Under the great void reserved by the height of the roof for the upward
flight of prayers the motley crowd of human beings was huddled together
like a flock of sheep.
They were all there, at the foot of the catafalque surrounded by lights
and covered with flowers, Durville, old Maury, Delage, Vicar, Destrée,
Léon Clim, Valrosche, Aman, Regnard, Pradel, Romilly, and Marchegeay,
the manager. They were all there, Madame Ravaud, Madame Doulce, Ellen
Midi, Duvernet, Herschell, Falempin, Stella, Marie-Claire, Louise Dalle,
Fagette, Nanteuil, kneeling, robed in black, like elegiac figures. Some
of the women were reading their missals. Some were weeping. All of them
brought to the coffin of their comrade at least the tribute of their
heavy eyes and their faces pallid from the cold of the morning.
Journalists, actors, playwrights, whole families of those artisans who
gain their living by the theatre, and a crowd of curious onlookers
filled the nave.
The choristers were uttering the mournful cries of the _Kyrie eleison_;
the priest kissed the altar; turned towards the people and said:
_"Dominus vobiscum."_
Romilly; taking in the crowd at a glance, remarked
"Chevalier has a full house."
"Just look at that Louise Dalle," said Fagette. "To look as though she's
in mourning, she has put on a black mackintosh!"
A little to the back of the church, with Pradel and Constantin Marc, Dr.
Trublet was, in subdued tones, according to his habit, delivering his
moral homilies.
"Observe," he said, "that they are lighting, on the altar and about the
coffin, in the guise of wax candles, diminutive night-lights mounted on
billiard cues, and are thereby making an offering of lamp oil instead of
virgin wax to the Lord. The pious men who dwell in the sanctuary have at
all times been proved to defraud their God by these little deceptions.
This observation is not my own; it is, I believe, Renan's."
The celebrant, standing on the epistle side of the altar, was reciting
in a low voice:
_"Nolumus autem vos ignorare fratres de dormientibus, ut non
contrisemimi, sicut et cæteri qui spem non habent."_
"Who is taking the part of Florentin?" inquired Durville of Romilly.
"Regnard: he'll be no worse in it than Chevalier."
Pradel plucked Trublet by the sleeve, and said:
"Dr. Socrates, I beg you to tell me whether as a scientific man, as a
physiologist, you see any serious objections to the immortality of the
soul?"
He asked the question as a busy and practical man in need of personal
information.
"You are doubtless aware, my dear friend," replied Trublet, "what
Cyrano's bird said on this very subject. One day Cyrano de Bergerac
heard two birds conversing in a tree. One of them said, 'The souls of
birds are immortal,' 'There can be no doubt of it,' replied the other.
'But it is inconceivable that beings who possess neither bill nor
feathers, who have no wings and walk on two legs, should believe that
they, like the birds, have an immortal soul.'"
"All the same," said Pradel, "when I hear the organ, I am chock-full of
religious ideas."
_"Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine."_
The celebrated author of _La Nuit du 23 octobre 1812_ appeared in the
church, and no sooner had he done so than he was everywhere at one and
the same moment--in the nave, under the porch, and in the choir. Like
the _Diable boiteux_ he must, bestriding his crutch, have soared above
the heads of the congregation, to pass as he did in the twinkling of an
eye from Morlot, the deputy, who, being a freethinker, had remained in
the parvis, to Marie-Claire kneeling at the foot of the catafalque.
At one and at the same moment he whispered into the ears of all a few
nimble phrases:
"Pradel, can you imagine this fellow going and chucking his part, an
excellent part, and running off to kill himself? A pumpkin-headed fool!
Blows out his brains just two days before the first night. Compels us to
replace him and sets us back a week. What an imbecile! A rotten bad egg.
But we must do him justice; he could jump, and jump well, the animal.
Well, my dear Romilly, we rehearse the new man to-day at two o'clock.
