Part 24

On his way back to the bear-room, the lawyer considered whether he ought to communicate to Christian the understanding he had entered into with Stenson, and concluded that he was, on the whole, bound to silence. He was, besides, not just now in a confidential humor. Agitated by a thousand strange thoughts and contradictory suppositions, his brain was as actively at work as if he had just been intrusted with a difficult suit full of important questions. The exact contrary was the case, for Stenson had prohibited him from even feeling curiosity. This interdict, however, was altogether null; M. Goefle could not at all impose silence upon the tumult of his hypotheses. However, Christian’s attitude made it easy for him to be reserved. Far from questioning him, the young man had forgotten all about their last conversation, and was absorbed by his comedy. He was, moreover, very much discouraged; and when the lawyer asked if he had arranged to do without his assistant, he answered that he had been trying in vain to do so for the last hour. He could, it is true, dispense with his services after a fashion; but at the risk of many accidents and undesirable omissions in the presentation of the piece. On the whole, he would have to make such heavy drafts on his brain and strength, and undergo such great fatigue, that he felt like giving up the whole thing.

“It is true,” he said to M. Goefle, who was trying to encourage him. “I give you my word that, to use a juggler’s phrase, the game is not worth the candle. In plain words, I should tire myself to death, without benefit to my reputation, and I should swindle the baron out of his money. Do you know what I intend to do, M. Goefle? Renouncing the idea of shining in this neighborhood, I shall bundle up all this luggage, and take up my line of march for some town where I can look up another assistant, competent to help me in representing, and pious enough to keep the oath which I shall exact from him, to drink nothing but water, even though all the mountains of Sweden should run down with wine!”

“The devil! the devil!” exclaimed M. Goefle, greatly discomposed at the idea of losing his fellow-lodger; “if I thought I could make these small gentlemen perform a little--but, pshaw! I never could learn it!”

“Nothing easier. Try. The forefinger in the head, the thumb in one arm, the middle finger in the other--that’s it! that’s it, exactly. Come, make a bow. Lift the hands towards heaven!”

“That’s easy enough! But to make the gestures match the words, and then to find something to say! I can only improvise monologue.”

“Well, that’s a great deal. Come, now, argue a case. Lift that arm, and forget that you are M. Goefle; keep your eye on the figure that you are directing. As you speak, the gestures that you would naturally make with your arms, and the whole carriage of your person, will be reproduced of themselves at your fingers’ ends. You only need to be convinced that the _burattino_ is a real person, and to transfer your individuality from yourself to him.”

“_Diantre!_ That is very easy for you to say; but without any practice--well, let’s try it. Suppose I am arguing,--what shall I argue, by the way?”

“Defend the baron from the charge of having caused the assassination of his brother!”

“Defend! I would rather argue against than for him.”

“If you are against him, you will be pathetic; if for him, you may perhaps be comic.”

“So be it,” said M. Goefle, extending the hand on which he held the marionette, and making it gesticulate. “Here goes; attend:

“What accusation can you bring against my client, you who reproach him for an action so simple and natural as merely the suppression of a troublesome member of his family? Why should he be blamed for that? When has it ever been expected that a man fond of money and display should pay regard to the vulgar consideration which you call the right to live? The right to live! We all claim it equally, and if we have the right to live, have we not also the right to live as we please? But if we cannot live without a considerable fortune, without the privileges of an elevated station; if we find that we should die of shame and mortification, fairly burst with ennui, to use a colloquial phrase, unless able to command luxury, castles, credit, and power; if all this is so, why, then, we possess the right, we demand the right, we seize the right, of removing from our path all obstacles whatever which may impede the most expansive, extensive, and radiant development of our whole moral and physical being. In our justification we may--”

“Higher!” interrupted Christian, who was laughing at the satirical argument of the lawyer.

