The Eternal Adam and other stories (23 page)

‘Then my son Frantz will be one of the
first to arrive,’ said Niklausse.

‘A spirited boy, Niklausse,’ replied the
burgomaster sententiously; ‘but hot-headed! He will require watching!’

‘He loves, Van Tricasse, – he loves your
charming Suzel. ‘

‘Well, Niklausse, he shall marry her. Now
that we have agreed on this marriage, what more can he desire?’

‘He desires nothing, Van Tricasse, the dear
boy! But, in short – we’ll say no more about it – he will not be the last to
get his ticket at the box-office. ‘

‘Ah, vivacious and ardent youth!’ replied
the burgomaster, recalling his own past. ‘We have also been thus, my worthy
counsellor! We have loved – we too! We have danced attendance in our day! Till
tonight, then, till tonight! By-the-bye, do you know this Fiovaranti is a great
artist? And what a welcome he has received among us! It will be long before he
will forget the applause of Quiquendone!’

The tenor Fiovaranti was, indeed, going to
sing; Fiovaranti, who, by his talents as a virtuoso, his perfect method, his
melodious voice, provoked a real enthusiasm among the lovers of music in the
town.

For three weeks Fiovaranti had been
achieving a brilliant success in
Les Huguenots.
The first act,
interpreted according to the taste of the Quiquendonians, had occupied an
entire evening of the first week of the month. – Another evening in the second
week, prolonged by infinite
andantes,
had elicited for the celebrated
singer a real ovation. His success had been still more marked in the third act
of Meyerbeer’s masterpiece. But now Fiovaranti was to appear in the fourth act,
which was to be performed on this evening before an impatient public. Ah, the
duet between Raoul and Valentine, that pathetic love-song for two voices, that
strain so full of
crescendos, stringendos,
and
più crescendos
– all
this, sung slowly, compendiously, interminably! Ah, how delightful!

At four o’clock the hall was full. The
boxes, the orchestra, the pit, were overflowing. In the front stalls sat the
Burgomaster Van Tricasse, Mademoiselle Van Tricasse, Madame Van Tricasse, and
the amiable Tatanémance in a green bonnet; not far off were the Counsellor
Niklausse and his family, not forgetting the amorous Frantz. The families of
Custos the doctor, of Schut the advocate, of Honoré Syntax the chief judge, of
Norbet Sontman the insurance director, of the banker Collaert, gone mad on
German music, and himself somewhat of an amateur, and the teacher Rupp, and the
master of the academy, Jerome Resh, and the civil commissary, and so many other
notabilities of the town that they could not be enumerated here without
wearying the reader’s patience, were visible in different parts of the hall.

It was customary for the Quiquendonians,
while awaiting the rise of the curtain, to sit silent, some reading the paper,
others whispering low to each other, some making their way to their seats
slowly and noiselessly, others casting timid looks towards the bewitching
beauties in the galleries.

But on this evening a looker-on might have
observed that, even before the curtain rose, there was unusual animation among
the audience. People were restless who were never known to be restless before.
The ladies’ fans fluttered with abnormal rapidity. All appeared to be inhaling
air of exceptional stimulating power. Everyone breathed more freely. The eyes
of some became unwontedly bright, and seemed to give forth a light equal to
that of the candles, which themselves certainly threw a more brilliant light
over the hall. It was evident that people saw more clearly, though the number of
candles had not been increased. Ah, if Doctor Ox’s experiment were being tried!
But it was not being tried, as yet.

The musicians of the orchestra at last took
their places. The first violin had gone to the stand to give a modest
la
to his colleagues. The stringed instruments, the wind instruments, the drums
and cymbals, were in accord. The conductor only waited the sound of the bell to
beat the first bar.

The bell sounds. The fourth act begins. The
allegro appassionato
of the inter-act is played as usual, with a majestic
deliberation which would have made Meyerbeer frantic, and all the majesty of
which was appreciated by the Quiquendonian
dilettanti.