See to it that Regnard has the script of his part, and that he knows how
to climb on to the roof. Let us hope he won't kick the bucket on our
hands like Chevalier. What if he, too, were to commit suicide! You
needn't laugh. There's an evil spell on certain parts. Thus, in my
_Marino Falieri_, the gondolier Sandro breaks his arm at the dress
rehearsal. I am given another Sandro. He sprains his ankle on the first
night. I am given a third, he contracts typhoid fever. My little
Nanteuil, I'll entrust you with a magnificent rôle to create when you get
to the Français. But I have sworn by the great gods that I'll never
again have a single play performed in this theatre."
And immediately, under the little door which shuts off the choir on the
right hand side of the altar, showing his friends Racine's epitaph,
which is let into the wall, like a Parisian thoroughly conversant with
the antiquities of his city, he recalled the history of this stone, he
told them how the poet had been buried in accordance with his desire at
Port-Royal-des-Champs, at the foot of Monsieur Hamon's grave, and that,
after the destruction of the abbey and the violation of the tombs, the
body of Messire Jean Racine, the King's secretary, Groom of the Chamber,
had been transferred, all unhonoured; to Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. And he
told how the tombstone, bearing the inscription composed for Boileau,
beneath the knight's crest and the shield with its swan argent, and done
into Latin by Monsieur Dodart, had served as a flagstone in the choir of
the little church of Magny-Lessart; where it had been discovered in
1808.
"There it is," he added. "It was broken in six pieces and the name of
Racine was effaced by the shoes of the peasants. The fragments were
pieced together and the missing letters carved anew."
On this subject he expatiated with his customary vivacity and
diffusiveness, drawing from his prodigious memory a multitude of curious
facts and amusing anecdotes, breathing life into history and endowing
archæology with a living interest. His admiration and his wrath burst
forth in swift and violent alternation in the solemnity of the church,
and amid the pomp of the ceremony.
"I would give something to know, for instance, who were the stupid
bunglers who set this stone in the wall. _Hic jacet nobilis vir Johannes
Racine._ It is not true! They make honest Boileau's epitaph lie. The
body of Racine is not in this spot. It was laid to rest in the third
chapel on the left, as you enter. What idiots!" Then, suddenly calm, he
pointed to Pascal's tombstone.
"That came here from the museum of the Petits-Augustins. No praise can
be too great for Lenoir, who, in the days of the Revolution, collected
and preserved."
Thereupon, he improvised a second lecture on lapidary archæology, even
more brilliant than the first, transformed the history of Pascal's life
into a terrible yet amusing drama, and vanished. In all, he had remained
in the church for the space of ten minutes.
Over those heads full of worldly cares and profane desires the _Dies
iræ_ rumbled like a storm:
_"Mors stupebit et natura,
Quum resurget creatura
Judicanti responsura."_
"Tell me, Dutil, how could that little Nanteuil, who is pretty and
intelligent, get herself mixed up with a dirty mummer like Chevalier?"
"Your ignorance of the feminine heart surprises me."
"Herschell was prettier when she was a brunette."
_"Qui Mariam absolvisti
Et latronem exaudisti
Mihi quoque spem dedisti."_
"I must be off to lunch."
"Do you know anyone who knows the Minister?"
"Durville is a has-been. He blows like a grampus."
"Put me in a little paragraph about Marie Falempin. I can tell you she
was simply delicious in _Les Trois Magots_."
_"Inter oves locum presta
Et ab hædis me sequestra,
Statuens in parte dextra."_
"So then, it is for Nanteuil's sake that he blew out his brains? A
little ninny who isn't worth spanking!"
The celebrant poured the wine and the water into the chance, saying:
_"Deus qui humanæ substantiæ dignitatem mirabiliter condidisu...."_
"Is it really true, doctor, that he killed himself because Nanteuil
wouldn't have any more to do with him?"
"He killed himself," replied Trublet, "because she loved another. The
obsession of genetic images frequently determines mania and
melancholia."
"You don't understand second-rate actors, Dr. Socrates," said Pradel. "He
killed himself to cause a sensation, and for no other reason."
"It's not only second-rate actors," said Constantin Marc, "who suffer
from an uncontrollable desire to attract attention to themselves at
whatever cost. Last year, in the place where I live, Saint-Bartholomé,
while a threshing-machine was at work, a thirteen-year-old boy shoved
his arm into the gear; it was crushed up to the shoulder. The surgeon
who amputated it asked him, as he was dressing the stump, why he
mutilated himself like that. The boy confessed that it was to draw
attention to himself."
Meanwhile, Nanteuil, with dry eyes and pursed lips, had fixed her eyes
upon the black cloth with which the catafalque was covered, and was
impatiently waiting until enough holy water, candles and Latin prayers
should be bestowed upon the dead man for him to depart in peace. She
had seen him again the night before, and she thought he had returned
because the priests had not yet bidden him to rest in peace. Then,
reflecting that one day she, too, would die, and would, like him, be
laid in a coffin, beneath a black pall, she shuddered with horror and
closed her eyes. The idea of life was so strong within her that she
pictured death as a hideous life. Afraid of death, she prayed for a long
life. Kneeling, with bowed head, the voluptuous ashen cloud of her
buoyant hair falling over her forehead, she, a profane penitent, was
reading in her prayer-book words which reassured her, although she did
not understand them.
"Lord Jesus Christ, King of Glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful
dead from the pains of hell and from the depths of the bottomless pit.
Deliver them from the lion's jaws. Let them not be plunged into hell,
and let them not fall into the outer darkness, but suffer that St.
Michael, the Prince of Angels, lead them to the holy light promised by
Thee to Abraham and to his posterity."
At the Elevation of the Host the congregation, permeated by a vague
impression that the mystery was becoming more sacred, ceased its private
conversations, and assumed a certain appearance of reverent devotion.
And as the organ fell silent all heads were bowed at the tinkling of a
little bell which was shaken by a child. Then, after the last Gospel,
when, the service being over, the priest, attended by his acolytes,
approached the catafalque to the chanting of the _Libera_, a sense of
relief was experienced by the crowd, and they began to jostle one
another a little in order to file past the coffin. The women, whose
piety, grief and contrition were contingent upon their immobility and
their kneeling posture, were at once recalled to their customary frame
of mind by the movement and the encounters of the procession. They
exchanged amongst themselves and with the men remarks relating to their
profession.
"Do you know," said Ellen Midi to Falempin, "that Nanteuil is going to
join the Comédie-Française?"
"It's not possible!"
"The contract is signed."
"How did she manage it?"
"Not by her acting, you may be sure," replied Ellen, who proceeded to
relate a highly scandalous story.
"Take care," said Falempin, "she is just behind you."
"Yes, I see her! She's got a cheek of her own to show herself here,
don't you think?"
Marie-Claire whispered an extraordinary piece of news into Durville's
ear:
"They say he committed suicide. Well, there's not a word of truth in it
He didn't commit suicide at all. And the proof of it is that he is being
buried with the rites of the Church."
"What then?" inquired Durville.
"Monsieur de Ligny surprised him with Nanteuil and killed him."
"Come, come!"
"I can assure you that I am accurately informed."
The conversations were becoming animated and familiar.
"So you are here, you wicked old sinner!"
"The box-office receipts are falling off already."
"Stella has succeeded in getting herself proposed by seventeen Deputies,
nine of whom are members of the Budget Commission."
"Yet I told Herschell, 'That little Bocquet fellow isn't the man for you.
What you need is a man of standing.'"
