called at the box-office to ask about the victim of the accident. He was
advertised as "The Great Polish Champion Bareback Rider and Aerial
Gymnast." We found that he was really a native of the East, whether Pole
or Russian the ticket-seller did not know. His real name was Nagy, and
he had been engaged only recently, having returned a few months before
from a professional tour in North America. He was supposed to have
money, for he commanded a good salary, and was sober and faithful. The
accident, it was said, would probably disable him for a few weeks only,
and then he would resume his engagement.
The next day an account of the accident was in the newspapers, and
twenty-four hours later all Paris had forgotten about it. For some
reason or other I frequently thought of the injured man, and had an
occasional impulse to go and inquire after him; but I never went. It
seemed to me that I had seen his face before, when or where I tried in
vain to recall. It was not an impressive face, but I could call it up at
any moment as distinct to my mind's eye as a photograph to my physical
vision. Whenever I thought of him, a dim, very dim memory would flit
through my mind, which I could never seize and fix.
Two months later I was walking up the Rue Richelieu, when some one,
close beside me and a little behind, asked me in Hungarian if I was a
Magyar. I turned quickly to answer no, surprised at being thus
addressed, and beheld the disabled circus-rider. It flashed upon me, the
moment I saw his face, that I had seen him in Turin three years before.
My surprise at the sudden identification of the gymnast was construed by
him into vexation at being spoken to by a stranger. He began to
apologize for stopping me, and was moving away, when I asked him about
the accident, remarking that I was present on the evening of his
misfortune. My next question, put in order to detain him, was:
"Why did you ask if I was a Hungarian?"
"Because you wear a Hungarian hat," was the reply.
This was true. I happened to have on a little round, soft felt hat,
which I had purchased in Buda Pesth.
"Well, but what if I were Hungarian?"
"Nothing; only I was lonely and wanted company, and you looked as if I
had seen you somewhere before. You are an artist, are you not?"
I said I was, and asked him how he guessed it.
"I can't explain how it is," he said, "but I always know them. Are you
doing anything?"
"No," I replied.
"Perhaps I may get you something to do," he suggested. "What is your
line?"
"Figures," I answered, unable to divine how he thought he could assist
me.
This reply seemed to puzzle him a little, and he continued:
"Do you ride or do the trapeze?"
It was my turn now to look dazed, and it might easily have been
gathered, from my expression, that I was not flattered at being taken
for a saw-dust artist. However, as he apparently did not notice any
change in my face, I explained without further remark that I was a
painter. The explanation did not seem to disturb him any; he was
evidently acquainted with the profession, and looked upon it as kindred
to his own.
As we walked along through the great open quadrangle of the Tuileries, I
had an opportunity of studying his general appearance. He was neatly
dressed, and, though pale, was apparently in good health.
Notwithstanding a painful limp his carriage was erect, and his movements
denoted great physical strength. On the bridge over the Seine we paused
for a moment and leaned on the parapet, and thus, for the first time,
stood nearly face to face. He looked earnestly at me a moment without
speaking, and then, shouting "_Torino_" so loudly and earnestly as to
attract the gaze of all the passers, he seized me by the hand, and
continued to shake it and repeat "_Torino_" over and over again.
This word cleared up my befogged memory like magic. There was no longer
any mystery about the man before me. The impulse which now drew us
together was only the unconscious souvenir of an earlier acquaintance,
for we had met before. With the vision of the Italian city, which came
distinctly to my eyes at that moment, came also to my mind every detail
of an incident which had long since passed entirely from my thoughts.
