Who was Berlick?—The fête of Villers-Cotterets—Faust and Polichinelle—The sabots—Journey to Paris—Dollé—Manette—Madame de Mauclerc's pension—Madame de Montesson—Paul and Virginia—Madame de Saint-Aubin.
I was Berlick: and this is how I obtained the charming nickname.
While my mother was enceinte the usual Whitsuntide fête took place at Villers-Cotterets; a delightful fête it was, to which I shall again refer. It took place at the time of the first spring foliage and amid the opening flowers, when butterflies are dancing and linnets singing. In olden days this fête was famed far and wide, and people attended it from twenty leagues round; like all other fêtes, it began as a Corpus Christi festival, but now only exists in the calendar.
Well, to this well-attended fête came a man carrying a booth on his back, as a snail carries its shell.
This booth contained the essentially national spectacle of Polichinelle, from which Goethe borrowed the idea of his Faust.
Polichinelle is simply a worn-out, callous, crafty libertine, who abducts women, and flouts brothers and husbands, who thrashes the officers of the law, and ends up by being carried off by the devil. And what else was Faust? A worn-out, callous libertine, not very cunning, it is true, who seduces Marguerite, kills her brother, beats burgomasters and is carried off by Mephistopheles in the end.
I will not venture to say that Polichinelle is more picturesque than Faust, but I will go so far as to maintain that he is quite as philosophical and more amusing.
Our friend with the booth had set up his show on the green, and gave daily thirty or forty representations of that sublime comedy, which has made us all laugh as children, and ponder over when grown men.