THE POET ASSASSINATED
BY
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
AND NOTES BY
MATTHEW JOSEPHSON
NEW YORK
THE BROOM PUBLISHING CO.
1923
[Illustration 01]
CONTENTS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
I. RENOWN
II. PROCREATION
III. GESTATION
IV. NOBILITY
V. PAPACY
VI. GAMBRINUS
VII. CONFINEMENT
VIII. MAMMON
IX. PEDAGOGY
X. POETRY
XI. DRAMATURGY
XII. LOVE
XIII. MODES
XIV. ENCOUNTERS
XV. VOYAGE
XVI. PERSECUTION
XVII. ASSASSINATION
XVIII. APOTHEOSIS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
There are men who cannot bring themselves to conform with the rest of
human society, who cannot conceive of a secure and honorable career even
at the hands of a tolerant age. They flee, they are eternally escaping
from the fold by some particularly outrageous or suicidal action.
Rimbaud having mastered the art of poetry in his twenties, deserted
literature to lead caravans through the African desert. Apollinaire at
almost as early an age had also mastered the traditional forms of his
art, but with Rimbaud's example before him could not become "an
explorer, a trapper, a robber, a hunter, a miner."
Possessed of great energy, curiosity, and disrespect, he was from the
start thrown upon the side of those who flout authority, court disorder
and embrace the glitter and profusion of an intensely mundane existence.
To regard the spectacle of modern life and to sense the cleavage with
the past and with the art or humanities of the previous day, is to be
"modern". For many the word is hateful; and yet Apollinaire set out
deliberately to be modern: to revalue the contributions of the past in
terms of the phenomenal changes which the twentieth century and the
Great War had brought in.
The barbarous new age he courted, adopting much of its method, the
character of its institutions and its cruel philosophy. Perhaps he has
interpreted his age best in his own personality, that is to say his
life, a large and daring conception in itself.
"Vain to be astonished at his continual feast-making," says his friend
the painter, Rouveyre, "at the rash exploits he undertook, at the crown
of thorns he inflicted upon himself... He was a prodigious creator and
all of his literary and social games, were of the most brilliant and
lavish character, far more so than their objects. Like God, who could
make man out of nothing, Apollinaire made many, with the same poverty of
material." (_Souvenirs de mon Commerce_--A. Rouveyre, Paris, 1919,
Mercure de France.)
Apollinaire was born in Monte Carlo in 1880. It is still a delicate
matter to approach the facts of his life, to some extent, because of his
confusing boasts and pretensions. We do know that his mother was Mme de
Kostrovitzka, a lady of Polish descent who lived in France, and that
Apollinaire (i. e., Wilhelm de Kostrovitzki) was baptized in Rome on
September 29, 1880.
He received an extensive and preciose education. He lived with his
mother in a chateau outside of Paris, a huge mansion that had a billiard
room, music parlors, salons, and animals of all kinds: monkeys, dogs,
snakes, parrots, canaries. Apollinaire travelled much when he was quite
young, chiefly in Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe; he lived and
studied in the Rhineland. Then he came back to Paris, with "all the
poems he had been collecting in a cigar-box."
A literary career in Paris, is perfectly conventional by now. You run
after the editors of newspapers, and finally you are allowed to
contribute "feuilletons" to them. Then the magazines, the publishers,
and you have "arrived." Apollinaire became a journalist and lived for a
time by the veriest pot-boiling, some of which included translations of
Aretino, an edition of the Marquis de Sade, introductions to
pornographical classics, and even a great bibliographical work, called,
"The Inferno of the National Library." But he soon became notorious in
Paris. He gathered a motley horde of writers, painters and _types_ (i.
e., idiots, or freaks), and paraded from the right bank to the left,
from the Montmartre to Montparnasse. His associates are now the most
distinguished names of France, Henri-Matisse, Picasso, Dérain, Braque,
Rousseau (the old man whom he "discovered" near the fortifications of
Paris), and André Salmon, Marie Laurencin, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy,
"baron" Mollet, his secretary.
He was intensely conscious of the time-spirit. An original and rugged
intellect, he disquieted those who were repelled by his lavish and
heedless manner. For him the French literature of the Symbolist era,
which de Gourmont still presided over, was dead, and he became, during
that whole period from 1905 to the end of the Great War, the only living
force in France. He predicted the sterile close of the literature of de
Regnier and Paul Fort, "Prince of Poets" (!), heralding an age of
boundless expansion and experiment, with new zones of experience, new
forms, and a yet more complex and rich civilization.
Such ideas were in the air of Europe: there was Marinetti, in Italy:
Cézanne had nearly brought his stupendous work to a close; and a group
of painters, Picasso, Duchamps, Picabia, Braque, Dérain (the Cubists),
launched their work upon a frightened world. The abstract investigations
of the Cubists appealed to him powerfully. Apollinaire became their
ringleader. His book, "The Cubist Painters," is an authoritative apology
for this movement. But not content with this, he conceived little
movements of his own, invented names for them, wrote up programs, and
precipitated bad painters into careers. It was not all buffoonery. He
may have placed silly, vacuous individuals at the head of the reviews he
organized, "_Les Soirées de Paris_", _Nord Sud_ (named after the new
subway); but some of the best modern writing of the time, by Max Jacob,
Pierre Reverdy, André Salmon, Paul Valéry, Apollinaire himself, and
some extremely youthful poets who are now Dadaists, were included in
them. His great charm in conversation, his uproarious wit, his complete
shamelessness, made him idol of all who were drawn to him.