But soon the leader perceived that he was
no longer master of his musicians. He found it difficult to restrain them,
though usually so obedient and calm. The wind instruments betrayed a tendency
to hasten the movements, and it was necessary to hold them back with a firm
hand, for they would otherwise outstrip the stringed instruments; which, from a
musical point of view, would have been disastrous. The bassoon himself, the son
of Josse Lietrinck the apothecary, a well-bred young man, seemed to lose his
self-control.

Meanwhile Valentine has begun her
recitative, ‘I am alone,‘ &c.; but she hurries it.

The leader and all his musicians, perhaps
unconsciously, follow her in her
cantabile,
which should be taken
deliberately, like a
¹²
/
₈
as it is. When Raoul appears at
the door at the bottom of the stage, between the moment when Valentine goes to
him and that when she conceals herself in the chamber at the side, a quarter of
an hour does not elapse; while formerly, according to the traditions of the
Quiquendone theatre, this recitative of thirty-seven bars was wont to last just
thirty-seven minutes.

Saint Bris, Nevers, Cavannes, and the
Catholic nobles have appeared, somewhat prematurely, perhaps, upon the scene.
The composer has marked
allegro pomposo
on the score. The orchestra and
the lords proceed
allegro
indeed, but not at all
pomposo.
and at
the chorus, in the famous scene of the ‘benediction of the poniards’, they no
longer keep to the enjoined
allegro.
Singers and musicians broke away
impetuously. The leader does not even attempt to restrain them. Nor do the
public protest; on the contrary, the people find themselves carried away, and
see that they are involved in the movement, and that the movement responds to
the impulses of their souls.

Will
you, with me, deliver the land, From troubles increasing, an impious band?

They promise, they swear. Nevers has scarcely time to protest, and to
sing that ‘among his ancestors were many soldiers, but never an assassin’. He
is arrested. The police and the aldermen rush forward and rapidly swear ‘to
strike all at once’. Saint Bris shouts the recitative which summons the
Catholics to vengeance. The three monks, with white scarfs, hasten in by the
door at the back of Nevers’s room, without making any account of the stage
directions, which enjoin on them to advance slowly. Already all the artists
have drawn sword or poniard, which the three monks bless in a trice. The
soprani tenors, bassos, attack the
allegro furioso
with cries of rage,
and of a dramatic
⁶
/
₈
time they make it
⁶
/
₈
quadrille time. Then they rush out, bellowing, —

At midnight,

Noiselessly,

God wills it,

Yes.

 At midnight.

At this moment the audience start to their
feet. Everybody is agitated – in the boxes, the pit, the galleries. It seems as
if the spectators are about to rush upon the stage, the Burgomaster Van
Tricasse at their head, to join with the conspirators and annihilate the
Huguenots, whose religious opinions, however, they share. They applaud, call
before the curtain, make loud acclamations! Tatanémance grasps her bonnet with
feverish hand. The candles throw out a lurid glow of light.

Raoul, instead of slowly raising the
curtain, tears it apart with a superb gesture and finds himself confronting
Valentine.

At last! It is the grand duet, and it
starts
off allegro vivace.
Raoul does not wait for Valentine’s pleading,
and Valentine does not wait for Raoul’s responses.

The fine passage beginning, ‘Danger is
passing, time is flying,’ becomes one of those rapid airs which have made
Offenbach famous, when he composes a dance for conspirators: The
andante
amoroso,
‘Thou hast said it, aye, thou lovest me,’ becomes a real
vivace
furioso,
and the violoncello ceases to imitate the inflections of the
singer’s voice, as indicated in the composer’s score. In vain Raoul cries,
‘Speak on, and prolong the ineffable slumber of my soul.’ Valentine cannot
‘prolong’. It is evident that an unaccustomed fire devours her. Her
b’s
and her
c
’s above the stave were dreadfully shrill. He struggles, he
gesticulates, he is all in a glow.

The alarum is heard; the bell resounds; but
what a panting bell! The bell-ringer has evidently lost his self-control. It is
a frightful tocsin, which violently struggles against the fury of the
orchestra.

