The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul

by Albert Robida

  “What was the era of greatest prosperity for Turkey, the period of the expansion and the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire? Exactly the era in which polygamy was considered by everyone as an absolute religious duty. Turkey only began to decay when mores were relaxed and polygamy was no longer observed save by the aristocrats of the State, the pashas and the sultans.

  “That is why I say that the renewal of the Old World will come from the Mormon nation, and why I am ready to contribute to the full extent of my feeble means to the triumph of our great pacific and humanitarian ideal!”

  II.

  We have mentioned the emotion that Farandoul’s speech excited in the Mormon assembly. An attentive observer would have been able to remark that Brigham Young alone had not afforded the orator his share of felicitations, and that his face, smiling and cordial at the beginning of the meal, had gradually passed through all the shades of discontent. With thin lips and frowning eyebrows, he watched the Mormons crowd around the man he was beginning to see as a potential rival, and whom he was repenting of having welcomed so expansively.

  Meanwhile, one of the most venerable members of the audience asked to speak. “I only have a few words to say,” he cried, in an outburst of enthusiasm. “There is a bishop’s seat vacant on the Grand Council, and I propose that our eloquent friend Farandoul be elected to it immediately. Believe me, my candidate will do honor to the Mormon Church!”

  Thunderous applause greeted this motion. Brigham Young’s lips became even more pinched, his fists clenched and he made as if to rise to his feet, but a moment’s reflection stopped him. He fell back into his chair with a malevolent smile.

  “The entire Council of Elders is gathered at this table,” the orator went on. “We can vote by acclamation!”

  Every hand was raised, and a great clamor went up.

  “Farandoul, Mormon bishop!”

  Saturnin Farandoul had just been unanimously elected.

  “The honor that you do me is immense, and I shall try to be worthy of it!” cried our hero, who found himself suffocated by the handshakes and hugs of his friends and wives within the blink of an eye.

  This incident reminded him that he was the head of a family.

  “Honor to the ladies!” he said, “Crushed by the weight of all the favors that you have so generously heaped upon me, I have not been able to make the acquaintance of my wives. It would be unpardonable were I to forget any longer those who have consented to become the flowers of my fireside.”

  “Bravo! Bravo!” cried the entire audience. “We shall lead you triumphantly to your domicile. The municipal band awaits you in the street.”

  Brigham Young had disappeared, along with a few somber faces that had not joined in with the general joy.

  The elders took their places at the head of the procession. Farandoul and his wives, Mandibul and his and the families of the seamen followed behind. They set off to the strains of the Mormon national anthem, sung in chorus by the entire crowd:

  “Great King Solomon had 300 wives…” And so on.

  Farandoul’s villa was charming; the purest taste had presided over the furnishing of every room. After a few last acclamations released beneath the windows, the procession went on to install Mandibul and the sailors. An individual who seemed to be the master of ceremonies had left a piece of paper in Farandoul’s hands, which was a copy of his marriage certificate.

  “Very well!” said Farandoul. “I shall finally know the forenames of my lovely fractions! Let’s take a roll-call first, to check that there’s no error, and that none of Mandibul’s spouses have got mixed up with mine. Let’s begin:

  “Sidonie Brulovif, 26, born in Bordeaux.

  “Lodoïska Ratakowska, 30, born in Krakow.

  “Balthazarde Marcassoul, 18, born in Marseille.

  “Chloe Vanderboeuf, 30, born in San Francisco.

  “Athénaïs Plumet, 32, born in Paris.

  “Calypso Zanguebar, African, age and birthplace unknown.

  “Theodosia Niggins, 18, born in New York.

  “Cora Millington, 16, born in Chicago.

  “Dolores Castanetta, 22, born in Mexico.

  “Diana Pilkington, 17, born in Philadelphia

  “Pulcherie O’Cobbler, 35, born in Baltimore.

  “Angelina Farthing, 26, born in Dublin.

  “Olga Biscornoff, 22, born in St. Petersburg.

  “Juanita Pacheco, 18, born in Lima.

  “Clarisse Dickinson, 25, born in Liverpool.