_Alcools_, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1913. It was the
escape of a personality from the "eternal recurrence." The Symbolists
had sought a kind of exalted, objective state; this false mysticism was
accompanied by an attitude of fatigue, and preciose resignation. Even
the language, in their hands had become crystallized, or static.
Apollinaire's attitude was the complete reverse. A wonderfully happy
man, his verse was lustier and sturdier. He had learned much from the
reawakened interest in the "primitive" Italian painters. There was no
false shading in his work. Every line was as direct as in a child's
drawing. No one could use clichés or write of the most common diurnal
experiences as freshly as he. His verse had also a certain heroic
character, an air of prophecy.
It has always been the good fortune of France that Paris draws gifted
strangers from other lands, who bring real gold to her. Apollinaire, a
weird mixture of what Slavic and Latin strains, laid rough hands on the
language. His aberrations are superb. He could never resist the
foreigner's impulse toward _jeux des mots_; and none are quicker than
the French themselves to accept and enjoy the new puns and
double-entendres. For the French have gone farther, their language has
been more pawed over and revivified through foreign usage than ours.
Apollinaire's exoticisms were not bizarre; they had the air of being
conceived in conversation.
In the summer of 1914, Apollinaire was in Deauville, surrounded by a
cosmopolitan horde of Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs and Russians
when the Great War began. He embraced the superb irony of these events
with the utmost ardour; his attitude was precisely that which Pascal
epitomizes:
"_Why do you wish to kill brother?"
"Do I not live on the other side of the river?_"
He went into the artillery, and was stationed at Nîmes. He became
Second Lieutenant Guillaume Apollinaire. There were dull months upon
months in the barracks. There was also active fighting. He was three
times wounded in the head, and trepanned. In the Fall of 1915, he lay in
a hospital in Paris, recovering from a successful operation. It was at
this time that he assembled the fragments of a novel over which he had
been working for a period of years, _The Poet Assassinated._
The poet, Croniamantal, is one of the few frankly epic figures of modern
literature. Apollinaire had never really outlived the poet's age of
twenty-five, and the preposterous life of his hero is drawn against the
artistic and social foibles of his age. By no means mere satire in the
18th century sense. Apollinaire grows positively hilarious and
intoxicated over his characters so that at times he is beside himself
with sheer fun. Results: humor of extraordinary eloquence and sonority,
and a form that is complete unrepresentative, with perpetual digressions
and asides.
There have been so many tired men in France who wrote like flagellants.
Flaubert made his waking hours a nightmare; Gautier was much too
corseted; to Stendhal writing was a torturesome but resistless destiny;
Villiers was a devout artisan; Mallarmé goaded himself into obscuracy
and speechlessness.
We must go back to Stendhal to find such extreme opposition to
naturalism. It is enemy of all that was Ibsen. Distortion or
under-emphasis are employed to fantastic ends; when a puppet is
uninteresting or wrung dry he is dismissed or killed. Here is the
destructive side of it: Apollinaire runs all the risks, obeys no rules,
and writes for fun.
In the following year he was dismissed from the army and pronounced
unfit for anything but censorship service.
Discharged from the hospital, he bought himself the most immaculate
officer's uniform, somewhat constricting for his already corpulent form
and his double chin, and in a victoria rode up to the editorial offices
of the _Mercure de France._ His manner was perfectly that of "a
Marseillaise tenor in an opera comique." His friends were in an uproar
over him. The art life of Paris, flared up again, under the guns. He
broke loose again upon his maddest tours de forces. A great welcoming
ball was given him, an orgy attended by a howling, cursing, fighting
throng, in which men and women tore about like Chaplin in the films.
There had never been such an outlandish and heterogeneous bazaar.
Apollinaire was ravished at being the orchestra-leader of such disorders
and follies. To stupefy them he gave a production of his preposterous
play, _Les Mammelles de Tiresias._ From the point of view of "action,"
of living, these were his greatest moments. Even before the war, these
carryings on had passed all boundaries and were a source of scandal all
over the world. Apollinaire was the man of the day, for this desperate
crowd. He _made_ poets and painters. "He made men and women seem much
madder than they really were." While they understood little his interior
laughter, his rebellious imagination.
I have stressed Apollinaire's social adventures, regarding them as an
aspect of his creative expression. Wholly absorbed in art, he was
completely wanting in the false reverence and dignity which some affect.
Believing in the new painting of Picasso, Braque, Dérain, he could as
well hold a street demonstration, parading his friends as sandwich-men
bearing cubist paintings.
In the last days of 1918 he was stricken with influenza and was taken
off very quickly. All the fools and freaks stopped pirouetting.
_Calligrammes_, his book of war poems had just appeared, and it is
agreed that his strongest and most singular expressions lie in these
reactions to the war. All other artists were involuntarily baffled by
their moral sentiments. Only Apollinaire, with his completely negative
philosophy, his un-morality, his shame in all of the common virtues,
could retort to this war with his gorgeous buffoonery and his ringing
apostrophes. He seized the new meanings of the modern era, from the
phallic zeppelins in the sky, the labels on his tobacco tins, the pages
of newspapers, or the walls of old cities. If these things are unworthy,
if the age is damnable, then Apollinaire is damned.
"Is there nothing new under the sun?" he asks. "Nothing--for the sun,
perhaps. But for man, everything." He calls upon artists to be at least
as forward as the mechanical genius of the time. The artist is to stop
at nothing in his quest for novelty of form and material; to seize upon
all the infinite possibilities afforded by the new instruments and
opportunities, creating thereby the myths and fables of the future.
