"No. My one piecee _fa-ke-kwok_; {69} my Melican, galaw. You dlinkee
ale some-tim?"
The giant replied that _pay-wine_, which is Pidgin for beer, was not
ungrateful to his palate or foreign to his habits. So we had a quart of
Alsopp between us, and drank to better acquaintance. I found that the
giant had exhibited himself in many lands, and taken great pains to learn
the language of each, so that he spoke German, Italian, and Spanish well
enough. He had been at a mission-school when he used to "stop
China-side," or was in his native land. I assured him that I had
perceived it from the first, because he evidently "talked ink," as his
countrymen say of words which are uttered by a scholar, and I greatly
gratified him by citing some of my own "beautiful verses," which are
reversed from a Chinese original:--
"One man who never leadee {69a}
Like one dly {69b} inkstan be:
You turn he up-side downy,
No ink lun {69c} outside he."
So we parted with mutual esteem. This was the second man by the name of
Chang whom I had known, and singularly enough they were both exhibited as
curiosities. The other made a living as a Siamese twin, and his brother
was named Eng. They wrote their autographs for me, and put them wisely
at the very top of the page, lest I should write a promise to pay an
immense sum of money, or forge a free pass to come into the exhibition
gratis over their signatures.
Having seen Chang, I returned to the Hotel de Louvre, dined, and then
went forth with friends to the Orangerie. This immense garden, devoted
to concerts, beer, and cigars, is said to be capable of containing three
thousand people; before I left it it held about five thousand. I knew
not why this unwonted crowd had assembled; when I found the cause I was
astonished, with reason. At the gate was a bill, on which I read "Les
Bohemiennes de Moscow."
"Some small musical comedy, I suppose," I said to myself. "But let us
see it." We pressed on.
"Look there!" said my companion. "Those are certainly gypsies."
Sure enough, a procession of men and women, strangely dressed in gayly
colored Oriental garments, was entering the gates. But I replied,
"Impossible. Not here in Paris. Probably they are performers."
"But see. They notice you. That girl certainly knows you. She's
turning her head. There,--I heard her say O Romany rye!"
I was bewildered. The crowd was dense, but as the procession passed me
at a second turn I saw they were indeed gypsies, and I was grasped by the
hand by more than one. They were my old friends from Moscow. This
explained the immense multitude. There was during the Exhibition a great
_furor_ as regarded _les zigains_. The gypsy orchestra which performed
in the Hungarian cafe was so beset by visitors that a comic paper
represented them as covering the roofs of the adjacent houses so as to
hear something. This evening the Russian gypsies were to make their
debut in the Orangerie, and they were frightened at their own success.
They sang, but their voices were inaudible to two thirds of the audience,
and those who could not hear roared, "Louder!" Then they adjourned to
the open air, where the voices were lost altogether on a crowd calling,
"_Garcon_--_vite_--_une tasse cafe_!" or applauding. In the intervals
scores of young Russian gentlemen, golden swells, who had known the girls
of old, gathered round the fair ones like moths around tapers. The
singing was not the same as it had been; the voices were the same, but
the sweet wild charm of the Romany caroling, bird-like, for pleasure was
gone.
But I found by themselves and unnoticed two of the troupe, whom I shall
not soon forget. They were two very handsome youths,--one of sixteen
years, the other twenty. And with the first words in Romany they fairly
jumped for joy; and the artist who could have caught their picture then
would have made a brave one. They were clad in blouses of colored silk,
which, with their fine dark complexions and great black eyes, gave them a
very picturesque air. These had not seen me in Russia, nor had they
heard of me; they were probably from Novogorod. Like the girls they were
children, but in a greater degree, for they had not been flattered, and
kind words delighted them so that they clapped their hands. They began
to hum gypsy songs, and had I not prevented it they would have run at
once and brought a guitar, and improvised a small concert for me _al
fresco_. I objected to this, not wishing to take part any longer in such
a very public exhibition. For the _gobe-mouches_ and starers, noticing a
stranger talking with _ces zigains_, had begun to gather in a dense crowd
around us, and the two ladies and the gentleman who were with us were
seriously inconvenienced. We endeavored to step aside, but the multitude
stepped aside also, and would not let us alone. They were French, but
they might have been polite. As it was, they broke our merry conference
up effectively, and put us to flight.
"Do let us come and see you, _rya_," said the younger boy. "We will
sing, for I can really sing beautifully, and we like you so much. Where
do you live?"
I could not invite them, for I was about to leave Paris, as I then
supposed. I have never seen them since, and there was no adventure and
no strange scenery beyond the thousands of lights and guests and trees
and voices speaking French. Yet to this day the gay boyishness, the
merry laughter, and the child-like _naivete_ of the promptly-formed
liking of those gypsy youths remains impressed on my mind with all the
color and warmth of an adventure or a living poem. Can you recall no
child by any wayside of life to whom you have given a chance smile or a
kind word, and been repaid with artless sudden attraction? For to all of
us,--yes, to the coldest and worst,--there are such memories of young
people, of children, and I pity him who, remembering them, does not feel
the touch of a vanished hand and hear a chord which is still. There are
adventures which we can tell to others as stories, but the best have no
story; they may be only the memory of a strange dog which followed us,
and I have one such of a cat who, without any introduction, leaped wildly
towards me, "and would not thence away." It is a good life which has
many such memories.
I was walking a day or two after with an English friend, who was also a
delegate to the International Literary Congress, in the Exhibition, when
we approached the side gate, or rear entrance of the Hungarian cafe. Six
or seven dark and strange-looking men stood about, dressed in the uniform
of a military band. I caught their glances, and saw that they were
Romany.
"Now you shall see something queer," I said to my friend.
So advancing to the first dark man I greeted him in gypsy.
"I do not understand you," he promptly replied--or lied.