trap-shooting-champion, and it was the thirty-fifth time that she had
lent herself to this little commercial transaction.
[Illustration 03]
IX. PEDAGOGY
The Dutchman, named Janssen, led Croniamantal to the region of Aix,
where there was a house which the people of the neighborhood called le
Chateau. Le Chateau had nothing lordly about it other than its name and
was nothing but a vast domicile having a dairy and a stable.
Mr. Janssen possessed a modest income and lived alone in this dwelling
which he had bought in order to live in solitude, a suddenly broken off
betrothal having rendered him rather hypochondriac. He devoted all his
energies now to the education of the son of Macarée and Vierselin
Tigoboth: Croniamantal, heir of the old name of des Ygrées.
The Dutchman, Janssen, had travelled much. He spoke all the languages of
Europe, Arabian, and Turkish, not to mention Hebrew and other dead
languages. His speech was as clear as his blue eyes. He soon made the
friendship of several scholars of Aix whom he would visit from time to
time and he corresponded with many foreign scientists.
When Croniamantal was six years of age, Mr. Janssen would often take him
to the country. Croniamantal came to love these lessons along the paths
of wooded hills. Mr. Janssen would often stop and show Croniamantal the
birds hopping about or butterflies pursuing each other and fluttering
together among the wild rose-bushes. He would say that love reigned over
all of Nature. They would also go out on moonlit nights and the master
would explain to his pupil the hidden destinies of the heavenly bodies,
their regular course, and their effects upon the life of man.
Croniamantal never forgot how one moonlit night his master led him to a
field at the edge of a forest; the grass bubbled with milky light.
Fireflies fluttered around them; their phosphorescent and jagged lights
gave the site a strange aspect. The master called the attention of his
disciple to the sweetness of this May night.
"Learn," he said, "learn to know all of Nature and to love her. Let her
be your veritable nurse, whose salutary mammals are the moon and the
hills."
Croniamantal was thirteen years of age at this time and his mind was
quite ripe. He listened attentively to Mr. Janssen's words.
"I have always lived in her, but I must say, lived badly, for one should
not live without human love as companion. Do not forget that all is a
sign of love in Nature. I, alas! am damned for not having observed this
law whose demands nothing can withstand."
"What," said Croniamantal, "you, my teacher, who know so many sciences
did not recognize this law which every country lout and even the
animals, the vegetables, and inert matter observe?"
"Happy child who at your age can put such questions!" said Mr. Janssen.
"I have always known that law, from which no human being should rebel.
But there are some luckless men destined never to know the joys of love.
That often happens to poets and scientists. Their souls are vagabond; I
am always conscious of existences preceding my own. This knowledge has
never stirred any but the sterile bodies of scientists. (You should not
be astonished in the least at what I say.) Whole races respect animals
and proclaim the principle of metempsychosis, a most worthy belief,
self-evident but fantastical, since it takes no account of lost forms
and of their inevitable dispersion. Their worship should have extended
to the vegetable kingdom and to minerals. For what is the dust of roads
but the ashes of the dead? It is true that the Ancients did not concede
life to inert matter. But rabbis believed that the same soul inhabited
the body of Adam, Moses and David. In fact, the name, Adam, is composed
in Hebrew of the letters Aleph, Daleth and Mem, the first letters of the
three names. Your soul like mine, inhabited other human forms, other
animals, or was dispersed and will continue so after your death, since
all things must serve again. For perhaps there is nothing new any more,
and creation has ceased, perhaps... I affirm that I have not desired
love, but I swear that I would not begin such a life over again. I have
mortified my flesh and suffered severe punishment. I should like your
life to be happy."
Croniamantal's master made him devote most of his time to the sciences,
keeping him au courant with all recent inventions. He also instructed
the boy in Latin and Greek. They often read the Eclogues of Virgil or
translated Theocritus in an olive grove. Croniamantal had learned a very
pure French, but his master taught him in Latin. He also taught him
Italian, and at an early age Croniamantal received the poems of
Petrarch, who became one of his favorite poets. Mr. Janssen also taught
Croniamantal English, and made him familiar with Shakespeare. Above all
he gave the boy a taste for old French authors. Among the French poets
he admired chiefly Villon, Ronsard and his pléiade, Racine and La
Fontaine. He also made him read translations of Cervantes and of Goethe.
