Having taken the musicians’ prize the day before, the famous Valmajour, the greatest taborist of Provence, had come to honor Numa with his finest airs. In truth he was a handsome youth, this same Valmajour, as he stood in the centre of the arena, his coat of yellow wool hanging from one shoulder and a scarlet belt standing out against the white linen of his shirt. Suspended from his left arm he carried his long light tabor by a strap and with his left hand held a small fife to his lips, while with his right hand and his right leg held forward he played on his tabor with a brave and gallant air. The fife, though but small, filled the whole place like a chorus of locusts; appropriate music in this limpid crystalline atmosphere in which all sounds vibrate, while the deep notes of the tabor supported this peculiar singing and its many variations.
The sound of the wild, sharp music brought back his childhood to Numa more vividly than anything else that he had seen that day; he saw himself a little Provence boy running about to country fairs, dancing under the leafy shadow of the plane-trees, on village squares, in the white dust of the highroads, or over the lavender flowers of sun-parched hillsides. A delicious emotion passed through his eyes, for, notwithstanding his forty years and the parching effects of political life, he still retained a good portion of imagination, thanks to the kindliness of nature, a surface-sensibility that is so deceptive to those who do not know the true bottom of a man’s character.
And besides, Valmajour was not an everyday taborist, one of those common minstrels who pick up music-hall catches and odds and ends of music at country fairs, degrading their instrument by trying to cater to modern taste. Son and grandson of taborists, he played only the songs of his native land, songs crooned during night watches over cradles by grandmothers; and these he did know; he never wearied of them. After playing some of Saboly’s rhythmical Christmas carols arranged as minuets and quadrilles, he started the “March of the Kings,” to the tune of which, during the grand epoch, Turenne conquered and burned the Palatinate. Along the benches where but a moment before one heard the humming of popular airs like the swarming of bees, the delighted crowd began keeping time with their arms and heads, following the splendid rhythm which surged along through the grand silences of the theatre like mistral, that mighty wind; silences only broken by the mad twittering of swallows that flew about hither and thither in the bluish green vault above, disquieted, and as it were crazy, as if trying to discover what unseen bird it was that gave forth these wonderfully high and sharp notes.
When Valmajour had finished, wild shouts of applause burst forth. Hats and handkerchiefs flew into the air. Numa called the musician up to the platform, and throwing his arms around his neck exclaimed: “You have made me weep, my boy.” And he showed his big golden-brown eyes all swimming in tears.
Very proud to find himself in such exalted company, among embroidered coats and the mother-of-pearl handles of official swords, the musician accepted these praises and embraces without any great embarrassment. He was a good-looking fellow with a well shaped head, broad forehead, beard and moustache of lustrous black against a swarthy skin, one of those proud peasants from the valley of the Rhône who have none of the artful humility of the peasants of central France.
Hortense had noticed at once how delicately formed were his hands under their covering of sunburn. She examined the tabor with its ivory-tipped drum-stick and was astonished at the lightness of the old instrument, which had been in his family for two hundred years, and whose case curiously carved in walnut wood, decked with light carvings, polished, thin and sonorous, seemed to have grown pliable under the patina time had lent it. They admired above all the little old fife, that simple rustic flute with three stops only, such as the ancient taborists used, to which Valmajour had returned out of respect for tradition and the management of which he had conquered after infinite pains and patience. Nothing more touching than to hear the little tale of his struggles and victory in an odd sort of French.
“It come to me in the night,” he said, “as I listened me to the nightingawles. Thought I in meself—look there, Valmajour, there’s a little birrd o’ God whose throat alone is equal to all the trills. Now, what he can do with one stop, can’t you accomplish with the three holes in your little flute?”
He talked quietly, with a perfectly confident tone of voice, without a suspicion of being ridiculous. No one indeed would have dared to smile in the face of Numa’s enthusiasm, for he was throwing up his arms and stamping so that he almost went through the platform. “How handsome he is! What an artist!” And after him the Mayor and President Bédarride and the General and M. Roumavage, the big brewer from Beaucaire, vice-consul of Peru, tightly buttoned into a carnival costume all over silver, echoed the sentiments of the leader, repeating in convinced tones: “What a great artist!”
Hortense agreed with them, and in her usual impulsive manner expressed her sentiments: “Oh, yes, a great artist indeed” while Mme. Roumestan murmured “You will turn his head, poor fellow.”
But there seemed to be no fear of this for Valmajour, to judge by his tranquil air; he was not even in the least excited on hearing Numa suddenly exclaim: