Aborigen

Once in a while I search my county library network for “giantess,” just to see what comes up. If it’s interesting or promising, or sufficiently unknowable, I’ll order any materials that result and read up on them.

It’s not always a direct hit: from The Best American Writing 2017 I read an essay titled “Giantess,” by Rebecca Solnit, in which she examined the subversive messaging of the movie Giant (1956), from the cast to the closing scene. It was interesting, and now I want to see the film, but the giantess in question was merely a metaphor for Elizabeth Taylor’s role.

This is the second time, however, that I’ve ordered From the South of France (1912) by Thomas A. Janvier. I recognized the title of the book, a collection of his short stories, but did not recall having read the story that prompted me to order it, “A Consolate Giantess.” I believe I did read the first story, “The Roses of Monsieur Alphonse,” in which an older man makes an ass of himself for a younger woman, though my impression may be mistaken. I don’t recall reading “A Consolate Giantess,” as I say, which is strange, because why would I get this book because of the mention of a giantess and then not read that story?

This time, however, not only did I read it, I wanted to preserve it. I doubted the binding would withstand scanning, so I committed to a certain writing exercise I’ve heard about but never attempted: typing out the story myself. The experience is supposed to give you an appreciation for the editorial choices made by the author, as you come up against how you feel the sentence should go but follow fastidiously in the footsteps of the creator. Over an evening and a morning I read and typed the story, coming in at just under 11,000 words, and now I think I’ll remember it for a long time.

Certainly, in having to study it more slowly by writing it out, I understand a layer of subtlety in the story that I must have missed the first time around. Either the author took a dim view of women, one that may have been shaped and shared by his era and location, or he labored to create a darkly comical story of personal aspirations and the cheapness of human life. The French do have a self-effacing sense of humor at times, in which they laugh at their worst characteristics by embodying them, which other cultures may reduce and misinterpret as simple bigotry. Whether that’s in operation here, in this century-old story, I’m not qualified to say.

Details: Madame Galissard, the titular giantess, stands at 2.09 meters tall, and she claims to have weighed, at the peak of her glory, 290 kg; she weighs more later but no numbers are cited. This translates to a height of 6’10” and 639 pounds! This doesn’t seem likely, unless a “kilo” in 1912 meant something different than our modern apprehension of metrics, or she was considerably more Rubenesque than I picture in my mind, or Messr. Janvier had a poor sense of scale. By comparison, there are several tall Instagram models of comparable height: Natasha Burns is 6’5″ tall; Lucie Tabitha stands 6’7″ (200 cm) as does Katie Woolls (6’7″/201 cm); Aly G self-reports at 6’9″ (206 cm) and 370 lbs; and Marie Temara insists she’s 7′ tall (213 cm), 220 lbs., in a family of giants. Mme. Galissard would be slightly taller than Aly and shorter than Marie, by comparison. There is reference to a rival giantess in the story, but no statistics are provided.

Does 6’10” a giantess make? Perhaps, to a nation of men who stood 5’5″ (average) at the time.

Anyway, as this story was published 102 years ago, I believe it’s safe to share. I have the audacity to have corrected three typos, but otherwise the story is faithfully recreated here.

* * *

Clad, as usual, in cotton tights and a slashed red velvet jacket, my friend Madame Galissard—known widely and favorably as La femme géante de Languedoc—loomed huge before the tent entrance. Beside her, as usual, the boy Jean beat the great drum. Above her, as usual, was a vividly painted canvas representing Monsieur Galissard standing with one foot upon the head of a prostrate tiger and with one hand grasping a rampant lion by the throat. Before her, as usual, was a little table bearing a tin box into which she clicked the prices of admission to the Grand Établissement Zoologique Alexandre Galissard: Premières, 1 fr. 50 ; Secondes, 1 fr.; Troisièmes, 0 fr. 50 centimes.

What with her great size, the generous cut of her red velvet jacket, and the surprising pervasiveness of her tights, Madame Galissard absolutely was the most striking feature of every fair on her circuit in the South of France.

“It is expected, Monsieur,” she explained to me at our first meeting, “that I thus present myself to the public. Throughout the whole of the Midi my legs have an honorable celebrity. They have received encomiums without number in the press. I can show you a cutting from Le Petit Nimois which declares that they resemble the Pillars of Hercules. Also, in Le Petit Soleil of Montpellier they have been described as a spectacle more petrifying than our entire collection of wild beasts. But I, I am not made vain. I value the admiration of the public only because it is for the good of our show. As is known, all the forces of my nature are given to making our show a success.”

Over the heads of the crowd Madame Galissard beamed toward me a smile of greeting. When I had worked my way across the double stream of fair-goers upon the boulevard, she grasped me warmly by the hand.

“And the brave Alexandre?” I asked, when we had made our exchange of compliments. “He carries himself well, as always, that gallant subduer of ferocious beasts?”

Madame Galissard visibly quivered with emotion—as a mountain of jelly in an impossibly enormous bag. “What! Monsieur has not heard?” she exclaimed. “It is incredible! The whole of France was upheaved by that great catastrophe. The journals devoted columns to it. For months all the world lavished such admiration upon our Néron that had he been a human being his head would have been completely turned. Ah, my adored Alexandre would have rejoiced over the business that we did in the suite of the tragedy in which he took so lamentable a part! Many and many a time had he said to me, in the seasons when our business went badly: ‘My angel, were our Néron to eat a man all would go well with us—our fortunes would be made!’ It was as a prophet that he spoke, Monsieur—but, alas, when his prophecies came to be realized he had no share in them. It was my adored Alexandre himself who was eaten by our Néron—eaten to the very bones!”

Madame Galissard paused, seemingly to give me an opportunity to express my sympathy and my regret. That was not easy. A widow whose husband has been served au naturel to a lion is not met with every day. The situation was of an awkwardness out of the ordinary. My sympathy and my regret existed, but I was at a loss to exhibit them in suitable terms. While I hesitated, Madame Galissard gave a turn to the matter that set me at my ease. She was an artist, that fine giantess. Her pause had been solely for dramatic effect.

“I could not, Monsieur,” she continued, “bring myself really to blame our poor Néron. He was famishing. His need for food was imperative—and he did not understand, of course, that it was because of our necessary economies that he was almost starved. He acted upon the impulses of his nature. He even may have had the feeling, the good beast, that he was helping us in our trouble by making his own little economies in his own way. None the less, Monsieur, it was most discomposing, I assure you, all in a moment, at a single stroke, to lose my adored Alexandre, and in him the effective manager of our show. In my first agonies of desolation I did not remember my adored Alexandre’s prophetic utterances—and so failed to realize that compensation awaited me for his loss. Monsieur, in that crisis of my fate it was my present husband who rescued me. The conduct of my present husband in that cataclysm of our fortunes was so magnificent that I simply was compelled to render to him all the affections of my heart!”

Madame Galissard again paused. Without attempting congratulations, I awaited her further words. Obviously, in the case of a narrative that moved so briskly, and that was charged with such conflicting emotions, it was safer to withhold comment until we were come safely to the end.

Taking again the word, the giantess continued: “Monsieur remembers, no doubt, my adored Alexandre’s pupil—the worthy lad Victor Pezon? It was my adored Alexandre himself who perceived that excellent young man’s possibilities and lavished upon him a father’s care. He had in him, my adored Alexandre said from the very first, the makings of a great dompteur—and in that, as in all things, my adored Alexandre was right. Monsieur, that brave young man it was who saved not only my life but the life of our show! In the very instant of the tragedy, perceiving that our black cloud had a silver lining, he was all fire and eagerness to make out of it a good account.

“It was at the performance of a Friday—and of a Friday that fell upon the thirteenth of the month—that my adored Alexandre perished. Will you believe it?—before ten o’clock the next morning my Victor had handbills everywhere (our stand that week was in Tarascon) proclaiming all that had passed in glowing words. Monsieur Manivet, the amiable editor of Le Petit Éclair d’Avignon, composed for us that heroic description of my adored Alexandre’s destruction. Our gratitude to Monsieur Manivet is lasting. We have given him free admission to our exhibition for life.

“By consequence, on the Saturday evening our tent was filled to suffocation. Every other show in the fair was deserted. Even the flying horses were paralyzed. Even the montagnes russes stood still. And we, we turned hundreds—literally hundreds—from our doors! It was as my adored Alexandre had said: every one was wild, demented, infuriated, to see the lion who had eaten a man! My tears flowed in torrents, Monsieur. I would have given continents could my adored Alexandre have been present that evening to enjoy the verifying of his own words. The bitterness of my sorrow was increased by the reflection that, in a way, he was present—but it was only as a part of our Néron that he was there!

“As to my Victor’s performance with Néron on that great occasion, it was majestic beyond words. Néron, to be sure, was a little dégagé. It was but natural. For a whole month, because of our bad business, we had been unable to give that brave beast a full meal. Being at last satisfied, he was dull. But my Victor’s energy more than made up for our Néron’s sluggishness. He was superb! Stopping only just short of being himself eaten, he re-enacted the whole of the tragedy—and with so furious a realism that almost a panic arose. I myself was a witness of that stupendous performance—which at once wrung all my heart-strings and filled me with a delighted surprise. I had not suspected—I am confident that even my adored Alexandre had not suspected—that such heroic possibilities resided in my Victor’s soul. That evening my Victor wholly won my heart. On the ensuing morning, at the Mairie of Tarascon, I gladly bestowed upon him my hand.

“The relative promptness of our marriage, Monsieur, was of necessity. The lion legally was mine—and sacredly was mine because of his precious contents—but without a lion-tamer he was valueless. Similarly, the extraordinary genius of my Victor was valueless without a lion upon which to exercise it. The safeguarding of our common interests therefore required that we should continue together; and, that being the case, the convenances demanded that we should be married without needless delay. It was that which decided me. To the convenances, Monsieur, I am and always have been absolutely a slave. I am proud to add that those considerations of convenience and of propriety were reinforced by considerations of affection and of gratitude. That excellent young man deservedly had won my love and my esteem. Reasonably, however, my tender attachment to my adored Alexandre’s memory would not suffer me to cast aside his name—by which, moreover, I was known professionally throughout our entire circuit of fairs. That sainted name I have retained. As Monsieur will observe upon examining our bills, I now am styled Madame Galissard-Pezon.”

There was a finality about this statement which encouraged me to break my guarded silence. Properly mingling condolence with congratulation, I did my possible to express to that tempest-tossed giantess my felicitations and my regrets. “And now, no doubt,” I said in conclusion, “the Établissement Zoologique Galissard-Pezon goes upon wheels.”

The giantess shook her head sadly. “Monsieur is most amiable to be so interested in our welfare,” she replied. “I wish that things were as he supposes. But it is not so. Already our great good-fortune is a thing of the past. No one understood better than my adored Alexandre the fickleness of the public. Yet in his words of prophecy he left that fickleness out of the account. For a time it seemed as though we were to grow rich beyond the dreams of avarice; as though my adored Alexandre, aided by our brave Néron, had coined himself into gold. At fair after fair, in the big towns and in the little towns, everywhere it was the same: all the world thronged to our show in a surging multitude. The enthusiasm of the public was without limit. Our Néron, my Victor, I—we became celebrities. In Marseille, Monsieur, we filled a month’s engagement at the Palais de Cristal—positively, Monsieur, on my honor, a month’s engagement at the Palais de Cristal! It was the crowning glory of my life. Always, from the moment that I came into the profession, the very zenith of my ambition was to appear at the Palais de Cristal—and there I was!

“Our success in that superb theater was without parallel. Figure to yourself the spectacle. In the center of the stage, enclosed in a grating of extra strength, was our Néron; with him, elegantly attired in velvets, was my Victor; in the front—a little to one side, that the view should remain unobscured—was I. My own dress, Monsieur, was of a simplicity, but of a richness. From head to foot I was in silk tights. Imagine my feelings! All my life silk tights had been my dream! In that superb dress, night after night, I stood on the stage of that magnificent palais de concert while my Victor glowingly re-enacted my adored Alexandre’s tragedy; coming so close to the very edge of its ending that to me, to every one, it seemed that in another instant we should hear, we should behold, our Néron crunching his bones! The furor of the spectators was beyond words. They shrieked! They roared! As for me, Monsieur, my emotions were so poignant and so conflicting that my head swam. My devotion to the memory of my adored Alexandre, aroused to a burning intensity by that thrilling recreation of his last moments, dissolved me in tears. (Dressed as I was, Monsieur, it was impossible to carry a handkerchief. I could only brush away my tears with my hand.) But, also, being filled with a passionate admiration for my Victor’s heroically realistic performance, I was stirred by an enthusiasm which made me forget my grief in the ennobling thought that I was at once the widow of a great artist—eaten, but immortal—and the wife of an even greater artist—equally immortal but uneaten—who was still alive!

“Nor will I conceal from you, Monsieur, that—standing upon that exalting stage, where all my life I had longed to stand—wearing that rich dress, which all my life I had longed to wear—my artist soul was filled to brimming with an honorable pride. Behind me hung a black curtain. Against it my figure stood out in stately statuesque relief. I was as another Galathée—but heroic in my animated marble majesty beyond that heroine of the opera. No Galathée who ever walked the stage of France had legs like mine! The remainder of my person—it is always as the artist that I speak—was only less impressive. Above all, I had the true artist’s satisfaction of knowing that the absolute simplicity of my costume made my appeal to the admiration of the public absolutely sincere. Monsieur, I conquered that admiration at a blow! I fairly divided with my noble Victor and our brave Néron the honors of that series of stupendous performances. More than that, the composer of the Palais de Cristal, by direction of the manager, embalmed my legs in song. The words and the melody were caught up by every one on the very first evening. The song spread like wildfire. In an instant it was echoing in every quarter of Marseille. Monsieur, when I heard the whole populace of that great city chanting with one voice that song in my honor I knew that the supreme moment of my life had come!”

Madame Galissard-Pezon had given her history of her triumphs with a constantly increasing verve; but as she uttered those final words there was in her tone a trieste undernote not to be mistaken. Obviously, the supreme moment of her life had come—and gone! It was done with a light touch, that revelation of disaster following upon victory. There was the subtle inflection of the voice. That was all—but it sufficed! Truly, she was an artist. Had not her great size barred to her the ordinary walks of the profession she would have been an ornament to the dramatic stage. But to her, and she knew it, theatrical success in the commonly accepted sense of the phrase was hopeless. Fancy the appearance on the boards, with a hero of the usual French dimensions, of a heroine 2 mètres 19 centimètres high! Of necessity, as she herself said, such a combination would produce a tumult, a revolt. In moments of emotion, that excellent giantess has confided to me that her mountainous proportions were at once her glory and her despair.

While we talked—or, rather, while the giantess talked and I listened—the boy Jean continued to beat the big drum with an honest vigor, and from time to time stray couples from the crowd clinked their money into the tin box and entered the tent. But so far from there being any popular excitement, any pressing forward of an enthusiastic throng eager to behold a thrilling spectacle, these stragglers were miserably few. It was though the great Néron were the most commonplace of lions; as though he never had made a place for himself in fame and history by eating his man.

“The performance goes to begin,” the giantess said, sighing a little. “Monsieur will have the amiability to enter? Ah, Monsieur is most generous—a whole louis, and he refuses to take his change! He is altogether American! Had this niggard France the free hand of Monsieur’s America our misfortunes would vanish as a bad dream! But it is not so. Monsieur has seen for himself how despicably few are our patrons. When he enters he will perceive that he alone has taken a première—has taken, indeed, with his superb American liberality, a whole row of premières; that the secondes make but a beggarly account; that the thin success felt to us rests only with the troisièmes—and that even they give us their wretched ten sous so grudgingly that our tent is as empty as a forgotten island in a lonely sea!

“Nothing, Monsieur, remains to us of our triumphs. In these black days we drink our wine double-watered, and we subsist upon crusts which we moisten with our tears. As for our unhappy beasts, they languish for sustenance. At the best, we can give them but a single meager meal a day. Our great Néron, whose appetite is a prodigy, exists always in torment. It is agonizing to hear his lamentations. He is as hollow, that unfortunate animal, as our big drum. With the white bear of the glacial seas it is the same. I weep as I behold him moping in his cage miserably. I am pierced with emotion as he turns toward me his beseeching eyes. His supplication is as plain as though it were expressed in words. And when I give him my sympathies, my compassions—it is all that I have to give him—he moans pitifully in bitterness of spirit, and turns again to the sucking of his paws. The case of our royal tiger of Bengal is yet more calamitous. That unfortunate creature knows not even the consolidations of sucking his paws! The panther, the jaguar, the leopard visibly are pining away. Only the monkeys and the birds are a little less unhappy. Our ten-sous patrons find amusement in giving them some morsels and crumbs of food. Of them all, our anaconda alone—having had his half-yearly rabbit at the appointed season—as yet makes no complaint. But I have the terrible conviction that soon even the anaconda’s turn must come! And to think that only a little year ago our worthy animals were filled every day to repletion—while we ourselves were feasting like princes, like emperors, as we went rolling in our gold! Monsieur, not a day passes that I do not find myself a dozen times saying—it is in my heart of an artist that I say it—my heart of a woman shudders at the thought: ‘Ah, if our Néron would but eat another man!’

“But enter, Monsieur—enter, and see for yourself the full measure of our despair. And after the performance—it ends quickly, my poor Victor having no heart to prolong it—Monsieur must honor us by drinking with us a glass of absinthe. It will be a delight to extend to Monsieur our little hospitalities—it will be as it was in the old days. He will find us in the rear of the tent. We have a little table there, beneath an enchanting tree. And Monsieur will find with us two old friends of his, the excellent M’sieu-Madame Rique. Monsieur remembers them—the proprietors of the wax-works? We continue, as always, to go the tour together. In good days and in bad days we have marched in company for a round dozen of years. In fair times and in foul times it is the same with them: they ring true always, they ring true as gold. They have cherished Monsieur delightedly in their memories. When they speak of him, as they do constantly, it is in warm words which come straight from their good hearts. To meet him again will arouse in those hearts of theirs a tumult of joy.

“Also, Monsieur will find with us my Victor’s pupil and assistant, the worthy young Marius Bompuy. We, my Victor and I, are as his father and mother. As I say to my Victor, my feelings toward that excellent youth are as they were toward himself in the happy days when my adored Alexandre was still alive. He goes to be a great dompteur—a subduer of animals whose fame will make a blaze in the whole world. My Victor takes pride in his astonishing abilities and encourages him to exercise himself in feats of daring. Between them—for all that Marius is of a modesty—there is the noble emulation of true artists. We feel profoundly that he has a great future; that he surely is destined to arrive.

“And now Monsieur must enter on the instant. I hear within my Victor’s voice. His conférence upon the animals begins. It is inimitable, his conférence; Monsieur must not miss a word. Au revoir, Monsieur. We meet at the little table behind the tent when the représentation ends.”

Only consideration for the feelings of my friends enabled me to sit out that sad performance: in which the spectators were without enthusiasm, and in which the performers were without heart. It went with a dull dreariness—and yet was thrilled with a touch of desperate animation by the feeling of hunger that was in the air. The monkeys chattered angrily. The royal tiger of Bengal lashed his tail against his lean sides and uttered dismal growls. The white bear of the glacial seas made the pitiful moaning noises of which the giantess had spoken; and betweenwhiles, with a tragic energy, sucked ravenously his paws. In the eyes of the great Néron there was so famished a look that I could not repress shudders of anxiety when my friend Victor thrust his head within the monster’s jaws. I gave a sigh of relief when it came out again—and entire! The pupil, Marius Bompuy, a handsome young fellow of two or three and twenty, took but a minor part in the performance. His modesty was obvious. His spirit of emulation was less conspicuously displayed. That he left the more daring ventures to his master was undeniable; and it seemed to me that his master did not accept his disposition to self-effacement quite in good part. In this I may have been mistaken;  but I certainly was not mistaken in regard to the look of relief upon my friend Victor’s face when his act with the great Néron had come to a good end. That act was the culminating feature of the performance. Ten minutes later we were all gathered about the little table in the rear of the tent beneath the enchanting tree.