On his advice, Croniamantal read the romances of chivalry which might
have made part of the library of Don Quixote. They developed in
Croniamantal an unquenchable thirst for experiment and perilous love
adventures; he devoted himself to fencing and to horseback riding; at
the age of fifteen he declared to anyone who came to visit them that he
had decided to become a celebrated and peerless cavalier, and already he
dreamed of a mistress.
Croniamantal was, at this time, a handsome youth, thin and straight. The
girls at the village fêtes, when he touched them lightly, would stifle
little bursts of laughter and redden, lowering their eyes under his
regard. Habituated to poetic forms, his mind thought of love as a
conquest. Thoughts of Boccacio, his natural daring, his education,
everything disposed him to take the final step.
One May day, he went out for a long ride. It was morning, everything was
still fresh. The dew hung from the flowers of the hedges, and on either
side of the road stretched the fields of olive trees whose gray leaves
trembled gently in the sea breeze and compared agreeably with the blue
sky. He arrived at a place where the road was being mended. The road
menders, handsome boys in bright colored caps, worked lazily, singing
the while, and stopping occasionally to drink from their flasks.
Croniamantal thought that these handsome fellows had sweethearts. It is
thus that they call a lover in that country. The boys say "my
sweetheart," the girls, "my sweetheart," and in fact they are both sweet
in that lovely country. Croniamantal's heart leaped and his whole being,
exalted by the springtime and the riding, cried for love.
At a turn in the road, an apparition increased his trouble. He arrived
close to a little bridge thrown across a river which cut the road. The
place was isolated, and across the hedges and the trunks of poplars, he
saw two beautiful girls bathing, quite naked. One was in the water and
held herself up by a branch. He admired her brown arms and abundant
beauties, hardly concealed by the water. The other, standing on the
bank, dried herself after her bath and exposed ravishing lines and
graces which inflamed the heart of Croniamantal; he decided to join them
and mingle in their pleasures. Unluckily, he perceived in the branches
of a neighboring tree two youths spying on this prey. Holding their
breath and watching the least movements of the bathers, they did not see
the equestrian, who, laughing uproariously, threw his horse into a
gallop and cried aloud as he crossed the little bridge.
The sun had risen almost to its zenith and was now darting its dreadful
rays. An ardent thirst added itself to the amorous inquietudes of
Croniamantal. The sight of a farm along the road brought him unspeakable
joy. He arrived at a little orchard whose blossoming trees made a lovely
sight. It was a little wood, rose and white with the cherry and peach
blossoms. On the fence linen was drying and he had the pleasure of
seeing a charming peasant girl of about sixteen, at work washing clothes
in a vat in the shadow of a fig-tree that had just begun to bloom. Not
having noticed his arrival, she continued to accomplish her domestic
function which he found noble; for, his imagination full of memories of
antiquity, he compared her to Nausica. Descending from his horse he
approached and contemplated the young girl with ravishment. He looked at
her back. Her folded up skirt discovered a well made leg in a very white
stocking. Her body moved in a manner that was pleasantly exciting
because of the efforts occasioned by the soaping. Her sleeves were
rolled up and he observed her pretty brown plump arms, which enchanted
him.
I have always loved beautiful arms particularly. There are people who
attach great importance to the perfection of the foot. I admit that they
touch me too, but the arm is to my mind that which should be most
perfect in woman. It is always in motion, one always has one's eye upon
it. One might say that it is the veritable organ of the graces, and that
by its deft movements, it is the veritable arm of Love, since when
curved, this delicate arm resembles a bow, and when extended, the arrow
thereof.
This was also Croniamantal's point of view. He was thinking of this,
when his horse, who suddenly remembered that it was the habitual hour
for being fed, began to whinny. At once the young girl turned and showed
surprise at seeing a stranger regarding her from above the fence. She
blushed and only seemed the more charming. Her dusky skin attested to
the Moorish blood that flowed in her veins. Croniamantal asked her for
food and drink. With much good grace this sweet girl did have him enter
the house and served him a rude repast. With some milk, eggs, and black
bread, his thirst and his hunger were soon sated. In the meantime, he
questioned his young hostess, in the hope of finding an opportunity for
paying her gallant compliments. He learned that her name was Mariette,
and that her parents had gone to the neighboring town to sell
vegetables; her brother was working on the road. This family lived
happily on the products of the orchard and the barnyard.
