Numa Roumestan

by Alphonse Daudet

On a vast gray wall pierced with hideous little windows at the angle of the Rue de Lyon, there was the picture of a wretched troubadour. Washed out by all the moisture of the winter and the filth from a barrack of poor people, the advertisement showed on the second story a frightful mess of blue, yellow and green through which one could still see the pretentious and victorious gesture of the tabor-player. In Parisian advertisements placards succeed each other quickly, one concealing the other; but when they are of enormous dimensions, some bit or end will stick out; wherefore it happened that in every corner of Paris during the last fortnight the Minister had found before his eyes either a leg or an arm, or a bit of the Provençal cap, or an end of the laced peasant’s boots of Valmajour. These remnants threatened him even as in that Provençal legend the victim of a murder with his various limbs hacked and separated cries out against his murderer from all the separate bits of his body. But in this case he was there entire, and the horrible coloring seen through the chill morning air, forced as it was to receive unflinchingly all kinds of filth before it dropped away and disappeared under a final rush of wind, represented very well the destiny of the unfortunate troubadour, driven forever from pillar to post through the slums of that Paris which he could no longer quit, and conducting the farandole for a mob recruited from the unclassed and exiled ones and the fools, those persons thirsting for notoriety whose end is the hospital, the dissection table and the potter’s field.

Roumestan got into his coach frozen to the very bone by that morning apparition and by the cold of his sleepless night, shivering at sight through the car windows of those mournful vistas in the suburbs, those iron bridges across streets that shone with rain, those tall houses, barracks of wretchedness whose numberless windows were stuffed with rags, and then those early morning figures, hollow cheeked, sorrowful and sordid, those rounded backs and arms clutching breasts in order to conceal something or warm themselves, those taverns with signs in endless variety and the thick forest of factory chimneys vomiting smoke that falls at once to earth. After that came the first gardens of the outer suburb, black of soil, the coarse mortar in the low farm buildings, villas closely shuttered in the midst of their little gardens reduced by the winter to copses as dry as the bare wood of the kiosks and arbors, and then, farther on, the country roads broken up by puddles, where one saw files of overflowing tanks—a horizon the color of rust, and flights of crows over the deserted fields.

He closed his eyes to keep out this sorrowful Northern winter through which the whistle of the locomotive passed with long wails of distress, but his own thoughts under his lowered eyelids were in no respect happier. So near again to that fool of a girl—for the bond that held him to her still contracted his heart though it had broken!—he pondered over all the different things he had done for her and what the support of an operatic star had cost him for the last six months. In that life of the boards everything is false, but especially success, which is only worth as much as one buys. The demands of the claque, cost of tickets at the office, of dinners, receptions, presents to reporters, publicity in all its varying forms, all these have their price; then the magnificent bouquets at sight of which the singer grows red and shows emotion, gathering them up against her arms and nude neck and the shining satin of her gown; and then the ovations prepared beforehand for the provincial tour, enthusiastic processions to the hotel, serenades to the diva’s balcony and all the other things calculated to dispel the gloomy indifference of the public—ah, all these must not only be paid for but paid high!

For six months he had gone along with open pocketbook, never begrudging the triumphs arranged for the little girl. He was present at negotiations with the chief of the claque and the advertising agents of the newspapers, as well as the flower-woman whose bouquets the diva and her mother worked off on him three times without his knowledge merely by decking them out with fresh ribbons; for these Bordeaux Jewesses were possessed of a vulgar rapacity and a love of trickery and expedients which caused them at times to remain at home for entire days, clad in rags, old jackets over flowing skirts, with their feet in ancient ball slippers. In fact it was thus that Numa found them oftenest, passing their time playing cards and reviling each other as if they were in a van of acrobats at a fair. For a good many months past they had no longer put on any restraint in his presence. He knew all the tricks and grimaces of the diva and the coarseness natural to an affected and unneat woman of the South: also that she was ten years older than her age on the boards and that in order to fix upon her face that eternal smile in a Cupid’s bow she went to sleep each night with her lips pulled up at the corners and streaked with coral lip-paint.

At this point at last he himself fell asleep—but I can assure you that his mouth was not like a Cupid’s bow; on the contrary his every feature was haggard from disgust and fatigue, while his entire body was shaken by the bumps and swayings to and fro and by the shocks of the express train whirled under full steam over the metals.

“Valeïnce!—Valeïnce!”

He opened his eyes like a child called by his mother. The South had already begun to appear; between the clouds, which the wind was driving apart, deep blue abysses were dug, and there was the sky! A ray of sunlight warmed the car window and among the roadside pines one saw the grayness of a few thin olive-trees. This produced a feeling of rest throughout the sensitive nature of the Southerner and a complete polar change of ideas. He was sorry that he had been so harsh to Lappara. Think of having destroyed the future of that poor boy and plunged a whole family in grief—and for what? A “foutaise, allons!” as Bompard said. There was only one way of repairing it and correcting its look of dismissal from the Ministry, and that was the Cross of the Legion of Honor. And the Minister began to laugh at the idea of Lappara’s name appearing in the Officiel with this addition, “Exceptional services.” But after all it was an exceptional service to have delivered his chief from that degrading connection.

Orange!... Montelimar and its nougat!... Voices were already full of vibration and words reinforced by lively gestures. Waiters from the restaurant, paper sellers and station guards rushed upon the train with their eyes sticking out of their heads. Certainly this was quite a different people from that which one met thirty leagues farther North, and the Rhône, the broad Rhône, with its waves like a sea, glistened under the sunshine that turned to gold the crenelated ramparts of Avignon, whose bells—which have never stopped ringing since the days of Rabelais—saluted the big political man of Provence with their clear-cut chimes. Numa took possession of a seat at the buffet in front of a little white roll, a pasty and a bottle of the well known wine from the Nerte that had ripened between the rocks and was capable of inoculating even a Parisian with the accent of dwellers among the scrub-oak barrens.

But his natal atmosphere rejoiced his heart the most—when he was able to leave the main line at Tarascon and take a seat in a coach on the small patriarchal railway with a single track which pushes its way into the heart of Provence between the branches of mulberries and olive-trees, while tufts of wild rose scrape against the side doors. People were singing in the coaches; at every moment the train stopped in order to allow a flock of sheep to pass or to pick up a belated traveller or to ship some parcel which a boy from a mas brought up at a full run. And then what salutations and nice little bits of gossip between the train hands and the peasant women in their Arles head-dresses standing at their doors or washing clothes on the stone near the well! At the station what cries and hustlings—an entire village turning out to conduct to the cars some conscript or some girl who was off to the town for service.

“Té! vé! not good-bye, dear lass, ... but be very good, au moins!”