I was in one of those salles de spectacle that were at that time as numerous in Paris as were political clubs—a wide, low room, with an open platform at its further end for musicians, and, round three of its walls, a roped-in enclosure for figures in waxwork. It was these bowelless dolls that caused me my start, and in which I immediately saw my one little chance of salvation.
I went down the row gingerly, on tiptoe. A horn lantern, slung over the stair-head, was the only light vouchsafed this thronged assembly of dummies. Its rays danced weakly in corners, and lent some of the waxen faces a spurious life. A ticket was before each effigy—generally, as I hurriedly gathered, a quite indispensable adjunct. I had my desperate plan; but perhaps I was too particular to select my complete double. Here, a button or the cut of a collar were the pregnant conditions of history. The clothes made the man, and Mirabeau had written ‘Le Tartufe’ on the strength of a flowing wig. I saw Necker personating our unhappy monarch in that fatal Phrygian cap that was like the glowing peak of a volcano; stuttering Desmoulins waving a painted twig, his lips inappropriately inseparable; the English Pitt, with a nose blown to a point; Voltaire; Rousseau; Beaumarchais—many of the notabilities and notorieties of our own times—and before the last I stopped suddenly.
I would not for the world insult the author of ‘Figaro’; but it was my distinction to be without any; and in a waxwork the ticket makes the man.
Pierre Augustin was represented pointing a Republican moral—in dress a pseudo petit-maître—at his feet a broken watch. One recalls the incident—at Versailles—when a grand seigneur requests the ex-horologist to correct his timepiece for him. “Monsieur, my hand shakes.” “Laissez donc, monsieur! you belittle your professional skill.” Beaumarchais flings the watch on the floor. “Voilà, monsieur! it is as I said!”
Now I saw my hope in this figure and (it was all a matter of moments with me) whipped it up in my arms and ran with it to the end of the platform. A flounce of baize hung therefrom to the floor, and into the hollow revealed by the lifting of this I shot the invertebrate dummy, and then scuttled back to the ropes to take its place.
There were sounds as I did so—a noise below that petrified me in the position I assumed. My heart seemed to burr like the winding-wheel of a mechanical doll. I pray M. Beaumarchais to forgive me that travesty of a dignified reproof.
A step—that of a single individual—came bounding up the stair. My face was turned in its direction. I tried to look and yet keep my eyes fixed. The dull flapping light seconded my dissemblance; but the occasion braced me like a tonic, and I was determined to strike, if need were, with all the force of the pugnacious wit I represented.
Suddenly I saw a white, fearful countenance come over the stair-head—shoulders, legs, a complete form. It was that of an ugly stunted man of fifty, whose knees shook, whose cheeks quivered like a blanc-mange. He ran hither and thither, sobbing and muttering to himself.
“Quick, quick! who?—Mirabeau? A brave thought, a magnificent thought! My God!—will they fathom it? I have his brow—his scornful air of insistence. My God, my God!—that I should sink to be one of my own puppets!”
Astounded, I realised the truth. This poltroon—the very proprietor of the show—was in my own actual case, and had hit upon a like way out of his predicament. I saw him seize and trundle the ridiculous presentment of M. Mirabeau to the room end, and then fling it hurriedly down and kick it—the insolent jackass!—under the curtain. I saw him run back and pose himself—with a fatuous vanity even in his terror—as that massive autocrat of the Assembly; and then, with a clap and a roar, I heard at last the hounds of pursuit break covert below and come yelling up the stairs.