  “Kaoula Ka-ou-lin, 28, born in Lichou-fou, near Peking.

  “Marguerite Schumacher, 20, born in Berlin.”

  No error was discovered; every woman replied to the roll-call, and Farandoul observed with satisfaction that they were in truth charming. Brigham Young had good taste; Saturnin made a mental note to thank him.

  The luggage arrived. Thoughtfully, Farandoul proceeded to unpack. In the course of his life, events had gone by with such rapidity that they had left him little time for reflection. Three weeks previously, he had still been in Brazil; he had spent an entire fortnight in a steamboat and six days on the railroad, taking only a little time to settle his affairs in New York. Finally, although he had only been a Mormon for six hours, he already had 17 wives ornamenting his household, and was already a bishop.

  A ringing bell drew him out of his reflections. The 17 wives disappeared, leaving him alone with his visitor. The latter had merely come to inform him that a meeting of the Council of Elders was to take place that evening and that Brigham Young requested the new bishop to honor it with his presence, if the fatigue of his journey would allow it.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Farandoul. And the indefatigable Saturnin, after a few words with his wives, went out on the heels of Brigham Young’s messenger.

  Alas, the hour of tranquility, after so many testing adventures, had not yet chimed for our hero. New perils were suspended over his head; the infamous Brigham Young, anxious and jealous, had judged it prudent to contrive the disappearance of a man who might become a dangerous rival for him.

  Night had fallen; our hero advanced along the somber avenue that led to the great Mormon Temple. Having no suspicion, he had not noticed that shadows were following him noiselessly, and that other shadows were lurking behind every tree.

  His thoughts were directed towards his 17 wives, and towards the happy future that was opening before him. There was no black dot on the horizon, no cloud in his sky…

  Suddenly, the call of an owl sounded behind him. A whirlwind of human beings fell upon his shoulders before he could look round, and—in spite of his desperate resistance—he was soon knocked down, bound and gagged. The men were masked. Even so, Farandoul thought he recognized two associates of Brigham Young that he had glimpsed at the banquet. He understood everything!

  Horses had been brought; the bandits attached Farandoul securely to the most spirited of the mounts, and leapt into the saddle in their turn. Without a word being spoken, the cavalcade set off at a gallop for open country.

  After a two-hour journey, they stopped on the edge of a wood. A few owl-hoots were released; others replied, and a second group of horsemen appeared.

  These riders were Redskins. In the moonlight, Farandoul glimpsed bizarre tattoos, further accentuating the ferocity of faces, fur jackets, war-bonnets ornamented by eagle- and vulture-feathers, and saddles garnished with horrible scalps.

  “Here’s the man!” said the leader of Brigham Young’s acolytes.

  “That’s good!” replied a tall Indian. “Our father the Paleface-with-a-hundred-wives is a great chief; his enemy shall die! The Apache warriors and the Palefaces of the Great Salt Lake are friends; the red warriors will be able to seek firewater in their city; the hatchet of war is buried forever. How!”

  The horse carrying Farandoul had been surrounded by the Indians. The two parties drew apart. They galloped all night. From time to time an Indian made sure of the solidity of the ropes retaining the captive. Farandoul slept. At daybreak, th
e horse’s abrupt halt woke him up; they had arrived.

  In the middle of a large clearing bordered by tall trees, the picturesque scene of a camp presented itself to his eyes, vaguely blurred by the morning mist. About 20 Indians were gathered around two fires, before which pieces of venison were roasting for the morning meal. Farandoul was able to admire the splendor of their war-paint, the strangeness of their costumes and the beauty of their weapons in broad daylight.

  The ropes that bound him to the horse were cut, and the prisoner, still bound but no longer gagged, was thrown on to a grassy mound and placed under the surveillance of two men. Then the whole troop, gathered in front of the fire, calmly began eating, without dreaming of offering anything to the captive. That did not please Farandoul, who was angered by a few jeers in the Apache language, whose meaning he had grasped without understanding the words.

  “Hey!” cried Farandoul, in English. “The red warriors are timid women, then—seeking to deplete the white man’s strength by depriving him of food! Shame on the red warriors!”

