Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Six several times in the course of the day did M. Berthelini hurry thither in quest of the requisite permission for his evening’s entertainment; six several times he found the official was abroad. Léon Berthelini began to grow quite a familiar figure in the streets of Castel-le-Gâchis; he became a local celebrity, and was pointed out as “the man who was looking for the Commissary.” Idle children attached themselves to his footsteps, and trotted after him back and forward between the hotel and the office. Léon might try as he liked; he might roll cigarettes, he might straddle, he might cock his hat at a dozen different jaunty inclinations — the part of Almaviva was, under the circumstances, difficult to play.

  As he passed the market-place upon the seventh excursion the Commissary was pointed out to him, where he stood, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and his hands behind his back, to superintend the sale and measurement of butter. Berthelini threaded his way through the market stalls and baskets, and accosted the dignitary with a bow which was a triumph of the histrionic art.

  “I have the honour,” he asked, “of meeting M. le Commissaire?”

  The Commissary was affected by the nobility of his address. He excelled Léon in the depth if not in the airy grace of his salutation.

  “The honour,” said he, “is mine!”

  “I am,” continued the strolling-player, “I am, sir, an artist, and I have permitted myself to interrupt you on an affair of business. To-night I give a trifling musical entertainment at the Café of the Triumphs of the Plough — permit me to offer you this little programme — and I have come to ask you for the necessary authorisation.”

  At the word “artist,” the Commissary had replaced his hat with the air of a person who, having condescended too far, should suddenly remember the duties of his rank.

  “Go, go,” said he, “I am busy — I am measuring butter.”

  “Heathen Jew!” thought Léon. “Permit me, sir,” he resumed aloud. “I have gone six times already—”

  “Put up your bills if you choose,” interrupted the Commissary. “In an hour or so I will examine your papers at the office. But now go; I am busy.”

  “Measuring butter!” thought Berthelini. “Oh, France, and it is for this that we made ‘93!”

  The preparations were soon made; the bills posted, programmes laid on the dinner-table of every hotel in the town, and a stage erected at one end of the Café of the Triumphs of the Plough; but when Léon returned to the office, the Commissary was once more abroad.

  “He is like Madame Benoîton,” thought Léon, “Fichu Commissaire!”

  And just then he met the man face to face.

  “Here, sir,” said he, “are my papers. Will you be pleased to verify?”

  But the Commissary was now intent upon dinner.

  “No use,” he replied, “no use; I am busy; I am quite satisfied. Give your entertainment.”

  And he hurried on.

  “Fichu Commissaire!” thought Léon.

  CHAPTER II

  The audience was pretty large; and the proprietor of the café made a good thing of it in beer. But the Berthelinis exerted themselves in vain.

  Léon was radiant in velveteen; he had a rakish way of smoking a cigarette between his songs that was worth money in itself; he underlined his comic points, so that the dullest numskull in Castel-le-Gâchis had a notion when to laugh; and he handled his guitar in a manner worthy of himself. Indeed his play with that instrument was as good as a whole romantic drama; it was so dashing, so florid, and so cavalier.

  Elvira, on the other hand, sang her patriotic and romantic songs with more than usual expression; her voice had charm and plangency; and as Léon looked at her, in her low-bodied maroon dress, with her arms bare to the shoulder, and a red flower set provocatively in her corset, he repeated to himself for the many hundredth time that she was one of the loveliest creatures in the world of women.

  Alas! when she went round with the tambourine, the golden youth of Castel-le-Gâchis turned from her coldly. Here and there a single halfpenny was forthcoming; the net result of a collection never exceeded half a franc; and the Maire himself, after seven different applications, had contributed exactly twopence. A certain chill began to settle upon the artists themselves; it seemed as if they were singing to slugs; Apollo himself might have lost heart with such an audience. The Berthelinis struggled against the impression; they put their back into their work, they sang loud and louder, the guitar twanged like a living thing; and at last Léon arose in his might, and burst with inimitable conviction into his great song, “Y a des honnêtes gens partout!” Never had he given more proof of his artistic mastery; it was his intimate, indefeasible conviction that Castel-le-Gâchis formed an exception to the law he was now lyrically proclaiming, and was peopled exclusively by thieves and bullies; and yet, as I say, he flung it down like a challenge, he trolled it forth like an article of faith; and his face so beamed the while that you would have thought he must make converts of the benches.

  He was at the top of his register, with his head thrown back and his mouth open, when the door was thrown violently open, and a pair of new comers marched noisily into the café. It was the Commissary, followed by the Garde Champêtre.

  The undaunted Berthelini still continued to proclaim, “Y a des honnêtes gens partout!” But now the sentiment produced an audible titter among the audience. Berthelini wondered why; he did not know the antecedents of the Garde Champêtre; he had never heard of a little story about postage stamps. But the public knew all about the postage stamps and enjoyed the coincidence hugely.

  The Commissary planted himself upon a vacant chair with somewhat the air of Cromwell visiting the Rump, and spoke in occasional whispers to the Garde Champêtre, who remained respectfully standing at his back. The eyes of both were directed upon Berthelini, who persisted in his statement.

  “Y a des honnêtes gens partout,” he was just chanting for the twentieth time; when up got the Commissary upon his feet and waved brutally to the singer with his cane.

  “Is it me you want?” inquired Léon, stopping in his song.

  “It is you,” replied the potentate.

  “Fichu Commissaire!” thought Léon, and he descended from the stage and made his way to the functionary.

  “How does it happen, sir,” said the Commissary, swelling in person, “that I find you mountebanking in a public café without my permission?”

  “Without?” cried the indignant Léon. “Permit me to remind you—”

  “Come, come, sir!” said the Commissary, “I desire no explanations.”

  “I care nothing about what you desire,” returned the singer. “I choose to give them, and I will not be gagged. I am an artist, sir, a distinction that you cannot comprehend. I received your permission and stand here upon the strength of it; interfere with me who dare.”

  “You have not got my signature, I tell you,” cried the Commissary. “Show me my signature! Where is my signature?”

  That was just the question; where was his signature? Léon recognised that he was in a hole; but his spirit rose with the occasion, and he blustered nobly, tossing back his curls. The Commissary played up to him in the character of tyrant; and as the one leaned farther forward, the other leaned farther back — majesty confronting fury. The audience had transferred their attention to this new performance, and listened with that silent gravity common to all Frenchmen in the neighbourhood of the Police. Elvira had sat down, she was used to these distractions, and it was rather melancholy than fear that now oppressed her.

  “Another word,” cried the Commissary, “and I arrest you.”

  “Arrest me?” shouted Léon. “I defy you!”

  “I am the Commissary of Police,” said the official.

  Léon commanded his feelings, and replied, with great delicacy of innuendo —

  “So it would appear.”

  The point was too refined for Castel-le-Gâchis; it did not raise a smile; and as for the Commissary, he simply bade the singer follow him to
his office, and directed his proud footsteps towards the door. There was nothing for it but to obey. Léon did so with a proper pantomime of indifference, but it was a leek to eat, and there was no denying it.

  The Maire had slipped out and was already waiting at the Commissary’s door. Now the Maire, in France, is the refuge of the oppressed. He stands between his people and the boisterous rigours of the Police. He can sometimes understand what is said to him; he is not always puffed up beyond measure by his dignity. ’Tis a thing worth the knowledge of travellers. When all seems over, and a man has made up his mind to injustice, he has still, like the heroes of romance, a little bugle at his belt whereon to blow; and the Maire, a comfortable deus ex machinâ, may still descend to deliver him from the minions of the law. The Maire of Castel-le-Gâchis, although inaccessible to the charms of music as retailed by the Berthelinis, had no hesitation whatever as to the rights of the matter. He instantly fell foul of the Commissary in very high terms, and the Commissary, pricked by this humiliation, accepted battle on the point of fact. The argument lasted some little while with varying success, until at length victory inclined so plainly to the Commissary’s side that the Maire was fain to reassert himself by an exercise of authority. He had been out-argued, but he was still the Maire. And so, turning from his interlocutor, he briefly but kindly recommended Léon to get back instanter to his concert.

  “It is already growing late,” he added.

  Léon did not wait to be told twice. He returned to the Café of the Triumphs of the Plough with all expedition. Alas! the audience had melted away during his absence; Elvira was sitting in a very disconsolate attitude on the guitar-box; she had watched the company dispersing by twos and threes, and the prolonged spectacle had somewhat overwhelmed her spirits. Each man, she reflected, retired with a certain proportion of her earnings in his pocket, and she saw to-night’s board and to-morrow’s railway expenses, and finally even to-morrow’s dinner, walk one after another out of the café door and disappear into the night.

  “What was it?” she asked languidly. But Léon did not answer. He was looking round him on the scene of defeat. Scarce a score of listeners remained, and these of the least promising sort. The minute hand of the clock was already climbing upward towards eleven.

  “It’s a lost battle,” said he, and then taking up the money-box he turned it out. “Three francs seventy-five!” he cried, “as against four of board and six of railway fares; and no time for the tombola! Elvira, this is Waterloo.” And he sat down and passed both hands desperately among his curls. “O Fichu Commissaire!” he cried, “Fichu Commissaire!”

  “Let us get the things together and be off,” returned Elvira. “We might try another song, but there is not six halfpence in the room.”

  “Six halfpence?” cried Léon, “six hundred thousand devils! There is not a human creature in the town — nothing but pigs and dogs and commissaires! Pray heaven, we get safe to bed.”

  “Don’t imagine things!” exclaimed Elvira, with a shudder.

  And with that they set to work on their preparations. The tobacco-jar, the cigarette-holder, the three papers of shirt-studs, which were to have been the prices of the tombola had the tombola come off, were made into a bundle with the music; the guitar was stowed into the fat guitar-case; and Elvira having thrown a thin shawl about her neck and shoulders, the pair issued from the café and set off for the Black Head.

  As they crossed the market-place the church bell rang out eleven. It was a dark, mild night, and there was no one in the streets.