MATTHEW JOSEPHSON
_To René Dalize_
I. RENOWN
The glory of Croniamantal is now universal. One hundred and twenty-three
towns in seven countries on four continents dispute the honor of this
notable hero's birth. I shall attempt, further on, to elucidate this
important question.
All of these people have more or less modified the sonorous name of
Croniamantal. The Arabs, the Turks and other races who read from right
to left have never failed to pronounce it Latnamainorc, but the Turks
call him, bizarrely enough, Pata, which signifies goose or genital
organ. The Russians surname him Viperdoc, that is, born of a fart, the
reason for this soubriquet will be seen later on. The Scandinavians, or
at least, the Dalecarlians, call him at will, _quoniam_, in Latin, which
means, _because_, but often serves to indicate the noble passages in
popular accounts of the middle ages. It is to be noted that the Saxons
and the Turks manifest with regard to Croniamantal, a similar sentiment,
since they refer to him by an identical surname, whose origin, however,
is still scarcely explained. It is believed that this is an euphemistic
allusion to the fact stressed in the medical report of the Marseilles
doctor, Ratiboul, on the death of Croniamantal. According to this
official document, all the organs of Croniamantal were sound, and the
lawyer-physician added in Latin, as did Napoleon's aide Major Henry:
_partes viriles exiguitatis insignis, sicut pueri._
For the rest, there are countries where the notion of the Croniamantalian
virility has entirely disappeared. Thus, the negroes in Moriana
call him Tsatsa or Dzadza or Rsoussour, all feminine names, for
they have feminized Croniamantal as the Byzantines feminized Holy
Friday in making it Saint Parascevia.[1]
II. PROCREATION
Two leagues from Spa, on the road bordered by gnarled trees and bushes,
Vierselin Tigoboth, an ambulant musician who was coming on foot from
Liège, struck his flint to light his pipe. A woman's voice cried:
He lifted his head, and a wild laugh burst out: "Hahaba! Hohoho! Hihihi!
thine eyelids are the color of Egyptian lentils! My name is Macarée. I
want a tom-cat."
Vierselin Tigoboth perceived by the roadside a young woman, brunette and
formed of nice curves. How charming she seemed in her short bicyclist's
skirt! And holding her bicycle with one hand, while gathering sloes with
the other, she ardently fixed her great golden eyes on the Flemish
musician.
"_Vs'estez one belle bâcelle_," said Vierselin Tigoboth, smacking his
tongue. "But, my God, if you eat all those sloes, you will have the
colic tonight, I'm sure."
"I want a tom-cat," repeated Macarée and unclasping her bodice she
showed Vierselin Tigoboth her breasts, sweet as the buttocks of the
angels, and whose aureole was the tender color of the rose clouds of
sunset.
"Oh! oh!" cried Vierselin Tigoboth, "As pretty as the pearls of
Amblevia, give them to me. I shall gather a big bouquet of ferns for you
and of irises, color of the moon."
Vierselin Tigoboth approached to seize this miraculous flesh which was
being offered to him for nothing, like the holy bread at Mass; but then
he restrained himself.
"You're a sweet lass, by God, you're nicer than the fair of Liège.
You're a nicer little girl than Donnaye, than Tatenne, than Victoire,
whose gallant I have been, and nicer than Rénier's daughters, whom old
Rénier always has for sale. Mind you, if you want to be my love, 'ware
o' the crablouse, by God."
MACARÉE
_They are the color of the moon
And round as the wheel of Fortune._
VIERSELIN TIGOBOTH
_If you fear not to catch the louse
Then I should love to be your spouse._
And Vierselin Tigoboth approached, his lips full of kisses: "I love you!
It is pooh! O beloved!"
Soon there were nothing but sighs, the songs of birds and of russet and
horned little hares, like elves, fleet as the seven-league boots,
passing by Vierselin Tigoboth and Macarée, prone under the power of
love behind the plumtrees.
Then Macarée was off on the old contraption.
And sad unto death, Vierselin Tigoboth cursed the instrument of velocity
which rolled away and vanished behind the terraced rotunda, at the same
moment that the musician began to make water while humming a jingle...
[Illustration 02]
III. GESTATION
Macarée soon became aware that she had conceived by Vierselin Tigoboth.
"How annoying!" she thought at first, "But medicine has made much
progress lately. I shall get rid of it when I want. Ah! that Walloon! He
will have toiled in vain. Can Macarée bring up the son of a vagabond?
No, no, I condemn this embryo to death. I should never even preserve
this foetus in alcohol. And thou, my belly, if thou knewest how much I
love thee since knowing thy goodness. What, wouldst stoop to carry such
baggage as thou findest along the road? O too innocent belly, thou art
unworthy of my selfish soul.
"What shall I say, o belly? thou'rt cruel, thou partest children from
their parents. No! I love thee no longer. Thou'rt naught but a full bag,
at this moment, o my belly, smiling at the nombril, o elastic belly,
downy, polished, convex, sorrowful, round, silky, which ennobles me. For
thou makest noble, o my belly, more beautiful than the sunlight. Thou
shalt ennoble also the child of the Flemish vagabond and thou art worthy
of the loins of Jupiter. What a misfortune! a moment ago I was about to
destroy a child of noble race, my child who already lives in my beloved
belly."
She opened the door suddenly and cried:
"Madame Dehan! Mademoiselle Baba!"
There was a rattling of doors and bolts and then the proprietors of
Macarée's lodging came running out.
"I am pregnant," cried Macarée, "I am pregnant!"
She was sitting up in bed, her legs spread apart. Her skin looked very
delicate. Macarée was narrow at the waist and broad-hipped.
"Poor little one," said Madame Dehan, who had but one eye, no waistline,
a moustache, and limped. "After confinement women are just like crushed
snail-shells. After confinement women are simply prey to disease (look
at me!) an egg-shell full of all sorts of rubbish, incantations and
other witch-spells. Ah! Ah! You have done very well."
"All foolishness," said Macarée. "The duty of women is to have
children, and I am sure that their health is generally improved thereby,
both physically and morally."
"Where are you sick?" asked Mademoiselle Baba.
"Shut up! I say," exclaimed Madame Dehan. "Better go and look for my
flask of Spa elixir and bring some little glasses."
Mademoiselle Baba brought the elixir. They drank of it.
"I feel better now," said Madame Dehan, "After so much emotion, I need
to refresh myself."
She poured out another little glass of the elixir for herself, drank it
and licked the last few drops up with her tongue.
"Think of it," she said finally, "think of it, Madame Macarée ... I
swear by all that I hold sacred, Mademoiselle Baba can be my witness,
this is the first time that such a thing has happened to one of my
tenants. And how many I have had! My Lord! Louise Bernier, whom they
nicknamed Wrinkle, because she was so skinny; Marcelle la Carabinière
(the freshest thing you ever saw!); Josuette, who died of a sunstroke in
Christiania, the sun wishing thus to have his revenge of Joshua; Lili de
Mercœur, a grand name, mind you, (not hers of course) and then vile
enough for a chic woman, as Mercœur put it: 'You must pronounce it
Mercure,' screwing up her mouth like a chicken's hole. Well she got
hers, all right, they filled her as full of mercury as a thermometer.
She would ask me in the morning; What sort of weather do you think we'll
have today?' But I would always answer: 'You ought to know better than
I...' Never, never in the world would any of those have become enceinte
in my house."
"Oh well, it isn't as bad as that," said Macarée, "I also never had it
happen to me before. Give me some advice, but make it short."
At this moment she arose.
"Oh!" cried Madame Dehan, "what a well-shaped behind you have! how
sweet! how white! what embonpoint! Baba, Madame Macarée is going to put
on her dressing-gown. Serve coffee and bring the bilberry tart."
Macarée put on a chemise and then a dressing gown whose belt was made
of a Scotch shawl.
Mademoiselle Baba came back; she brought a big platter with cups, a
coffee pot, milk-pitcher, jar of honey, butter cakes and the bilberry
tart.
"If you want some good advice," said Madame Dehan, wiping away with the
back of her hand the coffee that dribbled down her chin, "You had better
go and baptize your child."
"I shall make sure and do that," said Macarée.
"And I even think," said Mademoiselle Baba, "that it would be best to do
it on the day he is born."
"In fact," Madam Dehan mumbled, her mouth full of food, "you can never
tell what may happen. Then you will nurse him yourself, and if I were
you, if I had money like you, I should try to go to Rome before the
confinement and get the Pope to bless me. Your child will never know
either the paternal caress or blow, he will never utter the sweet name
of papa. May the blessing of the Holy Papa at least follow him all his
life."
And Madame Dehan began to sob like a kettle boiling over, while Macarée
burst into tears as abundant as a spouting whale. But what of
Mademoiselle Baba? Her lips blue with berries, she wept so hard that
from her throat the sobs flooded down to her hymen and nearly choked
her.
IV. NOBILITY
After having won a great deal of money at baccarat, and already rich,
thanks to Love, Macarée, whose corpulency nothing could conceal, came
to Paris, where above all, she ran after the most fashionable modistes.
How chic she was, how chic she was!
* * *
One night when she went to the Théâtre Français a play with a moral
was presented. In the first act, a young woman whom surgery had rendered
sterile lamented the fatness of her husband who had the dropsy and was
very jealous. The doctor went out saying:
"Only a great miracle and great devotion can save your husband."
In the second act, the young woman said to the young doctor:
"I offer myself up for my husband. I want to become dropsical in his
stead."
"Let us love each other, Madame. And if you are not unfaithful to the
principle of maternity your wish will be granted. And what sweet glory I
shall have thereof!"
"Alas!" murmured the lady, "I no longer have any ovaries."
"Love," cried the doctor at this, "Love, madame, is capable of working
the greatest miracles."
In the third act, the husband, thin as an I, and the lady, eight months
gone, felicitated each other on the exchange they had made. The doctor
communicated to the Academy of Medicine the results of his experiments
in the fecundation of women become sterile as a result of surgical
operations.
* * *
Toward the end of the third act, someone shouted "Fire!" in the hall.
The frightened spectators rushed from the hall howling. In fleeing,
Macarée possessed herself of the arm of the first man she encountered.
He was well dressed and fair of feature, and as Macarée was charming,
he seemed flattered that she had chosen him as her protector. They made
each other's acquaintance at a café and from there went to sup in the
Montmartre. But it appeared that François des Ygrées had negligently
forgotten to take his purse with him. Macarée gladly paid the bill. And
François des Ygrées pushed gallantry so far as not to allow Macarée
to spend the night alone, the incident at the theatre having rendered
her nervous.
* * *
François, baron des Ygrées (a doubtful baronetcy belonging to whoever
claimed it) called himself the last offshoot of a noble house of
Provence and pursued a career in heraldry on the sixth floor of an
apartment in the rue Charles V.
"But," he said, "the revolutions and the demagogues have changed things
so that arms are no longer studied except by ill-born archaeologists,
and the nobility is no longer tutored in this art."
The baron des Ygrées, whose coat of arms was of _azur à trois pairies
d'argent posés en pal_, was able to inspire enough sympathy in Macarée
for her to want to take lessons in heraldry out of gratitude for that
night at the Théâtre Français.
Macarée showed herself, it is true, little given to learning the
terminology of heraldry, and one might even say that she did not
interest herself seriously in anything but the arms of the Pignatelli
who had furnished popes for the Church and whose coat-of-arms was
adorned with kettles.
However, these lessons were wasted time to neither Macarée nor
François des Ygrées, for they ended by marrying. Macarée brought as
her dot, her money, her beauty and her fatness. François des Ygrées
offered to Macarée a great name and his noble bearing.
Neither complained of the bargain and they found themselves very
happy.
"Macarée, my dear wife," said François des Ygrées a few days after
their marriage, "Why have you ordered so many robes? It seems to me that
hardly a day passes without some modiste brings new costumes. They do,
true enough, honor to your taste and to their skill."
Macarée hesitated for a moment and then replied:
"It is to our honeymoon that you refer, François!"
"Our honeymoon, yes, I have thought of it. But where do you want to
go?"
"To Rome," said Macarée.
"To Rome, like the bells of Easter?"
"I want to see the Pope," said Macarée.
"Very fine, but what for?"
"That he may bless the child who lies under my heart," said Macarée.
"Phew-ew-ew!"
"It will be your son," said Macarée.
"You are quite right, Macarée. We shall go to Rome like the bells of
Easter. You will order a new robe of black velvet; and the dressmaker
must not neglect to embroider our arms at the bottom of the skirt: of
_azur à trois pairies d'argent posés en pal._"
V. PAPACY
_Per carita_, baroness, (I had almost called you Mademoiselle!) Ah! Ah!
Ah! But the _baron_, your husband, he would protest. Ah! ah! quite true,
you have a little belly which commences to become arrogant. They do
their work well, I see, in France. Ah! if that fine country would only
become religious again, the population decimated by anti-clericalism
would at once, (yes, _baroness_) the population would increase
considerably. Ah! dear Christ! how well she listens, the _arrogantine_,
when one talks seriously, yes, _baroness_, you have the air of an
_arrogantine._ Ah! ah! ah! so, you want to see the Pope. Ah! ah! ah! the
benediction of a mere cardinal like me will not do. Ah! ah! tut-tut, I
understand quite well. Ah! ah! I shall try to obtain an audience for
you. Oh! no need to thank me, you can let my hand go. How well she
kisses, the _arrogantine_, oh! Come here, again, I want you to carry
away with you a little souvenir of me.
"There! a chain, with the medal of the holy house of Lorette. Let me put
it about your neck... Now that you have the medal you must promise me
never to part with it. There, there, there! Come here so that I can kiss
you on the forehead. Come, come, can she be afraid of me, the little
_arrogantine?_ Done! Now tell me why you laugh?... Nothing! Well! Now,
one bit of advice! When you go to the Vatican, I warn you not to use so
much odour, I mean so much perfume. Goodbye, _arrogantine._ Come and see
me again. My compliments to _the baron._"
* * *
It was thus, that, thanks to Cardinal Ricottino, who had been to Paris
as _nuncio_, Macarée obtained an audience with the Pope.
She went to the Vatican dressed in her beautiful armorial robe. The
baron des Ygrées, in full dress, accompanied her. He admired much the
bearing of the royal guards, and the Swiss mercenaries, inclined to
drunkenness and brawling, seemed fine devils to him. He found occasion
to whisper into his wife's ear something about one of his ancestors who
was a cardinal under Louis XIII...
* * *
The couple returned to the hotel deeply moved and almost prostrated by
the benediction of the Pope. They undressed chastely, and in bed, they
spoke for a long time about the pontiff, the whitened head of the old
church, a pressed lily, the snow which Catholics think eternal.
"My dear wife," said François des Ygrées finally, "I esteem you to
adoration, and I love the child whom the Pope has blessed with all my
heart. May he come, the blessed infant, but I want him to be born in
France."
"François," said Macarée, "I have never yet been to Monte-Carlo. Let
us go there! I needn't lose our whole pile. We are not millionaires, but
I am sure that we shall be lucky in Monte-Carlo."
"Damn! damn! damn!" swore François, "Macarée, you make me see red."
"Ho, there," cried Macarée, "you gave me a kick, you----"
"I note with pleasure, Macarée," said François des Ygrées waggishly,
recovering his good humor, "that you do not forget that I am your
husband."
"Come, then, li'l nobs, let's go to Monaco."
"Yes, but you must have your confinement in France, for Monaco is an
independent state."
"Agreed," said Macarée.
On the morrow the baron des Ygrées and the baroness, all swollen by
mosquito bites, took tickets at the station for Monaco. In the coach
they laid charming plans.
VI. GAMBRINUS
The baron and the baroness des Ygrées in taking tickets for Monaco had
thought to arrive at the station which is the fifth on the way from
Italy to France and the second in the little principality of Monaco.
The name of Monaco is properly the Italian name of this principality,
although it is widely used nowadays in French, the French terms
_Mourgues_ and _Monéghe_ having fallen into desuetude.
However the Italians call Monaco, not only the principality which bears
that name but also the capital of Bavaria which the French call Munich.
The messenger accordingly gave the baron tickets for Monaco-Munich
instead of Monaco-principality. Before the baron and the baroness had
noticed their error they were already at the Swiss frontier, and after
having recovered from their astonishment, they decided to finish the
voyage to Munich in order to see at close hand all that the
anti-artistic spirit of modern Germany could conceive of ugliness in
architecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts...
* * *
The cold winds of March made the couple shiver in this stone-box
Athens.
"Beer," the baron des Ygrées had said, "is excellent for women who are
enceinte."
And so he led his wife to the royal brewery of Pschorr, to the
Augustinerbräu, to the Münchnerkindl and other great breweries. They
penetrated to the Nockerberg where there is a great garden. They drank
there, as long as it held out, the famous March beer, _Salvator_, and it
didn't last very long, for the Munich people are great drunkards.
* * *
When the baron and his wife entered the garden they found it thronged
with a mob of drinkers, who were already under-the-weather and sang head
to head and danced dizzily, breaking all the empty steins.
Peddlers sold roast fowl, grilled herrings, pretzels, rolls, sausages,
sweets, souvenirs, post-cards. And there was also Hans Irlbeck, the King
of Drinkers. Since Perkeo, the midget drunkard of the great cask of
Heidelberg, no such boozer had ever been seen. At the time of the March
beer, and in May, Bock-time, Hans Irlbeck drank his forty quarts of beer
a day. Ordinarily he did not have occasion to drink more than
twenty-five.
Just as the gracious Ygrées pair passed by, Hans placed his colossal
buttocks on a bench which, bearing already the weight of some twenty
huge men and women, cracked disconsolately. The drinkers fell, their
legs in the air. Some bare thighs could be seen because Munich ladies
never wear their stockings above their knees. Bursts of laughter
everywhere. Hans Irlbeck who had also been floored, but had not let go
of his stein, spilled its contents over the belly of a girl who had
rolled near him, and the beer bubbling under her resembled that which
she did when she got to her feet after swallowing a quart at one gulp in
order to recover her composure.
But the proprietor of the garden cried:
"_Donnerkeil!_ damned swine ... a bench broken."
And he started off with his towel under his arm, calling loudly for the
waiters:
"Franz! Jacob! Ludwig! Martin!" while the patrons called for the
proprietor:
"_Ober! Ober!_"
However the Oberkellner and the waiters did not come back. The drinkers
crowded about the counters and took their steins themselves, but the
kegs were no longer emptied, and no more were heard the sonorous blows
of another cask being put under the hammer. The singing ceased, the
drinkers, angered, proffered oaths at the brewers and at the March beer
itself. Some profited by the lull to vomit with violent efforts, their
eyes almost popping out of their heads; their neighbors encouraged them
with imperturbable seriousness. Hans Irlbeck who had picked himself up,
not without difficulty, grumbled with a great snort:
"There is no more beer in Munich!"
And he repeated, with the accent of his native city:
"Minchen! Minchen! Minchen!"
After raising his eyes toward heaven, he fell upon a vendor of fowls,
and having ordered him to roast a goose for him, began to formulate his
desires:
"No more beer in Munich... if there were only some white radishes!"
And he repeated many times the Munich expression:
"Raadi, raadi, raadi..."
Suddenly he stopped. The crowd of drinkers, beside themselves, gave a
cry of exultation. The four waiters had just appeared at the door of the
brewery. With dignity they were carrying a sort of canopy under which
the Oberkellner marched proud and erect, like a negro king dethroned.
Behind him came fresh kegs of beer which were put under the hammer at
the sound of the bell, while shouts of laughter rang out, and cries and
songs rose above this teeming butte, hard and agitated as the Adam's
apple of Gambrinus himself, when, burlesqued in the costume of a monk, a
white radish in one hand, he tossed off with the other the jug which
rejoiced his gullet.
And the unborn child found himself right shaken by the laughter of
Macarée who, greatly amused by the spectacle of this colossal gluttony,
drank and drank in company with her spouse.
But then, the vivacity of the mother exerted a happy influence on the
character of the offspring who acquired therefrom much common sense,
before his birth, and some of the real common sense, of course, which
great poets are made of.
VII. CONFINEMENT
Baron François des Ygrées left Munich when the baroness knew that the
hour of delivery was approaching. Monsieur des Ygrées did not want to
have a child born in Bavaria; he was sure that that country was overrun
with syphilis.
They arrived in the springtime, in the little port of Napoule, which in
an excellently turned verse the baron baptised for eternity:
_Napoule of the golden skies._
It was there that the delivery of Macarée's child took place.
* * *
"Ah! Ah! Aie! Aie! Aie! Ouh! Ouh! Whee-ee-ee!"
The three local midwives took to improvising pleasantly:
FIRST MIDWIFE
I dream of war.
O my friends, the stars, the bright stars, have you ever counted them?
O my friends, do you even remember the titles of all the books you have
read and the names of their authors?
O my friends, have you ever thought of the poor men who tread the broad
highways?
The herdsmen of the golden age led their herds to pasture without fear
that the cattle would flee, they feared only the jungle beasts.
O my friends, what do you think of all these cannons?
SECOND MIDWIFE
What do I think of these cannons? They are vigorous phalli.
O my beautiful nights! I am happy because of a sinister horn which
enchanted me last night, 'tis a good augury. My hair is perfumed with
abelmosch.
O! the beautiful and rigid phalli that these cannons are! If women had
to do military service they would all go into the artillery. The sight
of the cannons in battle would be strange for them.
Lights are born on the sea far off.
Reply, o Zelotide, reply with thy sweet voice.
THIRD MIDWIFE
I love his eyes at night, he knows my hair well and its odour. In the
streets of Marseilles an officer pursued me for a long time. He was well
dressed and of fair colour, there was gold on his costume and his mouth
tempted me, but I fled his kisses and took refuge in my "bedroom" of the
"family-house" where I was stopping.[2]
FIRST MIDWIFE
O Zelotide, spare the sad men as thou sparest this beau. Zelotide what
thinkest thou of the cannons.
SECOND MIDWIFE
Alas! Alas! I want to be loved.
THIRD MIDWIFE
They are the tools of the ignoble love of the people. O Sodom! Sodom. O
sterile love!
FIRST MIDWIFE
But we are women, why dost thou speak of Sodom?
THIRD MIDWIFE
The fire of heaven devoured her.
THE CONFINED
When you have finished your monkey-tricks, if it please you, will you
not forget to give a little attention to the baroness des Ygrées.
* * *
The baron slept in a corner of the room on several travelling blankets.
He made a fart which caused his better half to laugh until the tears
came. Macarée wept, cried, laughed and a few moments later brought into
the world a sturdy child of the male sex. Then, exhausted by these
efforts, she rendered up her soul, with a scream that was like the
ululation of the eternal first wife of Adam, when she crossed the Red
Sea.
In reporting the above, I believe that I have elucidated the important
question of the birthplace of Croniamantal. Let the 123 towns in 7
countries dispute the honor of his birth.[3]
We know now, and the state records bear testimony that he was born of
the paternal fart at _Napoule of the golden skies_, on the 25th of
August, 1889, but not announced at the mayoralty until the following
morning.[4]
It was the year of the Universal Exposition, and the Eiffel Tower, which
was just born, saluted the heroic birth of Croniamantal with a beautiful
erection.
The baron des Ygrées made another fart which woke him by the macabre
bed where the corpse of Macarée reclined. The child cried, the midwives
croaked, the father sobbed, and declaimed:
"Ah, Napoule with the golden skies, I have killed my hen with the golden
eyes!"
Then he bathed the new-born calling him by a name which he invented
forthwith and which did not belong to any saint in Paradise:
CRONIAMANTAL. He left on the following day, having arranged for the
funeral of his spouse, written the necessary letters assuring his
inheritance, and announced the child under the names of
Gaëtan—Francis—Etienne—Jack—Amélie—Alonso des Ygrées. And
with this nursling whose putative father he was, he took the train for
the Principality of Monaco.[5]
VIII. MAMMON
A widower, François des Ygrées established himself near the
principality; on the grounds of Roquebrune; he took pension with a
family, which included a pretty brunette called Mia. There he reared the
bearer of his own name with the baby-bottle.
Often he would go out at dawn for a walk at the sea shore. The road was
fringed with amaryllis which he would always compare involuntarily with
packages of dried cod. Sometimes, because of the contrary winds, he
would turn to light an Egyptian cigarette whose smoke rose in spirals
like the bluish mountains emerging far off in Italy.
* * *
The family in whose bosom he had installed himself was composed of the
father, the mother and Mia. M. Cecchi, a Corsican, was a croupier at the
casino. He had previously been croupier at Baden-Baden and had married a
German woman there. Of this union Mia was born; her carnation tint and
black hair bespoke her Corsican blood. She was always dressed in buoyant
colors. Her walk was balanced, her figure arched; she was smaller at the
breast than at the buttocks, and a touch of strabism lent her dark eyes
a somewhat distraught look, which only rendered her more tempting.
Her speech was lazy, soft, guttural, but pleasant nevertheless. It was
the accent of the Monegascans whose syntax Mia followed. After having
seen the young girl gather roses, François des Ygrées began to take
notice of her and was much amused by her syntax for whose rules he
enjoyed making research... First of all, he noticed the italianisms in
her vocabulary, and especially the habit of conjugating the verb "to be"
with the wrong auxiliary. For example, Mia would say: "_Je suis
étée_," instead of "_J'ai été._" He also noted her bizarre way of
repeating the verb in her principal clause: "I was at the Moulins, while
you went to Menton, I was;" or better: "This year I am going to the
gingerbread fair at Nice, I am."
One time before sunrise, François des Ygrées went down to the garden.
He abandoned himself to sweet reveries, during which he caught cold. All
of a sudden he began to sneeze about twenty times in succession.
Sneezing aroused him. He saw that the sky had whitened and the horizon
cleared with the first light of dawn. Then the first shafts of sunlight
enflamed the sky along the Italian coast. Before him spread the still
sorrowful sea, and on the horizon, like little clouds above the film of
sea, could be seen the curving peaks of Corsica, which always
disappeared after the rising of the sun. The baron des Ygrées shivered,
then he yawned and stretched himself. He kept on regarding the sea to
the east where one might have said there glittered a royal navy in sight
of a seaport with white houses, Bodighère, which furnished palms for
the festivities of the Vatican. He turned toward the immobile guardian
of the garden, a great cypress, begirt with a full-blown rose bush which
clambered up almost to its top. François des Ygrées breathed of the
sumptuous roses of nonpareil fragrance whose petals, as yet closed, were
of flesh.
And just then Mia called him to have his breakfast.
With her braid hanging down her back, she had just come to pick some
figs and she was letting a few creamy drops flow into a pitcher of milk.