Our talk, at first, went cheerily. Those honest souls seemed to be as glad to have me with them as I, on my side, was glad to be in their good company. M’sieu-Madame Rique greeted me with effusion; the lion-tamer with an equal cordiality, but with an air of weariness; the pupil, Marius Bompuy, being introduced to me, declared that he was honored by my acquaintance—and modestly disclaimed my rejoinder that I was honored by knowing a lion-tamer, already ranged in his profession, who surely would mount quickly the ladder of fame. In a moment we were all chattering away together like magpies in a hedge—all save our good Victor, whose weariness made him a little distrait. That was only natural. To thrust one’s head into the jaws of a lion, with the feeling that it may not come out again, no doubt puts an exhausting strain upon one’s nerves.

On the little table stood a jug of water, a half-dozen tumblers, and a bottle of execrably bad absinthe. They had not touched this refreshment. With a charming politeness they had awaited my coming. The giantess herself filled my tumbler—towering above me, as she stood to perform that kindly office, like a tall tree. When the other tumblers had been filled we all rose and touched glasses above the table—it is the Provençal custom—and drank to each other with a great good-will. Victor, I observed, drained his tumbler to the last drop before he set it down. Yet the absinthe, all the more because of its wretched quality, was of a fiery strength. Before my own portion was half finished my head began to swim. Presumably, being strong enough to dare the jaws of a lion, Victor’s head was strong enough equally to dare that dangerous absinthe. Certainly, he immediately refilled his glass. He performed this act with a gloomy aloofness, as though for another person; with a like air of detachment he rolled and lighted an extremely bad cigarette. As he smoked, sipping the while from his tumbler, his look of bodily weariness wore away a little; but the cheering of his spirit lagged appreciably behind the cheering of his flesh. In the hope of heartening him, I offered my congratulations upon his advance in his profession since our last meeting. Necessarily, I spoke guardedly. The regrettable accident which had promoted him from the rank of a lion-tamer’s pupil to that of a master lion-tamer had its complications. To congratulate him in the presence of the lady whom that accident had widowed required both tact and delicacy—and all the more because the lady, ceasing with an amiable abruptness to be a disconsolate widow, had become his own consulate wife. It was not easy, but I think that I did succeed in expressing myself with an appropriate caution and also with an appropriate warmth. Unfortunately, my sympathetic endeavor was not crowned with success.

“Monsieur is very amiable,” he replied dejectedly. “I am grateful to him for his good-will. But to be a tamer of lions is not to rest upon a bed of roses.” He paused, and then added with bitterness: “Rather is it to be mangled upon a bed of thorns!” Sighing heavily, he took a long draught of absinthe.

“My brave one!” exclaimed the giantess in tones of comforting. “Thou art the very first of living lion-tamers, and thou hast the admiration of the whole world. Let thy expansive soul be cheered by the tribute of homage that intelligent men and women pay thee all the evenings, and by the awed ecstasy that though inspires in innocent children at the représentation enfantine on all the Sunday and Thursday afternoons.”

The brave one did not respond to that encouraging exhortation. It is possible that the exclusion of deceased lion-tamers from the measure of his greatness may have touched a chord that jangled a little in his expansive soul.

“To be a lion-tamer, I repeat,” he said gloomily, “is to court unhappiness. I may even say, more broadly, that only misery is the portion of all who associate their fortunes with the exhibition of ungrateful wild beasts. Search through the entire universe, and I defy you to find a profession so despicable in every way!” As he uttered these energetic words he glared fiercely at Monsieur Rique—as though that excellent man personally was responsible for the ingratitude of wild beasts—and brought his hand down upon the table with a bang.

Monsieur Rique, actual proprietor of the Agrégation Incroyable de Figures de Cire, accepted, but moodily, the challenge. “Thou hast no need to search through the universe to find a more despicable profession,” he answered with a profound melancholy. “Thou hast only to cross the table that stands between us and thy search is made! Be thankful, my good Victor, that the lucky star of wild animals was regnant at thy nativity. To be born beneath the malignant star of wax-works is another thing!”

Monsieur Rique, in turn, sighed heavily. Madame Rique, I perceived, was disposed to sigh with him—but she checked her sigh bravely, and said with an admirable assumption of cheerfulness: “No, no, my Gaston, it is not so bad as that. The calamity that is upon us is but momentary—in this disgracing town inhabited only by camels who have no souls for art.”

“Wax-works!” cried the lion-tamer, with an indignant scorn. “Wax-works! Do wax-works require at every instant of the day and night the attention that a mother lavishes upon her children? Do wax-works demand that they be taught to stand upon their hind legs?—to traverse the ring upon a bicycle?—to leap through flaming hoops?—to perform an endless variety of edifying feats! And above all, above all I ask, do wax-works eat? Rather, should I ask, do they ravage, do they desolate, do they devour? Our lion, our great Néron, absorbs meat as the parched desert absorbs the rain. The white bear of the glacial seas is as a bottomless pit. The royal tiger, the panther, the jaguar, together cry out for the substance of a score of men. The monkeys and the birds are less disastrous only by comparison. Of them all, only the anaconda has a reasonable appetite. For that brave reptile a single rabbit suffices for half a year—and to those who desire to observe him in the edifying act of eating his rabbit we make an extra charge. Wax-works! Wax-works, indeed! To be the fortunate owner of wax-works is a lot that the angels of heaven may pine for—while to be the outraged proprietor of wild animals is to suffer a punishment more bitter than is inflicted upon the fiends of hell!”

“Calm thyself, my soul,” the giantess put in soothingly. “Calm thyself, my Victor. As our good Marie here has said, this town of Saint-Césaire—it was a desolating fate that brought us here—is inhabited by human beings who in taste and in discernment are as the beasts that perish. Their meager natures are without aspirations. Art is a sealed book to them. For enlightenment they have no desire. To expect them to appreciate the exalting influences of wax-works is to expect swine to appreciate the beauty of pearls. Equally are they insensible to the ennobling influences of natural history. Creatures of such a sort have no wish to behold our unrivaled collection of wild animals, to listen to thy illuminating discourses upon the wonders of zoology, to see thy magnificent feats of daring—which elsewhere thrill more intelligent spectators with mingled admiration and alarm. From us, from our friends here, they withhold their wretched sous with an iron avarice—and with an infamous prodigality basely lavish fortunes upon humiliating cock-shys, and soulless flying-horses, and profligate montagnes russes.

“But reassure thyself, my Victor. As our Marie has said, our calamity is but momentary. To-morrow we shake from off our feet the dust of this ungrateful Saint-Césaire and go on to Maussane. It is an honest little town. Our success there, a year ago, was superb. It will be again superb. Silver will flow in upon us in rivers. Our pockets will be bursting. We shall feast at the excellent little Hôtel du Petit Saint-Roch—thou rememberest the civet of hare that they gave us there?—and every one of our hungering animals shall have a full meal. Even our anaconda shall be fed. Now is not the season for his rabbit, but he shall have one. In our times of leanness the considerate abstinence of that amiable serpent is our only comfort. It is but just to him that in our times of fatness he should also have his little feast. Think, then, my Victor, of the good-fortune that is so near at hand. Think how merrily we shall eat together our civet, and how we shall drink with it a bottle of that good red wine which they make over there on the warm Southern declivities of the Alpilles!”

I am persuaded that in speaking with this resolute cheerfulness the good giantess consciously was permitting sanguine hope to get some stages in advance of reasonable probability. But upon the lion-tamer—whose gloom appreciably had been undermined by the fiery absinthe—the effect of her heartening deliverance was excellent.

“My angel!” he said warmly. “Thy great soul is in keeping with thy great body. On thy vast breast always I find comforting. Thy faith in our happy future raises me from despair. I rely upon thy glad prophecies. With thee, I am confident that the noble inhabitants of Maussane will atone to us for our disaster here in this ignoble Saint-Césaire. Again we shall march conquering. And perhaps—who knows?—perhaps again fortune may favor us by giving our Néron the opportunity to eat another man!”

As Monsieur Pezon spoke these final words—speaking them a little thickly; and letting them slip, perhaps, under the stimulus to sincerity supplied by the absinthe—I observed that his glance rested for an instant upon Monsieur Bompuy. What was more curious, I observed that simultaneously the glance of Monsieur Bompuy rested for an instant upon Monsieur Pezon. In those glances it seemed to me that I had the key to the spirit of noble emulation which the giantess had declared existed between the lion-tamer and his assistant—only I was inclined to believe that their noble emulation was of an inverted sort that led each of them to abandon to the other the honor of coming closest to Néron’s jaws.

“Heart of my heart,” the lion-tamer continued, “I shall drink one more glass of this excellent absinthe to thy health and to thy happiness. I can do no less, in recognition of thy comforting and sustaining love.”

With a prompt decision, the giantess placed restrainingly her huge hand upon his upraised arm. “No, not now, my Victor, not now,” she said in a tone at once persuasive and firm. “Already the afternoon draws to its ending. The représentation of the evening is not far off—and then thy nerves must be steady and thy head cool. Our Néron is in no mood to be trifled with, as thou knowest well.”

“Absinthe admirably steadies the nerves and cools the brain,” put in Monsieur Bompuy.

The lion-tamer had manifested a disposition to shake off his wife’s great grasp and to carry out, in spite of her, his gallant project of drinking to her health and happiness. That his assistant’s comments upon the steadying and cooling properties of absinthe were intended to strengthen him in this intention was obvious. Oddly enough, they seemed to have upon him a directly contrary effect. Certainly, as those words were spoke, he yielded gracefully to the moral and material pressure put upon him and withdrew his outstretched hand.

“Thou art right, my angel,” he said. “Thou art right, as always—and it suffices that I drink my toast to thee in my heart. Moreover, with Monsieur’s permission, I shall go now to the fountain and soak this head of mine in the refreshing water, and then to repose myself before the représentation begins. And our Marius, here,” he added dryly, “shall be free to steady his nerves and cool his brain with all the absinthe that remains. I observe that his conduct is not in accord with his counsel: as yet he has not finished his single glass. Au revoir à plaisir, Monsieur.”

As the lion-tamer left us he shot another look from under his brows at his assistant. But his assistant was busied in rolling a cigarette at that moment and the look, if observed, was not returned.

Presently Monsieur Bompuy also left us. “The master sets me a good example,” he said. “With Monsieur’s permission I will follow it. I too will go to repose myself before the evening. In dealing with our Néron just now, as was observed by Madame, it is well to have a clear head and a steady hand. But, truly, Madame does the good beast an injustice. At his roots, even in his hunger, he is of an amiability toward those whom he knows to be his friends. He has the best heart, our great Néron, of any lion in the whole world.” So speaking, Monsieur Bompuy made his bow to us and went his way.

A moment later M’sieu-Madame Rique rose from their seats. “It is time, Monsieur,” Madame Rique explained, “that we prepare ourselves for the evening. Our good Victor said but now that wax figures, unlike wild animals, make no demands, require no services. He could not possibly have uttered words more extravagantly at variance with the miserable truth! Wax figures, Monsieur, are a constantly exhausting care. They compel us to a harassing vigilance that fills every instant of our lives. At this very moment the nose of Monsieur le Président Carnot—I observed it at the afternoon performance—is turned askew; and, also, the hand in which Santo holds his assassin dagger is cracking at the wrist. And yet those figures (it is our most pleasing group—Monsieur must do us the honor to behold it) are almost new! As to the older figures—the Holy Father, the great Emperor, Monsieur Thiers, the thrilling group of two Zulu savages slaying the Prince Imperial—they are crumbling into fragments in every hour of the day. We spend our entire existence, Monsieur, in making the necessary repairs. We breathe an atmosphere charged with the fumes of boiling wax through all the long evenings which succeed to our days of toil. The hours which should be free to us for healthful slumber are devoted to making, to mending, the costly garments in which our figures are attired. Wild animals, no doubt, do require a certain amount of attention—that much I admit freely. But, Monsieur, wild animals do not explode themselves into fragments with an imbecile malignity; they do not demand that heated wax be used without ceasing in their restoration; they are clad at all times, pleasingly and economically, in their own costless skins. No, no—in cheerful attendance upon wild animals one leads a life of unruffled gladness. It is as the hopeless slave of wax figures that one comes to know that which preys upon one’s very vitals, which plunges one’s whole being irrevocably into the caverns of despair!”

Madame Rique was so overcome by her emotion that she left us without making her farewells. Monsieur Rique, only less moved, equally was incapable of words. Without speaking, he raised his hat to us. In his eyes I saw the glint of tears.

“And yet, really, those good souls swim in what almost is a sea of happiness!” said the giantess, when we were left alone together. “For this past week, in this wretched town, it is true that their business has been bad. But at Uzès, in the week before, they made a little fortune; and even here, while they have nothing for the stocking, they have taken in enough silver to cover the cost of the stand. As to expenses—except now and then the cost of a new figure, and the cost of the wax which their mendings consume—they have none at all. By Madame Rique’s own showing, they do everything for themselves. It is not with them as it is with us—to whom ceaselessly in all seasons a multitude of hungry animals comes clamoring for costly food. Monsieur may have observed upon our bills the announcement that ‘the direction buys the hold horses, asses, and mules, in good health, for the nourishment of the animals’—but Monsieur can have no conception of the prodigious outlay which those purchases compel when they are made in sufficient quantities for our needs. It is the soul-crushing thought of that hopelessly huge outlay—unavoidable if we would save our beasts from perishing—that weighs upon us always with a leaden heaviness, and that drives my brave Victor to his absinthe as an escape from his despair!”

The giantess paused and sighed deeply. With a pained earnestness she continued: “Monsieur, it is my Victor’s increasing habit of drowning his despair in his absinthe that is ruining me professionally by eating the flesh from off my bones. In the past three months, because of my anxieties, I have lost no less than twenty kilos. In my best condition, I have weighed as much as two hundred and ninety kilos. Figure for yourself how long it will be, at this rate, before I shall wither wholly away! That, of course, is an extravagance. My stature of necessity will remain; but my figure, Monsieur, my figure, in which I have the honest pride of an artist, will be lost! Already, as a glance at these wrinklings of the cotton webbing reveals, my legs have shrunk calamitously—and with  the shrinking of my legs, of necessity, there must be also a shrinking of my fame. Only the other day, at Uzés, I was forced to listen to a disastrous comparison that was instituted between my legs and those of a giantess lately come into the profession from the Department of the Loire. It was unfair in every particular, that comparison. It was malevolently false. I have seen the person with whom I was compared—she had the effrontery to make a stand at one of our fairs—and I know that all of my measurements exceed hers. None the less, those cruel words cut into me as knives—because they aroused in my soul the dread to which we artists are ever most sensitive: the dread that our popularity shall wane. False though they were, there was the seed of truth in them. Even I cannot lose twenty kilos of flesh without losing also in the delicacy of my lines!

“And it is wholly, Monsieur, my anxieties for my Victor which are causing this destruction of my person. It is my dread of what may chance some day—when his absinthe has made him careless, and when our poor Néron is more than usually hungry—that is wasting me away. For the représentation enfantine, at three hours and a half, I have no fears. At that time in the day my Victor is of the correctness of an arch-bishop. But when it comes to the représentatiosn of all the evenings, at eight hours, there is not one of them but causes me thrillings of dismay. When he said but now that the eating of another man by our Néron would restore our broken fortunes, I shuddered in my soul. He was repeating, all unconsciously, my adored Alexandre’s very words! That those words are true affords me no consolation. I am an artist, I am a woman—but above all, Monsieur, I am a wife! As an artist, I long for a repetition of those triumphs which bathed me in an exalting happiness. As a woman, I long to wear again those richly adorning silks in which the commanding lines of my figure so superbly were displayed. But as a wife, as a great-hearted wife, I have a natural hesitation about purchasing fresh triumphs and fresh adornment on the same terms.

“In this I am absolutely sincere. Monsieur saw for himself that I compelled my Victor to cut short his dangerous drinking. I give Monsieur my word that I put upon Victor the like compulsion every day. Equally , my effort was the same in the case of my adored Alexandre. I struggled to check in him the habit that ended in his destruction. My struggle, as Monsieur knows, was unavailing. IOn the case of my Victor it again may be unavailing. Should he have a successor, and should his successor betray a like weakness, the struggle shall be resumed. Sacrificing the artist, crushing the woman, it is my high resolve to be only and always the loyal and the heroic wife—with whom self-interest is as nothing, with whom wifely duty is sacredly supreme. I desire, Monsieur, that that creditable fact shall be inscribed upon my tomb. All of my measurements, when in my best condition, and also my weight, will be stated in that inscription. I have spoken of the matter to my Victor, and also—as a safeguard against accidents—to his assistant, the excellent young Marius Bompuy. They have promised me that my wishes shall be regarded. It is arranged. That record of my measurements, and of my weight, will give to my monument a unique distinction. But when I think, Monsieur, of the record of my wifely devotion which will accompany it I am filled with a still nobler pride. I repeat, Monsieur, I am an artist, I am a woman—but I am a wife above all!”

As the giantess gave expression to this lofty sentiment her moral grandeur, matching to a hair her material grandeur, was magnificent. The Obelisk of Luxor could not have spoken with a more majestic bearing nor with a nobler air. But even while her words still thrilled me the look of animation faded from her expansive countenance, and again she uttered a heavy sigh.

“Monsieur,” she continued, in a tone of sadness, “my enthusiasms carry me away and I forget myself. I have the little duties of a devoted wife to perform as well as the great duties. It is necessary now that I prepare the dinner. I must excuse myself that I may attend to that affair. My Victor is of an amiability, but he reasonably has his little access of feeling when his eating is delayed. This evening, thanks to Monsieur’s American open hand, he shall fare well. But it will not be a feast, our little meal, and I do not venture to ask Monsieur to share it with us. Perhaps that happiness may be ours on another day: in the good times that will come for us when again our Néron—  But no, that thought must be crushed within my breast! What I would say is, that perhaps we may have the pleasure of entertaining Monsieur at our humble board when once again we bask in fortune’s smiles.

“And Monsieur is resolute to return to Nimes by the train of six hours? It is deplorable! He would find the evening représentation of a brilliance. My Victor always then is at his best—perhaps because of the absinthe. Monsieur truly is resolute to go?”

Monsieur truly was resolute to go. Even to oblige that worthy giantess I was not prepared again to put my nerves on the rack by spending another hour among those starving animals; to see again, with my heart in my mouth, my friend Victor’s head in the way to be cracked like a filbert in the great Néron’s jaws.

Two years later I was in Marseille. In the interval I had been in England and across to America. I had received letters from my friends the poets of the South—they are excellent correspondents—and even from some of the painters; but, naturally, no word had come to me from my artist friends of the road. Letter-writing was an accomplishment not in their line. On the occasions when I had happened to see a French newspaper I had examined every part of it with a painful care; and had taken a long breath when I found no record of a lion who had made his little economies—as the giantess had phrased it—by eating a man. That was something to the good. But it was so little that whenever my thoughts turned to my friend Victor I was preyed upon by a feeling of gloom.

In regard to the giantess my feelings were more complex. Her case and her Victor’s case—in the deplorable event of Néron’s practicing upon the latter his little economies—differed radically. For Victor, obviously, the situation would have no compensations—save, perhaps, a merely momentary thrill of satisfaction in the thought that he was alleviating the necessities of a trusted friend. But for the giantess the translation of the lion-tamer into the lion would be far from meaning an absolutely black despair. As a devoted wife, that translation would have a dark side for her; but as an artist and as a woman—I had, in effect, her word for it—there would be a silver lining to her somber cloud. In the outcome of the matter it was impossible not to feel a lively interest. Really, it was more than anything else my desire to get news of those friends of mine that had brought me to Marseille.

“Monsieur, no doubt, dines as usual at Brégaillon’s and in the evening goes as usual to the Palais de Cristal?” It was Monsieur Chabassu, actual proprietor of the Grand Hôtel du Paradis, who thus addressed me. He is an old friend, the worthy Chabassu. He knows my ways.

“And at the Palais de Cristal,” Chabassu continued, “Monsieur will find an attraction over which, for the moment, all the town goes mad. It is a lion who has eaten in succession three of his keepers. The feeling is aroused, naturally, that at any moment he may eat his present keeper, the fourth. To be witness of that thrilling spectacle—painful, but most interesting—all the world attends. The Palais de Cristal is packed nightly to its very doors. Also, the widow of the three who have been eaten—she is now the wife of the fourth, the one who now awaits the caprices of the lion’s appetite—is a part of the spectacle: a giantess, Monsieur, with legs so stupendous—they resemble the towers of a fortress—that the whole city is singing a song in which their immensity is described. Monsieur is most fortunate in coming to Marseille at this moment. I venture to advise that he makes sure of the purchase of his ticket before he dines. The demand for seats is enormous. The pressure of the throng, when the doors are opened, is like the surging of a stormy sea.”

It was evident that Chabassu had given me—in broad outline, and with a not unnatural Provençal exaggeration—the very news that I was in search of. And it also was evident that I had only to go to the Palais de Cristal that evening to obtain the details—which would correct his florid estimate of the great Néron’s man-eating exploits—from the giantess herself. Following his good advice, I hurried to secure my ticket; and then went on to my dinner at Brégaillon’s: over which I lingered—over Monsieur Brégaillon’s dinners it is impossible not to linger, even in seasons of such emotion as mine was then—until close upon the hour when, as I had been told at the box-office, the lion act would come on. Then I betook myself to my seat in the stalls.

The spectacle that I beheld was identical with that which the giantess had so vividly described to me two years earlier. It went with the same splendid furor. It glowed with the same soul-thrilling fire. In the center of the stage was a strong cage of iron containing the great Néron and his keeper—the latter clad brilliantly in crimson velvet embroidered with gold. At the side, in relief against a black curtain, was the giantess herself—again arrayed in the rich but simple silk costume that was so dear alike to her woman heart and to her artist soul. She had more than regained her lost twenty kilos. Her measurements, as she subsequently assured me, were greater than ever before. Standing there in strong relief against the black curtain, her appearance was of an impressiveness—of a geographical opulence that made her a veritable animated object-lesson in the use of the globes. The comparison that had been instituted between the nether portions of her person and the Pillars of Hercules seemed inadequate. Chabassu had come nearer to the truth with his fine simile of the towers of a château fort. Briefly, the giantess was superb!

The enthusiasm that she aroused among the spectators was stupendous. The very walls were shaken by the tempests of their cheers. Presently, with the orchestra leading, the whole house burst forth with the song in which, to use her own words, her legs had been embalmed. The tumult—the very spirit of Marseille was regnant—was frantic, delirious, overwhelming! I myself was carried away by it. In a moment I was shouting with the others the refrain of that embalming song. The whole building trembled as we roared out together:

“V’là des jambes! Colonnes d’Hercule!”

In the midst of that whirlwind of excitement the doings of the lion-tamer and the lion passed almost unnoticed. At least, they received but little attention after Néron’s obvious docility—when sufficiently fed, he was the most amiable of lions—had convinced the spectators that there was no likelihood, on that occasion, of his treating his keeper as the pièce de résistance of the host’s table.

Half an hour later, the act being ended, I was on my way to the green-room to offer my congratulations to the recipient of that magnificent ovation; and also to offer to her such expressions of sympathy as might seem to be called for when she had given me details of the tragedies which had occurred since our parting at Saint-Césaire.

I use the word tragedies, rather than tragedy, advisedly. The lion-tamer whom I had seen that evening in the cage with Néron was not Pezon, he was not even Bompuy; he was a person absolutely unknown to me. Sill more ominous was the fact that on the bills of the performance the name of the giantess had been given as Madame Galissard-Pezon-Bompuy-Roustan. What had become, I asked myself with anxiety, of my friend Victor and of the youthful Marius? Who, I further asked myself, was Roustan? The painful conviction possessed in me that I had done Chabassu an injustice in attributing exaggeration to his statement of Néron’s achievements. It looked as though that energetic animal had been practicing his little economies upon rather a startlingly large scale!

The giantess, clad elegantly but concisely in her sheening silk, welcomed me warmly. In her effusive friendliness she even honored me with an embrace. I am not a pygmy, but I was as an infant in her massively enfolding arms.

“Monsieur beholds me,” she explained joyously, as she released me from her chaste embrace, “in the very moment of my greatest triumph! All of my previous triumphs together are as nothing to that which I now achieve. I am in raptures that Monsieur has returned at this auspicious instant to be a witness of the magnificent tribute of homage that I receive from all the world. And I rejoice that Monsieur also has seen the splendid act that is made with our brave Néron by my Félix, the utmost felicity of my life has arrived!”

“But Victor, but Marius, what—?” I began. And then checked myself abruptly, fearful that my question was ill-advised.

“Ah, my adored Victor! My adored Marius!” the giantess answered with feeling. “Alas, Monsieur, they went the way of my adored Alexandre! Our Néron ate them both!” The giantess sighed heavily. in her eyes were tears.

“Surely not at once?” I ventured to ask.

“No, no. Monsieur does the good beast injustice. He has a conscience, our Néron. It was under the stress of his necessities that he acted. Between his two meals there was an interval of a year. Our anaconda could not have been more temperate, more self-restrained.

“Naturally, as Monsieur will understand, when my adored Victor was eaten I married at once my adored Marius. As before, in a business way our marriage was necessary; as before, it was demanded imperatively by the convenances—as Monsieur knows, my existence is rooted in the convenances; and, also, as I desire to say frankly, the devotion of my adored Marius to my interests, and his still stronger devotion to my person, extorted from me a wealth of affection that came warmly from my heart. As on a previous occasion, my marriage was one of convenience and propriety; but equally, as on a previous occasion, it was a marriage of love. Unhappily, still as on a previous occasion, it was not destined to endure.”

Tears flowed from the eyes of the giantess as she spoke. Her costume—as she once had explained to me—not permitting her to carry a handkerchief, she was compelled to brush them away with her hand. Controlling her emotion resolutely, she continued her narrative.

“After my adored Victor was lost to me, Monsieur, we had a season of splendid prosperity—my adored Marius and I. My adored Marius was admirable in his management of the affair; and our good friend Monsieur Manivet once more helped us in the making of a handbill which drew francs in streams from all pockets and tears in streams from all eyes. Again, Monsieur, a prodigious success attended everywhere upon us—but again, disastrously, our success faded slowly, until at last it withered utterly away! Once more our poor animals suffered agonies in their craving for the food that we could not give them; and once more our Néron, being enraged with hunger—  Monsieur must pardon me. It is impossible that I continue. My emotion overcomes me. I can say only that once more our Néron—perhaps again the faithful animal had the feeling that he was making his little economies in our interest—was satisfied with an ample meal. When his meal was ended my adored Marius was au troisième—my Félix is the author of the jeu d’esprit—in our Néron’s inside!

“That tragedy, Monsieur, happily is of the past. It has become a retrospect. More than a month has elapsed since the merging of my adored Marius in our Néron was effected. My sorrow must endure always; but its extreme poignancy, as is reasonable, begins to be alleviated by the soothing touch of time. In its first fierce moments, Monsieur, my grief was insupportable. My Félix—he was the assistant of my adored Marius—then was everything to me. But for his masterly management of the business side of that trying situation, but for the tender comforting which he bestowed upon me in my hours of agony, my affairs would have been involved in a hopeless ruin and I myself should have succumbed to a desolating despair. Stopping only for the single instant in which he strengthened me with his consolidations, he left Saint-Remy—it was in Saint-Remy that my adored Marius was eaten—and flew on the wings of the wind to Marseille. In the course of that same single morning, such was his conquering energy, he was at my sorrowing side again—bringing me renewed happiness with the assurance that he had secured for us the splendid engagement that we are filling now. Nor was that all. Thinking of everything, and moving with the speed of a thunderbolt, he had visited Monsieur Samat in his editorial office; with the result that a spirituel account two columns long of our Néron’s doing appeared the next morning in Le Petit Marseillais. It was exquisite, that article; and touching in the extreme. I wept over it in torrents. I wore it for days—when my dress was of a sort to permit me that luxury of grief—pinned close upon my faithful heart!

“Still with the same masterful energy, my Félix organized our immediate departure from Saint-Remy. We came away—on the train of two hours and twenty minutes—that very afternoon: leaving behind us, to follow later, all our belongings save our Néron. That our Néron should accompany us was essential. He was a necessary part of our act. But even had he not been necessary to our act, Monsieur, I could not have brought myself to forsake that faithful animal: in whom was embodied, and therefore in a way not lost to me, so many of those whom so devotedly I had loved. That selfsame evening we all appeared together—I, my Félix, our Néron filled with his endearing memories—on this exalted and exalting stage. What my reception was, Monsieur, I do not need to tell you. Within the hour you have seen a repetition of it with your own eyes!” The giantess made this reference to her popular triumph with an air and with a gesture worthy of a queen.

“As you may imagine, Monsieur,” she continued, “my gratitude to Félix was without bounds. That he had secured our engagement here at the Palais de Cristal, to be sure, was not surprising. With a lion to offer who had eaten three men; with a giantess to offer—it is as an artist that I speak—who is without rival in the profession, the engagement was an affair that made itself. But I felt that I owed him much for the splendid energy which he had expended in my service; and I felt that I owed him still more—I am proud, Monsieur, to tell you this—for the exquisite delicacy which had characterized his attitude toward myself. I am forced to confess to you that my adored Victor and my adored Marius had been less delicate. In avowing their affection for me they had acted with a closer approach to precipitance than accorded with the stricter niceties of good taste. My Félix, on the contrary, carried his observance of the niceties of good taste almost to an extreme. Not a word did he breathe to me of a feeling more than tenderly friendly until the business matter wholly was concluded and we were on our way to Marseille in the train!

“In the mean time, Monsieur, through those long hours, I had been thinking deeply—and all of my thinking, guided by my past experiences, led me to the same result. As always, from the standpoint of my professional interests, I perceived the need of retaining with my lion a competent lion-tamer. As always, from the standpoint of the convenances—to the observance of which, as Monsieur knows, I devote myself with an unflinching exactitude—I perceived that only in one way could that need be satisfied with propriety. But also, Monsieur, I was swayed by a higher and a more tender sentiment. I was profoundly grateful to that fine-natured young man for his touching forbearance; for the restraint that he had put upon himself in hiding so resolutely the feeling which I knew was in his heart. For the adequate expression of my gratitude—as for the safeguarding of my interests, as for the observance of the convenances—again I perceived that only one course was open to me. Being conscious, Monsieur, that my adored Marius, that my adored Victor, would approve my action—each of them, in turn, had given to it what I may term his visée—I took that course. When at last my Félix overcame his delicate reserve and opened his heart to me—we had been traveling for more than an hour, we had left Arles behind us, before he ventured to speak—I frankly and gladly bestowed myself upon that worthy young man. He had earned my gift. It was deserved. On the following morning, Monsieur, our marriage was solemnized at the Mairie in Marseille.

“And so it is, Monsieur, that you now behold me not in sorrow, as at our last meeting, but on the very crest of a mountainous wave of joy. You observe how I am dressed—once again in silks of the richest. You saw me but a moment ago as a queen among my devoted subjects—receiving the tempests of their applause. You know that my adored Félix fills and satisfies my heart. Two years ago, Monsieur, I told you that the great triumph of my life had come and had gone. I was mistaken. I am in the midst of the great triumph of my life at this very hour!

“But it must not be, Monsieur, that you misunderstand me; that you imagine me to be, in my sublime present, unfaithful to my exalted past. In my soul still are cherished the sainted memories of those who, in turn, were all in all to me: my three adored husbands—whom I loved, serially, with a supreme affection and served with an exhaustless care. I was their devoted wife, Monsieur. In saying that, I say all! And having held toward them that sacred relation—Monsieur will remember what I have said to him in regard to the sanctity of wifely duty—my chaste love for their memories will endure to the ultimate moment of my earthly days. I have endeavored delicately to indicate my continued devotion to all of their memories by continuing to call myself—as may be seen by a reference to the bills—by all of their names. It has its inconveniences, that arrangement—but with me, Monsieur, inconveniences are as nothing when the sacred requirements of wifely duty are to be fulfilled. I have told my Félix that his name also—should fate have farther changes in store for me—equally shall be continued upon the list. It is with pleasure that I have given him that tender assurance. Should the occasion arise, my promise to him shall be kept. My word has passed, and my loyal resolve is taken: the name of Roustan, Monsieur, shall not be forgotten—even though its immediate owner, by the force of some regrettable accident, should go to complete in the interior of our Néron what for me would be a peerless but desolating partie carrée.

“As to my feelings toward our Néron, Monsieur, they are not easy of expression. When I consider all calmly, I find—I cannot help it—that those feelings are confused. At times I remember with gratitude that to him I owe the gain of my three dear ones upon whom I have lavished my devoted wifely love. At other times, equally, I remember that to him I owe a precisely corresponding loss—and with that thought comes the unavoidable reflection that the good beast, even though his motives may have been excellent, pushed the making of his little economies to an extreme. Yet again, looking at the matter in still another light, I am conscious that but for his impulsively energetic operations I never should have achieved the series of splendid successes which have made me a celebrity with a world-wide fame. With the good and the evil so nicely balanced, Monsieur, it is difficult, it is excessively difficult, to come to a just settlement of the account.

“But in one way, Monsieur, my feeling toward our Néron is without painful complications: he is, and the thought endears him to me beyond expression, the substantial link that unites my happiness of the present with my happiness of the past. When I think of him in that way I cannot withhold from him my affections. Forgetting his misdirected energies, forgetting his impulsive errors, I remember only that that faithful animal is at once the incarnation and the sarcophagus of all—of all save my adored Félix—that I most have loved: of my adored Marius, of my adored Victor, of my adored Alexandre!”