Bruant’s Mirliton, thanks to the forceful talent of its founder, its lugubrious but artistic furnishings, and its cavalier treatment of its patrons, is the most famous, the most picturesque, and the most startling of the cabarets brutaux.
Alexandre owes such success as he has had at the Cabaret Bruyant less to his talent as a writer and singer of chansons, which is not great, than to his having sung in the streets with Mme. Eugénie Buffet for the benefit of the poor[102] (his cabaret is also known as Le Cabaret du Chanteur des Cours) and to his having been haled into court by Bruant for plagiarising his costume. The court decided in this cause célèbre (Bruant vs. Alexandre) that the top-boots, velvet jacket, scarlet scarf, and mountaineer’s felt which Bruant wore professionally were his trade-mark, so to speak, and that the professional costume adopted by Alexandre—which, without being an exact copy, was as close a copy as the word “Bruyant,” for example, is of Bruant—constituted a palpable infringement. And it granted Bruant an injunction restraining Alexandre from appearing therein. The judgment was reaffirmed upon appeal.
In his first burst of rage over the result, Alexandre threatened to sing without any costume whatsoever; but he thought better of that. What he did do was to defy the court. Swearing
ALEXANDRE there was not force enough in France to undress him, he persisted in wearing the prohibited garb.
These strained relations with the law of the land made a hero of Alexandre, in a small way. He became thus a sort of Jules Guérin, and his cabaret a sort of Fort Chabrol. He elucidated the situation to his audiences nightly in a speech that ran somewhat like this:—
“What do you say to a republic where you can’t wear, so that they be decent, any clothes you like? This business has cost me more than ten thousand francs already. Every day—and it’s seventeen months now it’s been going on—the sheriff appears. ‘Still in the costume, Alexandre?’ And that means twenty francs! Twenty francs a day—to say nothing of the costs—counts up. Well, what of it? Let the bill swell! Let them come as often as they please! It’s their right! But I keep on wearing the clothes all the same.
“Not that I don’t recognise in Bruant, for all the harm he’s trying to do me, my cher maître. What should I be without him? Nothing at all. Oh, yes, I’m ready enough to admit that. I am no ingrate. For the man who is ruining me, I have something there, at the heart, which abides, and which nothing can take away.
“When I began to wear the costume, Aristide didn’t object. Not he. He thought me beneath his notice, I suppose. But, when he sees I am succeeding, then he brings me up in court.
“The truth of it is, he dreads my competition. I frighten him. My glory throws him in the shade. He says to Alexandre, ‘Get out of my light!’