She smiled at François des Ygrées, saying:
"Have you slept well?"
"No, there are too many mosquitoes."
"Don't you know that when you are stung you should rub the place with
lemon and in order not to be stung by them you should put vaseline on
your face before going to sleep. They never bite me."
"That would be too bad. For you are very pretty, and ought to be told so
oftener."
"There are those who tell me so and others who think so without telling.
Those who tell it to me make me neither hot nor cold, as for the others,
so much the worse for them..."
And François des Ygrées conceived at once a little fable for the
timid:
FABLE OF THE OYSTER AND THE HERRING
An oyster dwelt, beautiful and wise, on a rock. She never dreamed of
love but during fine weather simply bayed beatifically at the sun. A
herring saw her and it was as a spark of powder. He tumbled hopelessly
in love with her without daring to avow it.
One summer day, happy and coy, the oyster yawned. Smuggled behind a rock
the herring looked on, but all at once the desire to imprint a kiss upon
his beloved became so overpowering that he could no longer restrain
himself.
And so he threw himself between the open shells of the oyster who in her
surprise shut them with a snap, decapitating the wretched herring, whose
headless body floats aimlessly upon the ocean.
"'Twas so much the worse for the herring," said Mia laughing, "He was
much too foolish. I too want people to tell me that I am pretty, not for
fun, but so as we can marry..."
And François des Ygrées noted for future consideration her curious
peculiarities of syntax: "so as we can marry." ...And he thought
further: "She doesn't love me. Macarée dead. Mia indifferent. Alas I am
unhappy in love."
* * *
One day he found himself in the valley of Gaumates on a little knoll
covered with skinny little pines. The shore trimmed by the white-blue of
the waves stretched far out before him. The Casino emerged from the bank
of splendid trees in its gardens. This palace looked like a man
squatting and lifting his arms toward heaven. Near it, François des
Ygrées hearkened to an invisible Mammon:
"Regard this palace, François, it is made in the image of man. It is
sociable like him. It loves those who come to it and especially, those
who are unhappy in love. Go there and thou wilt win, for thou canst not
lose in play, since thou hast lost all in love."
Since it was six o'clock, the angelus tinkled from the different
churches in the neighborhood. The voice of the bells prevailed against
the voice of the invisible Mammon, who became silent, while François
des Ygrées searched for him.
* * *
On the next day, François took the road to the temple of Mammon. It was
Palm Sunday. The streets were littered with children, young girls and
women carrying palms and olive-branches. The palms were either very
simple or woven in a peculiar fashion. At each corner of the street, the
weavers of palms were sitting against the wall, working. Under their
deft hands the palm fibers bent, circled bizarrely and charmingly. The
children were playing about already with hard eggs. On a square a troop
of urchins were pummelling a red-headed kid whom they had found trying
to consume a marble egg. Very small girls were going to mass, well
dressed and carrying like candles the woven palms in which their mothers
had hung sweet-meats.
François des Ygrées thought:
"The sight of these palms brings good luck and today, which is gay
Easter, I shall break the bank."
* * *
In the game hall, he regarded at first the diverse throng which pressed
about the tables...
François des Ygrées approached a table and played. He lost. The
invisible Mammon had come back and spoke sharply each time they erased a
deal:
"Thou hast lost!"
And François saw the crowd no more, his head was turning, he placed
louis, packages of bills, on one square, diagonally, transversally. He
played a long time losing as much as he wanted to.
He turned away at last and saw the whole brilliant hall where the
players still pressed about the tables as before. Noticing a young man
whose chagrined face revealed that he had had no luck, François smiled
at him and asked whether he had lost.
The young man replied angrily:
"You too? A Russian just won more than two hundred thousand francs by my
side. Ah! if I only had a hundred francs more, I would make up what I
have lost twenty or thirty times over. But Oh, I have beastly luck, I am
hoodooed, done for. Imagine..."
And taking François by the arm, he led him toward a divan on which they
sat down.
"Imagine," he continued, "I have lost everything. I am almost a thief.
The money I have lost did not belong to me. I am not rich, I had a
position of trust. My employer sent me to recover claims in Marseilles.
I got them. I took the train to come here and try my luck. I lost. What
is there left? They will arrest me. They will say that I am a dishonest
man, even though I haven't ever profited of the money I took. I have
lost all. If I had won, no one would have reproached me. What luck I
have! There is nothing for me to do but to kill myself."
And suddenly rising the young man put a revolver to his mouth and fired.
The corpse was carried away. Several players turned their heads a
moment, but none of them bothered at all, and most of them took no
notice of the incident which, however, made a profound impression on the
mind of the baron des Ygrées. He had lost all that Macarée had left
him and the child. As he went out François felt the whole universe
contract about him like a tiny cell, and then like a coffin. He got back
to the villa where he lived. At the door he passed Mia who was chatting
with a stranger who carried a valise.
"I am a Hollander," said the man, "but I live in Provence and I would
like to hire a room for several days; I have come here to make some
mathematical observations."
At this moment the baron des Ygrées sent a kiss with his left hand to
Mia, while with a revolver in his right he blew his brains out and
rolled in the dust.
"We have only one room to rent," said Mia, "but it has just become
free."
And she quickly closed the eyelids of the baron des Ygrées, gave cries
of grief, and aroused the neighborhood.
* * *
As to the young child, whom his father had in such a characteristic
burst of lyricism named for aye Croniamantal, he was gathered up by the
Dutch traveller who soon carried him off to bring him up as his own son.