he has any personal reason to cheer up; he doesn't ask for any
explanations; he only thinks of partaking in my pleasure--only a glance,
a nod, or a single friendly word is enough for him, and his whole honest
face lights up with my joy. And when I am depressed and miserable, he
then sits so sorrowfully by my side. He does not try to console me, for
he knows how little words of pity avail; he says nothing, for he knows
that silence is a comfort when one is sad. He only looks steadfastly at
me, and maybe puts his big head on my knee. He knows that he cannot
fathom what it is that worries me; that his poor, dark brain cannot
follow me in all I am thinking about; but his faithful heart anyhow
wants to claim his share of my burden.
Others think I am quick-tempered and angry, and pay me back in the same
way; his patient indulgence knows how to forgive everything; his
friendship stands the trial against all injustice. Am I nervous and hard
on him when I leave him, he rewards evil with good and comes just as
friendly and caressingly to meet me when I come back. Others sit in
judgment over my many faults, and have only words of blame for whatever
I take in hand; he tries with loving eagerness to find out the least
ugly side of everything; he refuses to believe me capable of anything
wrong. When I defend a cause, I am too often considered to be in the
wrong; but he thinks always as I do. In the moment of adversity no
friends are to be found; he is always at my side ready to defend me
against any peril, happy, if required, to give his life for mine.
He never complains; he is always satisfied, however uncomfortable he is,
if only he may be allowed to be with me. He can sit for hours out in the
street waiting patiently, in cold and rain, whilst I am visiting some of
my acquaintances where he is not received. Is there no room in the
carriage when I drive, he runs just as cheerfully behind me; he is even
delighted when I am driving; he is proud of me; he thinks it looks
grand. Do I go out in my boat, without hesitation he jumps in the water
after me; he swims as long as he has any breath left, and when his
strength begins to give out, with a last effort he raises himself out of
the water to look after the boat, but to return to the shore he never
dreams of. When I travel by train, he sits, without complaining, cramped
up in his little compartment for however long it may be, without a scrap
of comfort, with the sharp wind blowing straight through, sore in all
his bones with the continual shaking, softened by no springs, black in
his face as a sweep from the smoke of the engine. And anyhow, whenever
the train stops, he shouts out cheerfully that he is there, and all well
on board. Have I time to run forward and look at him, he peeps out
patiently and contentedly through his little barred window, and presses
his dry nose against my hand--never a hint that he is aware how
uncomfortable he is, compared to me in my luxurious wagon-lit; never the
slightest complaint against the railway company who has done so
surprisingly little for travellers of his class.
But if he, out of delicacy for me, has never wanted to make any
complaint, I do not see why I should be kept back from doing so by any
such consideration. And I may as well tell you that I am thinking of
getting up a petition to protest against _the unfair distribution of
comfort for railway travellers_. I have been inquiring about it for the
many years I have knocked about on the railways of all nations, and I am
pretty sure that I may count upon a great number of signatures from
travellers concerned. Man, who always takes the best of everything, and
thinks of nobody but himself, has also succeeded in securing all sorts
of advantages from the railway companies--advantages which exclusively
benefit him, but which are a crying injustice towards other travellers,
who have also paid for their tickets, and consequently have a right,
even they, to claim the fulfilment of the obligations which the railway
company has accepted towards them. If I am waked up in the night in my
comfortable berth by the heating apparatus having gone wrong, and find
the compartment cold, I have only to complain to the conductor; but I
have innumerable times heard loud complaints from the dog-compartments
about the ice-cold night-wind blowing straight through them, and I have
never noticed any one pay the slightest attention to this. If my
neighbour lights a cigar, and having blown a cloud of smoke in my face,
asks me if I object to his smoking, although it is not a smoking
compartment, I have only to answer "Yes," to get rid of the smoke; but
who has ever asked the dogs if they object to the thick fumes of coal
which the engine puffs in their faces the whole time, where the poor
fellows sit in the front van?
All trains stop at certain places for refreshment, and we have only to
run into the buffet to eat our fill; but is there any one who knows how
difficult it is to get a little food and a drink of water for a
travelling dog? The minutes are counted, and you are served in turn as
you come to the buffet, you believe. No, not in the very least, the dogs
are always skipped over, even if they have their money lying ready
before them on the table; and as often as not, when their turn comes the
bell rings, and the train is off. When I was in the first stage of my
human knowledge--the Idealistic--I always asked for some food for my
dog; that was no good, no waiter was kind enough to listen to that.
Later, when in the second stage--that of Vanishing Illusions--I asked at
once for a beefsteak for my dog; that was not much better, the chances
of getting anything are very small. In the third stage--that of
Hopeless Pessimism--I immediately ask for dinner for two, and turn two
chairs at the _table d'hote_; Tappio disappears instantly under the
table, and I hand down to him his portion as it is placed before his
chair. I have acquired such a practice in this that nobody notices where
the food goes, and silent as a ghost, Tappio swallows down both cutlets
and pastry in one gulp--the only thing which has made him lose
countenance has been the, in Italy, not uncommon practice of serving
ice-cream, of the inconvenience of which, at railway dinners, I agree
with him. I remember how once in Macon--the Paris-Turin night-train used
to stop there for supper--we had as neighbours a peaceful family of
bourgeois, the members of which, one after the other, dropped their
knives and forks as the dinner proceeded, and stared at me and my
rapidly vanishing double portions with increasing amazement. At last a
little old lady, who was of the party, exclaimed, quite aloud, "_Voila
un homme que je ne voudrais pas inviter a diner, il serait capable de
manger les assiettes aussi!_"
* * * * *
Yes, we have seen a good deal of the world; we have met many people on
our way; our experience of life is large enough. There was a time when
we were ambitious we also, very ambitious. We dreamt of prize medals and
certificates for both of us, of Persian carpets under our feet, and of
roasted ortolans flying straight into our mouths. That time is past, one
of us is already gray, but no roasted ortolans have flown into our
mouths, nor any Persian carpets spread themselves under our feet. And
when the floor feels too cold, I lay down my cloak for my comrade to lie
upon. And we begin to realise what man is worth. We used to be idealists
because we believed that others were idealists. We were gentle and
harmless as lambs because we believed that others were so. We were
philanthropists. But we have discovered that we were mistaken. Men are
not at all kind to each other. They talk so much about friendship, but
there are only very few of them who are capable of realising the true
signification of this word.
But, to be sure, they laugh if one gives to a dog's faithful devotion
the name of friendship, if with thankful recognition one strives to
repay as far as lies in one's power the humble comrade whom they call
but a soulless animal, whose fine, sensitive thought they call instinct,
and for whose honest, noble soul they deny all right to live any longer
than his faithful dog-heart beats.
If this be not virtue, this all-sacrificing, all-self-denying,
all-injustice-forgetting love,--well, then, I don't know what virtue
means; and should his only reward for a whole life's faithful devotion
consist in being shot in his old age and buried under a tree in the
park at home, then all I can say is, that I do not believe that we
either will get beyond the grave where our remains will one day be laid.
MONSIEUR ALFREDO
I do not in the least know how I happened to come upon the modest little
cafe, nor do I know how it came to pass that during the whole of that
year I frequented no other.
I wonder whether it was not on account of Monsieur Alfredo that I became
an habitue there.
He evidently had his luncheon later than I, as I had already had time to
smoke a couple of cigarettes before he made his appearance at the Cafe
de l'Empereur, upright and trim in his tightly-buttoned frock-coat, a
roll of manuscript under his arm, and his gray hair in neat curls
surrounding his wrinkled, childlike face. The waiter brought him his
little cup of coffee and placed the chess-board between us. Monsieur
Alfredo, with old-fashioned courtesy, inquired after my health, and I on
my side received satisfactory assurances as to his well-being. I busied
myself in placing the chess-men, and whilst I groped under the table to
find that pawn which somehow or other had always fallen to the ground,
Monsieur Alfredo rapidly produced his lump of sugar out of his pocket
and put it into his cup.
We always played two games. I am singularly unlucky in games, and the
old man, who loved chess, beamed all over every time he checkmated me.
