IN WHICH THE ANCIENT AND SOLEMN GERMAN WALTZ BECOMES A WHIRLWIND.
But if the spectators, on leaving the theatre, resumed their customary
calm, if they quietly regained their homes, preserving only a sort of
passing stupefaction, they had none the less undergone a remarkable
exaltation, and overcome and weary as if they had committed some excess
of dissipation, they fell heavily upon their beds.
The next day each Quiquendonian had a kind of recollection of what had
occurred the evening before. One missed his hat, lost in the hubbub;
another a coat-flap, torn in the brawl; one her delicately fashioned
shoe, another her best mantle. Memory returned to these worthy people,
and with it a certain shame for their unjustifiable agitation. It
seemed to them an orgy in which they were the unconscious heroes and
heroines. They did not speak of it; they did not wish to think of it.
But the most astounded personage in the town was Van Tricasse the
burgomaster.
The next morning, on waking, he could not find his wig. Lotchè looked
everywhere for it, but in vain. The wig had remained on the field of
battle. As for having it publicly claimed by Jean Mistrol, the
town-crier,—no, it would not do. It were better to lose the wig than to
advertise himself thus, as he had the honour to be the first magistrate
of Quiquendone.
The worthy Van Tricasse was reflecting upon this, extended beneath his
sheets, with bruised body, heavy head, furred tongue, and burning
breast. He felt no desire to get up; on the contrary; and his brain
worked more during this morning than it had probably worked before for
forty years. The worthy magistrate recalled to his mind all the
incidents of the incomprehensible performance. He connected them with
the events which had taken place shortly before at Doctor Ox’s
reception. He tried to discover the causes of the singular excitability
which, on two occasions, had betrayed itself in the best citizens of
the town.
“What _can_ be going on?” he asked himself. “What giddy spirit has
taken possession of my peaceable town of Quiquendone? Are we about to
go mad, and must we make the town one vast asylum? For yesterday we
were all there, notables, counsellors, judges, advocates, physicians,
schoolmasters; and ail, if my memory serves me,—all of us were assailed
by this excess of furious folly! But what was there in that infernal
music? It is inexplicable! Yet I certainly ate or drank nothing which
could put me into such a state. No; yesterday I had for dinner a slice
of overdone veal, several spoonfuls of spinach with sugar, eggs, and a
little beer and water,—that couldn’t get into my head! No! There is
something that I cannot explain, and as, after all, I am responsible
for the conduct of the citizens, I will have an investigation.”
But the investigation, though decided upon by the municipal council,
produced no result. If the facts were clear, the causes escaped the
sagacity of the magistrates. Besides, tranquillity had been restored in
the public mind, and with tranquillity, forgetfulness of the strange
scenes of the theatre. The newspapers avoided speaking of them, and the
account of the performance which appeared in the “Quiquendone
Memorial,” made no allusion to this intoxication of the entire
audience.
Meanwhile, though the town resumed its habitual phlegm, and became
apparently Flemish as before, it was observable that, at bottom, the
character and temperament of the people changed little by little. One
might have truly said, with Dominique Custos, the doctor, that “their
nerves were affected.”
Let us explain. This undoubted change only took place under certain
conditions. When the Quiquendonians passed through the streets of the
town, walked in the squares or along the Vaar, they were always the
cold and methodical people of former days. So, too, when they remained
at home, some working with their hands and others with their
heads,—these doing nothing, those thinking nothing,—their private life
was silent, inert, vegetating as before. No quarrels, no household
squabbles, no acceleration in the beating of the heart, no excitement
of the brain. The mean of their pulsations remained as it was of old,
from fifty to fifty-two per minute.
But, strange and inexplicable phenomenon though it was, which would
have defied the sagacity of the most ingenious physiologists of the
day, if the inhabitants of Quiquendone did not change in their home
life, they were visibly changed in their civil life and in their
relations between man and man, to which it leads.
If they met together in some public edifice, it did not “work well,” as
Commissary Passauf expressed it. On ’change, at the town-hall, in the
amphitheatre of the academy, at the sessions of the council, as well as
at the reunions of the _savants_, a strange excitement seized the
assembled citizens. Their relations with each other became embarrassing
before they had been together an hour. In two hours the discussion
degenerated into an angry dispute. Heads became heated, and
personalities were used. Even at church, during the sermon, the
faithful could not listen to Van Stabel, the minister, in patience, and
he threw himself about in the pulpit and lectured his flock with far
more than his usual severity. At last this state of things brought
about altercations more grave, alas! than that between Gustos and
Schut, and if they did not require the interference of the authorities,
it was because the antagonists, after returning home, found there, with
its calm, forgetfulness of the offences offered and received.