When the bier, borne by the undertaker's men, passed through the west
door, the delicious rays of a winter sun fell on the faces of the women
and the roses lying on the coffin. Grouped on either side of the parvis,
a few young men from the great colleges sought the faces of celebrities;
the little factory girls from the neighbouring workshops, standing in
couples with arms round each other's waists, contemplated the
actresses' dresses. And standing against the porch on their aching feet,
a couple of tramps, accustomed to living under the open sky, whether
mild or sullen, slowly shifted their dejected gaze, while a college lad
gazed with rapture at the fiery tresses which coiled like flames on the
nape of Fagette's neck.
She had stopped on the topmost step in front of the doors, and was
chatting with Constantin Marc and a few journalists:
"...Monsieur de Ligny? He danced attendance upon me long before he knew
Nanteuil. He used to gaze upon me by the hour, with eager eyes, without
daring to speak a word to me. I received him willingly enough, for his
behaviour was perfect. It is only fair to say that his manners are
excellent. He was as reserved as a man could be. At last, one day, he
declared that he was madly in love with me. I told him that as he was
speaking to me seriously I would do the same; that I was truly sorry to
see him in such a state; that every time such a thing happened I was
greatly upset by it; that I was a woman of standing, I had settled my
life, and could do nothing for him. He was desperate. He informed me
that he was leaving for Constantinople, that he would never return. He
couldn't make up his mind either to remain or to go away. He fell ill.
Nanteuil, who thought I loved him and wanted to keep him, did all in
her power to get him away from me. She flung herself at his head in the
craziest fashion, I found her sometimes a trifle ridiculous, but, as you
may imagine, I did not place any obstacle in her path. For his part,
Monsieur de Ligny, with the object of inspiring me with regret, with
vexation, or what not, perhaps in the hope of making me jealous,
responded very visibly to Nanteuil's advances. And that is how they came
to be together. I was delighted. Nanteuil and I are the best of
friends."
Madame Doulce, hedged in on either side by the onlookers, came slowly
down the steps, indulging herself in the illusion that the crowd was
whispering, "That's Doulce!"
She seized Nanteuil as she was passing, pressed her to her bosom, and
with a beautiful gesture of Christian charity enveloped her in her
mantle, saying through her sobs:
"Try to pray, my child, and accept this medal. It has been blessed by
the Pope. A Dominican Father gave it to me."
Madame Nanteuil, who was a little out of breath, but was growing young
again since she had renewed her experience of love, was the last to come
out. Durville pressed her hand.
"Poor Chevalier!" he murmured.
"His was not a bad character," answered Madame Nanteuil, "but he showed
a lack of tact. A man of the world does not commit suicide in such a
manner. Poor boy, he had no breeding."
The hearse began its journey in the colossal shadow of the Panthéon, and
proceeded down the Rue Soufflet, which is lined on both sides with
booksellers' shops. Chevalier's fellow-players, the employés of the
theatre, the director, Dr. Socrates, Constantin Marc, a few journalists
and a few inquisitive onlookers followed. The clergy and the actresses
took their seats in the mourning coaches. Nanteuil, disregarding Madame
Doulce's advice, followed with Fagette, in a hired coupé.
The weather was fine. Behind the hearse the mourners were conversing in
familiar fashion.
"The cemetery is the devil of a way!"
"Montparnasse? Half an hour at the outside."
"Do you know Nanteuil is engaged at the Comédie-Française?"
"Do we rehearse to-day?" Constantin Marc inquired of Romilly.
"To be sure we do, at three o'clock, in the green-room. We shall
rehearse till five. I am playing to-night; I am playing to-morrow; on
Sunday I play both afternoon and evening. Work is never over for us
actors; one is always beginning over again, always putting one's
shoulder to the wheel."
Adolphe Meunier, the poet, laying his hand on his shoulder said:
"Everything going well, Romilly?"
"How are you getting on yourself, Meunier? Always rolling the rock of
Sisyphus. That would be nothing, but success does not depend on us
alone. If the play is bad and falls flat, all that we have put into it,
our work, our talent, a bit of our own life, collapses with it. And the
number of 'frosts' I've seen! How often the play has fallen under me
like an old hack, and has chucked me into the gutter! Ah, if one were
punished only for one's own sins!"
"My dear Romilly," replied Meunier sharply, "do you imagine that the
fate of dramatic authors like myself does not depend as much upon the
actors as upon ourselves? Do you think it never happens that actors, by
their carelessness or clumsiness, ruin a work which was meant to reach
the heights? And do not we also, like Cæsar's legionary, become seized
with dismay and anguish at the thought that our fate is not assured by
our own valour, but that it depends on those who fight beside us?"
"Such is life," observed Constantin Marc. "In every undertaking,
everywhere and always, we pay for the faults of others."
"That is only too true," resumed Meunier, who had just seen his lyric
drama, _Pandolphe et Clarimonde_, come hopelessly to grief. "But the
iniquity of it disgusts us."
"It should not disgust us in the least," replied Constantin Marc. "There
is a sacred law which governs the world, which we are forced to obey,
which we are proud to worship. It is injustice, holy injustice, august
injustice. It is everywhere blessed under the name of happiness,
fortune, genius and grace. It is a weakness not to acknowledge it and to
venerate it under its true name."
"That's rather weird, what you have just said!" remarked the gentle
Meunier.
"Think it over," resumed Constantin Marc. "You, too, belong yourself to
the party of injustice, for you are striving for distinction, and you
very reasonably want to throttle your competitors, a natural, unjust and
legitimate desire. Do you know of anything more stupid or more odious
than the sort of people we have seen demanding justice? Public opinion,
which is not, however, remarkable for its intelligence, and common
sense, which nevertheless is not a superior sense, have felt that they
constituted the precise contrary of nature, society and life."
"Quite so," said Meunier, "but justice----"
"Justice is nothing but the dream of a few simpletons. Injustice is the
thought of God Himself. The doctrine of original sin would alone
suffice to make me a Christian, while the doctrine of grace embodies all
truths divine and human."
"Then are you a believer?" asked Romilly respectfully.
"No, but I should like to be. I regard faith as the most precious
possession which a man can enjoy in this world. At Saint-Bartholomé, I
go to Mass every Sunday and feast day, and I have never once listened to
the exposition of the Gospel by the _curé_ without saying to myself: 'I
would give all I possess, my house, my acres, my woods, to be as stupid
as that animal there.'"
Michel, the young painter with the mystic's beard, was saying to Roget,
the scene painter:
"That poor Chevalier was a man with ideas. But they were not all good
ones. One evening, he walked into the _brasserie_ radiant and
transfigured, sat himself beside us, and twirling his old felt hat
between his long red fingers, he cried: 'I have discovered the true
manner of acting tragedy. Hitherto no one has realized how to act
tragedy, no one, you understand!' And he told us what his discovery was.
'I've just come from the Chamber. They made me climb up to the
amphitheatre. I could see the Deputies swarming like black insects at
the bottom of a pit. Suddenly a stumpy little man mounted the tribune.
He looked as if he were carrying a sack of coals on his back. He threw
out his arms and clenched his fists. By Jove, he was comical! He had a
Southern accent, and his delivery was full of defects. He spoke of the
workers, of the proletariat, of social justice. It was magnificent; his
voice, his gestures gripped one's very bowels; the applause nearly
brought the house down. I said to myself "What he is doing, I'll do on
the stage, and I'll do it better. I, a comic actor, will play tragedy.
Great tragedy parts, if they are to produce their true effect, ought to
be played by a comedian, but he must have a soul."' The poor fellow
actually thought that he had imagined a new form of art. 'You'll see,'
he said."
At the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michel, a journalist came up to
Meunier, and asked him:
"Is it true that Robert de Ligny was at one time madly in love with
Fagette?"
"If he's in love with her, he hasn't been so long. Only a fortnight ago
he asked me, in the theatre, 'Who is that little fair-haired woman?' and
he pointed to Fagette."
"I cannot understand," said the chronicler of an evening paper to a
chronicler of a morning paper, "what can be the origin of our mania for
calumniating humanity. I am amazed, on the other hand, by the number of
decent people I come across. It is enough to make one incline to the
belief that men are ashamed of the good they do, and that they conceal
themselves when performing acts of devotion and generosity. Don't you
think that is so?"
"As far as I am concerned," replied the chronicler of the morning paper,
"every time I have opened a door by mistake--I mean this both literally
and metaphorically--I have always come across some unsuspected baseness.
Were society suddenly turned inside out like a glove, so that one could
see the inside, we should all faint away with horror and disgust."
"Some time ago," said Roger to the painter Michel, "I used to know
Chevalier's uncle on the Butte de Montmartre. He was a photographer who
dressed like an astrologer. A crazy old fellow, always sending one
customer the portrait of another. The customers used to complain. But
not all of them. There were even some who thought the portraits were a
good likeness."
"What has become of him?"
"He went bankrupt and hanged himself."
In the Boulevard Saint-Michel Pradel, who was walking beside Trublet,
was still profiting by the opportunity of obtaining information as to
the immortality of the soul and the fate of man after death. He obtained
nothing that seemed to him sufficiently positive and repeated:
"I should like to know."
To which Dr. Socrates replied:
"Men were not made to know; men were not made to understand. They do not
possess the necessary faculties. A man's brain is larger and richer in
convolutions than that of a gorilla, but there is no essential
difference between the two. Our highest thoughts and our most
comprehensive systems will never be anything more than the magnificent
extension of the ideas contained in the head of a monkey. We know more
about the world than the dog does, and this flatters and entertains us;
but it is very little in itself, and our illusions increase with our
knowledge."
But Pradel was not listening. He was mentally rehearsing the speech
which he had to deliver at Chevalier's grave.
When the funeral procession turned towards the shabby grass-plots which
overflow the Avenue de l'Observatoire, the tram-cars, out of respect for
the dead, made way for it.
Trublet remarked upon this.
"Men," he said, "respect death, since they rightly believe that, if it
is respectable to die, every one is assured of being respectable in
that, at least."
The actors were excitedly discussing Chevalier's death. Durville,
mysteriously, and in a deep voice, disclosed the tragedy:
"It is not a case of suicide. It is a crime of passion. Monsieur de
Ligny surprised Chevalier with Nanteuil. He fired seven revolver shots
at him. Two bullets struck our unfortunate comrade in the head and the
chest, four went wide, and the fifth grazed Nanteuil below the left
breast."
"Is Nanteuil wounded?"
"Only slightly."
"Will Monsieur de Ligny be arrested?"
"The affair is to be hushed up, and rightly so. I have, however, the best
authority for what I say."
In the carriages, too, the actresses were engaged in spreading various
reports. Some felt sure it was a case of murder; others, one of suicide.
"He shot himself in the chest with a revolver," asserted Falempin. "But
he only succeeded in wounding himself. The doctor said that if he had
been attended to in time he might have been saved. But they left him
lying on the floor, bathed in blood."
And Madame Doulce said to Ellen Midi:
"It has often been my fate to stand beside a deathbed. I always go down
on my knees and pray. I at once feel myself invaded by a heavenly
serenity."
"You are indeed fortunate!" replied Ellen Midi.
At the end of the Rue Campagne-Première, on the wide grey boulevards,
they became conscious of the length of the road which they had covered,
and the melancholy nature of the journey. They felt that while following
the coffin they had crossed the confines of life, and were already in
the country of the dead. On their right stretched the yards of the
marble-workers, the florists' shops which supplied wreaths for funerals,
displays of potted flowers, and the economical furniture of tombs, zinc
flower-stands, wreaths of immortelles in cement, and guardian angels in
plaster. On their left, they could see behind the low wall of the
cemetery the white crosses rising among the bare tops of the lime-trees,
and everywhere, in the wan dust, they breathed death, commonplace,
uniform deaths under the administration of City and State, and poorly
embellished by the pious hands of relations.
They passed between two massive pillars of stone surmounted by winged
hour-glasses. The hearse advanced slowly on the gravel which creaked in
the silence. It seemed, amid the homes of the dead, to be twice as tall
as before. The mourners read the famous names on some of the tombs, or
gazed at the statue of a young girl, seated, book in hand. Old Maury
deciphered, in the inscriptions, the age of the deceased. Short lives,
and even more lives of average duration, distressed him as being of ill
omen. But, when he encountered those of the dead who were notable for
the length of their years, he joyfully drew from them the hope and
probability of a long lease of life.
The hearse stopped in the middle of a side alley. The clergy and the
women stepped out of the coaches. Delage received in his arms, from the
top of the carriage steps, the worthy Madame Ravaud, who was getting a
little ponderous, and of a sudden, half in jest, half in earnest, he
made certain proposals to her. She was no longer young, having been on
the stage for half a century. Delage, with his twenty-five years, looked
upon her as prodigiously old. Yet, as he whispered into her ear, he felt
excited, infatuated, he became sincere, he really desired her, out of
perverse curiosity, because he wanted to do something extraordinary, and
was certain that he would be able to do it, perhaps because of his
professional instinct as a handsome youth, and, lastly, because, in the
first place having asked for what he did not want, he began to want what
he had asked for. Madame Ravaud, indignant but flattered, made good her
escape.
The coffin was carried along a narrow path bordered with dwarf
cypresses, amid a murmuring of prayers:
_"In paradisum deducant te Angeli, in tuo adventu susciptant te Martyres
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem, Chorus Angelorum te
suscipiat et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, æternam habeas requiem."_
Soon there was no longer any visible path. It was necessary, in
following the quickly vanishing coffin, the priests and the choristers,
to scatter, striding over the recumbent tombstones, and slipping between
the broken columns and upright slabs. They lost the coffin and found it
again. Nanteuil evinced a certain eagerness in her pursuit of it,
anxious and abrupt, her prayer-book in her hand, freeing her skirt as it
caught on the railings, and brushing past the withered wreaths which
left the heads of immortelles adhering to her gown. Finally, the first
to reach the graveside smelt the acrid odour of the freshly turned soil,
and from the heights of the neighbouring flagstones saw the grave into
which the coffin was being lowered.
The actors had contributed liberally to the expenses of the funeral;
they had clubbed together to buy for their comrade as much earth as he
needed, two metres granted for five years. Romilly, on behalf of the
actors of the Odéon, had paid the cemetery board 300 francs--to be
exact, 301 fr. 80 centimes. He had even made plans for a monument, a
broken stele with comedy masks suspended upon it. But no decision had
been come to on this point.
The celebrant blessed the open grave. And the priest and the boy
choristers murmured the responses:
"Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine."
_"Et lux perpetua luceat ei."_
_"Requiescat in pace."_
_"Amen."_
_"Anima ejus et animæ omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam
Dei, requiescant in pace."_
_"Amen."_
_"De profundis...."_
Each one of those present came forward to sprinkle holy water on the
coffin. Nanteuil stood watching it all, the prayers, the spadefuls of
earth, the sprinkling; then, kneeling apart on the corner of a tomb, she
fervently recited "Our Father who art in heaven...."
Pradel spoke at the graveside. He refrained from making a speech. But
the Théâtre de l'Odéon could not allow a young artist beloved of all to
depart without a word of farewell.
"I shall speak therefore, in the name of the great and true-hearted
dramatic family, the words that are in every bosom."
Grouped about the speaker in studied attitudes, the actors listened with
profound knowledge. They listened actively, with their ears, lips, eyes,
arms, and legs. Each listened in his own manner, with nobility,
simplicity, grief or rebelliousness, according to the parts which the
actor was accustomed to play.
No, the director of the theatre would not suffer the valiant actor, who,
in the course of his only too brief career, had shown more than
promise, to depart without a word of farewell.
"Chevalier, impetuous, uneven, restless, imparted to his creations an
individual character, a distinctive physiognomy. We saw him a very few
days ago--a few hours ago, I might say--bring an episodical character
into powerful relief. The author of the play was struck by the
performance. Chevalier was on the verge of success. The sacred flame was
his. There are those who have asked, what was the cause of so cruel an
end? Let us not seek for that cause. Chevalier died of his art; he died
of dramatic fever. He died consumed by the flame which is slowly
consuming all of us. Alas, the stage, of which the public sees only the
smiles, and the tears, as sweet as the smiles, is a jealous master which
demands of its servants an absolute devotion and the most painful
sacrifices, and, at times, claims its victims. In the name of all your
comrades, farewell, Chevalier, farewell!"
The handkerchiefs were at work, wiping away the mourners' tears. The
actors were weeping with all sincerity; they were weeping for
themselves.
After they had slipped away, Dr. Trublet, left alone in the cemetery
with Constantin Marc, took in the multitude of graves with a glance.
"Do you remember," he said, "one of Auguste Comte's reflections:
'Humanity is composed of the dead and the living. The dead are by far
the more numerous.' Assuredly, the dead are by far the more numerous. By
the multitudinous numbers and the magnitude of their work, they are more
powerful. It's they who rule; we obey them. Our masters lie beneath
these stones. Here is the lawgiver who made the law to which I submit
to-day; the architect who built my house, the poet who created the
illusions which still disturb us; the orator who swayed us before our
birth. Here are all the artisans of our knowledge, true or false, of our
wisdom and of our follies. There they lie, the inexorable leaders, whom
we dare not disobey. In them dwells strength, continuity, and duration.
What does a generation of living folk amount to, in comparison with the
numberless generations of the dead? What is our will of a day before the
will of a thousand centuries? Can we rebel against them? Why, we have
not even time to disobey them!"
"At last you are coming to the point, Dr. Socrates!" said Constantin
Marc. "You renounce progress, the new justice, the peace of the world,
freedom of thought; you submit to tradition. You consent to the ancient
error, the good old-fashioned ignorance, the venerable iniquity of our
forbears. You withdraw into the French tradition, you submit to ancient
custom, to the authority of our ancestors."
"Whence do you obtain custom and tradition?" asked Trablet. "Whence do
you receive authority? There are irreconcilable traditions, diverse
customs; and opposed authorities. The dead do not impose any one will
upon us. They subject us to contradictory wills. The opinions of the
past which weigh upon us are uncertain and confused. In crushing us they
destroy one another. All these dead have lived, like ourselves, in the
midst of disorder and contradiction. Each in his time, in his own
fashion, in hatred or in love, has dreamed the dream of life. Let us in
our turn dream this dream with kindness and joy, if it be possible, and
let us go to lunch. I am taking you to a little tavern in the Rue Vavin,
kept by Clémence, who cooks only one dish, but a marvellous one at that,
the Castelnaudary _cassoulet_, not to be confused with the _cassoulet_
prepared in the Carcassonne fashion, which is merely a leg of mutton
with haricot beans. The _cassoulet_ of Castelnaudary comprises pickled
goose legs, haricot beans that have been previously bleached, bacon, and
a small sausage. To be good, it must be cooked for a long time over a
slow fire. Clémence's _cassoulet_ has been cooking for twenty years.
From time to time she puts in the saucepan, now a little bit of goose or
bacon, now a sausage or some haricots, but it is always the same
_cassoulet_. The stock remains, and this ancient and precious stock
gives it the flavour which, in the pictures of the old Venetian masters,
one finds in the amber-coloured flesh of the women. Come, I want you to
taste Clémence's _cassoulet_."