  “The white man is going to die. What does one meal more or less matter to him?” replied one of the Indians.

  “No,” said another, “the white man is brave; he has a right to a warrior’s meal. The Paleface will be attached to the war-pole in good health.”

  From that day on, Farandoul, almost freed from his bonds, was able to take part in the Indians’ meals. He was determined to remain alert and fit, in order to profit from any opportunity to escape that presented itself. He had understood that he was to be taken alive to the tribe’s village in order to be scalped ceremonially—a little pleasure-party whose enjoyment he often heard the Indians anticipating during the nine days that the journey lasted.

  By his bravery, Farandoul had won the good opinion and consideration of his guardians; unfortunately, though, he had not been able to find any opportunity to quit their company. That annoyed him considerably when he thought about his 17 wives, whose anxiety must have been immense.

  His bad mood grew worse one morning when, having arrived during a night march at the Apache village, he was taken down from his horse and led through the midst of the red population to a pole painted in different colors and ornamented with trophies, raised on a mound in the middle of the village. It was the war-pole! He understood that the fatal moment was approaching, and asked to speak.

  “Red warriors,” he cried, “you shall see how a brave man can die! But before that, you will not refuse the Paleface one last request. He has 17 squaws in the city of the Great Salt Lake; he asks to send them a last word of farewell, and he counts on finding a brave warrior among his red enemies to carry the letter.”

  An Indian came forward. “Fire-Eye,” he said—this was the name the Indians had given to Farandoul—“is right. Red Bison will go to the city of the Salt Lake.”

  “Thank you. Red Bison is a great chief!”

  Farandoul’s plan, as you will guess, was not so much to inform his wives as to make Brigham Young’s treason known to Mandibul and his sailors. He had no intention of saying any more than that, knowing his men well enough to be sure of being avenged.

  The Indians conferred, however. One of them, a chief, came back to Farandoul and asked him how and with what he proposed to write. That was a difficulty; there was not a single piece of writing-paper to be found in the entire tribe.

  Farandoul had an idea. “Red Bison’s body,” he said, “is ornamented by numerous beautiful paintings. If my brother will allow it, I shall inscribe my farewells on his skin, in order that he will have no fear of losing my letter.”

  “Red Bison accepts!” replied the Indian, after a moment’s reflection—and, pots of red and blue paint having been brought, Farandoul’s hands were untied in order that he might write his last confidences on Red Bison’s skin.

  Farandoul addressed his letter to Mandibul. He wrote at length, and was forced to continue his letter on Red Bison’s back page. The Indians crowded round, and followed with an increasingly keen attention the arabesques and flourishes with which Farandoul decorated his missive, in order to deflect Brigham Young’s suspicions and imitate the Indian designs. He thus discovered a talent for calligraphy and that of a most distinguished water-colorist, just at the moment when the talent was about to become useless to him. Red Bison’s breast and back soon resembled an illuminated page of an Arabic or Persian manuscript; the ornate lettering and the flourishes produced such an effect on the audience that several other Indians also asked to carry something.

  The enthusiasm became delirious. All the men in the tribe wanted at least to be charged with a postscript. Red Bison, fully illuminated, was the object of admiration of all the women, and continually came back to shake our hero’s hand warmly. The latter began to think that he might perhaps profit from these good wishes and save his scalp, so he redoubled his efforts. Ornamental art was no longer sufficient for him; he began to pant portraits. On the back of the Sachem of the tribe he painted a full-length portrait of Mandibul. The acclamations increased and every shoulder-blade was offered.

  Farandoul brandished his brushes, and 17 Indians soon bore portraits of the 17 tearful spouses of the Mormon bishop, some on their backs and others on their breasts. The face of Brigham Young followed; then a sequence of landscapes was launched; the most fantastic designs and the most seductive colors made the Indians flamboyant. What a revelation for them of a totally unknown art!

  Night fell and Farandoul, who should have been scalped at noon, still had his hair. The Indians had a discussion, and seemed disposed to renounce his scalp. Finally, after a great council in which Red Bison—who would rather have been the only one to beat Farandoul’s illustrations—was the only one to vote for the scalping, Farandoul was solemnly detached from the war-pole and begged to consider himself henceforth a child of the tribe. All they asked of him was to devote all his talent to the ornamentation of his new friends.

  Farandoul, of course, accepted—without raising any objection—the position of ordinary and extraordinary painter to the Apache nation, and relied to the felicitations of all his admirers with the most cordial handshakes. The costume of an Indian warrior was immediately brought for him, which gave him a sensible pleasure, his clothes having been reduced to rags by brushwood during the journey.

  A wigwam was allotted to him, in the center of the village, not far from the Sachem’s. The tribal chiefs and all the influential warriors spent the evening in the council hut with Farandoul, who was for them Fire-Eye, the white warrior with the deft brush. The calumets were lit and, lost in a cloud of smoke, Farandoul was asked to recount his adventures. We have mentioned the high degree to which our hero possessed the gift of eloquence; that day his mesmerizing words held the Indians in suspense for hours.

  The night was well-advanced when our hero was escorted to his new domicile. Farandoul went to sleep, exhausted by fatigue, putting off until another day the task of thinking up some means of escape. He was no longer worried; he knew that the opportunity would present itself some day or other, and wanted to profit from his sojourn among the Apaches to make a thorough study of that interesting nation. Besides, since we ought to reveal everything, we ought to admit that our Farandoul had yet another reason for staying with the Apaches. A young Indian woman of the most ravishing beauty had caught his eye; he had scarcely glimpsed her when, moved by curiosity but restrained by modesty, she had come to admire the painter’s arabesques momentarily—but that moment had sufficed.

  Farandoul had been struck in the heart by the tomahawk of love!

  Unfortunately, the young Indian woman was married; she was, in fact, the wife of Red Bison, Farandoul’s enemy.

  The next day was a holiday for the entire tribe. The warriors of the neighborhood had been summoned to a great fantasia in honor of Farandoul. He was introduced to them, and delighted them with his good manners. Their enthusiasm increased further when, during the fantasia, Farandoul, mounted on an unbroken horse, accomplished the most vertiginous fe
ats.

  Presents were exchanged. Farandoul had nothing to offer but specimens of his talent as a painter, but in exchange he received a calumet, a tomahawk and a rifle—which induced him to provide evidence of his skill as a marksman.

  Everyone went their separate ways delighted. Farandoul promised that he would soon illustrate the entire Apache nation. Indeed, after a few days devoted to his installation and a few hunting-trips with the Apache warriors, Fire-Eye took up his brushes again.

  The entire tribe filed in front of him. A little expedition against the Sioux had been proposed for the following season, and before disinterring the war-hatchet, everyone wanted to be painted in such a fashion as to sow fear among the enemy warriors. Fifteen squaws were employed night and day for a week in grinding colors and macerating them in a mixture designed to render them indelible.

  Fire-Eye commenced his operations. With his most garish tones, he began by painting extraordinary and terrible things on the breasts of the chiefs.

  Sachem Co-a-ho-hay, the eagle of the mountains, as ornamented with a frightful locomotive in deep purple, equipped with two red lanterns and a plume of Prussian blue smoke; an immense train of wagons charged with menacing Indians followed behind, turning under his left arm, snaking across his back and finishing up back on his breast.

  The success was complete. At the sight of this masterpiece, the warriors were bowled over with admiration!

  The three inferior chiefs followed in their turn. On the first, Pointed Knife, Farandoul painted a huge red balloon with a yellow gondola full of Indians brandishing their tomahawks. Long-nosed Fox was gratified with a portrait of Napoléon I, whose grey coat had to be changed into a blue one. As for the third, Big Gun, to his great delight he had a monstrous elephant armed with gigantic red tusks.

  The bulk of the army filed past then; every warrior was painted in his turn. The compositions that enjoyed the greatest success were fiery dragons, cannons vomiting grapeshot, a steam-boat, a French gendarme on horseback and finally, on the belly of one of the stoutest Apaches, an enormous Indian’s head, reproducing with a striking resemblance the face of its bearer, with all its ornaments exaggerated in size—so well that he seemed to have two heads, one large and one small.