When I found out this trick I naturally stopped giving him the candy, but he was not discouraged. First he begged for it with an appealing look; then when he saw that I would not give it to him, he sat up in his seat and bent his little body with his hand on his stomach, and coughed with all his might. The veins in his forehead stood out, the tears ran from his eyes, and his pretense at choking, in the end, turned to a dreadful attack over which he had no control.
I had to stay at the inn with Pretty-Heart while my master went out alone. One morning upon his return he told me that the landlady had demanded the sum that we owed her. This was the first time that he had ever spoken to me about money. It was quite by chance that I had learned that he had sold his watch to buy my sheepskin. Now he told me that he had only fifty sous left. The only thing to do, he said, was to give a performance that same day. A performance without Zerbino, Dulcie or Pretty-Heart; why, that seemed to me impossible!
"We must get forty francs at once," he said. "Pretty-Heart must be looked after. We must have a fire in the room, and medicine, and the landlady must be paid. If we pay her what we owe her, she will give us another credit."
Forty francs in this village! in the cold, and with such poor resources at our command!
While I stayed at home with Pretty-Heart, Vitalis found a hall in the public market, for an out-of-door performance was out of the question. He wrote the announcements and stuck them up all over the village. With a few planks of wood he arranged a stage, and bravely spent his last fifty sous to buy some candles, which he cut in half so as to double the lights.
From the window of our room I saw him come and go, tramping back and forth in the snow. I wondered anxiously what program he could make. I was soon enlightened on this subject, for along came the town crier of the village, wearing a scarlet cap, and stopped before the inn. After a magnificent roll of his drum he read out our program.
Vitalis had made the most extravagant promises! There was to be present a world-renowned artist—that was Capi—and a young singer who was a marvel; the marvel was myself. But the most interesting part of the farce was that there was no fixed price for the entertainment. We relied upon the generosity of the audience, and the public need not pay until after it had seen, heard, and applauded.
That seemed to me extraordinarily bold. Who was going to applaud us? Capi certainly deserved to be celebrated, but I ... I was not at all convinced that I was a marvel.
Although Pretty-Heart was very ill at this moment, when he heard the drum, he tried to get up. From the noise and Capi's barks, he seemed to guess that it was to announce our performance.