CHAPTER XVII
THE REVELS OF TRINQUETAILLE
(A REMINISCENCE OF ALPHONSE DAUDET)
Alphonse Daudet, writing of his youth in the “Lettres de mon Moulin” and “Trente Ans de Paris,” has told with the finest bloom of his pen some of the pranks he played with the early Félibres at Maillane, Barthelasse, Baux, and Châteauneuf—that first crop of Félibres who in those days ran about the country of Provence for the fun of running, to keep themselves going, and above all to stir up again in the hearts of the people the Gai-Savoir of the Troubadours. There is, however, one joyous day of adventure we spent together some forty years ago, of which Daudet has not told.
Alphonse Daudet was at that time secretary to the Duc de Morny, honorary secretary be it understood, for the utmost that the young man ever did was to go once a month to see if his patron, the President of the Senate, was flourishing and in a good temper. Amongst other exquisite things from his pen, Daudet had written a love-poem called “Les Prunes.” All Paris knew it by heart, and Monsieur de Morny, hearing it recited one evening in a drawing-room, requested the author might be presented to him, with the result that he took the young man under his patronage. To say nothing of his wit, which flashed like a diamond, Daudet was a handsome fellow, brown, with a clear skin and black eyes with long lashes, a budding beard and thick crop of hair which he allowed to grow so long that the Duke, every time the author of “Les Prunes” called on him at the Senate, would repeat, with disapproving finger pointing at the offending locks:
“Well poet—and when are we going to cut off this wig?”
“Next week, Monseigneur,” the poet invariably replied.
About once a month the great Duc de Morny made the same observation to the little Daudet, and every time the poet made the same answer. But the Duke himself was more likely to fall than Daudet’s mane.
At that age the future chronicler of the prodigious adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon was a merry youth, who kept pace with the wind, impatient to know everything, an audacious Bohemian, frank and free with his tongue, throwing himself headlong in the swim of life with laughter and noise, always on the look-out for adventures. He had quicksilver in his veins.
I remember one evening, when we were supping at the Chêne-Vert, a pleasant inn in the neighbourhood of Avignon, hearing music for a dance that was going on just below the terrace where we were dining. Daudet suddenly jumped down, a flying leap of some nine or ten feet, crashing through the branches of a vine trellis and landing in the midst of the dancers, who took him for a devil.
Another time, from the height of the road which passes at the foot of the Pont du Gard, he threw himself, without knowing how to swim, into the River Gardon, to see, so he said, if the water was deep. Had not a fisherman caught hold of him with his boathook, my poor Alphonse would most certainly have drunk what we call “the soup of eleven o’clock!”