At this moment, her parents, fine looking peasants, returned, and there
was Croniamantal already in love with Mariette, quite disappointed. He
paid the mother for the meal, and went off, after having given Mariette
a long look which she did not return, but he had the satisfaction of
seeing her blush as she turned away.
He mounted his horse and took the road to his house. Being for the first
time in his life, sad for love, he found extreme melancholy in this same
countryside which he had previously traversed. The sun had dropped low
over the horizon. The grey leaves of the olive trees seemed as sad as
himself. The shadows stretched out like waves. The river where he had
seen the bathers was abandoned. The lapping of the water became
unbearable for him, like a mockery. He threw his horse into a gallop.
Then there was the dusk, lights appearing in the distance. Then night
came; he slowed up his horse and abandoned himself to a disordered
revelry. The sloping road was bordered with cypresses, and it was thus,
somnolent with the night and with love, that Croniamantal pursued his
melancholy way.
* * *
His master soon noticed in the days that followed that he gave no more
attention to the studies to which he had been wont to apply himself with
such diligence. He divined that this disgust came of love.
His respect was mingled with a little scorn because Mariette was nothing
but a simple peasant girl.
The end of September had been reached, and one day Mr. Janssen led
Croniamantal out under the laden olive trees in the orchard and censured
his disciple for his passion, the latter hearkening to his reproaches
with ruddy embarrassment. The first winds of autumn complained in the
fields and Croniamantal, very sad and much ashamed, lost forever his
desire to see again the pretty Mariette and kept nothing but the memory
of her.
* * *
And so Croniamantal attained his majority.
A disease of the heart which was discovered in him led to his dismissal
by the military authorities. Soon after, his guardian died suddenly,
leaving him by will the little which he possessed. And after having sold
the house called _le Chateau_, Croniamantal went to Paris to give
himself freely to his taste for literature; he had been for some time
past composing poems secretly and accumulating them in an old cigar-box.
X. POETRY
In the early days of the year 1911, a young man who was very badly
dressed went running up the rue Houdon. His extremely mobile countenance
seemed to be filled with joy and anxiety by turns. His eyes devoured all
that they saw and when his eyelids snapped shut quickly like jaws, they
gulped in the universe, which renewed itself incessantly by the mere
operation of him who ran. He imagined to the tiniest details the
enormous worlds pastured in himself. The clamour and the thunder of
Paris burst from afar and about the young man, who stopped, and panted
like some criminal who has been too long pursued and is ready to
surrender himself. This clamour, this noise indicated clearly that his
enemies were about to track him like a thief. His mouth and his gaze
expressed the ruse he was employing, and walking slowly now, he took
refuge in his memory, and went forward, while all the forces of his
destiny and of his consciousness retarded the time when the truth should
appear of that which is, that which was, and of that which is to be.
The young man entered a one story house. On the open door was a
placard:
_Entrance to the Studios_
He followed a corridor where it was so dark and so cold that he had the
feeling of having died, and with all his will, clenching his fists and
gritting his teeth he began to take eternity to bits. Then suddenly he
was conscious again of the motion of time whose seconds, hammered by a
clock, fell like pieces of broken glass, while life flowed in him again
with the renewed passage of time. But as he stopped to rap at a door,
his heart beat more strongly again, for fear of finding no one home.
He rapped at the door and cried:
"It is I, Croniamantal!"
And behind the door the heavy steps of a man who seemed tired, or
carried too weighty a burden, came slowly, and as the door opened there
took place in the sudden light the creation of two beings and their
instant marriage.
In the studio, which looked like a barn, an innumerable herd flowed in
dispersion: they were the sleeping pictures, and the herdsman who tended
them smiled at his friend. Upon a carpenter's table piles of yellow
books could be likened to mounds of butter. And pushing back the
ill-joined door, the wind brought in unknown beings who complained with
little cries in the name of all the sorrows. All the wolves of distress
howled behind the door ready to devour the flock, the herdsman and his
friend, in order to prepare in their place the foundations for the NEW
CITY. But in the studio there were joys of all colours. A great window
opened the whole north side and nothing could be seen but the whole blue
sky, the song of a woman. Croniamantal took off his coat which fell to
the floor like the corpse of a drowned man, and sitting on the divan he
gazed for a long time at the new canvas placed on the support. Dressed
in a blue wrap, barefooted, the painter also regarded the picture in
which two women remembered themselves in a glacial mist.
