“I’ll make them better for you.”
“I’ve no doubt you believe it. Then
we understand each other?”
“Perfectly,” said Andre-Louis, dryly,
and was thus committed to the service of Thespis.
THE COMIC MUSE
The company’s entrance into the township of
Guichen, if not exactly triumphal, as Binet had expressed
the desire that it should be, was at least sufficiently
startling and cacophonous to set the rustics gaping.
To them these fantastic creatures appeared —
as indeed they were — beings from another world.
First went the great travelling chaise, creaking and
groaning on its way, drawn by two of the Flemish horses.
It was Pantaloon who drove it, an obese and massive
Pantaloon in a tight-fitting suit of scarlet under
a long brown bed-gown, his countenance adorned by a
colossal cardboard nose. Beside him on the box
sat Pierrot in a white smock, with sleeves that completely
covered his hands, loose white trousers, and a black
skull-cap. He had whitened his face with flour,
and he made hideous noises with a trumpet.
On the roof of the coach were assembled Polichinelle,
Scaramouche, Harlequin, and Pasquariel. Polichinelle
in black and white, his doublet cut in the fashion
of a century ago, with humps before and behind, a
white frill round his neck and a black mask upon the
upper half of his face, stood in the middle, his feet
planted wide to steady him, solemnly and viciously
banging a big drum. The other three were seated
each at one of the corners of the roof, their legs
dangling over. Scaramouche, all in black in the
Spanish fashion of the seventeenth century, his face
adorned with a pair of mostachios, jangled a guitar
discordantly. Harlequin, ragged and patched in
every colour of the rainbow, with his leather girdle
and sword of lath, the upper half of his face smeared
in soot, clashed a pair of cymbals intermittently.
Pasquariel, as an apothecary in skull-cap and white
apron, excited the hilarity of the onlookers by his
enormous tin clyster, which emitted when pumped a dolorous
squeak.
Within the chaise itself, but showing themselves freely
at the windows, and exchanging quips with the townsfolk,
sat the three ladies of the company. Climene,
the amoureuse, beautifully gowned in flowered satin,
her own clustering ringlets concealed under a pumpkin-shaped
wig, looked so much the lady of fashion that you might
have wondered what she was dong in that fantastic rabble.
Madame, as the mother, was also dressed with splendour,
but exaggerated to achieve the ridiculous. Her
headdress was a monstrous structure adorned with flowers,
and superimposed by little ostrich plumes. Columbine
sat facing them, her back to the horses, falsely demure,
in milkmaid bonnet of white muslin, and a striped
gown of green and blue.
The marvel was that the old chaise, which in its halcyon
days may have served to carry some dignitary of the
Church, did not founder instead of merely groaning
under that excessive and ribald load.
