Home > Authors Index > Alphonse Daudet > Nabob > This page
The Nabob, a novel by Alphonse Daudet |
||
Chapter 25. The First Night Of "Revolt" |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
|
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXV. THE FIRST NIGHT OF "REVOLT" "Take your places for the first act!" The cry of the stage-manager, standing with his hand raised to his mouth to form a trumpet, at the foot of the staircase behind the scenes, echoes under the roof, rises and rolls along, to be lost in the depths of corridors full of the noise of doors banging, of hasty steps, of desperate calls to the _coiffeur_ and the dressers; while there appear one by one on the landings of the various floors, slow and majestic, without moving their heads for fear of disturbing the least detail of their make-up, all the personages of the first act of _Revolt_, in elegant modern ball costumes, with the creaking of new shoes, the silken rustle of the trains, the jingling of rich bracelets pushed up the arm while gloves are being buttoned. All these people seem excited, nervous, pale beneath their paint, and under the skilfully prepared satin-like surface of the shoulders, tremors flutter like shadows. Dry-mouthed, they speak little. The least nervous, while affecting to smile, have in their eyes and voice the hesitation that marks an absent mind--that apprehension of the battle behind the foot-lights which is ever one of the most powerful attractions of the comedian's art, its piquancy, its freshness. The stage is encumbered by the passage to and fro of machinists and scene-builders hastening about, running into one another in the dim, pallid light falling from above, which will give place directly, as soon as the curtain rises, to the dazzling of the foot-lights. Cardailhac is there in his dress-coat and white tie, his opera hat on one side, giving a final glance to the arrangement of the scenery, hurrying the workmen, complimenting the _ingenue_ who is waiting dressed and ready, beaming, humming an air, looking superb. To see him no one would ever guess the terrible worries which distract him. He is compromised by the fall of the Nabob--which entails the loss of his directorate--and is risking his all on the piece of this evening, obliged, if it be not a success, to leave the cost of this marvellous scenery, these stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid. It is a fourth bankruptcy that stares him in the face. But, bah! our manager is confident. Success, like all the monsters that feed on men, loves youth; and this unknown author, whose name is appearing for the first time on a theatre bill, flatters the gambler's superstitions. Andre Maranne feels less confident. As the hour for the production of the piece approaches he loses faith in his work, terrified by the sight of the house, at which he looks through the hole in the curtain as through the narrow lens of a stereoscope. A splendid house, crammed to the roof, notwithstanding the late period of the spring and the fashionable taste for early departure to the country; a house that Cardailhac, a declared enemy of nature and the country, endeavouring always to keep Parisians in Paris till the latest possible date, has succeeded in crowding and making as brilliant as in midwinter. Fifteen hundred heads are swarming beneath the great central chandelier, erect--bent forward--turning round--questioning amid a great play of shadows and reflections; some massed in the obscure corners of the floor, others in a bright light reflected through the open doors of the boxes from the white walls of the corridor; the first-night public which is always the same, that brigand-like _tout Paris_ which goes everywhere, carrying those envied places by storm when a favour or a claim by right of some official position fails to secure them. In the stalls are low-cut waistcoats, clubmen, shining bald heads, wide partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-glasses raised and directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to another category. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and paint. Above, the boxes present the same confusion; actresses and women of the demi-monde, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics--these last wearing a grave air and frowning brow, sitting crosswise in their _fauteuils_ with the impassive haughtiness of judges whom nothing can corrupt. The boxes near the stage especially stand out in the general picture brilliantly lighted, occupied by celebrities of the financial world, the women _decollete_ and with bare arms, glittering with jewels like the Queen of Sheba on her visit to the King of Judea. But on the left, one of these large boxes, entirely empty, attracts attention by reason of its curious decoration, lighted from the back by a Moorish lantern. Over the whole assembly is an impalpable and floating dust, the flickering of the gas, that odour that mingles with all the pleasures of Paris, its little sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive, accompanying the movement of opened fans. And then, too, _ennui_, a gloomy _ennui_, the _ennui_ of seeing the same faces always in the same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of the provinces themselves. Maranne observed this ill-humour, this lassitude of the public, and thinking of all the changes which the