complete, the entire arrangements were not so bad. The
money received for the horses paid a month’s rent in advance and for
the erection of the stage. In the latter, both Grandin and Jean helped
the workmen and nailed and hammered industriously. François was willing
to help too, but rather hindered by his jokes and stories, which
distracted the workmen and kept them laughing when they should have
been working.
At the end of three days everything was settled for the winter. The
beds and stools and kettles and pans had been brought from the boat,
which was tied up for the season. The hall was in readiness, the
license was obtained, and the big posters were out announcing three
performances a week by the celebrated Grandin troupe of jugglers,
singers, and dancers.
On the night of the first performance the hall was so well filled that
Grandin was in ecstasies of delight, and Madame Grandin wept with joy.
Across the street, the pavilion was full of young officers, dining.
The new place evidently attracted their attention, and presently the
whole crowd sallied forth through the garden of the hotel, and across
the street. At that moment, François, by Grandin’s direction, went out
to see if the old woman who was hired to take in the money was doing
her duty. As the crowd of laughing young officers crossed the street,
François, who had inspirations of genius, ran inside and pulled up the
great green shade before what had once been the shop windows. Within
could plainly be seen Diane doing one of her best acts with Jean.
She was dressed as a fishwife, her skirts tucked up high, showing a
charming pair of ankles and small feet in little wooden shoes, and
a delicious white cap such as the fishwomen wear flapped upon her
beautiful black hair. The officers raised a shout of laughter and
applause and dashed into the little hall, throwing their money at the
old woman, and not waiting for change.
François pulled the curtain down, and rushed back of the stage. As
the officers came clattering in, they were led by one whom François
recognized as the dragoon officer who had fascinated Diane’s eyes three
days before. This made François nervous, because if the same thing
should happen, the act would be ruined. Diane, indeed, had seen the
young officer, but the effect was exactly opposite from what François
had feared. This, thought Diane, was the meaning of her dream. She
sang better than ever before, and no fishwife ever had so dramatic and
delightful a quarrel as she had with Jean. The end of the act was that
Diane gave Jean a beating with a broom, at which Jean bellowed, to the
great delight of the audience.
This audience, made up wholly of soldiers and working people, except
the officers, shouted with laughter, and the young officers made more
noise than any one else present, led by the handsome dragoon who had
struck Diane’s fancy that morning.
Diane was kept smiling and bowing, and blushing under her grease
paint, before the row of candles stuck in bottles that represented the
footlights. This went on for so long that the next feature on the bill,
a juggling act in which Grandin and his wife did miraculous things,
was delayed ten minutes. Madame Grandin, who was more nearly without
jealousy than any woman François had ever known, sat quite placidly
in her tights and short skirts, and wrapped in a shawl, waiting for
the hullabaloo to subside. Grandin was torn by rival emotions; joy
that Diane had made such a hit, and annoyance that the audience seemed
to prefer singing to burning up money and making an egg come out of
a pumpkin. Presently, however, Jean ruthlessly lowered the piece of
canvas that did duty for a curtain, and Diane came back palpitating
and quivering between laughter and tears. The Grandins then went on,
and François, who was not due on the stage for ten minutes, slipped on
his outside clothes over his stage costume and quietly dropped into the
audience and took his seat by a laughing corporal.
“Who is that young man over there?” whispered François to the corporal.
“Captain, the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel, captain of dragoons. I am in
his troop.”
The corporal, as he said this, made a little motion with his mouth, of
which François knew the meaning. It implied that Captain, the Marquis
Egmont de St. Angel was a person to be spat upon.
François knew the name well enough; he knew the names of all the great
families. He gave the corporal a wink, which was cordially returned,
and then went out, and to the back of the stage. He found Diane
sitting as if in a dream in the little canvas den which she shared as
a dressing-room with Madame Grandin. François, who was to go on in two
minutes, began jerking his arms about and bending his body as if it
were made of India rubber, by way of preparation, chatting meanwhile.
“Talking about love and onions and petticoats,” he said, “the young
officer who led the rest into the hall happens to be a cousin of mine,
about three removes, but we are blood relations, just the same, and I
think he will end in a worse position than that of a juggler when he
keeps sober, and a street vender when he is not quite so sober. He is
the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel, called Egmont for short. I was just
thinking,” continued François, making himself into a circle like a
snake, “that there are no such things as trifles in this world. I went
out just now and pulled up the window shade, and a certain man saw you.
The pulling up of that shade was a momentous act, perhaps.”
“I knew something splendid would happen in Bienville,” murmured Diane.
“The Marquis Egmont de St. Angel! What a splendid name! I never had a
hand clap from a marquis before.”
Then it was time for François to go on the stage. He did his part,
which was chiefly acrobatic, so badly that he came near ruining the
Grandins’ act.
Within the canvas den, Jean was preaching to Diane.
“Look here, Diane,” he said, “don’t let those young officers turn
your head, particularly that handsome one in front. They are not good
acquaintances for a girl like you.”
Diane turned on him a look as virginal as that of Jeanne d’Arc.
“No man can do me any harm,” she said, “except break my heart. I
suppose some might do that. And besides, Jean, I am full of ambition.
The women who misbehave and drink too much wine, lose their voices very
soon and are not respectfully treated by managers. Don’t be afraid for
me.”
“I am not,” answered Jean. “At least in the way you think. I am afraid
of your breaking your heart and doing something foolish.”
“I shan’t do anything foolish,” promptly answered Diane.
When the Grandins and François finished their act and the curtain was
down, even the placid Madame Grandin said a few mildly reproachful
words to François for his carelessness which might have caused a bad
accident. Grandin, who was sincerely attached to his wife, was much
shaken and nervous and violently angry with François.
“Never mind,” answered François coolly to Grandin’s invectives, “wives
come cheap, but if you are so shaken in the next turn as you are now,
your wife will be in a great deal more danger than she was with me.
Behave yourself, Grandin, and get the upper hand of your nerves. A
juggler who loses his nerve because another juggler hasn’t tumbled
fair, isn’t any good at all and a very dangerous person.”
Grandin was much taken aback by this onslaught of François, and could
only mumble:
“I don’t know why it is, François, that you always get the upper hand
of me.”
“I know,” replied François. “It is because I was born a-horseback and
you were born a-footback. That’s why.”
The second appearance of Diane upon the stage was greeted with greater
applause and laughter than ever. Jean, who was a capital low comedian
and singer, was scarcely noticed. When the act was over, it had to be
repeated, and at the end money was showered upon the stage. It was all
silver, however, except one twenty franc gold piece which was thrown by
the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel.
On the whole, the performance was a great success as far as money went,
but nobody had got any applause to speak of except Diane.
It takes some time to wash off powder and lamp-black and grease paint,
and to get into even the shabbiest clothes, so that the street was
almost deserted when the players came out in the quiet autumn night.
One person, however, was on watch. This was the Marquis Egmont de St.
Angel, known as Egmont. He stepped up to Diane and said with a low bow:
“Mademoiselle, will you do me the honor of taking supper with me in the
pavilion of the Hotel Metropole?”
“I thank you very much, Monsieur,” replied Diane in her flute-like
voice, “but I make it a rule always to go home with my friends,
Monsieur and Madame Grandin, after the performance.”
The Marquis remained silent for a moment, then he said, bowing to
Madame Grandin:
“Perhaps your friends will give me the pleasure of their company too.”
“It is as they wish,” answered Diane. “But I must return home. I cannot
stay out late; it affects my voice unfavorably.”
The Marquis stared at her as if she were a lunatic; he had never known
stage people of this class who refused anything to eat and drink.
Diane then, with Jean, started up the street shepherded by the
Grandins. When they reached the corner, Grandin found his big,
melodious voice, and thundered at Diane:
“What do you mean by declining for us to go to supper? I never went to
supper with a marquis in my life; it would be worth a hundred francs’
advertising!”
François had lagged behind, and was saying to the Marquis,
“Are you Fernand or Victor Egmont de St. Angel?”
“I am Fernand,” said the Marquis. “What do you know about my family?”
“Oh, merely that we are cousins.”
The Marquis shouted out laughing, while François, rolling up his
sleeve, gravely exhibited his arm tattooed with a crest and initials.
“This was done,” he said, “when I was a child, in case I got lost. I
have got lost since in the great, mysterious maze of the world, but I
have no objection, like that young lady yonder, to go to supper with
you, provided you will have a good brand of champagne. Cheap champagne
is worse than bad acting.”
“Come!” cried the Marquis, “I know that crest. You have indeed got
lost! But you shall have champagne at twenty francs the bottle if you
will tell me all about that young lady who kicked about so beautifully
in her little wooden shoes.”
François then slipped his arm within that of the Marquis and the two
paraded across the quiet street singing at the top of their voices some
of the songs they had heard that evening from the sweet lips of Diane.
Nothing was seen of François that night, but the next morning when
Madame Grandin, who added thrift and early rising to her other virtues,
was going out to the market at sunrise, she came across François lying
drunk on the door-step. Madame Grandin, a good soul, instead of calling
her husband or Jean, who would be likely to use François roughly,
tiptoed to Diane’s door and the two women very quietly managed to get
François, who was a small man, up the stair, on his way to his attic.
As they passed Grandin’s door, the manager appeared in a very sketchy
toilette.
“What’s the matter with François?” asked Grandin.
“Drunk,” hiccoughed François, thickly, and perfectly happy. “Too much
high society. Champagne at twenty francs the bottle, and my cousin, the
Marquis Egmont de St. Angel, paying for it. Just let me sleep all day,
and I will be as sober as a judge by six o’clock.”
And this actually happened.
It is a very serious thing for a juggler to get drunk while he is
juggling, but François, who had as good artistic conscience as Jean
Leroux or anybody else, never attempted his profession unless he were
dead sober. That, he was, at six o’clock when he walked into the little
sitting room and joined the rest of the party at supper which was
cooked by the excellent Madame Grandin and Diane in collaboration.
“Don’t be afraid to do the pumpkin act with me to-night, you dear
old goose,” said François to Madame Grandin. “I wouldn’t risk your
precious life for anything. Where would Grandin get as good a wife and
as good a partner as you if I should break your neck? And besides, it
would break up the show for a fortnight at least, and perhaps ruin the
whole season just as Diane is in a fair way to become a marquise.”
“What do you mean, François?” asked Diane.
“I mean that the young officer who admired you so much was the Marquis
Egmont de St. Angel, a cousin of mine. We got gloriously drunk together
like old Socrates and the boy Alcibiades the time that Socrates came in
and caught Alcibiades and a lot of Greek boys drinking, and they swore
that Socrates should drink two measures of wine to one of theirs, which
he did the whole night through, and in the morning left them all lying
about the floor while he went and took a bath and then lectured on the
true, the beautiful, and the good in the groves of Parnassus, with all
the wisest men in the town at his heels.”
“And who was Parnassus?” inquired Grandin in his big voice. “His name
sounds like a German university professor.”
“That’s just what he was,” answered François. “One of those _langsam
schrecklich_ German professors who don’t mind having a mob of
ragamuffins overrunning the place.”
All present gazed with admiration at François, amazed at his learning,
as well as his great family connections.
Diane’s thoughts were with the Marquis; her face grew rose red as she
wondered if the Marquis would be on hand for that night’s performance.