"Oh, yes! catch us relying on Monsieur Chambourdin!" said Madame Dufournelle; "I have made my own costume; I have the part of a cook, and I have borrowed my servant"s cap."
Monsieur Camuzard, who was annoyed because no part had been given to him, kept repeating:
"You will be very lucky if someone does not fail you when it"s time to begin. On such an occasion as this, accidents always happen, sudden indispositions, just as they do at the theatre. I offered to take part, but they didn"t want me."
"But you are to prompt, you know, Monsieur Camuzard; you prompt so well!"
"I am willing to prompt one play, but not three; that is too tiresome."
"I will prompt as many as you please," said stout Dufournelle; "don"t be afraid, I am solidly built, and my breath won"t give out."
Monsieur Camuzard, seeing that the post of prompter was about to escape him, hastily rejoined:
"After all, when I have got started, it won"t be any more trouble to prompt all three plays."
"Let"s rehea.r.s.e, my friends, let"s rehea.r.s.e, let"s not lose any more time," said Monsieur Glumeau. "The two short pieces go well enough, but _Roderic et Cunegonde_ doesn"t go well at all. There is so much stage play. Astianax, go and get the wooden swords, so that we may rehea.r.s.e the fights also."
"Do you expect much company this evening?" asked Madame Dufournelle.
"Well, I should say so! A most select audience; I have invited more than a hundred people, more or less; journalists, artists; I don"t count the people of the village and the neighborhood, who come to see the play.
When I don"t allow them to enter, they raise the devil; they besiege the place and break down my trellis."
"They represent the audience in the upper gallery in the theatres in Paris; they are often the best judges of the performance."
"Astianax, did you ask your neighbor, Monsieur Jericourt, to come?"
"Yes, papa, and he will bring one of his friends, a young man you would take for a tailor"s model, he is so well dressed: Monsieur Arthur de Saint-Alfred--no, I am wrong, it is Alfred de Saint-Arthur."
"Saint-Arthur! Alfred! that gentleman must be a humbug!"
"I a.s.sure you, madame, that he is a very good-looking fellow; at the theatre he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium boxes!"
"As he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium," said Dufournelle, "he is necessarily a young man of very high station."
"Let"s rehea.r.s.e, my friends, let us rehea.r.s.e."
"But we are not all here yet, young Kingerie and Monsieur Fourriette the druggist are still missing."
"I d--d--don"t want to f--f--fight with Monsieur F--F--Fourriette!" said Mademoiselle Eolinde; "he always. .h.i.ts me on the f--f--fingers with his sword."
"The trouble is that he puts too much action into his part; these druggists are generally very warm, especially as they are almost always from the South. Why is it that the South supplies more druggists and more apothecaries than the North? That is a question I have often asked myself. What do you say upon that point, messieurs?"
"It seems to me easy enough to understand," said Monsieur Dufournelle.
"It"s because sun dials are always placed in the south."
"Oh! excellent! excellent!"
"I don"t understand the joke," said Monsieur Camuzard, blowing his nose.
At last, Messieurs Kingerie and Fourriette appeared on the road; the first, as awkward as ever, began by upsetting a box of cactus which stood in a path where there was much more room than he required. As for the druggist, a dark-haired, very good-looking youth, he was all curled and perfumed, and made eyes at all the ladies, to whom he did not fail to offer pastilles which he had made himself.
"Take care, madame, take care," said Dufournelle, "it is very imprudent to accept monsieur"s pastilles; you don"t know what he may have put in them! He is quite capable of giving you something that will make you fall in love with him."
"If I knew that secret, I should not fail to make use of it," said Monsieur Fourriette, still offering his box and smiling at the ladies.
"Well! I don"t care, I will take the risk!" said Mademoiselle Mangeot, putting her fingers in the bonbonniere.
"It seems to me," said Mademoiselle Dufournelle in an undertone, "that she isn"t the one who is taking the risk at this moment!--Well, I will take the risk myself."
"Let"s rehea.r.s.e, my friends, let"s rehea.r.s.e; just see how the time is pa.s.sing; let us go to the theatre at once, we are all here."
"All except the three robbers with speaking parts."
"We will omit that scene."
"And the child,--we must have the child, we must make sure that he knows his part."
"Astianax, go and fetch little Codinde, the gardener"s son."
"Here"s the gardener himself coming this way; he looks as if he wanted to speak to you."
"The deuce! the fellow looks to me as if he had already had a touch of sunstroke."
Monsieur Pichet, the gardener, was in fact approaching the company, and as he was quite conscious of the fact that his legs wavered under him, he was walking very slowly to maintain his equilibrium, and was trying hard to keep his head back and his body upright.
"Pichet, go and get little Codinde, your son," said Monsieur Glumeau; "we want him for the rehearsal; go at once."
Instead of obeying his master and fetching Codinde, the gardener tried to straighten himself up, and answered in a thick voice:
"It"s impossible, monsieur; it"s impossible! Codinde is just what I wanted to talk to monsieur about."
"Can it be that anything has happened to him?"
"An attack of indigestion has happened to him; we thought he was going to choke to death; he was purple."
"The devil take you! Why do you stuff your son so"s to make him sick?"
"It wasn"t us, monsieur; the little glutton stuffs himself. As there"s a celebration going on in the house, he must have found lots of things to eat; bless my soul! children, you know, they ain"t reasonable."
"And then, too, you set him such an excellent example!"
"Why, monsieur--I haven"t eaten as much as your thumb to-day, saving your presence."
"No, but you have drunk enough to make up for it."
"I"ve drunk very moderate; besides, wine never upsets me, I"m so used to it."
"So, Pichet, your son won"t be in condition to act to-night?"