success of his play might bring about in his simple life, he asked himself, full of a great anxiety, what he could do to bring his ideas home to those thousands of people, to pluck them away from their preoccupation, and to send through this crowd a single current which should draw to himself those absent glances, those minds of every different calibre, so difficult to move to unison. Instinctively his eyes sought friendly faces, a box facing the stage occupied by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls seated in the front, Aline and the father in the row behind--a charming family group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers. And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, "Who are those people there?" the poet instrusted his fate to those little fairy hands, new gloved for the occasion, which very soon would boldly give the signal for applause. The curtain is going up! Maranne has barely time to spring into the wings; and suddenly he hears as from far, very far away, the first words of his play, which rise, like a flight of timid birds, into the silence and immensity of the theatre. A terrible moment. Where should he go? What should he do? Remain there leaning against a wing, with straining ear and beating heart? Encourage the actors when he himself stood in so much need of encouragement? He prefers rather to look the peril in the face; and by the little door communicating with the corridor behind the boxes he slips out to a corner box, which he orders to be opened for him softly. "Sh! It is I." Some one is seated in the shadow--a woman, she whom all Paris knows and who is hiding herself from the public gaze. Andre sits down by her side, and so, close to one another, mother and son tremblingly watch the progress of the play. It astonished the audience at first. This Theatre des Nouveautes, situated in the very heart of the boulevard, where its portico glitters all illuminated among the great restaurants of the smart clubs; this theatre, to which people were accustomed to come in parties after a luxurious dinner to listen until supper-time to an act or two of some suggestive piece, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most fashionable of all Parisian entertainments, without any very precise character of its own, and partaking something of all, from the fairy-operetta which exhibits undressed women, to the serious modern drama. Cardailhac was especially anxious to justify his title of "Manager of the Nouveautes," and, since the Nabob's millions had been at the back of the undertaking, had made a point of preparing for the boulevardiers the most dazzling surprises. That of this evening surpassed them all; the piece was in verse--and moral. A moral play! The old rogue had realized that the moment had arrived to try that effect, and he was trying it. After the astonishment of the first minutes, a few disappointed exclamations here and there in the boxes, "Why, it is in verse!" the house began to feel the charm of this invigorating and healthy piece, as if there had been sprinkled on it, in its rarefied atmosphere, some fresh and pungent essence, an elixir of life perfumed with thyme from the hillside. "Ah! this is nice--it is restful." Such was the general sense, a thrill of ease, a spasm of pleasure accompanying each line. That fat old Hemerlingue found it restful, puffing in his stage-box on the ground floor as in a trough of cerise satin. It was restful also to that tall Suzanne Bloch, her hair dressed in the antique way, ringlets flowing over a diadem of gold; and near her, Amy Ferat, all in white like a bride and with sprigs of orange-blossom in her fluffy hair, it was restful to her also, you may be sure. A crowd of demi-mondaines were present, some very fat, with a dirty greasiness acquired in a hundred seraglios, three chins, and an air of stupidity; others absolutely green in spite of their paint, as if they had been dipped in a bath of that arsenate of copper which is called in the shops "Paris green." These were wrinkled, faded to such a degree that they hid in the back of their boxes, only allowing a portion of a white arm to be seen, a rounded shoulder protruding. Then there were young men about town, flabby and without backbone, those who at that time used to be called _petits creves_, creatures worn out by dissipation, with stooping necks and drooping lids, incapable of standing erect or of articulating a single word perfectly. And all these people exclaimed with one accord: "This is nice--it is restful." The handsome Moessard murmured it like a refrain beneath his little fair mustache, while his queen in the stage-box translated it into the barbarism of her foreign tongue. Positively they found it restful. They did not say after what--after what heart-breaking labour, after what forced, idle and useless task. All these friendly murmurs, united and mingled, began to give to the house an eventful appearance. Success was felt in the air, faces became serene again, the women seemed the more beautiful for reflecting enthusiasm, for being moved to glances that were as exciting as applause. Andre, at his mother's side, thrilled with such an unknown pleasure, with that proud delight which a man feels when he stirs the multitude, be he only a singer in a suburban back-yard, with a patriotic refrain and two pathetic notes in his voice. Suddenly the whisperings redoubled, were transformed into a tumult. People were chuckling and fidgeting with excitement. What had happened? Some accident on the stage? Andre, leaning terrified towards the actors as astonished as himself, saw every opera-glass turned towards the big stage-box which had remained empty until then, and which some one had just entered, who sat down immediately with both his elbows on the velvet ledge, and with his opera-glass drawn from its case, taking his place in gloomy solitude. In ten days the Nabob had aged twenty years. Violent southern natures like his, if they are rich in enthusiasms, become also more utterly prostrate than others. Since his unseating the unfortunate man had shut himself up in his bedroom, with drawn curtains, no longer wishing even to see the light of day nor to cross over the threshold beyond which life was waiting for him, with the engagements he had undertaken, the promises he had made, a mass of protested bills and writs. The Levantine, gone off to some spa accompanied by her _masseur_ and her negress, was totally indifferent to the ruin of the establishment; Bompain--the man in the fez--in frightened bewilderment amid the demands for money, not knowing how to approach his ill-starred master, who persistently kept his bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as business matters were mentioned. His old mother alone remained behind to face the disaster, with the knowledge born of her narrow and straitened experience as a village woman, who knows what a stamped document--a signature--is, and thinks honour is the greatest and best thing in the world. Her peasant's cap made its appearance on every floor of the mansion, examining bills, reforming the domestic arrangements, and fearing neither outcries or humiliation. At all hours the good woman might be seen striding about the Place Vendome, gesticulating, talking to herself, and saying aloud: "_Te_, I will go and see the bailiff." And never did she consult her son about anything save when it was indispensable, and then only in a few discreet words, while avoiding even a glance at him. To rouse Jansoulet from his torpor it had required de Gery's telegram, dated from Marseilles, announcing that he was on his way back, bringing ten million francs. Ten millions!--that is to say, bankruptcy averted, the possibility of recovering his position--of starting life afresh. And behold our southerner rebounding from the depth of his fall, intoxicated with joy, and full of hope. He ordered the windows to be opened and newspapers to be brought to him. What a magnificent opportunity was this first night of _Revolt_ to show himself to the Parisians, who were believing him to have gone under, to enter the great whirlpool once more through the swing door of his box at the Nouveautes! His mother, warned by some instinct, did indeed try to hold him back. Paris now terrified her. She would have liked to carry off her child to some unknown corner of the Midi, to nurse him along with his elder brother--stricken down both of them by the great city. But he was the master. Resistance was impossible to that will of a man spoiled by wealth. She helped him to dress for the occasion, "made him look nice," as she said laughing, and watched him not without a certain pride as he departed, dignified, full of new life, having almost got over the prostration of the preceding days. After his arrival at the theatre, Jansoulet quickly perceived the commotion which his presence caused in the house. Accustomed to similar curious ovations, he acknowledged them ordinarily without the least embarrassment, with a frank display of his wide and good-natured smile; but this time the manifestation was hostile, almost indignant. "What! It is he?" "There he is." "What impudence!" Such exclamations from the stalls confusedly rose among many others. The retirement in which he had taken refuge for some days past had left him in ignorance of the public exasperation, of the homilies, the statements broadcast in the newspapers, with the corrupting influence of his wealth as their text--articles written for effect, hypocritical phraseology by the aid of which opinion avenges itself from time to time on the innocent for all its own concessions to the guilty. It was a terribly embarrassing exhibition, which gave him at first more sorrow than anger. Deeply moved, he hid his emotion behind his opera-glass, fixing his attention on the least details of the stage arrangements, giving a three-quarters view of his back to the house, but unable to escape the scandalous observation of which he was the victim and which made his ears buzz, his temples beat, the dulled lenses of his opera-glass become full of those whirling multi-coloured circles which are the first symptom of brain disorder. When the curtain fell at the end of the first act he remained motionless, in the same attitude of embarrassment; the whisperings, now more distinct when they were no longer held in check by the dialogue on the stage, the pertinacity of certain inquisitive people changing their places in order to get a better view of him, obliged him to leave his box and to beat a hurried retreat into the corridors, like a wild beast escaping across a circus from the arena. Beneath the low ceiling in the narrow circular passage of the theatre corridors, he found himself suddenly in the midst of a dense crowd of emasculate youths, journalists, tightly laced women wearing their hats, laughing as part of their trade, their backs against the wall. From box-doors opened for air, mixed and disjointed fragments of conversation were escaping: "A delightful piece. It is fresh; it is good." "That Nabob! What impudence!" "Yes, indeed, it is restful. One feels better for it." "How is it that he has not yet been arrested?" "Quite a young man, it seems. It is his first play." "Bois l'Hery at Mazas! It is impossible. Why, there is the marquise opposite, in the balcony, with a new hat." "What does that prove? She is at her business as a stager of new fashions. It is very pretty, that hat. In Desgrange's racing colours." "And Jenkins? What is Jenkins doing?" "At Tunis, with Felicia. Old Brahim has seen them both. It seems that the Bey has begun to take the pearls." "The deuce he has!" Farther along, soft voices were murmuring: "Yes, father, do, do go speak to him. See how lonely he looks, poor man!" "But, children, I do not know him." "Never mind. Just a bow. Something to show him that he is not utterly deserted." Thereupon the little old gentleman, very red in the face and wearing a white tie, stepped quickly in front of the Nabob, and ceremoniously raised his hat to him with great respect. With what gratitude, what a smile of eager good-will was that solitary greeting returned, that greeting from a man whom Jansoulet did not know, whom he had never seen, and who had yet exerted a weighty influence upon his destiny; for, but for the _pere_ Joyeuse, the chairman of the board of the Territorial would probably have shared the fate of the Marquis de Bois l'Hery. Thus it is that in the tangle of modern society, that great web of interests, ambitions, services accepted and rendered, all the various worlds are connected, united beneath the surface, from the highest existences to the most humble; this it is that explains the variegation, the complexity of this study of manners, the collection of the scattered threads of which the writer who is careful of truth is bound to make the background of his story. In ten minutes the Nabob had been subjected to every manifestation of the terrible ostracism of that Paris world to which he had neither relationship nor serious ties, and whose contempt isolated him more surely than a visiting monarch is isolated by respect--the averted look, the apparently aimless step aside, the hat suddenly put on and pulled down over the eyes. Overcome by embarrassment and shame, he stumbled. Some one said quite loudly, "He is drunk," and all that the poor man could manage to do was to return and shut himself up in the salon at the back of his box. Ordinarily, this little retreat was crowded during the intervals between the acts by stock-brokers and journalists. They laughed and smoked and made a great noise; the manager would come to greet his sleeping partner. But on this evening there was nobody. And the absence of Cardailhac, with his keen nose for success, signified fully to Jansoulet the measure of his disgrace. "What have I done? Why will Paris have no more of me?" Thus he questioned himself amid a solitude that was accentuated by the noises around, the abrupt turning of keys in the doors of the boxes, the thousand exclamations of an amused crowd. Then suddenly, the freshness of his luxurious surroundings, the Moorish lantern casting strange shadows on the brilliant silks of the divan and walls, reminded him of the date of his arrival. Six months! Only six months since he came to Paris! Completely done for and ruined in six months! He sank into a kind of torpor, from which he was roused by the sound of applause and enthusiastic bravos. It was decidedly a great success--this play _Revolt_. There were some passages of strength and satire, and the violent tirades, a trifle over-emphatic but written with youth and sincerity, excited the audience after the idyllic calm of the opening. Jansoulet in his turn wished to hear and see. This theatre belonged to him after all. His place in that stage-box had cost him over a million francs; the very least he could do was to occupy it. So he seated himself in the front of his box. In the theatre the heat was suffocating in spite of the fans which were vigorously at work, throwing reflections from their bright spangles through the impalpable atmosphere of silence. The house was listening religiously to an indignant and lofty denunciation of the scamps who occupied exalted positions, after having robbed their fellows in those depths from which they were sprung. Certainly, Maranne when he wrote these fine lines had been far from having the Nabob in his mind. But the public saw an allusion in them; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the conclusion of the speech, all heads were turned towards the stage-box on the left with an indignant, openly offensive movement. The poor wretch, pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory which had cost him so dear! This time he made no attempt to escape the insult, but settled himself resolutely in his seat, with arms folded, and braved the crowd that was staring at him--those hundreds of faces raised in mockery, that virtuous _tout Paris_ which had seized upon him as a scapegoat and was driving him into the wilderness, after having laden him with the burden of all its own crimes. A pretty gang, truly, for a manifestation of that kind! Opposite, the box of a bankrupt banker, the wife and her lover sitting next each other in the front row, the husband behind in the shadow, voluntarily inconspicuous and solemn. Near them the frequent trio of a mother who has married her daughter in accordance with the personal inclination of her own heart, in order to make a son-in-law of her lover. Then irregular households, courtesans exhibiting the price of shame, diamonds like circlets of fire riveted around arms and neck. And those groups of emasculate youths, with their open collars and painted eyebrows, whose shirts of embroidered cambric and white satin corsets people used to admire in the guest-chambers at Compiegne; those _mignons_, of the time of Agrippa, calling each other among themselves: "My heart--My dear girl." An assemblage of all the scandals, all the turpitudes, consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of greatness and without originality, intent on making trial of the caprices of every other age. And these were the people who were insulting him and crying: "Away with thee, thou art unworthy!" "Unworthy--I! But my worth is a hundred times greater than that of any among you, wretches that you are! You make my millions a reproach to me, but who has helped me to spend them? Thou, cowardly and treacherous comrade, who hidest thy sick pasha-like obesity in the corner of thy stage-box! I made thy fortune along with my own in the days when we shared all things in brotherly community. Thou, pale marquis--I paid a hundred thousand francs at the club in order to save thee from shameful expulsion! "Thee I covered with jewels, hussy, letting thee pass for my mistress, because that kind of thing makes a good impression in our world--but without ever asking thee anything in return. And thou, brazen-faced journalist, who for brain hast all the dirty sediment of thy inkstand, and on thy conscience as many spots as thy queen has on her skin, thou thinkest that I have not paid thee thy price and that is why thy insults are heaped on me. Yes, yes; stare at me, you vermin! I am proud. My worth is above yours." All that he was thus saying to himself mentally, in an ungovernable rage, visible in the quivering of his pale, thick lips. The unfortunate man, who was nearly mad, was about perhaps to shout it aloud in the silence, to denounce that insulting crowd--who knows?--to spring into the midst of it, kill one of them--ah! kill _one_ of them--when he felt a light tap on his shoulder, and a fair head came before his eyes, serious and frank, two hands held out, which he grasped convulsively, like a drowning man. "Ah! dear friend, dear--" the poor man stammered. But he had not the strength to say more. This emotion of joy coming suddenly in the midst of his fury melted him into a sobbing torrent of tears, and stifled words. His face became purple. He motioned "Take me away." And, stumbling in his walk, leaning on de Gery's arm, he only managed to cross the threshold of his box before he fell prostrate in the corridor. "Bravo! Bravo!" cried the house in reply to the speech which the actor had just finished; and there was a noise like a hailstorm, and stamping of enthusiastic feet while the great lifeless body, raised with difficulty by the scene-shifters, was carried through the brightly lighted wings, crowded with people pressing in their curiosity round the stage, excited by the atmosphere of success and who hardly noticed the passage of the inert and vanquished man, borne on men's arms like some victim of a riot. They laid him on a couch in the room where the properties were stored, Paul de Gery at his side, with a doctor and two porters who eagerly lent all the assistance in their power. Cardailhac, extremely busy over his play, had sent word that he should come to hear the news "directly, after the fifth act." Bleeding after bleeding, cuppings, mustard leaves--nothing brought even a quiver to the skin of the patient, insensible apparently to all the remedies usually employed in cases of apoplexy. The whole being seemed to be surrendering to death, to be preparing the way for the rigidity of the corpse; and this in the most sinister place in the world, this chaos, lighted by a lantern merely, amid which there lie about pell-mell in the dust all the remains of former plays--gilt furniture, curtains with gay fringes, coaches, boxes, card-tables, dismantled staircases and balusters, among ropes and pulleys, a confusion of out-of-date theatrical properties, thrown down, broken, and damaged. Bernard Jansoulet, as he lay among this wreckage, his shirt opened over his chest, pale and covered with blood, was indeed a man come to the shipwreck of his life, bruised and tossed aside along with the pitiful ruins of his artificial luxury dispersed and broken up, in the whirlpool of Paris. Paul, with aching heart, contemplated the scene sadly, that face with its short nose, preserving in its inertia the savage yet kindly expression of an inoffensive creature that tried to defend itself before it died and had not time to bite. He reproached himself bitterly with his inability to be of any service to him. Where was that fine project of leading Jansoulet across the bogs, of guarding him against ambushes? All that he had been able to do had been to save a few millions for him, and even these had come too late.
[THE END] _ |
||