Finally the air which ends this magnificent
act, beginning, ‘No more love, no more intoxication, O the remorse that
oppresses me!’ which the composer marks
allegro con moto,
becomes a wild
prestissimo.
You would say an express-train was whirling by. The alarum
resounds again. Valentine falls fainting. Raoul precipitates himself from the
window.

It was high time. The orchestra, really
intoxicated, could not have gone on. The leader’s baton is no longer anything
but a broken stick on the prompter’s box. The violin strings are broken, and
their necks twisted. In his fury the drummer has burst his drum; The
counter-bassist has perched on the top of his musical monster. The first
clarinet has swallowed the reed of his instrument, and the second oboe is
chewing his reed keys. The groove of the trombone is strained, and finally the
unhappy cornetist cannot withdraw his hand from the bell of his horn, into
which he had thrust it too far.

And the audience! The audience, panting,
all in a heat, gesticulates and howls. All the faces are as red as if a fire
were burning within their bodies. They crowd each other, hustle each other to
get out – the men without hats, the women without mantles! They elbow each
other in the corridors, crush between the doors, quarrel, fight! There are no
longer any officials, any burgomaster. All are equal amid this infernal frenzy!

Some moments after, when all have reached
the street, each one resumes his habitual tranquillity, and peaceably enters
his house, with a confused remembrance of what he has just experienced.

The fourth act of the
Huguenots,
which formerly lasted six hours, began, on this evening at half-past four, and
ended at twelve minutes before five.

It had only lasted eighteen minutes!

In which the
ancient and solemn German Waltz becomes a whirlwind

But if the spectators, on leaving the
theatre, resumed their customary calm, if they quietly regained their homes,
preserving only a sort of passing stupefaction, they had none the less
undergone a remarkable exaltation, and overcome and weary as if they had
committed some excess of dissipation, they fell heavily upon their beds.

The next day each Quiquendonian had a kind
of recollection of what had occurred the evening before. One missed his hat,
lost in the hubbub; another a coat-flap, torn in the brawl; one her delicately
fashioned shoe, another her best mantle. Memory returned to these worthy
people, and with it a certain shame for their unjustifiable agitation. It
seemed to them an orgy in which they were the unconscious heroes and heroines.
They did not speak of it; they did not wish to think of it. But the most
astounded personage in the town was Van Tricasse the burgomaster.

The next morning, on waking, he could not
find his wig. Lotchè looked everywhere for it, but in vain. The wig had
remained on the field of battle. As for having it publicly claimed by Jean
Mistrol, the town-crier, – no, it would not do. It were better to lose the wig
than to advertise himself thus, as he had the honour to be the first magistrate
of Quiquendone.

The worthy Van Tricasse was reflecting upon
this, extended beneath his sheets, with bruised body, heavy head, furred
tongue, and burning breast. He felt no desire to get up; on the contrary; and
his brain worked more during this morning than it had probably worked before
for forty years. The worthy magistrate recalled to his mind all the incidents
of the incomprehensible performance. He connected them with the events which
had taken place shortly before at Doctor Ox’s reception. He tried to discover
the causes of the singular excitability which, on two occasions, had betrayed
itself in the best citizens of the town.

‘What
can
be going on?’ he asked
himself. ‘What giddy spirit has taken possession of my peaceable town of Quiquendone?
Are we about to go mad, and must we make the town one vast asylum? For
yesterday we were all there, notables, counsellors, judges, advocates,
physicians, schoolmasters; and all, if my memory serves me, – all of us were
assailed by this excess of furious folly! But what was there in that infernal
music? It is inexplicable! Yet I certainly ate or drank nothing which could put
me into such a state. No; yesterday I had for dinner a slice of overdone veal,
several spoonfuls of spinach with sugar, eggs, and a little beer and water, – that
couldn’t get into my head! No! There is something that I cannot explain, and
as, after all, I am responsible for the conduct of the citizens, I will have an
investigation. ‘