It was during the Turin carnival, in 1875, that I happened to stop over
for a day and a night, on my way down from Paris to Venice. The festival
was uncommonly dreary, for the air was chilly, the sky gray and gloomy,
and there was a total lack of spontaneity in the popular spirit. The
gaudy decorations of the Piazza and the Corso, the numberless shows and
booths, and the brilliant costumes, could not make it appear a season of
jollity and mirth, for the note of discord in the hearts of the people
was much too strong. King Carnival's might was on the wane, and neither
the influence of the Church nor the encouragement of the State was able
to bolster up the superannuated monarch. There was no communicativeness
in even what little fun there was going, and the day was a long and a
tedious one. As I was strolling around in rather a melancholy mood, just
at the close of the cavalcade, I saw the flaming posters of a circus,
and knew my day was saved, for I had a great fondness for the ring. An
hour later I was seated in the cheerfully lighted amphitheatre, and the
old performance of the trained stallions was going on as I had seen it a
hundred times before. At last the "Celebrated Cypriot Brothers, the
Universal Bareback Riders," came tripping gracefully into the ring,
sprang lightly upon two black horses, and were off around the narrow
circle like the wind, now together, now apart, performing all the while
marvellous feats of strength and skill. It required no study to discover
that there was no relationship between the two performers. One of them
was a heavy, gross, dark-skinned man, with the careless bearing of one
who had been nursed in a circus. The other was a small, fair-haired
youth of nineteen or twenty years, with limbs as straight and as shapely
as the Narcissus, and with joints like the wiry-limbed fauns. His head
was round, and his face of a type which would never be called beautiful,
although it was strong in feature and attractive in expression. His eyes
were small and twinkling, his eyebrows heavy, and his mouth had a
peculiar proud curl in it which was never disturbed by the tame smile of
the practised performer. He was evidently a foreigner. He went through
his acts with wonderful readiness and with slight effort, and, while
apparently enjoying keenly the exhilaration of applause, he showed no
trace of the _blasé_ bearing of the old stager. In nearly every act that
followed he took a prominent part. On the trapeze, somersaulting over
horses placed side by side, grouping with his so-called brother and a
small lad, he did his full share of the work, and when the programme
was ended he came among the audience to sell photographs while the
lottery was being drawn.
As usual during the carnival, there was a lottery arranged by the
manager of the circus, and every ticket had a number which entitled the
holder to a chance in the prizes. When the young gymnast came in turn to
me, radiant in his salmon fleshings and blue trunks, with slippers and
bows to match, I could not help asking him if he was an Italian.
"No, signor, Magyar!" he replied, and I shortly found that his knowledge
of Italian was limited to a dozen words. I occupied him by selecting
some photographs, and, much to his surprise, spoke to him in his native
tongue. When he learned I had been in Hungary he was greatly pleased,
and the impatience of other customers for the photographs was the only
thing that prevented him from becoming communicative immediately. As he
left me I slipped into his hand my lottery-ticket, with the remark that
I never had any luck, and hoped he would.
The numbers were, meanwhile, rapidly drawn, the prizes being arranged in
the order of their value, each ticket taken from the hat denoting a
prize, until all were distributed. "Number twenty-eight--a pair of
elegant vases!" "Number sixteen--three bottles of vermouth!" "Number one
hundred and eighty-four--candlesticks and two bottles of vermouth!"
"Number four hundred and ten--three bottles of vermouth and a set of
jewelry!" "Number three hundred and nineteen--five bottles of vermouth!"
and so on, with more bottles of vermouth than anything else. Indeed,
each prize had to be floated on a few litres of the Turin specialty, and
I began to think that perhaps it would have been better, after all, not
to have given my circus friend the ticket, if he were to draw drink with
it.
Many prizes were called out, and at last only two numbers remained. The
excitement was now intense, and it did not diminish when the conductor
of the lottery announced that the last two numbers would draw the two
great prizes of the evening, namely: An order on a Turin tailor for a
suit of clothes, and an order on a jeweller for a gold watch and chain.
The first of these two last numbers was taken out of the hat.
"Number twenty-five--order for a suit of clothes!" was the announcement.
Twenty-five had been the number of my ticket. I did not hear the last
number drawn, for the Hungarian was in front of my seat trying to press
the order on me, and protesting against appropriating my good luck. I
wrote my name on the programme for him, with the simple address, U.S.A.,
persuaded him to accept the windfall, and went home. The next morning I
left town.
On the occasion of our mutual recognition in Paris, the circus boy began
to relate, as soon as the first flush of his surprise was over, the
story of his life since the incident in Turin. He had been to New York
and Boston, and all the large sea-coast towns; to Chicago, St. Louis,
and even to San Francisco; always with a circus company. Whenever he had
had an opportunity in the United States, he had asked for news of me.
"The United States is so large!" he said, with a sigh. "Every one told
me that, when I showed the Turin programme with your name on it."
The reason why he had kept the programme and tried to find me in America
was because the lottery ticket had been the direct means of his
emigration, and, in fact, the first piece of good fortune that had
befallen him since he left his native town. When he joined the circus he
was an apprentice, and beside a certain number of hours of gymnastic
practice daily and service in the ring both afternoon and evening, he
had half a dozen horses to care for, his part of the tent to pack up and
load, and the team to drive to the next stopping-place. For sixteen and
often eighteen hours of hard work he received only his food and his
performing clothes. When he was counted as one of the troupe his duties
were lightened, but he got only enough money to pay his way with
difficulty. Without a _lira_ ahead, and with no clothes but his rough
working-suit and his performing costume, he could not hope to escape
from this sort of bondage. The luck of number twenty-five had put him on
his feet.
"All Hungarians worship America," he said, "and when I saw that you
were an American I knew that my good fortune had begun in earnest. Of
course I believed America to be the land of plenty, and there could have
been no stronger proof of this than the generosity with which you, the
first American I had ever seen, gave me, a perfect stranger, such a
valuable prize. When I remembered the number of the ticket and the
letter in the alphabet, Y, to which this number corresponds, I was dazed
at the significance of the omen, and resolved at once to seek my fortune
in the United States. I sold the order on the tailor for money enough to
buy a suit of ready-made clothes and pay my fare to Genoa. From this
port I worked my passage to Gibraltar, and thence, after performing a
few weeks in a small English circus, I went to New York in a
fruit-vessel. As long as I was in America everything prospered with me.
I made a great deal of money, and spent a great deal. After a couple of
years I went to London with a company, and there lost my pay and my
position by the failure of the manager. In England my good luck all left
me. Circus people are too plenty there; everybody is an artist. I could
scarcely get anything to do in my line, so I drifted over to Paris."
We prolonged our stroll for an hour, for although I did not anticipate
any pleasure or profit from continuing the acquaintance, there was yet a
certain attraction in his simplicity of manner and in his naïve faith in
the value of my influence on his fortunes. Before we parted he
expressed again his ability to get me something to do, but I did not
credit his statement enough to correct the impression that I was in need
of employment. At his earnest solicitation I gave him my address,
concealing, as well as I could, my reluctance to encourage an
acquaintance which could not result in anything but annoyance.
One day passed, and two, and on the third morning the porter showed him
to my room.
"I have found you work!" he cried, in the first breath.
Sure enough, he had been to a Polish acquaintance who knew a countryman,
a copyist in the Louvre. This copyist had a superabundance of orders,
and was glad to get some one to help him finish them in haste. My
gymnast was so much elated over his success at finding occupation for me
that I hadn't the heart to tell him that I was at leisure only while
hunting a studio. I therefore promised to go with him to the Louvre some
day, but I always found an excuse for not going.
For two or three weeks we met at intervals. At various times, thinking
he was in want, I pressed him to accept the loan of a few francs, but he
always stoutly refused. We went together to his lodging-house, where the
landlady, an English-woman, who boarded most of the circus people, spoke
of her "poor dear Mr. Nodge," as she called him, in quite a maternal
way, and assured me that he had wanted for nothing, and should not so
long as his wound disabled him. In the course of a few days I had
gathered from him a complete history of his circus-life, which was full
of adventure and hardship. He was, as I had thought then, somewhat of a
novice in the circus business at the time we met in Turin, having left
his home less than two years before. He had indeed been associated as a
regular member of the company only a few months, after having served a
difficult and wearing apprenticeship. He was born in Koloszvar, where
his father was a professor in the university, and there he grew up with
three brothers and a sister, in a comfortable home. He always had had a
great desire to see travel, and from early childhood developed a special
fondness for gymnastic feats. The thought of a circus made him fairly
wild. On rare occasions a travelling show visited this Transylvanian
town, and his parents with difficulty restrained him from following the
circus away. At last, in 1873, one show, more complete and more
brilliant than any one before seen there, came in on the newly opened
railway, and he, now a man, went away with it, unable longer to restrain
his passion for the profession. Always accustomed to horses, and already
a skilful acrobat, he was immediately accepted by the manager as an
apprentice, and after a season in Roumania and a disastrous trip through
Southern Austria, they came into Northern Italy, where I met him.
Whenever he spoke of his early life he always became quiet and
depressed, and for a long time I believed that he brooded over his
mistake in exchanging a happy home for the vicissitudes of Bohemia. It
came out slowly, however, that he was haunted by a superstition, a
strange and ingenious one, which was yet not without a certain show of
reason for its existence. Little by little I learned the following facts
about it: His father was of pure Szeklar or original Hungarian stock, as
dark-skinned as a Hindoo, and his mother was from one of the families of
Western Hungary, with probably some Saxon blood in her veins. His three
brothers were dark like his father, but he and his sister were blondes.
He was born with a peculiar red mark on his right shoulder, directly
over the scapular. This mark was shaped like a forked stick. His father
had received a wound in the insurrection of '48, a few months before the
birth of him, the youngest son, and this birth-mark reproduced the shape
of the father's scar. Among Hungarians his father passed for a very
learned man. He spoke fluently German, French, and Latin (the language
used by Hungarians in common communication with other nationalities),
and took great pains to give his children an acquaintance with each of
these tongues. Their earliest playthings were French alphabet-blocks,
and the set which served as toys and tasks for each of the elder
brothers came at last to him as his legacy. The letters were formed by
the human figure in different attitudes, and each block had a little
couplet below the picture, beginning with the letter on the block. The
Y represented a gymnast hanging by his hands to a trapeze, and being a
letter which does not occur in the Hungarian language except in
combinations, excited most the interest and imagination of the
youngsters. Thousands of times did they practise the grouping of the
figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze
exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a
rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this
being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture.
Learning the French by heart, they believed the _Y a-t-il_ to be one
word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest with
this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this letter, borne on
his body in an indelible mark, and brought to his mind every moment of
the day, came to seem in some way connected with his life. As he grew up
in this belief he became more and more superstitious about the letter
and about everything in the remotest way connected with it.
The first great event of his life was joining the circus, and to this
the letter Y more or less directly! led him. He left home on his
twenty-fifth birth-day, and twenty five was the number of the letter Y
in the block-alphabet.
The second great event of his life was the Turin lottery, and the number
of the lucky ticket was twenty-five. "The last sign given me," he said,
"was the accident in the circus here." As he spoke he rolled up the
right leg of his trowsers, and there, on the outside of the calf, about
midway between the knee and ankle, was a red scar forked like the letter
Y.
From the time he confided his superstition to me he sought me more than
ever. I must confess to feeling, at each visit of his, a little
constrained and unnatural. He seemed to lean on me as a protector, and
to be hungry all the time for an intimate sympathy I could never give
him. Although I shared his secret, I could not lighten the burden of his
superstition. His wound had entirely healed, but as his leg was still
weak and he still continued to limp a little, he could not resume his
place in the circus. Between brooding over his superstition and worrying
about his accident, he grew very despondent. The climax of his
hopelessness was reached when the doctor told him at last that he would
never be able to vault again. The fracture had been a severe one, the
bone having protruded through the skin. The broken parts had knitted
with great difficulty, and the leg would never be as firm and as elastic
as before. Besides, the fracture had slightly shortened the lower leg.
His circus career was therefore ended, and he attributed his misfortune
to the ill-omened letter Y.
Just about the time of his greatest despondency war was declared between
Russia and Turkey. The Turkish embassadors were drumming up recruits all
over Western Europe. News came to the circus boarding-house that good
riders were wanted for the Turkish mounted gensdarmes. Nagy resolved to
enlist, and we went together to the Turkish embassy. He was enrolled
after only a superficial examination, and was directed to present
himself on the following day to embark for Constantinople. He begged me
to go with him to the rendezvous, and there I bade him adieu. As I was
shaking his hand he showed me the certificate given him by the Turkish
embassador. It bore the date of May 25, and at the bottom was a
signature in Turkish characters, which could be readily distorted by the
imagination into a rude and scrawling Y.
A series of events occurring immediately after Nagy left for
Constantinople resulted in my own unexpected departure in a civil
capacity for the seat of war in the Russian lines. The line of curious
coincidences in the experience of the circus-rider had impressed me very
much at the time, but in the excitement of the Turkish campaign I
entirely forgot the circumstance. I do not, indeed, recall any thought
of Nagy during the first five months in the field. The day after the
fall of Plevna I rode through the deserted earthworks toward the town.
The dead were lying where they had fallen in the dramatic and useless
sortie of the day before. The dead on a battle-field always excite fresh
interest, no matter if the spectacle be an every-day one, and as I rode
slowly along I studied the attitudes of the fallen bodies, speculating
on the relation between the death-poses and the last impulse that had
animated the living frame. Behind a rude barricade of wagons and
household goods, part of the train of non-combatants which Osman Pasha
had ordered to accompany the army in the sortie, a great number of dead
lay in confusion. The peculiar position of one of these instantly
attracted my eye. He had fallen on his face against the barricade, with
both arms stretched above his head, evidently killed instantly. The
figure on the alphabet-block, described by the circus-rider, came
immediately to my mind. My heart beat as I dismounted and looked at the
dead man's face. It was a genuine Turk.
This incident revived my interest in the life of the circus-rider, and
gave me an impulse to look among the prisoners to see if by chance he
might be with them. I spent a couple of days in distributing tobacco and
bread in the hospitals and among the thirty thousand wretches herded
shelterless in the snow. There were some of the mounted gensdarmes among
them, and I even found several Hungarians; but none of them had ever
heard of the circus-rider.
The passage of the Balkans was a campaign full of excitement, and was
accompanied by so much hardship that selfishness got entirely the upper
hand of me, and life became a battle for physical comfort. After the
passage of the mountain range we went ahead so fast that I had little
opportunity, even if I had the enterprise, to look among the few
prisoners for the circus-rider.
Time passed, and we were at the end of a three days' fight near
Philippopolis, in the middle of January. Suleiman Pasha's army,
defeated, disorganized, and at last disbanded, though to that day still
unconquered, had finished the tragic act of its last campaign with the
heroic stand made in the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains, near
Stanimaka, south of Philippopolis. A long month in the terrible cold, on
the summits of the Balkan range; the forced retreat through the snow
after the battle of Taskosen; the neck-and-neck race with the Russians
down the valley of the Maritza; finally, the hot little battle on the
river-bank, and the two days of hand-to-hand struggle in the vine-yard
of Stanimaka--this was a campaign to break the constitution of any
soldier. Days without food, nights without shelter from the mountain
blasts, always marching and always fighting, supplies and baggage lost,
ammunition and artillery gone--human nature could hold out no longer,
and the Turkish army dissolved away into the defiles of the Rhodopes.
Unfortunately for her, Turkey has no literature to chronicle, no art to
perpetuate the heroism of her defenders.
The incidents of that short campaign are too full of horror to be
related. Not only did the demon of war devour strong men, but found
dainty morsels for its bloody maw in innocent women and children. Whole
families, crazed by the belief that capture was worse than death,
fought in the ranks with the soldiers. Women ambushed in coverts shot
the Russians as they rummaged the captured trains for much-needed food.
Little children, thrown into the snow by the flying parents, died of
cold and starvation, or were trampled to death by passing cavalry. Such
a useless waste of human life has not been recorded since the
indiscriminate massacres of the Middle Ages.