Unconscious Comedians

“That is Carabine,” said Bixiou, who gave her, as did Leon, a slight nod to which she responded by a smile.

“There’s another who may possibly get your prefect turned out.”

“A marcheuse! – but what is that?”

“A marcheuse is a rat of great beauty whom her mother, real or fictitious, has sold as soon as it was clear she would become neither first, second, nor third danseuse, but who prefers the occupation of coryphee to any other, for the main reason that having spent her youth in that employment she is unfitted for any other. She has been rejected at the minor theatres where they want danseuses; she has not succeeded in the three towns where ballets are given; she has not had the money, or perhaps the desire to go to foreign countries – for perhaps you don’t know that the great school of dancing in Paris supplies the whole world with male and female dancers. Thus a rat who becomes a marcheuse, – that is to say, an ordinary figurante in a ballet, – must have some solid attachment which keeps her in Paris: either a rich man she does not love or a poor man she loves too well. The one you have just seen pass will probably dress and redress three times this evening, – as a princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; by which she will earn about two hundred francs a month.”

“She is better dressed than my prefect’s wife.”

“If you should go to her house,” said Bixiou, “you would find there a chamber-maid, a cook, and a man-servant. She occupies a fine apartment in the rue Saint-Georges; in short, she is, in proportion to French fortunes of the present day compared with those of former times, a relic of the eighteenth century ‘opera-girl.’ Carabine is a power; at this moment she governs du Tillet, a banker who is very influential in the Chamber of Deputies.”

“And above these two rounds in the ballet ladder what comes next?” asked Gazonal.

“Look!” said his cousin, pointing to an elegant caleche which was turning at that moment from the boulevard into the rue Grange-Bateliere, “there’s one of the leading danseuses whose name on the posters attracts all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousand francs a year and lives like a princess; the price of your manufactory all told wouldn’t suffice to buy you the privilege of bidding her good-morning a dozen times.”

“Do you see,” said Bixiou, “that young man who is sitting on the front seat of her carriage? Well, he’s a viscount who bears a fine old name; he’s her first gentleman of the bed-chamber; does all her business with the newspapers; carries messages of peace or war in the morning to the director of the Opera; and takes charge of the applause which salutes her as she enters or leaves the stage.”

“Well, well, my good friends, that’s the finishing touch! I see now that I knew nothing of the ways of Paris.”

“At any rate, you are learning what you can see in ten minutes in the Passage de l’Opera,” said Bixiou. “Look there.”

Two persons, a man and a woman, came out of the Passage at that moment. The woman was neither plain nor pretty; but her dress had that distinction of style and cut and color which reveals an artist; the man had the air of a singer.

“There,” said Bixiou, “is a baritone and a second danseuse. The baritone is a man of immense talent, but a baritone voice being only an accessory to the other parts he scarcely earns what the second danseuse earns. The danseuse, who was celebrated before Taglioni and Ellsler appeared, has preserved to our day some of the old traditions of the character dance and pantomime. If the two others had not revealed in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, she would have been the leading talent; as it is, she is reduced to the second line. But for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francs a year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential in the Chamber. And see! there’s a danseuse of the third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. If her engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one more journalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power; consequently it is considered better form in the upper ranks of dandyism and politics to have relations with dance than with song. In the stalls, where the habitues of the Opera congregate, the saying ‘Monsieur is all for singing’ is a form of ridicule.”

A short man with a common face, quite simply dressed, passed them at this moment.

“There’s the other half of the Opera receipts – that man who just went by; the tenor. There is no longer any play, poem, music, or representation of any kind possible unless some celebrated tenor can reach a certain note. The tenor is love, he is the Voice that touches the heart, that vibrates in the soul, and his value is reckoned at a much higher salary than that of a minister. One hundred thousand francs for a throat, one hundred thousand francs for a couple of ankle-bones, – those are the two financial scourges of the Opera.”

“I am amazed,” said Gazonal, “at the hundreds of thousands of francs walking about here.”

“We’ll amaze you a good deal more, my dear cousin,” said Leon de Lora. “We’ll take Paris as an artist takes his violoncello, and show you how it is played, – in short, how people amuse themselves in Paris.”

“It is a kaleidoscope with a circumference of twenty miles,” cried Gazonal.

“Before piloting monsieur about, I have to see Gaillard,” said Bixiou.

“But we can use Gaillard for the cousin,” replied Leon.

“What sort of machine is that?” asked Gazonal.

“He isn’t a machine, he is a machinist. Gaillard is a friend of ours who has ended a miscellaneous career by becoming the editor of a newspaper, and whose character and finances are governed by movements comparable to those of the tides. Gaillard can contribute to make you win your lawsuit – ”

“It is lost.”

“That’s the very moment to win it,” replied Bixiou.

When they reached Theodore Gaillard’s abode, which was now in the rue de Menars, the valet ushered the three friends into a boudoir and asked them to wait, as monsieur was in secret conference.

“With whom?” asked Bixiou.

“With a man who is selling him the incarceration of an unseizable debtor,” replied a handsome woman who now appeared in a charming morning toilet.

“In that case, my dear Suzanne,” said Bixiou, “I am certain we may go in.”

“Oh! what a beautiful creature!” said Gazonal.

“That is Madame Gaillard,” replied Leon de Lora, speaking low into his cousin’s ear. “She is the most humble-minded woman in Paris, for she had the public and has contented herself with a husband.”

“What is your will, messeigneurs?” said the facetious editor, seeing his two friends and imitating Frederic Lemaitre.

Theodore Gaillard, formerly a wit, had ended by becoming a stupid man in consequence of remaining constantly in one centre, – a moral phenomenon frequently to be observed in Paris. His principal method of conversation consisted in sowing his speeches with sayings taken from plays then in vogue and pronounced in imitation of well-known actors.

“We have come to blague,” said Leon.

“‘Again, young men’” (Odry in the Saltimbauques).

“Well, this time, we’ve got him, sure,” said Gaillard’s other visitor, apparently by way of conclusion.

“Are you sure of it, pere Fromenteau?” asked Gaillard. “This it the eleventh time you’ve caught him at night and missed him in the morning.”

“How could I help it? I never saw such a debtor! he’s a locomotive; goes to sleep in Paris and wakes up in the Seine-et-Oise. A safety lock I call him.” Seeing a smile on Gaillard’s face he added: “That’s a saying in our business. Pinch a man, means arrest him, lock him up. The criminal police have another term. Vidoeq said to his man, ‘You are served’; that’s funnier, for it means the guillotine.”

A nudge from Bixiou made Gazonal all eyes and ears.

“Does monsieur grease my paws?” asked Fromenteau of Gaillard, in a threatening but cool tone.

“‘A question that of fifty centimes’” (Les Saltimbauques), replied the editor, taking out five francs and offering them to Fromenteau.

“And the rapscallions?” said the man.

“What rapscallions?” asked Gaillard.

“Those I employ,” replied Fromenteau calmly.

“Is there a lower depth still?” asked Bixiou.

“Yes, monsieur,” said the spy. “Some people give us information without knowing they do so, and without getting paid for it. I put fools and ninnies below rapscallions.”

“They are often original, and witty, your rapscallions!” said Leon.

“Do you belong to the police?” asked Gazonal, eying with uneasy curiosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like the third clerk in a sheriff’s office.

“Which police do you mean?” asked Fromenteau.

“There are several?”

“As many as five,” replied the man. “Criminal, the head of which was Vidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, the head of it being always unknown; political police, – that’s Fouche’s. Then there’s the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palace police (of the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), always squabbling with that of the quai Malaquais. It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes. I belonged to the police of Louis XVIII.; I’d been in it since 1793, with that poor Contenson.”