On the boat. It rains. The Tarasconese hero salutes the
Ashes. The truth about William Tell. Disillusion. Tartarin
of Tarascon never existed. “Té! Bompard.”
He had left the snows of the Rigi-Kulm; down below, on the lake, he
returned to rain, fine, close, misty, a vapour of water through which
the mountains stumped themselves in, graduating in the distance to the
form of clouds.
The “Föhn” whistled, raising white caps on the lake where the gulls,
flying low, seemed borne upon the waves; one might have thought one’s
self on the open ocean.
Tartarin recalled to mind his departure from the port of Marseilles,
fifteen years earlier, when he started to hunt the lion--that spotless
sky, dazzling with silvery light, that sea so blue, blue as the water of
dye-works, blown back by the mistral in sparkling white saline crystals,
the bugles of the forts and the bells of all the steeples echoing joy,
rapture, sun--the fairy world of a first journey.
What a contrast to this black dripping wharf, almost deserted, on which
were seen, through the mist as through a sheet of oiled paper, a few
passengers wrapped in ulsters and formless india-rubber garments, and
the helmsman standing motionless, muffled in his hooded cloak, his
manner grave and sibylline, behind this notice printed in three
languages:--
“Forbidden to speak to the man at the wheel.”
Very useless caution, for nobody spoke on board the “Winkelried,”
neither on deck, nor in the first and second saloons crowded with
lugubrious-looking passengers, sleeping, reading, yawning, pell-mell,
with their smaller packages scattered on the seats--the sort of scene we
imagine that a batch of exiles on the morning after a coup-d’État might
present.
From time to time the hoarse bellow of the steam-pipe announced the
arrival of the boat at a stopping-place. A noise of steps, and of
baggage dragged about the deck. The shore, looming through the fog, came
nearer and showed its slopes of a sombre green, its villas shivering
amid inundated groves, files of poplars flanking the muddy roads along
which sumptuous hotels were formed in line with their names in letters
of gold upon their façades, Hôtel Meyer, Müller, du Lac, etc., where
heads, bored with existence, made themselves visible behind the
streaming window-panes.
The wharf was reached, the passengers disembarked and went upward, all
equally muddy, soaked, and silent. ‘Twas a coming and going of umbrellas
and omnibuses, quickly vanishing. Then a great beating of the wheels,
churning up the water with their paddles, and the shore retreated,
becoming once more a misty landscape with its _pensions_ Meyer,
Müller, du Lac, etc., the windows of which, opened for an instant, gave
fluttering handkerchiefs to view from every floor, and outstretched
arms that seemed to say: “Mercy! pity! take us, take us... if you only
knew!..”
At times the “Winkelried” crossed on its way some other steamer with its
name in black letters on its white paddle-box: “Germania.”.. “Guillaume
Tell”... The same lugubrious deck, the same refracting caoutchoucs, the
same most lamentable pleasure trip as that of the other phantom vessel
going its different way, and the same heart-broken glances exchanged
from deck to deck.
And to say that those people travelled for enjoyment! and that all
those boarders in the Hôtels du Lac, Meyer, and Müller were captives for
pleasure!
Here, as on the Rigi-Kulm, the thing that above all suffocated Tartarin,
agonized him, froze him, even more than the cold rain and the murky sky,
was the utter impossibility of talking. True, he had again met faces
that he knew--the member of the Jockey Club with his niece (h’m!
h’m!..), the academician Astier-Réhu, and the Bonn Professor
Schwanthaler, those two implacable enemies condemned to live side by
side for a month manacled to the itinerary of a Cook’s Circular,
and others. But none of these illustrious Prunes would recognize the
Tarasconese Alpinist, although his mountain muffler, his metal utensils,
his ropes in saltire, distinguished him from others, and marked him in
a manner that was quite peculiar. They all seemed ashamed of the night
before, and the inexplicable impulse communicated to them by the fiery
ardour of that fat man.
Mme. Schwanthaler, alone, approached her partner, with the rosy,
laughing face of a plump little fairy, and taking her skirt in her two
fingers as if to suggest a minuet. “Ballir... dantsir... very choli...”
remarked the good lady. Was this a memory that she evoked, or a
temptation that she offered? At any rate, as she did not let go of him,
Tartarin, to escape her pertinacity, went up on deck, preferring to be
soaked to the skin rather than be made ridiculous.
And it rained!.. and the sky was dirty!.. To complete his gloom, a whole
squad of the Salvation Army, who had come aboard at Beckenried, a dozen
stout girls with stolid faces, in navy-blue gowns and Greenaway bonnets,
were grouped under three enormous scarlet umbrellas, and were singing
verses, accompanied on the accordion by a man, a sort of David-la-Gamme,
tall and fleshless with crazy eyes. These sharp, flat, discordant
voices, like the cry of gulls, rolled dragging, drawling through the
rain and the black smoke of the engine which the wind beat down upon the
deck. Never had Tartarin heard anything so lamentable.
At Brünnen the squad landed, leaving the pockets of the other travellers
swollen with pious little tracts; and almost immediately after the songs
and the accordion of these poor larvae ceased, the sky began to clear
and patches of blue were seen.
They now entered the lake of Uri, closed in and darkened by lofty,
untrodden mountains, and the tourists pointed out to each other, on
the right at the foot of the Seelisberg, the field of Grütli, where
Melchtal, Fürst, and Stauffacher made oath to deliver their country.
Tartarin, with much emotion, took off his cap, paying no attention to
environing amazement, and waved it in the air three times, to do honour
to the ashes of those heroes. A few of the passengers mistook his
purpose, and politely returned his bow.
The engine at last gave a hoarse roar, its echo repercussioning from
cliff to cliff of the narrow space. The notice hung out on deck before
each new landing-place (as they do at public balls to vary the country
dances) announced the Tells-platte.
They arrived.
The chapel is situated just five minutes’ walk from the landing, at the
edge of the lake, on the very rock to which William Tell sprang, during
the tempest, from Gessler’s boat. It was to Tartarin a most delightful
emotion to tread, as he followed the travellers of the Circular Cook
along the lakeside, that historic soil, to recall and live again the
principal episodes of the great drama which he knew as he did his own
life.
From his earliest years, William Tell had been his type. When, in the
Bézuquet pharmacy, they played the game of preference, each person
writing secretly on folded slips the poet, the tree, the odour, the
hero, the woman he preferred, one of the papers invariably ran thus:--
“Tree preferred? ........... the baobab.
Odour? ..................... gunpowder.
Writer? .................... Fenimore Cooper.
What I would prefer to be .. William Tell.”
And every voice in the pharmacy cried out: “That’s Tartarin!”
Imagine, therefore, how happy he was and how his heart was beating as he
stood before that memorial chapel raised to a hero by the gratitude of
a whole people. It seemed to him that William Tell in person, still
dripping with the waters of the lake, his crossbow and his arrows in
hand, was about to open the door to him.
“No entrance... I am at work... This is not the day...” cried a loud
voice from within, made louder by the sonority of the vaulted roof.
“Monsieur Astier-Réhu, of the French Academy...”
“Herr Doctor Professor Schwanthaler...”
“Tartarin of Tarascon...”
In the arch above the portal, perched upon a scaffolding, appeared a
half-length of the painter in working-blouse, palette in hand.
“My _famulus_ will come down and open to you, messieurs,” he said with
respectful intonations.
“I was sure of it, _pardi!_” thought Tartarin; “I had only to name
myself.”
However, he had the good taste to stand aside modestly, and only entered
after all the others.
The painter, superb fellow, with the gilded, ruddy head of an artist of
the Renaissance, received his visitors on the wooden steps which led to
the temporary staging put up for the purpose of painting the roof. The
frescos, representing the principal episodes in the life of William
Tell, were finished, all but one, namely: the scene of the apple in
the market-place of Altorf. On this he was now at work, and his young
_famulus_, as he called him, feet and legs bare under a toga of the
middle ages, and his hair archangelically arranged, was posing as the
son of William Tell.
All these archaic personages, red, green, yellow, blue, made taller than
nature in narrow streets and under the posterns of the period, intended,
of course, to be seen at a distance, impressed the spectators rather
sadly. However, they were there to admire, and they admired. Besides,
none of them knew anything.
“I consider that a fine characterization,” said the pontifical
Astier-Réhu, carpet-bag in hand.
And Schwanthaler, a camp-stool under his arm, not willing to be
behindhand, quoted two verses of Schiller, most of it remaining in his
flowing beard. Then the ladies exclaimed, and for a time nothing was
heard but:--
“Schön!.. schön...”
“Yes... lovely...”
“Exquisite! delicious!..”
One might have thought one’s self at a confectioner’s.
Abruptly a voice broke forth, rending with the ring of a trumpet that
composed silence.
“Badly shouldered, I tell you... That crossbow is not in place...”
Imagine the stupor of the painter in presence of this exorbitant
Alpinist, who, alpenstock in hand and ice-axe on his shoulder, risking
the annihilation of somebody at each of his many evolutions, was
demonstrating to him by A + B that the motions of his William Tell were
not correct.
“I know what I am talking about, _au mouain_... I beg you to believe
it...”
“Who are you?”
“Who am I!” exclaimed the Alpinist, now thoroughly vexed... So it was
not to him that the door was opened; and drawing himself up he said: “Go
ask my name of the panthers of the Zaccar, of the lions of Atlas... they
will answer you, perhaps.”
The company recoiled; there was general alarm.
“But,” asked the painter, “in what way is my action wrong?”
“Look at me, _té!_”
Falling into position with a thud of his heels that made the planks
beneath them smoke, Tar-tarin, shouldering his ice-axe like a crossbow,
stood rigid.
“Superb! He’s right... Don’t stir...”
Then to the _famulus_: “Quick! a block, charcoal!..”
The fact is, the Tarasconese hero was something worth painting,--squat,
round-shouldered, head bent forward, the muffler round his chin like a
strap, and his flaming little eye taking aim at the terrified _famulus_.
Imagination, O magic power!.. He thought himself on the marketplace of
Altorf, in front of his own child, he, who had never had any; an arrow
in his bow, another in his belt to pierce the heart of the tyrant. His
conviction became so strong that it conveyed itself to others.
“‘T is William Tell himself!..” said the painter, crouched on a stool
and driving his sketch with a feverish hand. “Ah! monsieur, why did I
not know you earlier? What a model you would have been for me!..”
“Really! then you see some resemblance?” said Tartarin, much flattered,
but keeping his pose.
Yes, it was just so that the artist imagined his hero.
“The head, too?”
“Oh! the head, that’s no matter...” and the painter stepped back to
look at his sketch. “Yes, a virile mask, energetic, just what I
wanted--inasmuch as nobody knows anything about William Tell, who
probably never existed.”
Tartarin dropped the cross-bow from stupefaction.
“_Outre!_ {*}.. Never existed!.. What is that you are saying?”
* “Outre” and “boufre” are Tarasconese oaths of mysterious
etymology.
“Ask these gentlemen...”
Astier-Réhu, solemn, his three chins in his white cravat, said: “That is
a Danish legend.”
“Icelandic..” affirmed Schwanthaler, no less majestic.
“Saxo Grammaticus relates that a valiant archer named Tobé or
Paltanoke...”
“Es ist in der Vilkinasaga geschrieben...”