He played very slowly, but with amazing boldness, and even after having
played with him every day for months together, I was still incapable of
forming an opinion as to which of us played the worse. What puzzled me
most of all was the fact that Monsieur Alfredo seldom or never played
anything but kings and queens; occasionally, with reluctance, he would
put the knights, castles, and bishops into requisition, but as to the
pawns, he appeared to ignore them altogether. I had never before seen
anybody play in this way, and often enough had I to look very sharp to
make sure of losing.
The conversation turned on literature, and above all, the theatre.
Monsieur Alfredo was extremely exacting as to dramatic art, and approved
of no other form than the tragic. He was exceedingly difficult as to
authors. I was just then full of Victor Hugo, but Monsieur Alfredo
considered him much too sentimental. Racine and Corneille he thought
better of, although he gave me to understand he considered them lacking
in power. He despised comedy and refused point-blank to admit Scribe,
Augier, Labiche, or Dumas as celebrities. One only needed to mention the
name of Offenbach or Lecocq to make the otherwise peaceful Monsieur
Alfredo fall into a complete rage; he then burst forth into Italian,
which he never spoke unless greatly excited; he denounced them as
_Birbanti_, and _Avvelenatori_,[20]--they had with their music spread
the poison which had killed the good taste of a whole generation, and
they were, to a great extent, responsible for the downfall of tragedy in
our days.
He seemed well informed in everything concerning the Paris theatres, and
was evidently a frequent playgoer himself; I had once or twice hinted
that we should go to the theatre together some evening, but had observed
that Monsieur Alfredo never seemed willing to understand me.
As soon as we had finished our second game, Monsieur Alfredo produced
four sous wrapped up in paper, called the waiter and asked what he had
to pay, and laid his four sous on the table. The Cafe de l'Empereur was
not a very expensive place, as you may perceive; on the Boulevard St.
Michel they charged you eight sous for a cup of coffee, here you only
had to pay four if you took it without milk or sugar--Monsieur Alfredo
had long ago confided to me his experience that sugar took away half the
fragrance of coffee. I, who was not so particular, had both sugar and
milk with my coffee, and cognac besides, but never once had I succeeded
in getting Monsieur Alfredo to accept a glass from me. I had tried to
tempt him with everything the Cafe de l'Empereur could offer, but the
old gentleman had always declined courteously but firmly.
I knew that Monsieur Alfredo was an author, and that it was the
manuscript of a five-act tragedy he carried under his arm. I have always
admired authors and artists, and I tried my best to make him understand
how flattered I felt by his society. I had long ago told him everything
about myself and my affairs, but Monsieur Alfredo showed for a long
while a singular reticence in all that concerned himself. Sometimes, on
leaving the cafe together, I had tried to accompany him for a while,
but, once in the streets, he always wished me good-bye, and I could
easily see that I was not wanted. I had also expressed a wish to be
allowed to call upon him, but had been given to understand that his time
was very limited just then, and feeling sure that the tragedy was the
cause of it all, I took good care not to disturb him.
He never came to the cafe in the evening, so I then lounged there alone
smoking. Every now and then I dined with some of my fellow-students down
on the boulevards, but as true inhabitants of the Quartier Latin, it was
only seldom that we crossed the Seine. One evening, however, some one at
the dinner-table proposed that we should all drive down to the Varietes
to see Offenbach's _Les Brigands_, and somehow or another they carried
me off with them.
I believe the whole pit was full of students. We were in tremendous
spirits, and applauded quite as vigorously as the _claque_ which
occupied the row behind us. It seemed to me as though I were playing my
old friend from the Cafe de l'Empereur false, and I felt how he would
despise me had he seen me, and I made up my mind not to tell him
anything about it. But I could not help it, I roared with laughter the
whole time. The last words of a song were hardly over before the
_claque_ broke out with a deafening applause, and we and the whole pit
followed their lead with right good will. And so when we collapsed and
could move our arms no longer, the _claque_ had recuperated its
strength, and the brilliant farce was hailed once more with thundering
applause by the joyless spectators behind us, where a whole chorus of
poor devils shouted "bravo, bravo!" for next day's bread.
