the plan of Antonia, who wished to enter the upper
sphere of her profession, to have a magnificent
apartment, a femme de chambre, a carriage, and to
enter the lists with our beautiful amphitryon, for
example — "

"She is not well enough made for that," cried the
illustrious beauty of the Cirque; "but she well
rinsed out the little d'Esgrignon all the same!"

"Ten days later, the little Croizeau, perched upon
his dignity, used something like this language to the
beautiful Antonia," resumed Desroches:

" 'My child, your literary shop is a hole, you are
becoming yellow in it, the gas will ruin your eyes;
you should get out of it, and here, now ! let us profit
by the occasion. I have found for you a young
woman who asks nothing better than to purchase
your reading-room. She is a little woman, quite
ruined, who has nothing left but to throw herself in
the river; but she has four thousand francs in cash,
and it would be better to make use of them to nour-
ish and bring up two children — '

" 'Well, you are very amiable, Papa Croizeau' "
said Antonia.

" 'Oh! I shall be much more amiable presently,'
replied the old coach-maker. 'Just imagine, that
that poor Monsieur Denisart has been so upset that it
has given him the jaundice — . Yes, that has



A MAN OF BUSINESS 315

affected his liver, as is always the case with sensi-
tive old men. He was wrong to be so sensitive. I
said to him: 'Be passionate if you like, good!
but sensitive, — stop there! one kills one's self — . '
I did not expect it, really, such an upsetting in a
man sufficiently strong, sufficiently wise to absent
himself while he was digesting from the house
of—'

" 'But who is it?' — asked Mademoiselle Chocar-
delle.

" 'That little creature with whom I dined left him
in the lurch, clean — . Yes, she forsook him without
notifying him in any other way than by a letter
without any spelling in it'

" 'See what it is, Papa Croizeau, to bore the
women! — '

" 'It is a lesson! fair lady,' replied the affection-
ate Croizeau. 'Meanwhile, I have never seen a man
in such a state of despair, ' said he. 'Our friend
Denisart can no longer tell his right hand from his
left; he no longer wishes to see that which he calls
the theatre of his happiness—. He has so com-
pletely lost his senses, that he proposed to me to
buy for four thousand francs all the furniture of
Hortense — . Her name is Hortense!'

" 'A pretty name,' said Antonia.

" 'Yes, it was that of the step-daughter of Napo-
leon. I furnished her her equipages, as you know.'

" 'Well, come, I will see, ' said the clever Antonia ;
'begin by sending me your young woman — '

"Antonia hastened to see the furniture, returned



316 A MAN OF BUSINESS

fascinated, and captivated Maxime by an enthusiasm
worthy of an antiquary. That very evening the
count consented to the sale of the reading-room.
The establishment, you understand, was in the
name of Mademoiselle Chocardelle. Maxime laughed
at the little Croizeau, who found him a pur-
chaser. The firm of Maxime and Chocardelle lost
two thousand francs, it is true, but what was this loss
in presence of four beautiful notes of a thousand
francs each ? — as the count said to me :

" 'Four thousand francs cash in hand! — there are
moments when one would sign eight thousand francs
of notes to have them !'

"The count went to see the furniture himself, on
the third day, having the four thousand francs about
him. The sale had been consummated, thanks to
the diligence of the little Croizeau, who pushed at
the wheel ; he had enclaiide the widow, as he said.
Concerning himself but little with this agreeable
old gentleman, who was going to lose a thousand
francs, Maxime wished to have all the furniture
carried immediately to an apartment taken in the
name of Madame Ida Bonamy, Rue Tronchet, in a
new house. Thus he had furnished himself in ad-
vance with several large furniture vans. Maxime,
enamored anew of the beauty of the furniture, which,
for an upholsterer, would have been worth six thous-
and francs, found the unhappy old man, yellow
with his jaundice, at the corner of the fire, his head
enveloped in two handkerchiefs and a cotton night-
cap over all, muffled up like a chandelier; collapsed,



A MAN OF BUSINESS 317

not able to speak, in short, so dilapidated that the
count was forced to negotiate with the valet de
chambre. After having paid over the four thousand
francs to the valet de chambre, who carried them to
his master so that he might give a receipt for them,
Maxime was about to order his people to bring up
the furniture vans; but he heard at that moment a
voice which sounded in his ears like a rattle, and
which cried to him :

" 'It is unnecessary, Monsieur le Comte; we are
even ; I have six hundred and thirty francs and fif-
teen centimes to hand over to you !'

"And he was quite aghast to see Cerizet issue
from his wrappings, like a butterfly from his larva,
offering to him his cursed bundle of papers, and
adding:

"'In my misfortune I learned to play comedy,
and I can equal Bouffe in the old men.'

" 'I am in the forest of Bondy!' cried Maxime.

" 'No, Monsieur le Comte, you are in the house of
Mademoiselle Hortense, the friend of the old Lord
Dudley, who concealed her from everybody; but she
has the bad taste to love your servant. '

" 'If ever,' said the count to me, 'I had a desire to
kill a man, it was at that moment; but what would
you have ! Hortense showed me her pretty head ; it
was necessary to laugh, and to preserve my super-
iority. I said to him, throwing him the six hundred
francs: 'This is for the lady.'

"'That is just like Maxime!' cried La Pal-
ferine.



'■/,„,,.,/,/../ /■• ■■




IN THE RUE DE LA VICTOIRE



Gazonal gave his hand to the actress down to the
closed carriage which was waiting for her, and he
pressed it so tenderly that Jennie Cadine replied,
shaking her fingers :

"Eh, I have no spare ones/"

When they were in the carriage, Gazonal under-
took to take Bixiou by the waist, exclaiming :

"She has bitten! — Yon are a fine scoundrel — "



TO MONSIEUR LE COMTE JULES T>E CASTELLANE



21 (321)



THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS



Leon de Lora, our celebrated landscape painter,
is a member of one of the most noble families of
Roussillon, Spanish in origin, and which, admirable
as it is by the antiquity of the race, has for the last
hundred years been devoted to the proverbial poverty
of the Hidalgoes. Arrived light-footed in Paris from
the department of the Pyrenees-Orientales, with the
sum of eleven francs for his entire viaticum, he had
there, in some measure, forgotten the sorrows of
his childhood and of his family in the midst of the
miseries which are never lacking to the struggling
students of painting, whose entire fortune consists
in an intrepid vocation. Then the cares of glory
and those of success furnished additional causes for
forgetful ness.

If you have followed the sinuous and capricious
course of these Studies, perhaps you will remember
Mistigris, pupil of Schinner, one of the heroes of A
Start in Life— SCENES OF PRIVATE LIFE— and his
appearances in some other Scenes. In 1845, the
landscape painter, emulous of the Hobbemas, of the
Ruysdaels, of the Lorrains, no longer resembles the

(323)



324 THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS

denuded and brisk rapin whom you have seen above.
An illustrious man, he now possesses a charming
house in the Rue de Berlin, not far from the Hotel de
Brambourg, in which dwells his friend Bridau, and
near the house of Schinner, his first master. He is a
member of the Institute and an officer of the Legion of
Honor; he is thirty-nine, he has an income of
twenty thousand francs, his canvases are purchased
at their weight in gold, and, that which seems to
him more extraordinary than to be invited some-
times to the Court balls, his name, thrown so often
for the last sixteen years by the press to the winds
of all Europe, has finally penetrated into the valley
of the Pyrenees-Orientales, where vegetate three
veritable Loras, his eldest brother, his father and an
old paternal aunt, Mademoiselle Urraca y Lora.

In the maternal line, there remained to the painter
only a cousin, a nephew of his mother, of the
age of fifty, the inhabitant of a little manufacturing
city of the department. This cousin was the first
to remember Leon. In 1840, for the first time, Leon
de Lora received a letter from Monsieur Sylvestre
Palafox-Castel Gazonal, known simply as Gazonal,
to which he replied that it was indeed he, that is to
say, the son of the late Leonie Gazonal, wife of the
Comte Fernand Didas y Lora.

The cousin, Sylvestre Gazonal, went in the fine
season of 1841 to inform the illustrious unknown
family of the Loras that the little Leon had not
departed for the Rio de la Plata, as they believed;
that he was not dead, as they believed, and that he



THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS 325

was one of the finest geniuses of the French School,
which they did not believe. The eldest son, Don
Juan de Lora, said to his cousin Gazonal that he
was the victim of some joker in Paris.

Now, the said Gazonal proposing to go to Paris in
order to follow up a legal process which, through a
contest, the prefect of the Pyrenees-Orientales had
wrested from the ordinary jurisdiction of the
province to carry it up to the Council of State, the
provincial promised himself to clear up the matter
and to demand a reason for his impertinence from
the Parisian painter. It happened that Monsieur
Gazonal, putting up in a poor lodging in the Rue
Croix-des-Petits-Champs, was astonished to see the
palace in the Rue de Berlin. When he learned that
the master was traveling in Italy, he renounced for
the moment his demanding reason, and doubted if
his maternal relationship would be recognized by
the celebrated man.

From 1843 to 1844 Gazonal followed his lawsuit.
This contest, which related to a question of the
course and of the height of the water, of the erection
of a dam, in which the administration was inter-
ested, sustained by the dwellers on the banks of the
river, menaced the very existence of the manufac-
tory. In 1845, Gazonal considered this case as
entirely lost, the secretary of the Maitre des Re-
queues charged with making the report having con-
fided to him that this report would be opposed to his
contentions, and his advocate having confirmed it to
him. Gazonal, though commandant in the National



326 THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS

Guard of his city and one of the most skilful manu-
facturers of his department, found so little in Paris,
he was so dismayed at the dearness of living and at
the least trifles, that he kept himself secluded in his
poor little hotel. This Southerner, deprived of his
sun, execrated Paris, which he denominated a man-
ufactory of rheumatisms. In counting up the
expenses of his lawsuit and of his sojourn, he prom-
ised himself that, when he returned, he would either
poison the prefect or he would make a cuckold of
him! In his moments of sadness he killed the pre-
fect; in his moments of gayety, he contented him-
self with minotaurising him.

One morning, at the end of his dejeuner, fuming
and swearing, he took up furiously his newspaper.
These lines, which terminated an article, "Our
great landscape painter, Leon de Lora, who returned
from Italy a month ago, will exhibit several canvases
at the Salon; thus the exposition will be, as may
be seen, very brilliant, — " struck Gazonal as if that
voice which speaks to gamblers when they win had
sounded in his ear. With that promptness of action
which distinguishes the people of the South, Ga-
zonal leaped from the hotel into the street, from the
street into a cabriolet, and went to the Rue de Ber-
lin, to see his cousin.

Leon de Lora sent word to his cousin Gazonal
that he invited him to dejeuner at the Cafe de Paris
for the next day, for he was at that moment occu-
pied in such a manner that it would be impossible
for him to receive him. Gazonal, like a true man



THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS 327

of the South, related all his troubles to the valet de
chambre.

The next morning, at ten o'clock, Gazonal, too
well arrayed for the occasion — he had put on his
blue-bottle coat with gilded buttons, a shirt with
a jabot, a white vest and yellow gloves — waited for
his amphitryon while walking up and down for an
hour on the boulevard, after having learned from the
cafetier — title of the cafe proprietors in the prov-
inces — that these messieurs usually breakfasted
between eleven o'clock and noon.

"About half-past eleven, two Parisians, like
simple priests," he said, when he afterwards related
his adventures to those of his locality, "and who
had a general air of nothing at all, exclaimed on
seeing me on the boulevard: 'Behold thy Ga-
zonal!—"

This speaker was Bixiou, with whom Leon de
Lora had provided himself to mystify his cousin.

" 'Do not disturb yourself, my dear cousin! I am
yours,' cried the little Leon, clasping me in his
arms," said Gazonal to his friends on his return.
"The dejeuner was splendid. And 1 thought I saw
double when I saw the number of gold pieces that it
took to pay the bill. Those people must make their
weight in gold, for my cousin gave thirty sols to the
waiter, a day's wages."

During this monstrous breakfast, seeing that
there were then consumed six dozen Ostende oys-
ters, six cutlets a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo,
a lobster mayonnaise, fresh peas, a croute aux



328 THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS

champignons, washed down with three bottles of Bor-
deaux, three bottles of champagne, plus the black
coffee, the liqueurs, without counting the hors-
d'oeuvre, Gazonal was magnificent in his fury
against Paris. The noble manufacturer complained
of the length of the four-pound loaves, of the height
of the houses, of the indifference of the passers-by for
each other, of the cold and of the rain, of the dearness
of the hackney-coaches, and all that so cleverly,
that the two artists conceived a lively friendship
for Gazonal and got him to describe his lawsuit.

"My suit," said he, using his r's thickly and ac-
centing everything provincially, "is something very
simple : they want my manufactory. I find here a
beast of an advocate to whom I give twenty francs
each time to keep his eye open, and I always find
him asleep. — It is a snail which rolls in its carrriage
and I go on foot. They trrick me shamefully; I do
nothing but run from one to the other, and I see that
I shall have to take a carrriage — .No one pays atten-
tion here but to the people who hide themselves in
their carrriages! — On the other hand, the Council of
State is a pile of drones who let their work be done
by some little scamps who are bribed by our prre-
fect — . There is my case ! — They want to get it, my
manufactory; very well, they shall have it! — and
they may come to terms with my workmen, of whom
there are a hundred, and who will make them
change their mind with a cudgel — "

"Come, cousin," said the landscapist, "how long
hast thou been here?"



THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS 329

"Since two years! — Ah! this business of the pre-
fect; he will pay dear for it; 1 will take his life and
I will give mine at the Court of Assizes — "

"Who is the Councilor of State who presides in
that section ?"

"A former journalist, who is not worth ten sols,
and who calls himself Massol !"

The two Parisians looked at each other.

"The Rapporteur? — "

"Still bigger rogue! he is a Maitre des Requetes,
prrofessor of something or other at the Sorbonne,
who has written something in a review, and for
whom I prrofess a disesteem the most prrofound — "

"Claude Vignon?" said Bixiou.

"That is he, — " replied the Southerner; "Massol
and Vignon ; there you have the social rright, with-
out rright, the Trestaillons of my prrefect. "

"There is some remedy," said Leon de Lora.
"Seest thou, cousin, everything is possible in
Paris, in good as in evil, just and unjust. Every-
thing is done there, everything is undone there,
everything is done over again there."

"To the devil if I stay ten seconds longer — ; it is
the most tedious place in Frrance. "

At this moment the two cousins and Bixiou were
promenading from one end to the other of that patch
of asphalt on which, between one and two o'clock,
it is difficult not to see passing some of those per-
sonages for whom Fame puts to her mouth one or
the other of her trumpets. Formerly, it was the
Place Royale, then the Pont Neuf, which enjoyed



330 THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS

this privilege, acquired to-day by the Boulevard des
Italiens.

"Paris, "said the landscape painter to his cousin,
"is an instrument on which it is necessary to know
how to play; and, if we remain here ten minutes I
will give you a lesson. There, now, look," said he
to him, lifting his cane, designating a couple who
came out of the Passage de POpera.

"What is that?" asked Gazonal.

That was an old woman with a bonnet which had
remained six months in stock, with a very preten-
tious gown, a shawl in faded plaid, who had evi-
dently lived for twenty years in a damp lodge,
whose greatly dilated cabas announced a social
position no higher than that of an ex-portress; next
a young girl, slender and thin, whose eyes, edged
with black lashes, no longer showed innocence,
whose complexion betrayed much weariness, but
whose face, of a pretty outline, was fresh, and
whose hair should be abundant; the forehead charm-
ing and audacious, the corsage thin; in two words,
a green fruit.

"That," replied Bixiou to him, "is a rat orna-
mented with its mother."

"A rat?— what is that?"

"This rat," said Leon, who nodded in a friendly
manner to Mademoiselle Ninette, "can gain for thee
thy suit."

Gazonal started, but Bixiou held him by the arm
since leaving the cafe, for he considered his face a
trifle too much inclined to redness.



THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS 331

"This rat, which is coming out from a rehearsal
at the Opera, goes home to get a thin dinner and will
comeback in three hours to dress itself, if it appears
this evening in the ballet, for to-day is Monday.
This rat is thirteen years old ; it is a rat already old.
In two years from now, this creature will be worth
sixty thousand francs on the Exchange; she will be
nothing or everything, a great danseuse or a mar-
cheiise, a famous name or a common courtesan.
She has been working since she was eight years
old. Such as you see her, she is worn out with
fatigue, she has broken her body this morning in
the dancing-class; she is coming out from a re-
hearsal in which evolutions are as difficult as the com-
binations of a Chinese puzzle; she will come back
this evening. The rat is one of the elements of the
Opera, for she is to the premiere danseuse what
the little clerk is to the notary. The rat, it is
hope. ' '

"Who produces the rat?" asked Gazonal.

"The porters, the poor, the actors, the dancers,"
replied Bixiou. "It is only the very deepest pov-
erty which will advise a child of eight years to
deliver her feet and her joints to the hardest tor-
ment, to remain virtuous till sixteen or eighteen,
entirely through speculation, and to keep at her
side a horrible old woman, as you put manure
around a pretty flower. You are going to see file
out, one after the other, all the talent little and great,
artists in blade and in flower, who elevate, to the
glory of France, that monument of all time called



332 THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS

the Opera, a reunion of the powers, the wills, the
geniuses which are only found in Paris — "

"I have already seen the Opera," replied Gazonal,
with a sufficient air.

"From the top of your bench at three francs, sixty
centimes," replied the landscapist, "as you have
seen Paris in the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, —
without knowing anything about it. — What were
they giving at the Opera when you went there?"

" William Tell."

"Good," returned the painter; "the grand duet
of Matilda should have given you pleasure. Well,
what, according to your ideas, would be the first thing
the cantatrice would do on leaving the stage?"

"She would— what?—"

"Sit down to eat two mutton cutlets nearly raw,
which her servant kept ready — "

"Ah! Bouffre!"

"La Malibran sustained herself with brandy,
and it was that which killed her. — Another thing!
You have seen the ballet; you are going to see it go
by here, in simple morning costume, without know-
ing that your suit depends on some of those legs?"

"My suit?—"

"There, cousin, see, what they call amarcheuse."

Leon pointed out one of those superb creatures
who, at twenty-five, have already lived sixty years,
of a beauty so real and so sure to be cultivated, that
they do not make it obvious. She was tall, walked
well, had the assured look of a dandy and her toilet
recommended itself by a ruinous simplicity.



THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS 333

"It is Carabine," said Bixiou, who made, as did
the painter, a slight salutation with his head, to
which Carabine replied with a smile.

"There is another who can shipwreck your pre-
fect."

"A marcheuse! but what is that?"

"The marcheuse is a rat of great beauty whom her
mother, false or true, has sold the day on which she
could not become either the first or the second or the
third figure of the dance, and when she has pre-
ferred the state of coryphee to any other, for the
great reason that after having employed her youth
in it she could not take any other ; she would be
rejected at the little theatres where dancers are
required; she would not have succeeded in the three
cities of France in which ballets are given; she
would not have had the money or the desire to go
abroad, for, know it, the great Parisian school of the
dance furnishes the entire world with dancers and
danseuses. Thus, for a rat to become a marcheuse,
that is to say, figurante of the dance, it is necessary
that she should have had some solid attachment
which detained her in Paris, a rich man whom she
did not love, a poor youth whom she loved too
much. This one whom you have just seen pass,
who will change her costume perhaps three times
this evening, as a princess, as a peasant woman, as
a Tyrolean, etc., has some two hundred francs a
month."

"She is better dressed than our prefect's wife — "

"If you go to see her," said Bixiou, "you will



334 THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS

find there a femme de chambre, cook and domestic ;
she occupies a magnificent apartment in the Rue
Saint-Georges; in short, she is, in the proportions
of the French fortunes of to-day with the ancient
ones, the successor to the fille d 'Opera of the eigh-
teenth century. Carabine is a power, she governs
at this moment Du Tillet, a banker who is very in-
fluential in the Chambers — "

"And above these two steps of the ballet what
else is there?" asked Gazonal.

"Look!" said his cousin to him, showing him an
elegant calash which was passing at the end of the
boulevard, in the Rue de la Grange-Bateliere, "there
is one of the premiers sujets of the dance, whose name
on the poster attracts all Paris, who earns sixty
thousand francs a year, and who lives like a princess :
the price of your manufactory would not be enough
to buy the right to say good-day to her thirty times. "

"Eh ! well, I can say it to myself ; that will not be
so dear!"

"Do you see," said Bixiou to him, "on the front
of the calash that handsome young man? it is a vis-
count who bears a fine name; it is her first gentle-
man of the chamber, he who conducts her business
with the newspapers, who carries the words of
peace or war each morning to the director of the
Opera, or who occupies himself with the applause
which salutes her when she comes on the stage or
when she leaves it."

"This, my dear Messieurs, is the final stroke; I
knew nothing at all of Paris."



THE INVOLUNTARY COMEDIANS 335

"Well, at least know all that can be seen in ten
minutes, in the Passage de l'Opera. Look!" said
Bixiou.

Two persons came out from the passage at this
moment, a man and a woman. The woman was
neither pretty nor ugly, her dress had that distinc-
tion of form, of cut and of color which reveals an
artist, and the man had sufficiently the air of a
singer.

"There," said Bixiou to him, "is a baritone and
a second premier sujet of the dance. The baritone
is a man of immense talent, but being only an
accessory to the score, he scarcely earns as much
as the dancer earns. Famous before Taglioni
and the Elssler appeared, the second sujet has pre-
served for us the character dance, the Mimic; if the