Part 6 (1/2)
He never came to the cafe in the evening, so I then lounged there alone smoking. Every now and then I dined with some of my fellow-students down on the boulevards, but as true inhabitants of the Quartier Latin, it was only seldom that we crossed the Seine. One evening, however, some one at the dinner-table proposed that we should all drive down to the Varietes to see Offenbach's _Les Brigands_, and somehow or another they carried me off with them.
I believe the whole pit was full of students. We were in tremendous spirits, and applauded quite as vigorously as the _claque_ which occupied the row behind us. It seemed to me as though I were playing my old friend from the Cafe de l'Empereur false, and I felt how he would despise me had he seen me, and I made up my mind not to tell him anything about it. But I could not help it, I roared with laughter the whole time. The last words of a song were hardly over before the _claque_ broke out with a deafening applause, and we and the whole pit followed their lead with right good will. And so when we collapsed and could move our arms no longer, the _claque_ had recuperated its strength, and the brilliant farce was hailed once more with thundering applause by the joyless spectators behind us, where a whole chorus of poor devils shouted ”bravo, bravo!” for next day's bread.
Suddenly I was startled by a ”bravo, bravo!” which came a little after the rest. I turned rapidly round, and ran my eye over the _claque_, and then to the astonishment of my comrades, I took my hat and slunk out of the theatre.
The joyous music rang in my ears the whole way home, but I felt that tears were not far from my eyes that night.
No, I never told Monsieur Alfredo that I had been to see _Les Brigands_.
I never alluded again in our conversations to Offenbach and Lecocq, and never more did I try to accompany the old gentleman to the theatre.
Next day, after we had finished our game of chess, I followed him home at some little distance. I went to his house that same evening, and whilst I stood there contemplating the card on Monsieur Alfredo's door, the concierge made her appearance, and informed me that he never spent the evenings at home. ”Was I perhaps a pupil?” I answered in the affirmative. I asked her if he had many pupils just then, and she answered I was the first she had ever seen.
It was towards the end of autumn that I communicated to Monsieur Alfredo my irrevocable decision to throw medicine to the winds and to devote myself to the stage, and to my great satisfaction he consented to become my instructor in deportment and declamation. The lessons were given at my rooms in the Hotel de l'Avenir. The old fellow's method was a peculiar one, and his theories on acting as bold as those he held on chess. I listened with the utmost attention to all he said, and tried as well as I could to learn the fundamental rules of deportment he saw fit to teach me. After a while he acceded to my request to be allowed to try myself in a role, and fully aware of my preference for tragedy, it was decided that, under the immediate superintendence of the author himself, I should get up one of the characters in Monsieur Alfredo's last work, _Le Poignard_, a tragedy in five acts. Monsieur Alfredo himself was the king and I was the marquis. I admit that my debut was not a happy one. I saw that the author was far from satisfied with me, and I realised myself that my marquis was a dead failure. My next debut was in the role of the English lord in the five-act tragedy, _La Vengeance_, but neither there were there any illusions possible as to my success. I then tried my luck as the count in _Le Secret du Tombeau_, but with a very doubtful result. I then sank down to a viscount, and made superhuman efforts to keep up to the mark, but notwithstanding the indulgent way in which Monsieur Alfredo pointed out my shortcomings, I could not conceal from myself the fact that I was not fit to be a viscount either.
I began to have serious doubts as to my theatrical vocation, but Monsieur Alfredo thought that the reason of my failure might be traced to my unfamiliarity with the highest society, and my difficulty in adapting myself to the sensations and thoughts of these high personages.
And he was right--it was anything but easy. All his heroes and heroines were very sorry for themselves, not to say desperate, although as a rule it was impossible for me to understand the reason of their being so.
Love and hatred glowed in every one's eyes. True that as a rule everything went wrong for the lovers, but even if they got each other at last, they did not seem to be a bit the more cheerful for that. I remember, for instance, the third act of _Le Poignard_, where I (the marquis), after having waded through blood, succeed in winning the lady of my heart, who on her side has gone through fire and water to be mine.
The Archbishop marries us by moonlight, and we, who had not seen each other for ten years, are left alone for a while in a bower of roses. We had nothing on earth to be afraid of; no one was likely to disturb us, as I had previously run my sword through every grown-up person in the play, and I thought that I ought to be a little kind to the marchioness.
But Monsieur Alfredo never found my voice tragic enough during the few brief moments of happiness he granted us. (We perished shortly afterwards in an earthquake.)
For the matter of that, those who escaped a violent death were not much better off--they were carried off in any case in the flower of their youth by sudden inexplicable ailments, which no amount of care could contend against. At first I tried to save some of the victims, but Monsieur Alfredo always looked very astonished when I suggested that some one might be allowed to recover; and knowing his theory that it was sentimentality that spoiled Victor Hugo as a dramatist, I ceased more and more to interfere in the matter.
After a few more abortive attempts to pose as a n.o.bleman, I submitted to Monsieur Alfredo my opinion that I might do better in a more humble position. But here we were met by an unforeseen obstacle--Monsieur Alfredo did not descend below viscounts. If by the exigencies of the plot a lonely representative of the lower orders had to appear on the scene, he had no sooner got a word out of his mouth before the author would fling a purse at his head, and send him back into the wings with an imperial wave of his s.h.i.+ny coat sleeve. Well, away with all false pride! It was in these roles I at last hit upon my true genre; it was here I scored my only triumphs. Imperceptibly to the old man, I disappeared more and more from the repertoire, would now and then cross the stage and with a deep obeisance deliver a ma.n.u.script letter from some crowned head, or would occasionally come to carry off a corpse--that was all.
So the autumn pa.s.sed on, we had gone through one tragedy after another, and still Monsieur Alfredo constantly turned up with a new ma.n.u.script under his arm. I began to be afraid that the old man would wear himself out with this fathomless authors.h.i.+p, and I tried in every possible way to make him rest a little. This was, however, quite impossible. He now came every single day to Hotel de l'Avenir to his only pupil and literary confidant. His guileless, childish face seemed to grow more and more gentle, and more and more was I drawn towards the poor old enthusiast with a sort of tender sympathy.
And unquenchable and ever more unquenchable became his literary bloodthirstiness. By Christmas-time his new tragedy was ready, and Monsieur Alfredo himself looked upon it as his best work. The scene was laid in Sicily at the foot of Mount Etna in the midst of burning lava-streams. Not a soul survived the fifth act. I begged for the life of a Newfoundland dog, who, with a dead heir in his mouth, had swum over from the mainland, but Monsieur Alfredo was inexorable. The dog threw himself into the crater of Etna in the last scene.
But while the lava of Mount Etna was heating Monsieur Alfredo's world of dreams, the winter snow was falling over Paris. All of us had long since taken to our winter coats, but my poor professor was still wandering about in his same old frock-coat, so s.h.i.+ny with constant brus.h.i.+ng, so thread-bare with the wear and tear of years. The nights became so cold, and sadly did I follow in my thoughts the poor old man tramping home every night across the streets of Paris after the theatre was over.
Many times was I very near broaching the delicate subject, but was always deterred by the sensitive pride with which he sought to disguise his poverty. Yet had I never seen him in such excellent spirits as he was just then, he placed greater expectations than ever on his new tragedy. Like all his previous plays it was written for the Theatre Francais. The systematic ill-will with which Mons. Perrin[21] had refused to accept any work of his had certainly made him turn his thoughts to the Odeon Theatre; but with due consideration to the colossal proportions of his new drama, Monsieur Alfredo did not quite see how to avoid offering it to the very first theatre in Paris.
Maybe it seems to you that I ought to have pointed out to Monsieur Alfredo the dangerous flights of his imagination, that I ought to have tried to make him realise that his theatre was erected on quite another planet than ours. I did nothing of the sort, and you would not have done so either had you known him as I did, had you witnessed the anxiety with which his kind eyes sought for my approval, how his sad old child-face brightened up when he recited some pa.s.sage which he expected would especially dumbfound me--which alas! it seldom failed to do. But I had arrived so far that I was quite incapable of spoiling his pleasure by a single word of criticism. Silently I listened to tragedy after tragedy, and there was no need to simulate being serious, for all my laughter over his wild creations was silenced by the tragedy of reality, all my criticism was disarmed by his utter helplessness--he did not even possess an overcoat! The only audience the poor old man ever had was me, why then shouldn't I bestow upon him a little approval, he whom life had so unmercifully hissed?
One afternoon he did not turn up at the Cafe de l'Empereur, and in vain I waited for him before the chess-board the next day. I waited still another day, but then, driven by uneasy forebodings, I went to look him up towards evening. The concierge had not seen him go out, and there was no answer to my knock at his door. I stood there for a moment or two looking at the faded old visiting-card nailed on his door--
+------------------------------------------+
Mr. ALFREDO
Auteur Dramatique
Professeur de Declamation, de Maintien
et de Mise en Scene.
+------------------------------------------+
And then I quietly opened the door and went in.
The old man lay on his bed delirious, not recognising the unbidden guest who stood there, sadly looking round the empty garret cold as the streets without, for there was no fireplace.