“We may cite,” continued M. Goefle, elevating the pitch of his voice, “the traditions of ancient times, from Cain down to the great King Birger-Iarl, who starved his two brothers to death in the chateau of Nikœping. Yes, gentlemen, we point you to the ancient customs of the north, and, moreover, to the glorious example of the court of Russia of late years. Who of you will venture to weigh petty moralities against the great consideration of a reason of state? I say a reason of state, gentlemen. Do you know what that is?”

“Higher!” repeated Christian; “higher, M. Goefle!”

“A reason of state,” squealed M. Goefle, in a falsetto--for the range of his voice did not extend high at all--“a reason of state is, in my judgment--”

“Higher!”

“Go to the devil! I shall burst my pharynx! I’ve had enough, thank you, if I’ve got to scream in that way.”

“Why, no, my dear sir! I did not tell you to speak higher. I’ve been lifting up my arm to you this hour; you do not observe that if you hold the marionette down there at the level of your breast no one can see it, and that you will be playing exclusively for your own benefit. See here: your hand must be higher than your head. Come, now, let’s try a dialogue. I am the counsel on the other side, and I interrupt you in an excess of indignation, which I cannot restrain: ‘I absolutely cannot endure this any longer; and since the judges think proper to sit sleeping on the bench before such an abuse of the faculty of human speech, notwithstanding the specious eloquence of my illustrious and powerful adversary, I--’ Interrupt me, M. Goefle; you must always interrupt.”

“‘The counsel for the prosecution,’” said M. Goefle, “‘is not arguing at present.’ I am playing the judge, now.”

“Very good; but use another voice.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Yes, indeed; you have one hand free. Pinch your nose.”

“Good!” said M. Goefle, with a strong twang. “‘The counsel for the prosecution will speak in his own turn.’”

“Bravo! ‘I insist on speaking this moment! I demand the right of confounding the odious sophistry of the defence!--’”

“‘Odious sophistry!’”

“Capital! oh, capital! In an angry tone! Now I reply: ‘Orator without principle! I hand you over to the ban of Public Opinion!’ Give me a slap, M. Goefle.”

“What!--give you a slap?”

“Certainly, my lawyer, I mean; fair in the face, and let it be a loud one. The public always laughs at that sound. Hold tight with your fingers; I’m going to pull your cap off. Now we collar each other. Bravo! Pull the marionette off my fingers with yours, and throw it over into the audience. The children run after it, pick it up, examine it with admiration, and throw it back into the theatre. Take care and have it fall on its head; the public will almost burst with laughter. God only knows what for, but they always do it. Abuse and blows are a delightful spectacle to the crowd; and under cover of the laughter, your personage marches off the stage with a triumphant air.”

“And we have time to take breath! In good season, too; I have talked myself hoarse.”

“Take breath? Oh, not at all! The operators can never stop to take breath. We must hurry and take the actors for the next scene; and for fear the audience will lose its interest before an empty stage, we must keep up the dialogue, as if the actors who just went off were still quarrelling behind the scenes, or as if those on the point of coming on were chattering about what had just happened.”

“Plague on it! Why it’s a business that would wear out a horse!”

“I don’t deny it; still you get excited and warmed up, and keep on growing more and more spirited. Well, let us try another scene, M. Goefle. Let us bring out--”

“But I have had quite enough of it, I believe. Do you suppose I want to help you conduct the exhibition?”

“I thought you meant that you would help me this evening!”

“I? What! I go on the stage?”

“Who will know that it is you? The theatre will be set up immediately before the door of a room where no one is allowed to enter. There is a curtain between you and the audience; and, if necessary, you can mask yourself, if there is any risk of being met in the corridors as you go in or out.”

“True enough, nobody sees you, nobody knows that you are there; but my voice, my pronunciation? Before I should have uttered a dozen words every one would say: ‘Good! that’s M. Goefle!’ A fine effect that would have, from a man of my age, practising a dignified profession! It’s impossible; don’t think of it.”

“It’s a great pity--you would succeed capitally!”

“Do you think so?”

“Most assuredly. You would have secured me a great success.”

“But that devil of a voice of mine, that everybody knows!”

“There are a thousand ways of changing that. I can show you three or four in a quarter of an hour, and that is more than you would need for this evening.”

“Well, what are they? If I were only sure that nobody would suspect me of such a piece of nonsense! Ah, there’s an instrument that I can see the use of--a nose-pinch! And this one is to be used in the mouth, either on the tongue or under it.”

“Oh no!” said Christian; “those are rude contrivances that Puffo uses. You are too intelligent to need them. Now listen, and imitate me.”

“Really,” said M. Goefle, after some experiments that were promptly successful, “it is not so bad! I used to act in private theatricals in my younger days, and I did as well as other people. I understand very well how to imitate a toothless old man, a drawling coxcomb, and a pedant that licks his lips at every word. Now, if you will not make me talk too much and fatigue my throat, I will go through three or four scenes with you. But we must have a rehearsal. What is the piece? Where is it? What’s the name?”

“Wait a minute, M. Goefle. I have a number of manuscripts that you would be ready with after reading them over once; especially since the one represented, summed up in few words, and written in large letters, is always hung up before us inside of the front of the theatre. But what I should like in playing with you is, to arrange a new piece, which would entertain you more, and would give scope to your faculty for improvising. Now, if you will take my opinion, we will go right to work, and get one up between us.”

“That’s an excellent idea!” said M. Goefle. “Well, quick, then! let’s sit down here; we can make room enough on this table. What shall the subject be?”

“Whatever you like.”

“Well, then, your own history, Christian; or at least some parts of it, just as you told it to me.”

“No, M. Goefle, my history is not an amusing one, and it would not inspire me with any brilliant fancies. The only romantic part of it is just that which I am myself ignorant about, and I have often taken this as the basis of my Stentarello’s adventures. Stentarello, you know, is a personage who adapts himself to all characters and all situations. Well, one of my fancies is to attribute to him a mysterious birth, such as mine was; and I often begin my pieces by making him narrate the precise circumstances of that story, whether true or false, which the little Jew told Sophia Goffredi. I have sometimes amused myself by the idea that I should some day hear an exclamation or a cry in the audience that would be the means of directing me to my mother. But that is a mere fancy. As for Stentarello, he is a comic individual, sometimes young and sometimes old, according as I nail a blond or a white wig on his head. Of course, in order to be laughed at, he must be ridiculous. In such a plot as I refer to, and which I propose that we should adopt, he goes about in search of his parents, taking it for granted that he is nothing less than the natural son of a king. Then the action of the piece takes him through a series of absurd adventures, in the course of which he makes various ridiculous blunders, until he ends by discovering that he is the son of a mere country clown; but by that time he has had so many mortifications, that he thinks himself fortunate to find food and shelter with his father.”

“Very good,” said M. Goefle, “we will make him an epicure, and the son of a cook or confectioner.”

“Exactly the thing. That’s the idea. Well, shall we begin?”

“Do you write, if you can do it legibly. My writing can hardly be read. My hand can’t keep up with the flow of my ideas, and I scratch away like a cat. The deuce--what a good hand! But what are you doing?”

“Putting down the _dramatis personæ_.”

“Yes, I see that; but you have written in the first act: _Stentarello in swaddling clothes?_”

“That is my idea. I am tired of making my poor Stentarello repeat the story of being let down by a cord out of a window into a boat. If you agree, I will paint that scene instead.”

“Paint it? But how the devil will you do it?”

“I have an old castle amongst my scenery here.”

“What good will that do?”

“I will transform it into Stollborg. We will give it another name, but I will use the same romantic view that struck me so forcibly on the lake at sunset, and of which I made a sketch.”

“You are going to paint?”

“Yes; while you write, whether well or ill, it makes no difference; I have deciphered such quantities of hieroglyphics with my poor Goffredi! Remember, we have very little time. I have whatever is necessary to change my scenes for the requirements of any special occasion. A little dissolved glue in a tin box, and a few bags of powdered paint of different colors, are enough. The canvas is no larger than the back of my theatre, and the colors dry in five minutes. That will be about as much time as I shall need to introduce a window into my square tower. See, Monsieur Goefle, in the first place I render it practicable by making a slit in the canvas with my shears, and then I warm my glue on the stove. With this charcoal I sketch that row of great boulders. Some of them hang over--I studied them carefully, for it is a wonderful group. I give the tone of ice to this foreground--oh no, it must be water, since we are to have a boat--”

“Where will you get it?”

“In the property-box there. Don’t you suppose I have a boat? There are ships, too, and carriages, and carts, and all kinds of animals. I could not get along at all without that collection of profiles that are necessary in all my pieces, and which take up very little room. Another idea, M. Goefle: I will put the boat in that vault under the boulders.”

“What for?”

“Why, because it will give us a splendid effect! We are to have a very mysterious birth for our infant, I suppose?”

“Of course.”

“Environed with perils?”

“Necessarily.”

“A natural child?”

“As you please about that.”

“A jealous husband? No, no adulterers! If this does really happen to be my own story, I should prefer not to be the fruit of an unlawful love. My mother--poor woman, I have perhaps nothing with which to reproach her--is saving me from the vengeance of some brother or savage uncle, capable of killing me in order to hide a discreditable or clandestine marriage.”

“Very good; I’ll be the Spanish nobleman--some implacable uncle who is trying to kill the child! The innocent creature is concealed in the bottom of the lake, at the risk of a little drowning, after having been thrown out of the window, to save it from all danger.”

“Oh, no, no, M. Goefle! you are altogether too fantastic! That is not my style at all. I always maintain a certain verisimilitude, even in romancing, for you can neither make people laugh nor cry with impossible situations. No, no, we must have some regular assassins, as ugly and grotesque as they can be made. While they are standing guard on top of the boulders, watching the window, the boat, which fortunately has already stealthily received its precious charge--that’s the regular style--glides noiselessly along beneath the rocks, under the very feet of the unsuspecting watch. The audience is affected, and all the more because it is laughing at the same time at the faces of the assassins--people like extremely to laugh and cry at the same time--and the curtain falls on the first act, amid thunders of applause!”

“Excellent, excellent!” said M. Goefle; “but, while you are moving the boat, will there be no person at the window?”

“Certainly. Have I not two hands? With the left I propel the skiff over the limpid waves, and with the right I hold up at the window the faithful waiting-woman, who has lowered down the basket, and who lifts towards heaven her pretty little wooden arms in an attitude of supplication, and prays in a sweet voice, ‘Divine Providence! watch over the child of mystery!’”

“Yes, but the mother; is she not to be seen?”

“No, that would not be the correct thing.”

“And the father?”

“The father is in Palestine. That is the place where we always send the people we don’t know what to do with.”

“That will do very well; but if there are to be assassins, a haughty Castilian uncle, and a faithful waiting-woman, Stentarello must belong to a noble family.”

“The devil! yes; how shall we arrange that?”

“It is perfectly easy. The child whom we lower from the window is the young Alonzo, son of the duchess. Stentarello is the son of his grace’s pastry-cook.”

“But what is the pastry-cook to do?”

“I don’t know. It’s your business to find that out. If you keep on painting you won’t help me at all.”

“But only see, M. Goefle, how beautifully my sky is coming out!”

“Too much so; it is too prominent.”

“You are right, so it is! What an eye you have, M. Goefle! I must bring up the color of my donjon, then, a little.”

“That will do very well. That rosy sky is just about right now, and gives a very good idea of the brilliant cloud effects that we have here. But that is not a Spanish sky, is it?”

“Well, why not lay the scene in Sweden?”

“Oh dear me, no! Don’t you see that as we have arranged the play, particularly with that view of Stollborg that you have been painting, a certain comparison might be suggested--if you should give your imagination free play?”

“With the story of the Baroness de Waldemora?”

“Might there not? In reality there would be no sort of similarity, since she had no child. But there are persons who might suppose that we were representing the pretended captivity of the _Gray Lady_. No, Christian, lay the scene in Spain; it will do much better.”

“Spain be it, then! Well, the pastry-cook has a son, just born, who is to grow up into the illustrious Stentarello. Now, the cook of the chateau, who has sent to this pastry-cook by order of the baron--”

“The baron?”

“That is your fault, you put the baron into my head by talking of your possible comparisons. Our traitor must be called Don Diego, or Don Sancho.”

“With all my heart. Now, the baron’s cook--There! I am as bad as you!--Don Sancho’s, I mean--what did he send to the pastry-cook?”

“A magnificent pie in a basket, to be baked.”

“I see, I see! He had placed this basket in the boat. The boatman, employed to carry off and preserve the Child of Mystery, does not notice it, and thus carries away two baskets; then he makes a mistake, and puts the pie out to nurse, and gives the pastry-cook the baby to bake.”

“So the good pastry-cook brings up both the children, or, rather, he mistakes and brings up the child of the duchess. Thus there arise endless entanglements, and we can go forward with confidence to our denouement. Courage, M. Goefle! the painting is done, and now for the pen again. Let us arrange the scenes. Scene First: The cook, solus.”

“Wait, Christian! Why not have the child quietly carried down by a staircase?”

“True, particularly as Stollborg has a secret staircase, but it was watched by the assassins.”

“Were they incorruptible?”

“No, but the duchess is very short of money, while the traitor has his pockets full.”

“Why don’t he go himself to the tower where his victim is imprisoned, and throw the child out of the window, without so much ceremony?”

“I really don’t know. We must make it out that the child is not yet born, and that they are waiting for the fatal moment.”

“That will do very well! The child, then, must be born at the very moment that Don Sancho enters the donjon and ascends the stairs. Paquito, the waiting-woman, lowers down the infant that has just seen the light. But tell me, is the child to be visible?”

“Certainly. I am going to paint it in its cradle. There’s a string for the rope. All those things are cut out in profile; they are to be seen from a distance.”

“So the traitor, to his great disappointment, finds the bird flown. What does he do? Shall we make him fall out of the window and break his skull on the rocks?”

“Oh no! Keep that for the catastrophe of the piece; it’s a capital one.”

“Very well then, in his rage he kills his unhappy niece. A cry is heard, and the murderer appears at the window, exclaiming: ‘My honor is avenged!’--”

“His honor! I would rather have him say: ‘My fortune is made!’”

“Why?”

“Because he is the heir of the duchess. We must not make him a scoundrel by halves, since we are to fracture his skull for him at the end.”

“That is certainly very logical, but--”

“But what?”

“Why, that would be the exact history of Baron Olaus, as his enemies relate it. A female relative imprisoned, who disappears--”

“What difference does it make, as long as you are sure that the story is not true?”

“I am as sure as it is possible to be; and yet--do you know, with your mysterious voice, your idea of a prisoner in the vaults down below, your explanation of my last night’s vision, and your verses from the Bible, you have made me a perfect dreamer; my mind is filled with all sorts of strange notions.”

“But as there is every reason to believe that these notions are nothing more than the work of our own imaginations, we shall run no risk of offending any one. And besides, M. Goefle, even if, under my mask and with my assumed name of Christian Waldo, I should awaken unpleasant memories in the baron’s mind, please to tell me what difference that will make to me? or to you either, since you will be perfectly incognito as well as myself--”

“But it will be easy for the baron to have me watched and discovered;--he has only to give orders to some of those rascally servants of his--”

“Oh, if you are to be exposed to any real danger, let us give it up at once; but in that case we must choose another subject immediately.”

M. Goefle was silent, and absorbed in thought for some moments, greatly to the annoyance of the impatient Christian, who saw with anxiety the steady advance of the hands of the clock. At last, the advocate, striking his forehead, and jumping up with a certain nervous excitement of manner, cried out, as he began to pace rapidly up and down the room: