CHAPTER I

Mademoiselle Georges' house--Harel and Jules Janin--Young Tom and Popol--The latter's prayer against cholera--Georges' Oriental style of living--Her cleanliness--Harel's fault to the contrary--Twenty-four thousand francs flung out of the window--Saint Anthony--Piaff-Piaff--His dissoluteness--His death--His funeral oration

My _Christine_ rehearsals had opened Mademoiselle Georges' house to me, as those of _Henri III._ had given me the entrée to that of Mademoiselle Mars.

The house that my good and excellent Georges occupied, No. 12 rue Madame, was, if I remember rightly, made up of very original inhabitants. First of all, in the attics lived Jules Janin, the second tenant. Then came Harel, the principal tenant, who lived on the second floor. And on the first and ground floors were Georges, her sister and her two nephews. One of these two nephews, who is now a tall, fine, clever-looking young fellow who bears the name of Harel, had for a long time figured regularly on his aunt's playbills, both in the provinces and in Paris, for she could not do without him, either at the theatre or about town.

My readers will recollect the phrase which never varied for five or six years running--

"Young Tom, aged ten, will take the part of," etc.

The other names would vary from that of Joas to that of Thomas Diafoirus; but the age never varied: young Tom was always ten.

We ought to be fair to young Tom; he hated acting and, every time he had to go on the stage, he would mutter between his teeth--

"Curse the theatre! If only it could be burnt down!"

"What is that you are saying, Tom?" Mademoiselle Georges would ask.

"Nothing, aunt," Tom would reply; "I am only repeating my part."

His brother Paul, who was called "le petit Popol," was by far the funniest looking object that was ever seen: he had a charming head, with fine dark eyes and long chestnut hair, but his body was too small to carry the head. This disproportion gave the child a very grotesque appearance: he was immensely clever, a gourmand like Grimod de la Reynière, and the very opposite of Tom in that he would have stuck to the stage all his life, if he could only have managed to get plenty to eat thereby.

At the time when I first became acquainted with him, he was only a little monkey of six or seven years of age, and already he had devised a way of establishing a credit account at the café at the corner of the rue de Vaugirard and the rue de Molière, by means of all sorts of ingenious excuses. One fine day it was found out that little Popol's account amounted to a hundred crowns! In three months he had run through three hundred francs' worth of all kinds of confectionery and drinks, which he had asked for in his mother's name, or in that of his aunt, and which he had eaten or drunk on staircases, in corridors or behind doorways. He it was who, in _Richard Darlington_, was placed in such a manner as to make him appear the height of an ordinary man, representing the Speaker of the House of Commons. In this capacity he had a bell at his right hand and a glass of eau sucrée at his left; he rang the bell with the gravity of M. Dupin, and drank the glass of eau sucrée with the dignity of M. Barrot. The little beggar never would learn his prayers, and this gave the Voltairian Harel immense delight; however, all at once (it was during an epidemic of cholera), they found out that little Popol said a prayer, morning and evening, which he had, no doubt, improvised to suit the occasion.

They were curious to know what this prayer was and, hiding themselves to listen, overheard the following:--

"O Lord God! take my Aunt Georges; take my Uncle Harel; take my brother Tom; take mamma Bébelle; take my friend Provost, but leave little Popol and the cook!"

But the prayer did not bring the poor little fellow the luck he fervently wished: cholera took him, and carried him off, with fifteen hundred others in the same day.

We have said who his brother Tom was; we have all seen how "mamma Bébelle" acted under the name of Georges the younger: now let us say a few words about Aunt Georges, the most beautiful woman of her day, and about Uncle Harel, the wittiest man of his time.

Well, Georges' aunt was a splendid-looking creature of about forty-one. We have already given a sketch of her portrait by the clever pen of Théophile Gautier. Her hands and arms and shoulders, her neck, teeth and eyes, were of indescribable charm and beauty; but, like the lovely fairy Melusina, there was a certain weariness visible in her movements which was increased by the wearing of far too long dresses--why, I know not, for her feet were as lovely as her hands.

Mademoiselle Georges' idleness, except in matters connected with the theatre, wherein she was always alert, was incredible, Tall and majestic, aware of her beauty, with two emperors and three or four kings for admirers, Georges loved to lie on a big couch, in velvet robes, furred pelisses and Indian cashmere shawls, during winter; in summer, in teagowns of batiste or muslin. Thus extended, in a pose that was always careless and graceful, Georges received the visits of strangers, sometimes with the majesty of a Roman matron, at others with the smile of a Grecian courtesan; whilst from between the folds of her dress, the openings of her shawls and the skirts of her teagowns, there would peep out the heads of two or three hares of the very best breed, looking like as many snakes' heads. Georges' love of cleanliness was proverbial: she would perform a preliminary toilet before she entered her bath, so as not to soil the water in which she stayed for an hour; here she received her familiar friends, fastening up her hair with golden pins, from time to time, when it came down; her splendid arms uplifted entirely free of the water, her throat and bosom seeming as though sculptured in Parian marble. And it was a singular thing that these actions, which in another woman would have been provocative and lascivious, were simple and natural in Georges, like those of a Greek of the time of Homer or Phidias; as beautiful as a statue, she looked simply like a statue surprised at its own nudity, and she would, I am sure, have been much surprised if a jealous lover had forbidden her to show herself thus in her bath, where, like a sea-nymph, she made the water heave with the motion of her shoulders and her white breasts.

Georges made everybody round her clean in his habits except Harel. But Harel was another matter altogether. Cleanliness meant an immense sacrifice to him, and this sacrifice he would only make under strong pressure and constraint. So Georges, who adored him, and could not do without his delightfully witty chatter at her ears incessantly, declared to all comers that it was only his mind she loved, and that, as to the rest of his personality, she left him free to do what he liked with it.

At that period Georges still possessed magnificent diamonds and, among them, two buttons which had been given her by Napoleon and which were each worth nearly twelve thousand francs. She had had them set as earrings and wore them in preference to all others. These buttons were so large that Georges very frequently, on returning home in the evening, after acting, took them off, complaining that they pulled her ears down. One evening, we returned with her and sat down to supper. When supper was over, we ate almonds; Georges ate a great number and, whilst eating, complained of the weight of these earrings, took them out of her ears and laid them on the tablecloth. Five minutes later, the servant came, brush in hand, to brush the crumbs off the table, swept earrings and almond shells together into a basket, and both earrings and shells were thrown clean out of the window into the street. Georges went to bed without remembering her earrings, and slept peacefully; philosophic though she was, she would certainly not have done this if she had known that her servant had thrown twenty-four thousand francs' worth of diamonds out of the window.

Next day, Georges the younger came into the room to wake her sister.

"Well," she said, "you may well boast of being lucky indeed! Look what I have just found."

"What is it?"

"One of your earrings."

"Where did you pick that up?"

"In the street."

"In the street?"

"Yes, my dear ... in the street, at the door.... You must have lost it when you came back from the theatre."

"No, I had them on at supper."

"Are you sure of it?"

"So sure that, because they tired me, I took them out and laid them by my side. What can I have done with them afterwards? ... Where can I have put them?"

"Why, good gracious!" exclaimed Georges the younger. "I remember now: we were eating almonds and the servant swept the table with the brush."

"Ah! my poor earrings!" cried Georges, in her turn. "Go downstairs quickly and look, Bébelle!"

Bébelle was already at the bottom of the staircase and, five minutes later, she returned with the second earring, which she had found in the gutter.

"My darling," she said to her sister, "we are very lucky. Have a mass said, or some great misfortune will overtake us."

We have referred to Harel's dislike of cleanliness: it was universally well known, and he himself took a kind of pride in it; he was a man who delighted in contradictions and it amused him to enlarge upon this odd superiority. When he saw Georges lying on her couch surrounded by her well washed and combed dogs with their morocco leather collars round their necks, he sighed with ambition. For his ambition--and it was one he had often expressed but never realised--was to keep a pig! He considered Saint Anthony was the happiest of saints and, like him, he was ready to retire into a desert if Providence would condescend to allow him the same companion. As Harel's birthday approached, Georges and I decided to crown his modest desires: we purchased for twenty-two livres _tournois_ a pig three or four months old; we put a diamond crown upon its head, a bouquet of roses at its side, rings of precious stones round its feet and, conducting it in state like a bride, we entered the dining-room at what we believed to be the most suitable moment to favour Harel with this sweet surprise. At the cries the new arrival uttered, Harel at once abandoned his conversation with Lockroy and Janin, attractive though it was, and ran towards us. The pig held a complimentary letter in one of its feet which it presented to Harel. Harel leapt upon his pig--for he guessed instantly that the pig was for him--pressed it to his heart, rubbed his nose on its snout, made it sit next him in Popol's high chair, tied it in the chair with one of Georges' scarves and began to stuff it with all sorts of dainties. The pig was christened there and then, and received from Harel (who vowed to undertake the obligations of a godfather towards his godchild) the euphonious name of Piaff-Piaff. That very night, Harel retired to his second storey with Piaff-Piaff and, as nobody had thought of the animal's bed, Harel carried away with him one of Georges' velvet gowns and made a litter of it for the pig. This theft led next day to a tremendous altercation between Georges and Harel, in which we, who were called in to judge between the two, sentenced Harel to pay Georges two hundred francs' indemnity for the night's use. The dress was sent to a shop, and page-boys' costumes were made out of it. Harel's love for his pig became quite fanatical. One day he came up to me at a rehearsal and said--

"Do you know, my dear fellow, I am so fond of my pig that I sleep with him!"

"So I understand," I replied. "I have just met your pig, who told me exactly the same thing."

I believe this was the only quip to which Harel never found a retort.

In common with all over petted animals, Piaff-Piaff grew conscious of his power, abused it, and one day things ended by turning out very badly for him. Piaff-Piaff, well fed, well housed, constantly petted, sleeping with Harel, attained to the honourable weight of a hundred and fifty pounds; which--for we calculated it--was fifty pounds more than Janin weighed, thirty pounds more than Lockroy, ten pounds more than I, fifty-five pounds less than Eric Bernard; it was decreed in a council from which Harel was excluded, that when Piaff-Piaff reached the weight of two hundred pounds he should be made into black pudding and sausages. Unfortunately for himself, each day he committed some fresh depredation in the house, which led to a general threat to hasten the hour of his demise, and yet, in spite of all these ill deeds, Harel's worship of Piaff-Piaff was so well known that the strictest resolutions always ended by granting him pardon. But, one day, Piaff-Piaff was prowling round a kind of cage where a magnificent pheasant was kept that I had given to Tom; the pheasant had the imprudence to poke its neck through two bars to peck at a grain of corn, and Piaff-Piaff stretched out his snout and bit off the pheasant's head. Tom was only a few steps off, saw the deed accomplished, and set up loud shrieks. But the pheasant, when decapitated, was only fit to be roasted. Piaff-Piaff, in attacking everybody else, had had the sense to respect Tom's property; he had, as we have said, frequently benefited by the plea of extenuating circumstances, but this last clumsy outrage left him no sympathiser, however eloquent, who could save him from being killed. Georges emphatically declared that he deserved death and no one, not even Janin, dared contradict the sentence. Judgment declared, it was decided to take advantage of Harel's absence to put it into execution, and, whilst everybody was hot against the offender, the butcher was sent for and told to bring his knife. Five minutes later, Piaff-Piaff raised shrieks loud enough to rouse the whole neighbourhood. The street door was held fast to keep Harel out if he happened to come back at that moment; but we had forgotten that the garden possessed an exit to the Luxembourg and that Harel might come in that way. Suddenly, as Piaff-Piaff was uttering the doleful notes which signified that his death was drawing near at hand, the door opened and Harel appeared, crying out--

"What are you doing to my poor Piaff-Piaff? What is the matter with him?"

"Well," said Georges, "your horrid Piaff-Piaff had grown too unbearable."

"Ah! poor animal! poor beast!" cried Harel; "they are cutting his throat!" Then, after a moment's pause, he said in sorrowful tones, "At any rate, I hope you told the butcher to put plenty of onions in the black pudding--I adore onions!"

And that was Piaff-Piaff s funeral oration.