The studio contained another fatal object, a large piece of broken
mirror hooked to the wall. It was a dead and soundless sea, standing on
end, and at the bottom of which a false life animated what did not
exist. Thus, confronting Art, there is the appearance of Art, against
which men are not sufficiently on their guard, and which pulls them to
earth when Art has raised them to the heights. Croniamantal bent over in
a sitting posture, leaned his fore-arms on his knees, and turned his
eyes from the painting to a placard thrown on the floor on which was
painted the following announcement:
I AM AT THE BAR--_The Bird of Benin_
He read and re-read this sentence while the Bird of Benin contemplated
his picture, approaching it and withdrawing from it, his head at all
angles. Finally he turned towards Croniamantal and said:
"I saw the woman for you last night."
"Who is she?" asked Croniamantal.
"I do not know, I saw her but I do not know her. She is a really young
girl, as you like them. She has the sombre and child-like face of those
who are destined to cause suffering. And despite all the grace of her
hands that straighten in order to repel, she lacks that nobility which
poets could not love because it would prevent their being miserable. I
have seen the woman for you, I tell you. She is both beauty and
ugliness; she is like everything that we love nowadays. And she must
have the taste of the laurel leaf."
But Croniamantal, who was not listening to him, interrupted at this
point to say:
"Yesterday I wrote my last poem in regular verses:
_Well,
Hell!_[6]
and my last poem in irregular verses (take care that in the second
stanza the word wench is taken in its less reputable meaning):
PROSPECTUS FOR A NEW MEDICINE
_Why did Hjalmar return
The tankard of beaten silver lay void,
The stars of the evening
Became the stars of the morning
Reciprocally
The sorceress of the forest of Hruloë
Prepared her repast
She was an eater of horse-flesh
But he was not
Mai Mai ramaho nia nia._
_Then the stars of the morning
Became again the stars of the evening
And reciprocally
They cried--In the name of Maröe
Wench of Arnamoer
And of his favorite zoöphyte
Prepare the drink of the gods
--Certainly noble warrior
Mai Mai ramaho nia nia._
_She took the sun
And plunged him into the sea
As housewives
Dip a ham in gravy
But alas! the salmons voracious
Have devoured the drowned sun
And have made themselves wigs
With his beams
Mai Mai ramaho nia nia._
_She took the moon and did her all with bands
As they do with the illustrious dead
And with little children
And then in the light of the only stars
The eternal ones
She made a concoction of sea-brine
The euphorbiaceans of Norwegian resin
And the mucous of Alfes
To make a drink for the gods
Mai Mai ramaho nia nia._
_He died like the sun
And the sorceress perched at the top of a fir pine
Heard until evening
The rumours of the great winds engulfed in the phial
And the lying scaldas swear to this
Mai Mai ramaho nia nia._
Croniamantal was silent for an instant and then added:
"I shall from now on write only poetry free from all restrictions even
that of language.[7]
"Listen, old man!"
MAHEVIDANOMI
RENANOCALIPNODITOC
EXTARTINAP # v.s.
A. Z.
Telephone: 33-122 Pan : Pan
OeaoiiiioKTin
iiiiiiiiiii
"Your last line, my poor Croniamantal," said the Bird of Benin, "is a
simple plagiarism from Fr.nc.s J.mm.s."
"That is not true," said Croniamantal. "But I shall compose no more pure
poetry. That is what I have come to, through your fault. I want to write
plays."
"You had better go to see the young woman of whom I spoke to you. She
knows you and seems to be crazy about you. You will find her in the
Meudon woods next Thursday at a place that I shall designate. You will
recognize her by the skipping rope that she will hold in her hand. Her
name is Tristouse Ballerinette."
"Very well," said Croniamantal, "I shall go to see Ballerinette and
shall sleep with her, but above all I want to go to the theatres to
offer my play, Ieximal Jelimite, which I wrote in your studio last year
while eating lemons."
"Do what you want, my friend," said the Bird of Benin, "but do not
forget Tristouse Ballerinette, the woman of your future."
"Well said," said Croniamantal. "But I want to roar to you once more the
plot of Ieximal Jelimite. Listen:
"A man buys a newspaper on the seashore. From the garden of a house at
one side emerges a soldier whose hands are electric bulbs. A giant 10
feet tall descends from a tree. He shakes the newspaper vendor, who is
of plaster and who in falling breaks to bits. At this moment a judge
arrives. With strokes of a razor he kills everybody, while a leg which
passes hopping crushes the judge with a kick in the nose, and sings a
pretty little song."
"How wonderful!" said the Bird of Benin. "I shall paint the decoration,
you have promised me that."
"That goes without saying," answered Croniamantal.[8]
XI. DRAMATURGY
On the following day Croniamantal went to The Theatre, which was meeting
at Monsieur Pingu's, the financier. Croniamantal succeeded in gaining
entry by bribing the doorman and the butler. He entered boldly the hall
where The Theatre, its satellites, its stool-pigeons and its hired thugs
were gathered.
CRONIAMANTAL
Ladies and Gentlemen of THE THEATRE, I have come to read you my play
entitled _Ieximal Jelimite._
THE THEATRE
Good gracious, wait a minute, young man, until you have been informed
about our methods of procedure. You are here in the midst of our actors,
our authors, our critics and our spectators. Listen attentively and
don't even speak.
CRONIAMANTAL
Gentlemen, I thank you for the cordial reception that you give me and I
shall profit, I am sure, of all that I hear.
THE ACTOR
_My rôles have slowly withered like the roses
But mother, I love my metempsychoses
O seats of proteus and their metamorphoses_
AN OLD STAGE MANAGER
Do you remember, Madame! One snowy night of 1832, a lost stranger
knocked at the door of a villa situated on the road leading from
Chanteboun to Sorrento...
THE CRITIC
Nowadays, for a play to be successful it is important that it should not
be signed by its author.
THE TRAINER TO HIS BEAR
_Roll about in the sweet peas
Play dead... suckle...
Dance the polka... now the mazurka..._
CHORUS OF DRINKERS
_Juice o' the grape
Ruddy liquor
Let us drink drink
If we may_
CHORUS OF EATERS
_Horde of gluttons
There's no more
A crumb left
In the plate_
DRINKERS
_Bloated heads
Drink o drink
The juice o' the grape_
R.D.RD K.PL.NG, THE ACTOR, THE ACTRESS,
THE AUTHORS
(To the spectators)
Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay!
THE PROMPTER
The theatre, my dear brothers, is a school for scandal, it is a place of
perdition for the soul and the body. According to the testimony of the
stage carpenters everything is faked in the theatre. Witches older than
Morgane come there to pose as little girls of fifteen years.
How much blood is spilt in a melodrama! I say truthfully, though it be
false, this blood will be upon the heads of the children of the authors,
the actors, the directors, and the spectators, unto the seventh
generation. _Ne mater suam_, the little girls used to say to their
mothers. Nowadays they ask: "Are we going to the theatre tonight?"
I tell you frankly my friends. There are few shows which do not endanger
the soul. Outside of the spectacle of nature I know of nothing that one
may witness without fear. This last spectacle is Gallic and healthy, my
dear friends. The sound dilates the glands, chases Satan from the
stinking shades where he lies and thus the Fathers come in from the
desert to exorcise themselves.
THE MOTHER OF AN ACTRESS
Are you p..., Charlotte?
THE ACTRESS
No, mama, I am roasting.
M. MAURICE BOISSARD
We have with us today the entrails of a mother!
AN AUTHOR WHO HAS A PLAY ACCEPTED
BY THE COMEDIE-FRANÇAISE
My friend, you do not look very confident today. I am going to explain
the meaning of several words from the theatrical vocabulary. Listen
attentively and remember them if you can.
_Acheron_ (ch hard)--A river of Hades, not of hell.
_Artists_ (two types)--Is never used except in speaking of a comedian or
a comedienne.
_Brother_--Avoid using this substantive together with "little." The
adjective "young" is more proper.
NOTA BENE--This phrase does not apply to operettas.
"_High Life_"--This very French expression is translated in English as
"_fashionable people._"
_Liaisons_--They are always dangerous in the theatre.
_Papa_--Two negatives are equal to an affirmative.
_Cooked Potatoes_--(never used in the singular)--A crudity that is
deleterious to the stomach.
_Tut-tut_--This worn expression...
Would you like to have some titles for plays also? They are very
important in order to succeed. Here are some sure ones: