The nearer Frantz Mathéus approached the gipsies, the more he was struck
by their joyous and truly philosophical appearance. It was easy to be
seen that they cared little for the opinion of the world, and that they
drew all their satisfaction from themselves. Some had clothes too large,
others clothes much too small; there were many more rents than whole
pieces in their breeches, but that did not prevent them extending their
legs with a certain nobility of action, or of looking you in the face as
if they had been covered with magnificent embroideries. Almost all the
women had children upon their backs in a kind of bag, which they carried
slung over their shoulders. They went quietly about their business; some
put wood on the fire, others lit their pipes with a hot coal; others,
again, emptied their pockets, filled with crusts of bread, carrots, and
turnips, into the cauldron. It was exquisitely picturesque to see this
halt in the midst of the woods. The blue smoke rolled in masses through
the valley, and in the distance the frogs, enjoying themselves amid the
duckweed, were commencing their melancholy concert.
“Eat and drink, worthy people!” cried Mathéus, taking off his
broad-brimmed felt and saluting them; “all the fruits of the earth are
made for man. Ah! how I love to see Heaven’s creatures prosper and
spread before the face of the Great Demiourgos! How I love to see them
grow in strength, in wisdom, and in beauty!”
The gipsies looked suspiciously at the illustrious philosopher; but
hardly had they set eyes on Coucou Peter than several of them jumped up,
crying—
“Coucou Peter!—eh! It’s Coucou Peter come to have some of our soup!”
“That’s just what I’ve come for,” said the merry fiddler, shaking hands
all round. “Good evening, Wolf; good evening, Pfifer-Karl! Hallo! Is that
you, Daniel? How are you? And you, my little Nightingale, how long have
you had this chick? My eyes! how everything increases and multiplies!
Let’s see if he’s the right kind: black eyes, curly hair. Very good! all
as it should be, and nobody can say a word in objection, Nightingale.
Gipsies with blue eyes always strike me as deucedly suspicious; they are
like warren rabbits that taste of cabbage-leaf.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” cried the gipsies, pressing about him; “Coucou Peter has
always his joke!”
While this little scene was passing, Mathéus tied Bruno to one of the
neighbouring trees; when he turned round Coucou Peter was bending over
the cauldron.
“There’s no meat in the soup to-day,” he said, shaking his head.
“No,” replied the Nightingale; “we are fasting in honour of Saint
Florent.”
“Oh!” said Coucou Peter; “a little patience—a little patience; all the
troop are not together yet.”
Then turning towards Mathéus—
“No ceremony here, Maître Frantz,” he cried; “sit you down by the fire,
and make yourself at home. And you there, don’t let your hands stray into
the pockets of the illustrious philosopher.”
“Do you take us for thieves?” asked a young gipsy, dressed in a long
overcoat that hung down to his heels.
“On the contrary, Melchior, I look on you as the most honest people in
the universe; only you have crooked fingers, and, in spite of yourselves,
something is always hanging itself on to them.”
Mathéus slowly approached and looked closely at the gipsies.
“Like the most virtuous Aristides,” he said, in a grave tone, “an object
of party hatred and victim to the ingratitude of my fellow-citizens, I
come to seat myself by the fireside of a foreign nation, and to demand
of you the sacred rights of hospitality. Happy is he who lives in
solitude, in face of the immense heavens and of the boundless forests; he
there sees not vice triumphant and virtue humiliated; his heart is not
corrupted by selfishness nor withered by envy. Happiest of all is he who
believes in eternal justice, for he will not be disappointed, but will
receive the reward of his labours, of his courage, of his virtue!”
So spoke the good man; then, after seating himself by the fire, he
appeared to lose himself in an abyss of meditations.
The astonished gipsies looked at one another, and asked, in whispers, who
this man was, and what was the meaning of what he had been saying.
Coucou Peter thereupon undertook to relate to them the distant
peregrinations of the illustrious philosopher, and the vicissitudes
of his journey; but they could make nothing of it. Pfifer-Karl, the
trombone, asked—
“What does he want to do? What is he going about the world for? If he has
got a house of his own and lands, and all that he needs, why doesn’t he
stop at home?—or, if he’s fond of travelling, why doesn’t he sell one of
his fields to pay his travelling expenses?”
These worthy people could not in the least understand what it was to
be a prophet; they laughed at Coucou Peter’s explanations, and as the
illustrious Doctor did not stir from where he was sitting, and could not
hear them, Coucou Peter finished by laughing at them himself.
“Ha! ha! ha! you rascal, Pfifer-Karl!” he cried, slapping the trombone on
the shoulder, “you are no fool—it isn’t you who would go about working
for future generations! Ha! ha! ha!—it’s a funny idea all the same!”
The gipsies strongly pressed him to take up his fiddle again and go with
them to the fair; for they had made more than one round with him in
Alsace, and knew that he was everywhere well received. But he would not
abandon the doctrine.
“No,” he said, “I am a prophet, and I shall remain a prophet; it is a
long time since I played any music. Besides, if I were to find out later
that anybody else had taken my place of Grand Rabbi, I should tear my
hair in despair. No, no—I want to get myself talked about; I want the
name of Coucou Peter to be like that of Pythagoras.”
“When there’s a fool anywhere about he is always more talked of than all
the sensible people in the country,” said Pfifer-Karl.
“Yes,” replied Coucou Peter, laughing; “but fools of a new kind are rare.
They are like six-legged sheep. They are well fed, and shown for money,
while the others are led shorn. I wish I had a leg in the middle of my
back—my fortune would be made; people would come from the ends of the
earth to see me.”
Meanwhile the cauldron went on steaming and began to give out a most
agreeable odour. They gathered round the fire, and the Nightingale,
having washed her porringer at a neighbouring spring, offered it to
Coucou Peter. He refused it, saying that he had dined too well to drink
carrot-soup. Mathéus withdrew from the circle and said he was sleepy;
stale crusts of bread floating in clear water did not tempt his appetite.
The night was dark. Coucou Peter lit his pipe and watched the gipsies
eating their portions, the porringer passing from hand to hand, each
drinking out of it in his turn.
Maître Frantz had seated himself on the heather. For some time the good
man’s looks were turned to the dark valley; he listened to the roar of a
distant waterfall, which sometimes seemed to pause, and then slowly to
increase again, like the noise of a storm. The entire valley responded to
that solemn voice; the leaves sighed, the birds chirped, the trees waved
their black tops.
Suddenly a young gipsy began to sing a mountain ditty, which said—
“Away, gipsies, away! See, see! the sun is rising behind the woods! Take
up your bag and pass along the great alley of trees to the village. It is
long, that alley to the village; you must set off early to arrive there
in the morning-time.”
This child-voice faded in the immense valley—echoes answered it from
afar—from very far off, in a tenderer tone. Some women joined the child,
seated near the fire, their hands interlaced in front of their knees,
and they sang in chorus; then the men joined in the song, which was thus
continually swelled with—“Away, gipsies, away.”
Insensibly Mathéus’ head drooped; at length he stretched himself on the
moss and sank into a profound sleep.