“We’ll have a game of manille to-night, you old trickster.”
But Guitrel, hesitating, yet firm, stammered out that he would be obliged to go out after dinner. He was full of plans, and after pushing on the preparations for a meal, he gobbled down his food, to the great disgust of his host, who was not only a great eater, but a great talker. He refused to wait for dessert, but, retiring to another room, shut himself in, drew a layman’s suit from his portmanteau and put it on.
When he appeared again, his friend saw that he was dressed in a long, severe, black frock-coat, which seemed to have the drollery of a disguise. With his head crowned by a rusty opera-hat of prodigious height, he hastily gulped down his coffee, mumbled a grace and slipped out. Leaning over the stair-rail, Abbé Le Génil shouted to him:
“Don’t ring when you come in, or you’ll wake Nanette. You’ll find the key under the mat. One moment, Guitrel, I know where you’re going. You old Quintilian, you, you’re just going to take an elocution lesson.”
Through the damp fog, Abbé Guitrel followed the quays along by the river, passed the bridge of Saint-Pères, crossed the Place du Carrousel, unnoticed by the indifferent passers-by, who scarcely took the trouble even to glance at his huge hat. Finally he halted under the Tuscan porch of the Comédie-Française. He carefully read the playbill in order to make sure that the arrangements had not been changed, and that Andromaque and the Malade Imaginaire would be presented. Then he asked at the second pay-box for a pit ticket.
The narrow seats behind the empty stalls were already almost filled when he sat down and opened an old newspaper, not to read, but to keep himself in countenance, while he listened to the talk going on around him. He had a quick ear, and it was always by the ear that he observed, just as M. Worms-Clavelin listened with his mouth. His neighbours were shop-hands and artists’ assistants who had obtained seats through friendship with a scene-shifter or a dresser. It is a little world of simple-minded folk, keenly bent on sight-seeing, very well satisfied with themselves, and busied with bets and bicycles. The younger members are peaceful enough in reality, although they assume a jaunty military air, being automatically democratic and republican, but conservative in their jokes about the President of the Republic. As Abbé Guitrel caught the words that flew hither and thither all round him, words which revealed this frame of mind, he thought of the fancies cherished by Abbé Lantaigne, who still dreamt, in his hermit-like seclusion, of bringing such a class as this back to obedience to monarchy and priestcraft. Behind his paper Abbé Guitrel chuckled at the idea.
“These Parisians,” thought he, “are the most adaptable people in the world. To the provincial mind they are quite incomprehensible, but would to God that the republicans and freethinkers of the diocese of Tourcoing were cut out on the same model! But the spirit of Northern France is as bitter as the wild hops of its plains. And in my diocese I shall find myself placed with violent Socialists on one side and fervid Catholics on the other.”
He foresaw the trials that awaited him in the see once held by the blessed Loup, and so far was he from shrinking at the contemplation of them, that he invoked them on himself, with an accompaniment of such loud sighs that his neighbour looked at him to see if he were ill. Thus Abbé Guitrel’s head seethed with fancies of his bishopric amid the murmur of frivolous chatter, the banging of doors and the restless movements of the work-girls.
But when at the signal the curtain slowly rose, he instantly became absorbed in the play. It was the delivery and the gestures of the actors on which his attention was riveted. He studied the notes of their voices, their gait, the play of their features, with all the intent interest of an experienced preacher who would fain learn the secret of noble gesture and pathetic intonation. Whenever a long speech echoed through the theatre, he redoubled his attention and only longed to be listening to Corneille, whose speeches are longer, who is more fond of oratorical effects and more skilful in emphasising the separate points of a speech.
At the moment when the actor who played Orestes was reciting the great classic harangue “Avant que tous les Grecs ...” the professor of sacred elocution set himself to store up in his mind every attitude and intonation. Abbé Le Génil knew his old friend well; he was perfectly aware that the crafty preacher was in the habit of going to the theatre to learn the tricks of oratory.