This peculiarity could not be observed by these minds, which were
absolutely incapable of recognizing what was passing in them. One
person only in the town, he whose office the council had thought of
suppressing for thirty years, Michael Passauf, had remarked that this
excitement, which was absent from private houses, quickly revealed
itself in public edifices; and he asked himself, not without a certain
anxiety, what would happen if this infection should ever develop itself
in the family mansions, and if the epidemic—this was the word he
used—should extend through the streets of the town. Then there would be
no more forgetfulness of insults, no more tranquillity, no intermission
in the delirium; but a permanent inflammation, which would inevitably
bring the Quiquendonians into collision with each other.
“What would happen then?” Commissary Passauf asked himself in terror.
“How could these furious savages be arrested? How check these goaded
temperaments? My office would be no longer a sinecure, and the council
would be obliged to double my salary— unless it should arrest me
myself, for disturbing the public peace!”
These very reasonable fears began to be realized. The infection spread
from ’change, the theatre, the church, the town-hall, the academy, the
market, into private houses, and that in less than a fortnight after
the terrible performance of the “Huguenots.”
Its first symptoms appeared in the house of Collaert, the banker.
That wealthy personage gave a ball, or at least a dancing-party, to the
notabilities of the town. He had issued, some months before, a loan of
thirty thousand francs, three quarters of which had been subscribed;
and to celebrate this financial success, he had opened his
drawing-rooms, and given a party to his fellow-citizens.
Everybody knows that Flemish parties are innocent and tranquil enough,
the principal expense of which is usually in beer and syrups. Some
conversation on the weather, the appearance of the crops, the fine
condition of the gardens, the care of flowers, and especially of
tulips; a slow and measured dance, from time to time, perhaps a minuet;
sometimes a waltz, but one of those German waltzes which achieve a turn
and a half per minute, and during which the dancers hold each other as
far apart as their arms will permit,—such is the usual fashion of the
balls attended by the aristocratic society of Quiquendone. The polka,
after being altered to four time, had tried to become accustomed to it;
but the dancers always lagged behind the orchestra, no matter how slow
the measure, and it had to be abandoned.
These peaceable reunions, in which the youths and maidens enjoyed an
honest and moderate pleasure, had never been attended by any outburst
of ill-nature. Why, then, on this evening at Collaert the banker’s, did
the syrups seem to be transformed into heady wines, into sparkling
champagne, into heating punches? Why, towards the middle of the
evening, did a sort of mysterious intoxication take possession of the
guests? Why did the minuet become a jig? Why did the orchestra hurry
with its harmonies? Why did the candles, just as at the theatre, burn
with unwonted refulgence? What electric current invaded the banker’s
drawing-rooms? How happened it that the couples held each other so
closely, and clasped each other’s hands so convulsively, that the
“cavaliers seuls” made themselves conspicuous by certain extraordinary
steps in that figure usually so grave, so solemn, so majestic, so very
proper?
Alas! what OEdipus could have answered these unsolvable questions?
Commissary Passauf, who was present at the party, saw the storm coming
distinctly, but he could not control it or fly from it, and he felt a
kind of intoxication entering his own brain. All his physical and
emotional faculties increased in intensity. He was seen, several times,
to throw himself upon the confectionery and devour the dishes, as if he
had just broken a long fast.
The animation of the ball was increasing all this while. A long murmur,
like a dull buzzing, escaped from all breasts. They danced—really
danced. The feet were agitated by increasing frenzy. The faces became
as purple as those of Silenus. The eyes shone like carbuncles. The
general fermentation rose to the highest pitch.
And when the orchestra thundered out the waltz in “Der
Freyschütz,”—when this waltz, so German, and with a movement so slow,
was attacked with wild arms by the musicians,—ah! it was no longer a
waltz, but an insensate whirlwind, a giddy rotation, a gyration worthy
of being led by some Mephistopheles, beating the measure with a
firebrand! Then a galop, an infernal galop, which lasted an hour
without any one being able to stop it, whirled off, in its windings,
across the halls, the drawing-rooms, the antechambers, by the
staircases, from the cellar to the garret of the opulent mansion, the
young men and young girls, the fathers and mothers, people of every
age, of every weight, of both sexes; Collaert, the fat banker, and
Madame Collaert, and the counsellors, and the magistrates, and the
chief justice, and Niklausse, and Madame Van Tricasse, and the
Burgomaster Van Tricasse, and the Commissary Passauf himself, who never
could recall afterwards who had been his partner on that terrible
evening.
[Illustration: it was no longer a waltz]
But she did not forget! And ever since that day she has seen in her
dreams the fiery commissary, enfolding her in an impassioned embrace!
And “she”—was the amiable Tatanémance!