  “It is all very fine,” said Léon; “but I have a presentiment. The night is not yet done.”

  CHAPTER III

  The “Black Head” presented not a single chink of light upon the street, and the carriage gate was closed.

  “This is unprecedented,” observed Léon. “An inn closed by five minutes after eleven! And there were several commercial travellers in the café up to a late hour. Elvira, my heart misgives me. Let us ring the bell.”

  The bell had a potent note; and being swung under the arch it filled the house from top to bottom with surly, clanging reverberations. The sound accentuated the conventual appearance of the building; a wintry sentiment, a thought of prayer and mortification, took hold upon Elvira’s mind; and, as for Léon, he seemed to be reading the stage directions for a lugubrious fifth act.

  “This is your fault,” said Elvira: “this is what comes of fancying things!”

  Again Léon pulled the bell-rope; again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoes of the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriage entrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised and tremulous with wrath.

  “What’s all this?” cried the tragic host through the spars of the gate. “Hard upon twelve, and you come clamouring like Prussians at the door of a respectable hotel? Oh!” he cried, “I know you now! Common singers! People in trouble with the police! And you present yourselves at midnight like lords and ladies? Be off with you!”

  “You will permit me to remind you,” replied Léon, in thrilling tones, “that I am a guest in your house, that I am properly inscribed, and that I have deposited baggage to the value of four hundred francs.”

  “You cannot get in at this hour,” returned the man. “This is no thieves’ tavern, for mohocks and night rakes and organ-grinders.”

  “Brute!” cried Elvira, for the organ-grinders touched her home.

  “Then I demand my baggage,” said Léon, with unabated dignity.

  “I know nothing of your baggage,” replied the landlord.

  “You detain my baggage? You dare to detain my baggage?” cried the singer.

  “Who are you?” returned the landlord. “It is dark — I cannot recognise you.”

  “Very well, then — you detain my baggage,” concluded Léon. “You shall smart for this. I will weary out your life with persecutions; I will drag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in France, it shall be rendered between you and me. And I will make you a by-word — I will put you in a song — a scurrilous song — an indecent song — a popular song — which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howl through these spars at midnight!”

  He had gone on raising his voice at every phrase, for all the while the landlord was very placidly retiring; and now, when the last glimmer of light had vanished from the arch, and the last footstep died away in the interior, Léon turned to his wife with a heroic countenance.

  “Elvira,” said he, “I have now a duty in life. I shall destroy that man as Eugène Sue destroyed the concierge. Let us come at once to the Gendarmerie and begin our vengeance.”

  He picked up the guitar-case, which had been propped against the wall, and they set forth through the silent and ill-lighted town with burning hearts.

  The Gendarmerie was concealed beside the telegraph office at the bottom of a vast court, which was partly laid out in gardens; and here all the shepherds of the public lay locked in grateful sleep. It took a deal of knocking to waken one; and he, when he came at last to the door, could find no other remark but that “it was none of his business.” Léon reasoned with him, threatened him, besought him; “here,” he said, “was Madame Berthelini in evening dress — a delicate woman — in an interesting condition” — the last was thrown in, I fancy, for effect; and to all this the man-at-arms made the same answer:

  “It is none of my business,” said he.

  “Very well,” said Léon, “then we shall go to the Commissary.” Thither they went; the office was closed and dark; but the house was close by, and Léon was soon swinging the bell like a madman. The Commissary’s wife appeared at a window. She was a thread-paper creature, and informed them that the Commissary had not yet come home.

  “Is he at the Maire’s?” demanded Léon.

  She thought that was not unlikely.

  “Where is the Maire’s house?” he asked.

  And she gave him some rather vague information on that point.

  “Stay y
ou here, Elvira,” said Léon, “lest I should miss him by the way. If, when I return, I find you here no longer, I shall follow at once to the Black Head.”

  And he set out to find the Maire’s. It took him some ten minutes wandering among blind lanes, and when he arrived it was already half-an-hour past midnight. A long white garden wall overhung by some thick chestnuts, a door with a letter-box, and an iron bell-pull, that was all that could be seen of the Maire’s domicile. Léon took the bell-pull in both hands, and danced furiously upon the side-walk. The bell itself was just upon the other side of the wall, it responded to his activity, and scattered an alarming clangour far and wide into the night.

  A window was thrown open in a house across the street, and a voice inquired the cause of this untimely uproar.

  “I wish the Maire,” said Léon.

  “He has been in bed this hour,” returned the voice.

  “He must get up again,” retorted Léon, and he was for tackling the bell-pull once more.

  “You will never make him hear,” responded the voice. “The garden is of great extent, the house is at the farther end, and both the Maire and his housekeeper are deaf.”

  “Aha!” said Léon, pausing. “The Maire is deaf, is he? That explains.” And he thought of the evening’s concert with a momentary feeling of relief. “Ah!” he continued, “and so the Maire is deaf, and the garden vast, and the house at the far end?”

  “And you might ring all night,” added the voice, “and be none the better for it. You would only keep me awake.”

  “Thank you, neighbour,” replied the singer. “You shall sleep.”