Suddenly I was startled by a "bravo, bravo!" which came a little after
the rest. I turned rapidly round, and ran my eye over the _claque_, and
then to the astonishment of my comrades, I took my hat and slunk out of
the theatre.
The joyous music rang in my ears the whole way home, but I felt that
tears were not far from my eyes that night.
No, I never told Monsieur Alfredo that I had been to see _Les Brigands_.
I never alluded again in our conversations to Offenbach and Lecocq, and
never more did I try to accompany the old gentleman to the theatre.
Next day, after we had finished our game of chess, I followed him home
at some little distance. I went to his house that same evening, and
whilst I stood there contemplating the card on Monsieur Alfredo's door,
the concierge made her appearance, and informed me that he never spent
the evenings at home. "Was I perhaps a pupil?" I answered in the
affirmative. I asked her if he had many pupils just then, and she
answered I was the first she had ever seen.
It was towards the end of autumn that I communicated to Monsieur Alfredo
my irrevocable decision to throw medicine to the winds and to devote
myself to the stage, and to my great satisfaction he consented to become
my instructor in deportment and declamation. The lessons were given at
my rooms in the Hotel de l'Avenir. The old fellow's method was a
peculiar one, and his theories on acting as bold as those he held on
chess. I listened with the utmost attention to all he said, and tried as
well as I could to learn the fundamental rules of deportment he saw fit
to teach me. After a while he acceded to my request to be allowed to try
myself in a role, and fully aware of my preference for tragedy, it was
decided that, under the immediate superintendence of the author
himself, I should get up one of the characters in Monsieur Alfredo's
last work, _Le Poignard_, a tragedy in five acts. Monsieur Alfredo
himself was the king and I was the marquis. I admit that my debut was
not a happy one. I saw that the author was far from satisfied with me,
and I realised myself that my marquis was a dead failure. My next debut
was in the role of the English lord in the five-act tragedy, _La
Vengeance_, but neither there were there any illusions possible as to my
success. I then tried my luck as the count in _Le Secret du Tombeau_,
but with a very doubtful result. I then sank down to a viscount, and
made superhuman efforts to keep up to the mark, but notwithstanding the
indulgent way in which Monsieur Alfredo pointed out my shortcomings, I
could not conceal from myself the fact that I was not fit to be a
viscount either.
I began to have serious doubts as to my theatrical vocation, but
Monsieur Alfredo thought that the reason of my failure might be traced
to my unfamiliarity with the highest society, and my difficulty in
adapting myself to the sensations and thoughts of these high personages.
And he was right--it was anything but easy. All his heroes and heroines
were very sorry for themselves, not to say desperate, although as a rule
it was impossible for me to understand the reason of their being so.
Love and hatred glowed in every one's eyes. True that as a rule
everything went wrong for the lovers, but even if they got each other at
last, they did not seem to be a bit the more cheerful for that. I
remember, for instance, the third act of _Le Poignard_, where I (the
marquis), after having waded through blood, succeed in winning the lady
of my heart, who on her side has gone through fire and water to be mine.
The Archbishop marries us by moonlight, and we, who had not seen each
other for ten years, are left alone for a while in a bower of roses. We
had nothing on earth to be afraid of; no one was likely to disturb us,
as I had previously run my sword through every grown-up person in the
play, and I thought that I ought to be a little kind to the marchioness.
But Monsieur Alfredo never found my voice tragic enough during the few
brief moments of happiness he granted us. (We perished shortly
afterwards in an earthquake.)
For the matter of that, those who escaped a violent death were not much
better off--they were carried off in any case in the flower of their
youth by sudden inexplicable ailments, which no amount of care could
contend against. At first I tried to save some of the victims, but
Monsieur Alfredo always looked very astonished when I suggested that
some one might be allowed to recover; and knowing his theory that it was
sentimentality that spoiled Victor Hugo as a dramatist, I ceased more
and more to interfere in the matter.
After a few more abortive attempts to pose as a nobleman, I submitted to
Monsieur Alfredo my opinion that I might do better in a more humble
position. But here we were met by an unforeseen obstacle--Monsieur
Alfredo did not descend below viscounts. If by the exigencies of the
plot a lonely representative of the lower orders had to appear on the
scene, he had no sooner got a word out of his mouth before the author
would fling a purse at his head, and send him back into the wings with
an imperial wave of his shiny coat sleeve. Well, away with all false
pride! It was in these roles I at last hit upon my true genre; it was
here I scored my only triumphs. Imperceptibly to the old man, I
disappeared more and more from the repertoire, would now and then cross
the stage and with a deep obeisance deliver a manuscript letter from
some crowned head, or would occasionally come to carry off a
corpse--that was all.
So the autumn passed on, we had gone through one tragedy after another,
and still Monsieur Alfredo constantly turned up with a new manuscript
under his arm. I began to be afraid that the old man would wear himself
out with this fathomless authorship, and I tried in every possible way
to make him rest a little. This was, however, quite impossible. He now
came every single day to Hotel de l'Avenir to his only pupil and
literary confidant. His guileless, childish face seemed to grow more and
more gentle, and more and more was I drawn towards the poor old
enthusiast with a sort of tender sympathy.
And unquenchable and ever more unquenchable became his literary
bloodthirstiness. By Christmas-time his new tragedy was ready, and
Monsieur Alfredo himself looked upon it as his best work. The scene was
laid in Sicily at the foot of Mount Etna in the midst of burning
lava-streams. Not a soul survived the fifth act. I begged for the life
of a Newfoundland dog, who, with a dead heir in his mouth, had swum over
from the mainland, but Monsieur Alfredo was inexorable. The dog threw
himself into the crater of Etna in the last scene.
But while the lava of Mount Etna was heating Monsieur Alfredo's world of
dreams, the winter snow was falling over Paris. All of us had long since
taken to our winter coats, but my poor professor was still wandering
about in his same old frock-coat, so shiny with constant brushing, so
thread-bare with the wear and tear of years. The nights became so cold,
and sadly did I follow in my thoughts the poor old man tramping home
every night across the streets of Paris after the theatre was over.
Many times was I very near broaching the delicate subject, but was
always deterred by the sensitive pride with which he sought to disguise
his poverty. Yet had I never seen him in such excellent spirits as he
was just then, he placed greater expectations than ever on his new
tragedy. Like all his previous plays it was written for the Theatre
Francais. The systematic ill-will with which Mons. Perrin[21] had
refused to accept any work of his had certainly made him turn his
thoughts to the Odeon Theatre; but with due consideration to the
colossal proportions of his new drama, Monsieur Alfredo did not quite
see how to avoid offering it to the very first theatre in Paris.
Maybe it seems to you that I ought to have pointed out to Monsieur
Alfredo the dangerous flights of his imagination, that I ought to have
tried to make him realise that his theatre was erected on quite another
planet than ours. I did nothing of the sort, and you would not have done
so either had you known him as I did, had you witnessed the anxiety with
which his kind eyes sought for my approval, how his sad old child-face
brightened up when he recited some passage which he expected would
especially dumbfound me--which alas! it seldom failed to do. But I had
arrived so far that I was quite incapable of spoiling his pleasure by a
single word of criticism. Silently I listened to tragedy after tragedy,
and there was no need to simulate being serious, for all my laughter
over his wild creations was silenced by the tragedy of reality, all my
criticism was disarmed by his utter helplessness--he did not even
possess an overcoat! The only audience the poor old man ever had was me,
why then shouldn't I bestow upon him a little approval, he whom life
had so unmercifully hissed?
One afternoon he did not turn up at the Cafe de l'Empereur, and in vain
I waited for him before the chess-board the next day. I waited still
another day, but then, driven by uneasy forebodings, I went to look him
up towards evening. The concierge had not seen him go out, and there was
no answer to my knock at his door. I stood there for a moment or two
looking at the faded old visiting-card nailed on his door--
+------------------------------------------+
| |
| Mr. ALFREDO |
| |
| Auteur Dramatique |
| |
| Professeur de Declamation, de Maintien |
| |
| et de Mise en Scene. |
| |
+------------------------------------------+
And then I quietly opened the door and went in.
The old man lay on his bed delirious, not recognising the unbidden guest
who stood there, sadly looking round the empty garret cold as the
streets without, for there was no fireplace.